A Finer End

“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.

Winnie explained for Fiona’s benefit. “Traditionally, the Divine Office was made up of the services celebrated throughout the day in a monastery. Matins, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline. The chant repertory might have included recited Psalms.…” Looking back at the manuscript, she struggled with deciphering the ornate text, murmuring the words as she translated—then the pattern clicked. “It is a Psalm. Number 148! Praise ye the Lord. Praise ye the Lord from the heavens; praise him in the heights. Praise ye him, all his angels: praise ye him, all his hosts. Praise ye him, sun and moon: praise him, all ye stars of light. Praise him, ye heavens of heavens, and ye waters that be above the heavens. It goes on, all the birds and beasts and creeping things are here too.”

“And look at the illuminations.” Fiona pointed with a fingertip, but didn’t touch. “There’s the sun and the moon, and the stars, and here on the next page the birds.… But look at the background in this one. It’s Glastonbury. That’s the Abbey, and that’s the Tor behind it.”

“This is Edmund’s work,” Jack told them. “I’m sure of it. Look. That’s Glastonbury again. And here. And this