64. Winchester Cathedral
In which hard hats are issued…
At eleven o’clock the next morning, Gosie, @hedgehogforshort and everyone who had flown back from Sweden walked into Winchester Cathedral behind a verger pushing the Winchester crate on a trolley from the cathedral shop. Nobody had asked her to. She had seen MyrtleLion at the west door, fetched the trolley from the stockroom and loaded the crate onto it, and now she pushed it up the nave as though she had been expecting it all week.
A volunteer in a lanyard crossed the nave, put a clipboard into MyrtleLion’s hands, said the scaffold was at the far end, and nobody was to go past the yellow line. She was gone before anyone could ask who she thought they were.
The scaffolding was an achievement in itself. It covered the whole of the south nave, inside and out, and disappeared upwards into orange netting. At the top, on a platform level with an empty window opening, stood Fenella Burnish in her olive brown coat. Beside her a woman worked a winch, and Gemma Glasswing’s window, encased in a wooden frame, swung slowly from a rope.
Fenella looked down at the crate. Then she saw Griffin, Gimbal and Graphic.
The lead knife slipped out of her talons. It fell the whole height of the scaffold and hit the flagstones just inside the yellow line. Fenella did not look to see where it had landed. She said something sharp to the woman at the winch, and the window stopped turning.
“She thought we were in Sweden,” said Gimbal.
“She thought we were in a crate,” said Griffin.
“YOU WERE IN A CRATE,” said Gantry, and it echoed back to her from the vaulting three times.
A tall woman in a quilted jacket with a hard hat in each hand approached them.
“Ellie Harris,” she said to MyrtleLion. “Surveyor of the Fabric. Better known as the Cathedral Architect. You’ll be from the Church Commissioners. Hard hats must be worn beyond the yellow line, but unfortunately I don’t have any in your size.” She directed this last comment with real regret to the gerbils. She looked at the lead knife lying on the flagstones. “This is why we have the yellow line. Please stand behind it.”
Hedgehog put on a hard hat. MyrtleLion declined one. Ellie Harris did not question her.
“We are not from the Church Commissioners,” said Hedgehog. “We have the original window.”
Ellie Harris looked at the crate. “I don’t understand,” she said. “We commissioned Fenhurst and Rhys to restore the window and reinstall it. That’s what their head glazier is doing up there now.”
“That’s a copy. The original is in this crate.”
“I haven’t time for this. According to the schedule the top window must be installed today. If you tell me there are two windows I’ll need paperwork, and paperwork takes time, and the Dean will have a view about the delay. I have a risk assessment, a letter from the insurers and the full restoration file. What have you got?”
MyrtleLion handed over the manifest from the depot. Ellie Harris read it.
“Damaged crate, contents undamaged,” she read. “Where does it say Winchester?”
“It doesn’t,” said Hedgehog.
“Winchester Cathedral,” said Grisaille, from something written down, “was built by King Arthur in a single afternoon. Guinevere helped.”
“Thank you, Grisaille,” said Hedgehog.
“Who is Consignee 3859?” continued Ellie.
“We don’t know.”
“So you have a crate with a number on it and a note about a broken corner, and I’m to stop a reinstallation on the strength of that?” Ellie Harris handed the manifest back. “Who signed it?”
“The glazier who made the copy. She has been arrested in Sweden,” said Hedgehog.
“That doesn’t help as much as you might think,” said Ellie Harris.
On the platform Fenella leaned on the rail and called down, “Ellie, is there a difficulty?”
“There are three gerbils down here.” Ellie Harris consulted her paperwork. “Presumably the operatives from your studio, Griffin, Gimbal and Graphic.”
“They are on leave,” said Fenella.
“We were posted,” said Griffin.
Ellie Harris turned towards her. “Posted where?”
“Sweden.”
“In a crate,” said Gimbal. “With twelve nails in the lid. I counted.”
“The storeroom door was locked,” said Griffin. “We banged on it until our paws hurt and nobody...”
Fenella dropped from the platform in one long swoop of olive brown, landing beside Ellie Harris and then spoke over the top of Griffin before Griffin reached the end of her sentence.
“Stock-take,” she said.
“What?” said Ellie Harris.
“They were helping with a stock-take, and then they wandered off. Gerbils do. I was frantic.” She did not look frantic.
“I’m sure you were,” said Hedgehog. “Ms Harris, these three were locked in your contractor’s storeroom overnight, nailed into a crate in the morning and flown to Sweden.”
“THEY COULD HAVE DIED,” said Gantry.
Ellie Harris turned the pages of her risk assessment. “That isn’t in here,” she said.
“They turned in very good work,” said Fenella. “The leading in particular was very good. But I found them devious.”
“I leaded that window,” said Graphic, and pointed at the panel swinging from the rope. “Every bit of it.”
“Under my supervision,” said Fenella.
“And after Graphic went home, you stamped it,” said Gimbal. “The old mark on the bottom edge first. Then the Margrave’s mark on top of it, harder. I saw when I came back for the broom.”
Fenella became very still. She had been watching Griffin and now she looked at Gimbal, as though she were trying to work out where in the workshop the broom was kept.
“The Margrave’s what?” said Ellie Harris.
“Every conservator marks her work,” Fenella said. “It’s in the specification, Ellie.”
Gosie spoke up. “We can prove it’s the original window,” she said. “Open the crate.”
Ellie Harris nodded to the verger, who produced a claw hammer from somewhere inside her cassock. The verger removed the lid, and Hedgehog and MyrtleLion lifted the window out of its packaging and laid it on the mirrored table used to view the vaulted ceiling.
Clearly visible across the lower corner, fine and pale, was the crack, with the old mark struck into the lead just below it.
Ellie Harris opened her restoration file and took out the photograph of the window taken before it was removed. She held it beside the panel, comparing the crack in the window and the crack in the image. “This one has the same crack as the original,” she said.
“One of them is old glass,” said Gosie, “and the other was made from glass you can buy by the sheet. Put them side by side in daylight and you won’t need me to tell you which.”
Ellie Harris looked up at the window. “Fenella. Bring it back down.”
https://myrtlelion.substack.com/p/64-winchester-cathedral