Page 3

The Monks Codex

Bosch monk for entry page

I, Brother John of the Minorite Abby in Kilkenny, buried the Prior and my thirty-four fellow monks, one by one, sometimes three a day, and was left. alone until I could bear it no longer, and with Flynn, my dog, fled.

I reached Dublin, where no death bells tolled, and I believed at first that God had spared the seal of the church in my native Ireland.

Soon enough, I discovered the bells were stopped only by city ordinance lest their continuous dolorous ringing plunge the population here yet further into despair.