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behind the choirboys, the Vicar standing a little to Stephen’s right in the rearmost rank.
    Stephen bowed his head and uttered a prayer. Finishing, he looked about him idly. Two Punctators stood near the northern door, cross-checking each other’s lists. It was the duty of the Punctators to note who turned up and who did not for the services, and from the frown on their faces Stephen correctly surmised that someone was missing. No one would worry too much, he thought. The weather was cold, and many younger clerics would be celebrating the onset of Christmas.
    There was a loud slapping of feet on the cobbles outside, and the two Punctators turned, eyebrows raised, as the Secondary Jolinde appeared panting in the doorway. He marched in, head down, almost forgot to bow to the altar, and when he inclined his head respectfully to the Dean, Stephen saw the lad was red-faced, as if he had run a long distance.
    Stephen watched the youth shuffle along the stalls until he reached his own, next to the Secondary Peter Golloc. Stephen studied the two. Jolinde would be in for a reprimand later, he thought. The fellow should have risen earlier: from the look of him he had been drinking heavily last night. His appearance was scruffy, his complexion feverish, like a man who had been up until late in a tavern and whose sole desire now was to return to his bed.
    Next to him, Peter looked even worse. His face was pale, almost waxen, his lips grey, as if he was suffering from some kind of mental torment. Stephen sighed. The lad should be in the infirmary if he was unwell. There was no benefit to God in having a cleric collapse. An ill man was better advised to visit the infirmarer and make sure he got better. At that moment Jolinde jerked forward, and Stephen’s attention whipped back to him. The boy was carrying something under his robes – something he was concealing, Stephen was sure. Jolinde had half-dropped it.
    But before Stephen could consider the matter further, the calm, clear voice of the Succentor led the choir in the first song and the Canon forgot all about the incident.
    Ralph’s apprentice, Elias of Iddesleigh, tore along the alleys on his way home. Mary had made him delay his return to his master’s rooms, coquettishly offering him a kiss and then insisting that he should sit with her a while before returning home.
    ‘Mary, I can’t! I’ve got to get back with Ralph’s bread.’
    ‘You don’t care for me at all,’ she pouted. ‘Won’t even spare me a few moments before rushing off to your precious master.’
    ‘I have to,’ he protested, seeing her sullen expression. ‘But when I am free and can call myself a craftsman in my own right . . .’
    ‘By then I may have found another,’ she said tersely and flicked her hair from her eyes with a practised jerk of her head. It had taken him an age to soothe her with promises of his infatuation and ever-lasting devotion and now he was late. Very late.
    When he arrived at Ralph the Glover’s front door, Elias was surprised to find it locked against him. His master rarely locked his door. He always said, ‘If someone is so desperate that they would steal my rubbish, good luck to them – they’re welcome to it!’ All knew Ralph had few enough possessions, and the poor would be given money for food by asking, so the glover had not been burgled in all the time Elias had lived with him. That was why he frowned to find the door of the house locked. His own keys, he recalled with a sinking heart, were still by his bed. He had thrown them there after hurrying to answer the door to Peter, earlier. Walking to the shop-front, he tried the handle but that too was secured and he stood there a while, baffled.
    ‘Master?’ he called. There was no answer.
    Ralph, he knew, was set in his ways. The glover’s day was normally as predictable as the passage of the sun through the Heavens. He would rise before dawn, drink a little watered wine, wash his face, and as the bell tolled