‘You’re welcome. But it isn’t just charity that motivates me. I rather think your sister’s plight has a wider significance.’ He eyed Harry. ‘I know you’re a sceptic, Harry, about matters beyond the material, and that’s healthy. But the fact is your family is steeped in prophecy . . .’

Harry didn’t want to hear this.

They lapsed into silence, as the countryside of England, echoing only to the bleating of the sheep, rolled past them.

V

V

York, within its rectangle of much-battered, much-repaired walls, was bustling, a city of trade. But it was dominated by its immense cathedral, the newest sections of which, only a few years old, were fresh-cut, bright and sharp. Geoffrey said the minster had been built on the site of a Roman military headquarters, and that the city after the Romans had become a sort of Viking trading capital, a tradition of commerce that still lingered. There were layers of history written in the stones, Geoffrey said, layers that shaped the present.

They stayed the night in the hall of Harry’s merchants’ guild. It was a grand building, with religious paintings hanging from the stone walls and long tables groaning with food and drink. Harry was made welcome. There was much business to discuss, for Harry only rarely travelled this way, and it was a great relief for him to be able to escape from Geoffrey and history and his family’s complicated past, and to immerse himself in the real world of commodities and prices. Geoffrey excused himself and went to sit with the apprentices at the hall’s service end. Later Harry found him in the basement, where the guild ran a small hospital for the poor, who were expected to pray for the souls of their benefactors.

In the morning they mounted their cart again and set off to find Harry’s sister.

The church she had attached herself to, another Saint Agnes’s, was a few miles north of the city walls. It was a small, modest establishment at the centre of a village built of stone recovered from a much larger, abandoned settlement, whose ruins lay all around. The church itself was quite new, in the Perpendicular style. But Harry saw it had been built on older foundations of blackened stone - perhaps a Saxon chapel burned down by the Normans; there had been a lot of that in this area.

They were greeted by the parish priest, a kindly, elderly man called Arthur. It was Arthur who had first called in Geoffrey to help him cope with Agnes’s requests. ‘But you must understand we very much value your sister’s presence with us here,’ he told Harry. ‘Very much. She brings the love of God into our small lives . . .’