you've got a visitor, someone you'll be right glad to see.'
A bubble of joy shot up through Elena and her face broke into a beaming smile. 'Athan, is it Athan? Where is he?'
Raffe paced impatiently about the small chamber and finally settled himself awkwardly in a high-backed wooden chair. The room was sparsely furnished. A broad bed occupied one corner, mercifully for this meeting concealed behind heavy but somewhat threadbare drapes. A long, low bench was positioned in another corner and in the third was a tall wooden frame with leather straps hanging from it. Raffe eyed it with disgust. He could guess what implements lay hidden behind the hangings around the bed, but he'd seen too many men's backs laid open to the bone with the lash to find flogging a pleasurable game.
He gazed hopelessly around the room. On that day he'd chosen Elena from the circle of threshing girls to eat that little piece of bread and salt, how could he have foreseen that it would lead her here? If Raffe had chosen a different girl from the circle, would the outcome have been the same? Ever since he was a child, he had wondered whether you could ever really choose, or if something had already chosen you.
When Raffe was just six years old, his father's scythe had hit a stone hidden among the grass. That was all. That was all it took to change the whole course of Raffe's life, just an ordinary lump of stone in the wrong place. The scythe blade bounced off the stone and cut deep into his father's leg. The wound had festered and Raffe's mother was terrified that her husband would die.
A neighbour swore that St Gregory would surely save the poor man, if Raffe's mother would only seek his help. So his mother decided to make a pilgrimage to the abbey which housed a finger bone of the saint and offer the necklace of amber she'd been given on her wedding day, to secure the saint's aid. Raffe, she insisted, must go too, to pray for his father's life.
Raffe and his mother had set off before the sun had even risen above the hills. They arrived at the abbey church in the cool of the evening, just as the service of Vespers was beginning, and climbed the great white steps to join the throng of worshippers in the public part of the church. As Raffe entered that great building his thirst and belly-rumbling hunger vanished. His mouth fell open and he stood rooted to the spot in the doorway, unable to tear his gaze from the spectacle before him.
The tiny village church at home, where he sang in the little choir, was painted with scenes of brightly coloured angels and saints wandering through familiar fields and hovering over cottages exactly like his own. But here the towering walls and pillars were emblazoned with scenes of heaven and hell, of Creation and the Last Judgment. Angelic faces peered down at him from the great dome, and God Himself surveyed the whole church from his golden throne, his dark almond eyes staring directly into Raffe's own.
Raffe was too busy staring around him to notice the choir singing the psalms, until they began to sing the Magnificat. He had never heard such voices before in his own village choir, so much sweeter, higher and resonant than any boy's. Ignoring his mother as she frantically hissed at him to come back, Raffe pushed through the standing congregation until he was at the front. Still he could see nothing because of the carved screen. So he stooped down and crawled forward, edging around it until he could stare up at the beings making the sound.
He saw monks and novices kneeling in prayer, but this unearthly music was not coming from those plain creatures. He twisted his head around and then he saw them standing together. Some of them were mere youths, the others were men who might have been as old as his father, but they were smooth-cheeked, without a trace of beard. And the notes that were pouring from them sent shivers of awe and delight running up and down Raffe's spine.
He crouched there in the shadows, listening. Finally, when the service was ended and the monks had gone, the small group of beardless singers, laughing and chattering, began to amble out through a narrow door of their own. Raffe gaped up at them, shaking his head like a dog with sore ears, for