Chartreuse - a Sci-Fi Short Story, Page 2

past years. Her skills are world-renowned. You have seen reports of her work. She has come willingly to our order, of her own volition. We have no other option. What would you have me do?”

  A stubborn silence followed, and I began to feel self-conscious standing outside the doorway. I took a deep breath and knocked on the wooden door.

  The younger voice called out, “Come in.”

  I entered the windowless office and smiled at the brother who stood behind a solid wood desk. He was around my age, dressed in the long brown habit typical of the order. To my right stood three older fathers, with their hoods drawn over their heads so I could not distinguish their features. The shorter of the three, a stooped grandfatherly figure, seared me with his eyes but said nothing. Each nodded to me solemnly as the brother greeted me.

  Apparently the older monks had capitulated to the younger one, because there was no mention of the argument during our introductory discussion. The group greeted me warily but genially enough, several times praising my botanical training and commenting what a welcome addition I would be to the monastery. When we were done, the younger brother took me to my cell and my apprenticeship began.

  The rhythm of the monastery absorbed me into its easy repetition. The days stretched into weeks, and then months. I truly loved my work and enjoyed every moment in the greenhouse or fields. I spent hours in the library, researching the many herbs and spices which made up their liqueur. I adjusted the layout of the greenhouses so the herbs grew more robustly and earned the grudging admiration even of the three elder fathers. During my work I learned that each father only knew a third of the all-important secret recipe, which helped ensure that no single monk could be captured and have the secret in enemy hands. It had been a requirement set by the first monks to receive the parchment, back when they felt it truly was a recipe for eternal life. The parchment, given to the order in 1605, had been ancient even when they received it. That original document had long since turned to dust, and only the memories of those three monks kept its secrets alive.

  The outer world, with its overpopulation and growing hunger, faded from my life. I was living as these monks had lived for over one thousand years. Every morning that I awoke to the sun streaming through my cell window, and the birds singing sweetly outside, I gave thanks that I had found my haven.

  Summer rolled around into fall, and then winter. We lit roaring fires in the fireplaces, put on extra robes, and shared stories around the warmth. Time streamed on. Another year wheeled around, and then two. A ceremony on a fine day in April initiated me fully into the order, and the feast that evening had many toasts of Chartreuse to my long and happy life in the household.

  I felt complete.

  The monks became my family, much loved, even with their quirks. The three fathers of the recipe held a special place of honor within our group. My favorite of the three fathers was Arthur, the eldest, a man who was quick to smile and who took pleasure in the smallest items of beauty. Nearing eighty, he was still as spry as a mountain goat and often helped me on foraging trips in the hills.

  Spring was freshening our world again during my fifth year there when Arthur and I went into the hills in search of borage. He told me of his childhood in southern France, back when homes had large yards to play in, when space had not become so scarce. We talked for a while of new UN resolutions that each family could only have one child. The hope was that in a few hundred years the population could be reduced to a level that was sustainable - where all could be fed and have homes. With illness all but wiped out, and the average life span a full one hundred twenty years, the UN had not found another solution to the population problem. To the monks this time would pass in the blink of an eye, and they were encouraged by the plan.

  I realized suddenly that Arthur was no longer beside me - I had left him behind by accident in my musing. Heading back down the trail, I was alarmed to see Arthur sitting by the side of the trail, breathing heavily. I ran to him and knelt down beside him. “I’ll go back and get some help,” I reassured him. “You just sit still.”

  Arthur held me back. “No, no. I feel myself fading,” he said between deep breaths. “The recipe cannot be lost. I must tell you the herbs,” he insisted.

  I was torn, but I also understood how important this was to him. I could always run for help once he was done. Obediently, I moved next to him and listened intently. His breathing slowed as he lay back. He smoothly recited the forty ingredients that he had been entrusted with and the portion used of each. My years of studies served me well. It only took a few repetitions before I had the sequence seared into my memory.

  Arthur looked at me then, and concern showed on his face. “We were worried about you,” he admitted to me, the first he had spoken of that early argument. “We were concerned about you being a female. It is very important this recipe stay exactly the way it is. We worried that a female might change it; might not understand. But I trust you.” He looked into my eyes. “Remember the hyssop,” he insisted. “The recipe must not change.”

  I took his hand in mine. “I promise. I will leave the recipe as is,” I whispered.

  He blinked once, and then he was gone.

  The funeral was held on a dreary spring morning, with dignitaries coming from far and wide to pay their respects. The press made much about me being the first female to share in the secret of the recipe, despite it being an accident of chance. Many heralded my position as a sign that religious orders were accepting women as equals. I shut most of that out and focused on my work at the monastery. Now that I was one of the three holders of the recipe, my assigned duties had changed. I had entrusted some of my assistants to the daily care and gathering of the herbs. I now had to oversee the final stage of each production, adding in the ingredients in the proper proportions.

  Arthur’s final words about hyssop often rolled around in my mind as I worked in the steamy fermentation room. There had been forty herbs on his list - herbs with origins around the world. Whoever created that original recipe, long before the fifteenth century, had traveled far and wide to find his sources. Who could he have been? And what was so special about hyssop?

  The first year was busy, learning the new routines and processing. After a year, it became second nature to me, and my mind often wandered as I handled my secret tasks. The long, dog-days of the following summer were especially mind-dulling and I fought to find something to keep myself occupied. In my idleness I began to experiment with small batches of extra liqueur. I would try putting in extra hyssop or leaving out hyssop totally. With the seventy percent alcohol and one hundred twenty nine other herbs, I found I couldn’t taste any difference. I was certain that I could completely forget to use hyssop in a commercial run and nobody would notice at all. What was the big deal about hyssop?

  I gave up on my experiments during the busy times of fall harvest. Still, the thoughts wiggled around in my subconscious. Fall faded into a snowy winter. Again the fires were lit, and I felt the soft sadness that Arthur was not there to participate in our story-telling. He had shared such interesting tales of the olden days with such wit and humor that brothers would talk of them for days afterwards. I missed him intensely.

  Late winter was always the hardest. Dawn became a struggle to emerge from the cocoon of warmth of blankets and to stumble to morning prayers. My eyes were barely half-open when the winter solstice dawned and I joined the congregation for our prayers. The stone hall was full of bleary eyes and tightly-wrapped cloaks. One of the younger brothers was reading them a passage from Kings. The voice rolled out across the frosty dawn.

  “And he spake of trees, from the cedar tree that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall: he spake also of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes.”

  I perked up. Hyssop? Hyssop springing out of walls? That didn’t sound like hyssop at all. Despite the sluggish cold, the gears in my mind started turning ... slowly at first, and then more quickly. When the sermon was done, I returned to my cell
and picked up my own dog-eared copy of the Bible. I began looking through it for all references to hyssop. The more that I read, the more sure that I was that what they were calling hyssop was what we now knew as marjoram.

  The elixir was using the wrong ingredient!

  I forced myself to remain calm, to think this through. No doubt this was yet another silly conjecture of mine. Still, the recipe used just about every common herb I knew of. For some reason, marjoram was not in the mix, at least as far as I knew. I’d never seen it grown on the grounds, and I doubted that it was smuggled in secretly.

  I volunteered to go into town on the weekly supply run, and selected some marjoram at the local supermarket. I picked up a paper, as well, for the congregation to share. It told the usual tales of population crowding and UN resolutions. I held my herb satchel close to me as I left the store. It felt like a pouch of treasure to me, imbued with magic properties.

  It was a week later when it was time for the next fermentation round. Excited, I brought down my secret stash and made a small batch for myself substituting marjoram for the hyssop.

  The mixture seemed the same color and seemed to have the same aroma. My shoulders slumped in dejection. If I couldn’t