The net began to shimmer.
Carruthers said, “Watch out for the dogs. And the farmer’s wife—”
And found myself right back where I’d started from. And in pitch-blackness. The darkness meant I was there the next night, or any of a thousand nights, a hundred thousand nights, while the cathedral sat its way through the Middle Ages. And meanwhile Verity was in the middle of an air raid. And all I could do was stay put and wait for the bloody net to open again.
“No!” I said, and smashed my fist against the rough rock. And the world exploded around me.
There was a whoosh and then a crump, and ack-ack guns started up off to the east. The darkness flared bluish-white and then the aftercolor of red, and I could smell smoke below me.
“Verity!” I shouted and ran up the stairs to the bells, remembering this time to count the steps. There was just enough orangish light to see by, and a faint smell of smoke.
I reached the bell platform and shouted up the stairs. “Verity! Are you up here?”
Pigeons, no doubt descendants of the one I’d disturbed six hundred years ago, flapped wildly down the upper tower and into my face.
She wasn’t up there. I ran back down the stairs, shouting, till I reached the step where I’d come through, and began counting again.
Thirty-one, thirty-two. “Verity!” I shouted over the drone of planes and the wail of an air-raid siren that had, belatedly and unnecessarily, started up.
Fifty-three, fifty-four, I counted. “Verity! Where are you?”
I hit the bottom step. Fifty-eight. Remember that, I told myself and pushed the tower door open and came out into the west porch. The smell of smoke was stronger here, and had a rich, acrid scent to it, like cigar smoke.
“Verity!” I shouted, pushing open the heavy inner door of the tower. And came out into the nave.
The church was dark except for the rood light and a reddish light in the windows of the clerestory. I tried to estimate what time it was. Most of the explosions and sirens seemed to be off toward the north. There was a lot of smoke up near the organ, but no flames from the Girdlers’ Chapel, which had been hit early. So it couldn’t be later than half past eight, and Verity couldn’t have been here more than a few minutes.
“Verity!” I called, and my voice echoed in the dark church.
The Mercers’ Chapel had been hit in the first batch of incendiaries. I started up the main aisle toward the choir, wishing I’d brought a pocket torch.
The ack-ack stopped and then started up again with renewed effort, and the hum of the planes got louder. There was a thud, thud, thud of bombs just to the east, and flares lit the windows garishly. Half of them, the half that had had their stained glass removed for safekeeping, were boarded up or covered over with blackout paper, but three of the windows on the north were still intact, and the greenish flares made them light the church momentarily with a sickly red and blue. I couldn’t see Verity anywhere. Where would she have gone? I would have expected her to stay close to the drop, but perhaps the raid had frightened her and she’d taken shelter somewhere. But where?
The drone of the planes became an angry roar. “Verity!” I shouted over the din, and there was a clatter above on the roof, like hail pattering, then a pounding and muffled shouts.
The fire watch, up on the roof putting out the incendiaries. Had Verity heard them and hidden somewhere so they wouldn’t see her?
There was a crash overhead and then a whizzing, spitting sound. I looked up, and it was a good thing I did because I narrowly missed being hit by an incendiary.
It fell onto one of the pews, hissing and spitting molten sparks onto the wooden pew. I grabbed a hymnal out of the back of the next pew and knocked the incendiary off with it onto the floor. It rolled into the aisle and up against the end of the pew across the aisle.
I kicked it away, but the wood was already smoking. The incendiary spit and sparked, twisting like a live thing. It hit the kneeling rail and began to burn with a white-hot flame.
A stirrup pump, I thought, and looked around wildly, but they must have taken them all up on the roof. There was a bucket hanging by the south door. I ran back and grabbed it, hoping it had sand in it. It did.
I ran back up the nave and upended the bucket over the incendiary and the already-burning rail, and then stood back, waiting for it to spit.
It didn’t. I used my foot to push the incendiary into the very middle of the aisle and check to make sure the fire on the kneeling rail was out. I had dropped the sand bucket and it had rolled under one of the pews. For the verger to find tomorrow and burst into tears.
I stood there looking at it, thinking about what I’d just done. I’d acted without thinking, like Verity, going after the cat in the water. But there was no chance here of changing the course of history. The Luftwaffe was already correcting any possible incongruities.
I looked up at the Mercers’ Chapel. Flames were already licking through the carved wooden ceiling above it, and no amount of sand buckets would be able to put them out. In another two hours the entire cathedral would be in flames.
There was a dull boom as something landed outside the Girdlers’ Chapel, lighting it for an instant. In the seconds before the light faded, I could see the fifteenth-century wooden cross with the carving of a child kneeling at the foot of it. In another half hour, Provost Howard would see it, behind a wall of flames, and the whole east end of the church would be on fire.
“Verity!” I shouted, and my voice echoed in the darkened church. “Verity!”
“Ned!”
I whirled around. “Verity!” I shouted and bolted back down the main aisle. I skidded to a stop at the back of the nave. “Verity!” I shouted and stood still, listening.
“Ned!”
Outside the church. The south door. I took off between the pews, stumbling over the rails, and across to the south door.
There was a knot of people gathered outside, looking anxiously up at the roof, and two tough-looking youths with their hands in their pockets, leaning casually against a lamp-post on the corner, discussing a fire off to the west. “What’s that smell of cigars?” the taller one was asking, as calmly as if they were discussing the weather.
“Tobacconist’s corner of Broadgate,” the shorter one said. “We shoulda nipped in and pinched some cigs before it got going.”
“Did you see a girl come out of the cathedral?” I asked the nearest person, a middle-aged woman in a kerchief.
“It’s not going to catch, is it, do you think?” she said.
Yes, I thought. “The fire watch is up there,” I said. “Did you see a girl run out of the church?”
“No,” she said and went immediately back to looking up at the roof.
I ran down Bayley Lane and then back along the side of the church, but there was no sign of her. She must have come out one of the other doors. Not the vestry door. The fire watch came in and out that door. The west door.
I raced round to the west door. There was a cluster of people there, too, huddled inside the porch, a woman with three little girls, an old man wrapped in a blanket, a girl in a maid’s uniform. A gray-haired woman with a sharp nose and a WAS armband stood in front of the doors, her arms crossed.
“Did you see anyone come out of the church in the last few minutes?” I asked her.
“No one’s allowed inside the church except the fire watch,” she said accusingly, and her voice reminded me of someone’s, too, but I didn’t have time to try to work out whose.
“She has red hair,” I said. “She’s wearing a long white… she’s wearing a white nightgown.”
“Nightgown?” she said disapprovingly.
A short, stout ARP warden came up. “I’ve got orders to clear this area, he said. “The fire brigade needs all avenues to the cathedral cleared. Come along.”
The woman with the little girls picked up the littlest one and started out of the porch. The old man shuffled after her.
“Come along,” the warden said to the maid, who seemed paralyzed with fright. “You too, miss Sharpe.” He waved to the gray-haired woman.