“I cannot take the picture,” he repeated. “I’m sorry.”
“You owe me an explanation.”
Lowell looked from the camera to the seated couple. He exhaled. “Yes,” he conceded. “Perhaps you’re right.”
“Well?”
He pointed to the area above his own right eye and nodded toward Mrs Whateley. “It’s her make-up. It’s playing havoc with this light. Could we try one without?”
Whateley’s face turned crimson. He sprang up from the chair and grabbed hold of his wife’s arm. Without a word, he dragged her to her feet and spirited her toward the doorway.
In the entryway, he retrieved his cane and spun on his heel to address Lowell.
“You have wasted my afternoon, sir,” he declared coldly. “And you will not see me again. Nor will you see my friends again, either. I will certainly warn them to stay far away from an
He stepped through the doorway, pulling his wife after him. She tripped on the stoop and looked back at Lowell, her expression at once pleading and resigned, as though craving a deliverance she no longer expected. Her despair bit deep, instilling in Lowell a terrible, inescapable guilt.
He ran after them into the alleyway. Dusk was descending. A heavy snow filled the air. “You swine!” he shouted after Whateley. “I will tell the world what you are!”
Whateley halted and turned around. He released his grip on his wife’s arm and advanced on Lowell with a menacing sneer, brandishing his cane like a common thug, the weighted end tapping against his open palm.
“Run!” Lowell shouted to Mrs Whateley. “He will kill you — don’t you see that?”
She did not move. She merely looked on without expression, watching as her husband approached her would-be rescuer. Two yards away, Whateley lifted the cane high above his head and brought it down across his chest, a pendulum descending.
Lowell dodged to his right and managed to escape the blow. The cane impacted the frozen ground with a hollow report. Whateley cursed. Lowell saw his opening and took the offensive, dashing toward Whateley with fists raised.
The other man was ready for him.
Whateley stepped to one side and caught Lowell with an outstretched boot, scooping his legs out from under him. The photographer dropped to the ground, his weight landing on his elbow. His arm went numb.
Lowell attempted to regain his feet, but Whateley was too quick for him. The younger man kicked the photographer in the side and stomped down on his exposed gut. Lowell screamed. He rolled over and attempted to crawl away, dragging himself through the snow with his good arm.
Whateley followed him. Wielding the cane like a riding crop, he delivered a series of rapid blows across Lowell’s back, dropping the photographer onto his stomach. Lowell tried to speak — to apologise, to plead for mercy — but found he had not the breath for it.
From the corner of his eye, he saw Whateley raise the cane and take aim at his left temple. The blow connected with a startling crack. The world flashed white before him and the vision in his left eye flickered and dimmed. A warm trickle poured from the torn scalp, staining his shirt and collar. He collapsed onto his stomach and closed his eyes.
Snow settled above his brow and melted. Cold fluid streamed down his forehead and into his damaged eye. Patrick’s face returned to him in that moment, surfacing from the crimson cloud that obscured his vision.
“Forgive me,” he murmured. “Please.”
“Scum.”
Whateley wiped his stick on Lowell’s shirt and spit on him as he would a beggar or criminal. Then he turned away. His footsteps retreated, muffled by fresh snow.
“Come,” Lowell heard him say. “We’re due at the Grand.”
He opened his eyes.
Night had fallen. Hours might have passed or mere minutes — he could not be sure — but the agony he experienced on waking was indescribable. His chest ached. His temples pounded, and he had lost the sight in his left eye. Nauseous, he rotated his head and threw up into the fresh snow. His vomit was yellow and dark, the colour of old bruises.
He crawled to the nearest wall and propped himself against it. Slowly he counted down from five, whispering the words to himself as he did before a picture. When he reached the end, he vaulted himself into a standing position. He wobbled dangerously, nearly fell, but caught himself against the wall. He cast his gaze back in the direction of his studio. The door was open, but he could not bring himself to return there, not now.
Breathing heavily, he hauled himself hand over hand down the alleyway and emerged into the gas-lit sheen of the street. Only this morning he had walked this same block, but tonight, everything had changed. Providence itself now swam in the lens of Patrick’s camera. Even the newest buildings bore the signs of decay, marked by smoke stains and fallen roofs, brown curls of dying ivy on every wall.
It was late — too late — but the city hummed with activity. An endless stream of carriages clattered over the cobbles. Lowell stumbled into the path of a police officer, but the man simply ignored him, turning up his collar to hurry past.
No one else seemed to notice him. He passed among the midnight crowds — anonymous, unseen — cursed by solitude as in the year that Patrick left him. A dogcart flew past, missing him by less than a yard. Reeling, he took two steps backward, lost his footing, and tumbled into the gutter.
He lay there for a time, quite collapsed, while men and women passed him by. At one point he spotted the two sisters from the morning and observed that their faces had grown heavy with the accumulation of years, all vestiges of their former beauty spoiled. On a chain between them, they carried a purse that bulged with miserly excess.
Behind them, shackled to the purse by a pair of manacles, walked a young woman of waxy countenance who wore nothing but a cotton shift. Lowell could see that she alone understood his plight, but she only lifted her shackled wrists, as though to indicate her own helplessness, and then shuffled past, dragged on like a dog by the women she served.
No one would help him — that much was clear — and he called on reserves of strength he did not know he possessed in order to regain his feet. Once he had steadied himself, he began to walk, continuing down the pavement toward Saint Andrew’s. He thought he must be dying. He shivered in his shirtsleeves, occasionally spitting blood into the slush at his feet.
On the corner, he passed the paperboy. The lad grinned wickedly through his front teeth and shoved the evening circular into his face.
“No,” Lowell gasped. “I don’t need it.”
“Yessir,” the boy drawled. “But ye do
Lowell tore the paper from the boy’s grasp and threw it into the street. He pressed past him to the church of Saint Andrew’s, where he mounted the stone stairs. He took them slowly, his legs weakening with each step. At last he reached the high doors. He rattled the handles but to no effect. Locked fast: even the Church had closed its doors to him.
In despair he cast his gaze heavenward, seeking out that point in space where the cross-topped spire disappeared into endless snowfall. Then he saw it: the cross had become a crucifix. A living figure writhed in agony on that bronze tree, naked and abandoned with only the dark for comfort. Lowell recognised him at once, even at that great distance.
He fell to his knees, trembling as before the altar. He heard a cry — a boy’s voice, he fancied, though he could not make out the words. The world was falling from him, a garment shed. His head tipped back and he tumbled into nothingness.
He woke up swathed in snow. His clothes had frozen in conformance to the shape of his body, and the blood had thickened in his beard. He wiped the snowmelt from his face, relieved to find he could see through his left eye, and levered himself into a crouch. The pain was excruciating, but perhaps not as intolerable as before.
He was in the alleyway behind his studio. His nightmare, then, had been a nightmare in truth, a vision brought on by the blow to his skull. It made no difference. He was a man haunted, damned beyond atonement. He understood this now. Though years might pass, nothing could erase from his mind the image of that crucified
