Free The Printer's Devil by Chico Kidd

mean?’
    At that moment the sun shattered in coloured fragments the stained glass on the western side of the church with one of those sudden effulgences which bring their figures to glowing life.
    ‘The glass is nice,’ Alan said; and above them, the bells stepped their measure, six in their stately pavane, the treble’s silver thread treading an orderly path, the tenor’s note mellow as the beat of a tuned tympanum keeping the rhythm. In and out, dodging to and fro, dancing their arcane pattern, the other bells rang the method, a pastime ancient and melodious, a calling-on song for the congregation which echoed down the ages. Alan had never before thought that ringing could be subtle, but these bells sang so sweetly they beguiled him. Their sound sank into his heart, and made its home there.
    5 : Renowned be thy Grave
    ‘My heart is suddenly in Italy.
    Suddenly in that piercingly catching light Caught, as by a thorn: images snag my mind,
    The Italy of my mind, the sun Clear as it is not here (or not with the same clarity) pouring Vernaccia into the gold... ’
    M M Thomas, Towers
    The irrepressible Will Osborn led Alan and Kim up the stairs to the belfry, and opened the door to show them the bells in their oaken frame. The back five had been rung down, and pointed mutely to the dusty floor, silent and motionless and merely a potential for sweet music. The treble remained upright, like a chalice waiting to be filled. Through the louvres bright sunlight struck in stripes, pierced with dust, picking out details: a rope laid round a wheel, the treble’s blue clapper.
    Kim noted, as she became progressively hotter and sweatier tucked in to that confined space taking photographs, that the inscriptions on the five Fenstanton bells were stacked:
    KYRIE SUM THOMAS
    EMMANVEL ECCE OMNIPOTENS GABRIEL ORA WHEREIN ET IS
    BENEDICE FOUND EIS REST ELEISON ROSA SUM CIRCULI
    RAPHAEL TENEBRIS OS
    NOCTV NEBULAE ORPHEI IGNIS NUNTIA
    OFFERE DIRUS IVRATOR
     
    Intent on her work, she did not attach any significance to the layout of the words; but it was working like sugar and yeast in Alan’s mind - perhaps because his brain had got into the habit of puzzles - and when they eventually got home he did the same thing with the treble, solving the acrostic (to Kim’s relief) quickly.
    ‘You take the initial letter of each inscription and read across. That’s why three’s in English, to get the W, and four’s got “kyrie eleison" - the rest is just filling-in with Latin. That’s why it didn’t make sense to the Rev Hill.’
    ‘So what does it say?’ said Kim, peering at what Alan had written.
    SUM EMANUEL ECCE KYRIE SUM THOMAS
    ROSA OMNIPOTENS GABRIEL ELEISON ROSA SUM PULSATA ORA WHEREIN RAPHAEL CIRCULI OS MONDI ET IS NOCTU TENEBRIS ORPHEI
    MARIA BENEDICE FOUND IGNIS NEBULA DIRUS
    VOCATA EIS REST OFFERE NUNTIA IURATOR
    ‘“SEEKSTROGERS POWR COME IN TOMB FIND VERONI”. What?’
    ‘Verony,’ said Alan smugly, placing a book, which she recognised as his dictionary of archaic words, in front of Kim. She followed his finger and read:
    ‘VERONY. The cloth or napkin on which the face of Christ was depicted, that which was given by Veronica before his crucifixion to wipe his face, and received a striking impression of his countenance upon it.
    “Like his modir was that childe,
    With faire visage and mode ful mylde;
    Sene hit is bi the verony,
    And bi the ymage of that lady."
    Cursor Mundi, MS. Coll Trin. Cantab. f.ll5.’
    ‘Like the Turin shroud?’ she asked.
    ‘I suppose so.’
    ‘This means there’s some cloth somewhere with the imprint of a face?
    Roger Southwell’s face?’
    “‘COME IN TOMB”.’
    ‘It’s directing us back to where we started?’
    ‘Looks like it.’
    ‘Shit.’
    ‘As you say.’
    ‘I don’t suppose there was anything saying PRESS HERE on the tomb, was there?’
    ‘Not that I noticed. I’ll have to go back to Fenstanton.’
    ‘And do what? Dig him up?’
    ‘Hardly,’ said Alan, grimacing. ‘I