The Angel of Highgate

21 THE HIGHGATE ANGEL

Once again, Thraxton sat atop the uncomplaining Emily Fitzsimmons. A lantern borrowed from the sexton hissed quietly on the grave slab next to him. Its shifting glow threw Thraxton’s eerily stretched shadow thirty feet across the ground, where it broke its back over a row of nearby gravestones. Thraxton looked up into the face of a nearby angel. As the lantern light ebbed and shifted, it gave a mock animation to the statue, which seemed to stir restlessly on its pedestal. Although he was wrapped in a heavy woolen cloak, the stone slab radiated cold through his buttocks and the backs of his legs, and he shivered and pulled the cloak tighter about his shoulders.

In the nearby trees, skeletal and bare, a horned owl dropped from its perch and flapped silent and ghostly through the branch tops until it disappeared. Then a moth flitted from the darkness and swooped in spin-dizzy circles about the lantern. Thraxton reached out and snatched it from the air. Although he tried to hold it fast, the moth wriggled between his fingers, skittered across the back of his hand and fluttered straight up into the night. When Thraxton dropped his gaze from the dark sky, a small figure stood in front of him.

He exclaimed, startled. The figure laughed and pushed back a deep cowl revealing features that by now were etched into Thraxton’s being.

Aurelia.

“Strewth! You are as quiet as dust!”

Aurelia smiled, but her eyes were guarded. “I did not know if you would come.”

He leaned forward, an elbow resting on his knee as he looked up into her face, which glowed luminous in the lantern light.

“Dear God. Could you have doubted it?”

Again she smiled, but something about the intensity of his gaze unnerved her and she lowered her eyes. She wore a white flower pinned to her dress — a Night Angel — and now she touched a hand to it. “My mother is waiting for her flower.”

With the softly hissing lantern swinging at his side, Thraxton allowed Aurelia to take his hand and lead him through the jumble of headstones to the darkly wooded spot where the grave of Florence Greenley lay. During the day the spot was deeply shaded. Now, hidden from the wan glow of an orange crescent moon, the grave was pooled in impenetrable darkness. Even with the lantern light, Thraxton stumbled on the uneven ground and wondered at Aurelia’s ability to see in the dark.

“Hello, Mother,” Aurelia said upon reaching the simple headstone. “I have come as I promised and brought this kind gentleman to meet you.”

She looked up at Thraxton and smiled. “My mother says hello.”

Thraxton’s mouth dropped open. He was at a loss. “Ah, er, hello… Mrs. Greenley.”

Aurelia unpinned the flower and her silk dress rustled as she knelt to place the single bloom in the stone urn. Still kneeling, she pressed a hand against the headstone and bowed her head. When she rose a moment later and turned to Thraxton, her eyes held a liquid gleam.

“My mother says you are a kind man. That you have a compassionate soul, but you must first learn to listen to your heart.”

They walked back to the pathway without speaking. Finally it was Aurelia who broke the silence.

“My mother died giving birth to me.”

“How tragic. You never knew her.”

She stopped and turned to face him. “Oh, but I do know her. As I came into this world she left it. But our souls touched in passing. I speak to her every time I come.”

Thraxton looked down at her face, his pulse suddenly racing, his breathing quickened. He slipped his free hand around her waist and slowly drew her toward him. He brought his face close to hers, until all he could see was her eyes. Their mouths moved closer, until they passed the same breath back and forth between them. And then Aurelia slid from his grasp, slippery as the moth. She ran giggling up the path and plunged into the blackness of the huge pharaonic arch that formed the entrance to the Egyptian Avenue.

Thraxton pursued, the lantern held high, footsteps echoing as he ran up the sloping tunnel. The avenue opened out onto the Circle of Lebanon, the ring of catacombs that surrounded an ancient cedar tree.

Thraxton called out Aurelia’s name, but received no answer. He trod around the circular pathway until he returned once more to the Egyptian Avenue where she stood, waiting. “You should be more careful,” he said. “Running in the dark. You will hurt yourself.”

“You sound like my father.”

“Does he know of your nocturnal wanderings?”

She laughed. “If he did he would forbid them. I do not wish you to think I feel ill of my father. In truth, he has devoted his life to me, but I am not one of his flowers to be kept in a hot house. I must feel the night air. And so I steal out, when he is asleep.”

“What you do is very dangerous, Aurelia.”

A look of irritation swept her face, like a naughty child receiving a scolding.

“I have done so for years and suffered no harm.”

“But you are just a young girl and London is such a wicked place.”

Aurelia took a step toward him, her face earnest. “I believe that if you look for wickedness you will find wickedness. But if you look for goodness, you shall find goodness.”

“And the other night? Those Resurrection Men?”

“And you were there to save me.” She smiled. “The world is full of good people.” She reached out and took his hand. Feeling the touch of that small gloved hand with its thin, child-like fingers, a thrill tremored through Thraxton he would not have thought himself capable of feeling.

“Come,” she said. “I will show you.”