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 aboutyoursong? 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.
