I ran back up the nave and upended the bucket over the incendiary and the already-burning rail, and then stood back, waiting for it to spit.

It didn’t. I used my foot to push the incendiary into the very middle of the aisle and check to make sure the fire on the kneeling rail was out. I had dropped the sand bucket and it had rolled under one of the pews. For the verger to find tomorrow and burst into tears.

I stood there looking at it, thinking about what I’d just done. I’d acted without thinking, like Verity, going after the cat in the water. But there was no chance here of changing the course of history. The Luftwaffe was already correcting any possible incongruities.

I looked up at the Mercers’ Chapel. Flames were already licking through the carved wooden ceiling above it, and no amount of sand buckets would be able to put them out. In another two hours the entire cathedral would be in flames.

There was a dull boom as something landed outside the Girdlers’ Chapel, lighting it for an instant. In the seconds before the light faded, I could see the fifteenth-century wooden cross with the carving of a child kneeling at the foot of it. In another half hour, Provost Howard would see it, behind a wall of flames, and the whole east end of the church would be on fire.

“Verity!” I shouted, and my voice echoed in the darkened church. “Verity!”

“Ned!”

I whirled around. “Verity!” I shouted and bolted back down the main aisle. I skidded to a stop at the back of the nave. “Verity!” I shouted and stood still, listening.

“Ned!”

Outside the church. The south door. I took off between the pews, stumbling over the rails, and across to the south door.

There was a knot of people gathered outside, looking anxiously up at the roof, and two tough-looking youths with their hands in their pockets, leaning casually against a lamp-post on the corner, discussing a fire off to the west. “What’s that smell of cigars?” the taller one was asking, as calmly as if they were discussing the weather.

“Tobacconist’s corner of Broadgate,” the shorter one said. “We shoulda nipped in and pinched some cigs before it got going.”

“Did you see a girl come out of the cathedral?” I asked the nearest person, a middle-aged woman in a kerchief.

“It’s not going to catch, is it, do you think?” she said.

Yes, I thought. “The fire watch is up there,” I said. “Did you see a girl run out of the church?”

“No,” she said and went immediately back to looking up at the roof.

I ran down Bayley Lane and then back along the side of the church, but there was no sign of her. She must have come out one of the other doors. Not the vestry door. The fire watch came in and out that door. The west door.

I raced round to the west door. There was a cluster of people there, too, huddled inside the porch, a woman with three little girls, an old man wrapped in a blanket, a girl in a maid’s uniform. A gray-haired woman with a sharp nose and a WAS armband stood in front of the doors, her arms crossed.

“Did you see anyone come out of the church in the last few minutes?” I asked her.

“No one’s allowed inside the church except the fire watch,” she said accusingly, and her voice reminded me of someone’s, too, but I didn’t have time to try to work out whose.

“She has red hair,” I said. “She’s wearing a long white… she’s wearing a white nightgown.”

“Nightgown?” she said disapprovingly.

A short, stout ARP warden came up. “I’ve got orders to clear this area, he said. “The fire brigade needs all avenues to the cathedral cleared. Come along.”

The woman with the little girls picked up the littlest one and started out of the porch. The old man shuffled after her.

“Come along,” the warden said to the maid, who seemed paralyzed with fright. “You too, miss Sharpe.” He waved to the gray-haired woman.

“I have no intention of going anywhere,” she said, crossing her arms more militantly. “I am the vice-chairwoman of the Cathedral Ladies’ Altar Guild and the head of the Flower Committee.”

“I don’t care who you are,” the warden said. “I’ve got orders to clear these doors for the fire brigade. I’ve already cleared the south door, and now it’s your turn.”

“Warden, have you seen a young woman with red hair?” I interrupted.

“I have been assigned to guard this door against looters,” the woman said, drawing herself up. “I have stood here since the raid began and I intend to stand here all night, if necessary, to protect the cathedral.”

“And I intend to clear this door,” the warden said, drawing himself up.

I didn’t have time for this. I stepped between them. “I’m looking for a missing girl,” I said, drawing myself up. “Red hair. White nightgown.”

“Ask at the police station,” the warden said. He pointed back the way I’d come. “Down St. Mary’s Street.”

I took off at a trot, wondering who would win. My money was on the head of the Flower Committee. Who did she remind me of? Mary Botoner? Lady Schrapnell? One of the fur-bearing ladies in Blackwell’s?

The warden hadn’t done a very effective job of clearing the south door. The exact same knot of people was standing there, and the two youths were still holding up the lamp-post. I hurried along the south side of the cathedral toward Bayley Lane and straight into the processional.

I had read about what the police sergeant had called the “solemn little procession” when the fire watch had rescued what treasures they could grab and taken them across to the police station for safekeeping. And in my mind’s eye, I had thought of it as that — a decorous parade, with Provost Howard leading, trooping the colors of the Warwickshire Regiment, and then the others, carrying the candlesticks and chalice and wafer box at a measured pace, and the wooden crucifix bringing up the rear — so that at first I didn’t recognize it.

Because it wasn’t a processional, it was a rabble, a rout, Napoleon’s Old Guard frantically saving what they could from Waterloo. They stumbled down the road at a half-run, the canon with a candlestick under each arm and a load of vestments, a teenaged boy clutching a chalice and a stirrup pump for dear life, the provost charging with the colors thrust out before him like a lance and half-stumbling over the trailing flag.

I stopped, watching them just as if it were a parade, and that took care of one possibility Verity had proposed. None of them was carrying the bishop’s bird stump.

They ran back into the police station. They must have dumped their treasures unceremoniously on the first surface they found, because they were back outside in under a minute and running back toward the vestry door.

A balding man in a blue coverall met them halfway up the stairs, shaking his head. “It’s no good. There’s too much smoke.”

“I’ve got to get the Gospel and the Epistles,” Provost Howard said and pushed past him and through the door.

“Where the bloody hell is the fire brigade?” said the teenaged boy.

“The fire brigade?” the canon said, looking up at the sky. “Where the bloody hell is the RAF?”

The teenaged boy ran back down St. Mary’s to the police station to tell them to ring the fire brigade again, and I followed him.

The rescued treasures were sitting in a pathetic line on the sergeant’s desk, the regimental colors propped up against the wall behind. While the teenaged boy was telling the sergeant, “Well, try them again. The whole chancel roof’s on fire,” I looked at them. The candlesticks, the wooden crucifix. There was a little pile of worn brown Books of Common Prayer, as well, that hadn’t made the list, and a little bundle of offering envelopes and a choirboy’s surplice, and I wondered how many other rescued items Provost Howard had left out of his list. But the bishop’s bird stump wasn’t there.

The boy darted out. The sergeant picked up the phone. “Have you seen a young woman with red hair?” I said before he could dial the fire brigade.