He hoisted both soil and broken heart at Angelika’s feet, with an unholy sense of retribution.
Christopher stood with a half-lifted shovel of dirt, shocked to his core, but before he could say anything, a thin voice urged, “Please, delay any thought of such a thing until we understand what has gone on here.”
It was Father Porter at the foot of the grave, inspecting their progress. If he was worried he would be found out for selling bodies to the morgue, he betrayed nothing. It was the same blithe expression Angelika and Victor wore. Wealth gave a person a certain inner strength. Perhaps he had no part in it? Mr. Thimms had not stopped pacing the path since their arrival.
Father Porter pursed his mouth at the scene. “Are you quite sure you would not like to wait in my office, Miss Frankenstein?”
“Quite sure,” she replied. “It is a fine night to watch muscular men dig a hole.”
“In that case, I’ll take a turn,” Victor said with a grin, and put a hand down to Arlo, pulling him out of the hole. It was an odd thing, volunteering to entertain his own sister, since Lizzie was at home with instructions to rest herself. But as Arlo regained his balance and straightened up, Victor whispered, “You look like you’re about to faint. Rest yourself. Drink.”
Father Porter was at Arlo’s elbow with remarkable speed. “I really do wish we could speak privately.”
“There’s no need,” Arlo replied, wiping his brow with his forearm, trying not to weave on the spot. Dizziness was giving the edges of his vision a swirling effect. Below, Victor and an exhausted Christopher were making a competition of it; dirt was flipping out faster and faster. “All will be revealed momentarily, and we will deal with the consequences then. We will open the casket, and either Arlo Northcott is there, or he is not.”
Standing against the wall of the church, the magistrate heard this statement and nodded. “It’s nonsense, but if it’s what it takes.”
Father Porter’s eerie light eyes were intense on Arlo’s face. “You have no memory of me?”
Arlo looked away. He had every memory now: the cries of the men who died defending him, the helpless slide of the carriage into the ravine, and the jarring pain in his knee as he kicked like a mule at the pinned door and screamed for God to save him. Then, wrenching off his sweaty robes, growing cold, and huddling under them. Throat dry, eyes stinging with salt.
He had been alone for most of his life in every way that counted, and as the days and nights wore on, he had accepted that he would die alone.
But as it turned out, he hadn’t.
Broths and cold compresses still could not save him. This old man had been with him, holding his hand, reciting his last rites as he felt his entire essence drawing out, into the fireplace, dissolving into smoke, out the chimney, and into the night sky. Wouldn’t the world be astonished to know that after death, one’s spirit was caught in a star?
“You remember, don’t you?” Father Porter whispered. “Don’t lie to me, my child.”
Arlo would have liked to take a step back, but it would have put him into the grave. “Let it be,” he begged the old man in a whisper. “I am happy for the first time in my life. Whoever I am, let me walk away from here tonight, and let me go home.”
“Home?” Father Porter inquired. “You will take up residence here, allowing me to finish my service before I collapse from exhaustion. I know you were dead,” he said in a barely audible hiss. “I know who found your body afterward, and what he is rumored to do in the name of some unholy science. You are the work of the devil,” he impressed upon him, with his eyes black and intense. “And the only way to convince me otherwise is to take your place at the pulpit of this church and resume your godly life.”
Arlo shook his head. “I have sinned most terribly in my new life.”
“You are forgiven.”
Arlo’s heart beat off-kilter with this next declaration. “I am possibly a father of a different sort, and I will never stop loving her. I will love her forever, beyond death.”
Father Porter looked down at Christopher. “Sacrifices are required, and you have a willing replacement. Reapply yourself, young man.”
Arlo’s pulse was uncomfortable. “Let another take the role.”
“There is no one else available. If I pass into the Lord’s care before a replacement is installed, this village will leave civilization behind. They will not care that the Frankenstein family is the wealthiest of patrons. With no fear of God, and the rumors unchecked, the villagers will march on their wicked hill.”