“Guess all that leaves me to ask is—Gemma, do you love Barnabus?”
“I do.” She looked at him once more, the tenderness in her eyes nearly stealing his breath.
“Are you choosing to spend all your life with him and marry him no matter the messiness that got you two churched the first time? Honestlychoosingit?” Fletcher repeated the final question he’d posed to Barnabus.
“I am.”
“Well, then. I think that makes you pretty well married.” Fletcher stuffed the paper back in his pocket. “See you both at your funeral.” He popped his hat on his head and slipped out.
Barnabus pulled Gemma into an embrace. She set her hands on either side of his face. He kissed her softly and tenderly. As dangerous as the coming days would be, as difficult as it would be to successfully manage their escape from the Kincaids and the Mastiff, it meant they would never be torn apart again.
And that would be worth all the danger and difficulty in the world.
BodiesofLight
being a Fictionalization of Reported and Corroborated Mysterious Phenomena
by the late Dr. Barnabus Milligan, physician,
whom the publishers of this work grieve deeply
Chapter Five
Weeks had passed since Dr. Sefton Palmer had seen patients, attended bedsides, or interacted with any of the society he once had kept. Nothing was given place in his life but the question of lights. Nothing.
He stood in a graveyard at the very outskirts of London on a January night, one year to the day when he had first seen the columns of fire over a bog in Ireland. One year with more questions than answers. One year of replacing his doctoring with this pursuit. One year that had brought him to this place of death in the company of one who made his living disturbing the peace of the dearly departed.
Palmer had thrown his lot in with a resurrectionist.
They, a man who had once dedicated himself to healing people and a man who stole bodies from graves, stood in the dark, looking over the rolling mounds of dirt and the near-toppling headstones.
“You’ve seen corpse-lights?” Palmer asked his companion, not for the first time.
“All of us what ply our trade in these yards ’ave seen ’em.” The man spoke in gravelly tones, with no indicationhe found the occurrence the least intriguing. “I’ve a mate who comes from Wales. He calls ’emcanhwyllan cyrph. Another bloke what plies the trade quotes some Scottish poet, writing about dead knights and their graves glowing bright in the dark.”
It was a poor summary of Sir Walter Scott’s “Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border,” but Scott was hardly the only writer to recount such a thing. Irish poet Thomas Moore spoke of them as well. Many accounts existed of such things. And if Palmer’s theory that these lights were the result of decomposition were true, the sight of them in graveyards made perfect sense.
Then, where were they?
Palmer paced among the graves, making note of those headstones still standing, careful of those toppled over. The grass grew high and wild. Perhaps that was hiding the lights he’d come to see. Perhaps conditions weren’t right. But he didn’t know what the “right” conditions were.
“Have you seen corpse-lights inthischurchyard?” Palmer asked the resurrection man.
“Oi.”
“And was it on a night like tonight? Clear skies. Cold. The previous night was quite wet.”
“Oi.”
That, Palmer had decided, was part of the equation he was attempting to discover. The air needed to be cold. The ground and therefore the body needed to be wet, though it need be not raining at the time when the lights were expected. That the pattern still held true was a promising thing.
He would find his answers tonight. He was determined to.
“Have you ever seen these lights when the ground was not wet?”
“This ’ere’s London.” The man spoke sardonically, a tone he’d struck from the moment Palmer had first approached him about this undertaking. “When is the dirt at our feet ever not wet?”
It was a fair enough question. “Have you seen these lights anywhere other than graveyards?”