Chapter 58
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
True Illumination occurs when thanatists strengthen their thanaturgic light with specific knowledge and understanding.
—Raptorial Julien, “The Menace of Wraiths”
The luminous sky of the Renaissance Stratum gave Westminster Abbey the look of a bright castle. We approached the Dean’s Yard entrance, and the door opened before we even had a chance to knock. A squat abbot peered out at us. “We’re closed,” he said.
I fished Kincaid’s St. Jude medallion out of my pocket and held it up for the man to see. He squinted at it, then opened the door and shooed us inside.
“Follow me, please,” he said.
I didn’t have it in me to travel the Strata just then.
Besides, we’d probably have more luck searching Westminster archives in this stratum, closer to Handel’s lifetime.
“Could you get a message to Father Kincaid up top?” I said.
“Ask him to please meet us down here. In the meantime, maybe there’s someplace we could rest? ”
The abbot looked us over. “Very well.”
He led us past the cloister and across toward the Chapter House. Through an open door on the left, we saw a small gathering around a casket.
“I thought you were closed,” I said to the abbot.
“It’s a private memorial for Lady Mary Montagu,” he told us. “She was a friend of the abbey.”
Lady gasped.
I came around next to her. “You okay?”
“She was a pioneer of inoculation,” Lady said. “This funeral means the topside world has relegated her to the margins of history . . . her candle has been doused and her semblance with it. Such a shame.”
The abbot herded us into the Chapter House.
The stained glass windows seemed ablaze with the bright sky of the Renaissance Stratum.
Thick shafts of colorful light streaked down to the tiled floor.
But the paintings on the wall—depictions of the apocalypse—gave the chamber a solemn feeling.
You could almost feel kings’ councils debating here in the years before Parliament.
“Wait here,” said the abbot, shutting the door behind him on his way out.
We sat on a bench against the wall, content for a moment’s peace.
The Chapter House here was similar to the one topside.
But something about it seemed . . . holier.
Before I’d stopped going to St. Frances Cabrini, I’d wondered if prayers and faith got into the places where people share them.
I was a kid then, but if there was anything to that, it strangely jived with what I’d learned about Strata-folk—their convictions ran deeper than those of the average topsider.
After a few minutes, Kincaid came through the door, a rod in one hand, the other hanging from his belt. He was a bit red-eyed, but all things considered looked okay.
I pushed myself up from the stiff wooden bench. “Can we talk?” He eyed me, Lakshmi, and the rest. “Where’s Cassius?”
We didn’t have the time, and I didn’t have the will to explain it all to him. “He’s alive. He’s just made some different choices.”
Kincaid hefted the rod in his hand. “If there was ever a man worth your trust or forgiveness—”
“Got it,” I said. “And I’m sorry, Father, but can we set that aside for now? We’re in a hurry.”
He nodded. “I mean no offense,” he said, scrubbing his face, “but I’d rather hoped you wouldn’t be back.”
“Why’s that?” I asked.
“Because I figured if you returned, it would mean your wraith was still killing people.” He crossed himself.
“We dismissed the wraith that came into the Abbey the other night,” I told him. “But something far older has been called up.”
He stared back. “Older? ”
“Many, many souls,” Lakshmi said. “Muster Brach bound it to his cause, and it’s fed voraciously for days. But now it’s free again.”
I quickly filled Kincaid in on the wraith, Brach’s plan, and how we hoped to use the wraith to stop that plan.
Kincaid hefted his rod again. “How can I help?”
“You told me you know about the people buried here in the Abbey. George Handel would be one of them, right? I need you to tell us everything you about know him.”
Kincaid’s eyes grew wide. “Handel? That’s your wraith?”
“What do you know about him?” I pressed. “Not his accomplishments.
Tell us about his disappointments.”
Kincaid shrugged his broad shoulders. “I don’t know what to tell you, Jack.
His father died when he was twelve. He left home soon after that to pursue music and began to grow a reputation.
Even Handel’s peers, Bach among them, spoke highly of him, though today most people only remember his Messiah. ”
Church raised a hand. “We don’t have much time, Jack. What are you looking for? You’ve got to be more precise.”
I thought a moment. “We need to know why Handel’s spirit is writing out old songs and composing new ones, when there’s no apparent audience. You said before that you have archives.”
He nodded and led us from the Chapter House, past a locked door, and up a spiral staircase to a private room.
Rich wood bookshelves with attached study desks lined each side of a long, wide hall.
Down its center were glass cases of rare volumes and notation.
The room had that library silence to it, the smell of old books and old wood, and an air of knowledge and secrets.
Halfway down the right side we entered a row inscribed with an H. Kincaid pointed to two shelves. “There’s a lot to sift through.”
“Let’s skip the compositions,” I said, feeling I probably had the most important piece of Handel music in my pack, anyway.
“What exactly are we looking for?” Lady asked.
“Journals,” I said. Handel was a genius, a monumental figure, but he was still rewriting Messiah, as if he felt he hadn’t got it quite right. It was crazy to think even he might have this problem, too. “Letters, interviews. Anything that might reveal how Handel felt about his own music.”
Kincaid began to pull volumes from the shelves. “Handel was a notorious perfectionist. It alienated him from many of his friends and associates.”
Kincaid handed out books to everyone, and we began scanning through them.
“Man, this is tough to read. It’s like a bunch of scribbles,” Chuey said. “Can you narrow it down any further, bro?”
I remembered the smashed trunk in Handel’s attic. “Look for references to a newsletter called The Musical Times and Singing-Class Circular.”
Everyone sat at one of the little desks and dove in. A few minutes passed before Chuey mumbled, “This is like looking for a major chord in a death-metal tune.” After about thirty minutes, Lady happened on a reproduction of The Musical Times from June 1, 1773.
“Listen to this,” she said,“it’s based on a story from librettist Thomas Morell”:
The work, as often happens with non-success, was a great favourite of its composer.
Asked “if he did not consider the grand chorus in the Messiah (probably the ‘Hallelujah’) his best production,” he replied that “He thought the Chorus ‘He Saw the Lovely Youth’ from Theodora Act II far beyond it.” He was nettled at the audiences’ unenthusiastic response to it.
“How does this help us?” Lakshmi asked.
I pointed at Kincaid. “You said something before: most people only know Handel for Messiah. In his attic study, I found an old trunk filled with version after version of it.”
“Then you’re saying,” asked Church, “that he’s angered by our preference for Messiah over his other music?”
That didn’t feel quite right. “I think he’s trying to prove something. To himself. Maybe to someone else. Because other than hardcore classical enthusiasts, people have reduced his entire body of work to a single passage of music. And to his mind, it’s not even his best stuff.”
Kincaid set down his book on a dusty shelf. “Handel’s original score for Messiah was written for a small performance house in Dublin with just a few vocalists, a solo trumpet, some strings, and that was about it. We’ve a copy of it here in our archives.”
“Nobody remembers it that way,” Chuey said.
“He wrote the whole oratorio in three weeks,” Kincaid continued. “Then he spent the rest of his life rewriting it again and again to suit the performers, the venues, the librettist . . . the people. As it grew in popularity, audiences wanted bigger productions, massive choirs.”
“And yet he never thought it good enough.” I knew a little about that feeling. “He’s still revising.”
Lakshmi set her book aside. “Why wouldn’t a composer simply take joy and pride in the appreciation of his work?”
I shook my head. “Something won’t let him be defined by that one song, the way it is. It’s kind of . . . well, it’s kind of like a prison. And either the fame of it or his need to get it right has become the very thing that keeps him from moving on.”
Church tapped his cane on the floor. “Is this the context you need to see his Rupture and subdue him, Jack?”
“I can’t be sure,” I said. “But either way, what we need now is to find him.” “And if you bind him”—Lakshmi’s eyes were distant—“he’ll never finish his song, will he?”
I’d never heard Lakshmi speak so . . . unraptorially. “Are you saying you think the world is abusing the past?”
Her eyes seemed to focus. “Regardless of what I think, I’m sworn to defend Precedent Law, and I take that oath seriously. But if I’m honest, my husband lives on the Modern Stratum . . . it’s not easy to watch a philosopher slowly lose his ability to reason.”
“I thought you met him at the Buck ’N’ Bull,” I said.
“I did,” she replied, “in the Showplace. He poured me a lime and tonic and hooked me with Aquinas. But before that, in his mortal life, he taught at Imperial College.”
“Dude’s a bartender now?” Chuey asked.
Church smiled at Lakshmi. “Where better for a wise man to share his gift?”
“My point is that some of Brach’s contentions are defensible,” Lakshmi said. “His sin is his overreach. But most of the Strata and half the chancery will look past that in exchange for the changes he’s promising with his revolution.”
Church shut his book. “For which he seeks not Handel’s Messiah but ‘The Lays of Resolve.’ ”