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once stood. The rest of the workmen now stood round this, staring down into the darkness. The workman who had come for him, apparently the foreman, pompously waved Watkin and the rest back.
    ‘You see, Father,’ he said, looking round at his colleagues for agreement, ‘the altar was set on a flagstone that in turn rested on a slab over a bed of gravel and some soil. Now,’ the man cleared his throat and wiped his dusty mouth on the back of his hand, ‘as you directed, we’re trying to lower the sanctuary floor, so we removed some of the soil. Well, beneath the altar, the soil just caved in and this is what we found.'
    With the rest of his parishioners milling around him, Athelstan stood on the edge of the pit whilst one of the workmen stepped gingerly down to remove a roll of canvas sheeting. Athelstan gasped in amazement. A skeleton lay there in gentle repose, a small crucifix, the wood now rotten and soft-looking, clasped in its bony fingers. The wrists were crossed, the legs lying together.
    ‘It’s a martyr!’ Watkin declared suddenly as if announcing a great triumph. ‘Father, look, it’s a martyr! St Erconwald’s has its own saint, its own precious relic!’
    Athelstan closed his eyes and muttered a prayer. The last thing he wanted was a relic. He did not believe that God’s will depended on bits of bone or shreds of flesh.
    ‘How do you know it’s a martyr?’ he asked weakly. ‘Someone could just have dumped the remains there.’
    His parishioners looked angrily at him, fiercely determined not to be cheated out of their own saint and martyr.
    ‘Of course it’s a martyr.’ Pike spoke up, now in full agreement with Watkin. ‘Look, Father, you’ve seen many a corpse, they’re just dumped in a hole and left. This one has been specially laid here with its head towards the east.’
    ‘And the cross!’ Ursula screeched triumphantly. ‘Don’t forget the cross!’
    ‘They are right, Father,’ Benedicta declared quietly. ‘Whoever this skeleton belongs to, whoever he or she was in life, that person was buried here as a mark of respect with a cross as a sign of reverence.’
    Athelstan looked helplessly around.
    ‘Concedo,’ he muttered in Latin. ‘I concede there’s a possibility, but who is it and why here?’
    ‘He’s a martyr,’ Mugwort declared. ‘You know, Father, probably killed by the Persians.’
    ‘Persians, Mugwort? There were never any Persians in England !’
    ‘Yes, there were!’ Tab the tinker shouted. ‘You know, Father, the same buggers who killed Jesus. After they killed him,’ the tinker continued, ‘they came here, killed any poor sod who believed in Jesus and sacked the monasteries.’ He looked confidently around. He was proud of the little schooling he had received and could never resist an opportunity to show it off.
    ‘Romans,’ Athelstan answered. ‘The Romans invaded England . Yes, and when the Christian faith spread here, they killed those who believed in Christ. Men like St Alban whose holy corpse lies in its own church north of London .’ He saw the disappointment in Tab’s eyes. ‘But perhaps you are right, Tab. The Vikings who came much later were actually in London . They also killed Christians, and God knows this may be one of their victims.’ He stared down. ‘But we don’t know whether it’s male or female. Look,’ he continued, ‘Pike, Huddle, Watkin, take the body up carefully.’ He pointed down the nave to where the parish coffin, a great oaken chest, lay in one of the transepts. ‘Place the bones in there and let us see what we can find.’
    His chosen parishioners picked up the skeleton slowly and reverently, as if it was the most sacred thing under the sun, whilst the rest, including the workmen, knelt and made the sign of the cross. They all jumped as Bonaventure, who had crept into the church, suddenly realised how the upturned flagstones had disturbed the rats and mice and raced across the sanctuary in a flash of black fur to