Plans, intentions, reasons. I could hear Professor Overforce now. “I knew it! This is nothing but an argument for a Grand Design!”
A Grand Design we couldn’t see because we were part of it. A Grand Design we only got occasional, fleeting glimpses of. A Grand Design involving the entire course of history and all of time and space that, for some unfathomable reason, chose to work out its designs with cats and croquet mallets and penwipers, to say nothing of the dog. And a hideous piece of Victorian artwork. And us.
“History is character,” Professor Peddick had said. And character had certainly played a part in the self-correction-Lizzie Bittner’s devotion to her husband and the Colonel’s refusal to wear a coat in rainy weather, Verity’s fondness for cats and Princess Arjumand’s fondness for fish and Hitler’s temper and Mrs. Mering’s gullibility. And my time-laggedness. If they were part of the self-correction, what did that do to the notion of free will? Or was free will part of the plan as well?
“There’s something else I don’t understand,” Verity said. “The incongruity was repaired when Tossie eloped with Baine, right?”
I nodded.
“Then why was Delphinium Sharpe there? Didn’t T.J. say the probabilities collapsed into the true course of events as soon as the incongruity was repaired?”
“But the incongruity hadn’t been repaired when we were there,” I said. “Baine had thrown Tossie in the water, but they hadn’t run off together yet. And until they did, the incongruity still wasn’t completely repaired.”
“Of course they had. They’d run off together on June eighteenth, 1888. And it was a foregone conclusion once he kissed her, so why were we sent to Coventry at all? It obviously wasn’t to make Tossie elope with Baine.”
I knew the answer to that one at least. “To find the bishop’s bird stump,” I said. “I needed to see the doors and the empty wrought-iron stand to realize what had happened.”
“But why?” she said, still frowning. “It could have fixed it without even letting us know it had.”
“Out of pity?” I said. “Because it knew Lady Schrapnell would kill me if I didn’t find it in time for the consecration?”
But she was right. The bishop’s bird stump could have continued to sit in Mrs. Bittner’s attic, gathering dust, now that the incongruity was fixed and the Nazis hadn’t found out about Ultra. So why had I been sent to the lab in 2018 and to Blackwell’s and the air raid and been given such obvious clues if it hadn’t mattered whether the bishop’s bird stump was found or not? Would its eventual discovery after Mrs. Bittner’s death have caused some other incongruity? Or was there some reason it needed to be in the cathedral for the consecration?
“We’re coming up on Oxford,” the driver said. “Where do you want me to go?”
“Just a minute,” I said and rang up Mr. Dunworthy.
Finch answered. “Thank goodness,” he said. “Take Parks Road to Holywell and Longwell and then turn south on the High and turn off onto Merton’s playing fields. Take the access road. We’ll be waiting for you at the vestry door. Do you know where that is?”
“Yes,” I said. “Did you get that?” I asked the driver.
He nodded. “You’re taking this lot to the cathedral?”
“Yes.”
“Waste of money and everybody’s time, if you ask me,” he said. “I mean, what good is a cathedral?”
“You’d be surprised,” Verity said.
“Turn in here,” I said, looking for Merton’s pedestrian gate. “Finch, we’re here,” I said into the handheld, and to the driver again, “Go round to the east end. The vestry door’s on the south side.”
He pulled up next to the vestry door, where Finch had a dozen people waiting for us. One of them opened the back door, and Verity scrambled out and started giving orders. “The altar cloth goes in the Smiths’ Chapel,” she said, “and so does this candlestick. Take care you don’t get the reconstructions mixed up with the real things. Ned, hand me the capper’s pall.”
I laid it over her outstretched arms, and she started up the steps with it.
I picked up the handheld. “Finch, where are you?”
“Right here, sir,” he said at the door of the hearse. He was still in his butler’s frock coat, though his sleeve was now dry.
I handed him the enameled pyx. “The consecration hasn’t begun yet, has it?”
“No, sir,” he said. “There was an unfortunate jam-up in St. Aldate’s. Fire engines and ambulances completely blocking the street. It turned out to have all been an unfortunate mix-up,” he said, completely poker-faced, “but it took some time to clear up. No one was able to get near Christ Church Meadow for nearly an hour. And then the bishop was delayed. His driver took a wrong turn and ended up in Iffley. And now there seems to be some mix-up over the tickets.”
I shook my head admiringly. “Jeeves would have been proud of you. To say nothing of Bunter. And the Admirable Crichton.” I lifted out the bishop’s bird stump.
“Can I take that for you, sir?”
“I want to deliver this myself.” I nodded with my head at the children’s cross. “That goes in the Girdlers’ Chapel. And the statue of St. Michael goes in the choir.”
“Yes, sir,” he said. “Mr. Lewis is looking for you. He has something he needs to discuss with you concerning the continuum.”
“Fine,” I said, wrestling with the misericord. “As soon as this mess is over.”
“Yes, sir,” he said. “And at some point, sir, I need to speak with you about my mission.”
“Just tell me one thing,” I said, sliding the misericord out and handing it over to two first-year students. “Was your mission bringing back nonsignificant objects?”
He looked appalled. “It most certainly was not.”
I picked up the bishop’s bird stump. “Do you know where Lady Schrapnell is?”
“She was in the vestry a moment ago, sir.” He looked up at the sky. “Oh dear, it’s looking more and more like rain. And Lady Schrapnell wanted everything to be just as it was on the day of the raid.”
I carried the bishop’s bird stump up the steps and in the vestry door, and this was appropriate: carrying the bishop’s bird stump in through the same door Provost Howard had carried the candlesticks and the crucifix and the Regimental Colors out of. The treasures of Coventry.
I opened the door and took it into the vestry. “Where’s Lady Schrapnell?” I asked an historian I recognized from Jesus.
She shrugged and shook her head. “No,” she called to someone in the sanctuary. “We still need hymnals for the last five rows of pews in the north aisle. And three Books of Common Prayer.”
I went out into the choir. And chaos. People were running about, shouting orders, and there was a loud sound of hammering from the Mercers’ Chapel.
“Who took the Book of the Epistles?” a curate shouted from the lectern. “It was here just a moment ago.”
There was a chord from the organ, and the opening notes of “God Works in a Mysterious Way His Wonders to Perform.” A thin woman in a green apron was sticking long pink gladiolas in a brass vase in front of the pulpit, and a stout woman in glasses with a sheet of paper was going up to person after person, asking them something. Probably she was looking for Lady Schrapnell, too.
The organ stopped, and the organist shouted up to someone in the clerestory, “The trumpet stop’s not working.” Choirboys in linen surplices and red cassocks were wandering about. Warder must have got the surplices ironed, I thought irrelevantly.
“I don’t see what it matters whether the inside of the choir stalls is finished,” a blonde with a long nose was saying to a boy lying half under one of the choir stalls. “Nobody will be able to see it from the congregation.”