A Finer End

by Deborah Crombie

  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 unti
l 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 d
ishes, 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.