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night, the way its
colours changed, the way it seemed to tremble or crouch like a toad…
    Ripples in my spine.
    ‘Oft-times you don’t choose the stone,’ Jack said. ‘The stone chooses you. He said the right one might come along when you ain’t looking for it.’
    ‘And does he have one he might sell?’
    ‘Reckons he’s offered crystal stones wherever he goes, but most of ’em’s flawed and there’s – aw, Jesu, I could see this coming a mile off – apart from
his own, there’s only one other he’s coveted in years. Odd that, ain’t it?’
    ‘Go on…’
    ‘The kind you don’t find anywhere in Europe. Maybe a treasure from some ancient people of the west. A history of miracles and healing. But the man who has it, he’ll want a fair
bit more gold than Brother Elias could put his hands on. And Brother Elias, if I don’t insult you here, Dr John, is a richer man than you.’
    ‘Jack,’ I said sadly, ‘
you
are a richer man than me. Where did he see it?’
    ‘Abbey of Wigmore. Not a long ride from Wenlock, out on the rim of Wales. That’s where he
said
he seen it.’
    I did know of this abbey. It was close, in fact, to where my father was born. Dissolved now, of course.
    ‘Was it your impression that Elias might be an agent for whoever has the stone?’
    ‘Could be. Told him I was inquiring for a regular customer. But I reckon he knows.’
    ‘He was certainly asking questions about the extent of my wealth,’ I said. ‘Maybe he thinks I keep it abroad.’
    ‘Whatever, it don’t give me a good feeling. He ain’t a rooker in the normal sense, but it’s all too much like… coincidence and fate.’
    I knew what he was saying, but I was in a profession which dismissed neither fate nor coincidence, only sought the science behind them.
    ‘Who owns the stone?’
    ‘He was being close on that, but I had the impression it was the last abbot. Gone now, obviously, and the abbey passed through the Crown and into private hands long ago.’
    ‘Easy enough to find out whose. But the abbott – is he even in the vicinity any more?’
    ‘
Blind me
, you don’t bleedin’ listen do you, Dr John? You could sell your house and put your mother on the streets and you still couldn’t afford it. I don’t
understand none of this. I don’t see why the scrying stone – any scrying stone – is suddenly become so important for you. They’ve been around forever. Why now?’
    Above the coffin gate, a single planet – the great Jupiter, inevitably – had found a hole in the nightcloud, as if to remind me of my insignificance and the pointlessness of
concealment. I could sit on the truth of this matter, keep it to myself, take it to my grave…
    ‘Because—
Oh God,
because the study of its properties, notably in the matter of communion with angels, was… suggested to me.’
    ‘By whom?’
    ‘Is it not obvious?’
    Jupiter seemed to pulse as if sending signals to me and was transformed into the sun in the pure glass of a tall window in a book-lined chamber at the Palace of Greenwich, where a light, merry
voice was asking me had I thought of
this
, and had I looked into
that
?
    ‘Bugger,’ Jack said. ‘That’s
all
you need.’
    I hear the French king consults one owned by the seer, Nostradamus, which is of immense benefit in planning campaigns. And winning the support of the angels. Do you have a shewstone of your
own, John? Will it give us communion with the angels?
    Well… obviously, I do, Highness, and intend to spend some time assessing its capabilities, but…
    Perhaps worth more attention, John, don’t you think?
    ‘Jesu, Dr John,’ Jack Simm said. ‘You really know how to put yourself between heaven and hell and a pile of shite.’
    ‘We all walk a cliff-edge,’ I said.
    ‘She’ll forget, though, won’t she? She got too much to worry about.’
    I blinked Jupiter away. Of course the Queen would not forget. Unless by design, she forgot nothing.
    ‘Yea, well…’ Jack Simm tossed the