“Yes, ma’am,” he said, bowing.
“I’m sorry I was too ill to attend the wedding … two years ago already?”
Crawford nodded. “At the church in Bozier’s Court.”
“I remember it well.”
“Trelawny was there,” said Johanna. “Muttering heresies.”
“And his granddaughter? Rose? Was she at the ceremony?”
“No,” said McKee. “I gather she stayed on at the Magdalen house, working there now.”
“Ah. I haven’t been back there in years.” Christina shook her head, and her gray hair blew around her face as she turned to look back down the shallow slope to the churchyard. Absently she blew aside a stray lock.
“No mirrors in Gabriel’s coffin,” she said, “and William has three children now, the youngest a two-year-old girl. All well, and I don’t know if he even remembers now where the bit of Shelley’s jawbone is.”
Christina glanced at Mr. Foyle and seemed reassured when he nodded, clearly acquainted with the whole story.
“I’ve — been to Confession,” she said, “at a Catholic Church, though it was hard. I truly think you three would benefit from doing the same.” She sighed and looked at Crawford. “But if it weren’t for your actions, I believe we would all be very different people now, and incalculably worse, living in a London like Dante’s Inferno.”
“Or dead under an inverted London,” said Johanna.
“That too, that too,” Christina said distractedly, staring again down the slope at the mourners and the coffin. “I should rejoin the others.” She blinked, then focused again on Crawford. “I’m glad you have your spouse and child,” she said, and Crawford could hear the effort it took for her not to emphasize some of the words. “And I … truly do forgive you for the … sometimes stressful changes you brought us.”
Johanna’s brown hair was longer now, pinned back against the wind. She cocked her head and smiled at Christina. “We forgive you too,” she said, “for the same.”
Christina blinked. “Oh, yes. That’s — yes, thank you. And may the — the Father forgive us all.”
She shivered in the sunlight and then began hobbling back down the path to her brother’s burial.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
With thanks to Father Chrysostom Baer, O. Praem; John Berlyne; Jim Blaylock; Russell Galen; M. L. Konett; Barry Levin; Andreas Misera; Father Jerome Molokie, O. Praem; Chris Powers; Serena Powers; and Joe Stefko.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
TIM POWERS is the author of numerous novels, including Last Call, Declare, Three Days to Never, and On Stranger Tides, the inspiration for the blockbuster film Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, starring Johnny Depp and Penélope Cruz. Powers lives in San Bernardino, California.
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ALSO BY TIM POWERS
Three Days to Never
Declare
Earthquake Weather
Expiration Date
Last Call
The Stress of Her Regard
On Stranger Tides
Dinner at the Deviant’s Palace
The Anubis Gates
The Drawing of the Dark
An Epitaph in Rust
The Skies Discrowned
CREDITS
Cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa
Cover photograph © by Valentino Sani