The Orphan of Cemetery Hill

by Hester Fox

  Her last day at home had stretched into a week, then two, as the cooler winds of autumn swept away the sweet, grassy summer evenings. Every morning she awoke from her fitful sleep, determined that it would be the day she finally left and disappeared into some anonymous city. But where would she go? She’d had the lie about a cousin in Rockport at the ready, but hadn’t actually thought about where she would go. Eli hadn’t said anything as each day she sat inside, tense and withdrawn.

  Tabby poked at her johnnycakes. For all the thoughts swirling in her head about Mr. Whitby, there was something about his motive for killing Rose that didn’t sit right with her. How did he know that Rose and Caleb would have argued that night? And why would a rich man like him get his hands dirty? If Caleb were to be hanged, would the shipping business actually revert to Mr. Whitby? It was a convoluted and precarious plan, and Mr. Whitby struck her as anything but.

  Eli set down his fork with a sigh and leaned his elbows on the table. “You’re not eating. You need to eat.”

  Tabby gave a weak smile and skewered some of the cake on her fork and made an effort to lift it to her mouth. “Just tired,” she said.

  He gave her a long look. “There was a prison break last night,” he said finally. “Mrs. Hodge told me when I paid the rent this morning.”

  Tabby stopped chewing, the johnnycake turning to ash in her mouth. “Oh?”

  “Caleb Bishop.” Eli’s gaze was still trained on her, as if he could see every half-truth and secret she was keeping from him. “He created some kind of havoc and then slipped clean away. Gave a guard a good lumping on the head.”

  Slipped clean away. So, Caleb was gone. A light rain was starting to fall, pattering against the window and turning the world inside small and quiet. Would she ever see him again? Was he somewhere safe at least? Good, she reminded herself; it was better this way. A dangerous temptation had been removed. He was nothing but trouble, and the farther away he was, the better. But then why was there an entirely new and unwelcome ache in her chest? It seemed that the great ocean of time had claimed yet another person she cared about, and that she was destined to sail alone through life.

  As if reading her thoughts, Eli broke the silence. “Do you ever think of marriage, Tabby?”

  She nearly choked. “Marriage?” she asked weakly.

  “You’re almost twenty-four, a full-grown woman. Now, I’d keep you here with me forever if I could, but that’s no life for you.”

  “I—I hadn’t given it much thought.”

  That was only partly true. She hadn’t given it any thought until she’d recognized the young man with chestnut hair standing beside an open crypt. Since then she’d had many vivid—very vivid—thoughts about what it would be like to marry one man in particular. But the golden fantasies quickly turned to dust when she tried to envision day-to-day life with a rakish young man. He would irritate her to no end with his careless behavior. Besides, who said that he even would have wanted to marry her? Kisses and smoldering gazes were one thing, but young men like Caleb traded in those as easily as breathing. Never mind that he came from a different world, a world of plenty, a world of sparkling ladies and sumptuous entertainments. Never mind that he thought her a fraud and a liar. He was gone now, and she was still Curious Tabby. She would never know what it was like to take vows, never know the warm, satisfying weight of a baby in her arms, never know what it was to be loved unconditionally.

  Eli gave a sigh, folding his napkin and pushing back his chair. “I know I’m not the family you wanted or needed, but I want to do right by you, see you happy. And settled. I won’t be around for—”

  “Don’t say it,” Tabby begged, a sob choking in her throat. “Please.” His hair was turning grayer, his stoop more pronounced, but like the death’s heads etched in stone in the cemetery, she wanted him to stay the same forever, to never leave her. In that moment she vowed that she would not let Mr. Whitby get anywhere near Eli and the little life they had built together, even if it meant she could never see her father again.

  After she’d kissed Eli on the cheek and watched him shuffle across the street to the cemetery, she went to her room and locked the door behind her. It was dark and gray, the soft September rain still falling outside. Crouching before her bed, she pulled out her carpet bag, the one she hadn’t used since she’d run away with Alice, and began piling her few belongings inside it. When it was full, she perched on the edge of her bed, paralyzed by the enormity of what she had to do next. Hours passed as she watched the weak shadows on the wall fade into nothing.

  The sky was growing dark, and Eli would be back soon. It was now or never. There was no cousin in Rockport, nowhere to turn. The old feeling of desolation flooded over her. She was to be a runaway again, an orphan without a home.

  Taking up her bag, Tabby closed the door to the little room in the eaves. She folded a note addressed to Eli and left it on his place at the table. She couldn’t tell him everything, but she could tell him that she loved him, and that she would see him again someday. Then she walked down the creaking boarding house steps for the last time, and emerged out into the world, a lost child once again.

  * * *

  Caleb stood on the deck of the ship, salty wind whipping his hair and biting into his cheeks. The cold air felt good, refreshing, after weeks in the hold with his head in a bucket. It’d been nothing short of a miracle that he’d gotten passage on a ship at all, given that all he had to offer was his labor (which he’d been unable to perform given the whole head in the bucket situation) and a promise of payment on docking (which he was still not sure how he would provide).

  He hadn’t been able to return home to pack anything or to say good-bye to his mother. When it was safe to do so, he would write to her from his new home. Perhaps Tabby would visit her and reassure her, calm her. Poor old dear, he’d certainly made a hash of everything, and his mother would be suffering the consequences.

  Home. The word should have brought his smart brick house on Beacon Hill to mind. It should have brought images of the stuffy Bishop office where he’d spent so many long hours since he was a boy. But it was Tabby’s cloudy eyes looking up into his, seeing more in him than anyone else ever had, the soft touch of her lips, that filled his thoughts.

  He’d known he couldn’t say good-bye to her, but he’d gone to the hill anyway and stood outside the dark cemetery, staring up at the top floor of the boarding house. He’d just wanted to get a glimpse of her, even if it was no more than a silhouette passing the window. But he hadn’t seen her there. Instead he’d found her standing beneath a tree in the cemetery, gazing out toward the harbor and looking as lovely and ethereal as the day he had met her. It had nearly been his undoing, watching her from behind the gate, so close and yet not being able to go to her. But it would have been too dangerous, for both of them. For her because she would have been complicit in his escape. For him because he knew if he wrapped his arms around her, he would never be able to let go. After weeks at sea with nothing to do but think, he found that he didn’t care that she had lied to him about her motive for trying to help him. Perhaps she even believed her own delusion, and was convinced that she could speak with the dead.

  By the time Caleb roused himself out of his reverie, his skin was wet and cold, his hair plastered to his head, and the outline of the English coast had appeared through a bleak layer of fog.

  16

  IN WHICH THE DYING GAIN A NEW COMPANION.

  TABBY SLIPPED OUTSIDE into the mild, rainy dusk. She paused before the cemetery gates, the fresh scent of damp earth and honeysuckle filling the air. The cemetery, which had always felt like a sanctuary from the bustling world of the living, now was the most dangerous place she could be.

  If she had had time, and if Eli had not been there, she would have gone inside, bid farewell to some of her favorite stones. She would have lingered at the Bishop crypt, where she had spent her first nights as a runaway, and
where she had reunited with Caleb all those years later. But there was no time, and she could not risk seeing Eli again for fear that she would lose her nerve. She had already slipped out to walk through the cemetery the other night, and had felt as if someone had been watching her.

  Turning, she began walking down the hill. She had decided to accept Mary-Ruth’s offer to be a watcher for Boston’s dying. While she didn’t relish the idea of spending time with those near death, she would need the money to start a new life far away from Boston and Mr. Whitby. The orders for mourning embroideries were few and far between, and did not bring in much. Watching would be a small thing; she could provide comfort to the dying, and perhaps even send money to Eli to help with expenses at the same time.

  Tabby found Mary-Ruth in a shabby tenement in the west end of the city, hovering over a partially covered corpse. In the corner, two little chubby-faced boys in torn and dingy smocks watched solemnly. When Mary-Ruth saw Tabby she sprang up, her ministrations forgotten. “You’re back!” Throwing her arms around Tabby, she squeezed her so tight that Tabby thought her ribs might crack. “I was worried sick about you. Where have you been?”

  “I was visiting with a cousin,” she said weakly.

  Mary-Ruth gave her a long look before turning to the little boys and bending down to offer them a penny. “Why don’t you two take this to Greene’s and pick out a sweet to share.”

  When the boys had shyly accepted the coin and scampered out of the grimy room that served as both kitchen and parlor, Mary-Ruth picked up her sponge again and began gently dabbing dirt and blood away from the body. The woman on the table might have been anywhere from twenty-five to fifty, so careworn was her face, so sunken her eyes. “Childbirth,” Mary-Ruth said without looking up. “Poor woman lost too much blood as well as the babe, and now there’s two little boys with only a drunk father to raise them.”

  They fell into respectful silence as Mary-Ruth worked. Finally, she put down the sponge and turned around. “You don’t have a cousin, and you wouldn’t have gone all the way to Rockport without telling me first.” When Tabby didn’t say anything else, she sighed. “Well, you don’t have to tell me, but you might have at least given me the courtesy of letting me know before you disappeared off the face of the earth.”

  “I’m sorry,” Tabby said, but she did not offer any more details about the past weeks or why she had been hiding at home.

  Mary-Ruth moved around the body, rubbing it down with a silk cloth as carefully as if she were polishing marble, while Tabby stood in awkward silence.

  “I’ve been thinking, and...” Tabby toed at the worn carpet with her shoe, trying to put her words in order. “I’d like to do some watching.”

  Mary-Ruth’s eyes lit up, any lingering sourness about Tabby’s lies evaporating. “Oh, that’s such good news! You’ll be wonderful at it, and I’ll get to see more of you.”

  Tabby wasn’t as enthusiastic, but she managed a smile. The hours would be long and fraught, giving her mind time to wander to all those places she tried to avoid: spirits, death, and now Caleb. But at least she would always have a place at night, so long as she had a patient to watch.

  “You know,” Mary-Ruth said without looking up, “I saw that Caleb Bishop the other week.”

  Tabby’s chest went tight. “You saw him?”

  “I have to say, Tabs, I don’t know that I trust him.” Mary-Ruth slid her a sideways look.

  Tabby worried at her lip. “When did you see him exactly? What did he say?”

  “During my search of the city for you, after you never came for the laying out. When I informed him that you were missing, he acted surprised.”

  So, before he had escaped. Tabby desperately wanted an account of every word Caleb had uttered, but something in Mary-Ruth’s closed expression told her that she would only get half the story.

  “Now he’s the one missing,” Tabby said gloomily.

  Mary-Ruth shot her a look. “What do you mean?”

  “He escaped from prison.”

  “Escaped from prison!” Mary-Ruth straightened from her washing and wrung out the sponge in the basin. “I knew it. They must be convinced of his guilt in the Hammond case. I can’t say I’m sorry to hear that. I only hope that they catch him quickly.”

  “He didn’t have anything to do with it!” Tabby’s words came out more forcefully than she intended. She took a deep breath. “It was his father’s business partner, a Mr. Whitby. That’s where I was... I found evidence that implicated him in the murder, and he caught me. I only just managed to escape with my skin.”

  “Tabby, you didn’t!” Mary-Ruth looked over her shoulder as if worried that the corpse might hear. “Is it safe for you to be out around the city? Do you think he’ll come after you, looking for Mr. Bishop?”

  Tabby closed her eyes. She was so weary of running and hiding her entire life, of being afraid. “I don’t know,” she said. “But it’s likely, so don’t tell anyone.”

  She stood and threw one last glance at the corpse on the table. “Next time there’s need for a watcher, send for me. And whatever you do, don’t go near Eli. The last thing I want is for him to know anything about this.”

  17

  IN WHICH AN OLD FOE IS FACED AND A FRAUD EXPOSED.

  TABBY SLUNK THROUGH the city, hating that she felt like a rat, clinging to the shadows and scurrying with her head down. She despised Mr. Whitby for everything he had done, and what he had reduced her to. It was risky to go to the Bishop house, when she knew Mr. Whitby to be a visitor there on occasion, but as with Eli, she just needed to see Mrs. Bishop once more before disappearing.

  As she neared the house, a line of carriages with stomping horses at the curb greeted her. Mrs. Bishop often had other callers, but this looked as if she was hosting a party or one of those fashionable charitable events. So long as Mr. Whitby wasn’t in attendance, she would go and give her regards to Mrs. Bishop and then be on her way.

  Larson, the butler, greeted her at the door and took her cloak and bonnet.

  “What’s all this?” she asked. “Is Mrs. Bishop having a party?”

  Larson shook his head and glanced over his shoulder into the house before he leaned down to whisper to her. “Not a party—a séance.”

  “A séance?” A heavy, sour pit formed in Tabby’s stomach. “Why?”

  The butler shrugged. “I believe it’s a fashionable pastime for ladies these days.”

  Her heart began to beat a dreadful alarm of Run. Run. Run. But Tabby forced herself to ask, “Do...do you know the name of the medium?”

  “It’s a Mrs. Bellefonte.”

  All the air went out of Tabby’s lungs, and vivid memories that she thought had disappeared long ago flashed through her mind: sharp backhanded slaps that sent her stumbling to the ground; dark, airtight cupboards where she was forced to spend hours until she would submit to opening her mind; meager meals of porridge and sour milk.

  She should go, turn around and flee. But what could they do to her here? She had to see them, or she would never be able to breathe easy again. “Do you know,” she said to Larson, “I think I will keep my bonnet after all. Is Mr. Whitby in attendance?”

  “No, miss. Ladies only today.”

  Pulling her bonnet low over her face and wishing she’d worn a veil, Tabby allowed Larson to admit her to the large drawing room. The drapes had been drawn, and the opulent room was dim and stuffy. Mrs. Bishop was large and resplendent in the billowing black taffeta of her widow’s weeds as she conferred in low tones with a group of other ladies.

  Tabby easily blended into the small gathering of women in somber colors and veils, who no doubt hoped that the famed medium would have a message for them from their loved ones.

  How had her aunt carried it off? She didn’t have a stitch of clairvoyance, and Tabby doubted that she had developed any in the past ten years, yet somehow she had ma
naged to become a notable medium.

  A maidservant moved about the room with a silver tray, loaded with dainty cakes and finger sandwiches. Putting aside her tea and standing up, Mrs. Bishop cleared her throat. “Ladies, we will be beginning shortly. If you would all be so good as to take a seat.” She gestured to three rows of chairs facing a circular table draped in a long cloth.

  Excited murmurs rippled through the group as ladies in voluminous layers of petticoats swept over to the chairs and lowered themselves. How many of them were here not because they wanted to contact a loved one, but merely for the morbid entertainment of the spectacle?

  Taking a seat in the back, Tabby breathed slowly and evenly as the lamps were lowered. The room took on a hazy glow, the building anticipation of the women making the air thick and expectant.

  A door off to the side opened, and a petite woman in all black glided in. The lady next to Tabby leaned over to her and whispered, “She’s so small! I had imagined she would be tall and slender. I have never seen her in person, but my brother saw her do a demonstration and said that it put to rest any doubts he had about the existence of an afterlife.”

  Tabby couldn’t respond; she was too transfixed on the diminutive form of her aunt, seating herself at the table. Was this the same woman who had instilled such bone-deep terror in Tabby as a child? Had she always been so small? Her uncle was nowhere to be seen, but he would probably be off to the side somewhere, orchestrating whatever tricks they would have to use.