He followed Ursula through the narrow, winding streets of Southwark to the pig woman’s house, a small, two-storied tenement just behind the priory of St Mary Overy. As usual, the great sow, Ursula’s pet and the light of her life, lay basking in front of the fire whilst, behind a curtain in the far corner, Griselda lay on a pallet of straw, head back, her beak-like nose cutting the air, her eyes half-open. Athelstan would have taken her for dead already had it not been for the gentle rise and fall of her skinny chest. As Athelstan crouched beside her, placing the Viaticum and holy oils on a three-legged stool, Ursula stood behind him, still holding the candle. Of course, the sow had to see what was happening and, once she recognized Athelstan, whose cabbage patch she regularly plundered, began to snort and snuffle excitedly.

‘Oh, for God’s sake, go away!’ he breathed. ‘Ursula, for the love of God, give her a cabbage or something!’

‘She doesn’t eat cabbages,’ Ursula curtly replied as she grabbed the sow by the ear and pulled her away.

‘Aye,’ Athelstan whispered to himself. ‘The bloody thing only likes fresh ones!’

‘Is that you, Father?’

Athelstan bent over the old lady, her cheeks hollow, thick bloodless lips parted. But the small button eyes were still bright with life.

‘Yes, Mother Griselda, it’s Athelstan.’

‘You are a good priest,’ the old woman wheezed, ‘to come and see old Griselda. Do you want to hear my confession, Father?’

Athelstan grinned. ‘Why, what have you been up to, Mother, since I heard it last? How many young men this time?’

The old woman’s lips parted in a gumless smile.

‘What lechery and wantonness?’ Athelstan continued, peering down at the old lady. ‘Come, Griselda, you have long made your peace with God.’

Athelstan opened the golden pyx, took out the white host and placed it between the dying woman’s lips. Then he began to anoint her head and eyes, mouth, chest, hands and feet, whilst the old woman’s mouth chewed the thin wafer host. At last he finished. Ursula went to move across to tend the small fire whilst Griselda took Athelstan’s hand.

‘Will I go to Heaven, Father?’

‘Of course.’

‘Will my husband be there?’

‘Why not?’

‘He loved women, Father! In his youth he was as handsome as the sun. He had hair the colour of corn and eyes blue as the sky. But he wasn’t a bad man, Father, and I loved him.’ She coughed, yellow spittle drooling out of the corner of her mouth. Athelstan picked up a rag and dabbed gently at her lips.

‘God will not reject,’ he said slowly, ‘anyone who has loved or been loved.’

The old woman coughed again. Athelstan looked over his shoulder.

‘Ursula, a cup of water.’

But then he felt the grip on his hand loosen. He looked down. Griselda’s head had rolled slightly to the left. He felt for the beat in her neck but there was nothing. He looked up at Ursula, holding the battered cup, tears streaming down her fat cheeks.

‘She’s left us,’ Athelstan murmured. ‘She’s gone now. Gone ahead of us.’

He stayed for a while to comfort Ursula. Despite his protests, she insisted on giving him a huge flitch of bacon then, with his cope and stole under one arm, the flitch of bacon under another, Athelstan walked back to his church.

Southwark was now coming to life. The petty traders and tinkers trundled their hand carts down towards the bridge whilst sweating, cursing carters tried to get produce from the country across the river before the great markets opened. Two lepers covered in black rags begged for alms outside the hospital of St Thomas whilst the local beadles and bailiffs led the night roisterers they had caught, bound hand and foot, down to the stocks. Two drunks who had pissed out of an upper-floor window had already been tied back-to-back, their breeches about their ankles They would be forced to walk the streets and be pelted with rubbish until noonday when a friend could cut them loose. The officials had apparently also raided a brothel and a cart load of whores, their heads completely shaven, sat morosely manacled together as they were taken down to the river to be punished. A yellow, lean-ribbed dog snarled at Athelstan, jumping, lips curled to bite the bacon. Athelstan shooed it off, went up an alleyway and knocked on the door of Tab the tinker’s house.

His wife, grey-haired and worried-looking, answered. Athelstan thrust the flitch of bacon into her hands.

‘Father,’ she murmured, ‘I can’t.’

‘Yes, you can.’ He pointed to the grubby-faced children clinging to her tattered dress. ‘And they certainly will. But you mustn’t tell Ursula.’

He continued his journey and was about to pass the door of his church when he saw the piece of parchment fluttering there. Athelstan read the scrawled words:

The Anger of God will shout out like lightning from the clouds.

He cursed, pulled the parchment down, threw it into the mud and, ignoring Pike’s salutations, angrily strode back to his house.

Athelstan sat in the nave of his church, a group of young adults and children round him; this being a working day, their parents had attended morning Mass and left for their day’s routine. Athelstan’s school, as Cranston jokingly referred to it, met two hours before noon twice a week so the friar could try to educate the young in reading, writing, and the basics of arithmetic and geometry. Naturally, they were also instructed in their faith and Athelstan had been surprised at how quick and eager some of his students proved to be.

He looked round the group, his heart lurching with compassion as he gazed at their grimy, thin faces, makeshift clothes and tattered sandals. They sat in a circle, Bonaventure included, as Athelstan tried to explain how God was everywhere.

Now and again he stole glances at Pike’s son Thomas who couldn’t sit any closer to Watkin’s beautiful daughter Petronella. Athelstan gazed at the girl’s jet-black hair, smooth, white skin and sea-green eyes. How could Watkin and his portly wife have produced such a beautiful girl? Thomas was so deeply smitten by her, he hardly bothered even to glance in Athelstan’s direction.

‘Go on, Father!’ Crim, the altar boy, shouted

‘Of course.’ Athelstan rubbed his eyes. He was beginning to feel tired after his previous day’s labour.

‘Of course God is everywhere, he sees everything, hears everything.’

‘Is he in my hand?’ Crim asked.

‘Of course.’

Crim clapped his hands together. ‘In which case he’s trapped. I’ve got him!’

‘No, no,’ Athelstan laughingly explained. ‘It’s not like that, Crim.’

‘But you said he was everywhere?’

‘Crim.’ Athelstan leaned back on his ankles, wincing as his knee cracked. ‘God is like the air we breathe. He’s in us, part of us, yet at the same time outside of us. Like the air which you suck into your mouth and yet, at the same time, it is in your hand.’

Mugwort the bell ringer bounded into the church and Athelstan winced as the little goblin of a man disappeared into the small enclosure and began to tug like a demon at the bell, the sign for the mid-day Angelus. Athelstan said the prayer, got to his feet and dusted down his robe.

‘You can play now. Crim, don’t drink from the holy water stoup. John and James,’ he glanced in mock severity at Tab the tinker’s two sons, as like as two peas out of a pod with their grimy faces and greasy, spiked hair, ‘the baptismal font is not a castle. You can play on the steps but not inside the church. Petronella and Thomas, stay for a while.’

The rest of the children grinned behind their hands and there was a chorus of ‘oohing’ and ‘ahhing’ as Athelstan ushered them out of the church. The two lovebirds were well known in the parish; to everyone, that is, except their parents.

‘Father?’

‘Yes, what is it?’ Athelstan looked at the pinched white little face peering out of the tarry, pointed hood.