Followed by ten years at Our Lady of the Tears. Uncouth, fanatical, uneducated and stubborn as a mule. Without the slightest sense of what was possible, the sort who believed omnia sunt possibilia creienti, who couldn't distinguish between their own point of view and the reality surrounding them. Quart ought to go and hear one of his Sunday sermons, the prelate said. Quite a show. Father Ferro dealt in the torments of hell with the ease of a Counter-Reformation preacher; he kept his parishioners on the edge of their seats with the old tale of eternal damnation that nobody dared use any more. A sigh of relief swept through the pews when he finished his sermon.

"And yet, in complete contradiction," said the archbishop, "in other respects his views are highly modern. Inappropriately so, I would say."

"Such as?"

"His stance on contraception, for one thing. He's unashamedly in favour. Or his views on homosexuality, divorce and adultery. A couple of weeks ago he baptised a child whose parents weren't married. A priest from another parish, who had refused to do the baptism, came to demand an explanation. Father Ferro told him that he baptised whomever he wished."

His Grace's pipe had gone out. He struck a match and glanced at Quart over the flame. "To sum up," he said, "Mass at Our Lady of the Tears is like travelling in a time machine that jumps backwards and forwards."

"I can imagine," Quart said, suppressing a smile.

"No. I assure you, you can't. You have to see him in action. He performs part of the Mass in Latin, because he says it inspires more respect." Corvo managed to relight his pipe and sat back in his chair, relaxed. "Father Ferro belongs to an almost extinct species: the old-style country priest without training or vocation, ordained simply to escape a life of poverty, who turned even wilder in a godforsaken rural parish. He also has tremendous pride, which makes him quite intractable… In the past we would have excommunicated him immediately, or sent him to America, to see if God the Father could get him to return to the fold thanks to a fever in the Gulf of Darien, and then convert the natives by beating them on the back with a crucifix. But nowadays we have to be very careful. All the journalists and the political manoeuvring complicate things.''