by Hester Fox
She shook her head.
Exasperation edged his voice. “You, Tabby. The thought of you happy and in my arms.”
“Then let me petition the court,” she begged. “Let your mother rally her wealthy friends. There’s no need to sit here a moment longer. You have no shortage of resources to—”
“Tabby,” he said quietly.
“You could bribe the police!” she continued, heedless of his protest.
“Tabby.”
She finally stopped.
“Listen to me. There’s something else I need to tell you. Something I did, that, ah, I am not proud of. If you knew, then you would understand why I deserve my sentence.”
She frowned. “I know that you have a certain...colorful history,” she said diplomatically.
“It’s not that,” he said. “I know I was a bit of a cad. I kissed you when I was engaged, I left you alone when you were most vulnerable. And...”
She did not like where this was going. “Go on.”
“The thing is...” He rubbed at the back of his neck. “I may have told Billy—that is, Sergeant Hodsdon—about your...your ability. I may have leveraged it to help me escape.”
She could see sweat gathering at his temples despite the damp prison air. She waited for him to finish.
“I think... I think it was my fault that they found out about you and that you landed in Whitby’s hands.”
So Officer Hodsdon had found out about her from Caleb, not the séance. Tabby didn’t say anything, didn’t move a muscle. Not only had he not believed her when she’d told him, he betrayed her trust. How high her heart had soared, and now how quickly it plummeted.
“Please, say something,” he pleaded.
“What would you have me say?” She struggled to retain her composure, but her voice rose, her face growing hot. “You broke my trust, you sealed my fate by offering me up right to Mr. Whitby. I lost all hope. Do you know how close I was to taking my—” She cut herself short, biting down on her tongue and swiftly looking away.
Caleb took a step closer, but was stopped by the bars. His face was deadly serious. “How close you were to what, Tabby?”
“Nothing,” she mumbled, crossing her arms. “It doesn’t matter.”
He reached out a hand as if he would touch her, but then dropped it again with a heavy sigh. “It does matter, Tabby. You matter. What I did was terrible, unforgivable. I know that. If you can’t forgive me, I understand. But please know that what I did was out of my own miserable nature, and was not a reflection of you. You are a hundred times the person I could ever be, strong and loyal and loving. I—”
“Stop,” she said, cutting his pitiful speech short. “I don’t want to hear it anymore.”
She called for the warden. Her eyes stung with tears as she hurried away, heedless of Caleb calling after her.
* * *
Stupid man. Stupid, stupid man.
As soon as the prison expelled her onto the gray, slushy street, she began walking across the city to Beacon Hill. The sky was low and moody, a cold sting in the air that had men bundled up to their noses in thick mufflers, mothers holding their bundled children by mittened hands. Tabby had still not grown accustomed to walking without fear through the streets. Did the people she pass sense that she was different? Were her aunt and uncle still out there, looking for her?
One thing had not changed, though: Caleb still possessed the unique ability to drive her mad while simultaneously making her want to crawl into his arms and never let go. If he wanted to keep company with rats and drunkards as some sort of misplaced penance for the rest of his days in prison, that was his prerogative. But if he thought that Tabby was going to sit idly by, then he was mistaken. Him sitting in prison did Tabby no good. It didn’t bring Rose back. It didn’t erase the memories of the medical theater and the men leering at her. It didn’t erase the loneliness and crushing desperation of the past months. If he wanted to be a martyr, then he could do it out in the real world like everybody else.
* * *
Larson let Tabby in and showed her to the parlor. Mrs. Bishop sat in her chair, plucking listlessly at a loose thread on the arm of her chair. Her hair was thin and greasy, her coiffure unkempt.
“Hello, Mrs. Bishop,” Tabby said softly. “How are you?”
The older woman looked up at Tabby with glassy eyes, a vacant smile touching her lips. “You’ve come to see Caleb, haven’t you? I’m afraid he’s gone away and not likely to come back this time. He found his way back home, only to be arrested for his flight.”
“It’s you I’ve come to see, actually. About Caleb.”
Mrs. Bishop gestured vaguely to the sofa. Tabby had to push aside a pile of Caleb’s drawings to make room to sit. Measuring her words before she spoke, Tabby leaned forward. “You must know that I think rather highly of your son.”
At this, Mrs. Bishop looked up, some of the glassiness leaving her eyes. “I’ve always liked you, Tabby Cooke. My Caleb would be a fool if he didn’t, too.”
Tabby managed a small smile before continuing. “I tell you this because I think it’s possible for Caleb to be freed. He is innocent, after all, but he refuses to press his case, or even try for that matter.”
Mrs. Bishop had returned to picking at the thread, gazing sightlessly out the window. “I don’t know,” she said. “I just don’t know what to do. Thomas was the one who would know what to do in this situation, and that wretched Mr. Whitby was always the one to look after our legal affairs.”
“With all due respect, I believe you are more resourceful than you give yourself credit for. I was at the séance and saw for myself the influence you exert over the ladies in your circle.”
“Perhaps,” said Mrs. Bishop. She gave a heavy sigh. “But the business has all but collapsed in on itself. There simply isn’t the money.”
Tabby eyed the expensive furniture, the Oriental carpets, and lamps dripping with crystals. Mrs. Bishop followed her gaze. “It’s all bought on credit,” she said. “Every stick of furniture and piece of bread in the larder.” She buried her face in her handkerchief. “Why, I couldn’t even pay the grocer’s bill this month. Soon the creditors will come banging on the door, demanding their money, and then what shall I do?”
Tabby stood and crossed the room. She had come this far, and she wasn’t going to let Caleb brood about in prison while his mother withered away.
“What are you doing?” Mrs. Bishop watched as Tabby sat down at the writing desk in the corner, pulled out a sheaf of paper, and dipped the pen into ink.
“I’m writing a letter to the good ladies of the Benevolent Society,” she said, as she began to pen her missive. She thought of something. “And the ladies at the temperance coffeehouse.”
Buttermilk jumped up beside Tabby to supervise. “What can they do? We are just women,” Mrs. Bishop said with a sniff.
“We can accomplish quite a lot.” Tabby scribbled as fast as she could despite her poor penmanship and the wet, splotchy ink.
Mrs. Bishop’s interest had finally been piqued, and Tabby could feel her come up behind her and read over her shoulder. Buttermilk’s purring filled the silence until Mrs. Bishop finished reading. “Another séance? I’m sorry, my dear, but what will that achieve?”
Tabby sprinkled the wet ink with sand before reading over her work.
Mrs. Dorothea Bishop Humbly requests Your Presence
For an evening of Spiritualism & Mystery
With the medium Miss Tabitha Cooke
Private readings available for a small fee.
* * *
The replies to the invitations came flying back. After Tabby’s first performance exposing Minerva Bellefonte, every lady in Boston was eager to have a private reading, and paid generously for it. With Alice and Mary-Ruth’s help, Tabby transformed Mrs. Bishop’s parlor, draping silks over the lamps until the room
glowed with otherworldly elegance. Larson circulated the parlor with trays of cakes, and Tabby offered discreet readings to one lady at a time behind a screen. At the end of the night they had raised a stunning one hundred and forty dollars—more than enough to retain the best lawyer in Boston. Caleb would be a free man yet, whether he wanted to or not.
35
IN WHICH THE LIVING LIVE HAPPILY EVER AFTER,
AND THE DEAD REST IN PEACE.
SKELETAL TREES FEATHERED against a gray sky, and a cold, fine mist hung suspended in the air. In its own stark way, December in the cemetery was no less beautiful than spring, and equally full of life. Squirrels darted between the stones, birds huddled on icy branches, quietly chirping, and three young women stood bundled against the gloom, as solemn as a funeral.
“This is the one,” Tabby said, pointing at the overgrown crypt with rusty hinges. She had given Alice the broadest strokes of how she had survived those first days, trying to paint it more as an adventure than as the harrowing experience it had been.
Mary-Ruth trailed a respectful distance behind them. Every once in a while, Alice would look back over her shoulder at her, and when Tabby asked her what she was smiling about, she only smiled the more.
Alice shook her head. “I never thought that you would make a home for yourself amongst the dead, not after what we went through in Amherst.” She stepped around a crumbling stone covered in lichen as they moved away from the crypt. “Are you sure that you want to stay here?”
“It’s the only home I know. Besides, with Eli retiring, someone will need to look after this place. There aren’t many burials here anymore, but there are plenty of souls who still need to be remembered.” She glanced over to the far end of the cemetery, where a sea of unmarked men and women were buried, abused and enslaved in life, and quietly forgotten by all but Eli and a few others in death. Perhaps she could learn their names, their stories, make sure that they were always remembered.
“And how will you get by? Mary-Ruth told me that you were embroidering and doing watching.”
Tabby had been worrying over just this predicament. “I was thinking,” she said slowly, “of using my sight.” At Alice’s horrified expression, she hurried on. Her sister had been skeptical of the séance at Mrs. Bishop’s house, saying she worried that it would take too great a toll on Tabby. “I wouldn’t charge a lot of money, and only to people who can afford it. If there are messages I can pass on to the poor bereaved, then I shall always do so free of charge. But there are plenty of well-to-do people who would pay good money for the benefit of my gift,” she said. And it was a gift, even if it had always felt like a burden, a secret shame. Even if men tried to exploit it and use it for their own selfish means. She could use it to help people, and the thought gave her comfort. She and her sister could rent some rooms together, maybe with Mary-Ruth, and provide the bereaved and curious with messages from the other side for a small price. For as much as Tabby had always feared and abhorred speaking with the dead, she had done so out of necessity many times in the past months, and so long as she was in control, it had lost some of the terror of those early days.
She threw Alice a sidelong look. “And what about you? Do you think you would use your sight?”
Alice had always been quiet about her gift, holding it close to her chest, just as Tabby had hers. Her aunt and uncle had never suspected that Alice was any different than Tabby, that she was simply following Tabby’s lead at those terrible séances. They never suspected that Alice’s gift was a different sort of rare jewel. God only knew what they would have done if they had.
Sighing, Alice pulled her cloak tighter around her and stared down the misty hill. “I don’t know.” She paused, worrying at the ribbon of her hood. “There are dark times ahead for this country in the near future.”
A shiver ran down Tabby’s spine, but she dared not ask what Alice meant. She’d rather the future remain a mystery. If what Alice saw was truly terrible and came to pass, then she was at least glad that she would have her sister by her side.
She was just about to tell Alice as much, when the sound of voices and footsteps made her look up. Mary-Ruth was speaking to someone. Someone she recognized instantly.
Her heart sped up, the sounds of the city fell away, and suddenly it wasn’t a cold, foggy day in December, but that soft spring night all those years ago when the most dashing man had stumbled into her world of death and darkness, bringing with him light and hope.
The last she had heard, the lawyer was working to have Caleb’s sentence commuted for time served. She had assumed it would take months, perhaps even years. But here he was after only a few days.
Alice followed her line of sight and gave a small smile. “He’s a good man,” she said. “I wasn’t sure about him at first, but he proved himself when it mattered the most.”
It was all Tabby could do to nod. He was a good man, if impulsive and reckless. After all, he had risked everything to come back. But his betrayal was still a fresh wound. She had wanted him out of prison for his mother’s sake, but now as she watched him approaching, she realized how many things she wanted to say to him.
Alice squeezed Tabby’s hand. “I’ll leave you alone.”
Tabby watched as her sister linked arms with Mary-Ruth and walked along the fenced perimeter of the cemetery, their heads bent together. A moment later Caleb was approaching her, hesitation in his step.
It took everything in her not to run to meet him and throw her arms around him and hungrily inhale his scent that had lingered on the edges of her memory these past months.
He came to an abrupt stop a few feet in front of her, his hat in his hands, his hair tousled and damp from the harbor breeze.
“My mother told me what you did.”
Tabby managed a shrug. “It was nothing.”
“You know very well that it was not nothing. You’ve saved me, three times now. First, when I was a scared young lad. Again when you warned me of Mr. Whitby and persuaded me to escape. And now by rallying her wealthy friends.”
When she didn’t say anything, Caleb continued. “The shipping business is dead. After the scandal with my arrest and escape, and now its association with Whitby, no one will touch it.”
“Oh,” she said, trying not to let her surprise at the abrupt change of subject show on her face.
Caleb shrugged. “I certainly can’t say I’m sorry. I thought perhaps I might try my hand at architectural design.” He gave her a shy look. “It’s always been an interest of mine.”
So he would return to Scotland, to the freedom of pursuing his dreams. “I saw your sketches at your house. They were very good,” she said grudgingly.
Pink touched the tips of his ears and he cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Ah, yes. My mother is inordinately proud of anything I sign my name to.”
Above them, a crow rasped a call into the damp air, taking flight, and they lapsed into silence. Frigid mud was seeping into her boots, her toes growing numb.
“Tabby...” he started, before trailing off and scrubbing his hand through his fair stubble. He tried again. “Look, here’s how it stands. I don’t want to wait another ten years to see you again, or ten days for that matter. I don’t want to think of you wandering this cemetery like some sort of spirit, worrying about you and if you’re all right.”
She opened her mouth to assure him that she might have once been a lost spirit, but that she’d found a family, made a life for herself. As if reading her thoughts, he hurried on.
“I know that your sister is here now and you have Mary-Ruth and Eli. I know you have no need of a man, let alone a useless man like me, but I just need you to know that I would do anything to make you happy and lift your burdens from you. I would do anything just to catch a glimpse of you every day and would cross a thousand more oceans if it meant being with you. What I did was unforgivable, but I hope you can endeavor to forgive me all t
he same.”
His words washed over her, but it was like waiting for the thunder clap that followed lightning, and she dared not let out her breath until she was sure of what he was saying.
“Please say something,” he said, his eyes imploring. “I’ve never stood before the woman of my heart and given an impassioned speech before and I’m not sure I’ve done even a passable job at it.”
“Of course you’ve done a passable job at it,” she said bitterly. “Pretty words are your strength. But I need more than words. I think... I think you should go.”
He opened his mouth, but then must have thought better of whatever he was about to say, and just nodded. “I understand.” Turning, he replaced his hat, and began walking away.
He had hurt her. He had done what she always feared, and yet as his figure grew smaller, all she could think of was how much she wanted to be walking hand in hand beside him. Perhaps he would hurt her again, but what love, what happiness, might she miss if she did not give him another chance? She didn’t want to love him. It was inconvenient at best, and downright destructive at worst. But she couldn’t deny the truth any longer.
“Wait! Caleb,” she called after him. “Wait.”
Stopping, he slowly turned around. She ran as fast as her numb toes would allow her to until she was right in front of him, her breath coming in short puffs that evaporated on the warmth of his coat. “Wait,” she said again. “I don’t care.” At his hopeful expression, she hurried on. “Well, I do care. I care very much. You betrayed my trust, but what’s more important, you didn’t believe me. I need to know that you would have believed me anyway, if not for what happened at Harvard. I need to know that you will take me seriously, and that I can trust you.”
He nodded so vigorously that his hat nearly fell off again. “I will. I can.”
“Good,” she said. “You have a lifetime to prove your words with actions.”
He looked at her, his eyes alighting with hope. “You’ll have me, then?”