The Vespertine (6 page)

She staggered, and a thick, white presence poured from her mouth. A lady close to the stage screamed. Men rushed to help the fainter as the manifestation swirled like milk in tea, up toward the ceiling to disappear.

The bells jangled, and Lady Privalovna staggered. She heaved, as if some hook had caught her and jerked her toward the heavens. Yellow butterflies poured from her. They danced around her head, flickering, fluttering, as the crowd swelled. It was like our voices had to follow them, as they melted into the dark.

Suddenly, Lady Privalovna stopped. She turned wild eyes on us and demanded, "Who is Jane? Which of you is Jane, oh gods, how the spirits cry." Clutching her temples, she rolled her head. "Show Yourself, Jane, whose father is lost, show yourself!"

The dark made it impossible to see this Jane, but we heard her. Her seat snapped closed when she jumped from it, and her quavering voice carried over our heads. "My father is lost! This past winter at sea."

"The tides!" Lady Privalovna collapsed at the edge of the stage. She stayed us with a trembling hand, held high above her head. "No, no, let the spirits come through me, stay back! I bid you, disturb them not!"

Quavering with her, I held my breath and stared. What a terrible silence it was, waiting for her to stop panting, waiting for her to raise her golden head again. My hand grew hot in Zora's, and I took it back to clasp with my other, cold from clutching the damp arm of my seat.

I heard tears in Jane's voice when she dared to ask, "Can you ... Do You see my father, good lady?"

"I do not," Lady Privalovna croaked, struggling slowly to her feet. "My guides, my friends, they speak of the tides! Of a shipwreck. Of a distant shore. Jane! Oh, Jane, they beg you listen!"

"Yes," Jane cried, sobbing.

Lady Privalovna peered out at her and said, "Your father is—"

Her eyes rolled back in her head, bracelets and bells all but screaming as she started to shake. She twitched and howled, a seizure sweeping through her like fire. That unearthly sound stole my breath; it pierced my heart and left me shaking.

And then she collapsed.

It was no gentle fall. Her head cracked against the stage—again and again. So did the heels of her feet, her whole body drumming the bare wood. Her arms twitched like snakes, and she thrashed ceaselessly across the floor.

Two men ran out. One slid to his knees beside her, leaning over to press his hand between her teeth. The other turned out to us and called, "Do not be alarmed! Please, do not be alarmed! This man is a doctor!"

With the stage in tumult, the crowd whispered a panicked hiss. We pressed forward; we watched in greedy anticipation to see what would become of the medium, whose fit had only begun to subside. The men spoke, too low to be heard. Then the doctor slipped his arms beneath Lady Privalovna's body, hefting her up.

"She has seen all she can bear today," he told us.

His companion held up hands to still the anxious murmur in the audience. "We beg your understanding. Its for the lady's health! We must insist she depart."

Just when feet started to rustle on the floor, Lady Privalovna rose up in her doctor's arm. She vomited a blue cloud that enveloped them. Her thin voice cut through the crowd with one last shriek. "The tides!"

The light died.

The performance was over.

I'
VE NEVER SEEN
such a thing in all my life!"

Oh, the color had come back to Zora's cheeks! It had spread to the tips of her ears, too, which perhaps guarded them against salt-tasting winds that came off the nearby harbor.

We crowded outside the theatre, watching for a cab to carry us back to Reservoir Hill. Like a little bird, Zora stepped off the curb, then back on it, her eyes dancing again as she looked to me, then to Thomas. "Have You ever?"

I shook my head, stuffing my hands deeper into my muff. My head felt full, as if it might split with everything new poured into it. "Never."

"I've seen a fit before," Thomas said. He had a measured weight in his words. "But nothing like that, I'll give you."

"And that poor Jane!" Zora spun around again to study the crowd. "I wonder which one she is?"

A cool prickle rushed along my spine, like a winter wind dipped down my collar to torment my skin. Before I could consider it too much, a familiar voice answered Zora, and my skin stung after the chill.

"None of them, likely," Nathaniel said.

Newly pinned to the ground, I stilled. I believed, very much in that moment, that he had somehow slipped from the bonds of his skin to find me ethereally. My delusion of such an intimate connection was broken when Thomas looked past me, behind me, and said, "These ladies are in my charge, sir."

"A noble task you bear admirably," Nathaniel said, coming round to stand in the street before us. He offered Thomas a thoughtful look and then his hand. "Dr. Rea's boy, are you not?"

Restless, I ate up his details. This was my first glimpse of Nathaniel doing as he liked. And it seemed what he liked was lighting up a street by audaciousness alone. Gone was his staid, plum suit. Nathaniel stood there, bright as a poppy in winter. His coat was cut in green and gold tartan, and he'd pinned the pocket with a nosegay of tangerine silk.

Thomas read a nod of approval from Zora, then took Nathaniel's hand. Still, Thomas kept his guard, his jaw tight when he replied. "I am. Are we acquainted?"

"Once, I came to sketch an autopsy in your parlor."

I shivered at that awful remembrance. Even though it was common for artists to draw bodies in repose, it unnerved me to hear Nathaniel say it so casually. But I suppose it was just me, because recognition lit Thomas from within. "Mr. Witherspoon, of course."

Formality dispensed, Nathaniel said, "How did you find the show?"

All but exhaling her entire breath, Zora clutched my arm and said, "It was terrifying."

"And brilliant," I said. "The manifestations!"

"All a fraud, you know."

Unsettled as much now as I had been at dinner, I shook my head. "Were You there? Did You see?"

With a quick glance, Nathaniel leaped onto the walk and gestured for us to follow. "Come along, won't you?"

"We shouldn't," Thomas said.

"On my honor," Nathaniel replied, "nothing will come of this but revelation."

I think I would have followed Nathaniel anywhere, to see nearly anything. The promise I had made to myself, to keep my wits about me, dissipated the moment I felt his voice on my skin. Thomas resisted at first. He didn't move when Zora and I started to walk. Zora cast him an imploring look, and then he followed, too.

Leading us through another alley, Nathaniel helped us over puddles of unmentionable provenance. I couldn't imagine what gave this passage a scent so pungent; it stung my nose and troubled my eyes.

"Act as though you belong," Nathaniel advised, and we found ourselves at the back of the theatre. Someone had propped a door open with a little iron dog. I smiled at that bit of whimsy and watched stagehands come in and out. They carried painted parapets and a shaky balcony, all light enough to lay on their shoulders.

Zora murmured to me as we watched an Egyptian column disappear into the theater, "There's an engagement of
Antony and Cleopatra
next week."

Though I found the workings of a theatre interesting, its artifices sweetly humble in the broad of day, I couldn't fathom what revelation we were meant to take from this. A hundred papier-mache gods could march before me, and I would only marvel at their clever construction.

"Patience, Miss van den Broek," Nathaniel said. His words stung like a silver kiss, a forbidden intimacy I would have refused had I known it was coming.

Risking myself, I looked at him and said nothing. But I braved the blackness of his eyes and the wildness of my heart. I stilled my face, making it smooth, and then thought—clearly—to prove or disprove his command of my mind.
Look away,
I told him.
Yield your gaze first.

Did his expression change? Did his brow curve at the challenge, or did I simply wish it?

I had no answer, for at that moment Lady Privalovna burst from the stage door, followed by her doctor. "I'm black and blue all over, and you want another show?!"

"People complain, Peg." The doctor followed her, and I pressed my face against Zora's sleeve to keep from gasping aloud. In his left hand, a dancing, shimmering bit of blue fabric trailed—in his right, a silvery piece of the same.

They curled and danced like smoke in the air, impossibly light. I had never seen a cloth that delicate, but I had seen two apparitions during Lady Privalovna's performance—one white, one blue.

"Peg's complaining," Lady Privalovna exclaimed. She snatched one of the apparitions and twisted it. "They paid their money! They got what they come for!"

The doctor twisted his apparition, and soon both graceful, fluttering scraps disappeared completely. "And three shows a day, look. Two shows is good-enough money, but don't you want to get married?"

Laughing, Lady Privalovna—or, it seemed, Peg—took something from his hand and brushed past him. "I heard that about a hundred times now. It don't look like I'm ever gonna be done with this, so I say two shows a day and you get rich at my pace. Where are those butterflies?"

"Search me," the doctor said flatly, making no move to follow her back inside. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a pipe as his gaze trailed to us in the corner of the yard. "What of it?"

"Are these the auditions for the chorus?" Zora asked quickly.

The doctor shook his head. "They take auditions at the office, around that way."

Sweeping her skirts in a curtsy, Zora said, "Thank You," then turned to us. "Shall we, then, to the office?"

Nathaniel admired her with a smile, and my belly twisted once more with uncharitable jealousy.

***

We walked to the far end of Holliday Street, where Nathaniel said we'd more readily find a hansom cab to take us home. Though the horse cars still ran, daylight had shifted, casting long shadows to the east and washing us with the sharp, revealing light of afternoon. Our adventure, not yet finished, had to end nevertheless.

"All right, I grant the manifestations were showmanship," Zora told Thomas' back, as he and Nathaniel went before us on the street. "But surely the fit..."

Thomas stole a look over his shoulder. "Hysteria, I imagine. Father treats it with patents and a clockwork
percuteur.
"

Dubious, Zora said, "That's an illness, then? You can't pretend an illness."

Nathaniel dissolved into a fit of coughs, and just before I could lay my hands on his back in a panic, he sprang up again, spreading out his arms to present himself, entirely well.

"Sufficiently motivated," I said, fighting back an open smile on the street at his theatrics, "I suppose one could pretend nearly anything."

"Not that," Zora insisted.

The same spirit that took me to challenge Miss Burnside rose again, and I said, "I wager I could."

"Ladies don't gamble," Thomas said, and was startled when Zora burst out laughing in response. To recover himself, he almost smiled and amended, "Well, they shouldn't."

Perhaps not, but I was beginning to appreciate a certain thrill found in misbehaving. Due all, I realized as that peculiar warmth spread through my veins again, to Nathaniel Witherspoon's timely appearance.

"Here's a cab," he said, jolting me from my shameless considerations.

And there was, indeed, a brand-new hansom pulled by a fine Arabian. The driver had taken special care—silver bells jingled on the horse's tack, and its mane was gaily braided with ribbons.

"Take this one, please," Thomas said, standing at the step and offering Zora his hand. "We'll find another."

Nathaniel squinted at him. "It's all the same direction."

"These are ladies," Thomas replied, and though he often seemed to shrink into himself, at that moment he rose up. "Have care of their reputations."

Settling into the seat, Zora gazed down at Thomas, fairy lights in her eyes again. She seemed like liquid ivory, her pretty face poured into the sweetest fondness for Thomas' gentility.

I probably should have been sweet on him and his fine manners. But, I admit, it thrilled me when Nathaniel gripped my hand too long, then reached inside the cab to settle my hems.

"Do forgive me," he said, eyes meeting mine as he brushed gloved fingers over my boot. "I've no reputation of my own, and I forget they matter."

***

"We should have a picnic Saturday," Zora said.

Brush in hand, she smoothed her hair, letting it tumble down her back in glossy waves. Undressed to her corset and framed in the window, she seemed so very like a water nymph from
Des Nibelungen
that I expected her to reclaim the ring at any moment.

Thimble in place, I bent over my mending. "I thought we danced on Saturday."

"Not in the afternoon." She switched her brush from one hand to the other, reaching for another thick length of hair. "It could be too chilly."

"If today was any indication, I agree entirely."

"How can you be so driven by the cold?" Zora asked with a laugh. Slipping to her feet, she swayed toward me, taking soft, dancing steps to a melody she alone could hear. "Papa said Maine was ice from September to May, with a grudging admission of rain in the middle."

"I'll have you know, our summers are lovely," I said loftily. "For the entire afternoon that they last."

Twirling past, Zora reached for her house gown. "If it was archery, we could
coincidentally
practice near the pond."

Putting my sewing aside, I looked up at her. "Dare I guess the reason we should want to practice near the pond?"

"They fish, you know," Zora said, sweeping past me again, the dark cloud of her hair washing all around her and making her nearly exotic. "And sail toy boats, like they're children, and throw stones at their boats to sink them, like
foolish
children."

I smiled. "Thomas does, you mean?"

"All the boys. Overgrown and boisterous, the whole lot. The Fourteenths, too. I've seen them."