While her tasks as assistant librarian mattered to her greatly, what gave her the most joy was the development of her gift. Brother Michael had called it “the gift of communing with the dead” but she did not see it like that. She saw it, instead, as a blessing that permitted her access to those who lived on a different plane. Those who were not troubled by earthly concerns such as food or warmth or money, but had an entirely spiritual existence. She tried to help them when she could, and they were grateful, but in truth she felt she was the one who owed gratitude. Whatever strange ability she had been given, no matter where it had come from, her connection to the map, the friendship of her constant companion, the griffin, and being close to the cathedral’s lost souls, these were treasures, privileges, and she was thankful for them daily. This joy was increased by being able to share her experiences with her father. She had seen him thrive on this new aspect of their relationship, as if he had been rescued from a purposeless retirement by becoming her confidant and support.
Once seated at her desk, Hecate turned her attention to the small map repair she had been charged with, determined to finish the work to Reverend Thomas’s satisfaction. The damage was not extensive, but it required careful patching and repainting, and she liked to think her skills, which her father had taught her over many years of helping him with his collection, would satisfy or possibly even impress her employer. The griffin flew from the Mappa Mundi, conducted a circuit of the room, and came to sit on her desk. She smiled at him, glancing to check she was not observed before leaning forward to scratch him affectionately behind one of his tiny lion’s ears. She was on the point of unpinning the map to turn it when she heard the sound of one of the cathedral bells ringing. This was not the clock marking the quarter hour, nor the bell ringers practicing their art, but a lone chiming. She and the reverend exchanged looks. Of the several local stories regarding the haunting of the cathedral, the most well-known was that of a phantom who rang the oldest bell in times of danger. For most of the inhabitants of Hereford it was a chilling ghost story. For Hecate, knowing Lady Rathbone as she did, it was fact. Before she or Reverend Thomas had the chance to remark upon the bell, there came, amplified up through the twisting stone stairwell, a series of loud, shrill, and terrified screams.
The griffin took to the air.
Reverend Thomas showed a surprising turn of speed as he leaped from his seat and ran toward the door.
Hecate sprinted after him. As they descended the steep stairs, the screams continued amid sounds of agitated, raised voices and hastening footsteps.
“They are in the crypt!” Hecate said, the thought making her shiver even as she sprinted along the choir aisle and overtook her superior, quickly reaching the entrance to the catacombs. Corporal Gregory stood on guard, imploring her not to enter. She understood her ghostly friend’s desire to protect her, but on this occasion she could only run past him. The dean himself had already descended the short flight of stairs from the ground floor to the subterranean level and stood at the center of the main space of the crypt, attempting to calm the hysterical Mrs. White. Ahead of them, John cut a silent but steady figure, a point of stillness in a moment of chaos, as around him the reason for the cleaner’s distress was plain to see. Two of the three stone sarcophaguses in the center of the space had been opened, their lids wrenched away and thrown aside as if made of nothing heavier than paper. To the left, one of the iron gates that protected shelves of coffins had been pulled from its hinges and lay on the flagstoned floor. Three of the coffins had been removed from their ledges and dragged several paces across the floor. They, too, were missing their lids. One of the caskets had been reduced to nothing more than a pile of splinters. On the far side of the room, another tomb lay shattered, stones rendered rubble. All six of these burial places—whether worm-nibbled wood or ancient stone or opulent marble—now shared a common factor. Each and every one of them was empty.
Mrs. White had recovered sufficiently to be wailing amid wet sobs. Seeing Hecate, Dean Chalmers steered the cleaner toward her, hugely relieved to find a woman to assist him.
“Miss Cavendish, kindly lead Mrs. White from this upsetting discovery. I fancy a little fresh air…?”
“Of course, Dean,” she said, slipping a supportive arm around the older woman’s waist. “Come now, let us step outside.”
“Oh, such a shock!” Mrs. White declared. “Such a shock. Those poor souls … to be so disturbed!”
“Do not distress yourself further.” Hecate tried to prevent a fresh outbreak of hysteria. “The dean will know what to do.”
“To think such a thing could happen!” the cleaner went on, her voice echoing around the low-ceilinged space, forced down by the carved vaulted stone and funneled up the narrow staircase to inform any who might care to hear what she had to say. “Grave robbers! Saints preserve us, grave robbers!”
The dean lifted his own voice, keen to head off a rumor before it left the cathedral. “Now then, Mrs. White, let us not leap to unwarranted conclusions. We will send for the constable, who will inform the inspector of what has taken place.”
Even as the dean sought to reassure everyone present that grave robbers had not, in fact, breached the security of the cathedral and made off with several bodies, Hecate could see from the glances he exchanged with John that he accepted this as the most likely explanation. She herself remained to be convinced. It was not simply that vandalism on such a scale seemed beyond the scope of most simple grave robbers. It was not only that there was scant evidence of bodies being dragged or otherwise conveyed up the stairs and out of the building. What led her to the certainty that all was not as it seemed was the unshakable conviction that, somewhere in the deepest shadows of the crypt, something lingered. Accustomed as she was by now to the company of non-corporeal beings, this should neither have surprised nor frightened her. But it did. For what she sensed, what presence she detected, was not at all of the kind she regularly spent her time with. This was something altogether different. There came with it such a weighty sense of foreboding, such a cast of dread, that she found it hard to draw a deep breath. For the first time in her life, Hecate Cavendish was truly afraid.
Mrs. White had settled to whimpering now and taken out a large handkerchief with which to mop her eyes. “Those poor souls,” she repeated.
Hecate helped her up the stairs but as she did so she felt her flesh creep. The soldier at the top of the stairs had his own mouth open in shock. She could not speak to him in front of everyone present, but she could tell from his expression that he, too, felt what she was experiencing. He, too, was able to detect the danger that still lurked among the catacombs. She could not leave the dean there unaware of the peril he was in. She could not leave John. Turning, without attempting to pry Mrs. White’s fingers from her arm, she called back.
“Dean, might it not be wise to leave the area undisturbed? I imagine the inspector will thank you for protecting the evidence in a place where a … a complicated crime has taken place.” She addressed the man who was, after all, in charge of the cathedral, but it was the vicar whose gaze she met. As she had hoped, he detected the urgency behind her words. He nodded carefully.
“Miss Cavendish has it right, Dean. I’m certain of it,” he agreed. “Let us go upstairs and secure the entrance against anyone else setting foot down here before the police officers arrive.”
Dean Chalmers nodded and the two crossed the floor of the crypt to the stairs, where he pulled the hefty ledge and brace door closed, took a key from the cluster on his belt, and turned the lock with a jarring clunk that echoed through the gloomy space.
An hour later, with Mrs. White sent home, the dean was showing the scene of destruction in the crypt to the policemen. He had sent everyone else away, determined there should be as little disruption to the working day of the cathedral as possible. Before returning to the library, however, Hecate led John into the vestry and shut the door. The room was not available to the public but served as a store for many of the robes and articles required for the services. It smelled of starch and silver polish and mothballs and candle wax.
“Are you quite well?” John asked, his expression one of genuine concern. The black robes of his office and white collar looked severe on some, but on him they seemed somehow somber yet dependable and reassuring.
“Of course,” she said, not meeting his eye. She was aware he knew her well enough to sense her unease and had no wish to make herself the topic of discussion. “But, oh, John, what a dreadful thing to have happened.”
“So much destruction. Why would grave robbers take time to utterly destroy the caskets? Indeed, what point would there be in stealing dust and bones? Who would pay them for such pitiful remnants? And we have no tradition of valuables being interred with anyone here.”
“If it was grave robbers.”
“You think otherwise?”
“I sensed a presence. Someone, or something … powerful.”
“There must be a record of who was interred there. Perhaps it will provide some answers.”
“I have seen those records. They are less than helpful,” she told him, moving toward the door.
“Do you recall anyone who might have gone to their grave with a grievance? Or someone with a nature for dark deeds or violence?”
She could not help smiling. “Murderers and men of violence are not often laid to rest in cathedrals.” She paused and then added, “Unless they were kings.”
John gave a rueful shrug. “You make a fair point.” He paused, looking at her with undisguised affection. “You know your safety matters a great deal to me, Miss Cavendish,” he said.
Her smile broadened a little. “I must go. Reverend Thomas will be checking his pocket watch.”
As she slipped out of the vestry and headed back to the library she found herself, as so often was the case, reassured by John’s genuine warmth toward her. Nonetheless, she knew that whatever had emerged from those tombs was something more than a restless soul. She also knew that she would do whatever was necessary to seek it out, for if she could not return it to its rightful place, who could?
She found Reverend Thomas in a state of some agitation concerning time in the day lost. She did her best to placate him by settling at her desk and working diligently on repairing the small map without complaint or interruption for the better part of two hours. As the cathedral clock chimed, however, the conservator’s hunger overcame his preoccupation with work and he left to go home to the cloisters for his lunch. It was Hecate’s habit to walk to Church Street to buy a pie but today she had more pressing concerns than food. As soon as she was alone, she left her desk and threaded her way up and down the rows of shelves and the ancient chained tomes. With the griffin fluttering beside her at shoulder height, she called out softly.
“Brother Michael? Brother Michael, might I speak with you?”
She stopped at the end of a row, waiting, listening, opening her mind and her soul in the way she had learned to do so that she could better communicate with her ethereal friends. She felt rather than heard the old man’s footsteps behind her, for while his feet had no weight to them, his presence disturbed the atmosphere of the room. Unlike what Hecate had detected in the crypt, however, Brother Michael’s spirit was entirely benevolent. She turned to see him appear alongside his favorite part of the collection: the early illuminated Gospels.
“I should have known I’d find you there,” she said.
Brother Michael lifted his eyes to peer for the thousandth time at the worn, leather cover of his beloved book. With a sigh he replied, without looking up, “I confess, I have a fondness for this particular edition of the Gospels that could be seen as a weakness.” At last he turned to her, lowering his small, bright eyes, blinking myopically to bring her into focus. With his soft monk’s robes, the hood low over his brow, his short stature and small, snub nose, he put Hecate in mind of a mole recently emerged from its subterranean home. For all his slightly comical appearance and mild manner, his mind was razor sharp, and his knowledge of the contents of the library second to none. Hecate knew she was fortunate to have him as a friend. She would never forget their first conversation which came on her third day at the cathedral. It was only after they had known each other a little longer that he told her of how he came to haunt the library. A tragic accident had cut short his stay. The cathedral had been undergoing building work, which was, in truth, its habitual state for centuries. While Brother Michael was carrying out his work in the new library, repairs and extensions to the transept were underway. It had been the monk’s sad misfortune to be walking beneath a run of scaffolding at the precise moment it gave way. Two stonemasons were injured in the accident. Brother Michael was killed instantly. His brethren at Shaftesbury at first thought to repatriate his remains to be buried there, but the dean of Hereford protested. It was he who reminded them how much the monk had adored the library he had been so instrumental in setting up. How much better that he be laid to rest in the cathedral grounds. None of the clergy who attended his funeral could know, however, that their brother had chosen not to move on to a better place, because he so loved the books in his care that his soul could not bear to be parted from them. As far as Hecate could tell, he was one of only a very small number among the ghosts at the cathedral in that he chose to remain there and seemed content to do so.
“Has someone moved the copy of Ecclesiastical Processes for Our Time? I was searching earlier and cannot locate it.”
Hecate stepped forward and put her hand on the shabby blue volume two shelves lower.
