Fire Watch Part 6

"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 ma.n.u.script. What do you think?"

"I don't need to think," Mrs. Andover said. "I know what it is. It's the ma.n.u.script copy of Lawrence's book The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. He wrote it after he became famous as Lawrence of Arabia, before he-succ.u.mbed to his unhappiness. It was lost in Reading Railway Station in 1919." He wrote it after he became famous as Lawrence of Arabia, before he-succ.u.mbed to his unhappiness. It was lost in Reading Railway Station in 1919."

"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 ma.n.u.script 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."

"He hired a man to flog him, did you know that? He would have had to be well and truly lost to have done that." She looked up suddenly at Finney. "If something else turned up, something valuable, that would prove the end was coming, wouldn't it?"

"It would prove something," Finney said. "I'm not certain what."

"Where exactly is your Reverend Davidson?" she asked, almost offhand, as if she could catch him by changing the subject.

He is out rescuing the lost, dear lady, while you sit here seducing admissions out of me. A thief can't sneak past me either. "In London, of course," Finney said. "p.a.w.ning the crown jewels and hiding the money in Swiss bank accounts."

"Quite possibly," Mrs. Andover said. "Perhaps he should think about returning to St. John's. He is in a good deal of trouble."

Finney pulled his cla.s.s in and sat them down in the crypt. "Tisn't fair," one of the taller boys said. "The game was still going. It wasn't very nice of you to pull us in like that." He kicked at the gilded toe of a fifteenth-century wool merchant.

"I quite agree," Finney said, which remark caused all of them to sit up and look at him, even the kicker. "It was not fair. Neither was it fair for me to have had to drink my tea from a paper cup."

"It isn't our b.l.o.o.d.y fault you lost the cup," the boy said sulkily.

"That would be quite true, if indeed the cup were lost. The Holy Grail has been lost for centuries and never found, and that is certainly no one's b.l.o.o.d.y fault. But my cup is not lost forever, and you are going to find it." He tried to sound angry so they would look and not play. "I want you to search every nook and cranny of this church, and if you find the cup"-here was the tricky bit, just the right casual tone-"or anything else interesting, bring it straightaway to me." He paused and then said, as if he had just thought of it, "I'll give fifty pence for every treasure."

The children scattered like players in a game. Finney hobbled up the stairs after them and stood in the side door. The younger children were down by the water and Mrs. Andover was standing near them.

Two of the boys plummeted past Finney and up the stairs to the study "Don't ..." Finney said, but they were already past him. By the time he had managed the stairs, the boys had strewn open every drawer of the desk. They were tumbling colored paper out of the bottom drawer, trying to see what was under it.

"It isn't there," one of the boys said, and Finney's heart caught.

"What isn't?"

"Your cup. This is where we hid it. This morning."

"You must be mistaken," he said, and led them firmly down the stairs. Halfway down, Mrs. Andover's girl burst in at them.

"She says you are to come at once," she said breathlessly.

Finney released the boys. "You two can redeem yourselves by finding my cup," and then as they escaped down the stairs to the crypt, he shouted, "and stay out of the study."

Mrs. Andover was standing by the End, watching the children and Megan wade knee-deep in the clear water. The sun had come out. Finney could see the flash of sunlight off Megan's hair.

"They're playing a game," Mrs. Andover said without looking at him. "It's an old nursery rhyme about how bad King John lost his clothes in the Wash. The children stand in a circle, and when the rhyme's done, they fall down in the water. Megan stepped on something when she went down. She cut her foot."

Water and blood and Davidson reaching out for Finney's hand. "No!" Finney had cried, "not my hand, too!" Davidson had started to say something and Finney had flailed away from him like a landed fish, afraid it would be holy scripture. But he had said, "The cults did this to you, didn't they?" in a voice that had no holiness in it at all, and Finney had collapsed gratefully into his arms.

"Is she hurt?" he said, blinded by the sun and the memory.

"It was just a scratch," Mrs. Andover said. "King John did lose his clothes. In a battle in 1215. His army was fighting in a muddy estuary of the Wash when a tide came in and knocked everyone under. He lost his crown, too."

"And it was never found," Finney said, knowing what was coming.

"Not until now."

"Megan!" Finney shouted. "Come here right now!"

She ran up out of the water, her bare legs dripping wet. On her head was a rusty circle that looked more like a tin lid than a crown, He did not have the slightest doubt that it was what Mrs. Andover said, the crown of a king dead eight hundred years.

"Give me the crown, Megan," Finney said.

"Behold I come quickly. Hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown," she said, handing it to Finney.

Finney scratched through the encrusted minerals to the definite sc.r.a.pe of metal. It was thinner in several spots. Finney poked his little finger into one of the indentations and through it, making a round hole.

"Those are for the jewels," Megan said.

"What makes you think that?" Mrs. Andover said. "Have you seen any jewels?"

"All crowns have jewels," Megan said. Finney handed the crown back to her and she put it on. Finney looked at the sky behind Megan's head. The clouds had pulled back from a little circlet of blue over the church. "Can I go back now?" Megan said. "The game's almost done."

"This is the End," Finney said, watching her walk fearlessly into the water. "Not the Wash."

"Nor is it Reading Railway Station," Mrs. Andover said. "Nevertheless."

"The water's perfectly clear. I would have seen it. Someone would have seen it. It can't have lain there since 1215."

"It could have been put there," Mrs. Andover said. "After the jewels had been removed."

"So could the colored paper," he said without thinking, "after the book was taken out."

"What about the paper?" Mrs. Andover said.

"It's back in the drawer where Megan found the book. I saw it."

"You might have put it back."

"But I didn't."

"Perhaps," she said thoughtfully, "the pious Reverend Davidson has come back without telling us."

"For what purpose?" Finney said, losing his temper altogether. "To play some incredible game of hide-and-seek? To race about his church scattering priceless ma.n.u.scripts and ancient crowns like prizes for us to find? What would we have to find to convince you he's innocent? The Holy Grail?"

"Yes," Mrs. Andover said coldly, and started back toward the church.

"Where are you going?" Finney shouted.

"To see for myself this miracle of the colored paper."

"King John was a pretty lost soul, too," he shouted at her back. "Perhaps he's the last on the list. Perhaps it'll all go bang before you even get to the church."

But she made it safely to the vestry door and inside, and Finney hobbled after her, suddenly afraid of what his boys might have found now.

Mrs. Andover was staring bleakly into the open drawer as Finney had done, as if it held some answer. Finney felt a pang of pity for her, standing there in her st.u.r.dy shoes, believing in no one, alone in the enemy camp. He put his hand out to her shoulder, but she flinched away from his touch. There was a sudden clatter on the stairs, and the two boys exploded into the room with Finney's cup.

"Look what we found!" one of them said.