‘Why not? It will kill everyone who did not die in the battle she provoked. Including the Lady – the woman who devised the singularly cruel punishment for her old nurse.’
‘But it will only kill everyone if it comes down tonight,’ reasoned Langelee. ‘Which is unlikely, or there would have been warning signs when the scaffolding was dismantled.’
‘Perhaps there were,’ said Bartholomew quietly. ‘But Nicholas closed the church, so who would have seen them, other than a few labourers who can be bribed to keep their mouths shut?’
‘Even if that is true,’ countered Langelee, ‘there is nothing to say that it will fall today. It might be years before–’
‘No,’ interrupted Bartholomew. ‘It will be tonight, because I have a bad feeling that Anne is still here, so that she can make sure of it. Do you remember Grisel, the talking paroquet that Anne gave the Lady? It must have overheard her plotting and remembered certain words–’
‘Words like nuts?’ scoffed Michael. ‘Really, Matt! We do not have time for–’
‘It means that specific phrases were used often enough for Grisel to remember and mimic them,’ Bartholomew forged on. ‘They are not nautical expressions, as the Lady believes. We did not understand them, because Grisel does not recite the words in the same order every time.’
‘I have no idea what you are talking about,’ said Langelee impatiently.
‘Anne did not say “down the van bring hold” or “hold the bring van down” in Grisel’s hearing. She said “bring down the fan vault”. She does mean to collapse the ceiling – presumably at the point in the ceremony where everyone shouts God save the Queen. Although as Her Majesty is not here, she will have to devise an alternative–’
‘And you base all this on the testimony of a bird?’ cried Langelee in disbelief.
‘And what Anne said herself. Days ago, she told me that she was looking forward to tonight, as it would be “the culmination of all my labours”. I thought she was taking the credit for the rebuilding, but that is not what she meant at all. She referred to her work in igniting a feud between two factions that have been friends for centuries.’
‘I am not sure, Matt,’ said Michael, shaking his head doubtfully. ‘And what can we do about it anyway? If we try to clear the church, the fragile truce that John has established will be shattered, and we shall have a bloodbath for certain.’
‘I know what we can do,’ said Langelee suddenly. ‘Stop Anne.’
‘Yes,’ said Bartholomew tightly. ‘But how?’
‘I know where she will be. Do you remember Nicholas taking us to the roof space when we first arrived? There was more scaffolding up there, which he said was no longer needed, as the fan vaulting was finished. But perhaps there was another reason why it was left.’
‘Namely that the vaulting will not stay up without it,’ finished Bartholomew. ‘And that a few strategically knocked-out sections is all it will take to see the whole thing collapse.’
‘So we had better hurry if we want to prevent a massacre,’ said Langelee grimly.
It was not easy to reach the door to the roof, as the church was so tightly packed with folk. John was doing his best to put on an entertaining display, which included plenty of singing, abruptly clanging bells and forays into the nave with holy water, but the rite was necessarily in Latin, which few people understood, so it was difficult to keep their attention. The atmosphere was tense, and the dim lighting in the church encouraged nasty little skirmishes to break out.
‘I hope your plan will not necessitate a lot of leaping over rafters,’ whispered Michael worriedly, as they eased carefully through the throng. ‘I am not very good at that sort of thing.’
They reached the door with relief, glad it was in the south aisle, which was empty except for a handful of bemused villagers and two children playing hopscotch on the flagstones.
The door was locked from the inside, but this was no problem for Langelee, who shattered the wood with a single kick. Michael and Bartholomew jerked away in alarm, sure the resulting crash would bring people running to see what was going on. Luckily, it coincided with a sudden swell of sound from the chancel, as John and his helpers broke into a noisy anthem. The children glanced towards the scholars, but their attention soon returned to their game.
‘Albon?’ came a querulous voice, and they turned to see the hermit emerge from the shadows. ‘Is that you, back from the dead? To haunt us for not catching your killer?’
‘No, it is just me, Jan,’ said Langelee, hastily adjusting the cloak so that more black lining and less red wool showed. ‘Listen – lives are at risk. Go home and pray that we can save them.’
Jan’s face lit up. ‘You want me to provide a miracle? Then I shall see what I can do – on condition that if I succeed, you will tell everyone about it. I am sick of being second best to Anne.’
‘You will not be second best after tonight,’ muttered Langelee. ‘Whether you provide a miracle or not.’
He pulled out his letter-opener – the only weapon he had left from the arsenal he usually carried – and led the way up the stairs. Bartholomew followed, heart pounding, and Michael brought up the rear. The monk was soon breathing hard, and Bartholomew was glad that the Austins were singing a gusty Gloria, because otherwise all of Clare would have heard him panting. Then they reached the door at the top, and Bartholomew started forward urgently, afraid that Langelee would kick that open, too, thus warning Anne that they were coming. But it was unlocked, and they only had to push it to get inside.
The roof looked much the same as it had when Nicholas had showed it to them a few days before – a complex mesh of beams and struts. The only difference was that the scaffolding supporting the ceiling had since been dismantled. Or mostly dismantled. The few sections that were left were badly buckled, suggesting that they alone were supporting the immense weight of the stone domes below – something they were never intended to do.
‘Filling the cracks with glue would have been be a waste of time,’ whispered Langelee. ‘There is a serious structural weakness here.’
‘And Anne and Nicholas do mean to bring the whole thing down,’ Bartholomew whispered back. ‘Because there they are.’
He nodded to where a lamp glowed dimly some distance away. It was roughly where the nave met the chancel, and the stone rood screen would be directly beneath. Two shapes were hunched over it, one large and the other smalclass="underline" Nicholas and Anne, watching the ceremony through one of the larger fissures.
‘Wait here,’ ordered Langelee. ‘I will see if I can get a better look.’
He began to clamber across the timbers towards them, moving with impressive agility for a man his size. Bartholomew held his breath, partly from fear that Langelee would be seen by the huddling pair, but also that he might dislodge some critical joist and the ceiling would fall anyway.
‘Anne is holding a mallet,’ the Master reported a few moments later, arriving back as silently as he had left. ‘I think she aims to clout that big central truss with it when the time is right.’
Bartholomew peered forward, and saw that the strut in question had been dislodged from its moorings, so that one sharp blow would knock it away completely. Then its weight would be added to the already vulnerable ceiling, and a major collapse would be all but inevitable.
‘What shall we do?’ he gulped, struggling to quell his rising horror. ‘Try to reason with them? I doubt Anne will listen, but Nicholas might.’
‘He will not,’ predicted Michael. ‘Not as long as she is there to tell him what to think – just as she has been doing all along.’