A Finer End

by Deborah Crombie

  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.