“Hang the rules. Isn’t she more important than them?” Harford rose, fingertips on the desktop as he leaned over it. “She’s been playing a solo far too long, and so have you. They’re different melodies, but think how stunning they’d sound alongside each other. You know, my boy. You know what she is.” With a long, sober look, the old man turned and disappeared through the door, leaving Mitchell alone in the moonlight streaming through the one tiny window.

Yes, he certainly knew what she was. More importantly, what she wasn’t. The wind whistled outside, blowing through like the sound of desperate voices of the past. Memories tortured his still-raw soul.

“Please listen, Mitch. I’m not mad. Please. Don’t let me die here. I’m not mad. I’m not mad. I’m not mad.”

34

Music, when soft voices die, vibrates in the memory.

~Percy Bysshe Shelley

I twisted about under the sheets that night, and those awful shackles bumped the rawness with a jolt of pain. Scrambling to sit, I ripped a strip off the worn bottom of my sheet and wrapped it around each of the metal handcuffs to shield my skin from their cold, biting edges.

I was trapped now. Helplessly trapped and quite alone.

No hopeless cases, no hopeless cases . . .

Except Bridget.

Well, and me. Thornhill knew I was who I claimed, yet here I remained. Convincing them of my true identity would not free me, so I had nothing left to prove my sanity. Nothing. And with that, nothing with which to help those who needed me—including Bridget.

The sun would soon rise on day three—presumably her last. And because of Canon Harford’s arrival, I was even more trapped than before. More closely watched, more deeply suspected. And there would be no Richard rescue. I dropped my head onto my hands and wept. Oh God, I can do nothing. Have nothing. I had the sudden aching sense of facing a huge chasm a mile long with nothing to cross it but the minuscule distance my legs could stretch. Consumed with my smallness, I closed my eyes and prepared to let despair sweep over me, drown me. I braced for it.

But instead, it was God’s presence that washed over me—powerful, unexpected, immense. And very welcome. It flooded my being, my hollow lack, with an undeniable strength that was lavished on me, father to child, cradling me with comfort and courage.

I’m still with you, it seemed to say, and I felt it. Just as he’d been with me in the larder, and with Paul in jail and shipwreck and torture.

I spoke out in my heart. She’s lost, God. Bridget is lost.