* * *
Seated in Mother Hildegarde’s office, Jamie laid the bundle of papers he carried on the shining wood of her desk. Bouton, keeping a wary eye on the intruder, lay down at his mistress’s feet. He laid his nose upon his feet, but kept his ears cocked, lip raised over one eyetooth in case he should be called upon to rend the visitor limb from limb.
Jamie narrowed his eyes at Bouton, pointedly pulling his feet away from the twitching black nose. “Herr Gerstmann recommended that I consult you, Mother, about these documents,” he said, unrolling the thick sheaf and flattening it beneath his palms.
Mother Hildegarde regarded Jamie for a moment, one heavy brow raised quizzically. Then she turned her attention to the sheaf of papers, with that administrator’s trick of seeming to focus entirely on the matter at hand, while still keeping her sensitive antennae tuned to catch the faintest vibration of emergency from the far-off reaches of the H?pital.
“Yes?” she said. One blunt finger ran lightly over the lines of scribbled music, one by one, as though she heard the notes by touching them. A flick of the finger, and the sheet slid aside, half-exposing the next.
“What is it that you wish to know, Monsieur Fraser?” she asked.
“I don’t know, Mother.” Jamie was leaning forward, intent. He touched the black lines himself, dabbing gently at the smear where the writer’s hand had carelessly brushed the staves before the ink had dried.
“There is something odd about this music, Mother.”
The nun’s wide mouth moved slightly in what might have been a smile.
“Really, Monsieur Fraser? And yet I understand—you will not be offended, I trust—that to you, music is…a lock to which you have no key?”
Jamie laughed, and a sister passing in the hallways turned, startled by such a sound in the confines of the H?pital. It was a noisy place, but laughter was unusual.
“That is a very tactful description of my disability, Mother. And altogether true. Were you to sing one of these pieces”—his finger, longer and more slender, but nearly the same size as Mother Hildegarde’s, tapped the parchment with a soft rustling noise—“I could not tell it from the Kyrie Eleison or from ‘La Dame fait bien’—except by the words,” he added, with a grin.
Now it was Mother Hildegarde’s turn to laugh.
“Indeed, Monsieur Fraser,” she said. “Well, at least you listen to the words!” She took the sheaf of papers into her hands, riffling the tops. I could see the faint swelling of her throat above the tight band of her wimple as she read, as though she was singing silently to herself, and one large foot twitched slightly, keeping time.
Jamie sat very still upon his stool, good hand folded over the crooked one on his knee, watching her. The slanted blue eyes were intent, and he paid no attention to the ongoing noise from the depths of the H?pital behind him. Patients cried out, orderlies and nuns shouted back and forth, family members shrieked in sorrow or dismay, and the muted clang of metal instruments echoed off the ancient stones of the building, but neither Jamie nor Mother Hildegarde moved.
At last she lowered the pages, peering at him over the tops. Her eyes were sparkling, and she looked suddenly like a young girl.
“I think you are right!” she said. “I cannot take time to think it over carefully just now”—she glanced toward the doorway, momentarily darkened by the form of an orderly dashing past with a large sack of lint—“but there is something odd here.” She tapped the pages on the desk, straightening them into an orderly stack.
“How extraordinary,” she said.
“Be that as it may, Mother—can you, with your gift, discern what this particular pattern is? It would be difficult; I have reason to suppose that it is a cipher, and that the language of the message is English, though the text of the songs is in German.”
Mother Hildegarde uttered a small grunt of surprise.
“English? You are sure?”
Jamie shook his head. “Not sure, no, but I think so. For one reason, there is the country of origin; the songs were sent from England.”
“Well, Monsieur,” she said, arching one eyebrow. “Your wife speaks English, does she not? And I imagine that you would be willing to sacrifice her company to assist me in performing this endeavor for you?”
Jamie eyed her, the half-smile on his face the mirror image of hers. He glanced down at his feet, where Bouton’s whiskers quivered with the ghost of a growl.
“I’ll make ye a bargain, Mother,” he said. “If your wee dog doesna bite me in the arse on the way out, you can have my wife.”