Grey couldn’t sleep. He wandered to the edge of the courtyard and stood next to the chapel, where the monk was still under the tree. Both tree and monk waited, in quiet symbiosis, under a mournful moon. A painter could not have asked for a more evocative scene. Stefan had said the chapel was open all night. Grey pushed on the doors and they swung open. It was empty. The Romanesque chapel consisted of one large circular room. Every inch of the thick round walls was covered, floor to ceiling, with medieval frescoes faded from centuries of candle and incense smoke. Bronze candelabras in the center of the room provided illumination. Straight-backed wooden chairs ran in a contiguous austere circle against the chapel wall. A large fresco dominated the top of the rotunda: a multi-headed red and green dragon ushered a group of confused men through a gate, into a nightmarish scene of torture and pain. At the highest point of the dome, an angel hovered above the dragon, eyes cast towards the chapel floor, hands open and pleading.
