A finer end - Deborah Crombie [2]
The thought of the unexpected entry of Winifred Catesby into his life made him smile. Besieged by arranged dates as soon as his mother’s well-meaning friends decided he’d endured a suitable period of mourning, he’d found the effort of making conversation with needy divorcées more depressing than time spent alone. He’d begged off so often that the do-gooders had declared him hopeless and finally left him alone.
Relieved of unwelcome obligations, he’d found himself driving the five miles to Wells for the solace of the Evensong service in the cathedral more and more frequently. The proximity of the cathedral choir was one of the things that had drawn him back to Glastonbury—he’d sung at Wells as a student in the cathedral school, and the experience had given him a lifelong passion for church music.
And then one evening a month ago, as he found his usual place in the ornately carved stall in the cathedral choir, she had slipped in beside him—a pleasantly ordinary-looking woman in her thirties, with light brown hair escaping from beneath a floppy velvet hat, and a slightly upturned nose. He had not noticed her particularly, just nodded in the vague way one did as she took her seat. The service began, and in that moment when the first high reach of the treble voices sent a shiver down his spine, she had met his eyes and smiled.
Afterwards, they had chatted easily, naturally, and as they walked out of the cathedral together, deep in discussion of the merits of various choirs, he’d impulsively invited her for a drink at the pub down the street. It wasn’t until he’d helped her out of her coat that he’d seen the clerical collar.
Emily, always chiding him for his conservatism, would have been delighted by his consternation. And Emily, he felt sure, would have liked Winnie. He extended a finger to touch the photograph on his desktop and Emily gazed back at him, her dark eyes alight with humor and intelligence.
His throat tightened. Would the ache of his loss always lie so near the surface? Or would it one day fade to a gentle awareness, as familiar and unremarkable as a burr beneath the skin? But did he really want that? Would he be less himself without Emily’s constant presence in his mind?
He grinned in spite of himself. Emily would tell him to stop being maudlin and get on with the task at hand. With a sigh, he looked down at his paper, then blinked in surprise.
He held a pen in his right hand, although he didn’t remember picking it up. And the page, which had been blank a moment ago, was covered in an unfamiliar script. Frowning, he checked for another sheet beneath the paper. But there was only the one page, and as he examined it more closely, he saw that the small, precise script seemed to be in Latin. As he recalled enough of his schoolboy vocabulary to make a rough translation, his frown deepened.
Know ye what we … Jack puzzled a moment before deciding on builded, then there was something he couldn’t make out, then the script continued,… in Glaston. Meaning Glastonbury? It was fair as,… any earthly thing, and had I not loved it overmuch my spirit would not cling to dreams of all now vanished.
Ye love full well what we have loved. The time … Here Jack was forced to resort to the dog-eared Latin dictionary in his bookcase, and after concluding that the phrase had something to do with sleeping or sleepers, went impatiently on … to wake, for Glaston to rise against the darkness. We have … something … long for you … it is in your hands.…
After this sentence there was a trailing squiggle beginning with an E, which might have been a signature, perhaps “Edmund.”
Was this some sort of a joke, invisible ink that appeared when exposed to the light? But his secretary didn’t strike him as a prankster, and he’d taken the paper from a ream he’d just unwrapped himself. That left only the explanation that he had penned these words—alien in both script and language. But that was absurd. How could he have done so, unaware?
The walls of Jack’s office leaned in on him, and the silence, usually so soothing,