Old people find odd things funny. He told me about a time during those years we were apart, when he was in Italy to pick up a cargo which included a crate of relics. He was sent to the workshop where they were created and he saw them making miraculous shrouds.

"The workman smeared a naked man with oil and wine and lees," he said, "then the man lay down on a linen strip and it was folded over him and patted gently to take the print of his face and body. Then they hauled him up without messing the print on the cloth, and put a cloth in the sun. When it had been in the sun for a time they brushed off the dried lees and it was like a painting."

"Who was he supposed to be?" I asked.

"Oh," said Giles, " He was all different saints. In the crate I took back to the ship there was one shroud of St Stephen with lots of arrow wounds painted on afterward, and at least half a dozen of Christ. It was enough to make a man sceptical. "