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“Judith . . .”

“If I change my mind, I’ll go to the Mannings’,” she snapped. “I’ll say I’m lonely. They’ll understand. I promise! Just don’t push me. I’ll do what I want.”

“There’s a novelty!” Matthew said with a sudden, bleary smile, as if he needed to break the taut thread of tension.

She looked at him sharply, then her face softened and her eyes filled with tears.

“I’ll find them,” he promised, his voice choking. “Not only because they killed Mother and Father, but to stop them doing whatever it was in the document—if we can.”

“I’m glad you said we.” She answered his smile now. “Tell me what I can do.”

“When there is anything, I will,” he said. “I promise. But call me if there’s anything at all! Or Joseph—just to talk if you want. You must do that!”

“Stop telling me what to do!” But there was relief in her voice. A shred of safety had returned, something familiar, even if it was a restriction to fight against. “But of course I will.” She reached out to touch him. “Thank you.”

CHAPTER

THREE

Joseph found his first day back at St. John’s even more difficult than he had anticipated. The ancient beauty of the buildings, mellow brick with castellated front and stone-trimmed windows, soothed his mind. Its calm was indestructible, its dignity timeless. His rooms closed around him like well-fitting armor. He looked with pleasure at the light reflected unevenly on the old glass of the bookcases, knowing intimately every volume within, the thoughts and dreams of great men down the ages. On the wall between the windows overlooking the quadrangle were paintings of Florence and Verona. He remembered choosing them to keep in his heart those streets worn smooth by the footsteps of his heroes. And of course there was the bust of Dante on the shelf, that genius of poetry, imagination, the art of the story, and above all the understanding of the nature of good and evil.

He had been away for long enough for an amount of work to have collected, and the concentration needed to catch up was also a kind of healing. The languages of the Bible were subtle and different from modern speech. Their very nature necessitated that they refer to everyday things common to all mankind: seed time and harvest, the water of physical and spiritual life. The rhythms had time to repeat themselves and let the meaning sink deep into the mind; the flavor and the music of it removed him from the present, and so from his own reality.

It was friends who brought him the sharp reminder of loss. He saw the sympathy in their eyes, the uncertainty whether to speak of it or not, what to say that was not clumsy. Every student seemed to know at least of the deaths, if not the details.

The master, Aidan Thyer, had been very considerate, asking Joseph if he was sure he was ready to come back so soon. He was valued, of course, and irreplaceable, but nevertheless he must take more time if he needed it.

Joseph answered him that he did not. Everything had been done that was required, and his responsibilities to work were a blessing, not a burden. He thanked him and promised to take his first tutorial the following morning.

It was difficult picking up the threads after an absence of almost two weeks, and it required all his effort of mind to make an acceptable job of it. He was exhausted by the end of the day, and happy after dinner to leave the dining hall, the stained-glass windows scattered with the coats of arms of benefactors dating back to the early 1500s, the magnificent timbered ceiling with its carved hammer beams touched with gold, the oak-paneled walls carved in linen-fold, and above all its chattering, well-meaning people. He longed to escape toward the river.

He started across the narrow arch of the Bridge of Sighs with its stone fretwork like frozen lace, a windowed passageway to the fields beyond. He would walk across the smooth grass of the Backs, stretching all the way from Magdalene Bridge past St. John’s, Trinity, Gonville and Caius, Clare, and King’s College Chapel toward Queen’s and the