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in the church was
packed with straw so that the mortar did not crack from the frosts. The scaffolding on the new work made it appear like the decaying bones of some giant beast. Soon the barrowmen would be paid off
and her father would withdraw to work in the chapter house. He would spend the winter cutting and ornamenting the stones for the niches and the windows.
    Anselm wore a tunic and apron and the little round cap that distinguished him as the freemason, the one who carved the ‘free’ stone, the ornamentation in the vaultings and narthex
and in the traceries of the clerestory windows. He was at work with hammer and chisel on a block that would take its place on the tympanum over the south portal.
    She watched him work. His breath made little clouds of vapour in the air. It was gloomy and frigid inside the church, but he wore fingerless gloves, for he needed the nimbleness of his
fingertips for this work. His hands were thickly calloused so that he might as well have been wearing leather gloves, and his forearms were thick as an executioner’s; yet he could tease
flowers and vine leaves from capitals as if they were moulded from clay.
    He looked up and saw her and his face creased into a grin. ‘Fabricia! Good. The cold has made me hungry. I hope you have some of your mother’s warm bread there in that basket.’
He tucked his hammer and bradawl into his apron.
    ‘And some ewe’s cheese I bought at the market and a flask of spiced wine to warm you.’
    He took a knife from his apron and cut into the cheese. Then he upended the wine flask and poured the wine into his throat, his head tipped back.
    She studied the work he had left on his bench. He was sculpting the stone to the shape of a devil, worked into a pattern of vine leaves. The work was so fine it did not look like a carving at
all, but life wrought from raw stone. It was eerily lovely. Who would have thought such a gruff man kept visions in his soul?
    ‘It’s beautiful,’ she said.
    ‘It’s just stone, Fabricia. Now you, you are beautiful. Your mother is beautiful. This is just imitation of it, for God’s holy purpose.’ He shook his head. ‘Though
I confess I do not always understand His purpose. Why did he take Pèire? All that boy ever wanted to do was build churches for His greater glory and now he is gone.’
    Fabricia laid her hand on his. She could feel the warmth of him even through her glove. So much pent-up energy in him, he radiated heat like a furnace, even on the coldest days.
    ‘How did you know?’ He looked up at her and she saw fear in his face. ‘You said he was going to die. How did you know?’
    She shook her head.
    ‘Why didn’t you stop it?’ he said.
    ‘How, Papa? How do you tell someone something that has not happened and make them believe you? How could I stop Pèire climbing the scaffold and doing his work because I had a
dream?’
    ‘You still should have said something.’
    ‘I did.’
    Anselm closed his eyes, nodded. ‘But who dreams such things?’
    ‘A witch?’
    ‘Be still! You are not a witch! It was that storm, wasn’t it? The lightning? You have not been the same since.’
    ‘No, Papa. I was never the same as everyone else, ever. There were things before that. After the storm, they just got worse, that’s all.’
    ‘What things?’ She did not answer him. Anselm hung his head. ‘My little rabbit,’ he said. ‘What are we going to do with you?’
    She took a breath. She knew he would not want to hear this. ‘Papa, please, help me. I wish to take orders.’
    ‘No. I will not speak of this now.’
    ‘It’s the only way for me. We both know this.’
    ‘Not now,’ he said, and tore his hand from hers and went back to his work.
    *
    Instead of returning directly home Fabricia went to visit the shrine of Our Lady in Saint-Étienne. In the street by the side of the great church there was a locked door
that led to the sacristy. Something made her turn as she passed the doorway; she saw a