“Figure what out?” said Oscar.
Bethany stood over the three men silently for a moment, then burst out laughing. “You guys are like those three little monkeys with their eyes and ears and mouths covered. Arthur, do you have a copy of the article?”
“Uhm, at home, I think.”
“Never mind,” said Bethany, sitting down at the table and tapping away on David’s laptop. After a few seconds, she began to read. “The Dean this morning said he feared that efforts to extinguish the fire in the Lady Chapel would lead to the flooding of the main cathedral, but this did not come to pass.”
“Oh, my God,” said Arthur, reaching out and grabbing Bethany’s hand. “What would we do without you?”
“You should listen very closely to what you just said,” said Bethany, giving his hand a squeeze and looking him right in the eyes.
“What?” roared David. “What the goddamned hell are you two talking about?”
“This is a cathedral,” said Arthur. “Kindly refrain from using the Lord’s name in vain.”
“All right,” said David, smiling. “What in the name of fuck-all shit are you talking about?”
“Much better,” said Bethany.
“When the south transept of York Minster caught fire in 1980,” said Arthur, “large sections of the cathedral avoided serious water damage, because the water used to put out the fire flowed out of the crypt through a Roman drainage system that had been there almost two thousand years.”
“And when they put out the fire in Barchester in 1941, the water disappeared, too,” said Bethany. “So where did it go?”
“And why would there be a drainage system under the Lady Chapel?” said Arthur.
“The only reason I can think of,” said Bethany, still holding Arthur’s hand, “is that the Lady Chapel, which, by the way, if you read Arthur’s guidebook you will know housed the shrine of Ewolda, was built over her sacred spring.”
“And the manuscript says that Ewolda was entombed beside the spring,” said Arthur.
“In Winchester there was a hole in the shrine of St. Swithun,” said Bethany.
“The holy hole,” said Arthur.
“Where pilgrims could crawl in and be closer to the actual bones of the saint,” said Bethany.
“And the account we have of Ewolda’s medieval shrine describes the same sort of passage,” said Arthur. “But what if that holy hole took pilgrims above the tomb of Ewolda. What if, when the shrine breakers came, they didn’t destroy the actual tomb because they didn’t realize it was right below them?”
“And right next to the sacred spring,” said Bethany.
“The same spring whose drainage system took away all the water from the fire hoses in 1941.”
After this torrent of explanation, Arthur and Bethany fell silent, still staring into each other’s eyes.
“You’re kidding me,” said David. “You think a . . . what, a twelve-or thirteen-hundred-year-old spring with healing powers is sitting under the ruins of the Lady Chapel and nobody has known about it since the Reformation? And you think the tomb of Ewolda is sitting there beside it?”
“The tomb is conjecture,” said Arthur. “The spring has to be there.”
“Otherwise where did that water go?” said Bethany.
“Who the hell knows where it went?” said David. “Down the bloody toilet. Don’t you think if there was a spring under the cathedral someone would have found it in the past millennium?”
“Actually,” said Oscar, “I’ve wondered for a long time about the crypt. A crypt should be cruciform, like the church above it, but the crypt at Barchester is shaped like a T. There’s no arm at the top.”
“Or maybe there is,” said Arthur. “Maybe there is an arm that’s been sealed up. If they walled it off during the Reformation, to keep the king’s commissioners from finding the spring and the tomb, that would explain why they encoded the manuscript at the same time.”
“So we’re going to do what?” said David. “Spend the rest of the afternoon sneaking into the crypt of a cathedral with a dodgy north transept and knocking down walls hoping to find some mystical birdbath before the whole damn building comes down on our heads?”
“No,” said Arthur. “That would be a foolish way to spend the rest of the afternoon.”
“Absolutely,” said Oscar. “Extremely foolish.”
“Are you serious?” said Bethany.
“We’re very serious,” said Arthur. “We’ll wait until after Compline.”
David folded his arms across his chest as the other three glared at him.
“Come on, old friend,” said Oscar. “It’s no worse than robbing the precentor.”
“In for a penny, in for a pound,” said Arthur.
“Oh, fine,” said David. “But when they arrest us you can count on me to testify for the prosecution.”
“It’s hours until Compline,” said Bethany. “What do we do in the meantime?”
“In the meantime,” said Oscar, “we go to the Corpus Christi Mass. We listen to the lovely music and we act like nothing out of the ordinary is going on.”
“Why are we keeping everything secret?” asked Bethany, finally dropping Arthur’s hand.
“Because,” said Arthur, “if there is one thing the precentor made clear at his party it’s that he wants to sell those manuscripts.”
“And if he finds out what we’re up to,” said David, “you can be sure he’ll find a way to stop it. I don’t trust that salmon-headed twit any further than I can throw him.”
“I’m not leaving anything sitting out here,” said Arthur, pulling together the piles of ciphered and deciphered text. “As long as we’re being paranoid we may as well do it properly.” He stowed the papers in Oscar’s desk drawer, locked it, and pocketed the key.
“There’s just one more thing that I don’t understand,” said David, smiling archly.
“What’s that?” said Arthur.
“What the hell is going on between you and Bethany?”
“Oh, he’s just in love with me, that’s all,” said Bethany.
XIV
THE CRYPT
There is little of interest in the crypt of Barchester Cathedral. The construction, though early Norman, is undistinguished, and there are no tombs or monuments. There is no evidence that the crypt was ever used for worship—it seems to exist solely for engineering purposes. The east end of the cathedral, built closer to the river, sits on somewhat softer ground than the west end, and the substructure of the crypt transfers the weight of the building to a firm gravel bed.
A.D. 560, St. Ewolda’s Monastery
Wigbert seemed even weaker than before, thought Martin, as he entered the abbot’s room. It was as if, now that he had dictated the story of his sister’s life to Martin, his work on earth was done and he was beginning his transition to his heavenly reward.
“Read me the manuscript,” said Wigbert. “The portion that tells of my sister’s life. I should like to hear it one final time.”