A Finer End

do your parents know where you are?”

The girl pushed away her empty plate and cup. “My dad—They said they never wanted to see me ever again. That I was a disgrace to them.”

Oh, dear God, thought Winnie. “People often say things in anger that they don’t mean. I’m sure your parents have spent the last few months regretting every word, and that they’re worried sick about you.”

“I can’t go back. Not after that. You don’t know my dad. And my place is with Garnet now.”

Winnie thought she’d glimpsed a hint of tears in Faith’s eyes, but the girl’s chin was set in a stubborn line. She wouldn’t push her luck, but perhaps she could at least open negotiations. “Would you let me talk to them?”

Faith started to shake her head before Winnie had even finished her sentence.

“I wouldn’t tell them where you were,” Winnie continued. “I wouldn’t tell them anything you didn’t want me to—only that you’re all right.” Seeing Faith waver, she added with a grin, “You can trust me to keep a promise—it’s part of my job description,” and was rewarded with a hesitant smile.

“Could you—could you tell my sister and my brother that I miss them? And my mum?”

“Of course. You give me the address and I’ll go see them first chance I get.” Looking round, Winnie realized the refectory was almost empty. “We’d better go, or we’ll miss the service.”

Returning to the front of the cathedral, they made their way down the left-hand side of the nave to the rope that blocked entry to the Quire until time for the service to begin. There was a sizable crowd waiting, and after a moment the verger released the barrier and ushered them into the stalls.

There was a visiting choir that evening, as the cathedral choir was on August holiday, and Winnie saw with pleasure that they were singing the Bach Magnificat, then Parry’s Songs of Farewell, two of her favorites.

After the usual rustle and shuffle of people adjusting positions and shedding belongings, a hush fell as the choir processed in and took their seats.

Surrounded by the rich, dark wood of the stalls and the glow of lamplight, Winnie felt shielded from the outside world, sealed in a nucleus that rendered time and space meaningless. As the music rose about them, she glanced at the young woman beside her. Faith’s countenance was suffused with such joy and longing that Winnie’s heart ached, and she knew that this child was one innocent she would protect with all the weapons of her calling.

Chalice Well Gardens lay in the gentle valley between Chalice Hill and the Tor. The gardens rose, level by level, until the last, an enclosed, leafy bower that housed the well itself. Water the color of blood filled the five-sided well chamber, then flowed through an underground pipe into the Lion’s Head pool below at an unceasing twenty-five thousand gallons a day and a constant temperature of fifty-two degrees Fahrenheit.

Nick sat on a bench near the well, waiting for Faith, who had promised to meet him for a half hour before they both had to be at work. He contemplated the well’s intricate wrought-iron cover, designed just after the First World War by Frederick Bligh Bond; funny how old Bond kept cropping up, once you’d made a connection with him.

The carving was an ancient symbol called the vesica piscis, two interlocking circles said to represent the interpenetration of the material and immaterial worlds, or the yin and yang where the conscious and unconscious meet.

It was also said to represent the blending of male and female energy … perhaps a propitious sign for this meeting, but he wasn’t getting his hopes up. He told himself often enough that it was utterly stupid to be in love with a pregnant schoolgirl; he of all people should know better. But it made no difference. And what did he think he would do if she did return his feelings? Marry her and take care of mother and infant? Absurd. He barely managed to feed himself and pay the rent on his caravan.

But there was something special about Faith, some qualities of inner stillness he had never before encountered. Once or twice he thought he’d glimpsed a spark of possibility in her eyes, before she withdrew again into that calm silence he could not penetrate, and this kept him from giving up.

Impatiently, he stood and paced the confined area of the garden, stopping again at the well. The cover was pulled to one side, enabling him to peer down into the chamber itself. There was said to be a grotto set into one of the walls, large enough for a man to stand in, but he could see no sign of it. Dropping to his knees for a closer look, he didn’t hear Faith coming until she opened the gate to the well garden.

“Don’t fall in,” she teased, coming to stand behind him. “Garnet says it’s the Goddess’s well, and I doubt She’d like some big bloke splashing about in it.”

Faith wore a striped football shirt beneath denim coveralls, and her cropped hair and delicate features looked all the more feminine for it. Bugger Garnet, Nick thought savagely, but he didn’t say it aloud. “I was duly worshiping. Hands and knees, see?”

“Nick, don’t joke. It’s a sacred place.”

Rising, he returned to the bench and patted the seat beside him. “No offense intended. Come and sit; you stand all day.”

She obeyed, but kept a chaste distance between them. His desire for her was driving him to distraction, but he didn’t dare cross the boundaries she’d set, for fear of destroying the friendship they’d forged over the past months. Yet the thought that she had crossed those barriers with someone else was maddening, and it was all he could do not to ask her who … or why she continued to protect him.

Not that he had much opportunity to be alone with Faith. Garnet Todd had become both mother hen and fierce watchdog, and she’d made no effort to conceal her disapproval of Nick’s interest. On the few occasions he’d ventured up to Garnet’s farmhouse to see Faith after work, he’d sat uncomfortably in the primitive kitchen with the two of them, feeling like an unwelcome Victorian suitor. Hence this morning’s tryst in the garden.

“Some people think this is the garden Malory meant when he wrote that Lancelot retired to a valley near Glastonbury,” Nick mused, stretching his arm across the bench top, an inch from Faith’s shoulders. “Do you suppose this very place is where Lancelot lived out his days, dreaming of Guinevere in her nunnery? They died within months of one another—did you know that?”

Faith shivered. “That’s too sad. This garden isn’t meant to be sad: it’s a healing place.”

“I suppose it was a sort of healing for Lancelot, if he came to terms with his love for Gwen and for Arthur in the time he had left. And if he had been denied the Grail, perhaps living by a spring said to flow with the blood of Christ