“I’m sure you’re right,” murmured Fiona, but he was not at all convinced she meant it.
Bram held her more tightly. “I love you, Fi. You know that, don’t you?”
“Of course I do. How could you think otherwise?” She patted his hand. “Go on. I’ll be fine, I promise.”
With that he had to be content.
Jack carefully cracked open the door to the spare bedroom and peered in. Faith lay on her side, her hands curled into fists under her chin. The innocence of her face, relaxed in sleep, tugged at his heart. She could be his child, he thought, his little Olivia, if she had lived to grow up.
Turning away, he closed the door quietly and returned to the kitchen. Not knowing who else to call, he had got David Sanborne out of bed the previous night to check on Faith. Exhaustion, stress, a chill from exposure, David had pronounced—nothing that a hot water bottle and plenty of rest wouldn’t cure, but the girl had better stop such silliness if she didn’t want to induce labor prematurely.
But once Jack had got a fairly coherent story from her, Faith had continued to fret about Garnet until he’d agreed to ring the police. The duty officer in Yeovil informed him that they couldn’t report Garnet Todd missing until at least twenty-four hours had passed. Jack had left a message for Detective Greely, and only then had Faith fallen into a fitful sleep.
After a few hours’ sleep himself, Jack had spent the morning fielding phone calls and checking with the hospital. Winnie’s condition remained stable, and Suzanne Sanborne had offered to spend the morning with her.
In the meantime, he waited for his cousin’s promised arrival. Duncan had rung the previous evening to say he would be coming for the weekend. Although relieved, Jack had begun to worry. How was he going to explain the events of the last few months? Would Duncan think him as mad as the police obviously did? It didn’t matter, he told himself. He must convince Duncan that Winnie was in danger; and now he’d begun to fear for Faith too.
How much of the girl’s rambling last night had been delirium? Nick had rung this morning, saying he believed Garnet had struck Winnie with her van—but why would Garnet Todd do such a thing? And if it were true, where was Garnet now?
Filling the kettle from the tap, Jack spooned loose tea into his mother’s old Brown Betty teapot. Hadn’t he read once that tea stimulated one’s mental processes? If that were the case, he should be competing with Sherlock Holmes after another cup, but he was no further along in finding answers.
He’d just poured boiling water over the fresh tea leaves when the doorbell rang. Jack hurried to the door and swung it wide.
As he grasped his cousin’s hand, he saw that Duncan had lost the hollow-eyed look he’d remarked on when he’d seen him last. But who was the pretty redhead with him?
She held out her hand and gave him a warm smile. “Jack, I’m Gemma James. I take it Duncan didn’t tell you I was coming?” The look she cast at his cousin was affectionately withering. “Your manners, love, leave something to be desired.”
They had got the awkwardness of their accommodation out of the way first. Jack had apologized profusely, explaining that he’d just put someone in the room fitted out for guests, but he’d move his things into his old room and give them the master bedroom. Encouraged by Gemma’s well-placed kick at his ankle under the kitchen table, Kincaid had demurred, saying they’d find a nearby B & B, and Jack had recommended an establishment near the Abbey.
Gemma had breathed an inward sigh of relief. She found the dark old house with its ugly Victorian furniture depressing, and the mass of Glastonbury Tor rising from the back garden made her feel unexpectedly claustrophobic. It was as if the hill might lean over and swallow the house at any moment.
Over cups of tea, Jack had haltingly recounted his experiences with the automatic writing, his meeting with Winnie Catesby, the gradual involvement of the others in the group, and the disappearance yesterday of Garnet Todd.
If Kincaid felt any surprise at his cousin’s story, he didn’t show it. His expression remained neutral and sympathetic, a demonstration of his listening skills, and Gemma realized how acutely she missed working with him.
“Can you do it on demand?” Kincaid asked when Jack paused. “The automatic writing.”
“I—I don’t know. I’ve done it often enough with Nick or with Simon Fitzstephen, but—”
Kincaid leaned forward, his eyes alight with interest. “What do you have to do?”
“Just have pen and paper, and empty my mind. Talk about something inconsequential, or listen to someone reading the paper, for instance. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.”
“Let’s give it a try, then. I’ll be your assistant.” The look Kincaid gave his cousin was challenging. What sort of mischief had he beguiled Jack into in those long Cheshire summers? Gemma wondered.
She watched them as they sat opposite her at the table in Jack’s cluttered kitchen, Kincaid reading an incomprehensible financial article aloud from the Guardian while Jack sat in a relaxed posture, pen and paper ready. Jack Montfort was larger, fairer, and more blunt featured than his cousin, but the resemblance was there if you looked. What was more readily apparent was the easiness between them, the sense of long-established trust and camaraderie. And the man certainly seemed rational and well balanced, in spite of his worries. Could this bizarre tale he’d told them possibly be true?
Lulled by Kincaid’s voice and her own drifting thoughts, Gemma started violently when Jack’s pen suddenly began to move across the paper. He wrote without pause, and without looking at the script. His eyes, half closed, seemed fixed somewhere in the distance.
He filled several pages, then set the pen down. “Success, I see,” he said, looking at the scattered pages.
“You mean you don’t know what you’ve written?” asked Gemma.
“I suppose I’m aware of it at some level, but I don’t process it—it’s like static on a radio.”
Kincaid touched a page. “What does it say?”
“I’ll have to translate, so if you’ll bear with me …
“O Lord, forgive me, for I have sinned grievously against Thee. Though my days of the flesh are but a distant memory, still I feel her skin, soft as goose down, and the round fullness of her breasts.…”
Frowning, Jack stopped and cleared his throat, and Gemma found it endearing that he had colored slightly.
“Sixteen and yet a woman, Alys she was called, the daughter of the stonemason come to repair the damage to the church. She found me comely and would wait for me when I went to the spring. There was little speech between us … we came together in need and pleasure as the beasts do.
“The work was finished when Alys found she was with child. She begged me for herbs.… To my shame I did her bidding … for my cowardice as well as my lust I have brought misery on us all.…
“From Brother Ambrose, who had befriended me, I stole the necessary potion. With it I gave her what was most precious to me … a bond between us stronger than death. Alys and her father left the Abbey then. Such sorrow I had never known, it tethers me to this place still.…”
Jack looked up, his eyes wide with surprise. “This woman—Alys—she meant to abort their baby. Don’t you think that’s what he means?”
Gemma, intensely moved by this recounting of the girl’s predicament, said, “I—I suppose it’s possible. They were very skilled in using herbs, and her position would have been untenable, wouldn’t it? Edmund couldn’t have married her.”
“I suspect it would have been thought she’d sinned against the Church, as well, in seducing Edmund, rather than the other way round,” Kincaid offered.
“But what if Alys changed her mind? Or the herbs didn’t work?” demanded Jack. “We’ve searched for months for a blood connection—perhaps a niece or nephew—as we suspected there might be a genetic component to the link.”