Мэтью Перл - The Dante Chamber

Gabriel thought for a moment that the man could be making fun of him, then, seeing he was entirely serious, nodded. “How do you know?”

“There’s much we have uncovered about the power of Dante, which I understand is a birthright in your family. There is someone here to meet you.”

Through the gates there walked a woman, her hair bright in the low light of the moonrise. She might have been an amalgam of all the women Gabriel had painted since the golden days of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in his search for complete beauty and truth, or perhaps they had all been of her without him ever knowing. He could not decide if this woman before him was a copy or the original.

“Brother Gabriel,” she said.

Gabriel turned away from the grave and felt his legs take him toward Sibbie.

Christina felt conflicted as their span of horses carried them onward over rolling hills. Part of her wanted to throw herself from the moving vehicle and plunge into the thickening snow. But she could not bring herself to flee, not now that she was united with her brother. She would not let him out of her sight again. To questions about where they were going, Gabriel gave no response; his lips quivered and eyes widened. He didn’t remain completely silent. He spoke with fiery conviction about Dante as their way forward. “Father taught us,” he said in a near chant, “for so many years he taught us that very truth, Christina, and we refused, refused to listen, but it returns to us.”

She pleaded with him to let her bring him to safety where he could recover from his ordeal, and that anything else, everything else, could wait. “ This cannot wait ,” he said, “for she simply won’t allow it. Remember what Dante proclaims: ‘This day will never dawn again.’”

One horse’s leg became strained, and they had to stop twice for it to be wrapped. The drive went on for hours longer than it would have in better conditions, though she could not keep track of how long they rode along. Christina was tired of talking in circles with Gabriel, tired down to her bones. By the time they neared their destination, she had fallen asleep once again, and Gabriel picked her up, slipping off her boots, and lifted her from the vehicle. When she woke up, they were standing in a circle of people. Her head tipped backward, the first things she saw were several people’s bare feet.

She insisted Gabriel let her stand on her own. As she found her balance, a regal woman with the alabaster skin of a classical statue approached them — she hardly recognized this figure as Sibbie, whom she had mostly seen supine and silent in Tudor House until this moment. The quintessential patient. An object, not a subject. Now she wore a white, almost translucent robe. Her hair, glossy black mixed with shades of lighter blond and brown — as if she were a multitude of women — was blowing around in the winter gusts. Fallow was speaking into Sibbie’s ear.

Christina’s eyes roved, but she tried to fix her expression to hide how her mind was swimming. The residents of Phillip Sanatorium, including Reverend Fallow, all stood in postures of reverence toward Sibbie. The worshipped woman, meanwhile, stroked Gabriel’s hair. He bowed his head as if in a church.

“My dear boy,” Sibbie said in a hungry whisper, “I’ve just been learning all that I’ve missed while I was insensible. What they tried to do to you. Are you well enough?”

Gabriel’s eyes grew moist and he struggled to speak. Christina was astounded at the woman’s effect on her brother — an effect that took an instant hold of him the way she had only seen happen before under two influences, Lizzie Siddal and opium.

“Sister Christina,” the woman said, turning to her, the breath behind her words frosting into mist. “We have waited for you for a long time.”

“I don’t understand,” replied Christina, her fatigue swept away by awe.

“You’ve been welcome here for a long time, my dear. You may not have known that, or perhaps you did without admitting it. Do not fret. I assure you, you are ready.”

“Ready for what?”

“Please, my sister does not—” Gabriel tried to break in.

“Base child!” Sibbie turned back to Gabriel with thunder in her voice. “You could not stop yourself and your bottomless urges, and the consequences could have destroyed everything we have made. Oh, folly, when man is asked to serve the ways of God and reminds us he is merely a man!”

Christina thought back to Sibbie throwing herself into the drying shed to pull Holmes from the thick smoke. She was not trying to save Holmes at all — she was trying to stop Holmes from saving Loring. To stop him from ruining the purgation.

Gabriel fell to the snow, tears flowing as he begged the woman for forgiveness. Christina continued to try to hide the surge of emotions and fears that filled her, noticing the gathering included not only those wrapped in white robes but also those followers in green garments with swords in their belts.

One of the females robed in white stepped closer to Christina.

Christina gasped with fear and recognition. “Ethel!”

“Here I am called Sister Ethel,” said the refugee from Saint Mary’s, with a light giggle. With conviction she announced: “I found where I belong.”

Christina shook her head, and could only manage to blurt out: “Why?”

“At Saint Mary’s, they wanted us to conceal the past, however much we had done wrong and whatever wrongs were done to us. Brother Fallow came to teach us that we cannot run away from those vices, we must expel them, for ourselves and for all those around us.”

Christina heard a song before she noticed Ethel and the others were singing. “ Te Deum laudamus .” Their voices reached her. We praise thee, O God.

When she willed herself to find the strength to look back at Sibbie, the leader’s hand was outstretched toward her. Christina bowed her head, raised her own hand, and felt the woman’s fingers slide onto hers.

O God , the song went on, in Thee have I trusted — let me never be confounded.

As the ride went on, the train’s speed decreased. Deep, drifting snow swirled out the window as darkness fell. Where there would have normally been glimpses of the spires and towers of London receding, there was a white blur. Holmes and Tennyson heard the conductors speculating whether the next train would be able to run at all. The train passed several depots along the way without stopping because of concerns it could stall in a drift.

Whiskey Bill’s information inside his cage at the British Museum had led the two poets to an array of surprising conclusions. If they had pieced everything together correctly, then they had reason to believe Reverend Fallow was at the heart of the deaths — a realization that filled them with more questions than answers, at least not answers to be arrived at in the brief amount of time they had to contemplate them.

After leaving the museum, they had sent messages to be delivered to the police and their friends at Tudor House, and by now they hoped all of them might already be heading toward Walsden. It certainly worried the two travelers to hear that the snow might prevent more trains from going north, but they stayed hopeful that a resolution to all was imminent. They couldn’t know, of course, that the Rossetti siblings had left well ahead of them with the same destination. If they had known it, if they had known about Sibbie’s revival from her sleep, and what was revealed in its aftermath, they would have known to fear for their own safety and certainly for the Rossettis’. What they did know was this: Reverend Fallow could be holding his next victim somewhere at the Phillip Sanatorium, and as Holmes pointed out, he would not have been able to forgive himself if delaying even a minute longer than necessary resulted in another death.