Two days after he returned from the city, Athelstan rose early and went to examine his small garden. Outside he glared angrily about. Someone’s pig had been rooting amongst the cabbage patch. Athelstan cursed in some of the language Cranston used on such occasions. He felt angry, agitated. He had come back to find his church safe but Godric gone.

‘You see, Father,’ Watkin the dung-collector explained, ‘the silly bastard thought he could slip out, so he did, through the sacristy door. Of course, they were waiting for him, the sheriffs men. They beat him up in the alleyway, tied his hands and led him off to the Marshalsea. He’ll probably hang!’

‘Yes, Watkin,’ Athelstan replied, ‘he’ll probably hang.’

Apart from that, everything had been in order except for Bonaventure, who had slipped away and had not been seen since. Athelstan hoped he was safe and would come padding back when he was hungry, tail in the air, miaowing for food and comfort.

The friar looked up. The sky was still blue; the sun, growing in strength, promised a hot sweltering day. He sighed. He’d said his prayers and celebrated Mass, Benedicta just slipping in at the door and kneeling next to the baptismal font instead of coming further up the nave. Athelstan wondered if there was anything wrong. He moved down the side of his church to see if Crim was waiting on the steps but they were empty. He went back, took a hoe from inside the door of his house and stabbed furiously at the cabbage patch, trying to rearrange the furrows in neat order. Once Crim had arrived he would go and see Hob the grave-digger, dying they said after he had slipped and fallen under a cartwheel which had crushed his ribs.

Athelstan tired of his task. He threw the hoe to the ground, hoped that at least the pig had had a good meal, and went back inside his church. He looked around and felt happier. Simon the tiler had done a good job. The roof was secure against the coming winter rains. Huddle the painter had scraped the wall and begun a new fresco, his first church painting. Athelstan had requested that Huddle should first draw charcoal sketches, from these giving the gifted young man scriptural advice to the effect that there was no evidence whatsoever that Herod had eventually stabbed Pilate in the back! So the charcoaled drawings had been wiped out and Huddle had begun again, a lovely vigorous painting of the Annunciation and birth of Christ. The church floor was swept and washed clean, thanks to Cecily the courtesan who had earned her pennies honestly by scrubbing every inch.

‘Honestly, Father,’ she confessed, leaning on her broom of brittle twigs, ‘I’ve changed. I intend to change.’