The gravity had returned to the priest’s face and deepened there, transforming it. He put the glass down without touching it with his lips.
“Then—I don’t understand.”
“He disappeared from the monastery.”
“Do you mean he left it—a Trappist?”
“Yes.”
“After taking the final vows?”
“Oh, he had been a monk at El-Largani for over twenty years.”
“How horrible!” Domini said. She looked at the pale-green liquid. “How horrible!” she repeated.
“Yes. The monks would have kept the matter a secret, but a servant of the hotellerie—who had taken no vow of eternal silence—spoke, and—well, I know it here in the ‘belly of the desert.’”
“Horrible!”