Free Gunner Kelly by Anthony Price Page B

high up a bell rang in answer to the movement, joining the other bells which had been calling the faithful to prayer. In God’s world it must be time for evensong, to give thanks for the day’s blessings and to pray for safety during the hours of darkness to come.
    The priest plucked nervously at the folds of his long black cassock. “Mr Wiesehöfer?” He smiled tentatively at Benedikt.
    A priest? But a priest, of course! Who better, in a cathedral, than a priest?
    Benedikt nodded. “Good evening, Father. I am Thomas Wiesehöfer, yes.”
    “Mr Wiesehöfer.” The priest looked half relieved, half fearful. Perhaps he really was a priest. “If you would follow me, please.”
    Benedikt crossed the nave silently in the wake of the black cassock, pausing only to pay his duty in the central aisle in conformity with his guide. There was a small gathering of evening worshippers far down the rows of chairs towards the high altar, he observed. It would have been pleasant to have been able to join them—it would have been something to tell Mother in his next letter, the reading of which would have pleased her. But he had other gods to worship now, the unforgiving old earth-bound gods of man’s world.
    The priest waited for him by a doorway, flanked by an elderly black-gowned verger who regarded him with a mixture of disapproval and slight suspicion as he squeezed through the half-closed door into the gloom beyond.
    It was a cloister. He turned, expecting the priest to follow him, but the man remained in the gap, unmoving.
    “Down to your right, Mr Wiesehöfer—you will see a light.”
    Benedikt looked to his right. On one side the cloister was open, but the evening had come prematurely for the time of year under a canopy of low clouds and the passage ahead of him was full of shadows. Far down it he could see a faint yellow light diffusing out of a gap in the wall.
    He turned back to the priest. “Thank you, Father.”
    To his surprise, he saw the priest’s hand, pale against the cassock, sign the cross for him. “God bless you, and keep you always in His mercy, Mr Wiesehöfer.”
    Then the door closed with a thud which echoed down the cloisters ahead, towards where the light waited.
    Amen to that —his own thought mingled with the blessing.
    But why all the precautions? The blessing was fair enough, and better than fair, and any man far from home might feel the better for it. And it had been a good contact. But this was their territory, where their writ ran on their terms. So … why all the precautions?
    The wall on his left was rich with memorial tablets, all probably dedicated to the departed faithful of the diocese but which he could not read in the half-light. Then, of course, the English loved their memorials: they had a Roman weakness for cutting words into stone, as he had observed in the body of the cathedral, not merely to recall its past servants, but also the servants of the state who had died in their imperial wars and lay in faraway graves. Their ‘Fighting Men’, indeed!
    The opening out of which the pale yellow light came was a doorway: a tiny arched doorway, so low that he had to duck his head to pass beneath it.
    “Mind the step, Captain Schneider,” said a voice which he had never heard before—which was certainly not the voice of the Special Branch man Herzner had introduced to him.
    Outside, the light had been pale, but inside it was bright enough to make him blink at the single unshaded bulb which hung low in the little room, surrounded by the smell of old stone and damp, slightly flavoured with furniture polish.
    Polish—polished shoes— highly polished shoes, glistening ox-blood red-brown … then trousers with old-fashioned turn-ups in them, immaculately creased in expensive British tweed, lifting his eye up, past the matching jacket, and the Old School or regimental striped tie.
    “Captain Schneider—” Above the tie, the face was fierce, almost brick-red, to match the receding