A Finer End

Nick, Greely, and Kincaid led, Greely having found torches for them all, while the three officers carrying lights, ropes, and the folding stretcher brought up the rear. Although the southern slope was considerably more gentle than the northern, it was still a difficult climb. Fortunately, the rain had stopped, improving the visibility if not the footing.

Although none of them had much breath for conversation, Kincaid heard Greely mutter, “Mad. Bloody mad,” more than once.

“Likely as not they’ll find the girl curled up somewhere along the lane again, like a bloody hedgehog,” Greely grumbled, when they stopped for a breather at the first plateau. “And then I’ll have a hell of a time explaining this”—he gestured at the officers—“to my guv’nor.”

“I hope you’re right,” Kincaid said. What had Gemma been thinking, going off without telling him? He knew she wouldn’t have done such a thing lightly: that knowledge worried him even more.

They set out again, strung out single-file on the treacherous path. Suddenly Nick, who was in front of Kincaid, came to an abrupt stop and Kincaid teetered as he tried to avoid crashing into him.

“Look!” Nick exclaimed. “A light. There it is again.”

Kincaid saw it then, a faint but regular flash from the summit in an SOS pattern. It could only be Gemma.

The sight spurred them to climb with renewed energy, Greely no longer grumbling. Kincaid shouted Gemma’s name.

“Here!” As they reached the summit, she came running towards him. Kincaid gathered her to him, the fierceness of his hug part anger and part relief.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “But I had to find her. The baby’s fine, a little girl, but Faith’s bleeding—badly, I think.”

Greely was on the radio, calling for another ambulance, and Nick had dropped to his knees by Faith’s head, murmuring her name as the officers readied the stretcher. Kincaid squatted beside them and stroked her cheek with his fingertip. “You should have waited for me. I’d have given you a much smoother ride home.”

Faith attempted a smile. The baby was nestled against her chest, her tiny rosebud mouth just showing beneath the edge of Faith’s shirt. Kincaid found himself moved by the sight.

“We’ll have you down this hill in no time,” he promised, stepping back, but Faith clutched at him.

“Andrew …”

“Shhh. Don’t worry about that now. It’s fine.”

The officers stepped in and strapped mother and infant on the stretcher, and they were soon caravanning back down the hill.

This time Kincaid and Gemma brought up the rear. He noticed that she was limping, and when he stopped to help her over a particularly difficult spot, he saw that her hands were cut and swollen. In the light from the torch, her face looked as pale as Faith’s.

The ambulance was waiting when they reached the lane. To Kincaid’s surprise, Bram Allen paced nearby, his brow furrowed with worry. “What’s going on?” he demanded, hurrying towards them. “They said an accident, someone badly hurt at the old Kinnersley place.”

“Andrew Catesby,” Kincaid replied.

“But the girl …” Bram’s gaze followed the stretcher, now being loaded into the ambulance.

“Chose an odd place to have her baby.”

“I don’t understand,” Bram said, a tremor in his voice.

“Neither do we, yet. She—”

“Duncan!” Gemma called to him from the rear of the ambulance.

“Sorry,” he murmured to Bram, then ducked through the milling officers to Gemma’s side.

“Faith wants to speak to you before they go.”

He stepped up into the ambulance. “You rang, princess?”

Faith’s lips moved and he leaned closer. “I wanted you to know …” Her voice was a thread of sound. “Andrew … I didn’t mean to hurt him. He—he said he couldn’t bear for Winnie to know.…”

“You did the only thing you could,” Kincaid assured her firmly. “You protected yourself and your daughter.”

“Is he …”

“Don’t think about that.”

“We’re ready to go,” the paramedic urged.

Turning back to Faith, Kincaid said, “You’re going to be fine, sweetheart. We’ll see you at the hospital.” He backed out and stood beside Gemma as the ambulance pulled away.

“She’s so weak,” Gemma murmured. “There was so much blood.… And she’s so very, very cold.…”

The illuminations took Winnie’s breath away. So rich were the colors, so intricate the details of the minute paintings that adorned the folio’s alternate pages, that she could scarcely tear her eyes from them to look at the music itself.

The manuscript consisted of sixteen pages of tissue-thin, almost translucent vellum, folded to make a large, flat book. On the right-hand pages, the paintings filled the upper left corners, taking almost a quarter of the page, with the decoration continuing down the left-hand side and across the bottom. The text was in Latin, and above the text, the red, four-line staffs bore the ancient, square notation of chant, drawn in black.

“It is in twelve parts,” she said. “But I don’t recognize the sequence. It’s not an ordinary mass.…”

“The Divine Office?” suggested Jack.