Sibbie rested her other hand on Christina’s shoulder. “You have come closer to the mountaintop, too. After so long, we reach the final purgation, that which will save all those who enter it, and all those who learn about what happened here today. Look. Isn’t it beautiful, isn’t it magnificent? The reflection in the snow and in the sky, as though the whole world is aflame. You’ve been part of this all along.”
“You knew Gabriel would bring me?”
“No. I knew you would come for him.”
Christina studied her, her sparkling blue eyes and her unruly hair illuminated by the fiery spectacle surrounding them. She thought of the women over the years—Lizzie especially, though she wasn’t the first or last—whom Gabriel believed would bring him into harmony with some order of the spiritual world through their beauty and mystery. This woman awakened similar desires but promised vastly more, an ecstatic absorption into literature, art, life, death, salvation.
“You have continued your father’s labors of discovering the way to Beatrice. Had you thought you escaped it? Think of your poetry. Think of the power of ‘Goblin Market’ over readers that you try so hard to run from.”
“That was a fairy tale. I meant nothing profound by it.”
“Tales of goblin men appearing to innocents, allegory of sinful consumption. Devotional verses showing the way to God. Don’t you see what you’ve been writing about your whole life? Temptation, weakness, deliverance, your poetry was always about death more than life. You, too, were preparing humanity for what was to come, for what we enact here. Dear sister, they dared expect you to grow up to be a wife, to bring a man ale every night and lace his boots every morning. Instead you have lived your life with trepidation, self-recrimination and doubt, self-sacrifice, penitence, demanding the righteous path for you and for the world around you. Your life has been a purgatory.”
Behind them, flames swallowed the structure that held Gabriel. Christina gasped, a tear dropping down her cheek.
“I know you mourn him now,” Sibbie said, without any discernible emotion or change in her demeanor. “But remember that our people, Gabriel perhaps most of all, have waited for this day, which has been prophesied to come to all of us. Prophesied by your father’s discoveries that Dante would overturn all we think is safe. Think of Gabriel’s sad memories and pain: gone like a mist, like trying to pick up water in our hands. The rest of our brothers and sisters are gathered now and you are needed, as well.”
“If all who are here today perish, if I perish, who will tell your story in order to convince others?”
“Because we perish, dear sister, the story will be told again and again; nothing will be able to stop it. Death—as Dante comprehended—is the only story that nobody can resist. The finale of a writer with your talents and stature will inspire thousands of creators around the world to understand and convey what has happened to us.”
Christina threw one more glance at the flaming ruins where she and Gabriel had been imprisoned, then nodded, as if to say, Take me.
Sibbie embraced her, her grip warm and generous.
Christina allowed Sibbie to lead her. As they walked—strolled, really, considering the magisterial pace set by Sibbie—Christina studied the destruction. They passed by the crumbling structures of the sanatorium to the grand chapel, ornamented with Gabriel’s vivid depictions of the purgatorial deaths.
A group of approximately two dozen white-robed followers huddled together in the middle of the space. Sibbie raised her arms. Her followers trembled and shivered, bowing down to her. At either side, two of the settlement’s guardians held out their swords, making clear nobody would leave. Flames ate at the sides of what had once been a massive machine shop, and the ceiling began to crumble down in pieces.
They were there for one last mission. They were there to die.
Sibbie made a sweeping gesture toward Christina. “She has come to us, brothers and sisters, to redeem our world! Removed from pride, from envy, from wrath, sloth, avarice, gluttony. And now, from lust for anything outside of God. Nothing will come between us and our final cleansing! Join with us, Sister Christina!”
Sibbie slipped off her robe, and the followers did the same.
Christina, standing stock-still, studied the naked men and women huddled like sheep in a storm. She saw in their faces the split between fear of Sibbie and fear of their own demises. Then, a burning section of the ceiling crashed down on one of the armed guardians there to enforce Sibbie’s will. He was crushed. Christina’s eyes darted to the other guardian—his state of mind would be decisive for what she would do next.
Seeing that Christina was not coming any closer, Sibbie’s face distorted with betrayal.
“These flames are God’s art. Do not try to thwart this,” Sibbie said.
“This way to survive,” Christina called, her voice ringing out as clear as a bell. “The east path is clear of obstruction, and the police are outside and will help you! You’ll save no one by dying today!”
A pillar fell. Christina felt herself pushed out of the way. Ethel had grabbed hold of her a moment before she would have been crushed.
“Ethel, come with me, let me save you!” Christina cried.
Ethel tilted her head and studied her with adoration. “You already have,” she whispered. “Remember me, my sister.”
The chapel ceiling rained down, layer by layer of Gabriel’s vibrant paintings flying through the air, and the walls transformed into flames. The flock of followers was divided between those who would not leave Sibbie and those trying to save themselves by following Christina’s directions. The remaining guardian shouted and threatened, pulling his sword, but in the confusion, it was impossible for him to stop those who ran away. The followers who were escaping stampeded. A wall collapsed, smothering two or three of those clinging to Sibbie.
As the others hurried outside at Christina’s direction, she turned back to see Sibbie encircled by smoldering ruins. Christina gestured for her to follow. Now it was Sibbie’s turn to remain planted in place. Their eyes were fixed on each other for a moment, a moment Christina would remember for many years to come.
Sibbie’s mouth formed a word.
Ethel, standing near Sibbie, fell through a hole in the floor as it was incinerated.
A rafter collapsed right in front of Christina, throwing her backward. She scrambled to her feet and rushed out the door. Once outside, she and the others who escaped moved as fast as the snow and debris permitted. The last of the chapel surrendered itself to the flames.
Christina scanned the area until she spotted them.
Browning and a policeman were half carrying Gabriel, whose arms rested around the two other policemen’s shoulders.
Reverend Fallow, terror stricken, his wrists in irons, ran alongside Constable Branagan, who gripped his arm.
Christina hurried, and the escapees followed her. When she paused, they paused; when she turned to look back, they did.
XXVI
DOCUMENT #8: FRAGMENT OF LETTER BY REV. ORIN FALLOW, DISCOVERED IN HIS JAIL CELL (BELIEVED TO BE INTENDED FOR THE “DANTE MASTER,” SO-CALLED, OF ITALY)
[undated]
[no addressee]
It is as it is meant to be. You, who prayerfully taught us devotion to Dante’s sacred truth, who overmastered us with his power, would have savored what was accomplished. Not by my doing, I regret to add, for I allowed myself to waver and fall to cowardice, a trait belonging to infernal regions rather than the path to magnificence. As I watched the flames and panic spread with equal rapidity, I found myself back inside that theater, back at the pulpit, surrounded by chaos I could not quell, by riots internal and external. I looked backward, I tumbled. It was she who managed what Dante had dreamed up—laying the true and final path for the rest of the world to redeem humanity.
Many think that Dante was an arrogant man. Arrogant, so it is said, to think that he of
all people could record the will of God and point the one true way to salvation. Not a pope or a priest but a mere man. Not with dogma but poetry. He was exiled, shunned, and ridiculed by many of the so-called great men of his own time.
Dante’s life, in truth, represents humility. He submitted himself to a divine purpose to correct the course of mankind. There were bards who had held a mirror to our human weaknesses before Dante, but none who have ever succeeded in leaving behind the secrets to expelling them.
There were so many times in my life I hid from errors, from my vices, my mistakes. There were times I was confronted, haunted by them. Through dear Sibbie’s guidance, I saw firsthand how Dante’s words led to a time of purification in ways that the bickering denominations and governments of today fail to do.
Knowledge has never been more available than it is in our nineteenth century; books have become cheaper, and a proliferation of newspapers, magazines, and pamphlets can be found in the homes of the humble laborer. Knowledge underlies our miseries: knowledge of our family histories, replete with their own vices and errors; knowledge of other people’s abilities and gifts that we lack and cannot hope to obtain; knowledge of ever-improving medical advancements that would have saved the life of a beloved child or spouse if only it had existed a few years or months or days prior. Knowledge, too, of how the choices we make in professions, in war, in legislation, in commerce affect other people, other nations. We now know we are the cause of more misery than we ever dreamed, and it is a wonder anyone manages to live with that fact.
The religions of the world, organized at a time when most of the workings of the world remained obscure, become increasingly obsolete. As such, death, once reassuring, becomes horrifying, unanswerable. Deprived of what used to be our spiritual ballasts, our moral certainties, our peace, we fear darkness, we fear each other, we fear the foreign and foreigners, we fear the unknown. But here is Dante. His poem reveals death not as something to make us afraid but as the very thing that bestows meaning unto us—it is not a drama of suffering, but a revelation that suffering will save us. Death is the way—the only way remaining in an age of false prophets—we come close to the Lord.
Was Dante more prophet or poet? I have longed to ask you your opinions on this proposition, and to learn more of what you foresee Dante will bring next, and how we might help. Dante foresaw that Beatrice would guide his life when she was a mere child. I cannot help but think of Sibbie’s work as an unfinished portrait, that those to whom she has brought Dante will discover what remains to be painted.
* * *
—
Sometimes when normal life resumes, despair dissolves inside its circular routines; sometimes that despair is quieted and interred underneath the rest, but fortifies and thrives largely unnoticed. Sibbie and Fallow turned despair into the promise of magnificence, and that was difficult to forget for those who made it out of the former Phillip Sanatorium alive the day of Lancashire County’s worst conflagration in thirty-five years, on April 12, 1870, when flames were said to be seen miles away as the fire engines struggled through the snow. When flames were said to reach the heavens.
Gabriel was one survivor.
Back at Tudor House, he slept. Slept without interruption, not so unlike the time Sibbie had spent a few rooms down. He slept, in fact, more soundly and completely than he had in years.
When he woke, he did not display the sense of relief that Christina had anticipated. But no, perhaps she had hoped for it more than anticipated it. She wanted him to say something like: Yesterday, I wished to die, but today I do not. But no. This was Gabriel. Normalcy brought him no comfort. The frequent administration of opium had stopped for long enough that his body did not seem to demand it, and craved it far less frequently—for now. It was impossible to ever say what was caused by the poisons that had been filling his body for years, and what had come from the pure Dantean fervor of his imagination and Sibbie’s. Gabriel understood that he had been on a path to death and that he had been given a reprieve. He understood this, but he was sad after it. Christina could not decide whether Gabriel seemed sadder because of what happened, or sad to be removed from his trance. He never quite expressed regret for those dark, dreamy days under the spell of Sibbie’s power; when he did speak of it, it was as though he spoke of another man whose experiences fascinated him.
He did ask a question related to those events that sent shivers through Christina’s body.
“What do you think it was,” he asked, “that she said at the end?”
He meant the word Sibbie’s lips seemed to be forming when Christina last looked upon her. Christina knew that most people, in fact perhaps it was not too bold to say anybody other than her, would have spent countless hours guessing at the word Sibbie seemed to intone in Christina’s last glimpse of her. But not Christina. She threw down a steel door in her mind, willed herself to not pay any attention to it at all, defended herself from falling into any trace of obsession with Sibbie, who was born to absorb obsessions.
What most startled Christina about the question was that she had never told Gabriel she had seen Sibbie move her lips in what seemed to be silent speech. Or had she, and in the hurry and confusion of all that had happened, now forgot that she had? She considered how her parents would address a question such as Gabriel’s. Father would expound on its mysteries and meanings, and Mother would ignore it altogether. She chose her mother’s technique.
As Gabriel recovered, he spent much of his time tending to his assorted animals. Top, his wombat, died suddenly, and Gabriel held a funeral in the garden with half a dozen artist friends and Christina present. He broke down and cried hysterically over the creature before it was interred beneath his lime tree, so Christina read to the gathering the poem he’d written for the occasion:
My burning soul; neither from owl nor from bat
Can peace be to me now
That I’ve lost my wombat.
He also painted. Gabriel painted as much as Christina could remember him painting in recent years. This pleased her whenever she thought about it. On the surface, they were typical paintings of Gabriel’s, the kind that inspired passion from patrons and many artists, and anger from certain critics who thought them undisciplined and confusing. There were shimmering women in red and gold hues. There were heroic men on the threshold of dangerous actions. The paintings were windows, in other words, to a time and place when life could be redeemed by beauty, rumination, and sacrifice.
She observed small changes in his art—flames and sparks in odd places; death, when depicted, seemed something final and alarming, rather than something awe-inspiring and capable of regeneration. She hesitated to raise any of this with Gabriel, wondering if he even noticed. Perhaps, she thought, it was not his art that had changed; perhaps she had.
“In the past,” Gabriel mused in a low voice, indirectly addressing some of his techniques, “my painting tormented me more than I admit. Lately I feel I can paint by a set of rules, which I could teach to any man as systematically as one teaches arithmetic. In painting, dear sister, there is in the less important details something of the craft of a superior carpenter, and the part of a picture that is not mechanical is often trivial enough.”
Most surprising, he finally finished Dante’s Dream, which he had wrestled with for more than fifteen years. It was seven by ten feet, a massive accomplishment both in size and effect. When he unveiled it to his siblings with a twinkle in his eye, Christina stared into the face of the dying Beatrice until she realized she no longer looked like either of the two women who’d modeled for the painting over the years; nor did she look quite like Lizzie, whose likeness Gabriel often painted without realizing it; nor did she resemble Sibbie, the latter of whom had intruded into some of the new paintings. She felt a moment of relief that perhaps in some small way he had been unlatched from the women of his past, but then she wondered if it signaled a search for a new influence yet to be found. The paint
ing was remarkable for its beauty and the fact that it inspired feelings, not thoughts. He seemed so lighthearted about finishing that she didn’t think to ask about the face of Beatrice.
“I should not count on a reception from the bloody critics that it deserves,” Gabriel said as a kind of warning as he paced the studio back and forth studying the work, growing angry at the idea. “No. This conspiracy to persecute me—well, what remains to be said about it—is widespread and remorseless. Bedevilments thicken.”
She assured him that no such conspiracy existed, but he had stopped to stare out the floor-to-ceiling mullioned window to the Thames beyond, where the sail of a lone boat fluttered under heavy storm clouds. Peals of thunder reached the studio.
“Tennyson, that perpetual groan. And Browning! A dandy bloodsucker. Those two sprout a new horn, hoof, tusk, or tail at every step.”
“What on earth do you mean? They and Dr. Holmes helped you, Gabriel,” Christina said. “They helped me—us.”
Lightning flashed around the figure of Gabriel, whose back was facing her, momentarily filling the room with the long shadow of his body. “They wished to discredit me, my dear Christina. No, I am home at last, and never shall I leave it again.”
One afternoon, when she arrived at Tudor House, she found Gabriel walking up and down the stairs.
“Did you ever notice,” he asked in his velvety voice, “what a slopperty walk I have? Just look at it. Look! Like a sailor’s. My legs are too far apart.”
“You look well,” Christina said, the closest she could come to asking him how he felt.
“Without the chloral I fear my old curse will return before long—insomnia.”