“I have no intention of going anywhere,” she said, crossing her arms more militantly. “I am the vice-chairwoman of the Cathedral Ladies’ Altar Guild and the head of the Flower Committee.”
“I don’t care who you are,” the warden said. “I’ve got orders to clear these doors for the fire brigade. I’ve already cleared the south door, and now it’s your turn.”
“Warden, have you seen a young woman with red hair?” I interrupted.
“I have been assigned to guard this door against looters,” the woman said, drawing herself up. “I have stood here since the raid began and I intend to stand here all night, if necessary, to protect the cathedral.”
“And I intend to clear this door,” the warden said, drawing himself up.
I didn’t have time for this. I stepped between them. “I’m looking for a missing girl,” I said, drawing myself up. “Red hair. White nightgown.”
“Ask at the police station,” the warden said. He pointed back the way I’d come. “Down St. Mary’s Street.”
I took off at a trot, wondering who would win. My money was on the head of the Flower Committee. Who did she remind me of? Mary Botoner? Lady Schrapnell? One of the fur-bearing ladies in Blackwell’s?
The warden hadn’t done a very effective job of clearing the south door. The exact same knot of people was standing there, and the two youths were still holding up the lamp-post. I hurried along the south side of the cathedral toward Bayley Lane and straight into the processional.
I had read about what the police sergeant had called the “solemn little procession” when the fire watch had rescued what treasures they could grab and taken them across to the police station for safekeeping. And in my mind’s eye, I had thought of it as that — a decorous parade, with Provost Howard leading, trooping the colors of the Warwickshire Regiment, and then the others, carrying the candlesticks and chalice and wafer box at a measured pace, and the wooden crucifix bringing up the rear — so that at first I didn’t recognize it.
Because it wasn’t a processional, it was a rabble, a rout, Napoleon’s Old Guard frantically saving what they could from Waterloo. They stumbled down the road at a half-run, the canon with a candlestick under each arm and a load of vestments, a teenaged boy clutching a chalice and a stirrup pump for dear life, the provost charging with the colors thrust out before him like a lance and half-stumbling over the trailing flag.
I stopped, watching them just as if it were a parade, and that took care of one possibility Verity had proposed. None of them was carrying the bishop’s bird stump.
They ran back into the police station. They must have dumped their treasures unceremoniously on the first surface they found, because they were back outside in under a minute and running back toward the vestry door.
A balding man in a blue coverall met them halfway up the stairs, shaking his head. “It’s no good. There’s too much smoke.”
“I’ve got to get the Gospel and the Epistles,” Provost Howard said and pushed past him and through the door.
“Where the bloody hell is the fire brigade?” said the teenaged boy.
“The fire brigade?” the canon said, looking up at the sky. “Where the bloody hell is the RAF?”
The teenaged boy ran back down St. Mary’s to the police station to tell them to ring the fire brigade again, and I followed him.
The rescued treasures were sitting in a pathetic line on the sergeant’s desk, the regimental colors propped up against the wall behind. While the teenaged boy was telling the sergeant, “Well, try them again. The whole chancel roof’s on fire,” I looked at them. The candlesticks, the wooden crucifix. There was a little pile of worn brown Books of Common Prayer, as well, that hadn’t made the list, and a little bundle of offering envelopes and a choirboy’s surplice, and I wondered how many other rescued items Provost Howard had left out of his list. But the bishop’s bird stump wasn’t there.
The boy darted out. The sergeant picked up the phone. “Have you seen a young woman with red hair?” I said before he could dial the fire brigade.
He shook his head, holding his hand over the receiver. “Most likely place she’d be is in one of the shelters.”
A shelter. Of course. The logical place to be during an air raid. She’d have had more sense than to stay out in this. “Where’s the nearest shelter?”
“Down Little Park Street,” he said, cradling the phone. “Go back along Bayley and turn left.”
I nodded my thanks and took off again. The fires were getting closer. The whole sky was a smoky orange, and there were yellow flames shooting up in front of Trinity Church. Searchlights crisscrossed the sky, which was getting brighter by the moment. It was getting colder, too, which seemed impossible. I blew on my icy hands as I ran.
I couldn’t find the shelter. A house had taken a direct hit in the middle of the block, a mound of smoking rubble, and next to it, a greengrocer’s shop was on fire. Everything else in the street was silent and dark.
“Verity!” I shouted, afraid I’d hear an answer from the rubble, and started back up the street, looking closely for a shelter sign on one of the buildings. I found it, lying in the middle of the road. I looked around helplessly, trying to determine which direction the blast might have blown it from. “Hello!” I shouted down stairway after stairway. “Is anyone there?”
I finally found it at the near end of the street, practically next to the cathedral, in a half-basement that offered no protection from anything, not even the cold.
It was a small, grubby room without any furniture. Possibly two dozen people, some of them in bathrobes, were sitting on the dirt floor against the sandbag-lined walls. A hurricane lamp hung at one end from a beam, swaying wildly every time a bomb landed, and under it a small boy in earmuffs and pajamas was playing a game of cards with his mother.
I scanned the dimness, looking for Verity, even though she obviously wasn’t there. Where was she?
“Has anyone seen a girl in a white nightgown?” I said. “She has red hair.”
They sat there as if they hadn’t heard me, looking numbly ahead.
“Have you any sixes?” the little boy said.
“Yes,” his mother said, handing him a playing card.
The bells of the cathedral began to chime, ringing out over the steady roar of the ack-ack guns and the whoosh and crump of the high explosives. Nine o’clock.
Everyone looked up at the sound. “That’s the cathedral’s bells,” the little boy said, craning his neck at the ceiling. “Have you any queens?”
“No,” his mother said, looking at her hand and then at the ceiling again. “Go fish. That’s how you know our cathedral’s all right, if you can hear the bells.”
I had to get out of here. I plunged out the door and up the steps to the street. The bells rang out brightly, chiming the hours. They would do that all night, tolling the hours, reassuring the people of Coventry, while the planes droned overhead and the cathedral burned to the ground.
The knot of people had moved across the street from the south door for a better view of the flames shooting up from the cathedral roof. The two youths were still at their lamp-post. I ran up to them.
“It’s no good,” the tall one was saying. “They’ll never get it out now.”
“I’m looking for a young woman, a girl—” I said.
“Ain’t we all?” the short one said, and they both laughed.
“She has red hair,” I persisted. “She’s wearing a white nightgown.”
This, of course, got a huge laugh.
“I think she’s in one of the shelters round here, but I don’t know where they are.”
“There’s one down Little Park,” the tall one said.
“I’ve already been to that one,” I said. “She’s not there.”
They both looked thoughtful. “There’s one up Gosford Street way, but you’ll never get there,” the short one said. “Land mine went off. Blocked the road.”
“She might be in the crypt,” the tall one said, and, at my expression, said, “The cathedral crypt. There’s a shelter down there.”