there is in the universe. Accordingly, there is a bond between each of us and the stars above.'
Benedicta's eyes rounded in sham admiration of his scholarship.
'Now astronomy,' Athelstan continued, 'is the study of the planets and stars themselves.' He stretched out his hands. 'There are two schools of thought.' He thrust forward his left hand. 'The Egyptians and some of the Ancients believe the earth is a flat disc with heaven above and hell below.' Athelstan now stretched out his right arm, his hand rigid like a claw. 'However, Ptolemy, Aristotle and the Classics believe the earth is a sphere within a spherical universe. Each star, each planet, is a world in itself.'
Benedicta leaned back on her heels.
'My father,' she answered tartly, 'said the stars were God's lights in the firmament, put there by the angels at the beginning of time.'
Athelstan knew she was teasing him.
'Your father was correct.' He shrugged sheepishly. 'At Exeter Hall in Oxford I studied the greatest minds. In the end their explanations pale beside the creative wonder of God.'
Benedicta nodded, her eyes serious now, her teasing over.
'So why do you spend so many hours there, Father? On top of the church tower at night? We see your lantern.'
Athelstan shook his head.
'I don't know,' he murmured. 'But on a clear summer's night, if you stare at the velvet blackness and watch the movements of the planets, the shimmering light of the evening star, you become lost in their vastness.' He looked sharply at her. 'It's the nearest man comes to eternity without going through the door of death. When I am there, I am no longer Athelstan, priest and friar. I am just a man, stripped free of cares.'
Benedicta stared down, gently touching the crumbling altar step with the tips of her fingers.
'Tonight,' she murmured, 'I will do that, Father. Stare up at the sky, see what it is like to die without dying.'
She rose quickly, genuflected before the winking sanctuary lamp and walked quietly out of the church.
Athelstan saw the door close behind her and turned to where Bonaventure awaited his reward. The friar went into the sacristy and brought out the expected bowl of milk. He sat and watched the cat greedily lick the lacy white froth with its pink, narrow-edged tongue.
'Do you know, Bonaventure,' he muttered, 'every time she goes, I want to call her back. She comes here to pray for her husband's soul, another casualty of the king's war, but sometimes I deceive myself and believe she comes to talk to me.'
The cat raised its battered head, yawned and went back to the milk.
'The Master was right,' Athelstan continued. The friar suddenly remembered his old novice master, Father Bernard, who had been responsible for Athelstan's spiritual education in the novitiate at Blackfriars.
'A priest's life, Athelstan,' Father Bernard once began, 'has three great terrors. The first are the lusts of the flesh! These will plague your dreams with visions of soft bodies, satin-silk limbs, full sensuous lips and hair which gleams like burnished gold. Yet these will pass. Prayer, fasting and the onset of old age will drive this enemy from the field of battle.' The old novice master had leaned forward and grasped Athelstan by the wrist. 'Then comes the second terror, the sheer soul-destroying loneliness of a priest: no wife, no children, never the clasp of small warm bodies and clinging arms round your neck. But,' Father Bernard muttered,*that, too, will pass. The third terror is more dreadful.' And Athelstan remembered the old priest's eyes brimming with tears. 'There's a belief,' the novice master whispered, 'that each person is born destined to love another. Now sometimes we priests are lucky – in our early pilgrimage we never meet this person. But, if you do, then you truly will experience the horrors of the dark night of the soul.' The novice master had paused. 'Can you imagine, Athelstan, to meet, to love, but be bound by God's law never to express it? If you do, you break your vows as a priest and are condemned by the Church to be buried in hell. If you remain faithful to your priestly vows, you bury yourself in a hell of your own making for you will never forget her. You search for her face in crowds, you see her eyes in those of every woman you meet. She plagues your dreams. Not a day passes without her appearing in your thoughts.'
Athelstan thought of Benedicta and knew what the novice master had meant.
'Oh, sweet Christ!' he murmured.
He rose and dusted down his robe. Bonaventure, his milk finished, padded across and stared up.
'Catholic or Catolic, Bonaventure?' Athelstan laughed at his feeble jest. 'Is Father Prior playing a joke on me?' he murmured. 'I am past my twenty-eighth summer and I go from pillar to post.' Perhaps his superiors were testing him, sending him from the rigours of the novitiate to the academic glories of Exeter Hall, then pulling him back to menial duties at Blackfriars and finally to work as the Lord Coroner's clerk and parish priest of St Erconwald.
The friar knelt, crossed himself, and began softly to recite a psalm when he heard a disturbance at the back of the church. He rose in alarm, thinking that perhaps the city authorities had sent retainers to take Godric. Even in the slums of Southwark, Athelstan realised he lived in turbulent times. Edward III was dead; his heir, Richard II, a mere boy. The powerful, noble hawks still had their way in most matters. Athelstan took a taper, lit it from the candle burning before the Madonna and hurried down the church, splashing through the puddles left by the violent rain storm a few days before. He opened the door, thrust his head out and smiled. The city guards, roused from their sleep, were now locked in fierce argument with Sir John Cranston who boomed as soon as he saw his clerk: 'For God's sake, Brother, tell these oafs who I am!' Cranston patted the neck of his huge horse and glared around. 'We have work to do, Brother, another death, murder in Cheapside! One of the great ones of the land. Come on, ignore these dolts!'
'They do not know you, Sir John,' Athelstan replied. 'You go round muffled in cloak and hood, worse than any monk.'
The coroner blew his great cheeks out, pulled back his hood and roared at his tormentors, 'I am Sir John Cranston, coroner in the city, and you, sirs, are disturbing the king's peace! Now back off!'
The men retreated like beaten mastiffs, their dark faces glowering with a mixture of anger and fear.
'Come on, Athelstan,' Cranston bellowed. He looked down at the friar's feet. 'And put that bloody cat away! I hate it.'
Bonaventure, however, seemed to regard Cranston as its long lost friend. The cat skipped friskily down the steps to sit beneath the coroner's horse, staring up at the big man affectionately as if he was the bearer of a pail of thick creamy milk or a platter of the tastiest fish. Cranston just turned his head away and spat.
'Leave Godric be,' Athelstan warned the city guards. 'You are not to enter my church.'
They nodded. Athelstan locked the door and went over to his own house next to the church. He stuffed his battered leather panniers with parchment, quills and ink, saddled Philomel and joined Sir John. The coroner was in good spirits, thoroughly enjoying his altercation with the city guard as he hated officialdom. He damned the city guards loudly, along with goldsmiths, priests and, looking slyly at Athelstan, Dominican monks who studied the stars. Athelstan ignored him, urging Philomel on.
'Come, Sir John. You said we had business.'
But Cranston was thoroughly roused by now. He shouted abuse once more at the guards, kicked his horse forward and drew noisily alongside Athelstan.
'I suppose you had no sleep last night, Brother? What with your damned stars, your bloody cat, your prayers and your Masses!'
'Ever heavenwards,' Athelstan quipped in reply. 'You, too, should look up at the sky and study the stars.'
'Why?' Cranston asked brusquely. 'Surely you do not believe in that nonsense about planets and heavenly bodies governing our lives? Even the church fathers condemn it.'
'In which case,' Athelstan answered, they condemn the star of Bethlehem!'
Sir John belched, grabbed the ever-present wineskin slung over his saddle horn, took a deep gulp and, raising one buttock, farted as loudly as he could. Athelstan decided to ignore Sir John's sentiments, verbal or otherwise. He knew the coroner to be at heart kindly and well intentioned.
'What business takes us to Cheapside?' he asked.
'Sir Thomas Springall,' Cranston replied. 'Or rather, the late Sir Thomas Springall, once a powerful merchant and goldsmith. Now he is as dead as that rat over there.' Cranston pointed to a pile of rubbish, a mixture of animal and human excrement, broken pots, and, lying on top, a mangy rat, its white and russet body swollen with corruption.
'So a goldsmith has died?'
