The Book of Speculation

14

Their language was devised in secret, as it depended on stealing Ryzhkova’s cards. Lessons took place with little warning after evening performances in smaller towns, during lulls that came with travel, and in early mornings or late into night while the menagerie slumbered, save for a restless few. After traveling days Ryzhkova slept heavily. The bumps and kicks of the roads left her so depleted that on occasion Amos placed a hand under her nose to assure himself that she still breathed. If the air was chilled, he pulled an extra shawl around her. This small looking-after dulled the guilt that came each time he stole the cards.

Amos would signal a lesson by leaving a card for Evangeline to find in her bedclothes, nestled in the tub staves, or buried among her hair combs. She would hide it in her sleeve, wearing it by her skin until she found him waiting for her behind the pig wagon, which was set away from camp. Amos’s affinity for animals meant his spending time there aroused no suspicion. From there he took her into the trees, or down to the rivers the menagerie followed, to a branch that formed a perfect seat, or a group of rocks that would shelter them from prying eyes. When they met she wore a sackcloth dress that drew no attention. Amos took no such measures; he remembered how to walk silently and hide with stillness.

Through each bower, knoll, and bended branch, Evangeline grew to know him; things he’d loved while running free, secrets he’d learned — how green moss made a soft cushion, the chatter of river toads at tossed pebbles — each meeting was gilded with knowledge. Through cards and grass blade whistles, she began to love the silent man.

Lessons started in the same manner as readings, by identifying the participants. Evangeline was represented by the Queen of Swords, for her dark hair and fair skin. She understood the card for the woman’s coloring alone and did not know its kinship with sadness and loss. He thought it best not to tell her, and yet he felt a loss weeping from her, one he longed to ease. For himself, he chose the Fool, for its friendly appearance, and because the little dog made Evangeline smile. Together, Queen and Fool named each member of the menagerie.

The Hermit was Peabody, an easy choice, as the card was an aged man with a lantern and flowing white beard. To the untrained eye the card meant a solitary figure or a wizened man, but Amos knew the Hermit was a guide, a protector, one who shares in experience — all things he thought about the man who had become his proxy father. They chose the Two of Pentacles for Melina — a man juggling two golden stars. For Susanna, the contortionist, Evangeline chose the Hanged Man, an upside-down figure dangling by his foot, his free leg bent at the knee. Amos could not tell her that the Hanged Man spoke of the connection between the material and the divine, or that it appeared to those who grieved or questioned faith. Perhaps it was fitting; Susanna was quiet — what did he know of her thoughts? For Benno he chose the Four of Cups. The cross-legged dark-haired man reminded him of his friend and his generosity, a man with drink enough to share with many.

Choosing the card for Ryzhkova was difficult. Evangeline spread the trumps across a dark shale flat, searching for an old woman. Something about Madame Ryzhkova brought her grandmother to mind and set her skin crawling. Though they were safe in a hollow near a riverbank, Evangeline still watched the trees, wondering what would befall Amos should they be discovered. She didn’t fear for herself; the refrain that had followed her since Krommeskill wrapped around her as well as any blanket: I am a killer. She touched the card named the Magician. It was fitting — Ryzhkova practiced what some thought witchcraft.

Amos shook his head in dissent. Ryzhkova had called the Magician the breath of God. His teacher was many things, but the will of the divine wasn’t one of them.

Evangeline studied the pinch around his mouth and the urgency in his hands. Unused to anything but his approval, she said, “Very well, teach me who she is.”

His fingers paced, tips sliding across paper as they’d done thousands of times, waiting for the cards to sing to him, each a bird bearing messages, telling him what they were and who they were meant to be. When his longest finger glanced the right card he snatched it from the shale: the High Priestess.

“Don’t be silly. That’s a young woman, and with a cross as well! Madame Ryzhkova would never wear one. You’d do just as well to choose the Devil.” She frowned and turned thoughtful. “Your teacher does not like me.”

He tried to laugh — an ugly scraping — and blanched at the sound.

Evangeline smiled and touched her palm to his cheek. “Your voice is not so terrible. Only a little broken. I don’t mind.”

Amos blushed and returned his focus to the High Priestess. He removed two cards from the deck and set them by Evangeline’s toes — the World, with its garland of leaves and sky blue as cornflowers, and above it he placed the Sun’s benevolent face. He held the High Priestess between his fingers once more, then set it atop the other two, covering them with her stately robes.

“Above Heaven and Earth, is she?”

Though it was not the precise meaning he’d intended, it was close enough to the truth. He thought of Ryzhkova’s wry laughter, the way she teased him, how she’d shown him to wrap his hair, and her poor, bent hands. Those were the hands that had touched his most often. Peabody cared for him, slapped his back, and schooled him in being both Wild Boy and man, but Ryzhkova had taught him most how to be human, how to care.

Ryzhkova was above Heaven and Earth. She had been his mother.

“This is how you see her?”

He smiled and nodded. He knew Evangeline feared her, cringing fear that makes bodies tight. It was because she did not know the countless hours he’d spent with Ryzhkova, her patience and the care she’d taken to ensure that he would be more than a Wild Boy. She didn’t know it was Ryzhkova who’d given him his name. He took the card into his palm and touched it to his heart.

Evangeline placed her hand over his.

He grew bolder in his thievery.

As they traveled toward Burlington, driving rain forced their lessons indoors. Amos snuck Evangeline inside the wagon with Sugar Nip and the llama. With rain preventing travel and the troupe having taken to their rooms, they would be safe; Ryzhkova would assume he remained with Peabody, while Peabody would assume he stayed with Ryzhkova. Evangeline left the oilskin tight over her tub, inviting no guests or inquiry. Together they curled up in the straw that lined the wagon and closed their eyes, listening to the mix of breath and storm.

* * *

A hand knocked on Madame Ryzhkova’s wagon. She was unaccustomed to speaking with the man who called; in truth she found him disturbing: he smiled through a mask.

“Is Amos here? I had hoped we’d pass the evening playing dice,” he said. “He was not with Peabody, and so.” Benno cocked his head and Ryzhkova sensed his movements, cultivated ease. “He is not with you?”

“Have you seen the girl?” she asked.

“Melina? With Susanna, mending dresses.”

He knew exactly who she asked after. “The Mermaid,” she said and squinted at the tumbler. He shifted uncomfortably on his feet.

“Ah,” Benno said. She watched his features slide, detecting a hint of worry just before his measured words. “No matter. I shall find Nat, then. Unless you would like a game, Madame?”

“I will tell Amos you were here,” she grunted. “Leave me.”

Ryzhkova knew her cards were missing before opening the box. She felt the lingering energy of Amos’s fingers on the lid, the heat that stayed in his wake. She looked at the space where the cards should have been and trembled, thinking of the Tower and a long-ago reading. Betrayal and a woman. She had not expected herself to be the betrayed. Her legs buckled and she sat heavily on the floor. “Yelena,” she whispered, “you are a fool.”

Rusalki did not leave their home waters. It was knowledge she had come by through sorrow. The girl was supposed to have vanished once Peabody steered the menagerie to follow a different river, yet somehow this one remained, stronger, wilier than others.

As a child, long before she dreamt up Madame Ryzhkova, when she had been just Yelena and thought only of weaving, she had watched through a window as a woman lured her father into their stream. Stepan, her father, had been burly and strong from working the fields, with a beard thick and black like bearskin but soft as down. She remembered tangling her fingers in it. Her three brothers were nearly grown and gone by the time she’d been born — off to fight, farm, and sail. She’d had her father to herself and she’d adored him. Yelena loved how he’d picked her up and swung her around as though she were nothing more than a grain sack. He’d called her little dove and told her that he loved her best, better than her brothers. “You are my crown,” he’d said.

Then the woman came — the pale face in their stream.

Across a month she watched her father weaken and their fields go fallow, burning in the sun. Instead of working, Stepan had spent his days at the stream. Her mother threatened to poison the water and Stepan threatened to tie her to the stove. When Yelena asked to ride with him in the cart while he worked, he would not answer. When she stuffed his pockets with bread, he returned with it uneaten.

Her mother began to pray.

Yelena watched him die. Through slender alder trees she’d seen the woman’s luminous skin and laughing eyes, had seen her father reach toward the woman to embrace her. His hand, once so warm and strong, was thin and wasted. His dark bearded face disappeared into the woman’s soot black hair. Yelena had called to him but her voice did not carry. She shook her mother, but her mother stayed rooted, praying. By the time Yelena reached the banks, her father had long since been dragged beneath the water.

Once Stepan was drowned, her mother moved quick and sharp as a switch, piling their possessions into a wagon and moving them to a distant village on the edge of a still black lake. Yelena had cried, not wanting to leave her father, knowing that he was in the stream. Her mother slapped the backs of Yelena’s hands. “If we stay, waiting for your father, she will take away any man we love. Would you have her drown your brothers?” her mother had asked. Yelena considered; what was a lost brother or two if it brought her father back? “When she kills them their deaths will be on your head,” her mother warned. Then Yelena understood. No river would be safe again, but other waters would not hold her father’s face. When her mother died she left her homeland, crossed countries and an ocean to leave the woman in the river and her father behind. In this safe land she bore her daughter and baptized her quickly to anchor her soul. Now, a lifetime later, a woman from a new water was tempting the boy who had become her son.

She waited for the Rusalka by the tub where the woman slept by night and drowned herself by day. Madame Ryzhkova saw Evangeline, flushed and breathless, and feared that she’d already stolen life and youth from Amos.

Evangeline froze at the sight of Madame Ryzhkova. The woman stood in the downpour, her clothing soaked, her face consumed by fury. They had been discovered.

“Madame, you must return to your wagon. You’ll catch your death.” She moved to put her arms around Ryzhkova’s shoulders.

“Do not touch me. You touch my Amos, you charm him and make him lie to me. I have seen what you do, your kind. You are a murderer, a soul thief—Rusalka.” Ryzhkova fought the urge to shout, to scream, but years of reading fates taught her that words were most powerful when spoken gravely. “You will go. You will leave this place and my boy. You will take no more from me.”

“Madame, I think you do not know your boy so well.” Evangeline walked past Ryzhkova and began untying the tub’s canvas. She glanced back at the old woman. “Nor me.” If her stomach heaved she forced it down. If her hands quaked, she squeezed them. “Go back to your bed, Madame. It would be a shame if you took ill. Amos would be heartbroken. I was when my grandmother died.”

Evangeline did not allow her eyes to water until she’d pulled the canvas down, and then only when she held herself, knees to chest, to muffle the sound. Whether it was fear or anger, she could not say.

Unhindered by her wet skirts, Ryzhkova flew across the muddy ground to Peabody’s wagon. When she threw open the door Peabody was bent over his ledger, carefully sketching the detail of a tentlike structure. The expanse of his stomach spilled over the small desk and obscured the writing at the bottom of the page. Startled by the unexpected arrival, his hand jumped, causing his plumed quill to scratch an ugly line through his sketch.

“Blast.”

“The girl must go.” Ryzhkova’s voice cracked.

“What is this?” Peabody turned the three-legged stool he called his ciphering chair. He regarded Madame Ryzhkova with a raised eyebrow.

She shook with violence. “Mermaid, you call her. Evangeline. She is warping my boy, my Amos. She makes him lie to me.” She smacked her palm firmly on Peabody’s desk, further smudging the sketch.

“Evangeline?” Peabody twisted the end of his beard to a thoughtful point, then wound it around his thumb. “I agree she has our Amos in a knot. Love, Madame, is nothing to worry oneself with overmuch. With time it will right itself.” He murmured something about the course of young love and returned to his ruined page. “Good for the profits, Madame. I see no harm at all. If you don’t mind, I’ve correspondence I wish to read.”

Ryzhkova’s eyes narrowed in such a way that Peabody’s levity died. “Stupid, stupid man. You love the boy, yes? You think of Amos like your son, like your Zachary?” Her voice rose. “She will kill him. Then what will you have? Money? No. You will have a dead son. And the girl? She will vanish into the river. No Amos, no mermaid — nothing.”

“Madame.”

“We must go away from the rivers. Away from water. You will turn her out and burn her things.” Her hands bunched in her skirts.

“Here now,” Peabody said, rising from his seat. “The girl’s been a draw since the day she appeared. If she makes Amos happy I am of the inclination to keep her.”

Ryzhkova charged forward, placing a knobbed finger on Peabody’s chest, marking each word with a stab. “He, who I have shown my secrets, he who I have loved like my son. He has lied to me. She will drink him, drown him. It has already begun.”

Peabody removed her finger from his waistcoat, pausing to right the pile. He attempted reason. “You might establish rules with him, perhaps. Give the boy latitude, a bit of forgiveness, Madame. Do remember that Amos was not always civilized. As for Evangeline,” he continued, “you might do well to try and know her. The girl has been nothing but amicable. Amos is not alone; I believe most of our men are half in love with her.”

“Tongue speaks, but head does not know,” Ryzhkova sneered. “You brought her to us, you must send her away. Or I will leave. I will go to my Katya.” Her smile was predatory. “I will take the boy with me. Without me, he has no work. No words. Without me, he is nothing. He will come.”

The ire clouding Madame Ryzhkova’s vision prevented her from seeing a hard look pass over Peabody’s face. “My dear Madame,” he said, “I believe you underestimate my concern for Amos. I am aware of both his strengths and his shortcomings. Though you named him, that does not give you claim. It was me whom he came to, I who first clothed him, from my son’s possessions.” He leaned close to Ryzhkova, using his size, until her back was pressed to the wagon’s wall. “Be certain that the lad is valued most highly and I, as ever, intend to look after his interests, romantic or otherwise — they are aligned with my own. While it would be unpleasant to continue without your esteemed services, I have discovered over the years that I am an intrepid soul and would assuredly make do.” He turned to take up his quill once more. “Madame, I find that I am no longer desirous of your presence.”

Ryzhkova backed away, taking the awkward step down from the cart. As she walked to her wagon to wait for Amos, she remembered a piece of something she’d heard as a child, when she’d still been Yelena. To Peabody, the words she muttered sounded like a madwoman’s gibberish; they were in fact the beginnings of a prayer, the prayer for deliverance her mother had whispered, rocking on her knees, while Stepan drowned.