a terrorist? He’d walked into the cathedral one September morning in 2015 and killed half a million people. And destroyed this.
But it had only been there to destroy because the bomb underneath it at this very moment hadn’t gone off, and because Hitler and his air force had failed to blow St. Paul’s up or burn it down.
Though they certainly tried, she thought, walking up the nave, her footsteps echoing in the vast open space. They’d dropped hundreds of incendiaries on its roofs, to say nothing of the V-1s and V-2s Hitler would send at it in 1944 and ’45.
But St. Paul’s was ready for them. Tubs of water stood next to every pillar, and pickaxes and pails of sand were propped against the walls at intervals, next to coils of rope. On the night of the twenty-ninth, when dozens of incendiaries would fall on the roofs and the water mains would fail, they—and the volunteers wielding them—would be all that stood between the cathedral and destruction.
Polly heard a door shut somewhere far away and ducked into the south aisle behind one of the rectangular pillars, but no other sound followed, and after a cautious minute she emerged. If she wanted to see all the things Mr. Dunworthy had spoken of, she’d best hurry. She might get tossed out at any moment.
She wasn’t certain where the Whispering Gallery or Lord Nelson’s tomb were. The tomb was presumably down in the Crypt, but she didn’t know how to get to it. He’d said The Light of the World was the first thing he’d seen the first time he’d been in St. Paul’s, which meant it should be here in one of the side aisles. If it was still here. There were pale squares on the walls where paintings had obviously hung.
No, here it was, in a bay midway up the south aisle, looking just as Mr. Dunworthy had described it. Christ, wearing a white robe and a crown of thorns, stood in the middle of a forest in a deep blue twilight, holding a lantern and waiting impatiently outside a wooden door, his hand raised to knock on it.
It’s Mr. Dunworthy, Polly thought, wanting to know why I haven’t checked in yet. No wonder he likes it so much.
She wasn’t particularly impressed. The painting was smaller than she’d expected and stiffly old-fashioned, and now that she looked at it again, Christ looked less impatient than unconvinced anyone was going to answer his knock. Which was probably the case, considering the door obviously hadn’t been opened in years. Ivy had twined up over it, and weeds choked the threshold.
“I’d give it up if I were you,” Polly murmured.
“I beg your pardon, miss?” a voice said at her elbow, and she jumped a foot. It was an elderly man in a black suit with a waistcoat. “I didn’t mean to frighten you,” he said, “but I saw you looking at the painting, and—I hadn’t realized they’d opened the church again.”
She was tempted to say yes, that the bomb squad or the man in the cassock had given her permission to come in, but if he decided to check… “Oh, was it closed before?” she said instead.
“Oh, my, yes. Since Thursday. We’ve had an unexploded bomb under the west end. They only just now got it out. It was a near thing there for a bit. The gas main caught fire and was burning straight for the bomb. If it had reached it, it would have blown up the lot of us, and St. Paul’s. I’ve never been happier in my life than to see that monstrous thing driven away. I’m surprised Dean Matthews decided to reopen the church, though. It was my understanding it was to have remained closed till they’d rechecked the gas main. Who—?”
“I’m so glad they did decide to open it, then,” Polly said hastily. “A friend of mine told me I must see St. Paul’s when I came to London, particularly The Light of the World. It’s beautiful.”
“It’s only a copy, I’m afraid. The original was sent to Wales with the cathedral’s other treasures, but we decided it simply wasn’t St. Paul’s without it. It had hung here all through the last war, and we felt it was vital it be here through this one, particularly with the blackout and the lights gone out in Europe and Hitler spreading his nasty brand of darkness over the world. This reminds us that one light, at the least, will never go