Vespers, 1823

Foreword

In the stone-cold silence of Durham Cathedral, some voices never stop singing. This story explores what happens when the past reaches forward and the present reaches back—and they meet in a single, perfect note. 

The Latin blurred on the page—Magnificat anima mea—and Christian's vision swam. The library's fluorescent hum deepened to a bass note that vibrated through his bones.

Cold bit his fingers. Stone, carved and ancient, pressed against his spine.

Candlelight. The resinous weight of incense. Voices rising through ribbed vaults, each note a pillar holding up the dark. Durham Cathedral, but not his Durham—this one alive with bodies in the stalls, breath misting in December cold.

A boy in a white surplice stared at him, eyes enormous. "You're in my place," he whispered.

"I—" Christian's modern clothes felt obscene against the stone. "I don't know how—"

"Shh." The boy's hand, small and cold, gripped his wrist. "Stand. Sing. They mustn't notice."

The choirmaster raised his hands. The boy thrust a psalter at Christian, pages soft as cloth, and voices swelled around them. Christian knew this hymn. His great-grandfather had sung it every Christmas Eve, weeping, though no one knew why.

"I'm Robert," the boy breathed between verses. "It's Christmas Eve, 1823."

The name hit Christian like a fist. Robert. The ancestor in the faded daguerreotype, the one who'd vanished from family records after 1823, leaving only a letter in spidery copperplate: To my future kin—remember our harmonious bond.

"Robert," Christian whispered. "I'm—I think I'm your—"

The Bishop's voice cut through: "May we find our way back to our loved ones, even when paths have detoured."

Robert's grip tightened. "You're him, aren't you? The one I'm supposed to find."

Christian opened his mouth, but the music caught him. Robert's voice, pure as water, wove through his own. For three verses, they were the same breath, the same blood, time folding like a fan.

The final Amen shivered through stone.

Robert pressed something into Christian's palm—a scrap of paper, ink still wet. "For when you go back. Tell them I sang. Tell them I wasn't alone."

The candlelight stretched, pulling thin as honey. Christian tried to speak, but the bass note returned, rising, obliterating—

He gasped. Fluorescent lights. The rustle of pages.

In his hand: paper so old it might crumble, but the ink fresh as blood. To my future kin—I sang with you tonight. Remember our harmonious bond.

That Christmas Eve, Christian's family sang the old hymn. His voice cracked on the second verse, but he heard Robert's voice clearly—pure as water, unchanged by time—and knew that somewhere in the cathedral dark, across two hundred years, they were still singing together.