“Is it Daddy’s?” Megan said.
“I don’t know,” Finney said. Megan’s sticky fingers had marked the cover with bits of cotton and stuck the first two pages to the cover. Finney looked at the close handwriting on the pages, written in faded blue ink. He gently pried the glued pages from the cover.
“Is it?” Megan said insistently
“No,” Finney said finally. “It appears to belong to T. E. Lawrence. How did it get in your father’s desk?”
“Megan,” Mrs. Andover said, “it’s time for the children to come in. Go and fetch them.”
“Is it time for tea, then?” Megan said.
Finney looked at his watch. “Not yet,” he said. “It’s only three.”
“We’ll have it early today,” Mrs. Andover said. “Tell them to come in for their tea.”
Megan ran out. Mrs. Andover came over to stand beside Finney “It looks like a rough draft of a book or something,” Finney said. “Like a manuscript. What do you think?”
“I don’t need to think,” Mrs. Andover said. “I know what it is. It’s the manuscript copy of Lawrence’s book
“How did it get here?”
“Why don’t you tell me?” Mrs. Andover said.
Finney looked at her, amazed. She was staring at him as if he might actually know something about it. “I wasn’t even born in 1919. I’ve never even been in Reading Station.”
“It wasn’t in the desk this morning when I searched it.”
“Oh, really,” Finney said, “and what were you looking for in Reverend Davidson’s desk? Green construction paper?”
“I’ve set the tea out,” Megan said from the doorway, “only I can’t find any cups.”
“I forgot,” Finney said. “Jesus was fond of tax collectors, too, wasn’t he?”
Finney went into the kitchen on the excuse of looking for something better than a paper cup for his tea. Instead, he stood at the sink and stared at the wall. If the brown leather notebook were truly a lost manuscript of Lawrence’s book, and if Mrs. Andover was one of the state’s spies, as he was almost certain she was, Reverend Davidson would lose his church for withholding treasures from the state. That was not the worst of it. His name and picture would be in all the papers, and that would mean an end to the undercover rescue work getting the children out of the cults, and an end to the children.
“Take care of her, Finney,” he had said before he left. “‘Into thy hands I commend my spirit.’” And he had let a government spy loose in the church, had let her roam about taking inventory Finney gripped the linoleum drainboard.
Perhaps she was not from the government. Even if she was, she might be here for a totally different reason. Finney was a reporter, but he was hardly here for a good story He was here because he had nearly bled to death in the End and Davidson had pulled him out. Perhaps Reverend Davidson had rescued Mrs. Andover, too, had brought her into the fold like all the rest of his lost lambs.
Finney was not even sure why he was here. He told himself he was staying until his foot healed, until Davidson found another teacher for the upper form boys, until Davidson got safely back from the north. He did not think it was because he was afraid, although of course he was afraid. They would know he was a reporter by now, they would know he had been working undercover investigating the cults. There would be no question of cutting off a foot for attempting to escape this time. They would murder him, and they would find a scripture to say over him as they did it. 'If thy right hand offend, cut it off.’ He had thought he never wanted to hear scripture again. Perhaps that was why he stayed. To hear Megan prattling her sweet and senseless scriptures was like a balm. And what was St. John’s to Mrs. Andover? A balm? A refuge? Or an enemy to be conquered and then sacked?
Megan came in, knelt down beside the cupboard below the sink, and began banging about.
“What are you looking for?” Finney said.
“Your cup, of course. Mrs. Andover found some others, but not yours.”
“Megan,” he said seriously kneeling beside her, “what do you know about Mrs. Andover?”
“She’s a spy,” Megan said from inside the cupboard.
“Why do you think that?”
“Daddy said so. He gave her all the treasures. The marble angel and the choir screen and all the candlesticks. ’render unto Caesar that which is Caesars.’ It isn’t there,” she said, pulling her head out of the cupboard. “Only pots.” She handed Finney a rusted iron skillet and two banged-about aluminum pots. Finney put them carefully back into the empty cupboard, trying to think how best to ask Megan why she thought Mrs. Andover had stayed on. Her answer might be nonsense, of course, or it might be inspired. It might be scripture.
“She thinks we didn’t give her all the treasures,” Megan volunteered suddenly, on her knees beside him. “She asks me all the time where Daddy hid them.”
“And what do you tell her?”
“‘Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths corrupt and thieves break in and steal.’”
“Good girl,” Finney said, and lifted her up. “What’s an old cup? We’ll find it later.” He took her hand and led her into tea.
Mrs. Andover was already being mother, pouring out hot milk and tea into a styrofoam cup with a half circle bitten out of it. She handed it to Finney “Did you and Megan find your cup?” she asked.
“No,” Finney said. “But then we aren’t experts like you, are we.”
Mrs. Andover did not answer him. She poured Megan’s tea. “When is your father coming back, Megan?” she said.
“Not soon enough,” Finney snapped. “Are you that eager to arrest him? Or is it hanging you’re after, for treasonable offenses?” He thought of Davidson, crouched by a gate somewhere, waiting for the child to be bundled out to him. “If the cults don’t murder him, the government will, is that the game then? How can he possibly win a game like that?”
“The game’s not finished yet,” Megan said.
“What?” Finney slopped tea all over his trousers.
“Go and finish your game,” Mrs. Andover said. “Take the children with you. You needn’t come in till it’s ended.” Now that Finney was looking for it, he saw her nod to a tall girl with a large bosom. The girl nodded back and went out after the children. What else had he missed because he wasn’t looking for it?
“It’s a game of Megan’s,” Mrs. Andover said to Finney “One child’s the shepherd, and he must get all the sheep into the fold by putting them inside a ring drawn on the ground. When he’s got them all inside the ring, then it’s bang! the end, and all adjourn for tea and cake.”
“Bang! the end,” said Finney. “Tea and cakes for everyone. I wish it were as simple as that.”
“Perhaps you should join one of the cults,” Mrs. Andover said.
Finney looked up sharply from his tea.
“They are always preaching the end, aren’t they? When it is coming and to whom. Lists of who’s to be saved and who’s to be left to his own devices. Dates and places and timetables.”
“They’re wrong,” Finney said. “It’s supposed to come like a thief in the night so no one will see it coming.”
“I doubt there’s a thief could get past me without my knowing it.”
“Yes, I forgot,” said Finney “‘It takes a thief to catch a thief.’ Isn’t that one of Megan’s scriptures?”
She looked thoughtful. “Aren’t the lost supposed to be safely gathered into the fold before the end can come?”
“Ah, yes,” said Finney, “but the good shepherd never does specify just who those lost ones are he’s so bent on finding. Perhaps he has a list of his own, and when all the people on it are safely inside some circle he’s drawn on the ground—”
“Or perhaps we don’t understand at all,” Mrs. Andover said dreamily. “Perhaps the lost are not people at all, but things. Perhaps it’s they that are being gathered in before the end. T. E. Lawrence was a lost soul, wasn’t he?”
“I’d hardly call Lawrence of Arabia lost,” Finney said. “He seemed to know his way round the Middle East rather well.”
