The Book of Speculation

28

The menagerie fled Charlotte with a swiftness they had not used since a preacher had threatened Peabody with tar and feathers. They moved northeast, making no stops for as long as they could manage, camping at night on roadsides, away from towns, sending Benno or Nat ahead to purchase supplies rather than entering a city proper. They traveled this way until they ran along the Atlantic. “A restorative,” Peabody called it, though all knew the break for what it was. They had been scarred by the drowned village.

With Bess’s birth Evangeline’s stomach rebelled against ripeness and carved itself anew. Her ribs stood out and it seemed each tug of the child’s mouth at her breast sucked away life. She and Amos had spoken little since Charlotte. The cards became tools for divination only.

Peabody was the only buoyant soul. He sat Bess’s tightly swaddled body on the high shelf of his belly, cooing and rumbling as he delighted in her. “Little starling, sweet Bess. Whatever shall I make of you? A fine mermaid like your mother? A gypsy as your father was? I think you will be far lovelier, my dear.”

Had Amos not been consumed by the mother of his child, he would have recognized the profiteering gleam in Peabody’s eyes. But Evangeline had begun to shrink away. When he laced her, the stomacher gapped no matter how tight he pulled.

“I will tell Peabody that I wish to take up swimming again,” she told him one morning as they dressed. Amos flinched, breaking a lace. She sighed and searched for a replacement. “It’s that or I will be a human skeleton. The water act always brought in money and we must be practical; the girl will need things.” Wrapped tight in one of the velvet drapes from the Wild Boy act, Bess dozed in the costume trunk. Bess, whose birth had washed away a town.

Amos acquiesced. Though it cut him, if Evangeline wished to swim he would not stop her.

“Hush,” she said. “I will still speak cards for you. I won’t have you in a cage. Though,” she added, “I would prefer if we begin to think of another act, another way.”

Amos bit back his concerns. He worried at the nature of the water act in light of all that had happened. It had not escaped his notice that Susanna had ceased speaking to Evangeline and Melina barely murmured greetings. Benno had begun to subtly sneer as she passed. Once Amos lunged for him, but Evangeline had held him back with a hand to his chest.

“Stop,” she’d said quietly. “He is afraid. If we give him nothing to fear, he’ll come around.” Nestled in her arms, Bess had cried out. Evangeline had looked at Benno. “I’ve known people like you.” I have killed a woman such as you. Benno had walked away, but he’d shuddered; she’d felt it.

Evangeline had hardly slept since the flood. In candlelight she watched Amos’s chest rise and fall, listened to her child’s snores, and wondered what misfortune she’d brought upon them. Never had there been two such cursed people. While they dreamt, she spent hours with the tarot, asking questions and looking for meanings. What will come of us? What will come of her? A frightening pattern emerged.

The cards spoke of old wrongs, what had sent her running and what had happened since. The wasting death of her mother, Grandmother Visser dead, the disappearance of Ryzhkova, Amos’s grief, the perished fish at the poisoned river, and Charlotte destroyed. She’d felt bold when Ryzhkova had confronted her, strong in Amos’s affection and desirous of a portion of happiness, the same as when she’d met Will Aben by the Hudson. Ryzhkova had been right. Amos’s life before Evangeline had been without worries; that was gone. Since their meeting, his face had gained hard, sad furrows. She touched the deck and her past and future spouted horrors, the paper recoiling from her. Amos need not know these things.

After a second week of clandestine prophesies, Evangeline asked Amos if she might avoid handling the cards during readings. Amos frowned but assented. The cards drove her to approach Peabody about the water act.

Peabody was delighted with the news of his mermaid’s return. An extra half share of pay would be easily recouped by the additional gentlemen patrons that the act drew. The tub was repaired, varnished, and whitewashed. Peabody encouraged Evangeline to bring Bess with her as she practiced.

“We have no way of telling what our magnificent starling shall be.” Peabody had taken to tickling the child’s stomach when he spoke such things. Bess in return watched him, her yellowish eyes slow and unblinking like a rabbit’s. “Broaden her horizons. Teach her cards, water, train her in contortion, juggling, anything she’ll learn.”

Amos abided the resurrection of the swimming tub, observing the sealing and painting from the Les Ferez wagon, but made no move to help. He blamed himself for Evangeline’s apprehension of the cards. He understood fear, but he would not stand for the training of his daughter, not when he suspected that her birth had summoned a deluge and his readings spoke of water yet to come. Charlotte gnawed on their minds like a sickness.

Three months passed. Peabody kept them to a circuitous route toward Philadelphia and eventually New York, toward his son. On an evening before they were due to open in Millerston, Evangeline came to take Bess from Amos.

“Come now, little fish. It’s time we teach you to swim.” She brushed her hand over Bess’s fine black hair.

Amos tucked the baby into his long coat, hiding her from Evangeline’s reach. Fear made him tight.

“You know as well as I that Peabody will need her to work. We must teach her. If we begin now, she won’t dread it the way I once did. I can make it safe for her.”

He wrapped Bess more securely, gathering her into the folds of his shirt. Her grasping fist hooked on to a length of lace. He shook his head, silently cursing that he could not reach his cards.

“It will be years before she can read tarot,” Evangeline reasoned. “And who would tell their secrets to a child? Most wouldn’t want a child touching the cards at all.”

He did not need her to say the rest. She did not want Bess near the cards. He would be unable to speak to his daughter.

Amos held Bess against the wall of the wagon, shuffling the infant into one arm. He removed the cards from their box and smacked the deck down onto a small table, hard enough to shake the legs. He meant to say no, that he was frightened — since the river, since Charlotte. He spread the cards across the table, each humming with his touch.

Evangeline reached for the cards. At the brush of her fingers a wind stirred in the wagon, blowing the deck across the table and to the floor, erasing Amos’s words. New cards took their place, painting violence, a murdered woman, great floods, sorrow, and a map of desolation with her, the Queen of Swords, and him, the Fool, at its center. Evangeline bent to collect the cards, but he stayed her. He studied the placement, the layers of meaning. Bess squealed, the sound muffled by his body. He’d protected Evangeline from Ryzhkova’s dread and the future she had read for him, but the cards on the floor told a different truth; he had been protecting himself. Evangeline had been keeping secrets.

The frail water girl he’d first met had killed. He saw it in the Swords and how they’d scattered, from Death falling across Judgment’s face. Murder was a wearing sin. Each time Evangeline looked for solace, the unsettled spirit would draw misfortune to itself. Her expression held no surprise. He thought of all the cards he’d hidden, how there had been no need. He remembered the red mark that had marred her shoulder when he’d first seen it bared. The welt had torn at him, fascinated him, and his fingers had itched to trace it.

“Please,” she begged. When he shielded Bess from her, Evangeline pressed her lips to his forehead. “I did not mean to kill her,” she said. “I would take it back.” Amos closed his eyes, but he did not let go of the child.

Evangeline had long since left the wagon when Bess began to scream.

Amos spent the remainder of the day in thought, running his fingers across the bed they shared, feeling the impression of her body. She curled up when she slept, a habit from when the tub had been her home. The baby tossed and kicked like her mother. It was good that Bess was not mute like him. He thought of Evangeline’s sureness; she had chosen to swim and had sought out Peabody. The dead woman in the cards — Evangeline had done it.

He was not this way. From the moment he had encountered Peabody his life had not been his own. His name was not his own — whatever it had been lived in a house somewhere beyond his memory. He bundled Bess and put her to rest in the costume trunk. She shrieked, her face twisting and purpling with rage. They might begin again, without the cards or Peabody, in a house in Burlington, a place where they could live a solitary life. He would tell Evangeline he did not believe Ryzhkova, or that he would learn not to believe. It was that bruise that had let him love her, because she needed caring. She’d let him care, had chosen him, she had looked after him, learned for him, and kept him from the cage. A simple bruise.

Bess cried the way others bled, as though she might die from it. He did what he could to comfort her, bouncing her, patting her, and at last turning to Susanna when he could think of nothing else. The contortionist rocked her and called Melina over to rub the child’s belly. Nat popped his cheeks and gave the baby a sweet-smelling root to suckle on, but Bess howled until she choked. She needed her mother.

Amos waited.

Evening came. Evangeline did not return.

* * *

She’d walked to the ocean, past where the trees thinned into grass, and grass gave way to a strip of sand that beckoned like a smile to come into the water. In the past swimming and the stretch of her body brought her peace, but it did not now. Her breath came deeper than it had before the child; the baby changed her in unexpected ways. The troupe feared her. She could withstand it, but Amos’s distrust cut deep. Her body had been reshaped by the baby, but it had changed too for him; the curve between her neck and shoulder had become a rest for his head, her spine had bent to fit to him, her heart slowed when his did.

They could leave. She could leave and take him with her.

The water smelled of salt rather than the sweet, rotting peat scent she’d come to know from rivers. She dove below and the familiar weight fell upon her, perplexing half-formed memories of being drowned by Grandmother Visser. In the water she was deaf to Bess’s cries.

She set her feet to the ocean bottom. They came to rest on something smooth like a stone that scuttled under her step. Sharpness snapped her ankle, as though she’d been struck. She shifted her feet only to be smacked again by more lashes, dozens. A stream of breath escaped. The water tasted salt as well.

At the cold briny bottom she could not see the crawling legs or the tails that searched through her dress folds, climbing over her feet and up her calves, hooking into her stockings. She felt an ease she had not known since she was an infant. When her grandmother had held her under in the washtub it hadn’t been fear that had caused her heart to race — it had been a sense of right. The hem of her dress sank into the sand, buried by scrambling legs. Oh, but I belong here.

When she left water she took lives. She killed grandmothers and sons, poisoned rivers. She washed towns away. But in the water she was whole, in the water she did no harm.

Evangeline let the creatures pile upon her, pulling down her arms, until she was shrouded in a living mantle. The shelled bodies swarmed her. When the weight became such that she could no longer stand, she sat. On the surface, bubbles burst and were lost among the waves.

When she could sit no more, she lay down. Legs and tails knotted in her hair until she became them and they her. Her back settled deep into the sand. Their bodies stole the last of her breath.

The cards were right in all things. She brought misfortune where she walked. She was a killer, though she had not meant to be. Evangeline thought of her girl, who in being born had caused so much misfortune. Amos, with his kind eyes and clever hands, would keep Bess away from the water. In this, she thought, her death would be a good thing. When the need for air came hard like hunger she opened her mouth. It filled with sand and ocean. Inside she became as much water as out. Strange, she thought. The mermaid could drown.

* * *

Amos did not sleep. He rocked the child against him until morning slipped between the wagon boards. He walked to the water to look for Evangeline, but there was no sign. He bounced Bess against his chest as she cried for milk, for her mother. He looked for footprints, for Evangeline’s dress, but found only odd crab creatures on the shore. Swishing tails had swept away all trace of her.

Benno found Amos wandering, gasping, a harsh near-barking sound coming from him. He shook Amos’s shoulder, shocked by the sound and his appearance. “What has she done? Are you hurt? Did she hurt the baby?”

Amos pulled free. Eyes narrowing, he looked at Benno, taking his measure from his worn shoes to the tear on his shirt, and finally his scar. He snarled and went to find Peabody.

Without mention of opening nights or traveling time, Peabody ordered a search party. He sent Meixel and Nat on horseback. Each packed a lantern in case they should not return before nightfall. Melina and Benno were to search on foot while Amos remained on the beach, waiting. Peabody came down to the sand with two cushions from his wagon; he dropped one beside Amos and sat, knees cracking like dry wood. “We’ll wait.”

They watched the ocean. When Bess’s shrieks grew piercing, Peabody walked back to the camp and returned some time later with a cup of goat’s milk. He dipped a finger into the warm cup, and without moving the infant from Amos’s arms, he fed Bess, letting her suckle milk droplets from his fingertip.

Well into the night, after the crabs wandered back into the water, a spot of moonlight glimmered white on the ocean. Amos watched the light bob and dance before shooting to his feet. He jostled the dozing Peabody, who sputtered and coughed when Amos handed him the baby. When it was clear that Bess had not woken, Amos looked back to the water. He stepped in and it rose black and cold around him. The murky bottom sucked at his feet as he stumbled into territory that had previously belonged only to her. He waded to where a swift current ran. He’d not thought to remove his coat or shirt before walking in — she never had — and his clothing impeded progress. When he reached the glinting object, his legs ached and water lapped over his chin. He snatched blindly at the bobbing piece of light; the feel of it was at once familiar but he refused to think on it until he could see it properly. He was near to the shore before he dared look.

A piece of ribbon, white, from the waist of her dress; he knew its texture, the edges frayed from climbing in and out of the tub. His chest burst inside. She would not return. Evangeline was in the ocean.

“Come, let us see what you have,” Peabody called from the beach.

Amos stared at the ribbon and caressed the ribs in the weave as he had each time she’d hung the dress to dry. He turned away from the shore and squeezed the scrap of fabric, rubbing at it until it rasped his skin. He moved toward the depths and the current. Peabody yelled to him, but Amos did not listen. The weight of the Les Ferez costume kept him so heavy that the water could not lift him. He disregarded the shout and did not hear the splash.

He was underwater when Peabody reached him. A sodden cotton-covered arm grabbed Amos from behind, pulling him back. Amos fought and kicked, but his clothing slowed him. Peabody hooked another arm under his shoulder and, with strength neither knew he possessed, hauled Amos back to shore.

“Do not fight me,” Peabody gasped as Amos struggled. “If you fight me you will drown us both. Do you hear? You’ll drown me, boy.”

Amos surrendered and let himself be dragged. He let the water wash over him and clung to the ribbon. It smelled strongly of salt, the way her hair often had. When they came to rest on the sand, Peabody dropped him to his back.

“I will not have it. It will not do,” he said between splutters. “Two of you gone at once, it is not to be borne.” When Amos sat up, Peabody pounded him on the back until he coughed out water. “I have fed you, clothed you, given you all I ever possessed. And you would walk away from me.”

A kitten cry rose up from the sand.

“I’d not taken you for a fool. Silent yes, but a fool, no.” He extended an arm to Amos, waiting for him to take it. The crying continued. Amos grabbed the proffered hand. Peabody led him to where Bess lay wrapped in his burgundy velvet coat. Amos’s hair was crusted with salt and sand, and Peabody’s clothing hung like a wet sack. At the sight of them, Bess let out a delighted squeal. Amos stared at his daughter — small, round, with Evangeline’s eyes. Painful to look upon.

For a moment he wished she’d drowned like Charlotte in the river, that if Bess had not been born Evangeline would be with him. He sickened at the thought and took the child.

“Good lad,” said Peabody. “We’ll make you a father.”

* * *

It would be two more days before the menagerie moved on. Peabody was touched by a gray sadness and tried to attribute it to the downturn in accounts. He did not examine this feeling with a close eye, nor did he knock at Amos’s door. He ordered food and goat’s milk be left at the Les Ferez steps and kept vigil from his wagon to make sure it was taken.

Amos watched his daughter. Fed her. Slept little.

As days wore on it was decided that he must be coaxed out. Benno was sent to get him. When Amos refused to open the door, he resorted to the metal strips to open the lock. Amos’s appearance stunned Benno into muttering a short oath.

The fabric that had once decorated the wagon’s interior had been torn down, shredded and thrown about the room. Amos crouched over Bess. Hair wild, eyes sunken; his arms bore deep red scratches from where he’d clawed at himself.

“Oh,” Benno murmured. “I am sorry. I am so sorry.” He offered Amos his hand, but Amos pulled away. Benno leaned against the wall and slid down to sit on the floor. Amos gave him his back.

For the better part of an hour, they sat in silence. At last Benno spoke. “You would not remember how you were when you first came to us. Barely here. Mostly we did not see you, and when we did,” he sliced his hand in the air and made a sound through his teeth. “Fft. Nothing. You were an empty glass. Fragile, I thought. Then I start to see you with the small horse, and you begin to remind me of my youngest brother. And you were kind to me. I am not one whom people are often kind to. I tell myself I will look after you. When Ryzhkova begins to teach you, I thought good.” Benno scratched the back of his head and then pounded it against the wall. “Then Evangeline.” He felt Amos’s eyes on him and a chill ran through his bones. “Ryzhkova feared her. She asked me to watch over you. Protect you.” A dry laugh came from his chest. Amos tilted his head at the sound. “And I think to myself, what could be so fearsome that would drive Ryzhkova to leave? And so I watched. And then I saw Evangeline sneaking away. Then the river died, and then the town … I am sorry.”

Silence spread between them. Amos gathered his daughter in his arms. They sat for hours until the small lines of sun that sliced through the gaps in the wagon walls stretched then faded into nothing. Bess coughed and sneezed once.

“The child,” Benno muttered. “She has lost too much.” He rose to his feet and opened the wagon door. “There have been lies, so many, and I have been a part of them. I am sorry, friend. I will find Ryzhkova for you. Her daughter, Katerina — Ryzhkova would go to her. I will find her and tell her what has happened. She will come back. You will work again and teach your girl. I will do this for you. You will not be alone.” When he left he pulled the wagon door shut behind him. Benno was gone with the morning.

Amos’s time was filled with secret work. Bess had become silent, had not uttered a sound since the night they’d returned from the ocean. For hours on end Amos sat in front of his daughter, trying to remember what Evangeline’s voice had felt like when he’d pressed his ear against her breast. When he attempted sound all that emerged was a rough scratching. He held Bess to his chest in hope that the resonance of a beating heart might stir her to sound. It did not.

The cards slept in their box, untouched. They were marked by all that had passed between them — Ryzhkova, him, Evangeline. He would have to cleanse the cards repeatedly, how much he could not be certain, and to cleanse the cards would take the last of Evangeline away, the piece of her that still lived in them. It had been his mistake to not clear them once Ryzhkova had left. He’d only wanted to hold on to the woman who had taught him. The remainder, her lingering fear, had mixed with the cards and become a curse that twined with their fate like a braid. He kissed the top of Bess’s head. He would not teach her to speak as he did.

The Wild Boy cage reappeared. Fall turned and they pushed north, hoping to make New York before the weather changed. The Les Ferez cart was painted green and adorned with depictions of a grotesque Wild Man.

* * *

In a clearing north of Burlington they made camp under the shelter of ancient oaks. The stop was unscheduled but the troupe was weary; being shorthanded made travel more difficult. Peabody approached Amos’s door. It opened a scant crack. A single dark eye looked out.

“My boy, it is time you work. It will be good for your spirit and good for your girl to see you happier. The old act,” here he coughed. “It will be as it was before. I think you will be fine at it.” The door opened no further. Peabody chewed his bottom lip, causing his beard to bristle. “We got on well once, you and I. Please, let’s do so again. We’ll start anew.”

The door slammed shut.

Hours after Peabody had knocked, Amos emerged from the wagon, child in arms. He was wiry like a stray dog and his clothing fell from him. He crossed the camp and eyes followed him, his every move of interest. He rapped at Peabody’s door and was greeted at the first knock. Curly brimmed hat askew, Peabody smiled.

“Fine to see you out, good lad. And with our little girl looking every bit a beauty, she. Quite the—”

Amos thrust Bess at Peabody’s chest. He looked a long moment at his daughter before turning on a rotted boot heel and walking back across the camp. Peabody took Bess in his arms and watched as Amos continued past the last wagon and toward the deep of the woods. By the time he thought to send Meixel after him, Amos had ventured far enough that Peabody lost sight of him. The infant looked up at his crinkled blue eyes, clenched a fist around the pointed tip of his beard, and cooed.

“Well, most wonderful girl,” he said in the softest voice he could manage, “what have we here?”

In the wood among the branches, Amos divested himself of shoes. His bare feet welcomed the ground, toes digging into loam. His coat followed, discarded on a briar, then the tattered neck cloth and shirt were gone, until only skin separated Amos and the forest. It was curious to see how pale his body had grown under years of clothing. His deep brown hands looked like they belonged to another person. He walked for hours, scrambling and climbing. He held on to the piece of ribbon, winding it around his thumb, petting it. He picked his way over tree roots and stones, toe to heel, silent. Where three high rocks clustered, forming a small peak, he stopped. Rippling indicated a nearby stream, and in its sound he heard whispers of Evangeline. You are home. I am your home.

He scaled the boulders, feet digging for purchase in craggy ledges, fingertips hooking into crevasses until he perched atop the tallest rock. His breathing slowed as he came to rest. He sat as he had in the days before Evangeline, Ryzhkova, or Peabody, in the days when he’d crept into the house where he’d been born. The sun began its descent, making long shadows. A short huffing owl call echoed off the rocks. He sat. Amos’s shadow mixed with the trees and bushes, shades black as her hair. His breath slowed further until it became that of the world around him — a low breeze, nothing more. He became a part of the woods and the air, and lines defining beginnings and ends softened. Then the sorrow stopped. One moment a young man sat atop an outcropping of boulders, the next he was gone.

* * *

In coming days Melina found Amos’s clothing and the ribbon from Evangeline’s dress. She offered them to Peabody, who abruptly ordered them destroyed. Though Melina told him it was done, she stowed them in a traveling trunk for Bess once she grew older. It should not be as if they had never been. Every child needed to know her parents.

Peabody cared for Bess as his own. He doted on her and began to think of her as the crowning achievement of his years of captaining the menagerie. He ensured that she was taught to swim. Bess took to the water as if made from it. He delighted to see that the girl had a remarkable capacity to hold her breath. In evenings he began sketching plans. Alongside columns of figures, a diving tank took shape in brown ink. Glass. If only they could manage glass. Bess’s hair grew long and black like her mother’s. Her eyes stayed wide like Amos’s.

At her fifth birthday he presented her with a lacquered box adorned with intricately painted figures — a prince and a firebird.

“Bess, my little starling,” he rumbled as she worked to open its lid. “These cards are most special; they belonged to your father, a wonderful man, and in them are the keys to all the world. It is time you were instructed. I’ve heard from my son, Zachary. Our friend Benno has found you a guide. Her name is Katya, and she is the daughter of your father’s teacher.”

Bess’s soft fingers touched the orange deck, flipping over the first card. Lightning and flames — a broken sky. The Tower.