Lucy met Father Anselm on the forecourt of Liverpool Street Station. She had wanted to see him before he went back to Larkwood Priory, to say thank you, and had duly rung him at St Catherine’s the night before. The monk stood behind his suitcase like one of those carved statues on the front of a cathedral, observing the passing world on its busy way to somewhere important. He saw her and raised a hand.
Lucy said, ‘I’m told it’s because of you I’m not going to be charged.’
‘That’s not strictly true,’ replied the monk. ‘Detective Superintendent Milby and I go back a long way He’d never have put you through the system if he could help it. But what you did was remarkably daft, wasn’t it?’
‘At the time I was watching myself,’ said Lucy. ‘It was as though the whole episode was part of a play and once I’d started writing the script I couldn’t stop. At last I was in control. I could choose the ending. But it was unreal. I just wanted to rehearse what it would be like and see it through to the end.’ She felt again the queasy warmth of guilt passed by ‘Detective Inspector Armstrong told me that, once cocked, the trigger was so light it could have gone off in my hand without me even touching it.’
‘And you would have killed the last knight of The Round Table,’ said Father Anselm, ‘the man who saved Robert. It doesn’t bear thinking about.’ The monk went on to give a short account of Victor’s true position in the weave of events. Horrified at the magnitude of her error, humbled and ashamed, Lucy said, ‘Someone must have been looking after me.’
‘I know what you mean,’ replied the monk pensively ‘That is a phrase upon which to ponder.’ He glanced at the departure board. ‘I’m afraid I have to go.
Lucy walked with him along the platform. ‘I must tell my father who he is.’
‘Yes… and I must tell Robert Brownlow whose son he is.’
Lucy felt the first stirrings of an idea that she knew would fulfil itself. She had a sense of festival, streamers, a family outing. Father Anselm stopped by the train door and said: ‘Did you know that Salomon Lachaise was saved by The Round Table?’
‘No.’ She thought of the gentleman who had become her friend, having at one definite point in the course of the trial sought her out, along with Max Nightingale. ‘And yet he didn’t sit with the other survivors.
The monk looked at her curiously ‘How strange. I didn’t realise that…’
Lucy’s idea took a firm shape:
‘I’d like to bring all these people together, before my grand-mother dies. They all belong in the same room.
Surprised agreement lit the monk’s face.
She said, ‘Would you come.’ Father?’
‘Thank you, and remember… I’m also a messenger from the past.’
A messenger: somehow, despite the long, unrelenting conspiracy of misfortune, a letter had been passed on, as by runners at night, despite the guns, despite the wire. It would be brought to Agnes just before she died.
A man in a tired uniform appeared, urging stragglers to get on board. The one remaining question fell from her lips as the door began to swing on its dirty hinge: ‘I wonder what Mr Lachaise said to Schwermann…’
‘Yes, I wonder,’ replied the monk.
The door banged shut. A loud whistle soared over the carriages. The train heaved forwards, clattering on the rails. The man in uniform walked quickly past, his job done. And Father Anselm, his face framed by a grimy square of glass, moved away.