A Demon Summer (49 page)

“And Dame Meredith stole the one when Dame Pet wasn't looking. Broke it off the chain.”

“That's right. Effectively unleashing its poison. They are safe enough left alone, but once the coating is broken … I suspect her idea was to keep it close by—just in case. In case things got to looking too bad. In case the treatments got to be too horrid—or hopeless—for her to endure any more. Or in case she saw everything in her life, past and present, closing in on her. Which is exactly what did happen.”

“What a completely sad ending to a sad story.”

He agreed. “It is terribly sad. And they doubt she'll regain consciousness. A waste of a good person, over a mistake so old.”

“So, it was really about that horrible old crime that came back to haunt them all?” Awena said.

“Nearly twenty years on, yes. But we will never know what happened to that small child. That is the one question I wish I could answer, for everyone's sake, including mine.”

“And Dr. Barnard and Dame Petronilla—well, we can't call her that anymore, can we? But—it seems right that they would be together at last. I guess we'll get used to calling her plain old Petronilla Falcon, now that she has left the order.”

“Leaving really was the only thing, the best thing she could do. Her vocation, as she now sees it, was not so much one of choice, but of fleeing the world. The nuns talked of that a lot—how a true vocation was a running toward God, not away from man, or words to that effect. I would say running away from yourself fits in there somewhere, too, as not leading to a true calling for the life.”

“Is that what Dame Meredith was doing, too? Running away?”

“I suppose. But I like to think she found some contentment. Until … well, anything like contentment was blown apart when Lord Lislelivet came along, desperate to save his title and his money.”

“Poor woman,” said Awena. “How desperate she must have been.”

“I think we have to take it as given that she was not herself. She had been writing a letter to leave behind, addressed to the abbess and the community as a whole. If she'd been guilty of murder, I think she would have admitted it—and I for one don't think she was capable of that. But she admitted to all the old scandal and subterfuge—to the fact that she was Lord Lislelivet's natural mother and how she had conspired to hide his true origins from her own sister. To the fact that she had betrayed that sister in the first place and then indulged in a cover-up that went on for decades. It must be said: Lord Lislelivet, unpleasant a man as he was, had a right to know who he was. But his father's telling him, in this case, was a very big mistake.”

“Just think how the truth all those years ago, as disagreeable as it may have been, would have spared everyone years down the line.”

Max said, “Dame Meredith was mostly guilty of being naïve. Perhaps it is a trait that overtakes someone in the life there or that was always part of a trusting nature. She actually thought she could convince her son to give up the blood money, as she thought of it—in her letter, she quoted the rich man and the camel passage from the Bible: how it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into heaven. Lord Lislelivet believed without a doubt she would give the game away if he didn't do something fast, for she had said as much in the letter she wrote to him—to his mind, she was absolutely unhinged to be talking the way she was. Give away money? Never! He tried ‘coming clean' with her—at least his distorted idea of coming clean. He told her what he'd done to his baby brother and that he would surely go to prison for it if this all came out, thinking she would want to spare him. Well, that was all she needed to hear to be completely horrified. He overplayed his hand, forgetting that those maternal bonds had never really been forged between her and him. All she could think was of the nightmare her sister had gone through and how she, Dame Meredith,
must
make it right before her time ran out.”

“I can see that. Everything in her training, in who she was, and who she was trying to be, cried out for the truth to be told. And the one thing a man like her son feared the most was the truth.”

“Do you know,” Max added musingly, “I even saw the family resemblance, but at first I wrote it off to the fact the son resembled his father in photographs I'd seen of them both. Dark hair and eyes, and olive-skinned. Both men had the same body type, with the massive chest over an otherwise small frame. Only much later in the case did I realize that what I was noticing also was Lord Lislelivet's resemblance to his
mother
. His facial resemblance, in particular, to Dame Meredith. They both had that rather aristocratic cast to their features—her face much thinner and more drawn because of her illness, of course.

“Without the distractions of hair color and style, what is left are the basics—the planes of the face, the angle of the nose, and the width of the brow. Even then, I missed it. I just had this tantalizing sense that I was seeing a familiar face when I visited Dame Meredith in the infirmary.”

“There is no question she tried to commit suicide?”

“None, according to Cotton's medical examiner. It all just collapsed on her. All of her life. The despair and the weight of guilt overwhelmed her in the end. For there was one added element. During all the medical testing and treatment she had undergone, Dame Meredith learned she carried a gene for a progressively debilitating disease that had likely been passed along to her male child. This as much as anything made her want to have it all come out, to want to tell her son all of the truth. She felt so guilty, not about depriving him of an inheritance—what did a nun care about that, after all?—but of maybe having handed along this disease that amounted to a death sentence. So she thought, ‘I must tell my son the truth; it is the least I can do for him now.' Unfortunately, she found him to be not grateful but more determined to keep what was ‘his' at all costs. To keep the truth of his parentage hidden.”

Awena said, “I wonder how alike the brothers might have been, had the younger one survived, that is. The thing with two siblings born that far apart is that, fully related or partly related, they have little in common from a generational standpoint—exacerbated by the fact they were practically raised by different parents.”

“I don't follow,” said Max.

“Parents in their twenties are different from parents in their forties. They are practically different people from their younger selves. Child-rearing techniques evolve like any other skill.”

“I'm sure you're right. I can only hope
I'm
ready. I don't want to just practice on this little one. I want to be—I don't know. Perfect, I guess. Everything a child can look up to.”

His eye caught on the crèche scene in his office, purchased from the abbey shop. He'd decided not to pack it away but to leave it on display year round. The little painted figures brightened his bookshelves, which otherwise mainly held the heavy religious tomes inherited from his predecessor.

“I nearly forgot,” he said, and striding over to the desk he handed her a small package, wrapped in white cotton cloth and tied with a yellow bow. “As I was leaving the nunnery, Dame Hephzibah rushed out—well, for her it was rushing—and handed me this gift.”

Awena unwrapped the present to reveal one of the tiny christening dresses Max had seen in the abbey gift shop.

“Oh, Max,” breathed Awena. “I've never seen anything so beautiful. I'll have to write and thank her. What kindness.”

Just then a little car trundled by, laden with flowers for the handfasting ceremony. The windows had been rolled down to allow the blossom heads to wave free. The white car with its burden of summer flowers—Max recognized the marigold, and cornflower, and pink roses, and daisies—was on its way to Awena's cottage, where the ceremony was to be held the next afternoon.

“I thought the day would never arrive,” said Max. And resolutely, he tucked the case of Monkbury Abbey into the back of his mind. But the memory of Dame Meredith would be a constant in his prayers for years to come.

*   *   *

The handfasting ceremony of Maxen Tudor and Awena Owen was to become the stuff of legend, the sort of event destined to be woven into the lore of the village. The details were to be embellished and improved upon in the telling, although in truth, it was as perfect a day as it could be, from beginning to end.

The preparations for the handfasting had been under way for weeks; the heavens cooperated with nightly meteor showers in the clear skies over Nether Monkslip. Max and Awena would stand before the village and speak the vows they had written, promises that would seal their unity and affirm their greater strength as a couple. The service would invite Air, Fire, Water, and Earth to witness the healing power of their love. The celebrant, having poured cleansing water over Max and Awena's hands, would then lightly bind together their hands with a silken handkerchief as the words of blessing were spoken. The pair would promise to support each other through good and bad times and daily renew with word and deed the loving foundation of their lives.

The day itself continued a warm and languid trend, although the villagers under the somnolent clouds had been anything but idle. Indeed, all of Nether Monkslip had been in a fizz of activity. No one could recall a social occasion to match it since the owner of Totleigh Hall had brought home his bride many years before.

“But this,” Elka Garth, in charge of organizing the food, told one and all, “will be even better.”

And of course Elka herself had gone into overdrive, keeping the ovens at the Cavalier Tea Room and Garden going practically night and day to produce the magical baked goods for which she was known. There were summer berry tartlets, including almond tartlets made with raspberries and glazed with red currant jelly, each piped with tiny rosettes of whipped cream. And there were glazed figs. And melon cubes. And small squares of chocolate cheesecake. She had rented several tables to hold the food, and worried there would not be enough room for it all.

Elka, Suzanna Winship had decided, was often happiest when worried, in having something or someone to fuss about. This, thought Suzanna, would be her shining hour.

Even Elka's normally feckless son Clayton had pitched in, helping his mother with the washing up. And even though he chipped a few dishes in the process, it was generally agreed, his attempt at helpful participation was a miracle in and of itself.

Max, seeing the arriving delicacies—the red, black, and white currants on the pies, biscuits, and cakes, and the summer berries of every kind—had a sudden flashback to the doings at Monkbury Abbey, which he quickly erased from his mind. But Dame Ingrid had not forgotten him and had produced a specially decorated fruitcake, his name entwined in icing with Awena's. Enclosed was a note wishing them happiness and pointedly assuring them that this cake she had made herself.

Courtesy of the Grimaldi brothers of the White Bean restaurant, there were dozens of appetizers: bruschetta by the platterful, and artichoke hearts, mozzarella cheese, cherry tomatoes, and basil leaves speared together on sticks, the whole painted with pesto sauce.

In addition to the food there was a world of things to drink: cucumber water, lemonade, and of course wine. Lots and lots of wine, provided as a handfasting gift by Mme. Cuthbert of La Maison Bleue.

Then there were the marzipan creations for which Elka was most famous. Elka had thought long and hard about this, wanting to symbolize what many saw as a mystical union between two people operating on similar spiritual planes. In the end a fiery sun and half moon seemed to symbolize it best, each candy decorated differently and with exquisite precision.

Of course the pièce de résistance was her handfasting cake, a towering confection of white pastry and icing decorated with summer blossoms of every color. Small figures representing Max and Awena stood atop the cake, holding hands.

Elka, not quite believing she had pulled it off, took dozens of photos for her Web site. Orders from future brides and grooms already had started to pour in.

And then there was Awena, the bride herself, resplendent as all the meteors of heaven on a clear night, in a foamy ashes-of-roses dress she had made herself, a dress that shone and glittered with a million beaded and appliqued flowers in oranges, reds, and yellows, colors chosen to represent both the warmth of the summer sun and the approaching changes of the harvest season. Her dark hair with its streak of white at the temple had been braided through with vines and flowers.

The ceremony was held on Lammas Day, a day to celebrate the first wheat harvest of the year, and officiated by a woman from Awena's childhood in Wales, a woman of wide-ranging druidical beliefs who yet operated within the confines of the established church. Druidism, recognized in the United Kingdom as a religion, did not particularly speak to Awena's own beliefs but was flexible enough that a Universal Mind was acknowledged in the ceremony—a ceremony preceded by a brief civil union in Monkslip-super-Mare, to placate the authorities and Max, who had insisted on it.

Sitting in the congregation for the handfasting were Awena's sisters from Wales, Max's mother, and assorted cousins and nieces and nephews belonging to both bride and groom. DCI Cotton was there, of course, along with Sergeant Essex, to watch Max and Awena promise to live lives full of courage and love. Also in attendance were the Bishop of Monkslip and his wife, she in a fascinator hat and beige mother-of-the-bride type of linen suit. They both looked determinedly game if rather bewildered by the proceedings, and they may have stumbled a bit over the responses, but as the bishop had told Max on receiving the handfasting invitation: “I don't see how Awena can meet us halfway unless we try to do the same for her beliefs and customs. And I hope I'm not too old to learn new things.” The generosity of the statement summed up everything Max loved and admired about the man, completely describing how the bishop had achieved the highest reaches of his calling.