They walked down the hallway into the medicinal herb garden. The fresh scent of rosemary crossed their noses. The high mountains above the monastery had their tips already lighted by the coming sunrise. A couple birds were roused to chirp by the monk. More monks joined them at the door to the chapel. Their walk had slowed to shuffling steps in the mass of brown hooded man. Once inside the church, the mass of people dissipated as monks were leaving the central aisle to enter the black hard benches.
The lector began reciting the Latin mass. He was inside a white tower with a little roof at the front of the church. Sculptures of golden angels were flying above him. The stained colored tall baroque windows recounted a scene of the dead Christ stabbed into the side with a spear, a scene of Jonas being spewed out by the whale, and a scene of Moses receiving the ten Commandments. The pit of the church was lined by seats with tall wooden dividers between them. The highest religious leaders of the monastery would sit up front. Their bodies were completely hidden by the dividers. Only their knees and feet protruded to be visible. Even these limbs were covered by the same brown sack clothes as all the others, making them anonymous.
Bernard abruptly raised his head. He realized that his head had slowly lowered itself as he nodded off. The sleep was heavy on his eyes. The blood had drained his head from sitting. His finger nails scratched over the palm of the opposite hand. They left a white line in his pink flesh. He pinched his finger tips. The pinches did little to dispel the sleepy air out of him. For this problem, he had a small knife with him. He cut short quarter inch lines into the back of his hand to stay awake. Older cuts had healed into skinny white scars.
The monk next to Bernard opened his prayer book. He flipped to page eighty three. There was a slip of loose paper with a sketch in it. It was the primitive outline of a woman. A circle was the head. The hair was a curved line on both sides of her head. Notably, two circles on her chest stood for the breast. A cross hatched triangle at the bottom of the torso marked her sex. The monk reached his hand under his robe into his crotch.
Bernard tried to look away and focus on the lector. Yet, his eyes involuntarily peaked down at the drawing. They had to know. Was this girl like the girl that he remembered growing up in the village? Was this by rare chance the girl that had warmly hugged him after he had stumbled in school and bruised his knees? Was this the girl that had the purest blue eyes? Would that girl from school have breasts like these under her clothes as well? Bernard felt an erection despite the cold air. The stick figure naked woman and the memories of his school affection had aroused him.
When the sun had completely risen and flooded the chapel with light, the lector left his podium. The monks rose silently and shuffled to their morning chores. Bernard felt guilty. The mere thought of desire of a woman was adultery. This morning, he had adultered and perverted that innocent girl from his school. He felt horrible about hurting her. So, he took the path of penance.
The path of penance started at the back of the chapel. It was a trail that leads into the forest. The steep slope quickly gained altitude. Bernard looked back down at the abbey and the village. He felt like he had a good overview and was more in control of his life by seeing the big picture. The pine trees were large and towering around him. The wind whispered through the tips of them in an eerie woohoo. The dirt and rocks under his feet made a grinding sound as his weight pressed down on them.
The first stop was a shrine to Saint Abbo Fleury, who had written a passion about the martyrdom of Saint Edmund. Bernard kneeled on the sharp pebbles in front of the shrine. He prayed for forgiveness for his carnal desires earlier in mess. He tried to remedy the ill that he had done to Katherine, the school girl, by praying for her health. May, your arms be blessed with health. May, your legs be blessed with health. As he blessed her legs, he remembered an incident.
Katherine had been excited to fetch a certain wild flower for the teacher. The teacher was teaching botany and needed a specimen for demonstration. It was a dandelion. The teacher wanted to show us the little seeds. Katherine had jumped up from her chair. As she jumped out of the classroom, she had miscalculated the steps outside of it. She fell flat on her face. Her dress had risen up and over her, so that the bottom of it was resting on her back. As she lay face down, her whole legs were bare to the students looking out. She was exposed up to her panties. Those young, tender white legs had a bit of baby fat. The butt cheeks were firm under the panties. He had often thought about running kisses up and down the legs and feeling her butt cheeks with his lips through the panties.
Bernard rose. He walked to the next shrine. The shrine was hammered into a two man high outcropping of rock. This shrine belonged to Edmund the Martyr, who had been killed by Vikings. Bernard prayed for forgiveness of his earlier memory of Katherine's legs. He repented by praying for Katherine's life to be filled with joy and happiness. He remembered the time that he saw her at her happiest. She had been gleaming with joy that she had seen him naked. She had uttered the devious and forbidden word with a gushing passion: "I saw your penis."
Before school, Bernard had taken a bath at the creek a little outside the village. His clothes had been resting on a rock safely away from the sprinkling of the creek as it splashed over the rocks. He was sitting naked in the creek splashing water over his head, when he thought that he had heard giggling. Then, he had discounted his hearing. After she had told him, she imagined her hiding behind a tree. He imagined her watching his naked body. He imagined her watching his butt cheeks, inspecting the clef between his butt cheeks, as he jumped head first into a swimming hole. He imagined her telling the other girls in class about the white stout shaft of his penis and the shriveled up scrotum from the cold water. He imagined the girls visualizing their interpretations of his penis as they looked at him during class break.
Bernard tore himself away from the shrine and his rampant fantasy. He walked as fast as he could so that the pang in his lungs may stop the sinful thoughts. The shrine for Saint Gratus of Aosta quickly appeared at the edge of an idyllic clearing in the forest. The grass grew freely in the clearing with wildflowers dotting the green. A couple of deer were grassing on the far side. Bernard fell to his knees and silently cried for mercy from the temptations. He blessed Katherine with safety from the dangers of war and thugs. He remembered the night that the village was ransacked by a warring neighboring village. The formation of the Swiss federation was filled with battles for political power. All the children were huddled in the only school room. Katherine had fallen asleep leaning on his shoulder.
Her hair had fallen into his face. The long strands of hair were wafting the smell of female and youth into his nose. She smelled like nothing else he had smelled before. The hair tickled his face a bit, yet he surrendered to that feeling. Her chest pushed against his arm gently as she inhaled. He felt the warmth of her body creeping into his skin and warming his heart. His mind started feeling drowsy, yet happy about feeling her. Once she shifted a bit and her ragdoll hand fell into his lap. Her hand squarely landed on his pants covering his penis. He did not dare moving.
Outside, weapons were making sounds hitting each other. Men were yelling taunts and orders. Inside, he felt her soft little hand resting on his penis through his pant fabric. He felt so much tender love that his penis grew hard. Katherine was innocently sleeping, while he was flushed with lust. All his limps felt alive and vibrating sensuously.
The door barged open. An out of breath man in armor with a sword announced that the attackers were running. We were safe. Katherine roused. She felt his erection with her hand. He blushed with deep embarrassment. She looked tenderly into his eyes. He looked back into her blue eyes. They were clear. He could see the dark blotches in her iris. He felt the tenderness and love that his parents never gave him. A tear ran down his face. Katherine's face reacted with deep empathy for Bernard's hard life as a boy, who had to be tough. All the while, her hand was still resting on his erect penis.
Bernard rose up from the shrine. He had a raging erection under his monk robe. He stepped behind a large tree trunk. He reached his penis. He imagined that it were Katherine's hand. He dreamed what her soft warm touch on his sex would feel like. He could almost see her blue eyes and mischievous smile hovering in front of his face, as she would jack him off. He had looked at those red pinkish lips often enough to remember their shape, how they were evenly thin, how the crooks of the lips would move around for her different faces. He furiously rubbed his penis behind the tree. Desire had completely overtaken him. He could feel that Katherine's happy, cheerful, and innocent spirit overtook all of his guilt, inadequacy, and struggling.
