Murder most holy

parishioners’ confessions was something he would gladly have avoided for he knew the inevitable outcome. After it was all finished, Watkin’s wife would come and interrogate him on what her husband had confessed and, of course, Athelstan would have to reassure her without lying or betraying confidences. Benedicta, who must have sensed his apprehension, quickly intervened with the idea of a flower festival on the Wednesday before Corpus Christi , and they were in the middle of a more peaceful discussion when the door was flung open and one of the workmen rushed in.
    ‘Father! Father! Come quickly!’ The man’s eyes were rounded and fearful. Beads of sweat coursed down his dust-covered face.
    ‘What’s the matter?’ Watkin declared. ‘I am sexton and leader of the council. .
    ‘Shut up, Fatty!’ the workman shouted. ‘Father, it’s you we want. You must come!’ He waved his hands in agitation. ‘Please come. We have removed the flagstone...’ The fellow gulped and stared round. ‘We removed the flagstone under the altar and found a body!’
    Athelstan went cold, banging on the table to quiet the uproar. ‘A body?’ he exclaimed. ‘And under our altar?’
    ‘Well, Father, to be honest, a skeleton, perfectly formed, lying there. Just lying there! It has a small, wooden crucifix in its hand.’
    Led by their priest, the parish council strode out of the house and into the church, all animosity forgotten. Just inside the entrance, Athelstan stopped and the whole group jostled and shoved each other.
    ‘Oh, no!’ he groaned.
    ‘Don’t worry, Father,’ Watkin announced cheerfully. ‘It’ll all be put to rights in a week.’
    Athelstan stared at the chaos. The rood screen had been taken down and the sanctuary now looked more like a builder’s yard. The old flagstones were piled in untidy heaps and, as they strode up the nave, Athelstan could glimpse the huge hole over which the altar had once stood. The rest of the workmen now stood round this, staring down into the darkness. The workman who had come for him, apparently the foreman, pompously waved Watkin and the rest back.
    ‘You see, Father,’ he said, looking round at his colleagues for agreement, ‘the altar was set on a flagstone that in turn rested on a slab over a bed of gravel and some soil. Now,’ the man cleared his throat and wiped his dusty mouth on the back of his hand, ‘as you directed, we’re trying to lower the sanctuary floor, so we removed some of the soil. Well, beneath the altar, the soil just caved in and this is what we found.'
    With the rest of his parishioners milling around him, Athelstan stood on the edge of the pit whilst one of the workmen stepped gingerly down to remove a roll of canvas sheeting. Athelstan gasped in amazement. A skeleton lay there in gentle repose, a small crucifix, the wood now rotten and soft-looking, clasped in its bony fingers. The wrists were crossed, the legs lying together.
    ‘It’s a martyr!’ Watkin declared suddenly as if announcing a great triumph. ‘Father, look, it’s a martyr! St Erconwald’s has its own saint, its own precious relic!’
    Athelstan closed his eyes and muttered a prayer. The last thing he wanted was a relic. He did not believe that God’s will depended on bits of bone or shreds of flesh.
    ‘How do you know it’s a martyr?’ he asked weakly. ‘Someone could just have dumped the remains there.’
    His parishioners looked angrily at him, fiercely determined not to be cheated out of their own saint and martyr.
    ‘Of course it’s a martyr.’ Pike spoke up, now in full agreement with Watkin. ‘Look, Father, you’ve seen many a corpse, they’re just dumped in a hole and left. This one has been specially laid here with its head towards the east.’
    ‘And the cross!’ Ursula screeched triumphantly. ‘Don’t forget the cross!’
    ‘They are right, Father,’ Benedicta declared quietly. ‘Whoever this skeleton belongs to, whoever he or she was in life, that person was buried here as a mark of respect with a cross as a sign of reverence.’
    Athelstan looked helplessly around.
    ‘Concedo,’ he muttered in Latin. ‘I concede there’s a possibility, but who is it and why here?’
    ‘He’s a martyr,’ Mugwort declared. ‘You know, Father, probably killed by the Persians.’
    ‘Persians, Mugwort? There were never any Persians in England !’
    ‘Yes, there were!’ Tab the tinker shouted. ‘You know, Father, the same buggers who killed Jesus. After