Facing the Tank by Patrick Gale Page B

shop. He pulled hard on the chain, grinding flowers as he did so. The pulley and gears ground into action and the lid shifted. He pulled more, harder and faster until it was five inches clear of the tomb. He was getting hot. Leaving the lid to swing, he unfastened his anorak, draped it over a nearby chair and returned to pulling the chain. The sound echoed but he had gone too far to stop. He could plead religious fervour or divine prompting. He could say he had had a dream – vergers loved to talk about dreams. As he pulled he realized that more than anything he needed to see for himself that Saint Boniface or at least a body’s remains lay within. On top of Saturday’s sermon, a vanished patron would be too disastrous. There was no smell. He had expected a smell or at the very least a cloud of ancient dust. Of course; in order to secure the chain, the workmen had already prised the lid clear. There was to be no mystery, no unveiling.
    Panting, still curious despite his realization that he was not the first to do so, Gavin crouched to peer inside. While no miraculous preservation of the corpse had occurred, as might have been the case nearer the dread lair of the Beast of Rome, the patronal skeleton was remarkably well kept and had not crumbled to dust. The skull was rolled to one side as in sleep and the hands were unusually draped across the pelvis. No. The hands were grasped in prayer over the ribs so the other hands … Gavin Tree frowned. As well as his sainted compliment of skeletal arms and legs, Saint Boniface of Barrow had the remains of a great pair of wings. What had seemed to be hands were in fact the tips of two delicate webs of tiny wing bones which were draped protectively across the saintly shoulders, chest and midriff. Before bursting into wild and rapid action, the Bishop calmly observed that legend was in this case truth in that the body measured at least six and a half feet.
    Reaching deep into the sacophagus, he laid hands on first one wing then the other. Age had been only superficially kind to the bones; as he pulled at the join where the top wing bone entered the back of the massive rib cage, he felt it turn to a sort of crumbled biscuit in his grip. He dislocated both wings then lifted them gingerly through the cavity. He wanted to run because time was short and he still had to lower the lid, yet he was terrified of tripping and landing in a mass of someone else’s broken wing cartilage. Also the skeletal wings were too long to carry from his waist, so he had to keep his fists at shoulder height. Thinking quickly, he lurched like a crippled dragonfly to the entrance of the crypt. He took both wings in one hand, turned the doorknob and leaned on the door with his back. As he scrabbled with his free hand for the light switch, Gavin heard something scamper in the dark and splash into the water. Rats. Rats? No time to think. He hurried, bones flailing, to the point where the city’s subterranean stream swirled in a black U in and out of one mossy wall. It was difficult to throw the bones any distance but the swift current helped him.
    There was a distant sound of an animal gnawing as he closed the door. He didn’t look back but hurried to the Patron’s chapel where he lowered the lid as fast as he could. Only then, when he was at liberty to fall to his knees and beg forgiveness, did the full enormity of his crime begin to dawn upon him. Quite apart from his proud motives, his act had been one of scientific as well as religious desecration. Wise men would kill to have had even a glimpse of the remains that the rats were now chewing so eagerly.
    Perhaps that was a good reason for having destroyed them; a less shamefully selfish one than not wishing to have an overhasty sermon rendered ridiculous by untimely evidence of the miraculous. Gavin chewed on a thumb knuckle and thought hard about humility.
    There was a rattling of fat keys in the south transept door before someone found it was already