I tested the door of the aumbry, but Sir Anselm had been worrying himself unnecessarily. It was locked. I turned to leave the church, then hesitated, pricked by an unaccountable spur of curiosity that made me retrace my steps and unlock the cupboard to inspect the treasures within. There were the pair of silver candlesticks, the silver-gilt pyx, the ivory and gold crucifix. And there, also, were the two silver chalices, side by side, the fragile light gleaming on the elaborate chasing around their bowls. I was at once reminded of my dream; of the little satyrs dancing in and out of the trailing vine leaves and branches of olive, picking the silver fruit and gathering the grapes into baskets, no doubt to make wine for the great god, Bacchus …
Bacchus? What was he doing in this holy place? What was I thinking of? I must be seeing things … Mustn’t I? Carefully, I lifted out one of the chalices, carried it to the open church door and examined it in the better light thus afforded me. But I had not been mistaken. I was looking at the little boys with their tails and horns and goats’ legs, the vines and the olive trees. Without even realizing it, I must have made a mental note of its decoration when I had watched Ned Rawbone twisting it between his hands the previous morning, exactly as I was doing now.
Hercules barked impatiently. I hushed him. The metal felt very old and thin, and when I studied the base more closely, I could see that a double band of chasing depicted tiny, delicately wrought scenes of everyday life: a man ploughing, a shopkeeper (a seller of wine by the look of him), a smith in his forge. But this was not everyday life as I and my contemporaries knew it. These men wore tunics and sandals. They were … Yes, surely they were Romans!
I drew a sharp breath. This pair of cups had never been made for Holy Church. They were pagan relics of our Roman past, lost, or more likely buried, centuries before when the inhabitants of Cirencester – Corinium Dobunnorum – had spread out across the surrounding countryside to farm the rich and fertile soil. (Hadn’t Rosamund Bush told me that the alehouse was named after an old Roman sandal dug up from beneath its cellar floor?) But the question was, of course, how on earth had they come to be among Saint Walburga’s ceremonial plate?
I went back into the church and returned the chalice to the aumbry, placing it beside its fellow on the top shelf. A quick glance at the other pieces, before I relocked the cupboard, convinced me that there was nothing strange or odd about any of them. So, how had the Roman bowls been acquired by the village? I dredged around in my memory.
The answer suddenly hit me like a bolt of lightning.
‘It was that priest you told me about, wasn’t it? What did you call him? “Light-fingered” Lightfoot. Was that his name?’
Having slipped back into the priest’s house, leaving Hercules tied up outside, and having satisfied myself that Mistress Bush had once more returned to the kitchen, I had run upstairs and, without compunction, roused Sir Anselm from his postprandial doze. I dropped the bunch of keys on the coverlet and told him bluntly of my discovery. I also explained my theory as to how the bowls had been acquired.
Sir Anselm, still sore and badly shaken, had used up his fragile store of energy on our previous encounter, and was in no fit state to prevaricate further. He admitted wearily that he had always suspected that the chalices were Roman, but had consecrated them both to the glory of God, just in case any of his predecessors had failed to do so. He, also, had guessed that ‘Light-fingered’ Lightfoot had probably ‘donated’ them to Saint Walburga’s, although how he might have come by them in the first place, Sir Anselm had no idea.
‘Perhaps he just dug them up somewhere,’ the priest hazarded as an afterthought.
‘Unlikely,’ I answered. ‘Not impossible, but unlikely. Articles like the cups were usually buried pretty deeply to begin with, in order to preserve them from some natural or man-made disaster. Then you have to allow for accretion to the earth’s surface during the intervening centuries. A Roman sandal was found in the cellar of the alehouse, I believe, and that’s something that would only have been lost or mislaid by its owner … Has no one else ever noticed that the decoration on the cups is pagan?’
‘Not in my time.’ Sir Anselm yawned involuntarily. ‘At least, no one has ever mentioned the fact. In any case-’ he yawned again, this time suggestively – ‘I don’t suppose it would have worried anyone very much in this village. We live our own lives here. Some members of my flock, as you know, pay homage to the old gods of the trees and the stones, as well as to the living Christ. There are more ways of worshipping God, as I told you before, than that laid down by Holy Church.’
I was attending to him with only half an ear, busy pursuing thoughts of my own.
‘Do you know when this “Light-fingered” Lightfoot was priest in Lower Brockhurst?’ I asked. ‘Was it much before your time?’
My companion had to rouse himself with a conscious effort to consider my question. He looked ilclass="underline" I felt guilty.
‘He wasn’t my predecessor here,’ he said at last, ‘nor either of the two incumbents prior to that. I think you might have to go back quite a long time. The stories about him always struck me as having a mythical quality to them. You know, tales that have been repeated down through the generations until people aren’t quite certain whether they’re true or not. Or whether Father Lightfoot’s reported exploits were real or imagined.’
‘Oh, I suspect they were true all right,’ I said. ‘I should think those two cups testify to that. But if we rule out the likelihood of him digging them up, where else could he have found them?’
A troubled moan, however, indicated that Sir Anselm had at last fallen into an uneasy slumber, his fingers plucking unconsciously at the bedclothes, his shifting body a sure sign of his discomfort even while he slept. I could also hear faint yelps from Hercules, tied up outside, and decided that it was time to leave before Mistress Bush went to investigate them. I tiptoed from the bedchamber and down the stairs, gaining the street undetected by the landlord’s wife.
Hercules went half-mad with joy at the sight of me, and hurled himself towards me with such force that he pulled over the post to which his rope was attached. I stooped to untie him.
‘I agree, you’ve been very patient and forbearing,’ I said, patting his head. ‘Now we’ll go for that walk I promised you.’
We crossed the bridge over the stream, climbing the Draco’s bank to the woods above and leaving Lower Brockhurst far behind us. I supposed I ought to return to the Lilywhites’ smallholding to inform the women of the current state of the village’s two invalids, but decided it would be folly to try Hercules’s patience any further. Besides, I told myself, there were plenty of neighbours to keep Maud and Theresa informed of events, even if they had not, by now, paid a visit to Lower Brockhurst to find out for themselves. So the dog and I continued our ascent.
As we crested the final rise, I turned and looked at the view behind me. The surrounding hills lay grey and misty on both sides of the valley that clove a deep purple shadow between them. The encroaching forest mantled their tops and flanks, making them seem remote and magical in the thinning light that was already waning towards dusk, as the short February afternoon drew towards its close. A primaeval landscape that had stood here for aeons, long, long before the coming of Saint Augustine and Christianity, when men had worshipped the Tree and the Stone and made blood sacrifice to their insatiable gods. I shivered. These hills and valleys, these forests held echoes of those ancient rites as a curved shell will hold the sound of the sea.
I was suddenly very cold, and turned to find the well-trodden path that led to the ruins of Upper Brockhurst Hall, a path that now seemed so familiar to me that I might have been walking it all my life instead of just for the past three days. The silence was intense. If I stood still, I could almost touch it. Only the dog’s unconcerned snufflings amongst the undergrowth and gently waving grasses reassured me that I hadn’t strayed into the middle of some enchanted woodland where I was the only living thing. Well, I’d wanted solitude, and here I had it in abundance.