crinkles to prove it, and probably just as quick to show anger. If he gave one thought to his appearance you’d never know it. And that wafting scent, as earthy as Alain’s was bottled.
“So let’s have one of them,” she said. “Crenshaw’s blind spots.”
Jack stroked and scratched at his days of beard. Threads of gray she hadn’t noticed before were obvious now, in the sun.
“Didn’t happen to tell you anything about the money running out, did he? During construction? And how they remedied that?”
“Not a word.”
“I didn’t think he knew of that one. Well, then. It was the early 1350s when the coffers scraped empty, and they had to close down. Stonemasons, carpenters, mortar makers … nothing to pay them with. How you going to raise the rest, if you’ve half a church?”
“I don’t know. Fleece the flock?”
“Good start, but you’ll need more than what you can tap them for. So, for the next two years, they displayed their relic. It’s to be St. John the Baptist’s, right? If you remember your church schooling, maybe you’ll remember the way he ended up.”
“His head on a platter, right,” she said. “For Salome.”
“The very same.” Jack grinned. “Got themselves a stray head, then, put it in a box, called it John’s own noggin, and charged by the peek. Did a fine pilgrimage business with it, too. Enough to finish what you see here.”
“How do you know this and Crenshaw doesn’t?”
“Well, now, that you’d have to ask him.” Jack shook his great shaggy head. “Not to be too hard on the old boy. It’s good that he cares as much as he does about the place. Just that he’s too much of a Presbyterian to really understand it.”
“No such obstacles with me,” she said. “Agnostic, reformed.”
“Oh, better than that. This place was in your blood from the start.”
“I didn’t realize you knew. About my ancestry.”
“Got ears, haven’t I? They work just fine.” When he smiled, his weathered face became a splendid interplay of crease and hair and twinkle. Such pictures he would take, in his natural element; for her, an antidote, maybe, to the vapidity that came out of her studio, every blemish erased by microchip.
It occurred to her Jack could’ve wrought a thousand delusions about this place and believed every one of them. Sometimes the mad did speak with the most conviction. He could’ve left a dozen bodies buried along his wanderings, for that matter.
“They worshipped heads, you know, back when,” he said, with a nod toward the church, as if reading her mind and deciding to play with any misapprehension rather than assuage it. “The Celts. The reverence outlasted the actual headhunting itself. Still, you have to know that before you can ever understand this place.”
It made sense. This region, she’d already learned, had seen a tenacious holding to Celtic tradition from the murkiest antiquity, surviving well past Saxon times. That much was clear enough from the edifice itself. The gods of old religions become the devils of the ones that follow, and the Christian hell was full of them, but here in this particular stone they straddled two worlds in uneasy collusion.
“Then the dedication to John the Baptist,” she said, “wasn’t just coincidence.”
“Now you follow. What you had here were people who found this headless saint a lot more interesting than the main character. You should count the heads carved here. Inside, out. Forget anything with a body, just heads. Come up short of a hundred, I say you’re not trying very hard.”
Kate looked above, found two within a few paces of where she stood. One was clutched in the hands of a giant who was stuffing it into his maw.
“Geoffrey, they hardly knew ye,” she said, and wasn’t it the truth. Inside, in less obvious nooks and crannies, she’d found the editorial imprints of a man clearly antagonistic to Rome. One bas-relief depicted a fox in bishop’s robes preaching to a flock of geese. Another, a bloated pig in a papal miter guarding a horde of coins.
“That two-year down spell they had?” Jack said. “Didn’t apply to him. Geoffrey Blackburn never stopped work.”
“Meaning they paid him on the sly, or…?”
Jack shook his head. “Meaning he thought it more important this place be finished before he died. Never went hungry or cold, him nor his family, though. Always some dressed venison or fowl showing up at the door, baskets of vegetables. Wood pile never ran low.” A broad grin. “There’s instant karma for you.”
She looked into his eyes, green and merry, for any hint he’d been pulling her leg for minutes and was about to slap his thigh and howl. But no.
“What
“Mine?” He looked taken aback. “Now, how can I tell you that? It’s got no ending yet.”
She took him by the arm, steering him toward the west end. “Come on. We’re going inside. To count heads. My treat. They can’t throw you out then, can they?”
“You’re missing the point of all the fun.”
“Like hell,” she said. “Wait’ll you see Crenshaw’s face when he sees you have every right to be there.”
*
When he did it, Alain took the easy way out, the time- honored tactic of cads and cowards: told her in a public place so she’d be less likely to cause a scene.
Showed how much he’d been paying attention. Opinion on them at the Rose & Thistle was neatly divided. She was liked, he wasn’t. It wouldn’t be difficult to make his strategy backfire. Making two ways the joke was on him.
