Sanctuary

It had been stupid of me to visit the Library at this time of night, with no company but John. Archdeacon Claudius would have said it was stupid of me to visit at any time, no matter who I was with. Well, no, he wouldn’t, not exactly. He would have said it was unwise, with all due respect, and a bow and a pious expression. Sin would have been mentioned at some point. That was exactly why I hadn’t told him where I was going.

  In theory, the Brethren were allowed free access to the Library, as a gesture of goodwill between the University and the Cathedral. In practice, most of us avoided the place like the plague. The previous Blessed had denounced it as a den of vice, which had always sounded like a good reason for going when I was a novice, until I found out that the vices he had in mind included things like studying scientific texts and the Library’s refusal to stop shelving our holy books alongside the heathen scribblings of other religions. So I’d never been.

  Then, two years ago, the Blessed died, and I suddenly fell ill. For a fortnight I lay in my cell, slipping from feverish to delirious to unconscious, until suddenly there was a sweet, cloying smell and the pain stopped. And something bright and shining appeared in front of me and spoke.

  It’s no secret, what the figure said. They put it in all the new texts as soon as I was confirmed. Ben the merchant’s son, now the Blessed Benedict.

  And then I started thinking. I saw the doctors and teachers and architects from the University working with the poor, and I began to wonder, how much use are our prayers, really? And how can learning how to heal and teach be a sin? And I realised that our new texts were out very soon after my confirmation, even though they all had to be written and illuminated by hand. And, being the Blessed, I have to visit the sinful to tell them the errors of their ways, and on a few of my progresses around the seedier parts of town, I recognised that sweet, cloying smell coming out of some of the smokehouses.

  There was something very wrong going on, but I didn’t know what. I could only think of one place where I might find out the truth.

  So I’d called John and my private carriage, and I’d smiled my way past the surprised Night Librarian, and I’d climbed up here to the Scripture floor. I’d been taking down a book by a heretic that the last Blessed had had burned about four years ago when the shelf had tipped.

  And, lying here in the dark, with blood on my face, a crushing pain in my leg, and my minder dead by my side, I was starting to wonder whether it was really an accident.