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the bitter sea washed upon a barren winter shore.
    One by one they paid their last respects and headed off slowly back to the austere grey building that was their home. Breakfast awaited. Two remained behind, burdened with shovelling the hardened dirt over Saturday’s coffin. Pale brown wood, soon to be home to God’s final act of desecration upon the human body.
    They stood with spades at the ready, waiting for the others to return to the monastery before beginning their task; the last kick of the ball in the football match of Saturday’s life. The younger man, his face unfolded, thoughts elsewhere. His lips betrayed a knowing smile; an acceptance of fate – what would be done, was done. Tonsured head, hair a little long at the back. Could do with a cut, thought the other man. Older. Face creased with worry, full head of hair, greying with years.
    The last monk disappeared from view. They glanced at one another; it was time. The younger one dug his shovel into the waiting pile of dirt. The older man took a look around him – the path leading from the graveyard to the monastery; the surrounding forest, trees white with snow; the low hills, which doomed the monastery to the pit of the glen and the bitter wind which howled through; the distant edge of the freezing waters of Loch Hope – then bent his knee and thrust his shovel into the dirt.
    Already their hands were numb with cold, yet aching with an insistent pain. Brother Steven shovelled the dirt without emotion, knowing not the burden of his work. He was content to do as he was bid, even though, being neither the newest monk nor the youngest, he should not have been called upon to perform the task of the gravedigger. For this he had his unquiet tongue to thank.
    He glanced at the older man, who was performing his task with grim determination. Not for Brother Steven to know that this man, the latest addition to their complement, had become used to death in all its iniquitous guises.
    ‘So, what brings you here, Brother Jacob?’ he asked the older man, continuing to shovel dirt slowly, monotonously.
    Barney Thomson, barber, hesitated. A man on the run, a man with a dark past. Secrets to hide. He shovelled. ‘Not sure,’ he replied eventually. ‘Just needed something different, you know?’
    Brother Steven nodded, tossed another pile of dirt into the grave. The top of the coffin was now completely obscured. Brother Saturday was gone.
    ‘Got you,’ he said. ‘It’s that whole vicissitude thing. The basic need for something new. We all feel it. It’s like Heraclitus says: “Everything flows and nothing stays…You can’t step twice into the same river.” It’s why I’m here.’
    Barney stared, Steven shovelled, knowing smile on cold blue lips.
    ‘Aye,’ said Barney. ‘Right.’
    Barney had never heard of Heraclitus. Wondered if he’d played centre-forward for some Greek football team. Doubted it. Had to accept that he had come to a new world, after twenty comfortable years in the barber’s shop. Not all conversations would be about football.
    ‘So, what are you running from, Brother Jacob?’
    Steven rested on his shovel, looked through the mist which had formed from his words. Barney felt the beating of his heart, but realised that Steven could not possibly know his secrets. None of these monks could know. He tried to sound casual. ‘Life,’ he said.
    Steven laughed and began once again the slow and steady movement of his spade. Barney wondered if he’d said something funny.
    ‘Life, eh?’ said Steven, shaking his head. ‘Oh, yes. That thing we do.’
    Barney felt uncomfortable. A hand on his shoulder. Before he began to shovel he saw a bird of prey in the distance, hovering, searching the snow-covered ground for breakfast. The sparrow-hawk fancied some bacon and lightly scrambled egg, but accepted that he would probably have to settle for a vole or a mouse. If he was lucky.
    Could be an eagle, thought Barney, for he did not know birds of