Reverend Poole has a dream (Day 2 & 3)

[WinstonP]

After parting ways with Harwood, Rev. Poole makes his way back to his dreary flat, stopping only to rummage through the rubbish outside a fishmongers not too far from his quarters, wrapping up a few still passable bits of fish in a scrap of waxed paper.

Returned to his rooms, Poole lights his little lamp and goes about his usual evening routine; dressing for bed, putting the recovered morsels from the fishmonger in a dish for Virgil (who seems to be running late tonight), supping upon a few kippers and dry toast left over from breakfast, and downing the lot with a glass of tap water colored with bit of old tea.

Perhaps it was the kippers, their tin dented by rough handling at the grocer. Perhaps it was the abundance of liquor he consumed during the day. Perhaps it was some spore carried on the dark and queer air of the crypt at Little St. Hugh, but that night, Rev. Poole had a fantastic, curious, and altogether awful dream...

[WinstonP]

The bells of Notre Dame are ringing out in the morning.

"Oliver, darling, get up. This view is breathtaking!" A woman calls to him and he rises, nude, from the narrow, chaotic bed so recently shared. The bells continue to ring as he walks to the window, now receding from view, that almost forgotten silhouette fading with the light. Now he is in a corridor at home... the family home.

He passes into a parlor where his great aunts Beatrice and Euphemia are whispering over a card game. They shouldn't be here, he thinks, they are dead. The thought is chased from his head by the shrieking yip of auntie Bea's damned dog... Cereberus, was it? Two headed thing, always barking.

Poole sat at another table. The dead here were in little bottles, a wire within hanging from a plumb bob of ruby, like a giant drop of blood. The wire sang as the dead talked. Here was his old school chum Bartlett, dead in Flanders, discoursing with cousin Peter, dead in Basra over the price of cigarettes in Heaven. Both agreed, wires singing their unearthly language, that all the best tobacco can be had outside of Heaven's gates.

Poole looked down to his left and saw that he was standing with Little St. Hugh, still dripping from his time in the well, face white as a sheet. 'Hello sir. Shall we see the knights?" Poole took his icy hand, careful not to brush the silver balloon he was holding in the other. Something about not making the balloon pop. "Here we are Reverend." The little boy walked across the crypt, wet footprints trailing behind, and sat on the crypt of a Templar. Tracing his fingers over the inscriptions he read "Sir Anubis, Knight of Jackals. He was killed at Ascalon and carried into the Underworld to await the Resurrection. And here is Sir Jack of Aldershot. Died of wounds six times. The Blind Knight, where is his staff and lantern? Wait! Before you is Sir Wellington of Rags and Bones. Friends and Physicians could not save his body from the grave." The boy wandered deeper into the crypt, much larger than Poole remembered it being. At the edge of his hearing, the boy says something about "an injured man, fallen at Smithfields" and can be heard no more.

Poole looks across the compartment as the train pulls out from the station. It is but nine hours to Edinburgh he thinks to himself. The land, covered in a heavy snow, pulls by the window, stretching oddly, as if a rubber sheet rather than the paper roll he knows it to be. A bell rings and the door opens, admitting a party of Spanish kings and Queens into the cabin. Poole finds himself trying to remember the dates of their reigns. Another bell, and they depart, leaving the compartment for the grand ball in the room beyond. Auntie Beatrice's dog sits on the bench across from Poole, staring quizzically. "What is it that you want, doggie? I haven't a treat the flea-bitten thing." Poole reaches into a pocket and finds three heavy gold coins. Florins, he thinks. "I'll need one more, by nightfall."

The bell again rings. Notre Dame. Little Saint Hugh. Smithfields. St. Paul. Parliament. The little bell on the door of the doctor's office where she is.

Poole feels a cold draft. What was that the lecturer was saying? Latin? Sapiens medicus non quaerit propter se, sed pro amicis suis. [Spoiler-Button](The wise man seeks a physician not for himself but for his friends.)[/Spoiler-Button] The bell again, and the draft.

Poole awakens with a start. The bells he hears are from the nearby church, striking seven. Poole has been sleeping in his chair, a book unread and tumbled by his feet. He hears a pathetic mew and turns to the kitchen window where he spies poor Virgil, his right ear bloodied and torn, his fur matted from the rain, perched in the sink licking his plate from the night before.

That will need tending, he thinks to himself, as he rises to care for his injured companion.

It is Monday.