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Halfway between the gathering crowds and the Citadel’s summit, the Abbot, tired from a night spent awaiting further news, sat by the glowing embers of the fire and looked at the man who had just brought it.

‘We had thought the eastern face to be insurmountable,’ Athanasius said, his hand smoothing his pate as he finished his report.

‘Then we have at least learned something tonight, have we not?’ The Abbot glanced over at the large window, where the sun was beginning to illuminate the antique panes of blue and green. It did nothing to lighten his mood.

‘So,’ he said at length, ‘we have a renegade monk standing on the very summit of the Citadel, forming a deeply provocative symbol, one which has probably already been seen by hundreds of tourists and the Lord only knows who else, and we can neither stop him nor get him back.’

‘That is correct.’ Athanasius nodded. ‘But he cannot talk to anyone whilst he remains up there, and eventually he must climb down, for where else can he go?’

‘He can go to hell,’ spat the Abbot. ‘And the sooner that happens, the better for us all.’

‘The situation, as I see it, is this …’ Athanasius persisted, knowing from long experience that the best way to deal with the Abbot’s temper was simply to ignore it. ‘He has no food. He has no water. There is only one way down from the mountain, and even if he waits for the cover of night the heat-sensitive cameras will pick him up as soon as he gets below the uppermost battlements. We have sensors on the ground and security on the outside tasked to apprehend him. What’s more, he is trapped inside the only structure on earth from which no one has ever escaped.’

The Abbot shot him a troubled glance. ‘Not true,’ he said, stunning Athanasius into silence. ‘People have escaped. Not recently, but people have done it. With a history as long as ours it is … inevitable. They have always been captured, of course, and silenced – in God’s name – along with everyone unfortunate enough to come into contact with them during their time outside these walls.’ He noticed Athanasius blanch. ‘The Sacrament must be protected.’

The Abbot had always considered it regrettable that his chamberlain did not possess the stomach for the more complex duties of their order. It was why Athanasius still wore the brown cassock of the lesser guilds rather than the dark green of a fully ordained Sanctus. Yet so zealous was he, and dedicated to his duty, that the Abbot sometimes forgot he had never learned the secret of the mountain, or that much of the Citadel’s history was unknown to him.

‘The last time the Sacrament was threatened was during the First World War,’ the Abbot said, staring down at the cold grey embers of the fire as if the past was written there. ‘A novice monk jumped through a high window and swam the moat. That’s why it was drained. Fortunately he had not been fully ordained so did not yet know the secret of our order. He made it as far as Occupied France before we managed to … catch up with him. God was with us. By the time we found him the battlefield had done our job for us.’

He looked back at Athanasius.

‘But that was a different time, one when the Church had many allies, and silence could easily be bought and secrets simply kept; before the Internet enabled anyone to send information to a billion people in an instant. There is no way we could contain an incident like that today. Which is why we must ensure it does not happen.’

He looked back up at the window, now fully lit by the morning sun. The peacock motif shone a vibrant blue and green – an archaic symbol of Christ, and of immortality.

‘Brother Samuel knows our secret,’ the Abbot said simply. ‘He must not leave this mountain.’