He paused, as though the horror of it were almost too much. “But they were too late to save Saint Eusebius. All that remained of him was his left big toe.”

I felt rather proud that I did not even smile. “And so they preserved the relic at the hermitage where he had lived,” I said, “and subsequent generations of hermits have succeeded Eusebius there ever since. Is that it? But what do you have to investigate now?”

“Saint Eusebius was always a rather, well, difficult-if holy-man, even while he was alive. Now, fifteen hundred years after his death, some say he’s a difficult saint.”

“What do you mean, difficult?”

“Well,” said Joachim after an almost imperceptible pause, “here’s an example. A lady, a very lovely and vain one, went to his shrine to pray for help in overcoming her faults. The saint began with her vanity, by putting a giant wart on her nose.”

I could see the problem. What was the church supposed to do when the forces of good turned out to be a real pain?

Joachim hurried on without waiting for a response. “His, uh, difficult nature is why the bishop sent me here. Certain priests, in a church two hundred miles from here, have written to the bishop. They say that Eusebius appeared to them in a vision, saying that he was ‘fed up’ with having his relics at this shrine, and that he wanted his toe to be preserved at their church.”

Although a saint who induced giant warts had seemed to have promising possibilities, the situation now sounded like the confusing and dangerous churchly concerns they used to warn us against at the wizards’ school. “If he’s been dead so long, why does it matter where his toe is?” I asked irritably.