The bishop would no doubt hear about this, and about the candles and the fraying hem, and who knew what other errors and infractions he had committed.

"'Speak, what saw ye?'" Kivrin mouthed, and he seemed suddenly to come to himself.

"'Speak, what saw ye?'" he said clearly. "'And tell us of the birth of Christ. We saw the new-born Child and angels singing praise unto the Lord.'"

He began the Confiteor Deo, and Kivrin whispered it along with him, but he got through it without any mistakes, and Kivrin began to relax a little, though she watched him closely as he moved to the altar for the Orámus te.

He was hearing a black cassock under the alb, and both of them looked like they had once been richly made. They were much too short for Roche. She could see a good ten centimeters of his worn brown hose below the cassock's hem when he bent over the altar. They had probably belonged to the priest before him, or were castoffs of Imeyne's chaplain.

The priest at Holy Re-Formed had worn a polyester alb over a brown jumper and jeans. He had assured Kivrin that the mass was completely authentic, in spite of its being held in midafternoon. The antiphon dated from the eighth century, he had told her, and the gruesomely detailed stations of the cross were exact copies of Turin's. But the church had been a converted stationer's shop, they had used a folding table for an altar, and the Carfax carillon outside had been busily destroying "It Came Upon the Midnight Clear."

"Kyrie eléison," Cob said, his hands folded in prayer.

"Kyrie eléison," Father Roche said.

"Christe eléison," Cob said.

"Christe eléison," Agnes said brightly.

Kivrin hushed her, her finger to her lips. Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy. Lord have mercy.

They had used the kyrie at the ecumenical service, probably because of some deal Holy Re-Formed's priest had struck with the vicar in return for moving the time of the mass, and the minister of the Church of the Milennium had refused to recite it and had looked coldly disapproving throughout. Like Lady Imeyne.

Father Roche seemed all right now. He said the Gloria and the gradual without faltering and began the gospel. "Inituim sancti Envangelii secundum Luke," he said, and began to read haltingly in Latin, "'Now it came to pass in those days that a decree went forth from Caesar Augustus that a census of the whole world be taken.'"

The vicar had read the same verses at St. Mary's. He had read it from the People's Modern Bible, which had been insisted on by the Church of the Millenium, and it had begun, "Around then the P.M. landfilled a tax hike on the ratepayers," but it was the same gospel Father Roche was laboriously reciting.

"'And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, "Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace among men of good will."'" Father Roche kissed the gospel. "Per evangélica dicta deléantur nostro delícta."

The sermon should come next, if there was one. In most village churches the priest only preached at the major masses, and even then it was usually no more than a catechism lesson, the listing of the seven deadly sins or the seven Acts of Mercy. The high mass Christmas morning was probably when the sermon would be.

But Father Roche stepped out in front of the central aisle, which had nearly closed up again as the villagers leaned against the pillars and each other, trying to find a more comfortable position, and began to speak.

"In the days when Christ came to earth from heaven, God sent signs that men might know his coming, and in the last days also will there be signs. There will be famines and pestilence, and Satan will ride abroad in the land."

Oh, no, Kivrin thought, don't talk about seeing the devil riding a black horse.

She glanced at Imeyne. The old woman looked furious. But it wouldn't matter what he'd said, Kivrin thought. She'd been determined to find mistakes and lapses she could tell the bishop about. Lady Yvolde looked mildly irritated, and everyone else had the look of tired patience people always got when listening to a sermon, no matter what the century. Kivrin had seen the same look in St. Mary's last Christmas.

The sermon at St. Mary's had been on rubbish disposal and the dean of Christ Church had begun it by saying, "Christianity began in a stable. Will it end in a sewer?"

But it hadn't mattered. It had been midnight, and St. Mary's had had a stone floor and a real altar, and when she'd closed her eyes, she'd been able to shut out the carpeted nave and the umbrellas and the laser candles. She had pushed the plastic kneeling pad out of her way and knelt on the stone floor and imagined what it would be like in the Middle Ages.

Mr. Dunworthy had told her it wouldn't be like anything she had imagined, and he was right, of course. But not about this mass. She had imagined it just like this, the stone floor and the murmured kyrie, the smells of incense and tallow and cold.

"The Lord will come with fire and pestilence, and all will perish," Roche said, "but even in the last days, God's mercy will not forsake us. He will send us help and comfort and bring us safely unto heaven."

Safely unto heaven. She thought of Mr. Dunworthy. "Don't go," he had said. "It won't be anything like you imagine." And he was right. He was always right.

But even he, with all his imagining of smallpox and cutthroats and witch-burnings, would never have imagined this: that she was lost. That she didn't know where the drop was, and the rendezvous was less than a week away. She looked across the aisle at Gawyn, who was watching Eliwys. She had to talk to him after the mass.

Father Roche moved to the altar to begin the mass proper. Agnes leaned against Kivrin, and Kivrin put her arm around her. Poor thing, she must be exhausted. Up since before dawn and all that wild running around. She wondered how long the mass would take.

The service at St. Mary's had taken an hour and a quarter, and halfway through the offertory Dr. Ahrens' bleeper had gone off. "It's a baby," she'd whispered to Kivrin and Dunworthy as she'd hurried out, "How appropriate."

I wonder if they're in church now, she thought and then remembered it wasn't Christmas there. They had had Christmas three days after she arrived, while she was still sick. It would be, what? The second of January, Christmas vac nearly over and all the decorations taken down.

It was starting to get hot in the church, and the candles seemed to be taking all the air. She could hear shiftings and shufflings behind her as Father Roche went through the ritualized steps of the mass, and Agnes sank farther and farther against her. She was glad when they reached the Sanctus and she could kneel.

She tried to imagine Oxford on the second of January, the shops advertising New Year's sales and the Carfax carillon silent. Dr. Ahrens would be at the Infirmary dealing with post- holiday stomach upsets and Mr. Dunworthy would be getting ready for Hilary term. No, he's not, she thought, and saw him standing behind the thin-glass. He's worrying about me.

Father Roche raised the chalice, knelt, kissed the altar. There was more shuffling, and a whispering on the men's side of the church. She looked across. Gawyn was sitting back on his heels, looking bored. Sir Bloet was asleep.

So was Agnes. She had collapsed so completely against Kivrin there would be no way she could stand for the paternoster. She didn't even try. When everyone else stood for it, Kivrin took the opportunity to gather Agnes in more closely and shift her head to a better position. Kivrin's knee hurt. She must have knelt in the depression between two stones. She shifted it, raising it slightly and cramming a fold of her cloak under it.

Father Roche put a piece of bread in the chalice and said the Haec commixtio, and everyone knelt for the Agnus dei. "Agnus dei, qui tollis peccata mundi: miserere nobis," he chanted. "Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us."