Page 37

“St. Alcmund’s?” Elfreda had missed something crucial.

She turned to Georgie, who was giving her a significant look, arching their dark brows.

She turned back to the church, bloody old, yes, and small, and unprepossessing.

To the uninitiated, it appeared an unlikely focal point for a village war, albeit a war that consisted primarily of damn your eyes and spittle.

As Georgie’s destination, it bewildered in the extreme.

While walking with them, arm in arm, over the springy meadow grass, she’d begun to suspect they were leading her to a field of buttercups in a secluded dell.

They’d grinned mysteriously every time she’d asked where they were bound and peppered her with questions of their own, questions about druid lore.

Grandpapa hadn’t raised a dragon, but, according to Papa, he had raised a snow-white pig that marched with him through the standing stones, garlanded with anemones.

With Georgie laughing and goading her on, she’d revealed that the pig also told fortunes, at which point Georgie had to hold her up, she was laughing so hard herself.

And your grandmother was the fanciful one?

The honeysuckle was blooming profusely, perfuming the air.

The storm had blown by, and the sun felt delicious.

She’d slammed the door in her mind on the blue room, on her worries, on everything but the day.

When they’d reached Redmayne Manor, she’d wondered if the bower of bliss was journey’s end, but Georgie had gone inside, swapped the druidic vestment for a walking dress, and then driven her to the village in a gig.

They drove at least as well as they rowed, and bowling along the muddy lane was a pleasure.

The inn? The green? Where?

“St. Alcmund’s?” she repeated now. “I don’t understand.”

Georgie passed into the churchyard, with its sprawling yews and tilted gravestones, and stood in the deep green shade. She followed, tingles moving up and down her spine as her eyes roamed the stones. Georgie grasped her hands.

“ Within my depths ,” they recited, “ the shadows play. And yet there is light at my mouth and water that brings life. ”

Her stomach fluttered at their touch, and her brain rebelled.

Kiss. Wasn’t it always kiss when it came to Georgie and riddles?

She glanced around. St. Alcmund’s stood in the heart of the village, just off the high street, but the curved walls enclosing the grounds, and the large churchyard, and the ancient trees made it feel remote. No one would see.

She stepped toward them, pressed up through her toes. The look of surprise that crossed their face halted her forward motion.

“Kiss,” she muttered, heels coming back to earth.

Their laugh shook their shoulders.

“Font,” they said, and backed her up against the nearest tree, planted their hands on either side of her head, and kissed her, mouth moving hot on hers.

Too soon, they broke away, and twirled. “Font! Baptismal font. It’s a riddle written by nuns, after all.

When babies are baptized in the waters of a font, they’re given new life in Christ. And Christ is the light. The nuns hid the hoard beneath a font.”

She shook her head, kiss befogged, dizzy, the tree’s trunk keeping her upright.

“I’m not so sure.” She wasn’t sure of anything, truth be told.

Georgie had come up with a new possibility, a location, plausible if not probable, but the urge to drag them off into the buttercups was still rolling through her in waves. Tomorrow for the hoard.

Appalled, she focused on the reasonable objection. “The Northmen looted churches. Hiding a hoard of items looted from churches in a church—it’s…”

“Ingenious,” supplied Georgie. “Why look beyond the cross on the altar?” Their sparkling eyes searched her face and clouded. “Don’t tell me there’s no font.”

Obviously, her face was communicating distress. Distress she absolutely shouldn’t feel. “There’s certainly a font.”

“Hooray.” Georgie strode down the path that wound toward the church’s keyhole-shaped door. She watched them walk away. Mortifying, that she’d hoped to linger, among buttercups, while they’d kept their attention fixed on their goal. Treasure. London.

“I’ve never been inside,” they said when she caught up to them. “It looks more solid than I remember.”

“And less Saxon.” Her response was instantaneous. “The north porticus was reinforced with buttresses.”

“Oh, no,” Georgie teased. “Not buttresses. The horror.”

She wrinkled her nose at them. “The buttresses are innocent. But they don’t belong on a Saxon church.”

“That’s what you think? Or what your father thinks?”

“We agree on the buttresses. However, I’m unconvinced that Sir Hugh and Mrs. Alderwalsey are vandals, or that Mr. Hibbert merits rat torture.”

“Rat torture. I should hope you’re unconvinced.” They linked her elbow, fitted her snugly to their side. “What should happen, in your opinion, to a church like this? Should it crumble?”

“Ideally, no.” Elfreda looked up at it. “I’d rather someone stabilize the church than let it fall to pieces. But not through so many insertions of new materials and styles that the building dies.”

How strangely easy it was to speak with Georgie about what mattered to her. In their presence, she said things she’d never gotten the chance to say, things she’d barely articulated to herself.

“A building can die,” they said, musingly, “when it loses its connection to what it was?”

She met their eyes. “The stains of age on a stone, the divots worn by centuries of feet or fingers—they create something like a voice.”

They were smiling at her, not a dazzling smile, a vague smile, a little misty. A lump formed in her throat. Were they feeling nostalgic already? This golden day already behind them? They’d always remembered her. They would remember her. From miles and miles away.

“Will you do the honors?” They said it with an odd formality.

She tore her gaze from them, separated their arms, and pushed open the church door.

The nave was empty, narrow, with high, blank walls. The only light slanted from two tiny windows set high overhead.

Georgie moved into it, blanched face floating in darkness, and then out again, footsteps muted, whispering on the stone.

She said nothing as they wandered into the chancel. Finally, she shook herself, and called out.

“It’s over here.” She crossed to the font, set just inside the main entrance, badly decayed and recently blocked off. The basin was about three feet deep, devoid of ornament, the pedestal knee-high, carved with a simple geometric design.

She peered into the basin—dry, of course—and her skin tightened at the imagined cold, the phantom cries. How many lives now over had begun right here?

The thick air stirred as Georgie came to stand beside her. They laid their hands on the font’s stone lip.

“So this is it,” they said, voice low. “A thousand years ago, a baby was born in Twynham, and dipped in this font. And some Saxon girl, his older sister, felt dull during the service, and cut off another girl’s braid—with a knife, probably. I doubt Saxons had grape scissors.”

Elf’s laugh was also low. She put her hands on the font. Georgie was joking, and yet she could detect the note of wonderment.

“Vanished like foam,” they whispered, and with a start she recognized her own words. “Those Saxon girls have vanished. And yet the generations go on.”

Her fingers bumped theirs.

They looked at her through the shadows. “These walls heard them, and us too, and who knows who else, years from now, if they’re still standing.”

She nodded. Only their fingers touched, and the light from their eyes. It was a kind of touch, that blue shining into her.

“I’m going to slide the font over.” They adjusted their position. “To see if there’s anything beneath.”

She nodded again, anticipation prickling down her spine. The floor was stone, but it could have been dug out, the font positioned over the hole, lidding the precious contents.

Georgie drew a breath and pulled, fingers flattening inside the basin. The font didn’t budge. She gripped as best she could and tugged with them. Something audible happened, stone grating on stone.

“Nearly there,” they said, and pulled harder, leaning back.

“No.” She let go, but it was too late. The basin was moving but not the pedestal. They hadn’t been carved as one piece, and stupid, stupid of her not to have thought.

And not to push. She needed to push. To counter gravity, which had begun to do its work.

She flung her weight against the basin, her pulse gone wiry, her underarms slicked by sudden sweat.

Muscles she’d strained yesterday began instantly to scream, and a sound escaped her, not unlike a scream itself.

Something hooked her around the waist—hard—and she went over sideways, the blow of her body against the floor cushioned by Georgie, who sprawled beneath her.

The next noise was a crack as loud as a cannon.

Her insides flinched. She extricated her limbs, crawled from Georgie onto unforgiving stone.

“It’s not broken!” She patted the basin everywhere in time with her erratic heartbeats, all but sobbing with relief. “It’s not broken.”

Further noises turned her head.

A thump, a rattle, a creak, a booming voice…

“What’s going on in there?”

Georgie bolted across the nave, shoulder smacking the door just in time to prevent it flying open.

“Thank heavens,” they grunted. “We thought no one would ever find us. The door is stuck.”

“Who is that?”

Elfreda recognized the voice. She stumbled over to Georgie.

“Georgie Redmayne,” they said, and before she could stop them: “Elfreda Marsden.”

“Miss Marsden.” The voice at the door was perceptibly colder.

“Sir Hugh.” Elfreda cast a wild glance at the toppled font. She was now the vandal. Papa would judge this as harshly as marriage to the Major.

I have no such daughter.