Three most unjolly Jack-tars make their way down the rocking ladder. I’m the first, and William gravely steps aside for me. I apologize to him in an undertone, for the embarrassment. He pulls his hat lower, the better to speak privately. “Don’t you worry about that, Vicar. I’ll be off back to the school. I can see now, you’re in safe hands with Tom.”

When Tom reaches the bottom I say quietly, “You don’t need to stay with us, you know. Feel free to go and study.”

Tom looks horrified. “Not likely. He might eat you.”

We stare up at the descending Frobisher. A man never looks his best coming down a ladder. Frobisher is no exception.

—

In the kitchen Tom shows the ancient floor tiles to our guest. “Good heavens,” says Frobisher, bending and peering at the dim shapes. “Stabbed Wessex, if I’m not mistaken. Late twelve or early thirteen hundreds. What a find.”

“I’ve been told they were taken from Waltham Priory.”

“Well. If not in the floor of a religious building, their place is in a museum.”

My heart sinks. “I was thinking about somewhere local. Where people could view them without having to travel.”

“We’ll see.” He’s not so keen on that idea.

I assemble mugs and tea bags. The milk, subjected to a searching sniff, passes muster. “Would you care for a piece of toast, Archdeacon?” Tom asks. A vicar’s son when he wants to be.

“No, thank you.”

“We’ve got chocolate spread,” Tom coaxes.

Frobisher feigns not to hear this, plants himself on a kitchen chair, legs apart, black-socked ankles, rather swollen, on view. Bailey, who has taken to sunning himself in the sitting room, saunters in. I’m about to scoop the dog up and put him outside—Bailey has discovered the joy of shoelaces—but Frobisher is leaning forward, extending his hand toward the dog, and saying, “Now who is this? Who is this, now?” Before I can say anything, my archdeacon gets down off his chair and lowers himself into a kneeling position. Bailey hurries toward him and plants his front paws on the twin boulders of Frobisher’s knees.

“Are you a hound pup, by any chance?” murmurs Frobisher. “I think you are.” He begins to stroke the dog briskly, his hand enveloping the small body entirely, and Bailey climbs right up onto his lap, legs splayed foursquare as he squirms in bliss under Frobisher’s heavy palm. Frobisher’s slablike cheeks and doughty chin are softening, softening and almost . . . trembling? Can they be? But they are, almost imperceptibly, like a blancmange might tremble on a plate when a heavy lorry goes by on the road outside. “There, there,” he’s saying to the dog, who is gazing up at him with naked, greedy adoration. “There, there.”

Tom is standing immobile, knife in the air, halfway through troweling chocolate spread onto toast.