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laughed. He well knew Benan's 'High Church' views on this sort of thing - namely that it was important to alleviate suffering wherever possible, but that pestilence was God's punishment for sinfulness, and that to combat it could be seen as a form of heresy. On previous campaigns, in an effort to win the hearts and minds of a local populace, Earl Corotocus had thrown Zacharius's service open to local peasants and villagers, at his own expense - much to Father Benan's chagrin.
    "My question was a genuine one," the priest said.
    "So was my response," the doctor replied. "You think after what we've done in this land, anyone would come here? Even if their bowels were riddled with worms, their limbs rotted with leprosy?"
    Benan chewed his lip. There was no riposte to so valid a point. He eyed Zacharius's surgical instruments. Apparently the doctor had commissioned their manufacture himself, again paying out of his own private funds. They included forceps, a scalpel, a bone-saw, a curette, a retractor, and a curved needle. To Benan's eye, they looked less like instruments of medicine and more like implements of torture. Of course, in his heart of hearts, he knew that Zacharius meant well, despite his lecherous proclivities, and that these menacing items had no more to do with the Devil and heresy than the swords and spears wielded by the earl and his soldiers, but these were confusing times to be a priest.
    "I hope you have cause to treat no-one while we are posted in this castle," he finally said.
    Zacharius shrugged. "So do I. But for different reasons than you, I think."
    Benan was affronted. "My concern for the welfare of men's souls is more important than your concern for the welfare of their bodies."
    "That is a higher philosophy, Father Benan, that many of your fellow clerics no longer share." Zacharius fixed him with a frank stare. "First of all, the Church itself educated me in these arts. The Franciscans at Oxford encouraged me all the way. At Titchfield it was the same. But even among those few who objected, it's amazing how quickly a man's principles can be put aside when he himself comes down with a sickness."
    As always, Father Benan left Zacharius's company frustrated rather than irked, nervous rather than righteous. He returned to the castle chapel, which was located beneath the kitchen, and sandwiched between the barrack house and the Great Hall. As befitted a functional military outpost, it was little more than a subterranean chamber, built from bare, grey stone and austere in that typical Norman style. The altar table itself was a slab of granite. The pews were stiff, wooden things, embellished neither with carving nor cushion. There was no presbytery here, not even a sleeping compartment containing bedding. He'd seen no altar cloths, no silver candlesticks, no precious vessels of any sort; no doubt, if there had been some they were now in the grasp of the Bretons or the Welsh.
    The contrast between this place and his sumptuous residence at the earl's great castle on the River Severn near Shrewsbury could not have been more marked. There, he had had a huge four-poster bed with blankets of feather down, servants at his beck and call, good food, good wine, silver plates to dine off if he wished. The chapel there was lined with white plaster and inlaid with frescoes telling tales from the Bible. There were statues on pedestals, holy inscriptions in the footways. The thuribles and chalices were of white gold; the altar was bathed daily in the reflection of a huge stained glass window, which depicted the Saviour ascending to a deep blue heaven, his noble brow crowned with roses.
    What did Benan have for a window here?
    A cruciform slit high in the east wall, through which sunlight might occasionally find its way, though only via a series of connecting shafts. Even during daytime it provided almost no illumination.
    The dour environment matched the priest's mood. Yet again, he knelt at the altar and prayed for guidance,