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Page 75.

Tim and Ginny took a train from London’s Waterloo Station to Winchester, about 50 miles southwest. They wore raincoats and carried umbrellas, because it was a cold summer day in 1944. Ginny was one of those women who forever had a program of every scheduled event for miles around, and Tim could always count on her to have a pair of free or cheap tickets (when they weren’t available through the USO or its British sister agency), and they walked arm in arm. The concert was scheduled for 2 p.m., and they arrived at noon, in time to eat a leisurely lunch of fish and chips (the fish fresh from Portsmouth on the Channel). They strolled through the ancient city, enjoying the park, the museums, the medieval guild hall, High Street with its market and shops, and then of course the famous cathedral.

Winchester Cathedral had the longest nave of any medieval cathedral. It had a spectacular 12th Century Bible in the original Latin of St. Jerome’s Vulgate, lavishly illustrated with gold and jewels, and representing the life’s work of a band of master craftsmen. As Tim and Ginny wandered from exhibit to exhibit in the sprawling complex, there were plenty of visitors and tourists despite the war. As at St. Paul’s in London, parts of the stained glass windows had been packed away for safe keeping.

As they passed through the galleries, the main organ emitted a blast of sound. Ginny gripped Tim’s arm and whispered: “They’re staring early. We’d better hurry.” As they rushed toward the chapel where the concert was to be, they heard the piping voices of boy choristers at practice. Organ music stunned the echoing and incense-smoky space with exquisite ribbons of sound. “It’s not our concert,” Ginny whispered, “it’s something else.” As they passed another side altar, they heard the stentorian voice of a priest. Two men in bishops’ miters and gold-crusted copes or cloaks stood waiting. Their white-gloved hands held gold crosiers like question marks. A crowd of well-dressed persons stood around a baptismal font, including men in military uniforms glittering with gold, a few of them with old-fashioned tricornered hats with white plumage. “Friends,” said one of the bishops, attended by several priests, “we are gathered here for the solemn and joyful christening the newest child of Sir Peter and Lady Jane DeLory.” He raised his arms, draped with the lacy edges of an alb or white tunic, and in his hands was a smiling baby girl exquisitely swaddled in expensive linen and lace, with pink bows in her thin blonde hair. The bishop’s voice echoed among the burial stones of British gentry going back to the Middle Ages: “We are honored to celebrate with one of England’s most ancient families the birth and christening of Lady Elspeth Marie Jane Beatrice Anne Victoria DeLory. Please, let the parents and siblings step forth.”

A row of small children in immaculate suits paraded forth. Behind them on crutches came a slender young dark-haired army officer wearing a sword and fancy uniform; he was missing one leg but carried himself with strength and dignity on crutches. At his arm, demurely dressed in a somberly joyous mauve dress complete with pillbox hat and eye-net, was the beautiful spy briefly known as Leftenant Claire Denby. Her thin, tastefully red-glossed lips, dark hair, white teeth, crisp facial features, were unmistakable, along with the humorous and self-possessed eyes. Having done her duty for God and Crown, she had earned some sort of female knighthood or damedom or something in addition to being hereditary aristocrats. She must have cracked quite a spy ring and saved many lives. Tim intuited that Dame Commander (DBE) DeLory had risked her life cracking a sophisticated German spy ring stealing vital engineering secrets from Marshmallow Hills.

Ginny tugged at Tim’s sleeve. “Tim darling, you are gaping. What ever is the matter with you today?” She jokingly brought a finger up under his chin, and sardonically pressed his jaw shut.