The wind rose higher, a hoarse moan of warning between the walls on either side of her. Just what she needed, just what the scene required to feel really terrifying. But she moved on, regardless, her squat figure pulled into itself, her stick stabbing the pavement as if she would drive it right through the stone, her Borsalino bowed against the cold.

When she glanced up, she saw the Temple Church slowly moving into view from behind the alley’s corner, through the trees.

The Knights Templar—guardians of Jerusalem after the Crusaders took it, after they slaughtered its paynims and established the rule of the armies of the Prince of Peace; protectors, in legend, of the Holy Grail; pattern of the Teutonic Knights of Germany and rival of the Knights Hospitalers; soldiers, bankers, politicians; and finally, outcasts accused of Satanism and infanticide; disbanded, tortured, burned at the stake: they had built this church in 1185, some sixty-five years after their inception. Its round tower—one of only five round church towers in England—was modeled on Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Its castellated crown lowered blackly against the dull sky as Harper moved under it.

And there was more of the eerie wind business—the tree branches whispering and chattering all around her. And there were the ancient coffins oddly shimmering at the tower’s base. And there was the western porch of the church right before her, its obscure entryway: a chiseled Norman tympanum receding to the shut door. That recessive shape seemed to her to give a tide to the darkness, a tide that was dragging her in. She had again that irritating sense that she had come to this place helplessly, in answer to an overpowering summons. She had an awful feeling that everything to come was expected, had been expected for a long time, forever.

She felt sickened—but not surprised—when she heard a muffled thud as of a body dropping, and the heavy church door began to swing open.

She stopped before the archway. Steeled herself, squared her shoulders. The door continued to swing back until the interior of the church—or, that is, the utterly lightless murk of its interior—was displayed before her.

“You always did love an effect,” she muttered to no one between her teeth.

Then, her stick clicking on the stone, she stepped under the arch. Staring blankly ahead, she hobbled under the tympanum. She entered the church.