Free Bristol House by Beverly Swerling

as we walked and talked of paradise and martyrdom, I thought of how earlier that day, though to my knowledge there were no quails kept anywhere in the monastery, another of the creature’s eggs found its way to my cell. As always, the appearance of the speckled quail’s egg meant I was that very night commanded to visit the Jew of Holborn.
    •
    “Tell me again what you saw,” Geoff said.
    “A bright light.” Minutes had gone by, but Annie’s voice still quivered. “White. Shining from under this door.”
    Geoff opened it. Nothing in the small bedroom looked disturbed. “What do you mean by a white light?”
    “Not ordinary. As if . . . phosphorescent.” It was a relief to find the right word.
    He stepped across the threshold and flicked the light switch. A desk lamp went on. “Not even a fingerprint in the dust,” he said.
    Annie stayed where she was, leaning against the wall. Her heart was no longer racing, and she could breathe, but there was a rushing sound in her head. Everything seemed to come through a filter between herself and the known universe. “You’re sure you didn’t see it?”
    Geoff shook his head. “Sorry, I really didn’t.”
    The white glow had still been there when he joined her in the doorway to the kitchen. It had faded while they walked toward it. “Maybe it was a lightning flash,” Annie said. It was pouring now. They could see the rain beating against the bedroom windows.
    “This is English rain,” Geoff said. “It’s polite and quiet. No thunder and no lightning. At least not usually.”
    Anyway, a flash of lightning would not have produced a sustained glow, and she had seen the light for many seconds. But she couldn’t let it go. “It could have been,” she insisted.
    “I suppose.”
    He sounded as if he were indulging a frightened and unreasonable child.
    Annie turned and walked down the hall, putting on all the lights as she passed. She heard Geoff close the back bedroom door and come after her. In the drawing room she sat on the sofa, facing into the corner, her shoulders hunched over. The springs gave when he sat next to her. Annie clenched her hands in her lap.
    “You can’t stay here, Annie. Come back to my place tonight. Tomorrow we’ll see about finding you somewhere else to live while you’re in London.”
    “No.”
    “You’re being ridiculous. How can you stay here? You’re trembling.”
    “I’ll be fine.” She had four radios and a universal remote. What better defense against visits from the beyond? The rain looked to be coming in the open window. Annie got up and closed it.
    “Annie, I want to help you.”
    “Why?”
    “Why not? And why are you being so stubborn?”
    “I’m not stubborn, just practical.” The sense of everything being distant was dissolving. And the rushing sound in her head was gone.
    “How is it practical to stay in a flat that scares you out of your wits?”
    “It’s not the flat.” She turned. “And I’m scared, but not the way you mean. I can’t run away. There’s something I’m supposed to find out or . . .”—she hesitated—“accomplish. Some connection.”
    “With what?”
    “My job, what I came here to do. A connection with the Jew of Holborn. I would rather that were not true because it complicates things, but I’m convinced it is.”
    “I take it you mean the job Weinraub sent you here to do.” His expression changed, got harder.
    “Weinraub’s got nothing to do with this. Okay, he’s the one who gave me the assignment. But that only makes him the—I don’t know, the proximate cause. The instrument.”
    “I still can’t see how staying here is—”
    “Look,” Annie said, “maybe you’re smarter than I am. Or luckier. Or you had better judgment. Whatever—my life hasn’t gone the way yours has. I don’t have a fabulous career or live in a gorgeous house where everything is exactly the way I want it to be. But what I do know is how to hang tough. I know about that.”
    The words