“I’ve never been down there,” said David as Oscar pulled the door slowly open. A loud creak, magnified by the stones around them, seemed to push them away from the entrance, as if history itself were trying to repel them.
“Oscar and I went down about a year ago,” said Arthur, shivering as a blast of cold air came through the open door. “When I was working on the guidebook.” The crypt was not open to tourists, and as they descended the uneven stone steps, it was easy to understand why.
Oscar went first with a torch. David followed, then Bethany, who was using her cell phone to help light the way, and finally Arthur, who still held the candle he had taken after Compline. The dark seemed to swallow the three lights. The crypt smelled dank and the floor, when they reached it, felt slick underfoot. They found themselves in a low space, the ceiling of which was supported by squat Norman arches. Moisture glistened on the walls, which were black with the filth of centuries.
“One arm of the crypt runs west directly under the quire aisle to the central tower,” said Oscar, “and then at the east end, where we are, the other arm extends in a cross almost the entire width of the chancel under the east wall. So the center of this wall, where the two sections intersect, should be directly under the great east window.”
“And directly opposite anything underneath the Lady Chapel,” said Arthur.
“Exactly,” said Oscar.
“Well, let’s go,” said David.
Oscar led the way as they ducked under one arch after another. Arthur reckoned the distance couldn’t be more than twenty yards, but it seemed to take forever until they passed into an even colder patch of air and realized they had reached the intersection. In three directions, the arches disappeared into blackness. Bethany slipped her fingers around Arthur’s. “This is creeping me out,” she whispered. “Are there . . . graves and stuff down here?”
“No marked ones,” said Arthur.
“So what are we looking for?” said David, stepping up to the wall.
“Anything that looks like it was added later,” said Oscar. They stood in a line for a moment, staring at the wall, which looked only ancient, wet, and filthy.
“Why do you suppose it’s so wet down here?” said Oscar.
“Obviously because there is a sacred spring on the other side of this wall,” said Bethany.
“Ever seen the crypt at Winchester?” said Arthur. “That place literally has a lake in it.”
“Is this wall plastered?” said David. “I don’t see obvious joints between stones, but it’s so damp and dirty that I can’t tell if there’s some kind of finishing on it.”
“It would be strange for a crypt, but not unheard of,” said Arthur.
“But how do we . . . ,” began Oscar.
“Oh, give me the trowel, Oscar,” said Bethany in an exasperated tone. “If it’s plaster and it’s this wet, we won’t be doing any harm scraping the stuff off.” She handed her phone to David, took the trowel from Oscar, and scraped it loudly across the wall. Even though the cathedral was empty and they were hidden away in the crypt, they had been whispering, and the noise of metal on stone seemed deafening—as if the space hadn’t heard a sound that loud for centuries, and was rolling it around out of curiosity. Three scrapes later, Bethany turned back to the men. “I’m surprised this stuff was even staying on the wall. It’s like mush it’s so wet.”
Oscar pointed his torch over her shoulder and they saw three wide gouges about a quarter of an inch deep in the wall. The sodden plaster was easily coming off the surface. Twenty minutes later, with the aid of both trowel and bread knife, they had cleared the entire space within the central arch, and a pile of slick, wet plaster lay on the floor.
“Looks like there are graves down here,” said David, pointing to a stone near the bottom of the deplastered wall. “There’s lettering.”
“Hang on,” said Arthur, pulling out his knife. He knelt down in front of the wall, feeling the wet from the plaster soaking into the knees of his pants. With the long blade of the knife, he scraped out the residue from two lines of letters on the stone David had pointed to. “That’s odd,” he said.
“What is it?” asked Bethany, peering over his shoulder. “What’s it say?”
“It’s Latin,” said Arthur. “It translates, ‘Sacred to the Memory.’”
“That’s not so odd,” said David. “A fairly standard sentiment on grave markers, I’d say.”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “but it’s written upside down.”
“This is it,” said Oscar excitedly. “This is a new wall. Or at least newer than the rest of the crypt. And it was put up in a hurry.”
“What makes you say that?” said Bethany.
“Look,” said Oscar. “Let’s say you are a monk here at Barchester and you get wind of the dissolution of the monasteries. You hear that the king’s commissioners are destroying all the shrines and desecrating the tombs of the saints. The most sacred thing in your cathedral is a spring, and you don’t particularly want the commissioners tossing the rubble from Ewolda’s shrine into this holy water. But you have an advantage over other cathedrals. Your sacred spring is not right behind the altar and covered with jewels like a typical shrine. It’s in the crypt. And if you build a wall quickly, and slap some plaster on it, you can hide it. So, if I am this monk and I want to build a wall, I grab whatever building materials are at hand, including old gravestones, and I don’t worry about whether I stick them in right side up or upside down.”
“So you think this wall was built in the 1530s?” said David.
“Think about it,” said Arthur. “The inventory and the coded manuscript were both prepared then. Barchester was one of the last monasteries to be dissolved. They had time.”
“But weren’t the inventory and the manuscript from St. Ewolda’s up the river?” said Bethany.
“Yes, but the monks of the two monasteries must have known each other. And they shared an interest in protecting Ewolda. There must have been a concerted effort to hide her relics and her story from the commissioners.”
“So what do we do now?” said David. “Just come back in the morning with a little plastic explosive and blast our way through?”
“If this wall was built hastily and it’s not actually supporting anything, it shouldn’t be that hard to take down,” said Oscar.
“And we’re going to do that?” asked David. “We’re simply going to disassemble a five-hundred-year-old wall that’s part of a scheduled building. Isn’t that some sort of crime?”
“No,” said Arthur, taking the trowel from Bethany and stepping toward the wall. “I’m going to hear a strange rumbling sound from the crypt as I’m leaving after Compline. I’m going to ring Oscar and we’re going to discover that a poorly built wall has collapsed due to moisture damage.”
“Arthur, you don’t have a cell phone,” said David.
“OK, I’ll say I went and fetched Oscar,” said Arthur, wedging the trowel into the thin space between two stones at the top of the wall. “These stones are loose. If we can pry one or two out, it will be easy to remove the rest.”