Chapter 53
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
The body heals.
But in the soul, some scars have no end.
—Benjamin Barker, “Unfortunate Truths and Their Practical Uses”
In the light of my lantern, the patterns of the wraith’s countless souls wept to the floor of Henry’s cell.
So many occlusions—wounds, failings, and the bitterness that comes from living forever in a prison of painful memories.
And inside every soul’s gleaming notes, I saw the same pattern I’d seen inside Jimmy’s shadow, Lynn’s, and my own—the circle with the sweeping cross through it, like the sign for coda. It had to be the mark of a songwriter.
I held that thought as I played a soft, revelatory stroke on my lantern. The light gently brightened the wraith’s shadow, and I thought I saw harpsichords, violins, sheet music, people in audiences.
Suddenly, a smoky ribbon of the wraith plumed toward me.
It brushed my cheek like fine sandpaper, and I felt our thoughts begin to merge, as though our souls were intertwining.
It yearned for someone to love who would love it back.
Its many jumbled voices began to quiet, like distant chatter, while one rose above the rest.
Thank you for freeing us from the schemes of an egotist, the wraith spoke in my mind. When it did, one of its patterns flared, its gleam notes pulsing slow and languid like Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata.”
“We need your help,” I said. “Please—”
We will go to the Ancient Stratum for ourselves. To finish it. And you will join us.
The wraith’s smoky ribbon slipped inside me, brushing now against my soul. I started to go numb and couldn’t move. It would consume me, make me another of the many souls inside it, and I began to feel like that might be okay. Part of me even wanted to. There’d finally be rest . . .
Then I thought of Henry.
“No!” My scream steamed in the chill air. “I have more to do!”
I felt a sudden rush of doubt from the wraith. It recoiled, separating itself from me, pulling through my flesh like steel wool, and disappearing down through the floor. I staggered back against the bookshelf where Church had finally gotten to his feet.
Lakshmi rushed to me. “Are you all right?” “I’ll be fine,” I told her.
Then I glanced around the room. Chuey was sitting up, rubbing his head. Cassius hadn’t moved, but his semblance remained intact.
“Jack.” It was Lady, hunched over Henry’s body. “Over here, please.” I rushed to Lady’s side. Henry lay holding his chest with one hand.
Light seeped from between his fingers. In his shadow, a fiery red scar had torn open—it looked like pleading hands holding a tobacco leaf circled by a chain. Henry looked up at me with a strained smile. “Jack, my boy.”
I took his other hand. “You hang on.” Then to Lady, “What can I do?” Lady put a hand over mine and shook her head.
“You can’t give up.” I grabbed her hand. “There’s got to be something—” She squeezed my fingers. “Don’t waste another moment.” Then she leaned close to Henry and kissed his forehead. “You gave me purpose, dear, and I love you for it. I will never forget.” Henry smiled.
Church eased down on one knee next to us. “What’s this, old chap?
Lying down, just when we need you to stand up. I never took you for a slugabed.”
Henry took Church’s hand. “Help me up, then.”
Church and I gently eased Henry into a chair at his Formica table.
He spared us each a look, then turned to face the old solicitor.
“I’d like one Who song, preferably ‘Behind Blue Eyes,’ performed every Saturday night,” he said.
“Write it into the Iron Horse deed if you have to. Think you can manage it?”
“Legislate our music, would you?” said Church. “You’ve been too long in the Strata.”
Henry chuckled, and the two shook hands. Then Church and Lady withdrew, leaving me alone with my friend.
We stared at each other for a long moment before I finally asked, “Why didn’t you tell me? About thanaturgy, the Iron Horse, all of it?”
He nodded as if he’d expected the question. “You deserved the chance to live a life of your own choosing. It wasn’t my place to influence you in one direction or another.”
“But you knew I might come back from the Meadows.”
“A marker in your shadow showed me as much,” he replied. “But you still had to choose even that. Besides which, I knew if I asked, you’d have said yes out of hand, and put away your music.”
I thought about Wembley. “I think I’ve left that part of me behind.” “Nonsense, Jack. The way you’re able to see a thing, give it a voice, is going to open doors you’ve never imagined.” He paused. “And you’ll find your new band, sure enough.”
Henry doubled over in pain and clutched his chest. More light seeped between his fingers. In that same moment, the room shuddered; cracks opened in the ceiling and dust rained down on us.
I shielded Henry’s head with my arms. “The only door that matters right now is the one that takes us out of here.”
“There’s no body for me to return to, Jack.” Henry sat back. “Muster knew I had too much regret to move on. But he couldn’t let me return, either. So, he brought me here.”
“Cruel to create this place, and leave you here to rot.”
“This place is my doing.” Henry glanced around. “Newgate walls are like a mirror. For me, they reflected back a place I didn’t want to leave, and reminded me why I couldn’t move on . . . Martha.”
He began to weep, and light beamed from his wounded chest. Tremors ripped through the room again.
Large fissures opened up in the walls and floor, chunks of the ceiling crashing down.
He pulled a photo of Martha from his breast pocket and sat staring at it, gently touching his wife’s face.
Questions rolled through my head. I needed Henry’s help.
But right now—before whatever came next for either of us—he needed mine more.
Because somehow Martha’s soul had been here, and he’d watched her die, living that pain now a second time.
In that moment, I remembered singing with Jimmy his third verse when he’d been filled with worry.
Memory isn’t always about regret.
To that same derby tune I improvised a few memories of Martha—old pub jokes, Martha playing Chopin, debates about the Beatles versus the Stones. Just a few lines, really. Small reminders.
Rubble crashed down around us, but I sang until Henry looked up, tears in his eyes. “Nicely done, my boy. And what about your song? Any progress there?”
I nodded. “Finished it.” But I didn’t tell him how I’d lost it again.
A warm smile crossed his wet face. “You don’t say. Hardly a proper venue, but what I wouldn’t give to have a listen.”
“Let’s save that for another time.”
Henry patted my hand. “You’ve forgiven her, then. Good for you.” “Started to, anyway.”
He leveled his stare at me. “Have you likewise started to forgive yourself?”
“For what?” I asked.
“For trying to hate someone you love.” He rolled his eyes toward the sutured tear in my shadow. “That wound won’t heal until you do.”
As Henry always had, he’d looked straight to the heart of the matter.
I smiled. “One forgiveness at a time.”
“Fair enough,” he said. “Lord knows how very long I’ve held on to my own pains. Long enough, maybe.”
The prison rumbled again, and the rear wall of Henry’s Strata home fell completely away, revealing distant lights like fireflies in an otherwise utter darkness.
“But you’ve finally set your feet, my boy,” Henry went on. “That much is clear. You’re a new man. Capable of new things.”
I said nothing, just wanting to listen to him.
“Look into my shadow,” he invited, “into the wounds of my soul, and tell me if, in your good opinion, I haven’t reaped what I’ve sown.”
I hesitated. “Please,” he said.
So, I slowly bowed my lantern, bringing his shadow into sharp relief across the cracked stone floor.
The notes of his pattern gleamed in slow succession, like Pachelbel’s “Canon in D.” There were several dark occlusions standing out against the shimmering notes, but a few were open wounds, whose light seeped through . . .
. . . inside a great cathedral, its nave and transept coated in blood, bodies lie all around—a priest is sprawled on the floor, with the innocents who’ d tried to defend him . . .
. . . Martha, dressed in black, walking a row of gravestones in the rain. Against an autumn twilight she hunches next to one particular stone and weeps . . .
. . . a young boy, eyes shut, lies in a hospital bed. The soft whir of machines cannot quite cover his struggle to breathe, and the feeling of his father finally giving assent to turn those machines off . . .
I’d seen the scar of the first one before—supplicating hands holding a steer’s horn—the same wound I’d seen in Father Kincaid at Westminster.
A massive tremor rattled the prison cell.
Another wall and much of the ceiling fell away, crumbling into the darkness.
My friends gathered close, trying to shield Henry and me.
I looked up at Henry trembling in shame.
“I killed good people, Jack,” he said softly. “Right there in that beautiful cathedral, blind with rage. Years later, the first time I was reborn . . .
I never went back to Martha, letting her believe I was dead because I couldn’t bear to think how my new life might harm her.”
He stopped and stared at me, seemingly unable to find the right words.
His prison continued to quake and collapse into darkness around us. “My little boy,” he finally said, “had suffered so much, so soon. I told myself it was a mercy.”
My heart ached, not for the things he’d done, but because they’d caused him such bondage and pain.
It made me love him all the more. He’d hidden these wounds so well that I’d never known his sorrow.
He lived with them, but all I’d ever seen was his care for others.
These wounds were not the whole of him. Any more than Mama’s leaving was the whole of her.
Maybe my friend needed a third verse of his own.
So, I began to sing again.
Using his “Canon in D,” I first gave voice to the darkness of the many pains he carried—I’d spent a lifetime learning how to write such music.
The scars in his soul began to glow softly, like embers touched by the wind.
Then, I brought forward images of the man who’d made me feel a sense of belonging—listening to Ronnie Scott sax records, playing songs in his cramped little music studio, walking home together in the warm evening breeze, the way he always said “damn straight” just when I needed to hear it.
So many moments my songwriter’s heart had noted and held.
With these brighter images I changed the song, keeping phrases of the dark, but weaving it into something more complete. The sound of it came out in a rush, modulating up and up, the way hopeful songs often do. Inside his shadow, his gleaming pattern in D shimmered with new brightness.
He smiled again. “Nicely done, Jack, thank you. I think I’m ready.” “Ready?”
“To move on.”
“Is that why you wanted me to peer? Henry, we can find—” “Initially, I just needed you to see all of me,” he said. “But you’ve done more than that, my boy. You’ve helped me feel whole . . . opened a way for me.”
The floor beneath the wraith’s discarded body broke away, and the torn vessel disappeared into the darkness. The rest of the floor cracked in a web of dark fissures. Around us only remnants of the back wall remained, yellow in the light of my lantern.
“Are you talking about the Meadows?” I asked.
“I am, Jack.” He stood. “Do me one last favor, will you?” “Anything,” I said, clambering to my feet next to him.
“Don’t let the Iron Horse stage remain empty for too long.” He winked. “Get some music back in there soon, will you?”
“I know a great accordion act.”
We laughed together. But when the laughter faded, I had to fight back a familiar ache and pressure behind my forehead. I thought maybe I could still save him, and wanted to try. But that’s not what he needed. I would miss him terribly.
Henry took his hands from the hole in his chest and hugged me. “I love you, Jack. I always will.”
“I love you, too, Henry.” I hugged him hard.
He let go, turned, and walked toward the darkness. The song of him rose in my head again, and I let it out softly, watching him go.
Knowing where he was headed, I recalled the Meadows. A moment later, I stood with my friend on the endless plain of fallen statues and raised a hand goodbye.
He smiled his easy smile one last time, then let the wind sweep him toward the mountain of fire, upright and fast, coursing over the stony ground. When he was no more than a speck of sand in the distance, he joined the fire to a chorus of voices. A brief distant wink of light, and he’d gone home.
The memory of my first conversation with Henry flared and was gone.
Inside me another hollow opened up—this one felt different than the others.
The next moment, the crumbled walls of Henry’s prison began reforming.
Stones whipped back into place. Cracks in the floor slowly started to seal.
It wasn’t Henry’s place anymore—and so seemed to be reconstituting as just a grey stone cell.
“He disappeared,” said Church. “He moved on,” I said.
“Are you sure?” Lady asked. “I’m sure,” I said.
We’d lost our best possible proof that Brach had killed Henry. But before I could get my head around that, I saw Cassius still lying in the corner of the cell. I scrambled over to him. “Cassius.”
Blood coated the left side of his face. His bindings had gone dark.
And his blue semblance had started to pull free of its mortal shell.