A Finer End

it on demand?’ Kincaid asked when Jack paused. ‘The automatic writing.’
    ‘I — I don’t know. I’ve done it often enough with Nick or with Simon Fitzstephen, but—’
    Kincaid leaned forward, his eyes alight with interest. ‘What do you have to do?’
    ‘Just have pen and paper, and empty my mind. Talk about something inconsequential, or listen to someone reading the paper, for instance. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.’
    ‘Let’s give it a try, then. I’ll be your assistant.’ The look Kincaid gave his cousin was challenging. What sort of mischief had he beguiled Jack into in those long Cheshire summers? Gemma wondered.
    She watched them as they sat opposite her at the table in Jack’s cluttered kitchen, Kincaid reading an incomprehensible financial article aloud from the Guardian while Jack sat in a relaxed posture, pen and paper ready. Jack Montfort was larger, fairer, and more blunt-featured than his cousin, but the resemblance was there if you looked. What was more readily apparent was the easiness between them, the sense of long-established trust and camaraderie. And the man certainly seemed rational and well balanced, in spite of his worries. Could this bizarre tale he’d told them possibly be true?
    Lulled by Kincaid’s voice and her own drifting thoughts, Gemma starred violently when Jack’s pen suddenly began to move across the paper. He wrote without pause, and without looking at the script. His eyes, half closed, seemed fixed somewhere in the distance.
    He filled several pages, then set the pen down. ‘Success, I see,’ he said, looking at the scattered pages.
    ‘You mean you don’t know what you’ve written?’ asked Gemma.
    ‘I suppose I’m aware of it at some level, but I don’t process it — it’s like static on a radio.’
    Kincaid touched a page. ‘What does it say?’
    ‘I’ll have to translate, so if you’ll bear with me...
    ‘ O Lord, forgive me, for I have sinned grievously against Thee. Though my days of the flesh are but a distant memory, still I feel her skin, soft as goose down, and the round fullness of her breasts... ’
    Frowning, Jack stopped and cleared his throat, and Gemma found it endearing that he had coloured slightly.
    ‘Sixteen and yet a woman, Alys she was called, the daughter of the stonemason come to repair the damage to the church. She found me comely and would wait for me when I went to the spring. There was little speech between us... we came together in need and pleasure as the beasts do.
    ‘The work was finished when Alys found she was with child. She begged me for herbs... To my shame I did her bidding... for my cowardice as well as my lust I have brought misery on us all...
    ‘From Brother Ambrose, who had befriended me, I stole the necessary potion. With it I gave her what was most precious to me... a bond between us stronger than death. Alys and her father left the Abbey then. Such sorrow I had never known, it tethers me to this place still.. !
    Jack looked up, his eyes wide with surprise. ‘This woman — Alys — she meant to abort their baby. Don’t you think that’s what he means?’
    Gemma, intensely moved by this recounting of the girl’s predicament, said, ‘I — I suppose it’s possible. They were very skilled in using herbs, and her position would have been untenable, wouldn’t it? Edmund couldn’t have married her.’
    ‘I suspect it would have been thought she’d sinned against the Church, as well, in seducing Edmund, rather than the other way round,’ Kincaid offered.
    ‘But what if Alys changed her mind? Or the herbs didn’t work?’ demanded Jack. ‘We’ve searched for months for a blood connection — perhaps a niece or nephew — as we suspected there might be a genetic component to the link.’
    ‘An illegitimate child?’ Kincaid mused. ‘In that case there wouldn’t have been any record.’
    ‘I must tell Simon. This gives us a new angle’ — Jack grimaced — ‘although I don’t know that trying to trace an eleventh-century itinerant stonemason’s daughter will get us much further forward.’ Glancing at his watch, he added, ‘And in the meantime I’ve got to get to hospital. When I rang Nick this morning, he said he’d come at midday and look after Faith. I didn’t like to leave her on her own, with Garnet still—’
    ‘You’ve not found her, have you?’
    Startled, they all turned towards the doorway. How long had the girl been there, listening? Gemma