Midwinter of the Spirit

developments. In view of these, we’d rather avoid involving the Dean – or the Bishop – at this stage.’

‘But I don’t know him. And he—’

‘But you know what he does, Merrily,’ Sophie whispered urgently.

‘Do I?’

‘Mrs Watkins.’ George Curtis coughed. ‘We all know what he does, if not the, ah, technicalities of it. It’s just we’re a little nervous about what’s… going on in there.’

‘You want me to try and talk to him?’

‘Just listen, I suppose.’ Sophie tightened her scarf. ‘Interpret for us.’

‘My Latin isn’t what it used to be,’ George said.

‘Latin?’

George dragged a long breath through the brambles of his beard, but his voice still came out weakly. ‘My impression is he’s talking to, ah… to, ah… to St Thomas.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Merrily said.

Sophie almost snapped at her, ‘You think we do?’

They followed George Curtiss and his torch around the building to St John’s door, which was used mainly by the clergy and the vergers. Snow was already spattered up the nearby walls.

‘We’ll go in very quietly,’ George said, as though addressing a party of schoolchildren – he was one of the regular tourguides, Merrily recalled. ‘I sometimes think the Dean has ultrasonic hearing.’

Merrily stepped warily inside – as if a mad-eyed Dobbs might come rampaging at them, swinging his crucifix.

Drunk? If Dobbs had a drink problem, it was the first she’d heard about it. But if the old exorcist had become a public embarrassment, the Dean could no longer be seen to support him. That way the Dean would himself lose face. And if the Bishop found out, he would make the most of it – in the most discreet way, of course – to strengthen his position as an engine of reform, get rid of Dobbs, and perhaps the Dean as well.

Can of worms!

Although it felt no warmer inside, Merrily unzipped her waxed coat and put a hand to the bump in her sweater, her pectoral cross.

This was because the atmosphere in the Cathedral was different.

Live?

Sophie touched her arm. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes.’ Merrily remembered reading once that gothic churches somehow recharged themselves at night, like battery packs. She felt again the powerful inner call to prayer she’d experienced on the afternoon she’d emerged from the shell-like chantry to encounter Dobbs and the woman.

‘I won’t put on any lights,’ George whispered. ‘Don’t want to draw undue, ah… attention.’

He snapped off his torch for a moment. The only illumination now was the little aumbry light over the cupboard holding the emergency sacrament: wine and wafers in a silver container. Merrily felt a desperate, vibrating desire to kneel before it.

There was no sound at all.

‘All right.’ George switched on his torch again, and they followed its bobbing beam through the Lady Chapel and into the North Transept, where the great stained-glass window reared over the temporary screening partition hiding the dismantled tomb of St Thomas Cantilupe. George shone his torch over the various posters drawing- pinned to it, telling the story of Cantilupe – a wise and caring bishop, according to the Cathedral guidebook, who stood firm against evil in all its guises.

George stopped and called out harshly, ‘Thomas?’ as though he hadn’t intended to – as though the word had been wrenched out of him.

Merrily quivered for an instant.

Thomas? – as if he was summoning the spirit of Cantilupe.

He might as well have been. There was no response.

Merrily looked at Sophie. ‘You’re sure he’s still…?’

George moved across and shone his torch on the plywood partition door. Merrily remembered a padlocked chain connecting steel staples on the outside.

‘All this will be taken down quite soon,’ George said. ‘They’re putting the tomb back together next week.’

The chain appeared to have been dragged inside through a half-inch crack between the ill-fitting door and its frame. Dobbs – or someone else – had to be still behind it.

Merrily said, ‘Do you feel anything?’

‘I feel quite annoyed, actually,’ Sophie muttered. ‘Why isn’t he doing… what he was doing earlier? You’ll think we only dragged you here on a such a dreadful night on some sort of perverse whim.’

‘No. The atmosphere, Sophie – the atmosphere’s somehow… I don’t know… disarranged.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve never been in here at night before. Not like this, anyway.’

She had a feeling of overhead cables cut, slashed through. Of them hanging down now, still live and dangerous.

‘Thomas?’ George rapped on the plywood door. ‘Thomas, it’s George. Getting a bit anxious about you, old chap.’

‘Something’s happened,’ Merrily said suddenly. ‘Can you break it down?’

‘Thomas!’ George slapped the partition with a leather-gloved hand. ‘Are you there?’

‘Break it down!’

He swung round. ‘This is a cathedral, Mrs Watkins.’

‘Maybe you can snap the chain?’

‘I can’t even reach the chain.’

‘Kick the door.’

‘I… I can’t.’

Merrily hurriedly unzipped her coat and slipped out of it. ‘Stand back, then. I’ll do it.’

‘No, I… Thomas! For God’s sake!’ George put an ear to the crack between the door and the frame. ‘Stop… wait… I can hear…’

Merrily went still.

‘I can hear him breathing,’ George said. ‘Can you hear that?’

She turned her back to the plywood screen, steadying her own breathing. She rubbed her eyes. Think practically, think rationally. When she turned back, both George and Sophie were staring at her. And the air in the high transept was still invisibly untidy with snipped wires.

‘All right.’ Big George began to unbutton his overcoat. ‘I’ll do it.

He wore fat, black boots. Doc Martens probably, size eleven at least. With equipment like that, he could bring the whole damned partition crashing down.

He gave Merrily the rubber-covered torch, which felt moist. By its light, she saw that his brown eyes were wide and scared, and a froth of spittle glistened in his beard.

‘Christ be with us,’ Merrily heard herself saying.

19 Costume Drama

SIREN WARBLING, BLUE beacons strobing – violently beautiful over the snow – the ambulance broke the rules by cutting from Broad Street across the Cathedral Green.

Merrily stood outside St John’s door with Sophie. Feeling useless.

Even in his condition, Dobbs had reared up from the stones at the sight of her, one arm hanging limp, and his face like a waxwork melting down one side. George Curtiss had then taken charge, suggesting she and Sophie