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a bloody graze on the hound’s flank, though it did not appear to be serious.
    ‘The bastard kicked you, did he?’ he asked, fondling the dog’s ears. ‘I’ll make him pay for that when I find him!’
    Brutus whined again, with a different note this time, and pointed his lean muzzle towards the door. John took the hint and, pulling his dagger from his sheath on his belt, held up the lantern with the other hand and advanced cautiously into the building. His feeble light failed to reveal all of the large room, where the canons and their vicars met each day, but as he moved towards the centre of the flagstoned floor Brutus whined again and moved ahead of him towards the far corner, where steep wooden stairs led up to the library.
    As he approached, he saw that a crumpled shape lay at their foot, a man dressed in a black cloak over a plain clerical cassock. His legs were spread-eagled and his trunk was half-turned as if he was asleep. As John knelt by the inert body, he saw that the head had been shaved into a tonsure, but by the stout staff lying alongside the man it was clear that this was one of the proctor’s men, a night guard who had been patrolling the precinct. On his bald patch, a deep gash ran from side to side, dark blood still welling slowly from the wound.
    The coroner feared that the man was already dead, but when he gently turned him on to his back he heard shallow breathing, though he was deeply unconscious.
    ‘He probably fell down the stairs,’ he muttered to his hound, but Brutus made no comment. ‘So who was that bloody fellow who kicked you and ran, eh?’
    There was nothing de Wolfe could do other than go for help. Using the lantern, he loped off as fast as he could to find someone.
    Unfortunately, this was the quietest time in the cathedral, being the hours between afternoon Vespers and the midnight Matins, when most priests and their acolytes were either eating, drinking or sleeping.
    John went into the nave of the cathedral through the small door in the West Front, but he could see no one up in the dimly lit presbytery beyond the choir screen. He hurried out again and decided to go to the proctor’s hut in the Close, between two of the small churches that stood in the cluttered precinct. Here he found another proctor’s man, huddled over a small fire, and within minutes they had both returned to the Chapter House, the proctor ringing a brass handbell vigorously to summon help.
    Within minutes, two vicars-choral and a pair of secondaries, who were young men aspiring to be priests, appeared from somewhere in the recesses of the buildings and began fussing over the injured guard.
    ‘Better take him to the archdeacon’s house,’ suggested the coroner, who knew that his friend John de Alençon, one of the four archdeacons, was a calm, sensible man who would procure the best aid for the stricken man. Using one of the benches, the four younger men carried the wounded man away, the other proctor lighting their path with a pair of lanterns.
    ‘I’ll come after you very shortly,’ promised John. ‘I need to look around here first.’ Left alone, de Wolfe told Brutus to lie down while he cautiously climbed the stairs, the lantern and dagger still in his hands. There was no sound from the scriptorium above, but he wanted to make sure that no second intruder was lurking there. He made a slow circuit of the upper chamber, holding the small lantern high in the air, but he soon satisfied himself that the place was empty. He noticed that a number of books had been pulled from the shelves on to the reading boards and that some wooden boxes had been dragged into the outer aisle, their lids open and the contents in disorder.
    Near the top of the stairs he saw a larger lantern lying on its side, the candle extinguished. Picking it up, he opened the small door that formed one of the sides of thinly shaved horn that allowed the light to escape. John sniffed at it and smelled the pungent odour of recently