A Finer End

PRAISE FOR DEBORAH CROMBIE’S

A FINER END

“Crombie has laid claim to the literary territory of moody psychological suspense owned by P. D. James and Barbara Vine. Superbly creepy and melodramatic.”

—The Washington Post

“Crombie … has evolved into a masterful novelist.”

—The Denver Post

“Very richly written.”

—Deadly Pleasures

“A master of the modern British mystery … one writer who gets better with every book.”

—The Patriot News

“A really splendid book.”

—Booknews from The Poisoned Pen

“Intricately layered.”

—The New York Times

“Careful plotting, the development of characters and the evocation of place are hallmarks of Crombie’s writing and the current book is no exception.”

—Mystery Lovers Bookshop News

“A clever, cunning series.”

—Book Barn Gazette

“Superbly creepy and melodramatic. Like The Hound of the Baskervilles, one of those rare mysteries in which titanic forces clash.”

—Washington Post Book World, Fiction Raves 2001

“The atmosphere … is perfect.”

—Booklist

KISSED A SAD GOODBYE

“Atmospheric … absorbing … haunting.”

—The Washington Post Book World

“Crombie never stumbles as she maneuvers her way through her complicated plot as skillfully as she handles the ongoing romance between her two detectives. The result is an Anglophile’s delight.”

—The Sunday Denver Post

“Deborah Crombie is an American mystery novelist who writes so vividly about England, she might have been born within the sound of Bow bells. [She] gets better with each book.… Lyrical, biting, and evocative.”

—The Plain Dealer, Cleveland

“An engaging, richly peopled, satisfying mystery.”

—Houston Chronicle

“Compelling from start to finish. Another winner from a dependable and gifted pro.”

—Kirkus Review (starred review)

“[A] beautifully executed story of murder and revenge … With each volume, Crombie grows in the understanding of her characters and hones her writing and creative skills with verve and elan.”

—Booknews from The Poisoned Pen

“Gripping. Highly recommended.” —Library Journal

“Readers … who loved Deborah Crombie’s Dreaming of the Bones will not be disappointed with Kissed a Sad Goodbye.… Outstanding.”

—Mystery Lovers Bookshop News

DREAMING OF THE BONES

A NEW YORK TIMES

NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR

NAMED ONE OF THE CENTURY’S BEST MYSTERY NOVELS BY THE INDEPENDENT MYSTERY BOOKSELLERS ASSOCIATION

NOMINATED FOR THE EDGAR AND THE AGATHA AWARDS FOR THE YEAR’S BEST NOVEL

“Fascinating … multilayered.”

—The New York Times Book Review

“A definite recommendation for fans of Elizabeth George, P. D. James, and Ruth Rendell.”

—Library Journal

“Dreaming of the Bones will make you cry and catch your breath in surprise.” —Chicago Tribune

ALSO BY DEBORAH CROMBIEAll Shall Be WellA Share in DeathLeave the Grave GreenMourn Not Your DeadDreaming of the Bones*Kissed a Sad Goodbye*And Justice There Is None*

*Available from Bantam Books

A FINER END

A Bantam Book

PUBLISHING HISTORY

Bantam hardcover edition / May 2001

Bantam paperback edition / June 2002

Map illustration by Laura Hartman Maestro

All rights reserved.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to Samuel Weiser, Inc. for permission to reprint material from GLASTONBURY: AVALON OF THE HEART by Dion Fortune (York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser, 2000). Material used by permission.

Copyright © 2001 by Deborah Crombie

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

For information address: Bantam Books.

eISBN: 978-0-307-78940-2

Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, New York, New York.

v3.1

For my mother, who has always believed in me

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to my writer’s group once again for their unstinting support and patience: Steve Copling, Dale Denton, Jim Evans, John Hardie, Viqui Litman, Diane Sullivan, and Rickey Thornton. Added thanks to Diane Sullivan, RN, BSN, for advice on medical matters, and to Dr. Davis Wortman, director of music, St. Matthew’s Cathedral, Dallas, Texas, for his advice on the complexity of Gregorian chant.

I am also indebted to Marcia Talley and Carol Chase for their suggestions and additional readings of the manuscript; to my editor, Kate Miciak, for making this a better book; and to my agent, Nancy Yost, for her encouragement.

And last but certainly not least, thanks to Rick and Katie, for providing me a firm foundation.

Contents

Cover

Other Books by This Author

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Map

Part I Chapter OneChapter TwoChapter ThreeChapter FourChapter FiveChapter SixChapter Seven

Part II Chapter EightChapter NineChapter TenChapter ElevenChapter TwelveChapter ThirteenChapter FourteenChapter FifteenChapter SixteenChapter SeventeenChapter EighteenChapter NineteenChapter TwentyChapter Twenty-one

About the Author

PART I

CHAPTER ONE

Imagination is a great gift, a Divine power of the mind, and may be trained and educated to create and to receive only that which is true.

—FREDERICK BLIGH BOND,

FROM THE GATE OF REMEMBRANCE

THE SHADOWS CREPT into Jack Montfort’s small office, filling the corners with a comfortable dimness. He’d come to look forward to his time alone at the day’s end—he told himself he got more done without phones ringing and the occasional client calling in, but perhaps, he thought wryly, it was merely that he had little enough reason to go home.

Standing at his window, he gazed down at the pedestrians hurrying along either side of Magdalene Street, and wondered idly where they were all scurrying off to so urgently on a Wednesday evening. Across the street the Abbey gates had shut at five, and as he watched, the guard let the last few stragglers out from the grounds. The March day had been bright with a biting wind, and Jack imagined that anyone who’d been enticed by the sun into wandering around the Abbey’s fishpond would be chilled to the bone. Now the remaining buttresses of the great church would be silhouetted against the clear rose of the eastern sky, a fitting reward for those who had braved the cold.

He’d counted himself lucky to get the two-room office suite with its first-floor view over the Market Square and the Abbey gate. It was a prime spot, and the restrictions involved in renovating a listed building hadn’t daunted him. His years in London had given him experience enough in working round constraints, and he’d managed to update the rooms to his satisfaction without going over his budget. He’d hired a secretary to preside over his new reception area, and begun the slow task of building an architectural practice.

And if a small voice still occasionally whispered, Why bother? he did his best to ignore it and get on with things the best way he knew how, although he’d learned in the last few years that plans were ephemeral blueprints. Even as a child, he’d had his life mapped out: university with first-class honors, a successful career as an architect … wife … family. What he hadn’t bargained for was life’s refusal to cooperate. Now they were all gone—his mum, his dad … Emily. At forty, he was back in Glastonbury. It was a move he’d have found inconceivable twenty years earlier, but here he was, alone in his parents’ old house on Ashwell Lane, besieged by memories.

Rolling up his shirtsleeves, he sat at his desk and positioned a blank sheet of paper in the pool of light cast by his Anglepoise lamp. Sitting round feeling sorry for himself wasn’t going to do a bit of good, and he had a client expecting a bid tomorrow morning on a residential refurbishment. And besides, if he finished his work quickly, he could look forward to the possibility of dinner with Winnie.

The thought of the unexpected entry of Winifred Catesby into his life made him smile. Besieged by arranged dates as soon as his mother’s well-meaning friends decided he’d endured a suitable period of mourning, he’d found the effort of making conversation with needy divorcées more depressing than time spent alone. He’d begged off so often that the do-gooders had declared him hopeless and finally left him alone.

Relieved of unwelcome obligations, he’d found himself driving the five miles to Wells for the solace of the Evensong service in the cathedral more and more frequently. The proximity of the cathedral choir was one of the things that had drawn him back to Glastonbury—he’d sung at Wells as a student in the cathedral school, and the experience had given him a lifelong passion for church music.

And then one evening a month ago, as he found his usual place in the ornately carved stall in the cathedral choir, she had slipped in beside him—a pleasantly ordinary-looking woman in her thirties, with light brown hair escaping from beneath a floppy velvet hat, and a slightly upturned nose. He had not noticed her particularly, just nodded in the vague way one did as she took her seat. The service began, and in that moment when the first high reach of the treble voices sent a shiver down his spine, she had met his eyes and smiled.

Afterwards, they had chatted easily, naturally, and as they walked out of the cathedral together, deep in discussion of the merits of various choirs, he’d impulsively invited her for a drink at the pub down the street. It wasn’t until he’d helped her out of her coat that he’d seen the clerical collar.

Emily, always chiding him for his conservatism, would have been delighted by his consternation. And Emily, he felt sure, would have liked Winnie. He extended a finger to touch the photograph on his desktop and Emily gazed back at him, her dark eyes alight with humor and intelligence.

His throat tightened. Would the ache of his loss always lie so near the surface? Or would it one day fade to a gentle awareness, as familiar and unremarkable as a burr beneath the skin? But did he really want that? Would he be less himself without Emily’s constant presence in his mind?

He grinned in spite of himself. Emily would tell him to stop being maudlin and get on with the task at hand. With a sigh, he looked down at his paper, then blinked in surprise.

He held a pen in his right hand, although he didn’t remember picking it up. And the page, which had been blank a moment ago, was covered in an unfamiliar script. Frowning, he checked for another sheet beneath the paper. But there was only the one page, and as he examined it more closely, he saw that the small, precise script seemed to be in Latin. As he recalled enough of his schoolboy vocabulary to make a rough translation, his frown deepened.

Know ye what we … Jack puzzled a moment before deciding on builded, then there was something he couldn’t make out, then the script continued,… in Glaston. Meaning Glastonbury? It was fair as,… any earthly thing, and had I not loved it overmuch my spirit would not cling to dreams of all now vanished.

Ye love full well what we have loved. The time … Here Jack was forced to resort to the dog-eared Latin dictionary in his bookcase, and after concluding that the phrase had something to do with sleeping or sleepers, went impatiently on … to wake, for Glaston to rise against the darkness. We have … something … long for you … it is in your hands.…

After this sentence there was a trailing squiggle beginning with an E, which might have been a signature, perhaps “Edmund.”

Was this some sort of a joke, invisible ink that appeared when exposed to the light? But his secretary didn’t strike him as a prankster, and he’d taken the paper from a ream he’d just unwrapped himself. That left only the explanation that he had penned these words—alien in both script and language. But that was absurd. How could he have done so, unaware?

The walls of Jack’s office leaned in on him, and the silence, usually so soothing, seemed alive with tension. He felt breathless, as if all the air in the small room had been used up.

Who were “they,” who had built in Glastonbury and who wrote in Latin? The monks of the Abbey, he supposed, a logical answer. And “he,” who had “loved it overmuch,” whose spirit “still clung to dreams long vanished”? The ghost of a monk? Worse by the minute.

What did “rise against the darkness” mean? And what had any of it to do with him? The whole thing was completely daft; he refused to consider it any further.

Crumpling the page, Jack swiveled his chair round, hand lifted to toss it in the bin, then stopped and returned the paper to his desk, smoothing the creases out with his palm.

Frederick Bligh Bond. The name sprang into his mind, dredged from the recesses of his childhood. The architect who, just before the First World War, had undertaken the first excavations at Glastonbury Abbey, then revealed that he had been directed by messages from the Abbey monks. Had Bond received communications like this? But Bond had been loony. Cracked!

Ripping the sheet of paper in half, Jack dropped the pieces in the bin, slipped into his jacket, and, sketch pad in hand, took the stairs down to the street two at a time.

He stepped out into Benedict Street, fumbling with unsteady fingers to lock his office door. Across the Market Square, the leaded windows of the George & Pilgrims beckoned. A drink, he thought with a shiver, was just what he needed. He’d work on his proposal, and the crowded bar of the old inn would surely make an antidote to whatever it was that had just happened to him.

Tugging his collar up against the wind, he sidestepped a group of adolescent skateboarders who found the smooth pavement round the Market Cross a perfect arena. A particularly fierce gust sent a sheet of paper spiraling past his cheek. He grabbed at it in instinctive self-defense, glancing absently at what he held in his fingers. Pink. A flyer, from the Avalon Society. Glastonbury Assembly Rooms, Saturday, 7:30 to 9:30. An introduction to crystal energy and its healing powers, showing how the chakras and crystals correspond. Make elixirs and learn how to energize your environment.

“Oh, bloody perfect,” he muttered, crumpling the paper and tossing it back to the wind. That was the worst sort of nonsense, just the type of thing that drew the most extreme New Age followers to Glastonbury. Ley lines … crop circles … Druid magic on Glastonbury Tor, the ancient, conical hill that rose above the town like a beacon …

Although Jack, like generations of his family, had grown up in the Tor’s shadow, he’d never given any credence to all the mystical rubbish associated with it—nor to the myths that described Glastonbury as some sort of cosmic mother lode.

So why on earth had he just scribbled what seemed to be a garbled message from some long-dead monk? Was he losing his mind? A delayed reaction to grief, perhaps? He had read about post-traumatic stress syndrome—could that explain what had happened to him? But somehow he sensed it was more than that. For an instant, he saw again the small, precise script, a thing of beauty in itself, and felt a tug of familiarity in the cadence of the language.

He resumed his walk to the pub, then a thought stopped him midstride. What if—what if it were even remotely possible that he had made contact with the dead? Did that mean … could it mean he was capable of instigating contact at will? Emily—

No. He couldn’t even allow the idea of such a thing. That way lay madness.

A skateboarder whooshed past him, wheels clacking. “You taking root, mister?” the boy called out. Jack lurched unsteadily on, across the bottom of the High Street towards the George & Pilgrims. As he reached the pub, the heavy door swung open and a knot of revelers pushed past him. An escaping hint of laughter and smoke offered safe haven before the wind snatched sound and scent away; and then, he could have sworn, he heard, faintly, the sound of bells.

The cats slept in the farmyard, taking advantage of the midday warmth of the pale spring sun. Each had its own spot—a flower pot, the sagging step at the kitchen door, the bonnet of the old white van that Garnet Todd used to deliver her tiles—and only the occasional twitch of a feline ear or tail betrayed their awareness of the rustle of mice in the straw.

Garnet stood in the doorway of her workshop, wiping her hands on the leather apron she wore as a protection against the heat of the kiln. She had almost completed her latest commission, the restoration of the tile flooring in a twelfth-century church near the edge of Salisbury Plain. The manufacture of the tiles was painstaking work. The pattern suggested by the few intact bits of floor must be matched, using only the materials and techniques available to the original artisans. Then came the installation, a delicate process requiring hours spent on hands and knees, breathing the dank and musty atmosphere of the ancient church.

But Garnet never minded that. She was most comfortable with old things. Even her work as a midwife—although it had honored the Goddess—had not given her enough visceral connection with the past.

Her farm, a ramshackle place she’d bought more than twenty-five years ago, was proof of how little use she had for the present. The house stood high on the western flank of the Tor, its pitted stone facade in the path of a wind that had scoured down from the hilltop for years beyond memory. The sheep that grazed the grassy slope were her nearest neighbors, and for the most part she preferred their company.

At first she’d meant to put in the electricity and running water, but the years had passed and she’d got used to doing without. Lantern light brought ochre warmth and comforting shadows, and why should she drink the chemically poisoned water the town pumped out of its tanks when the spring on her property bubbled right up from the heart of the sacred hill? Enough had been done in this town to dishonor the old and holy things without her adding to the damage.

A cloud shadow raced down the hillside and for a moment the yard darkened. Garnet shivered. Dion, the old calico cat who ruled the rest of the brood with regal disdain, uncurled herself from the flower pot and came to rub against Garnet’s ankles. “You sense it, too, don’t you, old girl?” Garnet said softly, bending to stroke her. “Something’s brewing.”

Once, long ago, she had caught that scent in the air, once before she had felt that prickle of foreboding, and the memory of the outcome filled her with dread.

Glastonbury had always been a place of power, a pivot point in the ancient battle between the light and the dark. If that delicate balance were disturbed, Garnet knew, not even the Goddess could foresee the consequences.

• • •

Glastonbury did strange things to people—as Nick Carlisle had reason to know. He’d come here for the Festival, part of his plan to take a few months off, see a bit of the world, after leaving Durham with a first in philosophy and theology. On a mild evening in late June he had rounded a bend in the Shepton Mallet Road and seen the great conical hump of the Tor rising above the plain, St. Michael’s Tower on its summit standing squarely against the bloodred western sky.

That had been more than a year ago, and he was still here, working in a New Age bookshop across from the Abbey for little more than minimum wage, living in a caravan in a farmer’s field in Compton Dundon—and trying to forget all that he had left behind.

He often came to the George & Pilgrims for a pint after work. A fine thing, when a pub did duty as his home away from home, but then his caravan didn’t count for much—a place to put the faded jeans, T-shirts, and sweatshirts that made up his meager wardrobe, along with the books he’d brought with him from Durham. The small fridge smelled of sour milk, and the two-ring gas cooker was as temperamental as his mother.

The thought of his mum made him grimace. Elizabeth Carlisle had raised her son alone from his infancy, and in the process had managed to make quite a successful career for herself penning North Country Aga sagas. She had managed her son’s life as efficiently as she did her characters’, and had then pronounced herself affronted by his resentment.

Furious at his mother’s usurping of his responsibilities, he had convinced himself that he would be able to sort out his life as soon as he escaped her orbit. But freedom had not turned out to be the panacea he’d expected: he had no more idea what he wanted to do with his life than he’d had a year ago. He only knew that something held him in Glastonbury, and yet he burned with a restless and unfulfilled energy.

From his corner table, he surveyed the pub’s clientele as he sipped his beer. There was an unusual yuppie element this evening, young men sporting designer suits, accompanied by polished girls in skimpy clothes. Nick could almost feel the rumble of displeasure among the regulars, clustered at the bar in instinctive solidarity.

One of the girls caught his eye and smiled. Nick looked away. Predators in makeup and spandex, girls meant nothing but trouble. First they liked his looks, then, once they found out who his mother was, they saw him as a ready-made meal ticket. But he’d learned his lesson well, and would not let himself fall into that trap again.

Turning his back on the group, he found his attention held by the man sitting alone at the bar’s end. The man was notable not only for his large size and fair hair, but also because his face was familiar. Nick had seen him often in Magdalene Street—he must work near the bookshop—and once or twice they had exchanged a friendly nod. Tonight he sat hunched over his drink, his usually amiable countenance set in a scowl.

Intrigued, Nick saw that he seemed to be writing or sketching on a pad, and that every few moments he raised visibly trembling fingers to brush a lock of hair from his forehead.

When Nick made his way to the bar for a refill, the blond man was staring fixedly at his beer glass, his pen poised over the paper. Nick glanced at the pad. It held neat architectural drawings and figures, and, scrawled haphazardly across the largest sketch, a few lines in what looked to be Latin. It is for my sins Glaston suffered … he translated silently.

“You’re a classics scholar?” Nick said aloud, surprised.

“What?” The man blinked owlishly at him. For a moment Nick wondered if he were drunk, but he’d been nursing the same drink since Nick had noticed him.

Nick tapped the sketch pad. “This. I don’t often see anyone writing in Latin.”

Glancing down, the man paled. “Oh, Christ. Not again.”

“Sorry?”

“No, no. It’s quite all right.” The man shook his head and seemed to make a great effort to focus on Nick. “Jack Montfort. I’ve seen you, haven’t I? You work in the bookshop.”

“Nick Carlisle.”

“My office is just upstairs from your shop.” Montfort gestured at Nick’s empty glass. “What are you drinking?”

Montfort bought two more pints, then turned back to Nick. Now he seemed eager to talk. “Working at the bookshop—I suppose you read a good bit?”

“Like a kid in a sweetshop. The manager’s a good egg, turns a blind eye. And I try not to dog-ear the merchandise.”

“I have to admit I’ve never been in the place. Interesting stuff, is it?”

“Some of it’s absolute crap,” Nick replied with a grin. “UFOs. Crop circles—everyone knows that’s a hoax. But some of it … well, you have to wonder.… Odd things do seem to happen in Glastonbury.”

“You could say that,” Montfort muttered into his beer, his scowl returning. Then he seemed to try to shake off his preoccupation. “You’re not from around here, are you? Do I detect a hint of Yorkshire?”

“It’s Northumberland, actually. I came for the Festival last year”—Nick shrugged—“and I’m still here.”

“Ah, the rock festival at Pilton. Somehow I never managed to get there. I suppose I missed something memorable.”

“Mud.” Nick grinned. “Oceans of it. And slogging about in some farmer’s field, being bitten by midges, drinking bad beer, and queuing for hours to use the toilets. Still …”

“There was something,” Montfort prompted.

“Yeah. I’d like to have seen it in its heyday, the early seventies, you know? Glastonbury Fayre, they called it. That must have been awesome. And even that didn’t compare to the original Glastonbury Festival—in terms of quality, not quantity.”

“Original festival?” Montfort repeated blankly.

“Started in 1914 by the composer Rutland Boughton,” Nick answered. “Boughton was extremely talented—his opera The Immortal Hour still holds the record for the longest-running operatic production. All sorts of luminaries were involved in the Festival: Shaw, Edward Elgar, Vaughan Williams, D. H. Lawrence. And Glastonbury had its own contributors to the cultural revival, people like Frederick Bligh Bond and Alice Buckton.… And then there was the business of Bond’s friend Dr. John Goodchild and the finding of the ‘Grail’ in Bride’s Well. That caused a few ripples.…” Aware that he was babbling, Nick paused and drank the foam off his pint.

Looking up, he saw that Montfort was staring at him. Nick flushed. “Sorry. I get a bit carried away some—”

“You know about Bligh Bond?”

The intensity in Montfort’s voice took Nick by surprise. “Well, it’s a fascinating story, isn’t it? Bond’s knowledge was prodigious, his excavations at the Abbey were proof of that. But I suppose one can’t blame the Church for being a bit uncomfortable with the idea that Bond had received his digging instructions from monks dead five centuries or more.”

“Uncomfortable?” Montfort snorted. “They fired him. He never worked successfully as an architect again and, if I remember rightly, died in poverty. If the man had had an ounce of bloody sense, he’d have kept his mouth shut.”

“He felt he had to share it, though, didn’t he? I’d say Bond was honest to a fault. And I don’t think he ever actually claimed he’d made contact with spirits. He thought he might have merely accessed some part of his own subconscious.”

“Do you believe it’s possible, whatever the source?”

“Bond’s not the only case. There have been well-documented instances where people have known things about the past that couldn’t be accounted for otherwise.” Glancing at the paper Montfort had partially covered with his hand, Nick felt a fizz of excitement. “But you’re not talking hypothetically, are you?”

“This is”—Montfort shook his head—“daft. Too daft to tell anyone. But the coincidence, meeting you here … I—” He looked around, as if suddenly aware of the proximity of other customers, and lowered his voice.

“I was sitting at my desk tonight, and I wrote … something. In Latin I haven’t used since I was at school, and I had no memory of writing it. I tore the damned thing up.… Then this.…” He ran his fingertips across the scrawl on the sketch pad.

“Bugger,” Nick breathed, awed. “I’d swap my mum to have that happen to me.”

“But why me? I didn’t ask for this,” Montfort retorted fiercely. “I’m an architect, but my knowledge of the Abbey is no more than you’d expect from anyone who grew up here. I’m not particularly religious. I’ve never had any interest in spiritualism—or otherworldly things of any sort, for that matter.”

Nick pondered this for a moment. “I doubt these things are random. Maybe you have some connection to the Abbey that you’re not consciously aware of.”

“That’s a big help,” Montfort said, but there was a gleam of humor in his bright blue eyes. “So how do I find out what it is, and why this is happening to me?”

“Maybe I could help. You know it wasn’t Bond who did the actual writing, but his friend, John Bartlett. Bond guided him by asking questions.”

“You want to play Bond to my Bartlett, then?”

“You said you came from Glastonbury. That seems as good a place to start as any.”

“My father’s family’s been in Glastonbury and round about for eons, I should think. He was a solicitor. A large, serious man, very sure of where he stood in the world.” Montfort took a sip of his beer and his voice softened as he continued. “Now, my mother, she was a different sort altogether. She loved stories, loved to play make-believe with us when we were children.”

“Us?”

“My cousins and I. Duncan and Juliet. My aunt and uncle had a penchant for Shakespeare. We always visited them in Cheshire on our holidays. It was a different world. The canals, and then the hills of Wales rising in the distance.…”

Once more he fell silent, his eyes half closed. Nick was about to prompt him again, when, without warning, Montfort grasped the pen. His hand began to move steadily across the paper.

Nick translated the Latin as the words began to form. Deo juvante … With God’s help … you shall make it right.… Did that, he wondered, apply to him as well? Could he somehow set right what he had done?

In that instant, Nick knew why he had come to Glastonbury, and he knew why he had stayed.

Faith Wills rested her forehead against the cool plastic of the toilet seat, panting, her eyes swimming with the tears brought on by retching. She had nothing left to throw up but the lining of her stomach, yet somehow she was going to have to pull herself together, go out, and face the smell of her mother’s breakfast.

It was a bacon-and-egg morning—her mum believed all children should go off to school well fortified for the day. They alternated cooked eggs, or porridge, or brown toast and marmite; and on this Thursday morning in March, Faith had struck the worst possible option.

A whiff of bacon crept into the bathroom. Her stomach heaved treacherously just as her younger brother, Jonathan, pounded on the door. “You think you’re effing Madonna in there or something? Hurry bloody up, Faith!”

Without raising her head, Faith said, “Shut up,” but it came out a whisper.

Then her mother’s voice—“Jonathan, you watch your language,” and the crisp rap of knuckles on the door. “Faith, whatever’s the matter with you? You’re going to be late, and make Jon and Meredith late as well.”

“Coming.” Unsteadily, Faith pushed herself up, flushed the toilet, then blew her nose on a piece of toilet tissue. Easing the door open, she found her mum waiting, hands on hips, and beyond her, Jon, and her sister, Meredith, all three faces set in varying degrees of irritation. “What is this, a committee?” she asked, trying for a bit of attitude.

Her mother ignored her, taking her chin in firm fingers and turning her face towards the wan light filtering in from the sitting room. “You’re white as a sheet,” she pronounced. “Are you ill?”

Faith swallowed convulsively against the kitchen smells, then managed to croak, “I’m okay. Just exam nerves.”

Her dad emerged from the bedroom, tying his tie. “How many times have I told you not to leave studying until the last minute? And you know how important your GCSEs—”

“Just let me get my books, okay?”

“Don’t take that tone with me, young lady.” Her dad jerked tight the knot of his tie and reached for her. His fingertips dug into the flesh of her bare arm.

“Sorry,” Faith mumbled, not meeting his eyes. Tugging free, she escaped to the room she shared with her sister and, once inside, leaned against the door, praying for a moment’s peace before Meredith came back. It was a child’s room, she thought, seeing it suddenly anew. The walls were covered with posters of rock stars, the twin beds with bedraggled stuffed animals. Her hockey uniform spilled from her satchel; the sheets of music for that afternoon’s choir practice lay scattered on the floor. All things that had mattered so much to her—all utterly meaningless now.

She wouldn’t be fine, she realized, closing her eyes against the tide of despair that swept over her. Nothing would ever be fine again.

And she couldn’t tell her parents. In her mother’s perfect world, seventeen-year-olds didn’t start the day with their heads in the toilet, and her dad—well, she couldn’t think about that.

She had promised never to tell, and that was all that mattered.

Faith hugged herself, pressing her arms against the new and painful swelling of her breasts. Never, never, never. The word became a litany as she swayed gently.

Ever.

CHAPTER TWO

Glastonbury is the one great religious foundation of our British forefathers in England which has survived without a break the period of successive conquests of Saxon and Norseman, and its august history carries us back to the time of the earliest Christian settlement in Britain.

—FREDERICK BLIGH BOND,

FROM AN ARCHITECTURAL HANDBOOK

OF GLASTONBURY ABBEY

ON A SOFT evening in late June, Gemma James stood beside Duncan Kincaid in the pew of St. John’s Church, Hampstead. They had come to hear Kincaid’s neighbor, Major Keith, sing in the choir at St. John’s Evensong service.

Brought up in the spare tradition of Methodist chapel, Gemma had not learned to feel at ease in the Anglican Church. She watched Kincaid closely, standing when he stood, kneeling awkwardly when he knelt, and envying the ease with which he made his responses. Her mum would be horrified to see her here, she thought with a small smile; but Gemma was used to her mother’s dismay, given her choice of career.

The music, however, made up for her discomfort with the order of service. Gemma avidly followed the program in her leaflet: first the lovely opening prayer, then a Psalm, then the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis.

Then, with a rustle of movement, the choir rose again and began to sing, the voices coming in one after another, each more joyous than the last. The sound struck Gemma with a force almost physical; so rich was it, so full, that it seemed as if it displaced the very air. She shivered, blinking back tears.

Kincaid glanced at her, eyebrow raised, and put his arm round her shoulders. “Cold?” he mouthed.

Shaking her head, she found the piece in her leaflet. Ave Maria, by Robert Parsons. Hail Mary, full of grace; the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, read the English translation.

Gemma closed her eyes, letting the soaring, pulsing sound carry her with it, and the rest of the service passed as if in a dream.

“You all right?” Kincaid asked as they filed out afterwards. The sun, low in the sky, cast the gnarled trees in the sloping churchyard into deep shadow.

“The music …”

“Lovely, wasn’t it? Good choir at St. John’s.” He whistled under his breath. “I promised the Major we’d buy him a drink. The Freemason’s Arms, you think? It’s a nice enough evening to sit outside.”

Gemma gazed at him in consternation. Tall, slender, his unruly chestnut hair falling over his forehead, looking down at her with an expression of interested inquiry—he made a picture of the perfect sensitive man. So why did she suddenly feel they might as well be from different planets?

How could he take such music for granted? Had he not felt that the glory of it was almost beyond bearing? The gap between their perceptions seemed immense.

“I—I promised Toby I’d be home for bath and story time tonight.” But she lied. The truth was she needed time to absorb what she’d heard, and that she felt too burdened by what she hadn’t brought herself to tell him to make small talk. “I’ll take the tube,” Gemma said. “You wait for the Major. Give him my best.”

“You’re sure?” Kincaid asked, his disappointment visible for an instant before he schooled his expression into pleasant neutrality.

“I’ll see you at the Yard in the morning.” Slipping her hand round the back of his neck, she kissed him quickly, a silent apology. Before she could change her mind, she turned and strode away.

But before crossing Heath Street to the Underground station, positioned at the very top of Hampstead High Street, she paused. The view from these upper reaches, south over the rooftops of London, never failed to inspire her. She loved to imagine Hampstead as the village it had once been, a green and leafy retreat, its air free of the noxious fumes and fog that choked London below.

That vision made a startling contrast to the bowels of Hampstead tube station, the deepest in London. Gemma found a seat on the crowded train and did her best to ignore the hygienic deficiencies of the man next to her, letting the echo of the choir reverberate in her head. So intense had been the demands of the past few months that even half an hour on a train was welcome time to gather her thoughts.

The death of Kincaid’s ex-wife two months before had left him with an eleven-year-old son whose existence he had not previously suspected. His struggle to deal with the complexities of that relationship, as well as the guilt he felt over the death of the boy’s mother, had put considerable strain on his relationship with Gemma. Then, just when she’d begun to think they’d regained their equilibrium, she’d been faced with a particularly difficult case and her deep sense of connection to one of the suspects.

In the end, she’d been unwilling to give up the bond she and Kincaid had forged, but the episode had left her feeling unsettled. She sensed change in the offing, and it made her want to dig her heels into the present and hang on.

She left the tube at Islington, walking slowly through the familiar streets towards her garage flat as the summer evening faded towards twilight. Hazel, her landlady, looked after Gemma’s son, Toby, and the arrangement had given Gemma as idyllic a year as a single, working mum could possibly wish.

Letting herself into the garden by the garage gate, Gemma thought she might find her son and Hazel’s daughter, Holly, still playing outside. But the flagged patio showed only signs of hastily abandoned toys, and from an open window she heard a squeal of laughter.

“Am I missing a party?” she teased, peeking in the kitchen door.

“Mummy!” Toby slid from his chair at the table and darted to her, throwing his arms round her thighs.

She picked him up for a hug and a nuzzle, noticing that it seemed to take more effort than it had a week ago. “I do believe you’ve been eating stones,” she teased, pinching him and setting him down with a make-believe groan.

“We made play-dough,” Hazel explained, coming in from the sitting room. “Flour, water, and food coloring. Nontoxic, thank goodness, as I think they’ve eaten more than they’ve modeled. Supper? There’s cheese soup and fresh-baked bread.”

Hazel Cavendish was one of those women who made everything look effortless, and Gemma had long ago given up envy for unadulterated admiration. “Cheese soup’s my favorite,” she said, “but”—she glanced at the children, Toby insisting that his mottled green lump was a dinosaur, Holly claiming just as adamantly that it was a cat—“they seem content enough for a bit. Would you mind if I practiced my piano first?”

“Take a glass of wine with you,” commanded Hazel, pouring her something chilled and white from the fridge.

Glass in hand, Gemma made her way into the cluttered sitting room. The piano stood at the back, amid the scattered games and toys and squashy, well-worn furniture. It was old, and not in terribly good condition, but Gemma was grateful just to have something to play. There was certainly no room for an instrument in her tiny flat, even had she been able to afford one.

She slid onto the bench, pushing a strand of hair from her cheek, and poised her fingers over the keyboard. In some small way, she could attempt to reconnect with the feeling she’d had in the church. Her music book stood on the rack—Bosworth’s The Adult Beginner, or “the green book,” as she thought of it—open to Prelude in C. She played each note carefully—right hand, left hand … louder, softer—then the last two staves, both hands together. Coordination was still a struggle, but each time she practiced it got easier. Her teacher was pleased with her progress, and Gemma guarded her Saturday lesson time fiercely.

She continued through her exercises, stretching out the brief minutes in which her mind held nothing but the order of the notes and the way they resonated in the air. But all too soon she’d finished, and she knew she’d only been avoiding thinking about the problem she’d been wrestling with for months.

In the two years since she had become Superintendent Duncan Kincaid’s partner, their personal relationship had sometimes strained their working relationship. But it had also enriched it—they knew each other, could anticipate one another’s ideas and reactions, and their partnership had evolved into a finely tuned and creative entity, the sum greater than the parts.

All this Gemma realized, and she also was aware of how much it had meant to both of them to spend their days together, to share their lives so intimately.

But she hadn’t joined the force to be a career sergeant. She was due for promotion, and if she didn’t make a move soon, she’d be considered a nonstarter. Sidelined, her career shot before her thirtieth birthday, all her ambitions come to naught.

A simple enough conclusion, put in those terms. But promotion to inspector would mean a new duty assignment, possibly with another force, and the end of her partnership with Kincaid. And she hadn’t been able to bring herself to tell him what she’d decided to do.

She stood, closing the lid on the piano keys with a thump. It wouldn’t get easier, so she might as well stop making excuses and get on with it. Tomorrow, first thing, she would take him aside and say what she must. And then she would face the consequences.

From where Andrew Catesby stood, on the summit of Wirral Hill, he imagined he could just make out the estuary of the River Brue, the slight dip in the land that marked the gateway to the sea. To the north rose the Mendips, to the south the lesser Polden Ridge, and to the west, between him and the sea, stretched the wide, flat expanse of the Somerset Levels. Just when, he wondered, had he lost all joy in the prospect? Was there nothing safe from the anger that seemed to seep from him, staining all it touched?

Beside him, Phoebe, his spaniel, tugged at her lead, and Andrew freed her for a brief run before the light faded altogether. He turned, looking down at the lights of the Safeway on the Street Road, and beyond it the rising flank of the town itself, and behind that, the ever-present shadow of the Tor. Glastonbury was not really an island, of course; it had not been one within the span of human memory. It was a peninsula, linked to the higher ground to the east by a neck of layered limestone. But there had been many times when Glastonbury must have seemed an island to those travelers arriving from the west—even now, with the sea-water contained by extensive seawalls and deep-cut rhynes, heavy rains could bring the waters lapping once more at the foot of Wirral Hill. Andrew much preferred that appellation to the more commonplace Wearyall Hill, a direct reference to the Joseph of Arimathea myth. Below him on the slope grew the famous Glastonbury Thorn—a dubious tourist attraction, in his opinion.

After the Crucifixion, according to legend, Joseph brought twelve companions by sea to Glastonbury. The long, humped back of the hill proved the travelers’ first sight of land, and as a grateful and weary Joseph climbed ashore, he planted his staff of hawthorn in the earth of the hillside. The staff took root and a flowering tree burst forth, a sign to Joseph and his companions that here they should build a temple, the first Christian church in England.

Of course, the original thorn had long since died, replaced by a spindly, windswept shrub Andrew had difficulty believing could inspire awe in the most gullible pilgrim. But then, he dealt in facts, not fiction; he preferred things that could be measured, sampled, and recorded.

It seemed to him that the history of Glastonbury was so rich that it needed no embellishing with myths and questionable fables, and that the archaeology of the area provided an endless—and verifiable—source of discovery. The casual way his students accepted the blatant rubbish circulated about Glastonbury infuriated him. If it was drama they wanted, he’d give them the savage execution of the last abbot of Glastonbury, Richard Whiting, hanged on the Tor by Henry VIII’s henchmen. As soon as Whiting was dead, his head was struck off and his body cut into quarters, one to be displayed at Wells, one at Bath, one at Ilchester, and one at Bridgwater. His severed head the king’s men placed over the great gateway of the Abbey itself.

Whiting had been a kindly old man, an unlikely candidate for fate to choose as a martyr to a king’s greed, but the abbot had gone to his death with quiet dignity. Andrew never climbed the Tor without thinking of Richard Whiting’s execution, and he resented bitterly those who would make a theme park of one of Glastonbury’s most sacred spots.

In this he had his sister Winifred’s support. As an Anglican priest, she found the New Age marketing of Glastonbury as difficult to deal with as he did. Of course, both town and Abbey had a long history of embellishment, ending with the scam of all time, the digging up in 1191 of King Arthur’s and Queen Guinevere’s supposed bones from the Abbey churchyard.

Winnie, always one to see the best in people, insisted that the Abbey monks had acted in good faith, but Andrew was more cynical. After the devastating fire of 1184, the Abbey had been in dire need of funds for rebuilding. The “newly” discovered relics meant pilgrims—and therefore revenue. Human nature had not changed that much in eight hundred years, he thought grimly.

Realizing it was almost fully dark, Andrew whistled for Phoebe and reclipped her lead as he turned to retrace their path down the hill. Phoebe picked her way through the tussocky grass, and as Andrew followed he considered the lecture he needed to prepare for tomorrow’s sixth-form history class. Sixth-formers were always difficult—full of their own importance as they neared freedom and university—but he had hopes for one girl in particular, a scholar with an interest in archaeology, but then he had been disappointed before. It didn’t pay to invest oneself too deeply in adolescents.

Winnie teased him about his students, saying he’d been born in the wrong century. According to her, he’d have made a perfect nineteenth-century gentleman archaeologist, surrounded by rapt disciples, but Andrew thought it unlikely that the coterie of scruffy graduate students who usually staffed his digs could be described as “rapt.”

He and his sister had enjoyed an unusual rapport since childhood. Having lost their parents quite young, they’d become particularly close and when, after five years in London, Winnie had been given a parish near Glastonbury, he had felt his life complete. He supposed he’d taken for granted that things would go on as they were indefinitely—in fact, he’d even considered selling his house on Hillhead and moving into the Vicarage with Winnie. They had always shared interests, particularly their love of music, and it had been their custom to spend their free time together.

But all that had changed since Winnie had become involved with Jack Montfort last winter.

In Winnie’s company, Andrew had been content—with his teaching, his archaeological work, and his activism in the community—but now these once-beloved things seemed pointless.

The Thorn loomed ahead of him, its twisted silhouette a darker shadow against the dusk, and soon afterwards he reached the stile where the path intersected his street. Winnie loved the house on Hillhead, with its sweeping vista of the Somerset Levels, and she had helped him decorate it in a spare style that enhanced the view. Here they had spent many a winter evening in front of the fire, and in summer had lingered past dusk on the terraced patio.

As Andrew entered the house, its emptiness seemed to mock him. He hung Phoebe’s lead neatly on the hook beside the door, then scooped her evening portion of kibble into her bowl. But after a quick perusal of the fridge, he lost any enthusiasm for the preparation of his own meal.

Instead, he poured himself a solitary glass of red wine and took glass and bottle into the darkened sitting room. Through his uncurtained windows, he could see faint lights twinkling in the plain below, as remote as the stars pricking through the velvet expanse of the southern sky.

His life seemed as if it were collapsing around him, forming a dark, cold weight in his chest that gnawed at him like a tumor. He’d tried seeking solace elsewhere—a mistaken attempt with consequences so disastrous he strove to put the incident from his mind.

Never had he dreamed that anything—or anyone—could separate him from his sister, or that he would find her absence so devastating. If ever he had shared Winnie’s faith, this blow would have shattered it—how could any god inflict such loss upon him, after what he had suffered? Nor would any god right it, he thought as he poured another glass of wine. That, he could see clearly now, was entirely up to him.

Fiona Finn Allen had awakened that morning with the smell of her childhood lingering from a half-remembered dream. Crisp and piney-green as the air of a summer morning on Loch Ness, the scent stayed with her throughout the day, tickling the edge of her awareness. It filled her with a deep, almost physical longing to paint, but she resisted the impulse.

In the past few months, whenever she’d touched brush to canvas, she had painted the same thing—a child’s face, a little girl perhaps four or five years old. Where the image came from, or why it persisted, she did not know, but its occurrence left her feeling headachy and ill, and she’d begun to suspect that something was terribly wrong.

Kneeling in the heavily mulched rose bed, she ruthlessly deadheaded the spent blooms and tried to shake off her malaise. Soon she’d go in and put the last touches to her vegetable soup. Her friend Winnie Catesby was coming to lunch.

It was an odd friendship. She had never been able to accept the primary tenets of the Christian faith and Winnie was an Anglican priest, but their relationship was one Fiona had come to treasure in the year since she and Winnie had met at a council meeting. Winnie had the rare gift of making others feel as if they truly deserved her attention, and the time spent in her company had helped Fiona deal with the grief that had colored her life for so long.

That pain not even her husband had been able to heal, although he had given her much joy in other ways. Sitting back in the sun-warmed earth, she thought of how beautiful Bram had been when they had first met, and she smiled.

Even now, with the once-golden locks cut short and thinning, and the inevitable slight softening of the fine features, she found him irresistible.

How fortunate she was that fate had seen fit to bring them both, like ancient pilgrims washed ashore, to the first Pilton Festival—Glastonbury Fayre. She and Bram had found their destiny in Glastonbury, and had never looked back. Bram had sold her first few canvases on the street. Their success had enabled him to find gallery space for her work. It was not long before he owned the gallery, and in the years since, he’d developed an international clientele for her work and that of other painters he had taken on.

They’d made a good life for themselves, she and Bram, built on their mutual efforts and their love for each other. But sometimes in her dreams she saw that life for the fragile thing it was, and she would wake with a start of fear.

Jack stood, hesitating, before the Glastonbury Assembly Rooms, an ugly square block of a structure built in the 1860s, partly from stone salvaged from the Abbey precincts. Nor was the alleyway that led from the High Street to the building prepossessing in the dusk—it smelled of damp and cat urine, and the tattered shreds of posters pasted to its doors made a sad collage.

But the poster advertising that evening’s event had not yet suffered the ravages of time and weather. Simon Fitzstephen’s ascetic face was familiar—Jack had seen it often enough on Fitzstephen’s book jackets since he had started browsing in Nick Carlisle’s New Age bookshop. An Anglican priest who had given up active ministry to pursue his studies, Fitzstephen’s books were on the more conservative end of the shop’s offerings—the author was a local man, and a respected authority on the early Church and on Grail mythology. What would Fitzstephen think, Jack wondered, if he knew about his correspondence the past few months with a dead monk?

Like a jewel set in the greensward the Abbey lay … a city sufficient unto itself. We entered through the eastern gate … gone now … all gone.…

My father, always sharp in his dealings, meant to make one less mouth to feed and yet cheat the Abbey of his gift, for I was a sickly child and he foresaw I would not reach my manhood. My mother lamented, but my father would not hear her.…

The Abbot blessed me, his hands upon my head. Then they stripped me, washed me, clothed me in the rough brown habit. I was pledged to God, yet I knew nothing.…

So today’s script had read, the first in several weeks. Although it had been almost three months since the strange writings had begun, Jack had yet to tell Winnie about the communications from Edmund of Glastonbury. He feared she’d be appalled by something that smacked of spiritualism—and he felt guilty over the fact that he’d been unable to silence the nagging hope that somehow, sometime, this strange gift would put him in touch with his dead wife.

Tonight, he told himself he had come here merely to satisfy his curiosity—to ask, for instance, when the Abbey’s east gate had fallen into disuse; or when the Church had discontinued the practice of accepting children into the Order as gifts.

But he knew there was more to it than that. He needed to forge a connection with the past: to see the Abbey as the monk Edmund had seen it, to imagine the universe in Edmund’s terms.

Still, he hesitated. This seemed to him a public declaration of intent, as if he were crossing the line that separated skeptic from fool, and if he took that step he could no longer keep his experience secret from all but Nick.

Then he thought of the last line from his pen that day:

I did not weep.

He climbed the steps and pulled open the Assembly Rooms’ door.

CHAPTER THREE

The one test is the quality of the message, whether it be truthful or otherwise, edifying or lacking in helpful qualities.

—FREDERICK BLIGH BOND,

FROM THE GATE OF REMEMBRANCE

LIFE, THOUGHT WINIFRED Catesby, has a way of delivering the perfect one-two punch when you’re least expecting it. She was thirty-six years old and single—and it had been at least a decade since she’d seriously contemplated any alteration to that condition. Although Anglican priests could marry, not many men were willing to play second fiddle to God, or even second fiddle to the demands of her job, for that matter. And as Winifred was not beautiful, and she had never been blessed with the gift of flirtation, she’d thought herself fairly well reconciled to celibacy and the comfortable routine she had established with her brother, Andrew.

And then she’d found herself sitting beside Jack Montfort in the choir stall of Wells Cathedral, and nothing since had been the same.

On this June evening they were meeting for dinner at the Café Galatea on the High Street, a cheerful restaurant with a decidedly hippie ambience and surprisingly good food. Although Jack teased her good-naturedly about the vegetarian fare, which he referred to as “bird food,” the café seemed to have become their regular spot to meet after work.

Coasting to a stop at the Street Road roundabout, she gave herself a swift inspection in the rearview mirror. Hair okay, lipstick okay, nose could definitely be a bit more patrician.… Oh, well, it would have to do, as would her serviceable skirt and jumper, and the clerical collar.

She’d come straight from a meeting with the archdeacon, and she was running late. It had been an even more taxing day than usual, arranging to cover the obligations of two parish vicars who were away. But she had been fortunate, young as she was, and a woman, to be appointed rural dean, over and above the duties required by her own parish of St. Mary’s, and she reminded herself of that whenever she was tempted to whinge.

She slowed as she passed the Abbey, gazing through the wrought-iron fence at its grounds. As a child she’d felt a secret inclination towards the cloistered life; even now, a breath of the Abbey air made her feel strangely peaceful. Had the pilgrims come by the thousands hoping for a dispensation to save their souls, or because a glimpse of the Abbey itself was as close as they might get to paradise?

Turning into the High, she was lucky enough to spot a parking place on the street a few doors past the Galatea. She swung the Fiat into the space, then walked back to the café, stopping to peer into the window.

The café’s door stood open to the air. Jack sat at their usual table, halfway towards the back, reading something intently. Free to study him for a moment, Winnie tried to consider him dispassionately. A large, solidly built man with a shock of fair hair, and a rugged, hook-nosed face, he had the most piercingly blue eyes she had ever encountered. He might have played rugby—certainly he was not the weedy vicar type she had always found attractive. The thought made her smile, and in that instant, Jack looked up and saw her.

By the time she reached the table he had shuffled his papers out of the way. “Long day?” he asked, giving her a swift kiss. “You look a bit knackered. I’ve ordered some wine.”

“You’re a dear,” she replied, relaxing into her chair with a sigh as he poured her a glass of the Burgundy already open on the table. “We had more than the usual squabbling and backbiting in the Deanery chapter meeting.”

Jack studied her with the intense gaze she still found disconcerting. “I can tell. You’ve that strained look about the eyes.”

She took a sip of the wine already waiting, let it linger on her tongue, then nodded towards his briefcase. “Working?”

“Mmmmm,” he answered noncommittally. “Hungry?”

“Ravenous. All that fresh air.”

“Don’t tell me you’ve come on that dreadful bike?” he asked, grinning.

“No, more’s the pity. It would have been a lovely day for it, but I had to go too far afield.” They had an ongoing disagreement about her bike, which he considered a threat to life and limb. But she loved the old thing, and after her London parish she cherished the freedom she felt as she made her daily rounds on it. There were times, however, when the weather or the distance of her calls forced her to use the serviceable Fiat that had come with the job. She narrowed her eyes, giving him a mock glare. “I’ve no intention of giving it up, you know, no matter how much you nag me.”

“Then we had better build up your strength,” he replied wryly as the waitress arrived at their table.

Over dinner, they chatted companionably about their respective days, but Winnie soon sensed that in spite of his solicitousness, Jack was distracted. As he waited for her to finish eating, he lapsed into silence, and she was seized by a sudden fear that he had tired of her and couldn’t quite bring himself to say so.

Well, if that was the case, there was no point putting it off, she scolded herself. Gripping the stem of her wineglass tightly between her fingers, she asked, “Jack, is something wrong?”

He gave her a startled glance; his gaze strayed to the briefcase he’d left on the table. He frowned. After a moment’s hesitation, he said, “No. Yes. I don’t know. There’s something I haven’t told you.”

Winnie’s heart sank, and she braced herself for bad news.

Jack, however, seemed unaware of her discomfort. “Something very odd has been happening to me these past few months, Winnie, and I don’t know what to make of it. I haven’t said anything because … well, I was afraid you’d think I was a bit mad. And because it seemed somehow that telling you would give it a credence I wasn’t willing to acknowledge.”

“What are you talking about?” Winnie asked, now utterly baffled.

“I suppose you hear all sorts of odd things.…”

“Mostly ordinary things, really. People worried about their families, illness, debt … Jack, are you in some sort of trouble?”

“Nothing like that. Although that might be easier.” He hesitated a moment longer, then reached for his briefcase and removed a sheet of paper. “Read this.”

She took it curiously. It was an ordinary sheet of foolscap. On it a few Latin phrases had been penned in a small, square hand. Beneath that were parts of sentences scrawled in English, in a hand she recognized instantly as Jack’s.

At night the candles shone forth from the windows of the Great Church as stars from the heavens.… Our voices rang round roof and cloister … the gargoyles shouted praises to Our Lord. This you know.… That which was hidden will … out. Out of a thought will come truth. Fear not.…

“What is this?” she asked, looking up at Jack. “Are you translating something?”

“You might say that. Only, I wrote it. Both parts.”

“You wrote the Latin? But that’s not your handwriting. I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I.” He leaned forward, elbows on the table, pushing his wineglass aside. “The first few times it happened I had no awareness of it at all—just had to assume I’d written it because there was no other explanation. I had a few stiff drinks after that, I can tell you.

“But now … especially today—with this one”—he touched the page with his fingertip—“it’s like I’m watching myself from a distance, but I feel disconnected from what’s happening.”

“But you understand what you’re writing—”

“No. Not until afterwards. And then I struggle a good bit with the translation.”

Winnie stared at him. “But surely you can control it if you want—”

“It doesn’t occur to me. You do think I’m daft, don’t you? I can see it in your face.”

She made an effort to collect herself. “No, I … of course I don’t. But you should see a doctor, have a physical. Maybe there’s something—”

“A brain tumor?” He shook his head. “No other symptoms. Nor of any other physical ailment I’ve been able to find. Believe me, I’ve tried.”

“Then—”

“I suppose I could be suffering from some sort of mental breakdown, but I seem to be coping well enough otherwise. Wouldn’t you say?”

“Of course,” Winnie hastened to reassure him. He seemed as normal and as capable as anyone she had ever met, and that made his story all the more disconcerting.

“Good. That’s something, anyway,” he said with the ghost of a smile. “Having ruled out physical ailments, I started to research. There are parallels to something that’s happened before.”

Realizing she was still clutching her wineglass, Winnie relaxed her fingers and took a sip, forcing herself to be silent, to let him tell it his own way.

“Does the name Frederick Bligh Bond ring a bell?” Jack continued.

“Didn’t he have something to do with the Abbey? Sorry. That’s all I can come up with.”

“Bond was an architect, like me, and an authority on early church architecture. But he was also an amateur archaeologist, and when the Church of England bought the Abbey from private owners in 1907, Bond got the commission to excavate the ruins. He made some marvelous discoveries, including the existence of the Edgar Chapel. All very respectable, all very aboveboard, until several years into the excavations, when he revealed that his finds were due to instructions from former monks of the Abbey—and that the monks had communicated with him through automatic writing. He was fired, his reputation in ruins, and he never recovered.”

“But if he was familiar with the history of the Abbey, he was most likely just dredging up stuff from his subconscious,” Winnie protested.

“Oddly enough, Bond never claimed otherwise. He believed individual consciousness was merely a part of a transcendent whole—a cosmic memory—and that every person has the power to open a door into that reality. There was a spiritual revival going on in Glastonbury at the time, particularly after the First World War. It attracted all sorts of notables—Yeats, Shaw—Dorothy Sayers even attended one of Bond’s sessions. So the general climate was not averse to Bond’s ideas.”

“So he thought he was tapping into this collective memory as well as his own subconscious?”

“It was Bond’s friend, a Captain John Bartlett, who did the actual writing, but Bartlett knew very little about the Abbey or archaeology—”

“But surely Bond prompted him?”

“Bond asked specific questions,” Jack corrected. “Bartlett’s first few episodes had occurred spontaneously, then Bond suggested that this … conduit … might be directed in a specific way. But often enough they got something completely unexpected.”

Jack’s blue eyes were alight with passion, and Winnie had a sudden chilling thought. He’d never talked about his dead wife—she knew only what had been repeated round the town, that his wife had died in childbirth, along with their infant daughter, only a few months after he’d lost his mother to a prolonged illness and his father to a heart attack. “Jack … you’re not thinking that you can … direct this? That you might … contact … Emily?”

He regarded her, unblinking. “I had considered it,” he answered at last. “And I have to admit the idea that the dead are perhaps … not so far away is … comforting. But it’s not that simple, Winnie. I think it’s a case not of what I want from him, but rather what he wants from me.”

“Him?”

“It seems to be a ‘he.’ ‘Edmund.’ A monk of Glastonbury Abbey, although I haven’t been able to pinpoint the exact time frame.”

“That’s why you were interested in Simon Fitzstephen,” Winnie exclaimed.

“I went to hear him speak the other night. If I could arrange to meet Fitzstephen, give him specific details, perhaps he could help me.”

“Jack—” Winnie didn’t want to encourage his association with Simon Fitzstephen, but couldn’t think of a concrete objection that wouldn’t require her to expose her past dealings with the man.

Misinterpreting her hesitation, Jack said, “I can’t blame you for being skeptical. I don’t know what the explanation is—only that it’s not going away. If you feel you can’t go on seeing me—”

Winnie took his hand, holding it tightly in both of hers. “Now you are talking daft. Of course I’m not going to stop seeing you. And I’ll do whatever I can to help you. You know that.”

“Even if I’m crazy?”

“You’re not crazy.” She spoke vehemently. “You will find an explanation for these writings. May I read them?”

“Would you?” The thought seemed to please him. “You might see some clue I’ve missed.”

“Well,” she said slowly, wondering if she had completely taken leave of her senses, “have you tried simply asking Edmund what he wants?”

This, thought Bram Allen as he looked round his gallery, was what a church should be like. The plush carpeting muffled both voice and footfall, the illuminated paintings on the hessian-covered walls glowed as if they were stained-glass windows lit from within, and bells chimed musically with each swing of the door. It seemed an impenetrable sanctuary … and it was the only place he felt truly safe.

There were some, he knew, who were made uncomfortable by the fierceness of the creatures in Fiona’s paintings, but he had always found them strangely reassuring, as if that very quality might hold evil at bay.

What did concern him was the fact that the number of Fiona’s paintings on the gallery walls was steadily decreasing. Although his other artists sold well, it was Fiona’s work that provided the backbone of the business, and it had been months since she’d produced anything she was willing to let him display. Not that he wanted to hang those recent paintings—God forbid! What on earth had possessed her to paint that face?

Fiona’s gift was not something that could be subjected to a rational analysis—or so he’d always assumed. But now he wondered if there was some external factor at work, something that had changed in their lives? Or in Fiona’s life?

As he gazed out the gallery window, the bell began to toll for Evensong at St. John’s, just across the street. That was his signal to close for the day. Automatically, Bram tidied and switched off lights. Then, as he locked the door to the last peal of the bells, it came to him. Something had changed in Fiona’s life this past year. She had become friends with Winnie Catesby, who had begun counseling Fiona to express the grief she felt over her childlessness. Was this what had triggered Fiona’s visions?

But that still didn’t explain why she should paint that particular child. Had Winnie somehow managed to loosen a fragment of memory lodged in Fiona’s subconscious? Or did Fiona know more than he had always believed?

Bram realized he was sweating and wiped a hand across his brow. One thing was certain—he must find a way to stop Winnie Catesby’s meddling before it destroyed them all.

The kitchen of the Dream Café smelled strongly of cabbage, but Faith didn’t mind. Her morning sickness seemed to have improved at last—and the food odors did help disguise the ever-present smell of damp that permeated the place.

The café was built right into the base of the Tor, and condensation coated the limestone walls with a slick sheen. The front room held tables; the rear was divided into a small shop on the left and the kitchen on the right, separated from the eating area by a serving bar. Not that they served much—the menu consisted of hot soup, tea (herbal or otherwise), and a vegetarian special of the day. Faith, who had barely boiled water at home, had become quite adept at concocting the soups and hot dishes, and this morning she would have everything ready by opening time. Humming as she put the final dusting of paprika on the day’s cauliflower bake, she imagined what her mum would say if she could see her handiwork. But the thought brought a stab of homesickness and a prickle of tears behind her eyelids.

It had been almost three months since that day in early April when she’d run away from home. She would never have believed she could miss her beastly brother and sister so much—or her parents. So many times she’d been tempted to go back, to invent a story they would accept—she’d say it had been a boy in her class … but, no, that wouldn’t be fair … a stranger, then, passing through on a pilgrimage to Avalon.…

But she had known instinctively that lies wouldn’t wash, that they’d demand the one thing she couldn’t give them—the truth. So she’d managed as best she could; begging friends to let her climb in their bedroom windows for a dry night’s sleep, then, when their hospitality wore out, she’d slept rough wherever she could find a spot, taking handouts from the local charities.

School seemed a distant universe, and sometimes she missed that, too, with an ache so fierce it surprised her. But things were better now, since she’d met Buddy and got the job at the café. She’d been leery at first, but the offer had turned out to be no more than the kindness it seemed. After a few weeks she’d begun volunteering to open and close the café. If her boss knew she spent the nights in the tiny upstairs room, he’d never let on. And if it spooked her sometimes—the must of damp oozing from the walls, the strange dreams that kept her restless and sweating … she’d known it was better than the alternative.

There was a toilet and washbasin at the top of the stairs, so she’d been able to keep herself clean, and to wash out her few items of clothing. But everything was getting tight now, stretching across her swelling belly.

She didn’t think about how she would manage when the baby came.

You just did one thing at a time, and right now the soup needed stirring. It was a rich mixture of cabbage, tomatoes, and caraway seed—Schii, Buddy said it was called, a recipe from his German grandmother who had emigrated to the Texas Hill Country. She tasted it, reached for the salt, then felt the oddest sensation in her abdomen. A flutter, almost a tickle—there it was again.

She was standing, spoon in one hand, salt in the other, mouth open in surprise, when the door opened and a woman came in. Dark, silver-streaked hair in a plait down her back, a worn face, dangly earrings, long Indian cotton skirt—Faith recognized her as a regular customer and a friend of Buddy’s, but she’d never really spoken to her.

“Are you all right?” the woman asked, coming up to the serving counter.

“I—I just felt something.… I think the baby moved.”

“First time?”

Faith nodded. Putting down salt and spoon, she pressed her palm carefully against her abdomen.

“Good. That’s normal, you know. Nothing to worry about. Before you know it she’ll be kicking you like a footballer.” The woman looked Faith over, assessing her with what seemed a professional eye. “Do you have a midwife?”

Faith shook her head.

“Have you been to a prenatal clinic?”

“No.” All those things meant registering with the social services, giving name, address, parents …

The woman studied her a moment longer. “Like that, is it? How old are you?”

“Seventeen. Old enough to be on my own.”

“Your parents know where you are?”

“Don’t want to know,” Faith replied, struggling to keep her voice steady. “And I don’t see why it’s any of your business.”

“How about making me a cup of tea?” the woman said, apparently unfazed by Faith’s rudeness. “I’m Garnet, by the way, I live up the hill.”

Faith complied, glad of the opportunity to collect herself, while Garnet stayed at the counter, watching her.

When Garnet had her tea, she said as if continuing a casual conversation, “Not very comfortable, sleeping in that old boxroom upstairs, I shouldn’t think. Not the best thing for a girl in your condition, either—all that damp.”

Faith’s heart raced with panic. “But … how did you—”

“Buddy and I have been friends for a long time. He’s worried about you.”

Flushing with embarrassment at her own stupidity, Faith stammered, “But I thought he didn’t—”

“Don’t let the drawl fool you. He’s a sharp old bird, and more kindhearted than he’d like anyone to know. He thought I might have a spare room. It’s nothing fancy,” Garnet continued. “But it’s warm and dry, and there’s a real bed.”

“But I—”

“You could pay me a little rent, and help out with the groceries. Buddy says you’re turning into a pretty good cook.”

“But why would you do this for me? I don’t understand.”

Garnet gestured at her belly. “You’re going to need care, girl, and I can give it to you. I was a midwife, once, and those things you don’t forget.”

“That’s still not why,” Faith said stubbornly. “Are you in the habit of taking in strays?”

Garnet smiled. “Only cats.” Shrugging, she added, “I’m not sure I can give you a better reason. I hadn’t made up my mind until I saw you again. There’s something … I don’t know. Let’s just say I have some old accounts to settle.”

“I couldn’t pay much,” Faith said slowly.

“You’d better come and see the place before we talk about that,” Garnet said, businesslike again. “Go straight up Wellhouse Lane. It’s the old farmhouse on the right, just past the junction with Stonedown. If you come after work today, I’ll be there. And you’d better look to your soup.” Finishing her tea, she handed Faith her empty mug and turned away.

It was only when the door had jingled shut behind her that Faith realized the woman had referred to her baby as “she.”

Winnie had never quite learned to quell the depression engendered by Jack’s house. Although the detached, orange-brick Victorian was massive and respectable in the way of its kind, it seemed dwarfed by the shadow of the Tor looming above it. Adding to that unprepossessing beginning, the shrubbery was overgrown, last winter’s leaves still littered the walkway and covered porch, and even on this sultry July afternoon, the interior was bone-numbingly cold.

Rubbing at the goose bumps on her bare arms, she followed Jack through a dining room filled with massive and unrepentantly ugly Victorian furniture, and into the kitchen-sitting area. This was the snuggest room in the house, with a leather armchair drawn up to a television, an oak table bearing evidence of Jack’s hastily cleared tea, and warmth radiating from an Aga.

Jack switched on the red-shaded lamp over the table. “Like a cuppa while we wait?” he offered as Winnie took a seat. “Nick rang; he’s on his way.”

Refusing Jack’s offer of tea, Winnie asked, “However did Nick manage to get an invitation to Simon Fitzstephen’s for drinks?” The author was reputed to protect his privacy fiercely and did not often lend his presence to social events.

“Fitzstephen came into the bookshop for a signing. Nick took the opportunity to lay on some judicious flattery.”

Winnie was not looking forward to seeing Simon Fitzstephen, but she had no intention of letting Jack go without her. “It would take a dyed-in-the-wool curmudgeon to refuse Nick. He has such an irresistible air of earnestness,” she said lightly, while wondering how her former mentor would react to her unexpected appearance.

And what sort of reception would their story get from Simon? He had made his reputation by documenting the history of the Grail legends, but Winnie had always suspected that for Fitzstephen the Grail study was an exercise of pride rather than heart.

From Jack’s inability to sit still tonight, she gathered he was nervous about the meeting as well. “You don’t have to tell Fitzstephen anything, you know, if you don’t feel it’s right.”

“I know,” Jack said as he sank restlessly into a chair beside her. “But then I’ll feel an ass for having wasted his time.”

“Nonsense,” she reassured him. “It’s a friendly social occasion.”

“Right.” He acknowledged her effort with a grin, then pulled a folded piece of paper from his jacket pocket. “But I do have something more concrete to go on.”

“This came today?” Taking the sheet, Winnie added, “That makes it sound like it came in the post.” In truth, the communications were sporadic, the connection sometimes tenuous. Often the message would stop in midsentence, then take up again a week or two later in exactly the same place, as if there had been no interruption.

It was a bit like putting together a jigsaw puzzle—a piece here, a piece there, trying to make sense of it as you went along.

Aethelnoth was abbot then, and made us the poorer for it. Tender as a willow shoot, I was, but sturdy. Sturdier than my father had foreseen. He did not count on the ministrations of Brother Ambrose, the infirmarian, who kept me in when the wind blew from the north and fed me with herbs and warming broths. There I grew into my calling, and my heart rejoiced. But all that was before … brought God’s wrath upon us.…

She looked up. “That’s all?”

“Yes. But the name of the abbot gives us a date. Aethelnoth was the last Saxon abbot, from 1053 to 1078. I hope Fitzstephen can tell us more.”

There was not going to be any way round telling Jack the truth about Simon; she could see that. And the longer she waited, the worse it would be. Winnie steeled herself for confession. “Jack, there’s something I ought—”

“There’s Nick.”

Rescued by the sound of a motorbike, Winnie thought as Jack stood, giving no evidence of having heard her faltering words. Breathing a sigh of relief as she followed him to the door, she promised herself she would tell him, at the very first opportunity.

Leaving Nick’s motorbike in the drive, they took Jack’s car for the short drive to the village of Pilton. The evening light slanted across the rolling landscape, and behind them the Tor rose in silhouette against the setting sun.

As the road made the sharp left-hand bend into the village, Nick navigated from directions scribbled on a scrap of paper. “It’s below the church. You take the turning signposted ‘The Old Vicarage.’ ”

Pilton had to be one of the most charming of the Somerset villages, running down steeply wooded hillsides into a meandering stream valley. It was also a maze of twisting switchback and dead-end lanes. Their turning took them downhill, past the lovely church of St. John the Baptist, then another sharp turning to the left brought them into a steep lane barely wide enough for the Volvo. “Just on the right,” Nick called out, pointing. “Riverside Cottage.”

Jack followed the lane to its end, pulling the car up in a grassy space where a stone bridge crossed a rocky stream. They got out and took their bearings. The light was a liquid green under the thick canopy of trees; the silence was broken only by water gurgling over the rocks. The cottage stood before them, divided from the lane by a low stone wall; inside the wall a smooth expanse of lawn ran down to the stream, and a flagstone path led from the gate to the arched front door.

Following the men, Winnie paused, her hand on the gate. She felt suspended in the strange, breathless atmosphere, and wondered if she might, at the very last instant, change her mind.

Then Jack turned, waiting for her, and she knew that whatever transpired that night, there could be no going back.

Simon Fitzstephen stacked the dishes from his cold supper in the sink for Mrs. Beddons, his housekeeper, to wash in the morning. They had reached a comfortable arrangement over the years; Mrs. Beddons came in the mornings, fixed his breakfast, did the chores, and made him a hot lunch, then before she left for the day she put together a salad or cold meats for his evening meal.

Although the royalties from his books would have allowed him to live on a grander scale than Riverside Cottage, he had no desire to leave Pilton. The village was not only beautiful, it was one of the oldest possessions of Glastonbury Abbey, a gift from the Saxon king Ine sometime early in the eighth century. Fitzstephen traced his own family’s links to the Abbey only as far back as the twelfth century, when an ancestor had acted in loco abbatis for King Henry II, on the death of the previous abbot.

These associations of place and family gave Simon Fitzstephen an integral sense of connection to his work, at which he had been gratifyingly successful. He had not imagined, when he left active ministry to pursue his study of the Grail, that his books would be so well received by the public. The only drawback he had been able to discover to his minor celebrity was the tendency of his readers to an uncomfortable degree of familiarity. He was by nature a reserved man; he’d found his one speaking tour in America an excruciating experience.

At least the young man who had wangled an invitation this evening was English, and seemed quite civilized. He was also quite astonishingly beautiful and seemingly unaware of it.

The thought made Simon glance at his watch. Nicholas Carlisle and his architect friend would be arriving soon. He should finish the preparations for his guests.

By chance, Simon had run into his old friend Garnet Todd that afternoon, and he had invited her along as well. She was knowledgeable and sharp witted: surely she’d add a bit of spice to the evening’s gathering.

He set glasses, mixers, gin, and whiskey on the round drawing-room table. Inlaid with walnut burl and set round its circumference with two rows of drawers, it had been used by the lords of Pilton Manor for collecting rents. With a vase of full-blown garden roses set in its center, it did justice to the room, his favorite in the house. Three gothic-arched windows stood open to the lawn, and the green silk on the walls brought the garden in. Ornately framed sepia photographs hung everywhere, generations of Fitzstephens. But Simon was the last of his branch of the family, and childless. His name would have to live on through his books, a prospect which did not distress him, except for the fact that lately the well of his creativity seemed to have run dry. What could he say about the Grail that he had not already said, and said well? And yet he had another book under contract to his publisher, and he could not stall much longer.

Returning to the kitchen, he fetched the silver dishes of olives and salted almonds Mrs. Beddons had left ready. Just as he had everything assembled, the bell rang. He swiped a hand through his thick hair and went to greet his visitors.

Nick Carlisle stood on the doorstep with his friend, a large, fair-haired man—and, much to Simon’s shock, Winifred Catesby. What was she doing here?

Nick introduced Jack Montfort first, giving Simon a chance to recover as he shook Montfort’s hand absently. When released, Simon forestalled Nick’s second introduction.

“Winifred.” He bent to kiss her cheek, his lips meeting air when she turned her face away at the last moment.

“Hullo, Simon.”

“You know each other?” Montfort asked.

“Simon taught a few of my classes in theological college,” Winifred replied coolly. “It’s been a long time.”

“Yes, hasn’t it?” Simon responded drily. He ushered them into the drawing room, very much aware of her bare arms and her sleeveless, blue silk dress.

The bell rang again just as he had them seated, this time heralding Garnet Todd and an unfamiliar companion. Garnet wore her usual Romany attire, which amused Simon almost as much as her staunch vegetarianism; once in a moment of indiscretion, she’d revealed to him that she was a butcher’s daughter from Clapham.

“I hope you don’t mind, Simon,” said Garnet. “I brought my boarder. This is Faith.”

The girl was tall and slender, with a long neck and short-cropped hair that set off her delicate features. She was also, Simon realized as she moved past him into the entry hall, quite visibly pregnant, and not much more than a child. “Faith?” he repeated. “Just Faith?”

“Just Faith.” The girl turned serious dark eyes on him, with no hint of a smile. What, Simon wondered, had Garnet got herself into?

And if he had had any doubts about young Nick Carlisle’s sexual preferences, they were resolved the instant Faith walked into the drawing room. Both men rose, but Nick was clearly riveted. The girl seemed unaware of her effect, regarding them all with the same solemn gaze.

As Simon introduced Garnet, Winifred said, “Garnet Todd, the ceramist? I love your work! I’ve been hoping one day to have you restore the tiles in my church.”

“Your church?” Garnet’s worn face creased in a smile.

“I’m vicar of St. Mary’s, Compton Grenville,” Winifred answered, and they were soon deep in discussion of the church’s tile work.

Trust Garnet to monopolize the conversation, Simon thought acidly as he served drinks. When he could get a word in edgewise, he said, “Nick tells me you have a particular interest in the history of the Abbey, Mr. Montfort?”

“You might say that. Call me Jack, please. And I understand that you’re the expert where the Abbey is concerned. I’m especially interested in the eleventh-century period and in Aethelnoth’s abbacy.”

“Aethelnoth? That’s not a name most people know. Not exactly a shining star in the Abbey’s history, that one.”

“I wondered what happened in his time that the monks would have seen as bringing God’s wrath upon their House?”

“Among other things, Aethelnoth removed the gold and silver from the Abbey’s holy books and sold it for his own profit, and he appropriated Church lands. His rather disreputable career ended when he was formally deposed and sent into confinement at Christ Church, Canterbury.

“In fact,” Simon continued, warming to his subject, “neither of the last two Saxon abbots was anything to write home about. Aethelweard, Aethelnoth’s predecessor, hacked up King Edgar’s remains and tried to stuff them in a reliquary, after which he became incurably insane—small wonder—then fell and broke his neck. But I don’t know that any of their misdeeds was worthy of calling down God’s wrath upon the Abbey.”

Montfort and Nick Carlisle exchanged a look of disappointment. “Those sorts of things were fairly common, I take it?” Montfort asked.

“Unfortunately. Abbatial election usually had more to do with political astuteness than religious vocation, but those two lacked either quality. Of course, Frederick Bligh Bond came up with a much glorified version of Aethelnoth through his automatic writings, but in this case I’m inclined to believe the historians.”

“Bligh Bond?” Nick echoed huskily, then cleared his throat. Again he and Montfort exchanged a loaded glance.

“You’re familiar with Bond?” Simon asked.

Montfort’s reply made it clear that he was. “Are you saying that you accept Bond’s … um … received information in other cases?”

“Do I believe that Bond had a direct line to former monks of the Abbey?” This was turning out to be a good deal more interesting than Simon had anticipated. “Not likely. But Bond’s knowledge of the Abbey’s history and architecture was extensive. I think it highly probable that he communicated it somehow to his friend, Captain Bartlett.”

“Oh, really, Simon!” broke in Garnet. “Why not say ‘telepathy’ if you mean ‘telepathy’? And if you’re willing to admit that possibility, why rule out the idea that Bond—and Bartlett—might have tapped into some sort of collective memory? You certainly know the importance of collective memory to the Celts—”

“That’s an entirely different matter. Their collective—and racial—memory was based on the transmission of myth and tradition through highly stylized storytelling, ritual, and ceremony.”

“And it was an extremely powerful force, in ways we can’t even begin to understand,” Garnet challenged, reddening. “Why is it impossible that there are other things that operate beyond our understanding?”

“What are you talking about?” asked Faith, speaking for the first time. “What’s automatic writing?”

Jack Montfort gave her an encouraging smile. “It’s when someone writes things down without being consciously aware of what they’re writing, or knowing where the information originates.”

“You mean like ghosts? Or a séance?”

Wincing, Montfort said, “Not necessarily. It could be the person’s subconscious seeking … well, I suppose you could call it an unusual outlet.”

“Is that what you think happened to Mr. Bond—whoever he was?”

“It was Bond’s friend who actually did the writing,” Simon said tersely. “So whether the information came from Bond’s subconscious or another source, he still had to transmit it in some way to Bartlett. Unless, of course, the two were total charlatans, and that I don’t believe.”

“It seems odd, don’t you think,” Montfort mused, “that the one question no one ever asked was ‘Why John Bartlett?’ Bond’s connections to the Abbey were obvious—was Bartlett chosen simply because of his friendship with Bond, or was there something more? Bartlett was retired military, an intelligent and fairly well-educated man, but there was nothing to indicate a natural facility for automatism.”

“When you say Bartlett was ‘chosen,’ I take it you favor the collective-memory hypothesis?”

“I’m inclined to, yes,” Montfort answered with what sounded suspiciously like a sigh. “Speaking from my own experience, I find anything else highly improbable.”

There was a moment of surprised silence, then Garnet said, “Your own experience? Do you mean you’ve done automatic writing?”

Montfort hesitated, then with a glance at Winifred, pulled a folded sheaf of papers from his inside jacket pocket. “All these since March. And I knew very little about the history of the Abbey, just the ordinary schoolboy stuff.”

Curiosity battling against disbelief, Simon reached for the papers. He had always been intrigued by the story of Bligh Bond’s experience—what if he’d been wrong in assuming that Bond himself was the source? He read, fascinated, from the first halting script. As he finished each page Garnet reached eagerly for it, then passed it in turn to Faith.

As he read, a strong sense of personality began to emerge. Simon glanced at Jack Montfort, who sat cradling his drink in his hands. Montfort seemed an unlikely candidate for a hoax, nor could Simon imagine that some repressed part of Montfort’s personality sought expression as a medieval monk. And as an architect, the man certainly had nothing to gain by revealing such a thing—it could, without a doubt, seriously damage his career.

Simon felt the beginnings of an excitement he hadn’t experienced in years. Suppose there was the remotest possibility that these communications were genuine, that it was somehow possible to establish a living link with the past. What would that mean for his own studies, to have direct access to history? There could be a book in this that would take his career in an entirely unexpected direction.

He had reached the last page. Seek one goal and ye shall win, began the monk who signed himself as Edmund. Work at that which comes. Take others as ye find, for the task is great, ere ye shall join the Company. We are those who watch, and we are ever with you.

Garnet took the sheet from him almost before he’d finished reading it. She skimmed it, then read it again more slowly, her lips moving. Wide-eyed, she looked up at Montfort and breathed, “The Company of Watchers. They’ve chosen you.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Winifred. “Who—or what—is the Company of Watchers?”

“The Watchers are those who are tied to Glastonbury by a bond not even death could sever. They guard the spiritual heart of Britain—Logres—and some even say they watch over King Arthur, waiting for the day when he will rise again.”

“Britain’s hour of greatest need?” scoffed Simon. “Surely no one believes that old chestnut?”

“Six months ago I wouldn’t have given it the time of day,” Montfort answered slowly. “But now … after all this …”

Garnet fingered the Celtic pendant she wore at her throat. “This is a time of conflict, so near the Millennium—”

“Your paranoia’s showing, my dear,” Simon said sharply. Then he looked at the pages gathered in Faith’s slender hand and wavered.

“And the task?” asked Faith.

“I don’t know,” answered Montfort. “That’s one of the things I hoped to learn when I came here today.”

“Take others as ye find,” Faith read, then she looked at each of them, her gaze intent. “Don’t you see? We are the others. Whatever it is, it can only be accomplished if we work together.”

“All for one and one for all,” said Simon, still half mocking, but finding himself strangely drawn to the idea. “What do you think, Winifred? I doubt the Church would approve of your dabbling in the paranormal.”

“They didn’t much care for Bond’s methods, either, and yet he gave us invaluable information about the Abbey. Can’t we judge the material on the basis of its historical validity, rather than its source?” She looked at Jack Montfort, as if for confirmation; with an unpleasant jolt it dawned on Simon that they were a couple.

Garnet’s face was alight. “That’s why we’re here tonight, Simon. And that’s why Faith came to me. We were all drawn together for this purpose. I’m sure of it! You could interpret the material in historical terms—”

“And you have the resources and the skills to trace any possible connection Jack might have with Edmund,” Nick Carlisle interrupted. “Perhaps we all have something to offer, even if we’re not sure what it is at this point.”

Simon read dismay in Winifred’s expression. It was that, as well as the thought of his own possible gain, that prompted him to say, “Just how exactly would we go about this … investigation?”

Perhaps they had been brought together for a purpose, and if that meant Winnie Catesby would have to put up with seeing him on a regular basis, then it bloody well served her right.

CHAPTER FOUR

The water meadows are of that emerald green only to be seen where the subsoil water is near to the surface. Travelling through parched lands at midsummer, one knows that Avalon is near by the greenness of the earth.

—DION FORTUNE,

FROM GLASTONBURY: AVALON OF THE HEART

KINCAID COULD NOT imagine a more perfect day. The heat and mugginess that so often characterized late August days in the south of England had been swept away by a westerly wind that cleared the sky and brought a hint of autumn crispness to the air. Strangers passing in the street nodded, smiled, said, “Fine day,” and, for once, the English obsession with talking about the weather seemed justified.

He and Kit had spent the morning battling the machines in the Leicester Square video arcade, and by the time they emerged into daylight the temperature had climbed into the region of shirtsleeve comfort. “Ready for lunch?” Kincaid suggested, knowing the question was rhetorical.

“Um … do you think we could go to the Hard Rock Café?” Kit asked with the tentativeness that still marked most of his requests.

“Why not? I think I could manage to eat a tourist or two for lunch. Tube?”

Kit hesitated, watching the crowds surging across the pavement in the bright sunshine. “Could we walk?”

In Kincaid’s opinion, walking through the heart of the West End on a Saturday in August was akin to forcing one’s way through the mob at a football match in riot gear, but he nodded. “Go for it, sport.”

They set off towards Piccadilly Circus, picking their way through the warren of streets. Kit dodged oncoming pedestrians in order to stay beside him, his shoulder brushing Kincaid’s arm in comfortable contact. Kincaid thought of the time just a few short months ago when the precariousness of their relationship had made every word or touch a potential hazard. There was still the occasional minefield, but they’d come a long way.

As he looked down at his son’s fair head, he realized that one day soon he would no longer be able to look down at Kit, full stop. As yet, Kit had not outgrown childish things, and for that Kincaid was eminently grateful. Kit’s friend Nathan Winter had given the boy a microscope for his birthday, and their agenda for the morrow was collecting pond-water samples on Hampstead Heath. Girls and rock music would intervene soon enough; in the meantime, Kincaid had a lot of making up to do.

His marriage to Kit’s mother had ended stormily and abruptly, and it was not until a few months ago that Kincaid had learned Vic had been pregnant when they separated. She’d been having an affair with one of her professors and had subsequently married him, passing the child off as his. It must have been obvious to her very early on that the boy was not Ian McClellan’s son, but Kincaid’s. Whether she’d meant to confess as much when she’d contacted him last spring, Kincaid would never know.

She had been killed just a few weeks after she’d asked his help in the investigation of another death, leaving him with the sense of much unfinished between them.

Now as he looked at Kit matching him stride for stride, he realized it no longer shocked him to see a younger version of himself. Nor did the boy’s resemblance to Vic—her smile, her gestures, her mannerisms—cause him as much pain as it had in the first weeks after her death.

In due course, they reached Piccadilly Circus and from there made their way down Piccadilly towards Hyde Park. As they walked, some of Kit’s excitement infected Kincaid and he remembered how glorious he’d found the city when he’d first come to London two decades earlier. Kit met his eyes and they shared a smile of sheer delight in the bustle and color of it all.

By the time they reached the Hard Rock Café, they were warm and ravenous. They emerged from the café an hour later, replete with cheeseburgers, French fries, and chocolate milkshakes, and with Kit in possession of a much-coveted T-shirt proclaiming the London Hard Rock as the Original.

Across Piccadilly, Green Park beckoned, and they soon found a choice spot to stretch out in the grass. People sprawled on blankets or in awning-striped deck chairs, making the most of summer’s end. Although Kincaid usually found it difficult to relax in a public place, the sun soaked into his skin like a drug and his eyelids began to droop.

He came awake with a start when Kit rolled over on his stomach and declared, “I wish we could have brought Tess.” Kit gestured at the number of dogs walking or trotting beside their masters, chasing Frisbees or just panting happily in the sun.

“We couldn’t have done the videos, then,” Kincaid reminded him, rousing himself.

“I know. I’m not complaining. It’s just nice here, that’s all.” Kit chewed a blade of the springy grass meditatively. “It’s sort of like wanting it to be just the two of us, but at the same time missing Gemma and Toby.”

“That’s why Zen philosophers teach concentrating on the moment. Otherwise you miss now because you’re too busy wanting other things.”

“Are you good at that—what did you call it?”

“Concentrating on the moment? I don’t do it half as well as I’d like. But you’ve helped me be better.”

“Me?”

“When I’m with you, I don’t want to think about stuff like work. So when something niggly crops up in my head, I just think, Go away. And usually it does.”

“But it doesn’t stop you missing Gemma, does it?”

The question caught Kincaid like a punch. He stared at his son. Kit usually approached emotional issues with crablike self-protectiveness. “No,” he said, surprised into honesty. “It doesn’t.”

“I don’t understand why she had to go away.”

“She’s off on a training course, Kit. You know that.”

“But why’d she have to put in for a promotion? Why couldn’t she just leave things the way they were?”

Why indeed, Kincaid thought bitterly. Oh, he knew all the rational arguments—he had even given them lip service—but in his heart he felt as abandoned and unhappy as Kit. She had left him, and days on the job without her company seemed interminable. The succession of temporary assistants only made him more irritable. At least when Gemma returned from Bramshill they’d have some off-duty time together, depending on her posting, but there would be no replacement for their partnership. “It’s something she needed to do,” he said, hearing the lack of conviction in his voice.

Kit scowled at him, unmollified. “So why can’t you just get married, and we could be like a … you know, a regular family?”

“That’s not in the cards,” Kincaid said, more sharply than he’d intended. Gemma had made that quite clear, and he’d done his best to be content with what they had. Neither of them, after all, had made a success of marriage the first time round, and now that Gemma had separated herself from him so deliberately, he felt even less certainty about their future.

But what had got into Kit? Their relationship as father and son was still a touchy subject, and this was the first time he’d heard Kit directly acknowledge that they were—or could possibly be—family. “Is something going on with Ian, Kit?” he asked, studying the boy’s averted face. Kit spent the week with the man he had known for almost twelve years as his father, Ian McClellan, and most weekends with Kincaid.

Kit chewed his lip, his eyes half shielded by the wayward lock of hair that fell across his forehead. “I’m not supposed to know. But I saw the letter, and I’ve heard him talking on the phone.”

“What letter?”

“The one from the university in Quebec. Offering him a job. ‘… his academic career, more opportunities, blah, blah …’ What they mean is more money.”

“And you think Ian means to accept?”

“He’s been dropping little hints. ‘Wouldn’t you like to learn to ski, Kit? How’s your French coming, Kit?’ ”

Kincaid felt a rush of panic. After everything that had happened, all that they had been through, he would not lose Kit now. As calmly as he could, he said, “You don’t want to go?”

Kit glanced at him, then away, with studied nonchalance that didn’t quite come off. “I want to stay here. With you.”

“It would mean leaving Grantchester and living here in London.”

“I know. Would the Major mind Tess having a run in the garden sometimes?”

Kincaid smiled. “I think you might persuade him.” Trust Kit to think of the ragamuffin terrier first, rather than new schools, friends, and all the other logistics that boggled the mind. And nothing, of course, would be possible without Ian’s consent; he was still Kit’s legal guardian.

Ian McClellan’s behavior had never been predictable. First he had left Kit’s mother to run off to France with a graduate student; after Vic’s death he’d refused to take any responsibility for Kit. Then, a few months ago he had come back from France, determined to make amends, and moved Kit back into the cottage in Grantchester. Now it seemed the man was itching to be off again. How would Ian feel about leaving Kit behind?

For that matter, how would he fare as a single parent? It would further complicate things with Gemma, he could see that, but he knew Kit had to come first.

“Would you … You wouldn’t mind, would you? If I came to stay with you.” This time Kit met Kincaid’s eyes.

“There is nothing,” Kincaid answered truthfully, “that I would like more.”

Winnie made it a point to have lunch with Fiona Allen at least once a month, sometimes at the Vicarage in Compton Grenville, sometimes at Fiona’s home on Bulwarks Lane, below the Tor. Today they’d chosen Fiona’s house, due to Winnie’s commitments in Glastonbury, and Fiona had set out a salad Niçoise in her pale Scandinavian kitchen.

“I hate August in Somerset,” groaned Winnie, sliding into a chair and pulling her sticky blouse away from her damp skin. “It’s like living in soup.”

“You can’t fuss as long as you insist on riding that bike,” admonished Fiona as she laid plates on the table.

“You sound just like Jack. At least I get a breeze on the bike. The car’s a traveling oven.”

“You’re incorrigible.” Fiona shook her head, smiling. “How is the supposedly delicious Jack? I’m beginning to think you’re conspiring to keep me from meeting him, so that I can’t judge for myself.”

“I’ll give a dinner party. Soon, I promise. It’s just that all our spare time seems to vanish these days.”

“The automatic writing? How is that going?” Fiona was the one person outside the group in whom Winnie had confided.

“It’s fascinating—the material itself, I mean.”

“This can’t be comfortable for you.”

“Ghosties and ghoulies and things that go bump in the night?” Winnie teased in a fair parody of Fiona’s Scottish brogue. Then she continued more soberly. “You know, it’s odd, but somehow Edmund seems too real to be a ghost. Too human. And I suppose I’ve got used to it.”

Fiona raised an eyebrow. “Then what’s giving you the pip?”

“Too much experience with committees gone sour, I suppose,” Winnie said with a sigh. “The group dynamics seem to be changing, and that doesn’t bode well.”

“I thought it was all sweetness and light and save-the-world enthusiasm.”

“It was, in the beginning. But we’ve not had any luck finding out just what it is that Edmund wants, so all that energy is finding other outlets. Nick—the young man from the bookshop—is besotted with Faith—”

“Your pregnant teenager.”

“Right. Faith, on the other hand, seems totally oblivious. The girl has something about her that inspires devotion. She’s quite self-contained in a way I’ve never seen … and yet there’s something vulnerable about her.”

“Family trauma?” mused Fiona.

“I don’t know. I’d like to help her, but I haven’t been able to find a chink in her armor.”

“There’s more,” Fiona prompted, nibbling on a shiny black olive.

“Nick is terribly jealous of Simon—understandably so. I think Nick saw himself as a necessary part of the equation; then he introduced Jack to Simon Fitzstephen—”

“And now Jack’s spending more time with Fitzstephen than Nick, and Nick feels abandoned.”

“Classic, isn’t it? Damn Simon. I suspect he’s playing up Jack partly out of spite towards me and you can bet that whatever other motives he has aren’t unselfish. I don’t trust him as far as I could throw him. And then there’s Garnet—”

“Garnet Todd?” Fiona’s hazel eyes widened. “You didn’t tell me Garnet was part of your group.”

“Didn’t I? Do you know her?”

“Who doesn’t? Garnet’s a fixture round here. She always had a talent for stirring things. I take it that hasn’t changed?”

“She seems to have taken a dislike to Nick,” admitted Winnie.

“And you end up as peacemaker?”

“Not very successfully, obviously. But what bothers me most is Jack. His obsession with this seems to be growing. You’d think he’d be discouraged by our lack of progress, but it seems to have the opposite effect. It’s as if he feels there’s a clock ticking. And I can’t hear it.” As Winnie spoke she realized just how alone that made her feel.

“Don’t be too hard on yourself. Here you’ve tumbled into this unexpectedly wonderful relationship, then he goes and gets into bed with a rival you can’t even see.”

“It’s not like that!” Winnie protested, then laughed at her own discomfort. “Well, maybe it is, a little. Tell me about you,” she added, eager to change the subject.

“Not much to tell, unfortunately.”

Winnie studied her friend’s face. “You look a bit transparent round the edges.”

Fiona shrugged. “It’s not that I expect to control what I paint—that’s never been the case—but nothing like this has ever happened before.”

“You’re still painting the little girl, then?”

“They’re so dark, these paintings. There’s no happiness in them. I’ve begun to dread the urge to paint. And Bram hates them; I can tell—”

The banging of the back door silenced her.

“Sorry I’m late, Fi,” Bram Allen said, coming into the kitchen and kissing his wife’s cheek. “Waiting on an international call. Winnie,” he added, favoring her with a perfunctory nod. “Good to see you.”

As Fiona readied her husband’s meal, Winnie watched the couple with a stirring of envy. Married more than twenty-five years, they still seemed as devoted as newlyweds. Did she and Jack have such a future ahead of them? Or would Jack’s involvement with Simon lead him down a path she couldn’t follow?

She had been happily self-sufficient until she’d met Jack Montfort, unaware of any void in her life. So why, now, did the thought of a future without him fill her with such desolation?

They had made themselves comfortable in Jack’s kitchen—Winnie and Jack, Nick, Garnet Todd, Simon, and the girl, Faith. The heat wave that had plagued southern England for weeks had abated, and there was a crispness that presaged autumn in the breeze that blew through the open windows. From where Winnie sat, she could see the slope of the Tor rising beyond the neglected back garden, a solitary sheep grazing in the green grass.

Lazing over cups of tea, they indulged in the sort of desultory chat associated with warm summer afternoons. Jack sat with a notepad ready.

Suddenly, his pen began to move across the paper. Jack continued his conversation with Simon, seemingly unaware of the actions of his own hand. As often as Winnie had experienced the phenomenon, she still found it uncomfortably eerie, and, in spite of herself, the word possession came to mind.

As soon as Jack stopped writing, Simon began to translate.

Brother Francis has given me my own carrel. We work on the north side of the cloister where the light is best, and my carrel is near a window, a much-coveted spot. Brother Francis has set me the Abbot’s own missal to copy, as I have learned so quickly, but warns me against the sin of pride.

Simon looked up from the page, frowning. “Then there are a couple of lines I can’t make out at all—then something … something … meadowsweet, I think. The scent of meadowsweet. Then … much rain … Glaston rises from the flooded plain … an island in the mist. Supplies come by boat from Abbey holdings further afield, but our visitors are few, and this suits me well.”

“Have you noticed he’s suddenly giving us the present tense?” asked Winnie.

“I don’t know that linear time means much to someone in Edmund’s … uh, condition,” said Jack.

“Really, Jack, there’s no need to spare Winifred’s sensibilities by avoiding the word ghost or spirit,” said Simon. For once, Winnie had to agree with him. Who was she to quibble over dogma, if Edmund, who had been a Catholic monk, seemed to have no objection to being a ghost?

“Winnie’s right,” said Garnet. “It is a change—it’s as if the past has become more immediate to him. Is there anything more, Simon?”

Simon glanced round the table, but Nick was watching Faith, who was gazing at Garnet. Clearing his throat, he waited until he had their attention, then took up the notepad again.

Nothing interrupts the rhythm of our days, long in the summer twilight. Down the night stairs for Matins, the stone cool under our feet. We sing the Office in that state between sleeping and waking … then are we closest to God.

The times are now ripe for the glory to return. You must strive to restore all that was lost.… It was my sins brought such misfortune upon us.…

“That’s all.” Simon looked up, and Winnie came back to the present with a start. For a moment, she had seen the Great Church, illuminated by candlelight, and heard the voices raised in worship. The longing she felt for this vision was so intense she found herself blinking back tears.

Had the others felt it too? Faith’s face was luminous. Their eyes met, and an acknowledgment passed between them.

“What exactly is it that we’re supposed to strive to restore?” Jack sounded exasperated. “Not to mention how to go about it, if we knew what it was.”

Winnie said hesitantly, “I—I might have an idea.…” They all turned to stare at her. Would they think her barmy? But she knew it didn’t matter.

“I don’t understand how.… But he … Edmund … I could feel his joy, and a sense of—I guess you would call it complete harmony. I don’t know how else to describe it. Everything felt right with the world and with God. I think that’s what he wants you to know—that this is possible.”

Garnet leaned forward abruptly, raking them all with her intense gaze, and a sudden air current lifted the sheer curtain behind her. “And nowhere is this more true than in Glastonbury, one of the sacred power centers of the earth. Edmund has opened a window for us, a channel, a way to pull that energy into the present.”

“But how?” Jack frowned. “And that still doesn’t explain why it should come through me.”

“I know Simon hasn’t found a direct family connection,” mused Winnie. “But I can’t help feeling there must be a genetic component.”

Jack rubbed his chin as he thought, an unconscious gesture that Winnie always found endearing. “My father’s family does go back in these parts as far as anyone can remember. But I don’t have the foggiest idea how to follow it from my end.”

“If there’s a connection, Simon will find it,” insisted Garnet. “I know it’s hard to be patient—”

“You can’t expect us to sit round waiting for Simon until Doomsday,” snapped Nick. “He’s not the only one with access to genealogical records—”

“No one’s suggesting we leave avenues unexplored,” Jack broke in, forestalling outright hostilities. “I’ve some elderly relatives I could have a word with. That seems as good a place to start as any, don’t you think, Simon? More tea, everyone?”

Winnie hesitated, glancing at her watch. She felt a great need to block out the emotional undercurrents of the group so that she could absorb what she had just experienced. “I think I’ll go to Wells for Evensong. Jack?”

“Sorry, darling, I can’t. I’m meeting with some clients at six.” He touched her arm lightly. “You’re sure you won’t stay?”

“I’d like to come with you, if that’s all right,” offered Faith, much to Winnie’s surprise.

“Of course,” Winnie said with genuine pleasure. She’d been hoping to have a word with the girl without appearing too much the interfering priest, and she had just been handed the perfect opportunity.

Historically, Wells had long been Glastonbury’s rival, with much building at the Abbey spurred by progress at Wells, and vice versa. As the west front of the cathedral came into view across the green, Winnie tried to imagine that the Abbey had once looked very like it, but it seemed impossible to superimpose the magnificent front and towers of the intact cathedral against the ruins that remained at Glastonbury.

“The ladders are my favorite thing.” Faith stopped to look up at the carved stone saints climbing to heaven.

“Mine too,” Winnie agreed. “You’ve been here before, then?”

“Lots of times.”

When Faith didn’t offer anything further, Winnie glanced at her watch. “I think we’ve time for a cup of tea in the refectory, if you’d like. Are you hungry?”

Faith gave her a shy smile. “Always.”

As they entered the main doors of the cathedral, Winnie felt a lift of delight, as she always did, at the sight of the great scissor arch supporting the towers. Some historians theorized that Glastonbury had once had an arch like that, and it suddenly occurred to Winnie that they might ask Edmund—a sure sign that she was becoming as batty as the rest of them.

They turned right, passing through the gift shop and into the refectory, where Faith accepted a cheese roll and insisted on herbal tea. “Garnet says I mustn’t have any caffeine,” she explained. “It’s bad for the baby.”

“Do you get on well with Garnet?” Winnie asked when they were settled at a table overlooking the quiet green square of the Cloisters.

“She’s been brilliant. And she knows ever so much about everything. Have you seen her tiles?” Faith took an enormous bite of roll.

“Yes, in several of the churches I visit. They’re beautiful.”

“She knows all about the Old Religion, too, and about how Goddess worship was incorporated into the Christian Church as worship of the Virgin Mar—” She stopped, giving Winnie a horrified glance, as if suddenly realizing Winnie might not approve of these views.

“I daresay she’s right,” Winnie interposed gently. “It’s an interesting idea. You said you’d come to Wells often?”

“I sang in the choir at school,” Faith explained. “We came to hear other choirs, and once we were even invited to sing ourselves.”

Did she detect a wistful note in the girl’s voice? “You must miss that.”

“It was … It made me feel sort of … outside myself, I suppose.” Faith gave a small shrug, as if embarrassed by her admission.

“Like today? You felt it, too, didn’t you?”

Faith nodded. “It was really weird—like I was there, in the church, and I could hear them singing.”

“I don’t think the others had the same experience.” Winnie drank her tea, which had gone lukewarm, while she thought. “I can’t explain it. I’m not even sure I believe this whole thing.”

“Maybe you needed convincing.” The look in Faith’s dark eyes brooked no dissembling.

“Maybe I did. But what about you?”

Touching her belly, Faith said, “I think it might have something to do with this. Since the baby—it’s like the world’s more intense. I see better, hear better—everything seems to have another layer.”

A hormonally boosted increase in perception? Winnie wondered. Or something more? “Faith, about the baby—do your parents know where you are?”

The girl pushed away her empty plate and cup. “My dad—They said they never wanted to see me ever again. That I was a disgrace to them.”

Oh, dear God, thought Winnie. “People often say things in anger that they don’t mean. I’m sure your parents have spent the last few months regretting every word, and that they’re worried sick about you.”

“I can’t go back. Not after that. You don’t know my dad. And my place is with Garnet now.”

Winnie thought she’d glimpsed a hint of tears in Faith’s eyes, but the girl’s chin was set in a stubborn line. She wouldn’t push her luck, but perhaps she could at least open negotiations. “Would you let me talk to them?”

Faith started to shake her head before Winnie had even finished her sentence.

“I wouldn’t tell them where you were,” Winnie continued. “I wouldn’t tell them anything you didn’t want me to—only that you’re all right.” Seeing Faith waver, she added with a grin, “You can trust me to keep a promise—it’s part of my job description,” and was rewarded with a hesitant smile.

“Could you—could you tell my sister and my brother that I miss them? And my mum?”

“Of course. You give me the address and I’ll go see them first chance I get.” Looking round, Winnie realized the refectory was almost empty. “We’d better go, or we’ll miss the service.”

Returning to the front of the cathedral, they made their way down the left-hand side of the nave to the rope that blocked entry to the Quire until time for the service to begin. There was a sizable crowd waiting, and after a moment the verger released the barrier and ushered them into the stalls.

There was a visiting choir that evening, as the cathedral choir was on August holiday, and Winnie saw with pleasure that they were singing the Bach Magnificat, then Parry’s Songs of Farewell, two of her favorites.

After the usual rustle and shuffle of people adjusting positions and shedding belongings, a hush fell as the choir processed in and took their seats.

Surrounded by the rich, dark wood of the stalls and the glow of lamplight, Winnie felt shielded from the outside world, sealed in a nucleus that rendered time and space meaningless. As the music rose about them, she glanced at the young woman beside her. Faith’s countenance was suffused with such joy and longing that Winnie’s heart ached, and she knew that this child was one innocent she would protect with all the weapons of her calling.

Chalice Well Gardens lay in the gentle valley between Chalice Hill and the Tor. The gardens rose, level by level, until the last, an enclosed, leafy bower that housed the well itself. Water the color of blood filled the five-sided well chamber, then flowed through an underground pipe into the Lion’s Head pool below at an unceasing twenty-five thousand gallons a day and a constant temperature of fifty-two degrees Fahrenheit.

Nick sat on a bench near the well, waiting for Faith, who had promised to meet him for a half hour before they both had to be at work. He contemplated the well’s intricate wrought-iron cover, designed just after the First World War by Frederick Bligh Bond; funny how old Bond kept cropping up, once you’d made a connection with him.

The carving was an ancient symbol called the vesica piscis, two interlocking circles said to represent the interpenetration of the material and immaterial worlds, or the yin and yang where the conscious and unconscious meet.

It was also said to represent the blending of male and female energy … perhaps a propitious sign for this meeting, but he wasn’t getting his hopes up. He told himself often enough that it was utterly stupid to be in love with a pregnant schoolgirl; he of all people should know better. But it made no difference. And what did he think he would do if she did return his feelings? Marry her and take care of mother and infant? Absurd. He barely managed to feed himself and pay the rent on his caravan.

But there was something special about Faith, some qualities of inner stillness he had never before encountered. Once or twice he thought he’d glimpsed a spark of possibility in her eyes, before she withdrew again into that calm silence he could not penetrate, and this kept him from giving up.

Impatiently, he stood and paced the confined area of the garden, stopping again at the well. The cover was pulled to one side, enabling him to peer down into the chamber itself. There was said to be a grotto set into one of the walls, large enough for a man to stand in, but he could see no sign of it. Dropping to his knees for a closer look, he didn’t hear Faith coming until she opened the gate to the well garden.

“Don’t fall in,” she teased, coming to stand behind him. “Garnet says it’s the Goddess’s well, and I doubt She’d like some big bloke splashing about in it.”

Faith wore a striped football shirt beneath denim coveralls, and her cropped hair and delicate features looked all the more feminine for it. Bugger Garnet, Nick thought savagely, but he didn’t say it aloud. “I was duly worshiping. Hands and knees, see?”

“Nick, don’t joke. It’s a sacred place.”

Rising, he returned to the bench and patted the seat beside him. “No offense intended. Come and sit; you stand all day.”

She obeyed, but kept a chaste distance between them. His desire for her was driving him to distraction, but he didn’t dare cross the boundaries she’d set, for fear of destroying the friendship they’d forged over the past months. Yet the thought that she had crossed those barriers with someone else was maddening, and it was all he could do not to ask her who … or why she continued to protect him.

Not that he had much opportunity to be alone with Faith. Garnet Todd had become both mother hen and fierce watchdog, and she’d made no effort to conceal her disapproval of Nick’s interest. On the few occasions he’d ventured up to Garnet’s farmhouse to see Faith after work, he’d sat uncomfortably in the primitive kitchen with the two of them, feeling like an unwelcome Victorian suitor. Hence this morning’s tryst in the garden.

“Some people think this is the garden Malory meant when he wrote that Lancelot retired to a valley near Glastonbury,” Nick mused, stretching his arm across the bench top, an inch from Faith’s shoulders. “Do you suppose this very place is where Lancelot lived out his days, dreaming of Guinevere in her nunnery? They died within months of one another—did you know that?”

Faith shivered. “That’s too sad. This garden isn’t meant to be sad: it’s a healing place.”

“I suppose it was a sort of healing for Lancelot, if he came to terms with his love for Gwen and for Arthur in the time he had left. And if he had been denied the Grail, perhaps living by a spring said to flow with the blood of Christ was some compensation.”

“I can see him here,” Faith said dreamily, tilting her head back until her hair brushed his arm. “With his little hut in the woods, and the spring flowing out of the hillside.” Her face darkened. “But the other spring would have been always below him, reminding him of the darkness to come.”

“The White Spring?” It flowed from the base of the Tor itself, and if the Red Spring represented the female element, the White Spring was said to represent the male.

“Garnet says it’s the entrance to Annwn, the home of Gwyn ap Nudd, Lord of the Underworld. And I can feel … something there … it’s a dark place.”

“Oh, bollocks, Faith.” He touched her chin with his fingertips, turning her face towards his. “You don’t really believe that, do you? It’s just a fairy story.”

“How do you know?” She twisted her face away and sat up straight. “The Druids were in tune with the earth itself, and there’s nothing more powerful.”

“But it’s myth, Faith! Symbolism. It was their way of explaining the world. No one’s meant to take it literally.”

“Is what’s happened to Jack a myth? Do you not believe that’s real?”

“Yes, but—”

“If Edmund can speak to us across nine hundred years, how can you set limits on what’s true?” Faith stood and faced him, her eyes bright with anger.

“But that’s different—”

“Is it?”

“Of course it’s different. Glastonbury Abbey was a real place, and monks really did live there. Edmund was a real person—”

“Can you prove it?”

“I don’t need to prove it. I’ve experienced it.”

“Then how can you say other people’s experiences aren’t valid?” she shot back.

He stared at her. This was not going at all the way he’d intended. “Look, Faith, meet me tonight. We can talk about it, but right now we’re both going to be late for work.”

“I can’t. Garnet wants me to study.”

“Study what? The Old Religion?” He heard the loathing in his voice.

Faith’s chin went up defensively. “The first religion. You know the Christian Church just built on what went before. Even Simon says so.”

“That’s not the point. You need to be doing normal, ordinary things. Finishing school. Taking your exams. Thinking about what you’re going to do with your life—and how you’re going to take care of your baby. You need to go home, Faith.” As he said it, he knew it was a mistake, and worse, if she were to take his advice he would very likely lose her altogether.

“Don’t patronize me, Nick Carlisle,” she spat at him. “And don’t tell me how to live my life. I’ve done all right—”

“Only because Garnet took you in, and I suspect she had her reasons—”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about! Garnet understands me, and she knows I have something to do, something important—I just can’t see what yet. So just bugger off, okay?” She spun round, opening the gate and clanging it shut behind her.

Jumping up, he called out, “Faith, I’m sorry—” but she ran down the path, away from him.

CHAPTER FIVE

We also had to meet with a certain amount of jealousy from that section of the community which regards all positive happiness as tending to evil, and all beauty as an endowment of the devil; for it did undoubtedly happen that the young things that studied with us acquired a liveliness and a physical carriage that marked them out from their fellows.

—RUTLAND BOUGHTON,

FROM THE GLASTONBURY FESTIVAL MOVEMENT

HAVING GIVEN FAITH chamomile tea and tucked her in bed for a nap, Garnet walked down the hill towards the café, for once oblivious to the beauty of the mild afternoon. Buddy had sent the girl home after lunch, insisting that she take the afternoon off, and Garnet needed to know exactly what had transpired that morning.

She was thankful to find the café empty and Buddy cleaning tables after the lunch rush. When she entered, he smiled and motioned her to a seat with a flourish of his cloth.

“You’re a sight for sore eyes, darlin’. It’s been a bugger of a day.” His Texas drawl had never faded, although it was regularly interspersed with English slang.

“And you’re culturally confused,” Garnet replied. There was something about Buddy’s lanky frame and graying ponytail that still made her think of the Wild West, although he swore his only contact with cows had been on a plate and that he wouldn’t know what to do with a horse if it bit him.

“Tea?” he asked. “You look like you could use the real thing.”

“Yes, please,” Garnet said gratefully, and waited until he’d made two mugs and brought them to the table.

“How is she?” he asked, sitting across from her.

“Sleeping, I hope. What happened this morning, Buddy?”

“Hell if I know. She came in five minutes late—first time she’s ever done that—puffy-eyed and silent as a newt. Dropped things all morning like her fingers had been greased, then I found her crying in the soup.” He shook his head. “Anybody could see the poor girl wasn’t fit to work, so I sent her home. She didn’t like it, though.”

Garnet sighed. “I never thought I’d be looking after a teenager, and a pregnant one at that. She left the house early this morning; I just assumed she was coming in to help you.”

“Think she met someone? But who?”

“Nick Carlisle would be my guess, damn him. Although I’ve never seen Nick get her in such a state.”

“Maybe it was someone else. What about the baby’s father? Has she ever said anything to you?”

“Not even a hint. But I wonder … Faith told me last night that Winnie Catesby intends to talk to her parents. It may be that’s what has her so out of sorts.”

“The priest?”

“You make it sound like Winnie has a disease, Buddy.” Garnet laughed in spite of her worry. “She means well.”

“Then let her send the girl home to her mom. It’d be a burden off you.”

“I can’t.” Garnet said it flatly.

“And why the hell not? Sounds like the sensible solution to me.”

“It would be, except that it’s not safe.”

“Not safe?” Buddy frowned. “You think her dad would hurt her?”

“I don’t know. She’s never said so, not flat out. But there’s something not right in that family.”

“Anybody laid a hand on that girl’d have me to answer to, dad or not,” Buddy bristled.

“You’re a good man, Buddy, not like some. But it’s not as simple as that.” Garnet tried to gather into words what she felt with such certainty. “Faith is a pivot, a magnet, for forces much more powerful than her father. She and her baby are in dire peril—I’m more sure of that than anything I’ve ever known. Faith has to stay with me—it’s the only way I can protect her.”

“And the boy you’re so riled up about—Nick? Is he part of this danger?”

“I don’t know. But he is a distraction, and that’s something Faith can’t afford right now.”

Buddy fidgeted with his mug, then reluctantly met her eyes. “Are you sure you’re not … overreacting?”

“I don’t want to be proved right, Buddy. And I don’t carewhat anyone thinks. I’m not willing to risk Faith if I can help it. Are you?”

“No … I … well, I’ve gotten used to having her around, if you want to know the truth. If anything happened to her …”

What a pair they were, thought Garnet. Childless, never married, no family. And this slip of a girl had come into their lives and pierced them like an arrow.

“Just look after her, Buddy, when she’s with you. Promise me that.”

It was the best she could do.… But she was terribly afraid it would not be enough.

Faith’s family lived in the town of Street, just two miles from Glastonbury across the sluggish trickle of the River Brue. Whenever Winnie drove across the bridge, she found it hard to imagine that it was here King Arthur was said to have seen a vision of the Blessed Virgin; perhaps in those days it had been a more prepossessing spot.

Street was home to the Clark Shoe Company. One of the more enlightened of Victorian employers, Clark’s had provided good working conditions and comfortable housing for their factory workers, and the town had carried that air of forward-looking prosperity into the present. It was quite a contrast to Glastonbury’s ragtag appeal, but it was Glastonbury that Winnie preferred.

Faith had admitted reluctantly that her name was Wills, and had given Winnie an address in a comfortable housing estate near the Street police station. At half past five Winnie stopped her car in front of the Wills house. It sat at the end of a quiet close of similar brick, semidetached homes that looked as if their owners had participated in a “tidy garden” contest. There was neither an untrimmed shrub nor a weed to be seen, and Winnie found it vaguely depressing. Nor was there any sign of life: no bicycles, no roller skates, no one digging in a well-manicured flower bed.

As she neared the front door, however, she saw signs of neglect that had not been visible from the street—weeds sprouting in the beds, parched petunias and begonias that had been allowed to wither. Winnie rang the bell, and after a moment a woman of about her own age opened the door. The woman wore smart business clothes, and would have been pretty had she not looked drawn with worry or exhaustion.

“Mrs. Wills? Could I speak to you for a moment?”

“I’m sorry, but we’ve already donated at our church.” She started to close the door.

“Mrs. Wills, it’s about your daughter.”

The woman stared at her, her hand flying to her throat in the classic gesture of shock that Winnie had seen too often.

“She’s all right, Mrs. Wills,” Winnie hastened to reassure her. “May I come in, please?”

Mrs. Wills moved back like a sleepwalker, then sank onto a sofa in the small, formal front room. There was a faint smell of cooking potatoes in the air. “Is she … is the baby—”

“Faith is healthy as a horse, and hasn’t had any difficulties or complications with the pregnancy.” Winnie sat in a nearby chair. “My name’s Winifred Catesby, Mrs. Wills, and Faith asked me to come and see you.” That might be stretching the truth a bit, but Winnie didn’t see any harm.

“Where—where is she?” Mrs. Wills started to rise, as if to go to her daughter that instant.

“It’s Maureen, isn’t it?” said Winnie as she laid a gently restraining hand on her arm. “Maureen, Faith wanted you to know that she was safe and well.”

“But she’s coming home? She is coming home, isn’t she?”

Winnie had known this would be difficult. “Not just now, Maureen. She seems to be content where she is for the present, but she wanted you to know that she misses you, and that she misses her brother and sister.”

Maureen Wills put her face in her hands. “You don’t know—you can’t imagine what it’s been like,” she choked out. “Losing your baby, not knowing if she’s alive or dead. And Gary—Gary won’t even allow us to speak her name—It’s been terrible for Meredith and Jon.…” She raised her face, blotched and tear streaked. “How could she do this to us?”

“Maureen, kids make mistakes. We all make mistakes, but this one isn’t easy to put right. I’m sure Faith never meant to hurt any of you.”

“Then why is she so stubborn? If she’d just told us what happened, who the father is, or if she’d just been reasonable about having an—” Maureen broke off abruptly, with a glance at Winnie’s collar. “I never thought … when Gary told her she was legally an adult, that if she was going to disrespect us that way, she could fend for herself. I never thought she’d go.”

Winnie listened, nodding encouragingly, knowing how badly Maureen Wills must have needed to say these things to someone.

“And then, when I found her gone, that was terrible enough. But I never thought she’d stay away. Every minute, every hour, I thought I would hear the door. Or she would ring and ask me to come and get her. Sometimes I’d find myself thinking I had to pick her up from soccer practice, or choir, and then I’d realize …”

“She told me she sang in the choir. It seems to have meant a lot to her.”

“She was at Somerfield. We were so proud of her.”

“Faith is very special, Mrs. Wills—Maureen. What’s happened doesn’t change that. I’ve seldom seen a girl her age with such courage and self-reliance.”

“I want to see her, please. Can’t you take me to her?”

The tearful supplication was hard to resist, but Winnie shook her head. “I can’t betray Faith’s wishes. But I’ll tell her what you’ve said, and I’ll do my best to arrange a meeting. I think that’s all we can hope for just now.”

“But where is she? How is she managing? Is she eating? Does she attend your church?”

“I came to know Faith as a friend, not in my official capacity,” Winnie explained. “She has a job, and a safe place to live, and a number of people who are concerned for her welfare.”

“But how will she manage, once the baby’s … When is it …?”

“Late October, I believe. As for what she’ll do then, I don’t know, but we’ve some time to find a solution. If you’ll just—”

There was a sound from the back of the house and Maureen Wills froze, holding up a hand to silence Winnie. “It’s Gary and the kids. I don’t want him to—It’ll be better if I talk to him. Could you—”

The woman looked so terrified that Winnie quickly handed her the card she’d taken from her handbag and rose. “Here’s my number. Ring me.”

She patted Maureen’s trembling hands, and was out the front door as a man’s furious voice called out, “Maureen, where are you? The damn chips are burned to a crisp! Maureen?”

Winnie drove home with hopes that she had made some progress in reconciling Faith with her family, although perhaps a goal of physical reunification was unwise if Mr. Wills was as intimidating as he seemed. It seemed obvious that he was the real stumbling block. Winnie had seen this a number of times in her years of counseling parishioners—men often took a daughter’s pregnancy as a personal affront, and even in the more well-balanced families there seemed to be an element of jealousy involved. What she did find curious was the lengths to which Faith had gone to protect a boy who apparently had shown no further interest in her.

The next challenge would be arranging a meeting between Faith and her mother on neutral ground. As she neared home, she decided that her study at the Vicarage would provide the ideal setting.

The Vicarage was on the Butleigh Road, south of Glastonbury, in the village of Compton Grenville. Winnie had come to love her parish in this gentle countryside, with its view of the Levels to the east, and to the west the Hood Monument at the top of wooded Windmill Hill.

The house was the epitome of the drafty Victorian pile, but in five years Winnie had come to regard its eccentricities with a profound affection.

Of course, to do the place justice would have taken a small fortune, but Winnie had done the best she could with diocesan funds, and she had used a bit of the small inheritance she and Andrew had had from their parents. She had made the front parlor her office, and had outfitted the large old kitchen as a combination sitting/eating area.

She turned into her drive with the pleasure she always felt. She and Jack had no plans for that evening; for once she had no pastoral obligations, and she was rather looking forward to a quiet evening spent working on her sermon. Then, to her surprise, she saw Andrew’s car pulled round near the kitchen door.

Andrew had been dropping in unannounced rather frequently of late. While Winnie adored her brother, she was aware that his concern was much more likely to be for his welfare than for hers. Andrew had come to depend on her, perhaps too much, and she had tried to reassure him that her feelings for Jack wouldn’t change things between them—although if she were honest with herself, she’d have to admit they already had.

Stopping the car, she retrieved the shopping she’d picked up for her supper from the boot and let herself in the back door. Andrew sat at her kitchen table, the Observer spread out before him, a half-empty glass of red wine in his hand. He looked up with an impish smile.

“Hullo, darling. I brought you a nice bottle of Burgundy, and thought I’d stay to do the honors.”

“I can see you already have.” She gave him a fond peck on the cheek as she set her shopping on the table. The cheerful kitchen was her favorite room in the house. Roman blinds in tomato-red canvas covered the windows, so that the morning sun filled the room with its own sunrise, and she’d slipcovered the old sofa and chair in the small sitting area in a combination of prints in the same red and apple-green.

Now in the evening light the rich colors were muted, the room cool and welcoming. Andrew examined the contents of the shopping bag. “A loaf of bread, a hunk of cheese—farmhouse Cheddar, no less—apples, and a bar of Cadbury’s chocolate. Planning a romantic dinner?”

“No, a working one, actually, so I’d better go easy on the wine. But I will have a glass and put my feet up for a bit before I dig in.” Winnie fetched a glass from the cupboard and sat down beside Andrew, slipping out of her shoes with a sigh of relief.

She had often been told that they resembled one another, but she’d always thought that Andrew had got the better part of the deal. He was taller, slimmer, and on him her pleasant features and untidy brown hair were refined to quiet good looks. His tortoiseshell wire-rimmed spectacles added just the right touch of distinction. Perfectly professorial, she thought as she filled her glass, and smiled.

Raising an eyebrow, Andrew queried, “Had a good day, then? You look as though you’ve been impressing the bishop.”

“Tougher than that.” She hesitated. How much might she tell him about Faith’s situation without compromising the girl’s trust? Without mentioning names, she briefly outlined her efforts to negotiate a reconciliation.

Andrew swirled the wine round the rim of his glass, then took a swig and studied her over its edge. “Winnie, don’t you think you’ve gone beyond the pale here? This girl is not a member of your congregation, or even C of E as far as you know. No one has asked you to intercede—or interfere, as the case may be—and it seems to me you’re likely to do more harm than good.”

She stared at her brother, astounded. “It’s my job to minister to people, parishioners or not. You know that. And I would never have gone to see the girl’s parents without her permission. She’s seventeen years old, for heaven’s sake, and she misses her home and her family!”

“You don’t have a clue what girls are like these days! Or teenagers, for that matter. They’re lazy and they expect the world handed to them on a platter, and this one probably deserved her predicament—”

“That’s absurd—”

“Not to mention the fact that she’s already got a strike against her if she’s involved with these batty friends of yours. And what makes you think this girl’s told you the truth about anything?” Andrew shook his head in disgust. “Since you met Jack Montfort, you seem to have lost all common sense.”

“Andrew, what on earth has got into you?” Then realization dawned. “This isn’t about my work at all! This is about Jack, isn’t it?”

For a moment she thought he would deny it, then he met her eyes. “Glastonbury is a small town, Winnie. People talk. I went to a council meeting last night, and you and Jack Montfort were a great source of speculation. Montfort may have some justification for going off the deep end, but I can’t see that you have any excuse for plunging in with him. I’m surprised that your bishop hasn’t had a discreet word with you about associating yourself with blatant spiritualism—”

“That’s enough!” She pushed back her chair and stood, her bewilderment turning to icy fury. “You’re being bloody offensive, and you don’t know what you’re talking about. I think you’d better go home.”

Andrew stood, too, a little unsteadily, and leaned towards her. “How do you think I feel, being gossiped about? I’ve worked for years to build my reputation in this town—you know how hard it is to get project funding—and now people snigger when they see me and make comments about my sister’s raging hormones causing her to take leave of her senses. They all want to know if you’re sleeping with him—are you sleeping with him, Winnie?”

For the first time since she was nine years old, Winnie raised her hand and slapped her brother across the face as hard as she could.

“Inspector James …”

Gemma said the words aloud as she drove, trying out the sound on her tongue. Heady things, titles. They tempted you to think you were a different person, when in reality the changes were more like the layers of accretion on a pearl. A little more irritation gained you a little more luster, another layer of knowledge, of experience.

Or perhaps she’d wanted the title to make her into a different person—one whose sense of accomplishment wasn’t tempered by her sense of loss. She’d been so busy worrying about how Kincaid would deal with her decision that she’d failed to take her own response to their separation into account. And in spite of her excitement, and the intensity of her focus on her training, she’d felt a constant ache that seemed only to grow more profound with time. She’d come to think of it as the equivalent of the phantom-limb syndrome—she found herself carrying on imaginary conversations with him throughout the day. It was as if their thought processes had become permanently intertwined. Even when they’d been apart in the course of a job, investigating different avenues on a case, she’d been constantly filing away mental references to share with him.

Kincaid had reacted the way she’d expected, his initial dismay turning quickly to angry bewilderment. “Doesn’t our partnership mean anything to you?” he had asked, and her justifications had sounded weak in her own ears. He’d pulled himself together, of course, had even tried to be understanding and supportive—but he had withdrawn from her. During her last weeks of training in Hampshire, she’d rung him a few times and their conversations had consisted of pleasantly distant chat. Returning to London yesterday, she’d found her new duty assignment awaiting her, and she knew she must tell him about it in person.

He’d been away from the Yard on a case, so she’d gone home, fed Toby his supper, then tucked him up at Hazel’s and headed for Kincaid’s Hampstead flat. She should have rung—he might still be out, he might have other plans, he might not want to see her—and perhaps it was fear of the last that had prompted her to go unannounced.

The traffic was light as she drove through Camden Town, the September evening warm enough to allow her to drive her new car with the windows down. The Ford Escort, whose color went by the romantic and improbable name of Wild Orchid, had been a much-needed gift to herself on her promotion. The increase in her salary had made it feasible, but more than that she had needed some sort of visible symbol of her achievement. And Kincaid had not seen the car yet, which gave her an excuse for showing up on his doorstep.

When she reached Hampstead the glitterati were out in force, strolling and positioning themselves to see and be seen in the sidewalk cafés, cell phones permanently attached to their ears.

Turning into Carlingford Road, she saw Kincaid’s old MG Midget parked in front of his building, covered with its tarp, but that didn’t necessarily mean he was at home. The Major’s ground-floor flat was quiet, as was the stairwell of the building, nor was there any sound of telly or stereo from Kincaid’s flat when she reached the top floor. Her hopes sank, but she knocked, and after a moment he opened the door.

“Gemma! I didn’t know you were back.”

She absorbed the details as if it had been months rather than weeks since she’d seen him: unruly chestnut hair, jeans and a cornflower-blue T-shirt that brought out the indigo in his eyes, bare feet, and the smile that always made her catch her breath.

“Late yesterday,” she answered as she followed him into the flat. “I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”

“Not unless you count drinking a beer and sitting on the balcony.” Going to the fridge, he retrieved a lager and held it out towards her, his eyebrow raised questioningly.

Nodding, she accepted the cold bottle and looked round the flat with pleasure. He had managed that rare thing: comfortable masculinity. The small but functional kitchen was separated from the sitting room by a lamplit island that served as the flat’s depository for keys, the day’s mail, and the usual household odds and ends, but the clutter was well organized.

In the sitting room, the furniture was upholstered in rich reds, blues, and greens—stained-glass colors, he called them—the walls held his collection of vintage London Transport art, and every spare nook and cranny was filled with books. But the true focus of the room was the view, first of the balcony with its colorful pots of flowers (contributed by the Major) and, beyond that, the panorama of London rooftops limned by the evening light.

“Join me outside?” he asked, and as she stepped out through the French doors she laughed aloud.

“You’ve made Sid a platform!” Sid, the black cat Kincaid had inherited from his late friend Jasmine Dent, turned and gave her an unblinking emerald stare from a cat-sized perch attached to the balcony railing.

“I got fed up having heart failure every time he jumped up on the railing,” Kincaid explained, running his hand along the cat’s back. “He’s already used up a couple of his nine lives—and I’d hate to think what the Major would do to me if Sid plummeted three floors into one of his prize rosebushes.” He settled in one of the lawn chairs, stretching out his long legs and resting his feet on the railing. “I can’t take credit for the platform, though. It was Kit’s idea.”

Gemma sat beside him, very much aware of his physical nearness. “How is Kit?”

Kincaid frowned. “Ian’s thinking of taking a job in Canada. Kit wants to stay with me if Ian goes, but I haven’t been able to get a commitment out of Ian either way. The last thing Kit needs is to be uprooted. And I want him here.”

“But how would you manage?” she asked, thinking of the conflict with the job—and of the changes it would mean in her relationship with him.

“How much more difficult could it be than the weekends he spends here now?”

A good bit, she thought, but aloud she said merely, “What if Ian won’t agree?” She had never trusted McClellan’s sudden desire to make things up to Kit.

“We’ll deal with that if it happens. It’s not even positive about the job yet.”

Gemma sat forward and peered down into the garden. The roses were lush with late summer’s passion, but the rectangle of lawn was as primly tidy as ever. “Where is Kit tonight? I thought he’d be with you for the weekend.”

“In Grantchester, getting Tess ready for an obedience trial tomorrow. I’ll go up in the morning.”

Gemma felt suddenly excluded, as if they’d done a perfectly good job of carving out a life without her. And yet she knew that was unreasonable—wasn’t she the one who had chosen to go away? “I thought I’d see you at the Yard today,” she said, striving for firmer ground. “Tough case?”

“Wrapped up today, barring the paperwork, and that I’ve turned over to my sergeant.” He gave her a wicked grin. “Serves him right for being such a bloody eager beaver.”

“Wasn’t I?”

“Not like this. He’s a public-school boy—Eton, no less—and full of do-gooder’s enthusiasm for the job. Hasn’t learned he can’t change the world yet.”

“What’s his name?” she asked casually. Surely it was ridiculous to be jealous of this young man who had taken her place.

“Doug Cullen. He’s not a bad chap, really, and I think he’ll make a decent copper once he’s seasoned a bit. At any rate he’s intelligent, and that’s an enormous improvement over the last two they assigned me.” He took a sip of his beer and studied her. “You’ll be bossing sweet young things about yourself, any day now. How does it feel?”

She heard the distance in his tone and said awkwardly, “Don’t know yet, really.” He’d given her an opening, and the longer she waited to take it, the more difficult it would be. Abruptly, she said, “I’ve got my duty assignment. Notting Hill.”

For a moment he didn’t respond, then, without taking his gaze from the garden, he said softly, “Your old stomping ground. Good. That should make things easier for you. Congratulations,” he added, but she could see it took an effort.

“This has been harder than I expected.”

“Gemma, I’ve no doubt you can do the job—”

“No, that’s not what I meant. I feel so … displaced … without you. It’s like half of me’s missing. I never realized …”

He stared at her, then said lightly, “And I thought you’d come to give me a ‘Dear Duncan’ send-off in person. I met this terrific bloke on my Criminal Behavior course …”

“Fat chance, that!” she exclaimed, laughing.

He moved his bare foot along the railing until it touched hers. “I’ve missed you too.”

The wave of desire that washed over her from that small contact was so intense it left her shaken. She closed her eyes and held quite still, struggling to convince herself that every nerve ending in her body hadn’t suddenly migrated to the left side of her left foot.

When she opened her eyes, Kincaid was watching her. “Gemma? You okay?”

Tentatively, she said, “Just exactly how much did you miss me?”

He brushed her cheek with a fingertip. “Are you angling for a demonstration, Inspector?”

Her pulse leapt. “Yes, sir, guv’ner, sir.” The lights blinked on in the house opposite, as if to signal the coming of night. “You can’t make a case without evidence, you know.”

“Oh, I think that could be obtained easily enough, don’t you?” He stood, and she caught the flash of his grin as he held out his hand to her. She slipped her fingers into his, and willingly gave herself up.

CHAPTER SIX

There are times in the history of races when the things of the inner life come to the surface and find expression, and from these rendings of the veil the light of the sanctuary pours forth.

—DION FORTUNE,

FROM GLASTONBURY: AVALON OF THE HEART

SHE LAY BESIDE him, listening to his soft breathing, with the slight whistle on the exhalation that might easily become a snore. That she found tolerable, much to her surprise, even though she had slept alone for so many years.

Not that Winnie felt entirely comfortable with the fact that she was sleeping with Jack, and she knew the excuse that the transgressions of a number of Anglican priests far surpassed hers was no justification. But she also knew that it felt right, blessed, and she could not believe that God would find such joy offensive. God had more to worry him than a bit of out-of-wedlock lovemaking … as did she.

Easing out of bed, she fumbled for slippers and dressing gown, then remembered that she had not meant to stay and that her clothes lay in a heap on the floor. That meant borrowing Jack’s dressing gown from the bedpost and slipping on thick socks.

She had learned her way round this room, which had been Jack’s parents’, well enough to navigate in the dark. The first time she had stayed the night, Jack had admitted rather shamefacedly that he had been using the small single bed in his boyhood room, unable to bear the thought of taking over the mahogany four-poster in which his parents had slept for almost fifty years. But the single bed had not been big enough for two, and together they had made the transition to the larger bedroom.

If she had thought the house cold on bright summer days, now that October had arrived it was frigid. Winnie sometimes fancied that it was the shadow of the Tor that kept it so, but that was absurd. It was merely, she told herself, shivering, that the house was old and the central heating inadequate.

As she shuffled down the stairs, hugging the banister, she indulged a moment’s fantasy in which she and Jack were snuggled up cozily in her warm room at the Vicarage. But she knew that no matter how discreet they were, tongues would wag eventually, and she did not need more gossip just now. Her archdeacon, Suzanne Sanborne, already had expressed concern over rumors circulating about Winnie’s “dabbling in the paranormal,” and this Winnie suspected had been instigated by Andrew.

Andrew had apologized to her after their row, and she’d made every effort to smooth things over, but there remained a wedge of discomfort between them that she feared might never be healed. His criticism had hurt her deeply, and she was finding forgiveness difficult. “Practice what you preach, Winnie,” she whispered as she reached the kitchen.

Switching on the light over the table, she opened the fridge and filled a mug with milk, then popped it in the microwave.

Jack could teach her a thing or two about forgiveness, she thought as she retrieved her drink and breathed in the sweet, comforting smell of scalded milk. Once she’d finally worked up her nerve that evening over dinner to tell Jack about her past relationship with Simon Fitzstephen, he had merely said gently, “I never believed you were a saint, Winnie. I hate to think you’ve been worrying over this for months.”

“You don’t mind?”

“The thought of you with another man does give me a twinge,” he admitted. “But it was a long time ago, and I don’t see how it affects us now.”

“I haven’t told you why I broke it off.” Winnie hesitated, piecing together a story that she’d kept to herself for more than a decade. “There was another student, Ray, a protégé of Simon’s. He was killed in an auto accident.”

“You were friends?”

“Yes. He’d have made a good priest—a very compassionate man, with a real gift for pastoral care. But he was a scholar as well, and he worshiped Simon. If Ray had lived, I think he’d have outgrown it in time, but he wasn’t given the chance.”

Frowning, Jack said, “Tragic, but I don’t see how this reflects on Simon.”

“Ray was working on a research project under Simon’s tutelage, an exploration of an obscure thirteenth-century Grail legend. When Ray was killed, Simon published the paper as his own.”

“But surely there was some mistake—”

“No mistake. A few months after Ray’s death, his family asked me to sort through his things. I found the original. When I confronted Simon, he said the work was his, that Ray had merely been transcribing it for him.”

“Of course, that would be it,” Jack said with evident relief.

“But Ray left notes, extensive ones. There was absolutely no doubt that he had done the research and written the paper.”

Digesting this, Jack asked, “Did you tell anyone?”

Winnie felt herself flushing. “No. Simon said he’d make a fool of me to the bishop, that he’d say I was acting out of spite because he’d rejected me, and that he’d make sure I never got a good living. He had the influence to do it too. So I convinced myself that it was a minor academic point, nothing that really mattered to anyone—and I’ve hated myself for it ever since.”

Jack covered her hand with his. “You were young, inexperienced—”

She shook her head. “There’s no excuse for what I did. I know that. But I also know that you can’t trust Simon Fitzstephen. He would betray you in an instant if it was to his advantage.”

“But there’s nothing to betray,” protested Jack. “What could Simon possibly have to gain by helping me?”

“I don’t know. But promise me you’ll be careful.”

She had had to be content with that. Jack had insisted on giving Simon the benefit of the doubt, and she realized she wouldn’t choose to change that about him—it was one of the reasons she loved him.

If only her brother was as generous, Winnie thought, finding herself back at the problem that had initially kept her from falling asleep. She could see no way to mollify Andrew other than to give up seeing Jack, which she was not willing to do, or to convince Jack to give up his communication with Edmund, which he was not willing to do—even if it were possible. This rift in her relationship with her brother nagged her like a toothache.

Sipping her milk, she thought of Faith Wills, and Andrew’s criticism of her intercession in Faith’s affairs. Andrew had been vindicated, in a sense, as things had certainly not turned out as Winnie had hoped, but she still felt strongly that she had done the right thing. Faith had agreed to see her mother, had even set a time to meet at the Vicarage, then had abruptly changed her mind. Winnie had not been able to budge the girl from her decision, and Faith had offered no excuse. The closer Faith came to her due date, only a few weeks away now at the end of October, the more concerned Winnie became about her.

Although Garnet had assured her that Faith was doing well and the pregnancy seemed normal, Winnie sensed that Garnet was holding something back—and that both Faith and Garnet were avoiding her. Had she unwittingly alienated them by her efforts to reunite Faith with her parents?

Nor had the tension between Nick and Garnet abated, as their mutual concern for Faith only seemed to increase their antagonism.

And as far as Winnie knew, no one in the group seemed to have gained any true understanding of what it was that Edmund wanted of them.

Sighing, Winnie set down her empty cup and rubbed her face. Tired, but no closer to sleep, she couldn’t shake the feeling that things were building to some sort of climax, and she found no comfort in the passage from Ephesians that came suddenly to mind. For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh … but against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Could there be some truth in Garnet’s dire forecasts of doom and dark forces?

No, surely not. That was absurd. But whatever the cause of the foreboding she felt, she must protect Jack as best she could—and she could only do that if she knew exactly what she was up against.

As much as she disliked the idea, it was time she had a confrontation with Simon Fitzstephen … and she mustn’t let herself forget that it was she who held the upper hand.

With a decision made, she rinsed her cup in the sink, switched off the lamp, and climbed the stairs. Diving under the covers, she snuggled up to Jack’s solid warmth and fell instantly into a deep and dreamless sleep.

We who watch … rue the day of Thurstan’s coming.… Darkness came upon us then.…

Simon Fitzstephen sat next to Jack Montfort at the round table in Fitzstephen’s sitting room, translating aloud what Montfort had just scrawled on the page in his notebook. A fire crackled in the grate, John Rutter’s arrangement of William Byrd’s Miserere mei played softly on the stereo, and they had drawn the heavy velvet drapes against the coming of evening.

Having invited Jack on the pretext of continuing their genealogical research, Simon had encouraged him to try asking Edmund for information once more. Fitzstephen was convinced that the presence of the others in the group hampered the automatic-writing process: it looked as though the results of this session might prove him right.

Thurstan had been the first Norman abbot at Glastonbury, brought from Caen in France by King William after the Conquest to succeed Aethelnoth. By Simon’s reckoning, Edmund must have been in his early teens when Thurstan became abbot in 1077.

Jack’s hand again moved across the paper. The church was never finished … it was cursed. One day the Abbot went into the Chapter House and spoke against the monks. He sent for his men and they fell upon us fully armed. We scattered in terror. Some fled into the church, thinking to be safe there. But evil … that day … the Frenchmen broke into the choir.… Some shot arrows towards the sanctuary so that they stuck in the Cross that stood above the altar. Many … monks were wounded … three were killed. Blood came from the altar onto the steps, and from the steps onto the paving stones.…

“Where were you?” Simon asked softly.

I hid in the scriptorium, among the books. But I saw … afterwards. I washed the bodies of the dead … and wept for them. I weep still for what the Abbot stole from us that day.

“What was that? What did the abbot take?”

But Jack’s hand rested unmoving on the paper, his fingers slack, and after a moment he blinked.

“Get anything?” he asked, laying down the pen and stretching.

“See for yourself.” Simon paced while Jack read, for while Jack’s translations had improved, he still didn’t think as easily in Latin as Simon did.

Jack came to the end of the page and looked up. “There’s something here I don’t understand. Why did Thurstan ‘speak against’ the monks? Had they done something wrong?”

“No. Although Thurstan was a godly man, and a builder, like all the Normans, he made the monks stop the Gregorian chant that had been part of the Abbey’s tradition from time immemorial, substituting a French chant by William of Fécamp. When the monks protested, Thurstan attacked them. You must understand that this substitution was no minor thing to the monks—the chant was part of the very fabric of their daily lives.”

“And Edmund witnessed this.…” Jack mused. “Maybe it was even more than that.… Do you remember when Winnie said that as she listened to Edmund’s description of the monks’ service she felt an immense sense of joy and harmony? She told me later that she had seen a vision, that she’d been in the church and heard them singing.…”

Would wonders never cease? thought Simon. The pragmatic Winifred Catesby was the last person he’d have expected to have a vision. Aloud, he said, “She heard them singing.… Do you suppose … Could it be the chant that Edmund wants us to restore?”

“It sounds a bit far-fetched. The chants must be well documented—”

“No, wait.” Something nipped at Simon’s memory. He went to the bookcase and ran his finger along the spines until he found the volume he wanted, but the mere act of touching it triggered his recall and he held the book, unopened. “There’s a Celtic tradition that Joseph of Arimathea brought with him to Britain a twelve-part chant that had been secretly passed down through the centuries from pre-Christian temple priests in Egypt. Although no one is certain what they sang at Glastonbury, some sources say it was the one place where this chant was maintained in its purest form by a perpetual choir.… What if it was this chant that Thurstan forbade?”

“And the monks would have risked their lives for this?” Jack’s doubt was evident.

“Perhaps if they thought that the survival of their society depended on it. The word enchantment is derived from ‘chant.’ The ancients believed that music was the strongest magic, that it kept man in tune with the cosmos and in harmony with one another. Music was almost always the province of the priesthood, and in some cultures, it was considered so powerful that music that deviated from the prescribed rituals was strictly forbidden.

“A twelve-part chant was part of Celtic magic as well,” Simon continued, “and the two traditions may have blended together over time, increasing in significance and importance.”

Standing, Jack went to warm his hands at the fire. “If you’re right, how could we possibly restore something like that? I wouldn’t have the foggiest idea where to begin.”

“There might have been a written record,” Simon said thoughtfully. “That could be where your family comes into it.”

They had been able to trace Montforts as far back as the thirteenth century, but had not been able to find a link between that Montfort—a Glastonbury wool merchant—and Edmund, twelfth-century monk of the Abbey. When they’d questioned Edmund directly, he’d merely said, “Blood helps the link, sometimes … oftentimes it obscures.…” Over the months, Simon had become aware of distinct personality traits apparent in their otherworldly correspondent, and this was Edmund at his cagiest.

Jack rocked on his heels, a mannerism that should have been clumsy on so large a man, but was not. “Do you seriously think something like that could have survived intact all these years?”

“Abbey deeds were found in a parish church fairly recently.” Simon made an effort to keep his voice calm. To discover an untouched fragment of the past, hold it in his hands—

“But say we did find this chant, then what would we do? We couldn’t sing it ourselves—”

“Let’s not put the cart before the horse here,” Simon soothed. “We may not even be on the right track. It is interesting, though, that most of us—including your Anglican friend—have a strong interest in church music.”

“Winnie! Bloody hell! I’m supposed to be at the Vicarage for dinner in a quarter of an hour. I completely forgot. And Winnie’s invited the Archdeacon and her husband, and her brother—a peacemaking attempt of sorts—so there’ll be hell to pay if I’m late. I’d better fly.” With that, he grabbed his coat from the peg by the door, and was gone.

Simon followed him to the porch and stood for a time, ignoring the cold, gazing up at the patch of starlit sky visible through a gap in the foliage above his garden. Did Jack Montfort have any idea of the significance of what they’d just learned? Or of its inherent possibilities?

Perhaps, decided Simon, it was just as well he did not. They had gone beyond parlor games now, and it was time to test allegiances. He went inside for his car keys, and set out to pay a visit.

It seemed to Faith that every day it got harder to walk up the bloody hill. The steep incline of Wellhouse Lane was made more treacherous by the slimy mat of dead leaves coating the tarmac, and if she fell she’d be as helpless as an overturned tortoise. The baby’s feet were lodged firmly in her diaphragm, and the pressure of its head on her sciatic nerve sent pain shooting down her thigh—at least that was what Garnet had told her, and Garnet would know.

Faith stopped, panting, pressing her palm into the small of her back and wiggling feet already swollen from a day of standing behind the café’s counter. She could hear the trickle of water beneath her feet. These hills were honeycombed with water—it ran in the culverts laid under the tarmac; it leached from the verges and sprang from every nook and cranny.

Woodsmoke lay heavy on the still, damp air. Garnet would have the stove lit, and Faith imagined the smoke rising from the chimney, spilling down the hillside like a cloak, hiding everything beneath it from mortal sight. But then she had been thinking strange things of late, and her dreams were stranger still.

It was odd that the nearer she came to having her baby, the more she missed her own mother. Often now, she dreamed she heard her mother’s voice calling her name—sometimes she even felt her mum’s hand on her brow, stroking back her hair—and then she would wake in the silent, cold room, the only living presence the calico cat curled on the foot of her bed.

Stepping carefully on the slippery tarmac, she began the uphill trudge again. To her left rose the massive cone of the Tor, blotting out the sky. When she had first come to live with Garnet, she’d liked to climb up to the head of the spring above the farmhouse and gaze out over the Levels, imagining centuries past and the land below her covered with water, Glastonbury an island in the Summer Sea.

But now the pull of the Tor was too strong—she carried it with her, waking and sleeping. Was this feeling of oppressive power bound up with what Jack and the others were trying to do? Or was it something else entirely, something so old and dark it stretched beyond memory?

She wished she could talk to Winnie about it. Winnie listened without judging, without trying to make you see things her way. But she was no longer sure she could trust Winnie, after what Garnet had told her. That saddened her, as did her decision not to see her family. As much as she missed them, that was not her path. Faith knew that as surely as she knew she held two lives in her hands.

The smell of smoke grew stronger as she reached the farmyard gate. The yard was a pool of shadow beneath the peaked slate roof of the house. But as she clicked the gate latch, the door opened. Garnet stood outlined against the kitchen’s warm glow, looking anxiously out into the dusk, and Faith hurried to meet her.

Other than Andrew Catesby, Jack had not met Winnie’s guests before.

Archdeacon Suzanne Sanborne, Winnie’s immediate superior, was a woman in her forties with short, dark, silver-streaked hair that curled about her square jaw. She had a forthright manner and a talent for putting people at their ease, and Jack knew that Winnie both liked and admired her.

The Archdeacon’s husband, David Sanborne, was a physician with a busy practice in Street. His mild demeanor made an interesting contrast to his wife’s more forceful personality.

Both Sanbornes seemed well acquainted with Andrew Catesby, as was Winnie’s friend Fiona Allen and her husband, Bram. The two women listened to Andrew with rapt attention, laughing at his stories on cue, and it seemed odd to Jack that a man so attractive to women had never married. Andrew did a good job of excluding him from the general conversation, but no one else seemed aware of it, and Jack was content to observe until Winnie called the party in to dinner.

Winnie had painted the dining room the color of aubergines, which made the large space seem smaller and more intimate. Above the table, she’d hung a Victorian chandelier she’d found in a junk shop, polishing the brass until it gleamed and filling it with candles. The effect was lovely. And Winnie looked lovely herself in the candle glow, in a dress of midnight-blue velvet that set off the blue of her eyes and the creaminess of her skin. Was it Jack’s imagination, or was Andrew watching his sister even more intently than usual?

As they started on the first course, David Sanborne addressed Andrew: “Any new projects on the archaeological front since I saw you last?”

“There are always projects—it’s the funding for them that’s scarce.” Andrew’s smile was acid. “It’s not newsworthy, is it, digging for shards of sixth-century pottery? But then you have chappies calling themselves Pendragon and digging up the High Street for treasure with a bulldozer, and that makes the front page.”

Suzanne chuckled. “That did cause a bit of a stir in the town council. Mr. Pendragon would probably rate as a genuine English eccentric.”

“I can testify to that.” Bram Allen smiled. “It happened right in front of my gallery, so I had a ringside seat. Right out of King Arthur, he was, with flowing white hair and a star-covered robe. Had to be forcibly removed, poor chap, and the police impounded the bulldozer.”

“Certifiable, if you ask me,” Andrew said too loudly. “All these mumbo-jumbo followers are loony, spouting off about dreams and visions.”

Fiona Allen went very still, and into the awkward silence Winnie said, “The biblical prophets might take exception to that view, wouldn’t you say, Suzanne?”

The conversation moved on as they progressed through poached salmon with dill sauce and new potatoes, but there was a distinct feeling of unease at the table.

After the salad, Winnie served a lemon roulade that she readily admitted was store-bought. “I don’t have the patience for sweets,” she said. “They’re too fiddly—all that measuring and sifting.”

“Why bother when you can buy things like this?” Fiona took the last bite of her portion with a contented sigh. “Mind you, I’ll expect this the next time I come for lunch.”

“Not too soon, I hope,” her husband said. “Or my gallery walls will be bare. Fiona’s been doing more lunching than painting lately.”

“Painter’s block, would you call it?” asked David Sanborne with interest.

“Something like that,” Fiona replied tersely, casting an injured glance at Bram.

“Coffee, anyone?” Winnie said brightly, and received a relieved-sounding chorus of affirmatives.

“I’ll help, shall I?” Andrew offered as they rose to return to the drawing room.

“Jack and I can manage,” Winnie shot back, and the look Andrew gave Jack could have drawn blood.

Returning to the drawing room after he had helped Winnie clear the table, Jack made an effort to ignore Andrew. He slipped Handel’s Dixit Dominus in the CD player, and as the conversation flowed around him, he thought of what he and Simon had discussed. Was it possible that they were right in thinking it was the Abbey’s lost chant Edmund wanted them to find?

Winnie’s recent warning about Simon crossed his mind, but he dismissed it easily enough. Surely Winnie had been mistaken—perhaps overly zealous in the defense of her dead friend. And if not—if Simon had done such an unscrupulous thing, Jack could not believe it was more than an isolated incident that Simon had later regretted.

Hoping for a moment alone with Winnie, he went back into the kitchen. She stood at the worktop, her back to him, stacking cups and saucers on a tray. He placed his hands on her shoulders and bent to kiss her exposed shoulder just above the neckline of her dress. She relaxed against him, and he wrapped his arms round her.

But before he could speak he felt a prickling at the back of his neck, and a small current of air. Turning, he saw Andrew Catesby standing in the doorway, watching them.

“Oh, good, Andrew—you can carry the coffee,” said Winnie, as if nothing were amiss, but Jack had seen the venom in her brother’s eyes.

With a forced smile, she handed Jack the cheese tray, and as he left the kitchen he heard Andrew say, “Not very fitting behavior for a priest, fawning all over him like a common tart.”

Winnie snapped something in reply that Jack couldn’t quite make out. He’d turned back, determined to intervene, when Winnie came out of the kitchen, cheeks flaming.

“Winnie—”

“Later. We’d better serve the guests.”

They returned to the drawing room, and when Andrew had joined them, David Sanborne said, “Nice choice, the Handel. I believe that’s what the Somerfield choir is doing at Christmas this year—am I right, dear?” He glanced at his wife.

“Our Nigel’s hanging on to his soprano part by a hair, I’m afraid. We’re all praying his voice will hold another few months.”

“It must be frustrating for boys that age, being neither fish nor fowl,” said Winnie, her color still high. “And then just when they’ve got themselves sorted out, grown a bit of hair on their chests, they have to move up and deal with Andrew.”

“I do what I can,” Andrew said. “Vile, back-stabbing little buggers, most of them. Your son excepted, of course.” He nodded at the Sanbornes.

David Sanborne grinned. “Sixth-formers shaping up this year, are they?”

“As well as they ever do, meaning it would take a miracle to make historians out of them.” He gave Jack a malevolent glance. “Montfort here is an amateur historian of a sort—why don’t you tell them about your interest in the history of the Abbey?”

The bastard, thought Jack, groping for an acceptable answer. “Just a bit of local genealogy, really. It’s odd, but with both my parents gone, I suddenly realized I wanted to know more about my family. I’ve been able to trace Montforts in Glastonbury as far back as the twelve hundreds, but earlier than that it gets fuzzy.”

“Montfort’s a French name, surely,” said Fiona, who had been quiet since her husband’s dig about her painting. “If your ancestors didn’t arrive until after the Conquest, that would explain why the trail disappears.”

“Any relation to Simon de Montfort, the reformer?” asked Bram.

“An interesting idea,” Andrew mused, “but that de Montfort came to a very bad end. His revolutionary zeal got him gutted on the battlefield, I believe.”

“Simon Fitzstephen’s been remarkably helpful,” Jack said as he saw Winnie blanch. “I’m sure if there was a connection, he would have found it.”

“Yes, but would he have told you?” murmured Suzanne. Then, seeing all eyes turned on her expectantly, she shook her head slightly. “Oh, that was out of turn. Too much wine, I expect. It’s just that Simon’s been known to withhold information when it suited him. Church politics can be surprisingly vicious, and Simon was a master player.”

David Sanborne stood. “I think I’d better take you home, my dear, before you become indiscreet. And I’ve got early surgery tomorrow—you know what they say, farmers and doctors never get a lie-in.”

“We’d better be going too,” said Bram Allen. “Fiona needs her rest. It’s been an interesting evening, Winnie. Unparalleled, you might say.”

As they made their farewells, Fiona took Jack’s hand. With a glance at her husband, she said softly, “I am glad to meet you.”

It was a fine, crisp night, with stars hard and bright in a clear sky, and when the two couples had left, Andrew remained on the porch, shifting from one foot to the other. Winnie moved closer to Jack, slipping an arm round his waist.

“Well, I’ll leave you two young lovers to it, shall I?” Andrew spat, then turned on his heel, and strode away. A moment later his car sped out of the drive.

Guiding Winnie by the shoulder, Jack stepped inside and shut the door. In the brighter light of the hall, he could see that her eyes were swimming with unshed tears.

“He was beastly,” she said. “Absolutely beastly.”

“I’m sorry, love. It’s my fault for getting you into this—”

“If it’s anyone’s fault it’s mine, for not seeing this coming—but there’s no excuse for his behavior.”

“Winnie, he’s jealous! And I think he’s terrified of losing you.”

“No, there’s something wrong, really wrong, but he won’t talk to me. We were best friends for most of our lives, and now I seem to have become the enemy.”

“Let’s not think about Andrew right now.” He pulled her to him and stroked her hair. “You’re cold. Come in by the fire—I’ve something to tell you.”

Pushing the chair back, Gemma stretched, yawning, then sipped at the dregs of cold tea in her mug. The clock on the cooker in her tiny kitchen alcove read half past eleven, and if she didn’t get to bed she’d be struggling at work tomorrow. Giving the papers on the tabletop a halfhearted shuffle to straighten them, she stood and padded into Toby’s room in her stocking feet.

Although it was one of the first cold nights of the autumn, he’d kicked off his small duvet and lay spread-eagled on his stomach. It wouldn’t be long before he outgrew his junior bed: how would they fit anything larger into what was essentially a boxroom?

Giving the covers a last pat, she turned away with a sigh. They would just have to manage. She wasn’t willing to contemplate leaving the garage flat just now—one change at a time was enough.

The adjustment to the new job had been more difficult than she’d expected. Although she’d been a rookie at Notting Hill, she’d just had her own bit of turf to worry about in those days. In the past two months she’d discovered that the reality of command was a different beast altogether, and with it came a mountain of paperwork that was never finished—hence her midnight stint at the table with cold tea. Added to that was the lingering sexism demonstrated by both her chief inspector and some of the male officers under her command. Only now did she realize how much she had taken her working relationship with Kincaid for granted, and how much it had insulated her from active prejudice.

These problems were complicated by her enforced separation from Kincaid: between their schedules they were lucky to snatch a few hours together in a week. She told herself daily that she had made the right decision, that things would get easier, that she wouldn’t let herself whinge over changes that had been her own choice. But more and more often she found herself awake and restless long past a sensible hour, wondering just exactly what it was she wanted from her life.

She poured the remains of her tea down the sink and rinsed the cup, then wandered round the room, turning down the bed and picking up stray toys and books. She found the routine comforting, for although she was physically tired, she didn’t feel ready to sleep.

Rummaging in the trunk that served her as a wardrobe, she found the ancient flannelette nightdress she hadn’t worn since the previous winter. For a moment, she held the fabric to her face, feeling the softness against her skin and inhaling the scent of her mother’s rose sachet. The nightdress had been a much-coveted Christmas gift from her parents while she was still at school. She had never quite managed to part with it, even during her marriage to Rob, although he’d hated it with a passion he usually reserved for rival football teams.

She slipped out of her clothes and put the nightdress on, then found a pair of heavy socks. Armed against the chill, she went into the bathroom and brushed her hair until it crackled, then washed her face and cleaned her teeth. She saved using the loo for last, as a good-luck charm of sorts, but when she checked the loo paper, there was no trace of pink.

The panic that welled up in her left her shaking, nauseated. But there was really no need to worry, she told herself—she was only a few days late—and there was certainly no need to tell Kincaid. Not yet.