A young monk leads them by a short route to the burial site. Keys turn behind them, bolts are slammed, bars dropped into their guards. The vast nave stretches away, a black and echoing expanse in which he has set men with dogs. He can hear their scrambling paws and their panting as they strain at their leashes. These are ban-dogs. Their jaws are like vices. They will nab any intruder and have him on the floor screaming. ‘Sweeper!’ their keepers call. ‘Sturdy!’ ‘Diamond!’ ‘Jack!’
The monks of the advance party have lit torches around the tomb. He walks towards the light. He counts his witnesses: Layton’s clerks, the chosen townsfolk. He wants every man where he can see him, no one loitering in the cavernous space. ‘Loose the dogs.’
In the space of a breath, the black void fills with snarling. ‘Jesu,’ Christophe says. ‘They sound like roving demons.’
He puts out a hand and finds the boy’s shoulder. ‘Stick close.’ Even a Frenchman knows the legends of the shrine. As for those huddled bystanders from the town – guild officials, aldermen – they have been brought up on stories of those who, mishandling a saint’s relics, were consumed by plague or leprosy, or were choked by invisible nooses and died twitching on the floor.
‘We are ready,’ he says. A monk is walking towards him and his eye catches the glint of metal. His hand flies to his chest, to his knife. But as the man steps into the flicker of light he sees it is not a weapon he is holding but Becket’s skull. He has it tucked against his robes, as if it were a shy pet animal that feels the cold.
‘Give it here,’ he says. A cap of silver holds together the crazed fragments of bone. The lips of thousands have grazed this relic; but he is a whore’s client with no time for kissing. He holds Becket up, eye to hollow eye; he looks into his vacancy. He turns the skull up, to see where it was chopped from the backbone. There is no record that the four knights cut off Becket’s head. His admirers did that, later.
‘Shall we have a look at the rest of him?’ Dr Layton asks.
Now that the jewels and gilding are prised off, what rests on the flags is a serviceable iron chest, such as our forefathers used time out of mind. His fingertips graze its surface: common rust. ‘Jesus, Layton,’ he says, ‘the monks missed a chance here, they could have scraped down the rust every spring and sold it for more than you could charge for powdered unicorn.’
‘Hold up a light,’ Layton says.
The chest has been sealed around with lead. ‘See if it is still tight.’ A workman crouches and examines the seal, feeling his way along the join. Dr Layton squats beside him: ‘You would swear it has not been disturbed in years, my lord.’
Their anxiety is that the bones have been stolen by some dissident monk: that they have been sent by a courier to Rome, or tucked in some private ossuary till old times come again. But if the seal is intact, ‘I could have been in my feather bed, Dr Layton.’
‘Oh, I would not miss this,’ Layton says. ‘Not personally.’
The workman straightens up. ‘Shall we do off the lid, sirs?’
A monk says, ‘God in His mercy protect us.’
He is aware that some of the witnesses are retreating from the circle. ‘Don’t go too far, or the dogs will have you.’ The workman is a stonemason, and has brought his own bag of tools. A blacksmith, he thinks, made them all. Some nameless smith three centuries past melted the lead to make the seal which we will now split and rip. He says, give us a chisel. He fingers the business end, passes it back. Some smiths cannot make chisels, or punches either – they have to re-dress them after every job. Walter used to say, you must wait, wait, wait, till the colour fades from sunset-red to ash. It’s the last three hammer blows that count.
Each blow rings. One, two, three. He would rip open the chest himself, but: dignity of his office, the king’s Vicegerent, Cromwell of Wimbledon, Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal. Knight of the Garter.
The mason exhales as he stands up. He walks around the chest and repositions himself, kneeling.
‘Another torch,’ he says. The flames lick, sway, and behind him there is a cry: ‘Up there!’ He whirls around, a black storm of velvet and fur. The dogs set up a thunderous barking. High above, a shape cuts through the space, swaying. He glimpses the edge of a wing – the outline, against the heights, of a huge bird or bat.
Cowled monks plummet to their knees. A body goes down and a head hits the flags. He calls for more light. Lanterns bob in the nave. The handlers whip back the dogs. ‘Oh, by the thighs of Mary!’ shouts Christophe. High in the roof, thrown across the scaffolding, a stonemason has left his coat. It stretches its arms, as if swimming through the black air.
The fallen man is slapped about the face and levered to the vertical. He is led away, shaking, by two fellow witnesses who will dine out on it for years. There is some uncertain laughter.
‘I suppose that’s not your coat?’ Layton asks the mason.
