Free Sister Pelagia and the Black Monk by Boris Akunin

your health gets a bit shaky, rush to save your immortal soul—and with the same intense passion that you used to put into sinning. Only the debt to the Heavenly Moneylender that the abbot has run up is too great—Israel has already been stuck in this hallway to Heaven for two years and buried six of his cohabitants, but he still cannot pay it off. They say that no one else has overstayed his allotted span on Outskirts Island by so much in the last eighty years—so you can see what a great sinner he is.
    On that note I conclude the discourse required of me and call down upon your luminous personage, Oh sovereign lord, the blessings of Allah.
    Slave of the Lamp Alexei Lentochkin
    P.S. And now that you have finally decided that in this letter I shall do no more than amuse you with idle gossip about the local curiosities here, I shall move on to the actual matter at hand.
    Know then, Oh most wise of the wisest, that I almost have the solution to the riddle of your Black Monk in the bag. Yes, indeed. And it seems likely that this solution will prove to be highly comical. That is to say, I already understand what the actual trick consists of; all that is unclear is who is amusing himself by playing the part of Basilisk, and to what end, but I shall obtain the answers to these questions today, because all the signs are that there will be a clear moon tonight.
    My routine for these last three days has been as follows: in the morning I have slept late and then launched into my expeditions by land and sea, and with the onset of darkness I have settled to wait in ambush on the Lenten Spit, which extends out in the direction of Outskirts Island. I have not observed any supernatural events, but that is probably because the nights have been pitch-black with no moon and, as we know, the holy saint prefers celestial illumination. For lack of any other occupation, I have spent some time jumping from one rock to another and rowing backward and forward in a rocker (that is a small kind of boat they make here that I have rented from a local resident), hoping to find out if it is possible to balance on one of the boulders so that you appear to be standing on the water. It is perfectly possible to balance on a boulder, but it is quite impossible to move even two or three steps. Having become convinced of this, I was inclined to think that in their fright the monks have simply imagined the walking on water. Then on the third night, that is, yesterday, I discovered a certain highly suggestive detail that has made everything clear. But for now—mum's the word.
    The effect will be more spectacular if I write and tell you the full story all at once, and that will happen no later than tomorrow. In two hours, as soon as it gets dark and the moon rises, I shall set out for my duel with the phantom. And since doing battle with the world beyond always carries the danger of death or, in the very best case, the loss of reason, I am prudently dispatching this letter in advance by the evening packet boat. Now pine in suspense until tomorrows post, Archbishop of Rheims, languish in your curiosity and impatience.
    Girding on his sword of damask steel
And donning his stout hauberk of chain mail,
See the audacious warrior of good
Prepare to face the insuperable giant.
And if his fate in this ferocious battle
Should be to sacrifice his valiant head,
Remember him, Your Reverence, in a word of prayer,
And you, bright Princess of the coffee shop,
Water the hero's body with your tears.
Ah-oo!
    So that was the letter. At first Matvei Bentsionovich and Pelagia listened with a smile—they were amused by the comparison of His Grace to Turpin, the Archbishop of Rheims, the indefatigable exterminator of Moors and comrade-in-arms of Roland of Roncesvalles. But by the end of this verbose epistle the faces of the nun and the assistant public prosecutor both wore puzzled expressions, and Berdichevsky even called Alexei Stepanovich a rotten so-and-so for his