'Hardly a protege, Excellency,' Sir Hugh replied casually. 'Of mine, anyhow. Brother Petroc is a thinker. I merely wished to demonstrate some of the promising material the University is nurturing.'
'Thinker, eh?' the flat voice said. 'Make sure he's thinking the right thoughts, then, Hugh.' There was a sort of laughter, a rustle of fabric, and the grumble of a closing door. Sir Hugh tapped my tonsure. 'Unfreeze yourself, brother. Let us find some dinner.'
And so we retraced our steps through the stony anatomy of the palace, Sir Hugh wrapped, seemingly, in his thoughts and I in mine. Chief of these concerned my introduction to the Bishop, and my sense that I had acquitted myself rather poorly. The man was quite terrifying, and kneeling on the flagstones between him and Sir Hugh I had felt like a frog caught between two sharp-beaked herons. But now the Bishop knew my name and face. What a stroke of fortune – an introduction to Bishop Ranulph! Wait and see,' I told myself. Wait and see.'
By now we were back in Cathedral Yard. Sir Hugh was still preoccupied, and although ignored I reasoned I had been invited to dinner, so I kept close to his side. Then, to my surprise, Sir Hugh steered me towards the great west door of the cathedral.
'Forgive my silence, Petroc. The cares of work. And I'm afraid I have an errand to perform,' said Sir Hugh. 'A small matter of the Bishop's business. It will take but a few minutes. In fact-' and he turned to me as if a new thought had struck him, '-you can be of some help… that is, if you don't mind?'
And although I was too surprised – not to say worried – to reply, he cuffed my arm companionably. 'Splendid. That is, unless you have made other plans for your evening?'
'No, no,' I managed, unable for the life of me to imagine how I could help this strange and intimidating man.
'It is simply that, as a cleric, you are the appropriate person for this task, which will assist me and please His Excellency the Bishop,' said the knight, as if reading my thoughts.
After that, how could I resist? Besides, we were now at the cathedral door. It was unlocked at this hour, and Sir Hugh gestured me inside with a courtly flourish.
I had always loved Balecester cathedral, although love is too easy a word. It is a titanic cave of stone, and yet the artisans who made it shaped that stone as if it had been wood, or wax. It was always cool and silent, except during Mass and on feast days and festivals, when it blazed with candles, buzzed with humanity and was filled with billows of incense from huge censers. Just a few weeks back, a great Mass had been held in the presence of the Pope's own legate, one Otto, and it seemed as if the entire city had craned its neck to catch a glimpse of this exotic plenipotentiary from Rome. Tonight it was empty, and lit only by the candles that burned in its chapels and before the altar. As we walked through the transept and reached the nave, I looked up, as I always did here. Columns of stone soared up and away, and met far over our heads in a filigree of arcs and leafy bosses, some carved as clusters of leaves, others as heraldic designs or grotesque beasts and men. It was like being inside a stone forest, and now, although the ceiling was deep in shadow, I felt tiny, awe-struck and insignificant compared to this mighty work honouring a mightier God.
If Sir Hugh felt such things, he did not show it. While I made a full genuflection towards the high altar, the knight gave a curt bow and crossed himself briskly. Then he strolled on up the nave, and I hurried along behind him, trying to keep up. I was surprised when we passed under the rood screen and into the chancel. Sir Hugh was a layman – a knight, of course, and an erstwhile Templar – but he was also the Bishop's man, and so maybe had some kind of dispensation that allowed him access to the sanctuary. The rood screen itself always made me shiver. I saw it as a colossal web of stonework that held seemingly hundreds of statues, of kings, noblemen, bishops and saints, guarding the altar. So much holiness – and so much weight, supported as if by a miracle. But if I felt the fear of the pious, Sir Hugh was immune. Or was he? Now he hesitated, dropped quickly to one knee and, taking my arm, led us back into the nave.
'I will have to ask forgiveness for that,' he said, and I thought his voice sounded strained. 'But I used to be in orders myself, and the training never leaves one.' The poise and presence of the man seemed to have left him all of a sudden. I was intrigued. He was human after all. Will had mentioned the Templars, and I was about to say something, when Sir Hugh continued.
'As the Bishop's Steward I have the right to approach the altar, but I do not like to do so,' he said. Which is how you can be of service, Petroc. The Bishop has asked me to bring him a certain holy relic that is kept there,' and he pointed to the altar. 'It would be right and fitting if you were to carry it, brother.' I felt a glow of pride. 'Of course,' I said.
'Excellent!' said Sir Hugh. His spirits seemed to have revived a little. 'The Bishop has need of the hand of St Euphemia. It is held in a reliquary shaped like a hand, thus,' and he raised his own hand in imitation of querulous, feminine benediction. It was startling in its precision, and faintly mocking: an actor's gesture. It was also deeply out of place, somehow: like the polished, tightly coiled knight himself, with his white eyes and evil little knife. I heard, somewhere in the back of my mind, a gasp of outrage from the stone worthies in the rood screen. But the sense I had of Sir Hugh's otherness, his utter remoteness from anything or anyone in my experience, only tightened his hold over me. I had no familiarity with power. For all I knew, this was how it manifested itself to lesser persons like myself.
So it was against my better judgement, indeed almost against my will, that I turned and entered the chancel once more. The floor here was made of richly coloured tiles, which were quieter than the flagstones of the nave. The tiered pews of the choir rose on either side of me, and at any other time I would have paused to admire the dense carving that rambled over every surface. The misericords – the hinged seats that folded up against the pew-backs – each had a face or a beast under them, some obvious caricatures of real people, others leaf-haired wood-woses or green men. They were cheerful things that brought a spark of fun to the serious business of Mass, but tonight the thought of all those odd faces made me uncomfortable. Like the statues in the screen, I felt their eyes upon me.
But now I had reached the altar. I climbed the three steps slowly; the inlaid marble of different hues and patterns that made the treads glow in the light was smooth and slippery under the leather of my soles. The great stone table before me was laden with candles, and the flames winked and slid over the gold and jewels of the tall crucifix, the covers of the Bible and Psalter, the chalice and pyx. I saw a casket of figured ivory; the stand for a crystal globe which held a single tooth of St Matthew suspended within it like the iris of a grotesque eye; a small cross of filigreed gold and garnets that I knew guarded a splinter from the True Cross. And there, almost hidden by the Psalter, slim golden fingers rose to catch the tiniest beads of candlelight on their tips. The reliquary. Catching my breath, I gathered up my right sleeve so as not to brush the altar or the gems that studded the Psalter's cover, reached across and took the hand of St Euphemia.
It was cool, not cold, to my touch, a thin hand smaller than my own, and finely boned – not unlike my mother's, I thought suddenly. It rose from a richly patterned sleeve that formed a base. The Saint had seemingly lost her hand three or four inches below the wrist. I held the thing reverently. Although I had heard of St Euphemia, a Roman woman of Balecester who had been chopped into pieces by the soldiers of Diocletian, and knew that her powers of healing were revered by country women, I had never given her much consideration. My favourite saint had always been St Christopher, whose image my father wore always and whom I could imagine striding across the moors, carrying Our Lord across brook and mire. St Euphemia had lived and died in Balecester, and her cult was here in a city I neither liked nor wished to remain in. Nevertheless, holding this thing, a thin skin of gold separating my flesh from the flesh of the long-dead woman, I felt a tingle of power coming through the metal. I closed my eyes and offered up a prayer to her, and again, the image of my mother came unbidden to my mind. Feeling oddly comforted, I turned from the altar and found myself face-to-face with a man whose pinched face twitched with shock and outrage.