Wynkyn de Worde had undertaken the journey between Rome and Nuremberg over one hundred times in the past fifty or so years, but never had he done so before with such a heavy heart. He had been twenty-three in 1296 when the then pope, the great Boniface VIII, had sent him north for the first time.

      Twenty-three, and entrusted with a secret so horrifying, that it, and the nightmarish responsibility it carried with it, would have killed most other men. But Wynkyn was a special man, strong and dedicated, sure of the right of God, and with a faith so unshakeable that Boniface understood why the angels had selected him as the man fit to oversee the Cleft.

      “Reveal this secret to any other man,” Boniface had told the young Dominican, “and you can be sure that the angels themselves will ensure your death.”

      Already privy to the ghastly secret, Wynkyn knew truth when he heard it.

      Boniface had leaned back in his chair, satisfied. Since the beginnings of the office of the pope in the Dark Ages, its incumbents kept the secret of the Cleft, entrusting it only to the single priest the angels had said was strong enough to endure. As this priest approached the end of his life, the angels gave the pope the name of a new priest, young and strong, and this young priest would accompany the older priest on the man’s final few journeys to the Cleft. From the older, dying priest the younger one learned the incantations that he would need…and he also learned the true meaning of courage, for without it he would not endure.

      These priests, the Select, spent their lives teetering on the edge of hell.

      In 1298 Boniface informed Wynkyn de Worde that he was the angels’ choice as the new Select. Then, having learned from his predecessor, Wynkyn performed his duty willingly and without mishap for five years. He thought his life would take the same path as the scores of priests who had preceded him…but he, like the angels, had underestimated the power and cunning of pure evil.

      Who could have thought the papacy could fail so badly? Wynkyn had not anticipated it; the angels certainly had not. In 1303 the great and revered Pope Boniface VIII died, and Wynkyn had no way of knowing that the forces of darkness and disorder would seize this opportunity to throw the papacy into chaos. In the subsequent papal election a man called Clement V took the papal throne. Outwardly pious, it quickly became apparent to Wynkyn, as to everyone else, that Clement was the puppet of the French king, Philip IV. The new pope moved the papacy to the French-controlled town of Avignon, allowing Philip to dictate the papacy’s activities and edicts. There, successive popes lived in luxury and corruption, mouthing the orders of French kings instead of the will of God.

      When a new pope was enthroned, either the first among archangels, St Michael, or the current Select revealed to him the secret of the Cleft, but neither St Michael nor Wynkyn approached Clement. How could they allow the fearful secrets of the angels to fall into the hands of the French monarchy? Sweet Jesu, Wynkyn had thought as he spent sleepless nights wondering what to do, a French king could seize control of the world had he this knowledge in hand! He could command an army so vile that even the angels of God would quail before it.

      So both Wynkyn and the angels kept the secret against the day that the popes rediscovered God and moved themselves and the papacy back to Rome. After all, surely it could not be long? Could it?

      But the seductiveness of evil was stronger than Wynkyn and the angels had anticipated. When Clement V died, the pope who succeeded him also preferred the French monarch’s bribes and the sweet air of Avignon to the word of God and the best interests of His Church on earth. And so also the pope after that one…

      Every year Wynkyn travelled north to the Cleft in time for the summer and winter solstices, and then travelled back to Rome to await his next journey; he could not bear to live his entire life at the Cleft, although he knew some of his predecessors, stronger men than he, had done so.

      He received income enough from what Boniface had left at his disposal to continue his work, and the prior and brothers of his friary, St Angelo’s, were too in awe of him to inquire closely into his movements and activities.

      Brother Wynkyn de Worde also had the angels to assist his work. As they should, for their lusts had necessitated the Cleft.

      But now here Wynkyn was, an ancient man in his mid-seventies, and it seemed that the popes would never return to Rome. God’s wrath had boiled over, showering Europe with a pestilence such as it had never previously endured. Wynkyn had always travelled north with a heavy heart—his mission could engender no less in any man—but this night, as he carefully led his mule through the dead and dying littering the streets of Rome, he felt his soul shudder under the weight of his despair.

      He was deeply afraid, not only for what he knew he would find awaiting him at the Cleft, but because he did fear he might die…and then who would follow him? Who would there be to tend the Cleft?

      “I should have told,” he muttered. But who was there to tell? Who to confide in? The popes were dissolute and corrupt, and there was no one else. No one.

      Who else was there?

      God and the angels had relied on the papacy, and now the popes had betrayed God Himself for a chest full of gold coin from the French king.

      Damn the angels! If it wasn’t for their sins in the first instance…

      It took Wynkyn almost seven weeks to reach Nuremberg; that he even reached the city at all he thanked God’s benevolence.

      Every town, every hamlet, every cottage he’d passed had been in the grip of the black pestilence. Hands reached out from windows, doorways and gutters, begging the passing friar for succour, for prayers, or, at the least, for the last rites, but Wynkyn had ignored them.

      They were all sinners, for why else had God’s wrath struck them, and Wynkyn was consumed by his need to get north as fast as he could.

      Far worse than the outstretched hands of the dying were the grasping hands of the bandits and outlaws who thronged the roadways and passes. But Wynkyn was sly—God’s good gift—and whenever the bandits saw that Wynkyn clasped a cloth to his mouth, and heard the desperate racking of his cough, they backed away, making the sign of the cross.

      Yet even Wynkyn could not remain immune to the grasping fingers of the pestilence forever. Not at his age.

      On Ember Saturday Wynkyn de Worde had approached a small village two days from Nuremberg. By the roadside lay a huddle of men and women, dying from the plague. One of them, a woman—God’s curse to earth!—had risen to her feet and stumbled towards the friar riding by, but as she leaned on his mule’s shoulder, begging for aid, Wynkyn kicked her roughly away.

      It was too late. Unbeknown to the friar, as he extended his hand to ward her off the deadly kiss of the pestilence sprang from her mouth to his hand during the virulence of her pleas. He planted his foot in the hateful woman’s chest, and when he raised his hand to his face to make the sign of the cross the pestilence leaped unseen from his hand to his mouth.

      The deed was done, and there was nothing the angels could do but moan.