Follow My Lead (45 page)

And while the center panel featured a Renaissance-era depiction of Jesus on the cross, the two side panels were far more interesting. There was one of Adam and one of Eve, with the Tree of Knowledge divided between the two.

And they were exact copies of the Adam and Eve from the disputed painting. Down to the snake winding around Adam’s ankle.

“Oh my God,” she breathed, taking measured steps toward the altar—she did not fully trust her legs now. She reached the triptych—were her eyes playing tricks on her? No . . . no, they were correct. Completely and utterly correct.

“. . . the First of Man and Woman. That’s what Maria F. called the painting in her letters,” Winn intoned, her breath coming in little hitches. “But it wasn’t a title . . . it was a first draft! This must be her finished work!” Her eyes focused unblinkingly on a lower corner.

“It’s . . . oh my God. Jason . . . oh my God, is that, is that a signature?”

She peered closely, and then gingerly, ever so gingerly, lifted it up and used a votive candle’s light to peer at the bottom right corner of the main panel.

“Well, it’s certainly not Dürer’s mark,” Jason commented, his nose as close to canvas as her own.

“This is it, Jason,” she replied, standing upright but still clutching the triptych. “This, plus the letters? This is incontrovertible proof. And to think, it’s been sitting in this little abbey in Döbling for the past three hundred years. Forgotten.” She looked up at him with shining eyes. “And you found it. Jason—you made the discovery of a lifetime.”

He opened his mouth to answer, to say something . . . anything . . . about the discovery, about what she told him mere seconds before it . . . but it was not to be.

Because someone else answered for him.

“The discovery of a lifetime, Your Grace?” George Bambridge’s voice came out of the shadows from down the left corridor. “My congratulations. A pity your life is going to be far too short.”

G
EORGE emerged from the darkness of the long corridor, lead by the shine of a pistol in his hand.

“Good heavens, George, where did you get that?” Winn asked, surprised a little at her own tone.

“Linz,” George replied conversationally. Then, with his spare hand, he dug into his pocket. “You left something there, Your Grace.” He held up the ducal signet ring, its gold crest sparkling in the low light. Tossed it to Jason, who caught it and slipped it back onto his finger.

“My thanks, Bambridge,” Jason said, his tone far more wary than Winn’s had been. Slowly, Jason shuffled himself so that his body stood in front of Winn, protecting her.

“Ah, ah, ah,” George said, seeing Jason’s intentions. “That’s quite far enough, Your Grace.”

“Now, George, be reasonable. We have just had a moment of true academic discovery. This is important,” Winn began.

“No! You do not order me about any longer. Your independence was fostered by your father and should never have been encouraged. You women, trying to tell me what is important and what is good,” George spat, advancing toward them. “I’m tired of it. Now, you’re going to listen to me.”

It was at that point that Winn realized two things: First of all, it was eerily quiet in the convent dormitory. There was no one there but them. Where was Totty? Where were the sisters, the novitiate who had come to check on them periodically throughout the day? Where was Mr. Ellis? The silence told her that there was no one coming to save them.

The second thing she realized, as the first was sending a chill down her spine, was that George Bambridge had, over the last few weeks, gone past the point of reason.

Although, in fairness, the last was a point she should have realized as soon as she saw the pistol in his hand.

It was obviously a point that Jason had taken note of, as he held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “All right Bambridge, you win.” Gently, he took the triptych out of Winn’s hands, closing the side panels over the main one so only the wooden sides faced out. Its hinges, obviously long held in the same position, creaked with the effort of use, shaking Winn to the core.

“This is what you want, correct? This is the proof that Winn was right all along. Take it.” Jason held out the triptych to George, at arm’s length. George glanced down at it, uncertain. Then, stepping carefully, he approached. He reached out his left hand, and in so doing, the pistol in his right fell by an inch.

That’s when Jason tossed the triptych in the air. And suddenly, everything happened at once.

George reached for the triptych, dropping his pistol to the ground, luckily without discharge. But before the triptych even touched George’s outstretched fingers, Jason had launched himself at George, tackling him. As George hit the ground, so did the painting, and Winn’s strangled cry rent the air. She was about to dive for it, but as George and Jason wrestled on the floor, George’s leg kicked out and knocked over the small altar of votive candles.

That was when things got truly interesting.

The altar itself was old, and little more than tinder. It went up quickly, with Winn on one side, and Jason, George, and the triptych on the other.

For one of the few times in her life, Winn did not know what to do.

“Jason!” she cried as George rolled on top of him and began pummeling his ribs.

“Go! Get help!” Jason said in strangled tones.

“I’m not leaving you!” she cried. Oh heavens, the fire was spreading to the chair. How long before the ceiling beams caught?

“Oh for God’s sake . . .” Jason grumbled, and then, with a lucky kick to George’s male parts, managed to turn the tables and get the advantage. He stood quickly and picked up the triptych, tossing it over the fire, startling Winn into reaching out her hands and catching it.

“Go get help!”

“Jase—”

“The fire is spreading. Go now!”

She ran. Winn ran down the corridor, out into the orange gaze of the setting sun. She looked around wildly, but could see no one. “Help!” she yelled, again and again. But no one came. All the sisters and students must be in the school, for prayers before supper, as the church was still being repaired.

The church. It was the closest.

“Mr. Ellis!” she cried, taking off for the doors to the little chapel that served as the convent’s place of worship. It was a perfectly serviceable place, with rows of wooden pews on either side of a main aisle, leading up to an altar. It would not have stood out of place from any other church, except for the scaffolding and lack of roof. She burst through the doors, setting some nesting pigeons into flight, the flap of their wings echoing across the empty space. “Mr. Ellis! Mr. Ellis!” she called again, and thankfully, finally, Mr. Ellis appeared at the little podium at the altar.

“Oh thank goodness . . . Mr. Ellis, take this.” Winn practically tossed the triptych at him. “It’s terribly important. And you have to go get help, there’s a fire in the dormitory!”

“What on earth, child . . . ?” Mr. Ellis said, his eyes running over the triptych in his hands.

“Mr. Ellis. Fire! Dormitory!”

That was all that needed to be said. Using the door on the side, he took the triptych and ran out to the school.

Winn headed back up the aisle to the main doors, the ones she had come through, that lead back to the dormitory. She had to get to Jason . . . She had to get him out . . .

And then she heard it.

The birds that had settled back into their nests, rustling, the beginnings of flight.

She dove down in between pews just as the main doors burst open, and George roared into the little church.

She held as still as she could, barely breathing, wedged between the kneeling stools and the seats. She was on her hands and knees, as low and she could get. Watching the aisle . . . listening to footsteps.

“Winnifred . . . come out now, I know you’re in here. I must say you chose your champion poorly. You missed it when I knocked him down in two blows to the head.” Footsteps crept closer.

“Funny, isn’t it? I never liked boxing.” He laughed then, a hollow, wild sound that Winn had never heard before. It sent pricks of fear to her scalp. “I seem to have a talent for it.”

She couldn’t hide here forever. He would find her, catch her . . . She shuffled as far back in the row as she could, as quietly as possible, sliding on her knees. But alas, she wasn’t silent enough.

“There you are.” George appeared at her row, leaning casually on the pew. He was a mess—she hadn’t noticed it before, her focus had been mainly on the pistol (that he luckily no longer carried), but his coat was worn, his face scruffed with beard. His shirt and trousers were smattered with ashes. Normally, George was finicky about his appearance, to the point of irritation. But now, his gaze and his voice were utterly, disturbingly calm.

“Might as well stand, you know,” George drawled, his voice becoming harder and harder with every word he enunciated. “Are you going to make me come get you? Make me chase you more? I’ve been chasing you for fifteen years. One would think that’s enough.”

It was his anger that kept his eyes calm, Winn realized. His anger that he normally stomped out had now been ingested, and permeated his very soul. She didn’t have to glance behind her to know that there was no means of easy escape. There was very little choice but to stand and meet him.

“Where is Jason?” she asked.

“Where I left him.”

“And where is Totty?” She swallowed, taking a slow, small step behind her.

“Where I left her.” George grinned. “Never fear, His Grace’s injuries are far more severe than hers. At least I hope so.”

Winn took another cautious step back. She was almost fully into the far aisle now, the full pew separating them. But George didn’t move, didn’t advance. Didn’t need to.

“Do you mean, that you . . . hurt Totty, as you hurt Jason?” she said cautiously.

“I didn’t mean to,” George reasoned, desperation creeping into his voice. “But I had to. She was keeping me from finding you. I . . . just want things to go back to normal, Winnifred. You and me, in Oxford. Please understand . . . It was the only way . . . Winnifred, it was the only way. Totty just would not shut up. Her and her friends . . .”

Winn felt something hot burn her ears. Some deep-seated anger finally finding its way to the forefront of her mind, and she no longer saw her old friend George on the edge of madness. Instead she saw her jailer, her oppressor, and one who caused injury to her friends.

“For someone who seems so beset by women’s voices, you never listen to them.” Winn breathed deeply, her gaze constantly on him. “I have tried in the past to tell you this, but you brushed it off. So hear me now: I will never marry you. I am done with this farce.”

As George’s eyes narrowed and the anger that drove him finally showed on his face, Winn knew in that fraction of a second before he dove for her, that at last, he had heard her.

“A farce, is it?” George growled as he dove into the row, stomping toward her. While George had size and strength, Winn had a surprising amount of speed, and she darted out of his grasp.

“You call the life I planned for us a farce?”

But there was very little in the way of places to go. George had the center aisle, he would get to the main doors before her . . .

“The love I’ve borne for you all these years is a farce?”

The door Mr. Ellis had escaped through was on the other side of the church . . .

“Even when my friends told me to look elsewhere, that you were a frigid headache, I always came back to you.”

She could feel the hot swipe of his hand as he grabbed for her, just fractions of an inch out of his grasp. She ran for her life, ran in circles, barely keeping herself out of his grasp until she ran out of places to run. And then, there was nowhere to go but up.

“I endured the humiliation of your education, of those Marks papers, of your silly pursuits, and now
you
reject
me
?”

She clasped the rungs of the scaffolding, propelling her body up the rickety works, each board straining audibly with her slight weight. Quickly she moved . . . up . . . up some more. . . . She was almost to the large gaping hole in the roof when she felt the scaffolding shake violently, bow and creak. She chanced a look behind her and saw that George had begun his own assent after her. She doubled her pace. Reaching the top, she used every muscle in her arms, arms that were in general used for lifting little more than a quill, to hold her body at the hole in the roof. And then, with one solid kick, knocked the rickety scaffolding to one side.

It creaked and cried and buckled under the pressure of being thrown so far to one side. The twine binding the hinges snapped, and the whole thing went down in a great crash of sticks, wood, and dust.

And George went down with it.

She could hear his cry through the crash, as Winn used the last of her strength to pull her hanging legs up over the edge of the hole. She rolled onto the slate shingles of the roof, which slid loosely beneath her, her breath coming in heavy gulps. Seconds ticked by as she regained her strength and mind. Then, she scrambled to her feet, trying to keep steady on the slope of the unstable roof. (For the first time in her life, she was thankful for her shortness, thereby providing a low center of gravity.) She glanced down into the hole, into the depth of the church. She could see nothing beyond the cloud of dust that had been kicked up, but she could tell there was no movement on the ground.

Funny, but that cloud of dust . . . it smelled of . . . Was it smoke?

Her head whipped up. No, the smoke was on the air. She scrambled on unsteady legs up to the ridgepole of the roof, desperate for a better view. There she saw the dormitory, smoke blowing out two windows. The fire had spread. The place was being beset by organized nuns and schoolgirls, forming a line from the well to the fire, buckets being run up the line. She spotted Mr. Ellis with the Alton girls, the triptych still in his hands. But nowhere did she see Jason.