The Tarnished Chalice

‘I have some bad news,’ said de Wetherset. ‘I spent a good deal of time with all twenty-two of the cups you retrieved, but none is the genuine item. They are all fakes.’

‘How do you know?’ demanded Suttone. ‘What tests did you perform?’

‘I can tell by their feel,’ replied de Wetherset loftily. ‘I cannot explain it any better than that. I just sense, with all my heart, that none of these goblets is the Hugh Chalice.’

‘Then you are wrong,’ said the dean. He held up a tarnished vessel, although Bartholomew had no idea whether it was one he had seen before. ‘I also subjected the cups to rigorous examination, and I sense – with all my heart – that this is the real one.’

‘How?’ asked de Wetherset, startled. ‘Because it is the only one I do not desire to own myself,’ explained the dean. ‘I am content to see it stand on the High Altar, whereas while I feel obliged to take the others to the crypt.’

De Wetherset weighed it in one hand, then the other. ‘I suppose it may have a certain something,’ he conceded eventually. ‘Although, as an instrument of St Hugh myself, I expected the sensation to be a good deal stronger.’

‘Perhaps the saint has abandoned you,’ said Suttone unkindly. ‘He does not want you to stand as University Chancellor against a Suttone, and this is a sign of his displeasure.’

‘It is tin,’ said Bartholomew, watching Michael take the cup from the spluttering de Wetherset. ‘I thought the real one was supposed to be silver.’

‘Details, Matt, details,’ said Michael. ‘If the dean says it is holy, then that is good enough for me.’ He passed it to Suttone.

‘It is holy,’ declared Suttone, although he was no more qualified to make such a proclamation than Michael. ‘This is the real one, without the shadow of a doubt!’

‘Oh, yes,’ agreed Choirmaster Bautre, eager to please the Michaelhouse scholars because they had exposed Claypole’s role in the murders, thus ridding Bautre himself of the man who was plotting to overthrow him. ‘I can see the holiness radiating from it.’

‘So can I,’ said John sombrely. ‘Our dean speaks the truth.’

‘Good,’ said Gynewell, pleased. ‘But none of you has answered my question: what shall we do with it? I have no idea who owns legal title. Does it belong to the Old Temple in London? The Geddynge priest who bought it from Shirlok? Are we actually entitled to display it in the cathedral?’

‘I think so,’ said the dean. ‘And if anyone else lays claim to it, then I swear, by all I hold holy, that I will bring it back again by any means possible. It belongs here. I feel it.’

‘It can be a part of the procession, then,’ said Bautre. ‘One of my lads can carry it, holding it aloft all the way through the ceremony. It will be an arduous task, so I shall allot it to Hugh – the first of many such duties he will have to endure as penance for listening to bad advice from Dame Eleanor.’

‘Putting a holy thing in the hands of such a person might see him struck down,’ said Suttone uneasily. ‘I would not like my day marred by an effusion of blood.’

‘I would not mind,’ said Michael venomously. ‘It would be divine justice, and I do not see why he should escape unscathed while his co-conspirators lie dead. It was clever of Dame Eleanor to leave that document claiming full responsibility, and maintaining Hugh was not present at any murder, but it was unwise. She wanted to leave Lincoln a better place, but she has unleashed a devil in it.’

‘Let John carry the Hugh Chalice,’ suggested Suttone, after a moment during which everyone looked sombre. ‘He is an upright fellow, and I intend to make him my Vicar Choral.’

‘You are too late,’ said Michael smugly, while John looked suitably modest. ‘I have invited him to be my deputy, and he has accepted. You must find another.’

‘You cannot have Bautre, either,’ gloated de Wetherset. ‘He is mine.’

The dean smiled suddenly. ‘This business may have been unpleasant, but it has rid me of some very turbulent priests.

Tetford, Aylmer and Ravenser are dead, Claypole is in prison. We shall have a staff worthy of this fine cathedral yet.’

Suttone pouted sulkily. ‘You two were securing yourselves Vicars Choral when you should have been praying, like me. Dame Eleanor was right: this is a corrupt place.’

‘Not as corrupt at Cambridge,’ said the dean indignantly. ‘And it was there that this business began. De Wetherset was telling me about it yesterday.’

De Wetherset shrugged when everyone looked at him. ‘You all know that Miller, Lora and Langar died in that riot the other night, and that Master Quarrel of the Swan has been elected head of a new Commonalty, which includes guildsmen. Well, now their black shadows have gone, I am free to reveal what I recall of the incident twenty years ago.’

‘You mean about the carts in the bailey?’ asked Bartholomew. ‘And the box that you-’