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“Just spent a quiet night at the Abbey of Saint-Benoît-du-Lac. The only sound was the monks singing Gregorian Chants. Hope I can capture this feeling of peace in the book. This really is a “beautiful mystery.”
The abbot led the small procession, followed by Frères Simon and Charles. Then Captain Charbonneau at the head of the stretcher and Beauvoir behind. Gamache was the last to leave the abbot’s garden, closing the bookcase behind him.
They walked into the rainbow corridor. The joyful colors played on the body, and the mourners. As they arrived at the church, the rest of the community stood and filed from the benches. Joining them. Walking behind Gamache.
The abbot, Dom Philippe, began to recite a prayer. Not the rosary. Something else. And then Gamache realized the abbot wasn’t speaking. He was singing. And it wasn’t simply a prayer. It was a chant.
A Gregorian chant.
Slowly the other monks joined in and the singing swelled to fill the corridor, and join with the light. It would have been beautiful, if not for the certainty that one of the men singing the words of God, in the voice of God, was a killer.
