Chapter 57
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
Not all souls and semblances want to move on after death. The mountain of fire is a reward for some, but a chastening for others.
—Thomas Vincent, The Awakening of Fire
The Shiguan thanatist with the bushy red mane stepped past his vestige crew toward me, his boots crunching on shards of broken window glass. He stopped at the center of the attic, glaring, and a heavy quiet fell around us.
Behind me, Lady whispered. “That’s Henry Purcell, Jack. For centuries his songbook Orpheus Britannicus was a daily part of dame school. He’s London’s best Renaissance composer.”
And largely forgotten. Like Bazalgette and Swan.
“You’re a fool to have freed a mature wraith,” Purcell said.
Lakshmi stepped up next to me. “The way I see it, we just stopped you from committing the Precedent crime of binding a mature wraith.” “The Precedent is due for reform.” Purcell pointed his stringless bow at me. “You are fortunate this was not a contest between you and me.”
I rubbed my chest, which still ached from Purcell’s assault strokes. “I don’t feel fortunate.”
He shook his head. “You have no idea what you’ve done.” “I think I do,” I said.
Purcell stared at his useless bow. “Your world is no friend to us. They plagiarize and pilfer, with no sense of the cost to us . . . or them.”
“What have we taken?” I honestly wanted to know.
Purcell scoffed. “Your lewd and nihilistic Clockwork Orange film bastardized my funerary music for Queen Mary. Mr. Jethro Tull’s A Passion Play is low mimicry.
And perhaps worst of all, those noisy bumpkins the Who stole my harmonies and plagiarized my suspended chords for heretical songs about wizards and fools. It’s shameful.”
“You stole as much from German polyphony and Italian baroque,” I said.
His brow rose. “Such a provincial assessment of my work from a topsider is not surprising. In any case, you’re missing the point.
Without provenance—by which I mean visible and proper attribution by topside imitators—the Strata artist loses a bit of himself. ” “Like, metaphorically?” Chuey asked.
Purcell ignored him. “For myself, compositional skills are . . . fading. And the same is true for every artist and craftsman in the Strata. I simply want accountability, and a topside forum to share my continued works, as do many of us below.”
Church put his cane-knife away. “And there’s no way to achieve this other than going to war with the mortal world?”
“You have no idea what you’ve done,” Purcell said again. “But you may trust that I will undo it.”
He shooed away his recovery team and they started for the ladder. Lakshmi stepped into their path to stop them, but I shook my head. “We don’t have time to tangle with these guys.”
Purcell grunted as he and his team descended from the attic. I rushed the other way, leaned out the broken window, and quickly bowed the darkshine again. The wraith’s pattern was gone.
Around me, papers were riffling in the wind; some pulled past me through the window into the breeze high above the street. It was sheet music. Most of it still lay strewn under broken glass across the shattered desk. An inkwell had spilled over a stack of empty parchment scattered to one side.
I ducked back inside and bent closer to examine the notation.
They were like musical prayers. Beautiful, triumphant, heartbreaking melodies, but all of them about redemption in one way or another.
More than that, I knew some of them: Xerxes, Jephtha, Water Music.
At the top of each page was written . . . George Frideric Handel.
I leaned against the broken desk to steady myself. Handel.
The pile of rubble we’d stepped over at Westminster had been right in front of the Handel memorial.
If Brach had gotten hold of Handel’s bones, he might have used them when he bound this wraith, hoping to reconstitute the composer, maybe force him to write music for the Shiguan revolution and eliminate songwriters who would not.
But every soul inside the wraith bore the coda mark of a composer, which meant even before Brach bound Handel, the composer had only been consuming songwriters. And he’d obviously already been sitting here in the Strata, composing and recomposing his own songs. Why?
I started shuffling through the sheet music.
“Jack, bro”—Chuey shouldered his macuahuitl—“what’s the deal?” “I don’t know,” I said. “Give me a minute.”
I looked through the operas, oratorios, odes, masques, and cantatas. I scanned anthems, arias, and hymns. I didn’t see Messiah, which struck me odd, given its popularity, but I could have missed it in my haste.
Nevertheless, the creature seemed to have an incessant need to compose.
There must have been a thousand songs. Some from the oeuvre we knew, but most of them were new compositions by the master.
In fact, all across the broken desk and floor lay music the world would never hear.
What a shame that such beauty would languish in a dwindling past. But Handel must have known his songs would have no living audience.
Yet, he continued to compose. I couldn’t make sense of it.
Church was inspecting the untouched spinet on the left, so I walked over to the opposite corner.
The lute here was likewise unscathed, but Handel had stomped the small wooden trunk into pieces.
I bent over to inspect the reams of papers that had cascaded out .
. . countless handwritten copies of Messiah.
I leafed through version after version. Dates scrawled in the top right corner helped me track the revisions, which seemed to mature in subtlety with each reworking.
There was also a number below each date: the earliest score had the numeral 1; the most recent said 49.
And beside each of the numbers were notes: caroler, Dunstaple—polyphony, jazz pianist, and on and on.
Beneath all the copies of Messiah, I found a stack of a pamphlets called The Musical Times and Singing-Class Circular, a kind of music newsletter. It seemed to be a collection of interviews and reviews.
Finally, I picked up the topmost version of Handel’s most famous score and hummed a few notes, listening to the differences from what I’d heard at Cadogan Hall the past three Christmases, or ever. It was beautiful. Changed, and yet suffused with the same joyous spirit.
I didn’t know what to make of any of this, but I thought if I kept this version with me—and could get a minute to study it—I might be able to understand what Handel was doing, which might help with the context I’d need to turn him.
It wasn’t going to be enough, but it might help, and it was the best idea I had.
So, I folded the newest version of Messiah into my pack, then turned to my friends.
“The wraith’s driving persona is Handel.” Chuey gaped. “No way. The Handel?” Church took a sharp breath. “Dear me.”
“ ‘Dear me’ is right,” I said. “But we need to learn something more about him, something that will lead us to his Rupture. Without that, we don’t stand a chance of binding him.”
Lakshmi sheathed her sword. “Perhaps not even then.”
“You need a library, bro,” Chuey said. “Preferably one with access to Handel source material.”
From Handel’s home, we made fast for Westminster Abbey.