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*****

(E/* 7/19/2013)

I'll be honest with you: I actually had good reasons and real reasons for "volunteering" with the Marshal for the duty. Certainly, I wanted to figure out who in the Netherhells had cold-cocked Brother Felix, and who was smart enough to defeat the simple ward I'd put up. Furthermore, when the Marshal dropped a none-too-subtle hint that he wanted me to do something, I snapped to it.

But there was, on reflection, a deeper reason I wanted to spend a night in the Cathedral. The whole affair last year, what with Sir Jasper Chitterleigh and I foiling that assassination attempt on the Crown Prince and the Marshal (at nearly the cost of both of our lives), and then the whole matter of the battle at Mossford (and the preliminaries before that), meant that I owed the Lady a great deal. There was little doubt in my mind that She had looked after me, and without Her, well, you wouldn't be hearing this from me.

Now, I know enough about the legends of the Great Heroes of the Long Ago, that you're supposed to dedicate your armour, swords, helms or what have you to the altar of the Lady. In my case, I didn't have any of that. (Well, I did at one point, but the exotic sword that had belonged to the Grand Duke's kin, the one that I had put under the ice at Lark's Rise, ended up getting buried with Sir Jasper.) Somehow, my short staff and my bow and arrow, fine works that they were, didn't seem to quite measure up to the standards of old.

However, the ballads did often talk of furs, either before or after battle, holding Vigils. This is where you plant yourself in front of an appropriate altar, and pray to the Lady for an extended period of time. Overnight, judging from the songs of old, is quite seemly and shows the proper humility.

Now, while I grant you I've been seen at the Old Chapel a number of times, and certainly the blabber-mouth monks had told all about my role in finding Brother Felix, I still wanted a good reason for being at the Old Chapel, other than I was acting as a be-antlered scrying device for the Marshal, voluntary as that was.

So, after bathing and dressing in my "A" uniform, and polishing my short-staff, I headed back to the Cathedral for a night of fasting, prayer and obedience to the Lady. A few of the monks saw me enter shortly before dusk, unfortunately, but that could not be helped. Busy place and all.

In setting myself up at the altar in the Old Chapel (and, of course, after administering the Benedicto Interphalangeal upon myself), there were a few things I wanted to do. It was risky, but I angled myself with my back to the entrance to the Chapel. I had to do this, because if I faced the entrance, I would not have a suitable view of the interior. In conducting my Vigil, I wanted to slowly make myself familiar with the room as much as possible.

Of course, there was also the fact that I needed to figure out a way to conduct my vigil without my legs falling asleep. There aren't any manuals that tell a would-be supplicant how to conduct a Vigil. When my right leg started tingling after about an hour, I imagined that I was doing it incorrectly.

The Old Chapel, as I mentioned, is quite small. Now that I had seen what the area looked like to an elf many centuries before, I realized that in essence the chapel covered the area around the stones, but not a great deal more. What was peculiar to me was what was missing: where were the vents emitting smoke?

The floor itself was covered with the same red-flecked white marble tiles throughout. Putting down my paw at intervals, I did not feel any heat coming up. Nor where any of the tiles discoloured, which is what I might expect from either extended periods of heat or smoke, even with diligent maintenance by the monks of the Chapter. The walls, likewise, were a uniform grey stone. It was rough and unfinished stone, which matched the ancient blocks that formed the Altar here.

The only thing that I found peculiar was that one of the tiles, in the corner, was missing. As one could see stone underneath, it didn't look remarkable or out of place. Still, not where one would expect a broken tile.

Not surprisingly, there were no statutes or paintings in the Old Chapel. Old King Irenaeus likely destroyed those. I recalled that what the Marshal had shown was that the Old Chapel, as well as the Crypt, had been some of the few parts of the Cathedral that had existed since the Long Ago. Looking at the walls -- and I assure you I looked at them steadily for long periods -- didn't reveal any remnants of the original decorations, assuming that any had survived all these centuries.

Swiveling my ears repeatedly didn't provide any further clews. There were no sounds within the Old Chapel itself that could be detected, though the noises from the Cathedral itself, especially the Evesong Service, meant that you could hardly hear yourself. Sniffing the air only indicated that a lot of wax candles had been burned in here over time, and that there were no fresh breezes.

Having exhausted touch, sight, hearing and smell, I couldn't figure out a way to bring taste into the equation. Indicative, I suppose, of a limited imagination.

After a while, just before Midnight Service, frankly I got bored, and began to look at the floor and follow the flecks. If I looked hard enough, I could see a sweet persimmon in one tile, which reminded me that fasting was perhaps not all it was cracked up to be. I did notice that there was a lot of grout in between each of the tiles, which must have made it a long job to keep the floor clean. You never do quite lose habits from being an officer's batman.

What precisely made me snap to, I'm not sure. My mind had indeed wandered back to the Lady, and I had begun another round of prayers to Her. This one had focused on my gratitude for meeting Meadow. Maybe that pleased Her, I don't know. Whatever it was, something told me to dive, and dive hard to my right.

The wisdom of this action was quickly brought home by what I saw out of the corner of my eye, which was the end of a long stick whistling past me, and striking the floor with a loud clatter. I could hear it, but considering the Choir was in full voice, I doubt anyone else could.

I rolled, backed against the wall, and drew my short-staff from across my back. I was just in time to raise it to block a vigorous thrust from my opponent. Little could be discerned about him, other than the fact that he was large, dressed in the habit of a monk (including a cowl that covered his head), and that his feet (hooves?) and paws were covered. Thus, aside from the fact that it was unlikely he had antlers or horns, didn't tell me much.

Well, I did know two things for sure: this was a fur who knew his staff-fighting quite well, and was bent on demonstrating this talent to me. I had to exert myself fully to parry and block, and the speed at which he was making his moves made it very difficult for me to engage in any offence with my own weapon.

This had to change, and there was a way that I could do it. Putting one of my hooves against the wall of the Chapel, I launched myself hard at my opponent, throwing a hard shoulder just as he came down with a blow. I was not only able to block the blow, I was able to strike his face inside the cowl with one end of my staff.

A combination of being knocked off-balance and probably partially blinded gave me the advantage for a second. Slipping my staff in between his body and his staff, I made a vigorous twist, and it popped out of his paws. It landed on the marble tiles with a loud clatter, a clatter that was silenced when I stepped on the staff, hard, with one of my hooves. I crouched down, with both paws on my staff and his staff under my control.

We mirrored each other in stutter-steps for a number of seconds, without any success on his part in creating an opening. There was a long pause after that, while both of us breathed heavily.

I was not quite prepared for what he did next. He took one step back, and I braced myself in case he tried to repeat my trick of using the wall as a launching-point. The fact that I crouched down slightly gave him all the opening he needed. With a graceful bound, he was clean over my rack, and soon out of the Old Chapel.

I fought down the immediate urge to use a few words not appropriate in the House of the Lady, and took off after him, not omitting to sheathe my short-staff and grab what had been his. I began to run after him.

When I emerged into the North Aisle, I could see my assailant quite easily, even in the comparatively dim light of the candle-lit building. He was a good few steps ahead of me, and a fast runner, but when roebucks have their dander up, we're no slouches in terms of speed. A number of bounds on my part had me closing with him rapidly by the time he just cleared the Choir, and I was nearly at the western end of the North Aisle.

It was at that point that my luck ran out. One of the monks got it into his head to investigate the noises he must have heard, and had ambled out to have a look. He was staring in wonder at the rapidly moving form of a fellow monk when he felt the shock of a deer running into him at top speed. He caromed rather noisily off a stone pillar, while I took a headlong spill on the floor, scraping up my "A" uniform trousers. The staff I had been carrying went off with a clatter into the corner.

I still could have made an attempt to catch up, except for the fact that the area was soon a boiling mass of monks asking questions loudly, bumping into one another, and attempting to help (or "help") the accident victims. It was a full few minutes before I was able to wrest myself free, but by then, I was quite too late. My quarry had vanished into the night, his destination unknown.

For the second time in a few minutes, I had to fight down the urge to use language not fit for the ears of the Lady. I rather crisply ordered a monk to take a message to the Royal Palace to advise the Marshal that there had been yet another assault in the Cathedral, upon an officer of the Crown (i.e., me), and that the assailant was at large. A few other monks were sent to find the staff, which was soon proudly borne to me. The thanks they received was a bit brusque, and I stomped off back to the Old Chapel in a filthy frame of mind, one not suitable for Vigils.

In fact, the first thing I did when I crossed the threshold was to angrily whirl around and blindly kick at the floor with one of my hooves. This action promptly landed me flat on my back, which did not do the least bit of good to my already boiling mood. I put my paw down to launch myself back in the air for a good-old fashioned tantrum, when I felt something odd.

My paw was resting not on a marble tile, but on a square of stone. I looked around, and found that the corner, where the missing marble tile had been earlier, was now filled.

Somehow, the tiles had slid when I kicked at them. I knelt down, and with a finger, experimentally pushed at one of the tiles bordering the open square. It slid over with a smooth "click."

Digging the nails of my paws didn't budge any of the tiles by brute force. The only way to move them was by sliding them one after the other. I busied myself trying to reveal each square of the floor in turn, but there was no hole that was revealed.

I sat on my haunches with my chin on my knees, thinking, when a voice broke into my thoughts.

"Corporal, would you mind stepping outside the Chapel, for a moment? I would like to have a closer look at this very interesting puzzle you've discovered."

I looked up, to discover that His Royal Highness Prince Roland, Marshal of Faerie, can look quite imposing and authoritative even when dressed in lemon-yellow silk pajamas.