Of the rest of the Manor, only Mog attended the village church, and was indeed a stalwart of the choir. Marcus suspected that Mog’s still-powerful baritone at Evensong was his way of voicing an allegiance, at least partial, to the village against the Manor and to the old dispensation against the new. He would serve the interloper while Miss Cressett was in charge and the money was good, but Mr. Chandler-Powell could buy only a carefully rationed part of his loyalty.

Apart from the altar cross, the only sign that this cell was in some sense set apart was a bronze commemorative tablet set in the wall beside the door:

TO THE MEMORY OF CONSTANCE URSULA 1896–1928,
WIFE OF SIR CHARLES CRESSETT BT,
WHO FOUND PEACE IN THIS PLACE.
BUT STRONGER STILL, IN EARTH AND AIR,
AND IN THE SEA, THE MAN OF PRAYER,
AND FAR BENEATH THE TIDE;
AND IN THE SEAT TO FAITH ASSIGNED,
WHERE ASK IS HAVE, WHERE SEEK IS FIND,
WHERE KNOCK IS OPEN WIDE.

Commemorated as wife, but not a beloved wife, and dead at thirty-two. A brief marriage, then. He had traced the verse, so different from the usual pieties, to a poem by the eighteenth-century poet Christopher Smart, but made no enquiries about Constance Ursula. Like the rest of the household, he was inhibited from speaking to Helena about her family. But he found the bronze a discordant intrusion. The chapel should be simply stone and wood.

No other place at the Manor held such peace, not even the library, where sometimes he sat alone. Always there was the fear that solitude would be interrupted, that the door would be opened to the dreaded words so familiar from his childhood, “Oh, here you are, Marcus, we’ve been looking for you.” But no one had ever looked for him in the chapel. It was strange that this stone cell should be so peaceful. Even the altar was a reminder of conflict. In the uncertain days of the Reformation, there had been theological disputes between the local priest, who adhered to the old religion, and the then Sir Francis Cressett, who was inclined to the new ways of thought and worship. Needing an altar for his chapel, he had sent the male members of the household at night to steal the one from the Lady Chapel, a sacrilege which had caused the rift between church and Manor for generations. Then, during the Civil War, the Manor had been briefly occupied by Parliamentary troops after a successful local skirmish, and the Royalist dead had been laid out on this stone floor.

Marcus put thoughts and memories from him and concentrated on his own dilemma. He had to make a decision—and make it now—whether to remain at the Manor or to go with a surgical team to Africa.

He knew what his sister wanted, what he had come to see as a solution for all his problems, but was this desertion a running away from more than his job? He had heard the mixture of anger and entreaty in his lover’s voice. Eric, who worked as a theatre nurse at St. Angela’s, had wanted him to join a gay march. The quarrel was not unexpected. It wasn’t the first time that conflict had arisen. He remembered his own words.