Benedicta stared down, gently touching the crumbling altar step with the tips of her fingers.

'Tonight,' she murmured, 'I will do that, Father. Stare up at the sky, see what it is like to die without dying.'

She rose quickly, genuflected before the winking sanctuary lamp and walked quietly out of the church.

Athelstan saw the door close behind her and turned to where Bonaventure awaited his reward. The friar went into the sacristy and brought out the expected bowl of milk. He sat and watched the cat greedily lick the lacy white froth with its pink, narrow-edged tongue.

'Do you know, Bonaventure,' he muttered, 'every time she goes, I want to call her back. She comes here to pray for her husband's soul, another casualty of the king's war, but sometimes I deceive myself and believe she comes to talk to me.'

The cat raised its battered head, yawned and went back to the milk.

'The Master was right,' Athelstan continued. The friar suddenly remembered his old novice master, Father Bernard, who had been responsible for Athelstan's spiritual education in the novitiate at Blackfriars.

'A priest's life, Athelstan,' Father Bernard once began, 'has three great terrors. The first are the lusts of the flesh! These will plague your dreams with visions of soft bodies, satin-silk limbs, full sensuous lips and hair which gleams like burnished gold. Yet these will pass. Prayer, fasting and the onset of old age will drive this enemy from the field of battle.' The old novice master had leaned forward and grasped Athelstan by the wrist. 'Then comes the second terror, the sheer soul-destroying loneliness of a priest: no wife, no children, never the clasp of small warm bodies and clinging arms round your neck.