‘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.