Then Brother Fabrizius strangled another teal. “Hand me that retort, Brother Arpad, so that I may decant into it this teal’s gore.” Brother Arpad reached for the retort and in so doing smashed an alembic. There was a sound of bells. The monks were called to compline. For each canonical hour they allocated a duck to be slaughtered for its blood. At compline, a teal. At matins, a merganser. At prime, a pintail. At tierce, a shoveler. At sext, a wigeon. At nones, a smew. And at vespers, a bufflehead. Out in the fields, sweet little lambs gambolled and frolicked. They would not frolic for long, for soon, in the monastery, it would be bathtime.

• Total Eclipse (Reprise)
• A Note on Bags (Reflections on the Book of Haggai)
• Fifty Years Ago (Dobson on the Radio)
• Orrery Sleuth
• Quotation from “A short history of monastaries” by Alfred Wesley Wishart
• Two Monks
• Tanis Diena
• Quotation from “Egyptian Ideas Of the Future Life” by E. A. Wallis-Budge