“Care for a drink?” she asks, pouring herself another one. “I couldn’t find any sherry, but I don’t think Milo would mind me drinking from his private stock of scotch. It’s a little bitter at first, but you get used to the taste.”
“Where have they taken his body?” Corinth asks.
“To the parlor, where he can keep Mr. Campbell company. Dr. Murdoch might have saved himself a visit. At least this time he won’t have to lie on the death certificate. I believe this really was a heart attack. You knew, of course, that Milo had a weak heart?”
“No,” Corinth says, crossing the room toward the door to the hallway, “I didn’t know that.” Mrs. Ramsdale steps in front of her, blocking her way out. Corinth can smell, beneath the bitter reek of the scotch, the sweeter smell of laudanum.
“Yes, we frequented many of the same spas and took the same water-cures, although my malady resides a bit lower in the body than his.” She lays her hand over her stomach, pressing the cloth flat so that Corinth can see the swelling there. “I thought there was another tumor growing, but Dr. Murdoch examined me this morning and . . . well, I’m afraid my condition is a bit more delicate than that.” She pauses, waiting for Corinth to absorb the import of her news. “Of course, I’m surprised. I’d thought I was too old and that the last surgery had removed any chance . . . but, as they say, life will find a way. Of course it will have to be a hurried wedding and some people will talk, but what does that matter? We’ll go to Europe. I have a house in the south of France; I have enough money for the three of us . . .”
“I hope you’ll be very happy,” Corinth says, pushing past Mrs. Ramsdale. A baby? Could a baby really be born of that corruption? But as she presses by Mrs. Ramsdale, grazing the woman’s shoulder with her own, she can feel the presence of the child and knows it is Tom’s. It occurs to her, as she flees up the stairs to her room, that it might be the only life to break free of this sepulcher.
When she gets to her room, she finds a sheet of paper lying flat on the floor, just over the threshold. Picking it up, she sees that it’s a theatrical poster, an old one from the Lyceum Theater in Gloversville on the night she and Tom both appeared. She turns it over and sees on the back a handwritten message: Cory, I’m leaving Bosco tonight. If you want to go with me, meet me in the Rose Garden at midnight.—Q And beneath that: We’ll follow the rivers north.
Mrs. Ramsdale probably hasn’t had a chance to tell him her news. When she does . . . well, it doesn’t matter. He’s no doubt arranged for a carriage to take them away. If he’s not there, then she’ll take it herself. She packs her trunk, but then realizes that she can’t carry it herself down to the rose garden. And she’s certainly not going to leave a forwarding address for Aurora Latham to send it on. She takes out her plainest dress and only what will fit in her small carpetbag, consigning the rest of her dresses, her toiletry case, and the unmatched glove to the trunk. She pauses over the case that contains her wires and picks, but then decides to leave it in the trunk—let whoever finds it unmask her as a fraud. What does it matter? She won’t be performing any more séances after tonight.
Before she closes her trunk, though, she checks the toiletry case and finds the hellebore root that she put back earlier, relieved to see that it’s still there. A weak heart, Mrs. Ramsdale had said. No, she’d never known that Milo had any weakness. When they met at the spas in Europe, he always said that they were taking the waters because of Aurora’s neurasthenia, but now that she thinks of it, she remembers that he spent his days taking various water-cures and drinking from the springs. If he had a weak heart, it wouldn’t have taken much of the hellebore root to kill him. But who would know that?
If her trunk is searched and the root found in it, she might be blamed for Milo’s death. Or if she’s stopped and it’s found on her person . . . She looks around the room for a place to hide it, but decides she can’t take the chance of it being found in her room, either. She has to hide it somewhere in the house. Opening her door and listening for voices, she hears Aurora’s keening cry coming from the downstairs parlor. Now she really is Egeria mourning for her lost husband. It’s almost as if she purchased the statue first and then rearranged her life to fit it.
At the back stairs she also hears voices—Mrs. Norris and one of the maids—coming from below, so she takes the stairs up to the third floor and then to the attic.
The long room is dark except for the light from the newly risen moon that cuts a swath from the window to the storage room on the west side of the attic, catching the glass eyes of the dolls and the rocking horse but leaving the beds along the north wall in shadow. She can’t tell which bed Alice is in as she crosses to the storage room. She tries the door and finds that it’s locked with a heavy iron padlock. She slips a wire out of her sleeve and within a minute she’s picked the lock. As soon as she slides the padlock off the bolt, the door swings in and moonlight pours into the bare room. Corinth had expected a jumble of trunks and old furniture. Instead the only object in the room is a single straight-backed chair upon which sits a little girl in a white nightgown who stares up at Corinth with bottomless black eyes.
After he and Lantini have carried Milo’s body into the parlor, Tom tries to get away so that he can find Corinth, but Aurora Latham pauses in her weeping long enough to ask him to go into town to summon Dr. Murdoch back to the house. Why the doctor is needed so urgently—or why he should be needed to accompany the driver into Saratoga—is beyond Tom’s reasoning, but he can see that there’s no point arguing with the grieving widow. Besides, he might need the driver’s cooperation later and it won’t hurt to scout out a likely hotel in Saratoga while he’s fetching Dr. Murdoch.
He rides in on the box beside Latham’s coachman, a taciturn young man in his midthirties with lank black hair and pitted skin, which he hides with a hat turned low over his forehead. Tom asks him if he’d be available later to drive him back into town, but he doesn’t answer. Tom wonders if the man is deaf and dumb, but then he realizes that he’s waiting to be offered money. He takes out a few bills and holds them out so that the driver can see them.
“Twice this if you wait for me at the bottom of the garden and don’t tell anyone where you take us.”
The driver takes the bills and stuffs them into his pocket, grunting assent.
Maybe the man is dumb, if not deaf, Tom concludes, which suits him just fine. Less chance he’ll give them away. Maybe he could have gotten away with giving him less—as it is he’ll barely have enough to pay for the hotel. He spends the rest of the drive into Saratoga calculating what he has left from the last time Violet paid him and how much he’s likely to get by pawning the pocket watch and other trinkets she’s given him over the years. By the time he’s walking up the path to Dr. Murdoch’s spacious Greek Revival mansion on North Broadway, he’s come to the conclusion that he sorely needs more money if he expects to get any farther than Saratoga with Corinth.
The housekeeper tells Tom to wait in the library while she goes to wake the doctor. “He was up delivering a baby in Ballston Spa last night and turned in early tonight,” she explains when Tom expresses surprise that the doctor is already asleep. “And this man’s already dead, you say? Well, if it were anyone else but Milo Latham, I’d tell you to come back in the morning, but he and the doctor were good friends. He’ll want to know.”
It’s hard to imagine anyone being good friends with Milo Latham, but when Tom enters the library he guesses that what the housekeeper means is that the doctor and Latham were good hunting buddies. The room is filled with trophies of the hunt: deer and moose heads mounted on the walls, bear rugs on the floor, and a stuffed loon hovering above the mantelpiece as if it were about to take flight. Below the loon Tom notices a photo—in a frame made of silver and carved antler—of Dr. Murdoch and Milo Latham standing in front of a cabin, rifles resting in the crooks of their arms and a pile of dead beaver lying at their feet.
“Best damn hunting in the Adirondacks over by Latham’s cabin on the Vl
y,” Tom hears the doctor say from behind him. “I’ll sure miss it.”
Tom turns, feeling in his pocket for the letter of sale Latham gave him earlier this evening. “You may not have to, Dr. Murdoch,” he says.
“Have you come to let me out?” the girl asks.
Corinth puts her hand to her chest and wills her heart to stop pounding. It’s only Alice Latham sitting in the chair, not her ghostly sister, but still, with her pale skin and black eyes glowing in the moonlight, she’s a startling sight.
“What are you doing in here?” Corinth asks, thinking for a moment that the girl might be playing a game of hide-and-seek until she remembers that the door was locked from the outside.
“I’m being punished,” Alice says, attempting a nonchalant shrug. The motion is awkward, though, because she keeps her hands behind her back. Corinth steps into the closet and, looking over the girl’s shoulders, sees that her hands are tied behind her back.
“Who did this?” Corinth asks, her voice coming out as a hoarse croak that she’s sure must frighten the child. It certainly frightens her.
“Norris,” Alice answers, “but only because mother told her I had to be punished for throwing rocks in the well, only I swear I didn’t do it. So I’m being punished for lying as well.”
Corinth kneels on the floor and begins to pick at the knots, but they are too intricate even for her. “I’ll have to get a knife to cut the rope,” she says.
“Tam’s carving knife is in his night table,” Alice says. “It’s the second one from the closet.”
Corinth retrieves the knife, marveling at the girl’s calm. She’s been sitting tied up in a dark closet and yet she’s not even crying. Her calm is somehow more chilling than hysteria, as it suggests it’s not the first time she’s been punished in this barbaric fashion.
“Are you often punished like this?” Corinth asks as she saws at the thick ropes.
“Only when I’ve been particularly bad, not half as often as James and Cynthia, but”—she pauses, and from behind, Corinth can see the girl tilt her head as if she were considering a difficult arithmetic problem—“more often than Tam, I think. Tam was usually very good unless James made him be bad. At first, mother wouldn’t punish him at all, but then she said one day”—again the girl tilts her head up to the ceiling, as if she were trying to remember a line of verse she’s memorized—“that James’s punishment would be to see Tam punished. It bothered James awfully, and for a while he tried very hard to be good— Ow! you’ve cut me!”
The knife has indeed slipped in Corinth’s hand while she’s been listening to Alice’s account. It’s only scratched the girl’s wrist, though, and at least the ropes are free now. Corinth takes out her handkerchief and wraps it around Alice’s wrist, holding both of the girl’s hands in hers for a moment as she crouches in front of her. “Alice,” she says, looking into the girl’s black eyes, “your mother stopped punishing your brothers and sisters when they got sick last year, didn’t she?”
“Of course,” Alice says, looking surprised. “Mother nursed them all herself; she loved them all so very, very much.” Alice yawns as if she were repeating a lesson she’d learned by rote. Corinth helps the girl up out of the chair and to the bed closest to the closet while Alice continues her account. “She made them all special teas and poultices so that they’d get well. Can I tell you a secret?”
Corinth nods while smoothing the covers over the girl and Alice whispers in her ear, “Norris gave my tea to the others and made me her own teas to keep me well and a charm to ward off the evil spirits that made James and Cynthia and Tam sick. An Indian charm! And that’s why I didn’t get sick, only”—she falls back down onto the pillow and crinkles up her forehead—“only I lost it. Now I’m frightened that I’ll die like the others.”
“Did the charm look like this?” Corinth asks, loosening the buttons of her dress and drawing from around her neck the leather pouch her mother gave her so many years ago.
“Yes! Only it didn’t have this pretty beading on it. Oh, please, may I have it?”
Corinth slips the necklace off and hands it to Alice. Immediately the girl plucks at the drawstring holding closed the pouch. “Does it have special charms to keep me safe?”
“Yes,” Corinth answers, “sweet gale to ward off snakes and rosemary to help you remember your way home—”
“And a feather!” Alice exclaims, drawing from the pouch a black, red-tipped feather.
“From the red-winged blackbird. My mother said that women of her tribe believed that the red-winged blackbird warned them of approaching danger, and see”—Corinth holds up a strand of Alice’s hair in the moonlight—“you have hair just like the red-winged blackbird—black with tips of red—so it will work for you, too.”
Alice smiles and snuggles deeper into the covers. “So I’ll be safe,” she says.
Corinth nods, unable to speak around the tightness in her chest that feels like ropes binding her. She leans down and presses her lips against the girl’s forehead. What possible help will a handful of feathers and herbs be against a monster like Aurora Latham? But what can Corinth do? She’s not the girl’s mother.
When she raises her head, she sees that Alice is already sleeping. Corinth tucks the leather pouch under the girl’s pillow and quietly steals out of the attic.
She takes the path on the west side of the hill down to the rose garden—both to avoid being seen on the fountain allée and to avoid seeing again that unnatural spectacle of water flowing uphill. She keeps her eyes to the narrow path, ignoring as best she can the rustle of leaves all around her. It sounds as if the woods are full of birds, and she finds herself thinking about the story her mother once told her about the red-winged blackbird that she’d mentioned to Alice.
There was a girl of the Haudensosaunee people who, while gathering cranberries in a bog, came across a blackbird trapped in a thorny bush. The girl freed it, but still it could not fly away because its wing had been torn by the thorns, and so the girl bound up the bird’s wing with moss and leatherleaf and carried the bird in her gathering basket for many days, always giving the bird water and letting it eat the berries she gathered. When the bird’s wing was finally healed, the girl held it up to the sky to let it go, but before it flew away the blackbird spoke to the girl.
“Since you have helped me, my kind will always warn you of approaching danger. Keep this feather in your hair so we will always recognize you.” And when the bird flew away, a single black feather that was tipped in blood from where its wing had been torn fell into the girl’s hair.
Many years later the girl’s tribe were at war with the Abenaki people. Among the prisoners they took was one of the black robes, a shaman who had come from his land to teach the people about his gods. The girl took pity on him, though, and thinking about how she had rescued the blackbird, she untied his bonds and helped him to get away from the camp. Because he was much injured and weakened, she took him to a sacred spring by a cave and there she washed his wounds and gave him water to drink until he was healed. They spent three nights by the spring, sleeping in a cave nearby, until he was well enough to travel, and by then the girl had fallen in love with him. He told her that shamans of his people could not take a wife, and so, although he said he loved her, too, and lay with her as a husband for three nights, he told her that she could not live with him as his wife. At first she was very angry that he had not told her this earlier and she thought about betraying him to her people, but on the fourth day she let him go just as she had once let the blackbird fly away. This time, though, she felt as if something had been torn inside of her and when she plucked the blackbird’s feather from her hair she saw that it was bleeding.
She became known among her people as Ne’Moss-i-Ne, She Who Remembers.
Corinth has reached the edge of the maze. She stops and listens to the rustle of leaves in the hedges and wonders if she had forgotten the name of the girl up until now or has she made it up and given the girl in her mother’s
story the name of the statue in the maze? She can’t tell. Her head is full of the sound of wings beating all around her as she follows the downward sloping path to the center of the maze, remembering the rest of the story.
Once a year, on the longest day of the year, the girl’s tribe camped at the spring by the cave to drink the water and so gain strength for the coming year. The woods around the spring were full of birds and animals come to drink at the spring, but it was not permitted to kill a bird or an animal at the spring, and so for the three days the tribe camped here the people and the animals lived side by side as friends. On the third day of her tribe’s visit, Ne’Moss-i-Ne was sitting by the spring surrounded by her friends the blackbirds when suddenly the flock rose to the sky as if possessed of one spirit, the sound of their wings like a great wind. Ne’Moss-i-Ne looked up and saw the sun blackened by their flight, and a drift of feathers fell to the earth, each one stained with blood. She shouted out a warning to her people, but they did not listen to her. Soon the air was thick with the arrows of their enemies and the screams of their women and children. In the middle of this chaos Ne’Moss-i-Ne saw the black robe and knew that it was he who had betrayed the location of the spring to her people’s enemy.
She was taken prisoner by the Abenaki, but later that night the black robe came to her and untied her hands and legs. He swore he hadn’t known what would happen when he led the Abenaki to the spring, and he begged her to forgive him and come back and live with his people now that her own people were all dead or taken prisoner, but Ne’Moss-i-Ne only turned from him and ran into the woods. He followed her, but she ran faster, heading for the high cliff above the Sacandaga River. When she reached the edge of the cliff, she turned back to look at her lover one last time and he saw that her eyes had become two blackbird wings, spreading across the sky. When she jumped, he could hear the sound of wings all around him. Indeed he heard the sound of wings for the rest of his life.
The Ghost Orchid Page 25