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.