Tried

by Jan Burke

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  little birds

  the abbey ghosts

  unharmed

  the mouse

  1871

  TYLER HAWTHORNE WALKED THROUGH THE BUFFALO cemetery in the hours past midnight, his large black dog at his side. Recent reports of grave robbers made the Forest Lawn superintendent glad of his help. When he’d approached the superintendent to offer his aid, the man had believed he was meeting Dr. Tyler Hawthorne III, who was the spit and image of his father, and how the dog bred true as well!

  Tyler’s first visit to Buffalo had been in the summer of 1834, as part of a group of doctors who came to the city to volunteer their services during a cholera outbreak. It was a good thing that the superintendent wasn’t around then, for seeing a man who also appeared to be identical to his own “grandfather” might be too much.

  The fact that Tyler, who looked twenty-four now, had been born before the end of the previous century, and his dog untold centuries before then, would be held to be impossible by that gentleman.

  Tyler was a Messenger, able to take the hand of a person at death’s door and hear thoughts they could not speak. He would then convey these last messages to the person’s loved ones, or to whomever they wished him to give the information. Each also told him where he would next be needed. And so he had returned to Buffalo. He did not age, recovered rapidly from any injury, and other than brief bouts of fever associated with his work, suffered no illness.

  The autumn night was mild, a lovely night to stroll through the Forest Lawn Cemetery. This was one of the relatively new “rural cemeteries” in the United States. Although established within large cities, they provided park-like settings for burials. They were a change from the usual practice of burying the dead on one’s own family land, or in a lot next to a church, or a potter’s field. Those traditional burying grounds were thought of as places to be avoided and often became neglected.

  The first cemetery created as a pastoral ideal was Père-Lachaise, established near Paris in 1804, when Tyler was still fully mortal, although he had not visited it until after Waterloo, when he had changed. Tyler had taken Shade there in 1820.

  Shade, a cemetery dog, had a special concern for the resting places of the dead and the care of graves. He needed to roam among burial grounds on a regular basis. Tyler and the dog had been together more than half a century now, and while Tyler didn’t fully understand all the complexities of Shade’s needs and powers, he could tell that this new form of cemetery met with the dog’s approval.

  Père-Lachaise had been immediately popular—and imitated. This new form of cemetery had started appearing in the United States in the early 1830s. Buffalo had started this one about twenty years ago, the result of need. In 1849, another cholera epidemic had cost 877 lives here in the city, and although all the dead were interred, it placed a strain on the city’s resources for burial grounds. Two years later, a visionary citizen, attorney Charles E. Clarke, had bought eighty acres of farmland from Erastus Granger and designated it as a cemetery.

  Clarke soon bought more land for Forest Lawn and began to make the improvements that created this beautiful park for the dead, a place where the living could come to remember and reflect—or enjoy it as place to ride or stroll, as many did. Unlike the previous practice of only arranging for a burial place at the time of death, lots were purchased in advance. The distinguished gentlemen of the all-volunteer Forest Lawn Cemetery Association ensured that funds collected were used solely for the care and protection of the grounds and enriched no individual.

  At this hour, although two other attendants roamed another part of the cemetery, Tyler and Shade were alone in this section of the hilly grounds. Suddenly Shade stiffened. His ears pitched forward and his hackles rose. He gave a low, soft growl.

  Tyler came to a halt. Shade protected him, but the dog seldom growled at living beings.

  In the next moment, the air was filled with what he at first took to be bats, then saw were small birds, of a type Tyler had never seen so far inland. “Mother Carey’s chickens,” he said, using the sailors’ name for them. Storm petrels. “What are they doing here?”

  The birds fluttered above him, then a half dozen dropped to the ground before Shade in a small cluster. The scent of the sea rose strongly all about him, as if someone had transported him to the deck of a ship.

  Shade stared hard at them as they cheeped frantically, then the dog relaxed into a sitting position.

  The other petrels flew away. No sooner had they gone than the six before him were transformed into the ghostly figures of men.

  They were forlorn creatures, gray-faced and looking exactly as what they must be, drowned men. Their uniforms proclaimed two as officers, the other four as sailors, all but one of the British navy.

  Shade’s demeanor told him that these ghosts—unlike some others—would be no threat to him.

  “May I be of help to you?” Tyler asked.

  “Captain Hawthorne?” the senior officer asked.

  “I believe the rank belongs more rightly to you,” Tyler said. “I was a captain in the British army many years ago, but I sold out after Waterloo.”

  “Yes, sir,” the captain said, “I understand. If I may introduce myself to you, I am Captain Redding, formerly of the Royal Navy. Lost at sea in about your—your original time, sir.”

  They exchanged bows.

  “You are a Messenger?” Captain Redding asked.

  “Yes.”

  “We are all men who drowned at sea. Many of those in the flock you called ‘Mother Carey’s chickens’ are indeed just that. We come from many nations, taken by that sea witch Mother Carey, yet death has made us all birds of a feather. Little birds tell other little birds news of those such as yourself, and speak of Shade as well.”

  The dog gave a slight wag of his tail in acknowledgment.

  The captain went on. “The midshipman we bring to you is an American. Hails from here in Buffalo. We approach you on his behalf.” He turned to the man. “Step forward, Midshipman Bailey, and tell the captain your story, for we’ve not much time left.”

  “Aye, sir.” The midshipman gave Tyler a small bow. “Thank you, sir. If you would be so kind to visit my sister, who lies dying not far from here. In the asylum, sir. The good one. We’ve all of us in her family done her a grave injustice.” He looked down at his feet. “Many injustices.”

  “When were you lost at sea?” Tyler asked gently.

  “Eight years ago, sir, in ’63. In the War Between the States. Would have done more for my country if Zeb Nador hadn’t pushed me overboard in a storm.”

  “Do you ask me to seek justice for you?”

  “Not necessary for me, Nador’s in the county jail here and will face trial for murdering someone else. He’ll hang as well for that one as for what he did to me.”

  Tyler was about to try to say something to comfort him, unsure what that might be, when one of the other men whispered, “Hurry!”

  Midshipman Bailey nodded, then said, “Will you go to her, sir? Her name is Susannah. She needs you tonight. And if you’d tell her Andrew sent you to her, and that she was always the best of his sisters, and that he sees things clearer now, and hopes to one day rest at her side—”

  “Hurry!” the captain ordered.

  “Well, sir, I’d take i
t as a great kindness.”

  “I would be honored to do so, Midshipman Bailey.”

  “Thank you!” he said, and had no sooner whispered these words than all six men again transformed into small birds and rose from the ground. They circled in the air above him, where they were joined again by the larger flock. He had thought they would begin their long journey back to the sea, but they surprised him by surrounding him and the dog.

  Quite clearly, he heard hundreds of voices whisper to him at once, “Storm’s coming!”

  And they were gone.

  Shade immediately headed toward the nearest gate at a brisk trot. He glanced back at Tyler in impatience. Tyler hurried to catch up.

  “There is more than one asylum, you know. The closest is still under construction, which leaves Providence Lunatic Asylum and the Erie County Almshouse—”

  It wasn’t hard to read the next look he received.

  “I apologize. Yes, Sister Rosaline Brown’s would be the ‘good one.’ And of course you will know the way and of course you will be admitted, although large black dogs, as a rule . . .”

  Shade wagged his tail.

  Providence Lunatic Asylum was operated by the Sisters of Charity, who had previously established a hospital in Buffalo. They had arrived in the city just in time to deal with the early cholera epidemics and were considered heroes by many. In 1860, horrified by conditions in the Erie County Almshouse and Insane Asylum, Sister Rosaline Brown started the asylum, which attempted a more humane treatment of the insane.

  The dog paused at the small building closest to the cemetery’s main gate. Tyler understood what he was meant to do. Hailing the man who was keeping watch, Tyler said, “A severe storm is coming. Please call the other men in.”

  “Storm?” the man said, bewildered.

  “Yes, it’s calm now, but I just saw a flock of storm petrels. Sea birds. The only reason they’d be this far inland is if a hurricane had blown them here.”

  He bid the man a quick good night and wondered if he would heed the warning.

  In the next moment the wind came up, and trees began to rustle and sway. Shade leaped into the gig Tyler had left tied at the gate. Tyler glanced over his shoulder and saw the watchman gather a large lantern, and soon heard him calling out to the others.

  “WHY, DOCTOR! I WAS JUST ABOUT TO SEND A BOY OUT TO FIND you!” the porter said. He peered out at the downpour. “Where’d all that come from, I’d like to know? Come in, come in out of the rain. You, too, Shade.”

  Once he closed the door behind them, he said, “The sisters are doing their best, but Miss Bailey has been asking and asking for you and the dog, which is passing strange, because she’s never been known to speak a word of sense in all the time she’s been with us, so the sisters thought—we were hoping—well, we didn’t even know you knew her!”

  “I met her brother Andrew briefly.”

  “Ah, during the war,” the porter said knowingly. “Sad, that. Very sad.” He took Tyler’s hat and driving coat, then led the way.

  As they followed the porter down the hallways, Tyler noticed that the few patients who were awake grew quiet as the dog passed their doors. The porter noticed it as well, and whispered, “I don’t know what it is about him, but he brings peace to the place. Soothes my own nerves, for that matter.”

  “Mine as well,” Tyler said quietly.

  This asylum was vastly different from the Erie County Almshouse, where the poor and the insane of all degrees were housed together. At the county facility, those in charge seemed to be more concerned over expenditures than care or feeding of its residents, and the suffering there was unimaginable. Fifteen or so years ago, the Buffalo Medical Journal said the diet there was one that exceeded “anything Dickens ever described” in estimating the starvation point. Matters had not really improved since then.

  As they neared the room in which Susannah Bailey was being kept, they heard her become quieter. “Poor lady has been having seizures. They’ve exhausted her.”

  “She is epileptic, then?”

  “Yes, and no trouble!” He frowned. “A kind soul, even if she can’t speak sensibly. I don’t believe she would ever hurt anyone.”

  Before Tyler could ask him what he meant by that, the porter tapped softly on the room’s door and said, “I’ve brought them, Sister Elizabeth.”

  A tall nun opened the door. “So quickly!”

  “He arrived here just as I was about to send the boy out,” the porter confessed.

  “Well, how good of you to bring him to us right away,” she said. “Any word from her family?”

  “Her stepfather, well, imbibed a bit too much and is in no condition to be out. But the servants said her mother was in Williamsville, where she was staying with a friend, and would be sent for straightaway, but there’s a storm, Sister, so I don’t know if she’ll make it back in time.”

  “We’ll leave that in God’s hands then, and do our best for Miss Bailey. Come in, come in, Dr. Hawthorne. And you, too, Shade. It’s as if she heard your approach.”

  “They all did,” the porter said, stepping aside. “Listen.”

  She did. The only sounds to be heard were made by the steady fall of rain. “A blessed silence it is, too.” She smiled at Shade. “How true that the Lord works in mysterious ways.”

  Tyler thought of the initial resistance he had faced when he had asked to bring Shade inside with him. It was not necessary that Shade be at his side when he did his work, but he had long ago noticed the dog’s effect on those whose minds were troubled. It took only one demonstration of this fact to make the dog a welcome guest at the asylum.

  “They are here!” the woman in the bed cried out.

  “She spoke clearly!” one of the nuns said in amazement.

  Tyler moved quickly to Miss Bailey’s side. Her features were twisted as if in a spasm. She was restless and tried to sit up, reaching out with thin hands. He took them in his own, and she sighed and fell back onto her pillow, keeping her gaze on him. In that moment, her facial features relaxed, and he saw that she was a beautiful woman, probably in her early twenties. It was hard to tell. After all, he appeared to be about the same age.

  Oh, at last you are here!

  He read her thoughts as clearly as if they were his own. Keeping silent, he said to her, Yes. Your brother Andrew asked us to come. He conveyed to her all that Andrew had said.

  She was marveling, as many had before her, at the transformation felt by the dying when in contact with him.

  How wonderful to have my thoughts clear, to be able to speak to someone! Ah, and no seizures. I was growing so tired. How lovely to have strength again!

  * * *

  It will not last, I’m afraid. Tyler replied. I know you can tell that we have only a little time. What can I do for you?

  * * *

  I am so glad to hear this news of Andrew, she said. Thank you. Please thank Sister Elizabeth and all the others here, and especially Sister Rosaline. The Sisters of Charity saved me from a horrible fate.

  A series of images and sensations flashed across his mind, as she relayed memories of being chained to a wall, of hunger, of cold, of darkness and isolation.

  “I am so sorry,” he said aloud.

  Sister Elizabeth said, “We have been unable to stop the seizures. They come frequently, and as a result, she has been growing exhausted. We’ve done our best to prevent injury, but—”

  “I am sure if she could speak, she would thank you for rescuing her from the almshouse, for all your merciful care of her.”

  “Sister Elizabeth,” one of the others said softly, “look at her face. She’s smiling.”

  He focused again on Susannah Bailey.

  Thank you, she said. As you say, I must tell my story quickly. Ten years ago, on June 7, 1861, my sister Amelia disappeared. She left the house early that morning, dressed
in a pink gown and wearing a bright gold locket, as well as a ring with a small ruby at the center.

  When she did not return that evening, my stepfather, Ira Podgett, hired a person he said was a detective to look for her. A Mr. Briggs. A few days later this seedy-looking man returned to our home and made his report. After he left, my stepfather told my mother that Amelia was well but refused to return home, that she had eloped with a soldier. He told my mother that he didn’t blame Amelia, that living with me had been too much for her. He said that only his love for my mother allowed him to tolerate my dangerous presence in the house, and he again pleaded with her to have me locked away.

  He does not love my mother. He loves her money and her social standing.

  But part of what he said was the truth—Amelia, who did flirt shamelessly with soldiers, was mortified by my epilepsy, and often said that no one would offer her marriage, as it was widely known there was a madwoman in the family. But no matter what is said of me, I never harmed anyone. My epilepsy does not make me dangerous!

  * * *

  Tyler replied. No, of all the cases I have seen, epilepsy is only dangerous to the person who suffers it. I think we err in deeming it a form of madness. Alas, it is a belief I share with no more than a handful of my colleagues.

  * * *

  She sighed aloud, as if in contentment at finding this small amount of support. Thank you.

  Tyler was vaguely aware of murmurs around the bed.

  But I must continue, she said. Andrew was away at school when Amelia disappeared. Within the year, though, he left school to serve in the navy.

  Soon after, when I reached the age of nineteen, my seizures abated and there was hope that I had been cured of epilepsy—my physician said he had seen such cases, where it passed off after childhood.

  I was, for the first time in my life, allowed to be without a constant attendant. However, the fear that the seizures might return remained strong—and may I say, even stronger, the fear that I might embarrass the family should I have a public seizure—so I continued to be restricted to living on an upper floor of our home, although if we were not entertaining guests, I was free to walk about the grounds when the weather allowed.