“I thought you left.” That’s all she could say once she reached him.
“I only made it as far as the ferry landing.”
“Why did you turn back?”
He took her hand in his. Three strokes of his thumb against her palm.
She sobbed with happiness, with terror. He had understood after all.
“I know I shouldn’t have come to you last night,” he said, “but I couldn’t stop thinking of you. So lovely. So fragile. I’ve loved you since I first saw you that day with your poor sparrow—I’d never felt so protective of anyone as I did in that moment.” He caressed her pale cheek. “I know I am older than you. I know I have a past that bears no honor. I have no immediate family. No home.”
“And I know I have a future that will only bring you sorrow,” she warned. “I’m unwell and unable to have children. I’ll die and destroy you.”
“But you’re alive now, as am I.” Hugh took a deep, shuddering breath before he gathered her in his arms, kissing her forehead, her neck, her cheeks beneath her bonnet. “I have nothing to offer but poems and birds and love. I will be the ruin of you.”
She brushed his hair from his brow. “Perhaps we’ll ruin each other then.”
He tilted her face toward his, touching her lips gently. A year later, he’d tell Ada he’d tasted death on them; he’d wanted to breathe life into her, as if to bring her back from tipping into oblivion. But by then naught could be done.
V.
The candle began to sputter against the conservatory floor. Robert looked up. Isabelle was shivering.
“Perhaps that’s enough for this evening, Miss Lowell.”
Isabelle shook her head. “Not yet, Mr. Highstead. But if you’re cold, we can return to the library. Here, let me help you up.”
Once they were settled anew in the library, Isabelle continued to speak as though there’d been no interruption.
* * *
Ada and Hugh exchanged vows in Calais a scant ten days later, a wedding in which Missus Dido was their only guest. To Ada’s surprise, her solicitor, Watkinson, had refused the match because she was underage: It would be remiss of me to allow you to marry someone of such dubious heritage, he wrote in a frosty letter. Nor shall I release the funds for it. Ever the problem solver, Hugh suggested they marry in France, where Ada’s age wasn’t a barrier, and contacted a distant cousin in Kent, a Mr. Bertram Highstead, for financial assistance. (Yes, your father, Mr. Highstead—no need to look so startled!) To avoid scandal, Hugh had insisted her guardian accompany them. “I suppose this is for the best,” Missus Dido had congratulated Hugh after the ceremony, her eyes mysteriously red. “With her money, you’ll be able to write all the poetry you want.”
For a wedding present, Hugh gave Ada a coat sewn of furs and a sheaf of poems, which he proudly announced were to soon be published as his second book; they’d been inspired by Wilhelm’s fairy tales. “Now the world will know you as I do, my love.”
Soon others circled the poor cold girl :
Bear and fox, lion and possum,
A mink draped in gold, a wolf jeweled in pearls.
‘Daughter, we’re here!’ they cried. ‘Have no qualm!
We’ll warm you like a coat sewn of fur.’
That first night, Hugh knelt beside the bed they were to share as husband and wife; she’d already blown out the candle, and was lying still as could be in her simple ivory nightdress, her hands pressed over her breast, unable to think of anything but what would happen next. Hugh did not stir from his knees for some moments. By then Ada knew him well enough to understand he could not be praying.
“Hugh?” she called out to him in the darkness; the room sounded empty and cold despite the fire blazing in the hearth. Though it was early May, death still weighed the air. “Come to bed.”
How strange to say this phrase so matter-of-factly.
“In a moment, my love.” He pressed his face against her hand. His cheeks were wet.
“Why are you weeping?” This was their wedding night; they were supposed to be happy. “Are you crying because we’ve left England?”
“No. I don’t care two figs about England—you’re my home now. My locus amoenus.” Later in their marriage, he’d tell her, “I was weeping because I fear you are going to die. Because I’ve married sorrow instead of you.”
But that night Hugh would not explain; he could not explain. Instead, he asked, “Are you cold, my love? You’ve gooseflesh on your arms. Will spring ever arrive? Come, let me warm you.”
He rose to spread the fur coat he’d given her over her form, so still and cool and beautiful on their nuptial bed—
VI.
“I can speak no more of this,” Isabelle said, a quaver in her voice.
Robert glanced up, startled, from his writing: the clock in the library showed close to eleven. Between their visit to the east wing and the telling of her story, he’d lost track of time. Upon their return to the library, Virgil had been waiting before the fireplace; now the dog slept curled peacefully at their feet. The fire had grown low, the embers grey. Even so, the heat singed Robert’s shoulders. When Isabelle had spoken of Ada and Hugh on their wedding night Robert had recalled Sida during theirs. To his dismay, his eyes were moist. Perhaps it was also the surprising mention of his father funding Ada and Hugh’s elopement—Robert had no idea of his involvement.
Robert trained his gaze toward the floor.
“I’ve shocked you.” Isabelle’s unbound hair shrouded her face in shadows. “You didn’t expect me to speak of their wedding night.”
Her voice was so soft, so hesitant, that Robert was compelled to lean in. She was right: he had been shocked. But he hadn’t stopped her, even when her voice slowed and she seemed to lose whatever vigor he’d witnessed during their walk to the east wing. Her story seemed a folie à deux they’d engaged in, like a folktale where the mortal was cursed to dance until dawn. How exhausted she appeared! How drained! He’d peer up periodically as she spoke, eager to witness any expression that might betray her identity. Now all he noticed were the purple shadows beneath her eyes, the slackened tilt of her mouth. She’d been possessed by her words as much as he’d been—at least until she’d arrived at Ada and Hugh’s wedding night.
Robert cracked his knuckles as he set down his pencil. A strange yearning rose from his stomach. He’d never see her again. Never truly know the entirety of her story.
She must be Ada How else would she know of such things? I must warn her about the pilgrims before I leave.
He didn’t. Instead, he said, “I should have stopped you from speaking. I sat here listening—”
“To a tale that should remain untold.” She wrapped her arms around her chest, rocking herself like a child. “I suppose I considered it remiss of me to leave any part out. After you confessed to me of your wife, I suppose I felt I could. I-I wanted you to have everything you need for my book.”
“I assure you a history is more than a collection of encounters,” was his stilted response.
“I did promise to tell you everything about Ada’s life. What of our agreement?”
“There’s no need to write something so . . . indecorous.”
“But I’m telling the truth about Ada’s story—”
“I don’t think so,” he said, no longer able to hold back. “I think it’s your story.”
Isabelle rose from her dais, her skirts swaying.
“I feel weary. Forgive me, Mr. Highstead—it must be the hour . . .”
Robert watched her make her way to the door, passing beneath the oil portrait of Ada with her sparrow. Isabelle’s pale hair fell below her waist, luminescent beneath candlelight. Her hair gilded with sunlight, like that Crivelli Saint Catherine. The sparrows settled along her shoulders. The blood on her handkerchief. He fought the urge to touch a tendril.
Tell her you’re leaving. About Missus Dido. Now.
Robert’s chest knotted. There was no putting it off.
He cleared his thr
oat to gain her attention. “I’m afraid this is our last night together, for I must leave in the morning. I must request my camera and end our agreement. Now that word is out of Hugh’s death, my brother deems it best I bury him in our family plot.”
Isabelle turned from the door. “What of your ankle? You were barely able to walk to the east wing.”
“I’ll manage.”
“Oh. I suppose returning is the wisest course.” She took two steps in his direction. “And so you’ll leave without your daguerreotypes.”
He wasn’t sure if she sounded triumphant or repentant. It mattered not: with her so close, his yearning to reunite Hugh with Ada seemed from another age—an age that ended the afternoon he’d come upon her on the moors shrouded in sparrows and sunlight.
“It appears so,” he answered.
She took another step. He drew a deep breath, still disconcerted by her story. Her presence. He could smell the hint of beeswax perfuming her skin.
The ground seemed to tilt beneath his feet.
She’s Ada.
He forced out, “Missus Dido. I must warn you—”
“Warn me?” she said. “I don’t want to speak of Missus Dido or any other part of my story. Not now.” She cocked her head. “I know our time together has not been tranquil, but I must confess I’ll miss you, Mr. Highstead.”
An uneasy laugh. “I’d assumed you’d be relieved to be rid of me.”
Another step. “It’s not that.”
“Because I won’t be able to finish your book?” He held up his journal. “I’ll mark up a few last notes before I go. I’m sure you can find someone to complete it.”
Again, Robert felt that peculiar pull toward her. Isabelle. Ada. No difference. Though the historian in him wished for more absolute proof than a too intimate knowledge of Hugh’s bedroom habits, he had no choice but to be satisfied.
“It’s not that either, Mr. Highstead.”
“What is it then?”
She wrapped a lock of her white hair around her finger. “What I wrote in my letter. You and I . . . well, we both suffer.”
Robert’s heart pounded. “I’m uncertain what you mean.”
A wan smile. “It’s like what we saw in the east wing, with the wicker, the white sheets. In a way, we’re both haunted by ghosts, aren’t we? You with your wife, myself with my aunt?”
With this, his vision of her gilded with sunlight and sparrows fled, along with his intent to warn her. He shouldn’t have spoken of Sida.
He grabbed the door handle and rushed out. She’d have to deal with Missus Dido and Tamsin Douglas on her own. Anyway, she couldn’t be Ada de Bonne—he’d only imagined this.
* * *
But Ada’s story would be told whether or not Isabelle would tell it.
While Robert slept, he found himself in that strange between-land that seems more real at times than waking life. In his dream, he was reunited with his camera, though he wasn’t in London. Instead, he was present in Ada and Hugh’s hotel room on their wedding night. Robert didn’t question why he was there, or what his intentions were, for he was immersed in that unquestioning logic only sleep can bear. For some reason he was convinced that if he could daguerreotype Ada he’d find proof of Isabelle’s identity.
Robert watched Ada seated before her piano, Hugh standing behind her. Hugh’s hands rested on her shoulders as music swept about them, reminding Robert of when he’d first heard Isabelle playing the Beethoven. A shelf above the piano held an array of daguerreotypes, like those he’d seen at Missus Dido’s. Their frames were adorned with small white roses instead of black crape.
The couple paid Robert no mind as he settled his tripod near them. Robert stared through the camera glass as Hugh guided Ada’s hands from the keyboard into his. He led his bride to their bed, upon which he’d draped the fur coat he’d given her for their wedding. Hugh kissed her neck as he laid her against the fur. He lifted her nightdress—it was an ivory silk, fancier than what Isabelle had described—to view his bride by candlelight. Her alabaster figure floated upside down on Robert’s lens like an angel.
Robert slid the copper plate into the camera’s belly.
Hugh slid the gossamer silk from Ada’s shoulders. He unpinned her long dark hair and settled the tresses about her pale body. He kissed her jutting ribs, fanning out like a cage over her heart. Her small, tight nipples crowning each of her breasts.
“Ada,” Hugh proclaimed, his voice husky with tenderness. “A name that is the same forward as it is backward. A conundrum I will never tire of.”
Robert looked away to pull the cap from the lens. He counted the seconds of exposure for the image to take. One, two, three, four . . .
Hugh stroked Ada’s brow, asking her if she felt feverish. “No, my darling,” she replied, meeting his gaze with a disconcerting certainty. Bereft of all her coverings, she appeared a corpse—still, white, pristine. Exquisite. Hugh bent over her, spreading her limbs with his hips. And then the corpse came to life: Ada’s colorless eyes blinked wide like a doll’s. Yet when Hugh asked if he should stop—to his credit, his concern for her was greater than his desire—she urged him to continue. Her fingers pressed against his shoulders, as though she feared he’d abandon her during this first act of intimacy, leaving her adrift without land in sight.
Robert bathed the daguerreotype in mercury vapors. He varnished the plate once it finished developing.
Once Hugh had finished—Ada had been startled at the sharp cry he’d made at the end—her tears spilled onto the pillow. This time, though, her tears were from pleasure rather than pain. She was happy to be right for once in her life. She’d sensed the possibility of what he could bring her when he’d come to her that night in Herne Bay. That there was something within her body she’d never suspected; a force stronger than disease, greater than death. Whether one called it love, desire, or lust, it existed as tangibly as those ghosts she’d sensed as a child.
Robert took a step closer, pulling his tripod with him. He readied a second copper plate. The couple still ignored him.
Suddenly Ada’s hair faded from dark to white. Embers to ash. Ash to snow.
Alarm possessed Hugh’s voice. “My sweet, what’s happening to you—”
* * *
“My sweet, what’s happening to you? Did you have a nightmare?”
Robert awoke with Sida’s face near his. She’d returned. Was he in Weald House or Clerkenwell? He couldn’t tell.
Robert rubbed his eyes. “Something like that.”
Ada. Her hair turning white like Isabelle’s. Her body possessed by Hugh’s . . . To lessen the hold of the dream, he reached for Sida and tried to think of other times. Happier times. That day in the woods, just after she’d painted that eye miniature. How he’d kissed the hem of her gown . . .
A slow smile spread across his face.
“You’re still here.” Since her death, he’d never woken up beside her; she usually disappeared before then.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” Sida rolled on top of him. Her dark hair surrounded him like a cascade of shadows.
Her lips were cold, her fingers too. Any attempt at language fell away as she reached down, cupping his genitals; he’d awakened aroused. “I love you.” He closed his eyes, shivering at each tug of her fingers against the buttons of his trousers—he’d been so exhausted he’d fallen asleep clothed and without packing. I’m still dreaming. Was he?
Her lips brushed against the tendons of his neck. He groaned and met her kiss as though he could bring her back to life through sheer will. Through desire.
Once they’d broken away, she murmured, “The more you love me, the more I live.”
Their determination to meet at the intersection of life and death seemed to succeed at first. Robert felt his wife’s ghost take on a corporality that had never occurred since her death. He’d watched her unlace her stays for him, terrified she’d disappear if he drew too close. When he finally dared to touch her, her skin prickled from the air, her cheek
s flushed. Her mouth parted, her rosy lips an O of entreaty. At last all he’d yearned for was before him—his wife, his beloved, turned to flesh anew. Yet he feared injuring her in some way he couldn’t understand. What was the protocol for sexual congress with the undead? Unsurprisingly, this wasn’t something discussed in Oxford.
“I love you,” he breathed into her ear once she was freed of all her layers. “Only you.”
“The more you love me—”
“I know,” he said, silencing her with a kiss.
He swept her into a tight embrace, pulling the length of her against him, her nipples pressing against his chest. His erection ached. He reached down, caressing the smooth skin of her stomach, her soft cleft. She parted against him. But when he thrust into her, she lapsed back into that intangible liminal state she’d inhabited since her death, leaving Robert’s limbs enveloped in a clammy fog. Worse, Sida seemed as confused as he was. As frustrated.
He tried again, pressing against the darkness between her legs. Again, her body slipped through his, dissolving into ether before materializing on the other side of the mattress.
Robert reached for her. “Sida—”
* * *
Robert awakened alone in the stable house, his shirt damp with sweat, the only sound in the room his breath.
Ada. Sida. Just a dream.
He lit the candle, took out the portrait of Sida. When that didn’t calm him, he splashed his face with cold water. The scab on his temple tingled at the contact. He hadn’t seen Sida in over a day. Had she returned to London? Perhaps she’d found John’s letter, or overheard him speaking to Isabelle regarding his departure.
Yet, to his infinite shame, his mind didn’t dwell long on Sida’s absence. All he could think of was Ada with her white hair. Entwined with Hugh. On that coat sewn of fur.
The Lost History of Dreams Page 22