‘I didn’t know they still made these,’ Masters remarked, pulling one from the packet. ‘It’s all unverifiable stuff, you know. I’ve heard the story many times before. Some students came to me insisting that the vial was lodged beneath the floorboards of the Jerusalem Tavern, Farringdon, which would be all very well if the pub hadn’t been built on the site of an eighteenth-century clockmaker’s shop. I told them then that even if it did exist, it would probably contain germs that would be potentially fatal to the city’s present-day citizens. I mean, good God, they had the Black Death back then. I’m not disputing the existence of a vial of blood, even if one ignores current thinking that suggests Jesus was most likely an invention of the Romans. Why are you so interested, anyway?’
‘Oh, I hate loose ends.’ It wasn’t much of an explanation, but it was the best Bryant could muster. ‘Sorry, I have a bit of a hangover. We laid our pathologist to rest yesterday. It’s funny that so many of the cases we’ve been asked to handle lately have involved historical artefacts.’
‘Of course, there was a time when you couldn’t move for religious relics,’ said Masters. ‘The Prior Roger de Vere gave the church of Clerkenwell one of the six pots Christ used to turn water into wine. It supposedly had transformational properties. This is the point where religion crosses into magic.’
‘There’s something I don’t understand about religious relics. I mean, there have been splinters and nails from the true cross knocking about for millennia, all of them fake. Even if the vial of blood had been “verified” – by what means we’ll never know – what made it so much more special?’
Masters raised his bushy eyebrows knowingly. ‘If you’ll forgive the phrase, it’s considered to be the holy grail of relics. John 6:53–54, “Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.” The blood of Christ covers, cleanses and consecrates. It’s nothing less than the gateway to the Kingdom of Heaven, the elixir to the realm of the everlasting. And I suppose you want to know whether this fabled prize might still exist.’
‘Well, it would be rather interesting to find out, don’t you think?’ said Bryant, somewhat underestimating the case.
‘I daresay it would,’ Masters admitted, ‘although I think I can save you a lot of unnecessary pain by stating categorically right now that it vanished long ago.’
‘How can you be sure?’
‘Please, my dear Arthur, the priories and monasteries were all burned to the ground and their contents destroyed. Their basements were dug up, their tombs desecrated until nothing more than dust was left, and even that was carted off to King’s Cross for sale to the Russians. Don’t you think we’d have heard about something like this?’
‘London’s greatest treasures have always been carefully hidden whenever the city has been placed under threat. We know that Catholicism survived dissolution, and surely an item such as this would have been protected by the most powerful holy men in the land.’
‘You might as well conduct a search for Atlantis,’ sighed Masters. ‘When it comes to the lost icons of antiquity, you have a gullible buyers’ market and plenty of unscrupulous salesmen willing to feed it. We all want to believe. Look at the experts’ willingness to ignore the implausibilities in the forged diaries of Hitler and Jack the Ripper. These days it’s easier to manufacture something more recent, like a missing session from a rock band or the diary of a dead celebrity. They won’t add much to the comprehension of the human condition, but they’ll make someone’s fortune on the grey market. Trust me, Arthur, the trail has had eight centuries to grow cold. Ask yourself where such an item could have been kept without disturbance and you’ll realize the absurdity of it. There are plenty of easier things to find in London than Christ’s blood, and even if it did survive, it wouldn’t still be in Clerkenwell.’
‘Well, thanks for the advice,’ said Bryant, pinching his hat from the table. ‘I’d better go and find Oswald.’
‘Call me sometime, we’ll go out for a spot of lunch,’ said Masters, who had become more reclusive since the death of his wife. ‘There are all sorts of things we should talk about.’
Bryant gave a little wave as he stumped out of the Great Courtyard. In the long winter months of his retirement, there would be plenty of time for old men to sit and set the world to rights.