The Bone Garden: A Novel (32 page)

Thirty-five

N
ORRIS HEARD THE SPLASH,
even from Lechmere Point. He could not see what had just fallen into the water, but he spotted the carriage stopped on the bridge ahead. And he heard a howling dog.

As he drew closer, he saw the boy’s body sprawled beside the carriage’s rear wheel. A black dog crouched beside it, teeth bared and growling as it held off the man and woman trying to get near the fallen man.
It’s Billy’s dog
.

“We couldn’t stop the horse in time!” the woman called out. “It was a horrible accident! The boy ran straight in front of us and…” She stopped, staring in recognition as Norris climbed out of the shay. “Mr. Marshall?”

Norris yanked open the carriage door but did not see Rose inside. From the floor, he plucked up a torn strip of cloth.
From a woman’s petticoat.

He turned to Eliza, who stared at him, mute. “Where is Rose?” he asked. He looked at Wall-eyed Jack, who was already backing away, preparing to flee.

That splash. They’d thrown something into the water.

Norris ran to the railing and stared into the river. He saw rippling water, silvered by moonlight. And then a shudder, as something broke the surface, then sank again.

Rose
.

He scrambled over the railing. Once before, he had plunged into the Charles River. That time, he had docilely surrendered his fate to the whims of providence. This time, he surrendered nothing. As he flung himself off the bridge, he stretched out his arms as though to seize this one last chance at happiness. He sliced into water so cold it made him suck in a startled gasp. He surfaced, coughing. Paused only long enough to heave in and out several deep breaths, washing his lungs with air.

Then he plunged, once again, underwater.

In the darkness, he flailed blindly at anything within reach, feeling for a limb, a bit of cloth, a fistful of hair. His hands met only empty water. Out of breath, he popped to the surface again. This time he heard a man’s shouts from the bridge above.

“There’s someone down there!”

“I see him. Call the Night Watch!”

Three quick breaths, then once again, Norris dove. In his panic, he did not even register the cold or the growing chorus of shouts above. With every passing second, Rose was slipping away from him. Arms churning, he clawed at the water, as frantic as a drowning man. She might be only inches from his grasp, but he could not see her.

I am losing you
.

A desperate need for air drove him back to the surface for another breath. There were lights on the bridge above, and more voices. Feckless witnesses to his despair.

I would rather drown than leave you here
.

One last time he dove. The glow of the lanterns above faintly penetrated the dark water in shifting ribbons of light. He saw the shadowy strokes of his own arms, saw clouds of sediment. And drifting just below, he saw something else. Something pale, billowing like sheets in the wind. He lunged toward it, and his hand closed around cloth.

Rose’s limp body drifted toward him, her hair a swirl of black.

At once he kicked upward, pulling her with him. But when they broke the surface and he gasped in lungfuls of air, she was limp, as lifeless as a bundle of rags.
I am too late.
Sobbing, gasping, he hauled her toward the riverbank, kicking until his legs were so exhausted they would scarcely obey him. When at last his feet touched mud, he could not support his own weight. He half crawled, half stumbled out of the water, and dragged Rose up the bank, onto dry land.

Her wrists and ankles were bound; she was not breathing.

He rolled her onto her stomach.
Live, Rose! You have to live for me.
He placed his hands on her back and leaned in, squeezing her chest. Water gushed from her lungs and spilled out of her mouth. He pressed again and again, until her lungs were empty, but still she lay unresponsive.

Frantic, he tore the bindings from her wrists and turned her onto her back. Her face, smudged with grime, stared up at him. He pressed his hands against her chest and leaned in, trying to expel the last drops of water from her lungs. Again and again he pressed as his tears and river water dripped onto her face.

“Rose, come back to me! Please, darling. Come back.”

Her first twitch was so faint, it might only have been his desperate imagination. Then, suddenly, she shuddered and coughed, a wet and racking cough that was the most beautiful sound he’d ever heard. Laughing and crying at once, he turned her onto her side and brushed sopping hair from her face. Though he could hear footsteps approaching, he did not look up. His gaze was only on Rose, and when she opened her eyes, his face was the first thing she saw.

“Am I dead?” she whispered.

“No.” He wrapped his arms around her shivering body. “You’re right here with me. Where you’ll always be.”

A pebble clattered across the ground, and the footsteps came to a standstill. Only then did Norris look up to see Eliza Lackaway, her cape billowing in the wind.
Like wings. Like the wings of a giant bird.
Her gun was pointed straight at him.

“They’re watching,” Norris said, glancing up at the people who stood on the bridge above. “They’ll see you do it.”

“They’ll see me kill the West End Reaper.” Eliza shouted toward the crowd: “Mr. Pratt! It’s Norris Marshall!”

Voices on the bridge rose in excitement.

“Did you hear that?”

“It’s the West End Reaper!”

Rose struggled to sit, clinging to Norris’s arm. “But I know the truth,” she said. “I know what you did. You can’t kill us both.”

Eliza’s arm wavered. She had only one shot. Even as Mr. Pratt and two men from the Night Watch gingerly worked their way down the steep bank, she was still standing there, undecided, her gun swinging between Norris and Rose.

“Mother!”

Eliza went rigid. She looked up at the bridge, where her son was now standing beside Wendell.

“Mother, don’t!” Charles pleaded.

“Your son told us,” said Norris. “He knows what you did, Mrs. Lackaway. Wendell Holmes knows, too. You can kill me here, now, but the truth is already out. Whether I live or die, your future has already been decided.”

Slowly, her arm dropped. “I have no future,” she said softly. “Whether it ends here, or on the gallows, it’s over. The only thing I can do now is to spare my son.” She raised her gun, but this time it was not pointed at Norris; it was aimed at her own head.

Norris lunged toward her. Grabbing her wrist, he tried to wrench the gun free, but Eliza resisted, fighting with the viciousness of a wounded animal. Only when Norris twisted her arm did she finally release her grip. She stumbled back, howling. Norris stood pitilessly exposed on the riverbank with the gun in his hand. In the space of a heartbeat, he realized what was about to happen. He saw Watchman Pratt take aim. He heard Rose’s anguished scream of
“No!”

The impact of the bullet slammed the breath from his lungs. The gun dropped from his hand. He staggered and sprawled backward on the mud. A strange silence fell over the night. Norris stared up at the sky but heard no voices, no footsteps crowding in, not even the swish of the water against the bank. All was calm and peaceful. He saw stars above, winking brighter through the clearing haze. He felt no pain, no fear, only a sense of astonishment that all his struggles, all his dreams, should come down to this moment at the water’s edge, with the stars shining down.

Then, as though from far away, he heard a sweet and familiar voice, and he saw Rose, her head framed by stars, as though she gazed down from the heavens.

“Is there nothing you can do?” she cried. “Please, Wendell, you must save him!”

Now he heard Wendell’s voice as well, and heard cloth rip as his shirt was torn open. “Bring the lamp closer! I must see the wound!”

Light spilled down in a golden shower, and as the wound was revealed, Norris saw Wendell’s expression, and read the truth in his eyes.

“Rose?” Norris whispered.

“I’m here. I’m right here.” She took his hand and leaned close as she stroked back his hair. “You’re going to be fine, darling. You’re going to get well, and we’ll be happy. We’ll be
so
happy.”

He sighed and closed his eyes. He could see Rose floating away from him, carried on the wind so swiftly that he had no hope of reaching her. “Wait for me,” he whispered. He heard what sounded like a distant clap of thunder, a lonely blast of gunfire that echoed through the gathering darkness.

Wait for me
.

Jack Burke yanked up the floorboard in his bedroom and frantically scooped out the money he had hidden there. His life’s savings, close to two thousand dollars, clattered into the saddlebag.

“What’re you doing, taking it all? Are you mad?” asked Fanny.

“I’m leaving.”

“You can’t take it all! That’s mine, too!”

“You don’t have a noose hangin’ over
your
head.” Suddenly his chin shot up and he froze.

Someone was pounding downstairs, on the door. “Mr. Burke! Mr. Jack Burke, this is the Night Watch. You will open this door at once!”

Fanny turned to go downstairs.

“No!” said Jack. “Don’t let them in!”

She looked at him with narrowed eyes. “What’d you do, Jack? Why’ve they come for you?”

Downstairs, the voice yelled: “We’ll break down the door if you don’t let us in!”

“Jack?” said Fanny.

“She’s the one did it!” said Jack. “She killed the boy, not me!”

“What boy?”

“Dim Billy.”

“Then let
her
go to the gallows.”

“She’s dead. Picked up the gun and shot herself with the whole world watchin’.” He rose to his feet and slung the heavy saddlebag over his shoulder. “I’m the one’ll be blamed for it all. Everything
she
paid me to do.” He headed for the stairs. Out the back way, he thought. Just saddle the horse and go. If he could get a few minutes’ head start, he could lose them in the dark. By morning, he’d be well on his way.

The front door crashed open. Jack froze at the bottom of the stairs as three men burst in.

One of them stepped forward and said, “You’re under arrest, Mr. Burke. For the murder of Billy Piggott, and the attempted murder of Rose Connolly.”

“But I didn’t—it wasn’t me! It was Mrs. Lackaway!”

“Gentlemen, take him into custody.”

Jack was hauled forward so roughly he stumbled to his knees, dropping the saddlebag on the floor. In an instant Fanny darted forward and snatched it up. She backed away, hugging the precious contents to her breasts. As the Night Watch yanked her husband back to his feet, she made no move to help him, said not a word in his defense. That was his last glimpse of her: Fanny greedily cradling his life’s savings in her arms, her face calm and impassive as Jack was led out the tavern door.

Sitting in the carriage, Jack knew exactly how it would all turn out. Not just the trial, not just the gallows, but beyond. He knew where the bodies of executed prisoners invariably ended up. He thought of the money he’d so carefully saved for his precious lead coffin with the iron cage and the gravesitter, all to defeat the efforts of resurrectionists like himself. Long ago, he’d promised himself that no anatomist would ever cut open his belly, hack at his flesh.

Now he looked down at his own chest and gave a sob. Already, he could feel the knife begin to cut.

It was a house in mourning and a house shamed.

Wendell Holmes knew that he was intruding upon the private agonies of the Grenville home, but he made no move to depart, and no one asked him to. Indeed, Dr. Grenville did not even seem to notice that Wendell was in the parlor, sitting quietly in the corner. Wendell had been a part of this unfolding tragedy from the beginning, and it was only fitting that he should be present now, to witness the end of it. What he saw, in the wavering firelight, was a broken Aldous Grenville hunched deep in a chair, with his head bowed in grief. Constable Lyons sat facing him.

The housekeeper, Mrs. Furbush, timidly entered the parlor with a tray of brandy, which she set down upon the end table. “Sir,” she said quietly, “I gave young Mr. Lackaway that draught of morphine you requested. He’s asleep now.”

Grenville said nothing, merely nodded.

Constable Lyons said to her: “And Miss Connolly?”

“She won’t leave the young man’s body, sir. I have tried to pull her away, but she stays by his coffin. I don’t know what we’ll do with her when they come to take him in the morning.”

“Leave her be. The girl has every reason to grieve.”

Mrs. Furbush withdrew, and Grenville said, softly: “As do we all.”

Lyons poured a glass of brandy and put it into his friend’s hand. “Aldous, you cannot blame yourself for what Eliza did.”

“I do blame myself. I didn’t
want
to know, but I should have suspected.” Grenville sighed and drank down the brandy in one gulp. “I knew she would do anything for Charles. But to
kill
for him?”

“We don’t know that she did it all herself. Jack Burke swears he’s not the Reaper, but he may have been involved.”

“Then she most certainly instigated it.” Grenville stared down at his empty glass and said softly, “Eliza always wanted to be the one in control, ever since we were children.”

“Yet how much control does a woman ever truly have, Aldous?”

Grenville’s head drooped, and he said softly: “Poor Aurnia had the least of all. I have no excuse for what I did. Only that she was lovely, so lovely. And I’m nothing but a lonely old man.”

“You tried to do the honorable thing. Take comfort in that. You engaged Mr. Wilson to find the child, and you were ready to provide for her.”

“Honorable?” Grenville shook his head. “The
honorable
thing would have been to provide for Aurnia months ago, instead of handing her a pretty necklace and walking away.” He looked up, torment in his eyes. “I swear to you, I didn’t know she was carrying my child. Not until the day I saw her laid open on the dissection table. When Erastus pointed out that she’d recently given birth, that’s when I realized I had a child.”