His mouth twisted into a crooked kind of leer, but I was no longer frightened by that. I knew it was his way of smiling.

“Then it’s a good gift for your saint’s day,” he told me. “Take it; it’s no use to Ella or me and I’ve nothing else to give. I’ll not forget your kindness that day you brought me here. You’ve more courage than any man in the village, though you’re little more than a bairn yourself. I often think on how you gripped my arm and lifted your hand to cover me when they…” He faltered, his arm half raised against his face as if he could still feel the sting of the filth and muck they threw. “If it weren’t for you and Servant Martha, God bless her, I…” He scrambled up as fast as he could, holding Ella fiercely against him. “Take it for a blessing,” he said brusquely and limped away before I could put it back in his hand.

i WENT ALONE TO ANDREW’S CELL. I heard her confession, and absolved her of sins which were so far beyond my understanding that I was afraid to hear them. Sins of the desolation of a soul sunk to the depths of humility, a soul that saw its own corruption with such burning clarity that it could accuse itself no more and yet accused itself for that very fault. How could I listen to that? There was no penance I could lay upon her that her own spirit had not already taken upon itself.

Trembling, I placed the Host in her mouth and her spirit shot upwards like a lark. She babbled such sounds of joy that I shivered to hear them. Despite her bloated features there was an expression of ecstasy in her eyes. I crept from the room and summoned Healing Martha to sit with her, for I could not.

Healing Martha glanced at my face and then at the cloak pulled tight around me to conceal what I carried. I dared tell no one what I did. I wanted to share the weight of it with Healing Martha, to seek her reassurance that I was doing the right thing, but I couldn’t. If there was sin in that deed, I had to take it upon myself alone. I’d had a choice. It had been my decision, so I couldn’t then force the knowledge of it upon Healing Martha. For this much I knew for certain-even if what I did was not a sin before God, there was danger in the act, grave danger for me and for anyone who knew what I did.

i WATCHED THE LONG THIN FINGER run down the column of fingers in the tithe ledger and the frown deepen. I couldn’t bear to watch, but leaving him alone was worse. At least if I stayed in the church, I might be able to divert him.

“Would you care for some wine, Commissarius?”

He didn’t look up. “From what I read in these entries, I am surprised you have any wine to spare, Father Ulfrid.”

He pulled his fur-trimmed robe more closely about him. Although the rain had chilled the evening air, it was hardly cold enough to warrant such a heavy robe, but he had the pinched look of a man who was permanently cold, whatever the weather. Several times he tilted the ledger towards the candle on the table, to illuminate an entry, before dipping his quill and making notes on his own parchment. In the hollow empty church, the harsh scratching of his quill seemed to reverberate off the stones, until it was all I could hear.

I’d encountered the Bishop’s Commissarius only once before, the day Bishop Salmon interrogated me about Hilary, an interview I still relive in my nightmares. The Commissarius had been poised on a stool placed just behind the Bishop. Occasionally he had leaned forward from the shadows to murmur something in Bishop Salmon’s ear, but he’d never once addressed me, and those whispers had been far more unnerving than the Bishop’s torrent of angry words.

With his face half obscured in the shadow of the Bishop’s high-backed chair I’d assumed the Commissarius was a man of mature years, but now that he was sitting in my vestry, I could see he was only in his late twenties, though his skin had the waxy unnatural pallor of a prisoner kept for years in a dungeon. He had a long narrow face, as if his mother had squeezed her legs together to try to prevent him coming into the world. His cheekbones were sharp and his eyes sunk deep into dark sleepless hollows, and little wonder for he had such a tension of ambition in his frame that it would rob any man of his sleep.

“I’m… surprised that you were sent to look over the tithe ledgers, Commissarius. I thought perhaps the Bishop’s Reeve-”

“You thought? Or you hoped?” he said, running his finger down another column. “Then my visit must be a great disappointment to you.”

“No, no, it’s a great honour, of course… but I hadn’t realised you concerned yourself with such matters.”

Still he did not raise his eyes from the ledger. “I am concerned with whatever is troubling His Excellency, the Bishop. And he, Father Ulfrid, is troubled about you.” He snapped the ledger shut on this last word and finally lifted his head to look at me. “Your parishioners would appear to be somewhat reluctant to pay their tithes.”

“But they cannot give what they didn’t harvest, Commissarius. You must have seen the fields as you rode here. The grain harvest was ruined and the hay crop was hardly better. Surely it must be the same in all the parishes in these parts?”

“Quite so, Father Ulfrid; as you say, all the parishes in the See are affected.” He smiled, but the smile did not reach his eyes.

“Then you understand the difficulties,” I said, much relieved.

“I understand very well, Father Ulfrid. I understand that all the other priests-priests who are diligent in the service of the Church-have collected their tithes as usual and on time, despite the… difficulties.”

I gaped at him. How could they? It was almost on the tip of my tongue to say I didn’t believe him, but I stopped myself in time. “But, Commissarius, how can they bring a tenth of their crops when they have no crops?”

What did he expect me to do, rip the rags from the backs of beggars? God knows I didn’t want to be here, but if a man is suddenly thrown into chains, he cannot help but feel some compassion towards the other wretches suffering in the same dungeon.

He studied me carefully, pressing the tips of his long fingers together. “Father Ulfrid, perhaps you have forgotten that the Church accepts wool and crops as the tithe only from its compassion for the poor. What the Church wants, Father, what indeed it demands first and foremost, is money. If the people cannot pay their tithes in grain and beasts, then they must pay in coins. Were you to familiarise yourself with the tithe records of your predecessors, Father, you would find there ample reminders that tithes are collected on time and in full regardless of whether the harvest is good or poor.”

“But with due respect, Com-”

He held up a hand to silence me. “Ah, yes, respect, that is at the heart of this matter-the people’s respect for the Church. I think you’ll find, Father Ulfrid, that excommunicating a few of the more obdurate members of your congregation will serve as a salutary lesson to the rest of the parish. After all, what is a mere tenth of their earnings in this life, compared to an eternity spent in the fires of Hell for them and their children?”

“But if the crops have failed where are they to find-”

“It is because they deny God what is rightfully His that He has punished them with poor harvests. If they had tithed honestly and generously in the past, they would not now be suffering. At such times you should advise them to redouble their efforts to pay in order that His wrath may be turned aside.”

He rose abruptly and tucked the ledger under his arm. “Come, show me the tithe barn. With so little gathered in, at least there will have been no occasion for error in the counting of it.”