By then, the fire was raging so fiercely that the infirmary’s iron doors glowed red at the edges. Many of us ran to fetch water from the rain tank and even from the clock. But when the cold water hit the burning building, the very stones cracked and collapsed so that, in the end, no more was left of the structure than a single scorched and crumbling wedge of wall. The bodies within had been reduced to charred flesh and bones; skulls that seemed frozen in their death cries.

And all this occurred because I had told a story, a tale I invented in my desperation to save my own life. I had spread it among the people that it was the Jews who had murdered the infant, that it was they who were responsible for the little body that had recently been discovered near the abbey grounds. I said the Jews had sacrificed the babe. I concocted an arcane rite, invented enough details to make it sound convincing. I said the Jews had stabbed the child and used his blood to make their Paschal bread: an abominably distorted version of the mass. I made it all very believable.

And the story slowly spread until the people rose up in a mob and took their vengeance in the chapel.

By then, of course, poor Annie was too far gone in madness to convince anyone of the truth.

*    *    *

For weeks before the child was found, Annie had wandered the streets, babbling about the murder. She said she heard the baby tapping at the earth above his secret grave, tapping and tapping night and day. She would roam the village in her rags, her hair hanging down around her face in filthy tangles. Her eyes had a wide, white, almost mystical aspect. She would seize the arm of any passerby who would stop for her.

“Listen!” she would whisper.” Tick-tick. Tick-tick. Hear him? Hear him? He is trying to get out. He is trying to come back to me.

Anselm, William and I suffered agonies of suspense for fear that someone might actually pay heed to her.

In the end, as it will, disaster came like a thief in the night. We monks departed mass one morning shortly after Easter, to find a large crowd had gathered just beyond the cemetery garth, where the walls had been undergoing repair. I was sent to investigate—in what state of guilty tension I cannot describe—and there found many of the local farmhands clustered in a murmuring circle. I pushed my way through and what I saw brought my heart into my mouth.

There was Annie, lying on the ground half naked. She had torn her rags from her body with her clawed hands. Her long nails were black with dirt. Her fingertips were bleeding.

She had dug up the infant’s body.