Work Text:
Sunset. Another day ended at the Mary Morstan Lighthouse.
The people inside grumble and curse but they leave what had once been a grand stone house on the outskirts of Tudor London. The neighbourhood is now a slum but the people who flock to the Lighthouse leave with wounds dressed and illnesses medicated, hunger sated, and children with clean faces and full bellies.
The Irregulars who help run the place clutch their wages and their own shares of food as they head home (if such shameful hovels can be called homes).
The man who tends the injuries and doses the sick finally sits back with a bone-weary sigh. The interior of the house stinks of carbolic and beef stew and unwashed people. He longs only to go home to his supper and his spouse’s embrace.
One more thing.
He takes a lantern and descends the stairs. He walks across icy flagstones toward a square trap-door. He lifts the ring, and stares down into the tiny pitch-black pit of the oubliette.
The year before he had been held captive here by a street gang; he thought he would die that night in this darkness, buried alive. Now it’s a forgotten spot in a charity-house bearing the name of his first love and funded by his second.
His oubliette has become a beacon.