“We effect what changes we can, Martha” is Kelman’s quiet reply. “Just as you’ve taken Ella and Cai into your house. We address what wrongs we’re able to. We cannot fix them all.”
Martha again remains mute, thinking, while around them robins twitter, hopping with showy exuberance from gravestone to gravestone as if there were only mirth and merriment in the world. “And those tragic Rosegger orphans. What a cruel legacy they’ve been given. To know their mother died by their father’s hand.”
Kelman also pauses before speaking. “Hopefully, the children’s uncles will be able to allay their sadness. And remember, my dearest, they haven’t been left destitute. Perhaps, in time, they’ll devote themselves to some admirable work, and so alleviate their own distress.”
“Yes,” Martha answers, then says no more, and both she and Kelman turn and walk to where Lemuel Beale’s marble marker stands.
I KNOW MY REDEEMER LIVETH. She reads the words in silence, as she’s done many times before. The passage she ordered engraved upon the stone seems fitting for a man whose body was never found, but Martha also has a personal motive in choosing the words. Redemption, she’s come to realize, is not only about securing a place in a far-off Heaven. Redemption can be found much closer to home.
“Oh, Thomas,” she says as she eventually turns her head away from the gravestone, “you know, that day, when I overheard Owen Simms so casually discussing both Father and you … how he’d ‘arranged’ to have Father’s rifle discovered, and thereby lay blame on another man … and then what his intentions were toward you, oh, my brain envisioned the most awful scenes. Truly, I didn’t think to see you alive again.”
“I’m sorry you had to listen to that conversation, Martha. And endure that catastrophic fire.”
“It was nothing compared to the grim thoughts my imagination created.” She closes her eyes for a long moment. “Poor Father.” She looks back at the marble tablet, touching it with one hand while the other stays firmly in the crook of Thomas Kelman’s arm. “Betrayal is a terrible thing, isn’t it?”
“It is. And so is murder.”
Martha sighs. “I wish …” she starts to say, but doesn’t finish the sentence. In fact, she’s not sure what she wishes: That her father were still alive? Certainly. That he hadn’t witnessed the treachery of Owen Simms? Of course. Or that he hadn’t allied himself with a man like Rosegger? Which is also true. But what her secret heart is whispering is the wish that Lemuel Beale had confided in his daughter rather than his numerous acquaintances, that he’d recognized her value and instead of discipline and disapproval had chosen to show love and admiration. “If I’d been a better daughter—” she finally begins.
“Oh, Martha, my dearest. I’m certain you were the best daughter anyone could wish.”
She doesn’t respond, and so Kelman continues with a more soothing “If you gave your father half the joy you give me, then that was great indeed.”
“You’re kind to say so, Thomas.” Then she permits herself a small smile. “But then, you are always kind.”
“To you” is Kelman’s simple response. “I’m not so certain others who know me would agree with that assessment.”
Martha’s thoughtful smile grows, and she tilts her head and looks up into his face. “I know you claim not to believe in the gift of clairvoyance, Thomas, but if you’d asked me last January where April and May would find me—or Cai or Ella or you—well, I could never have imagined we’d be here strolling together, arm in arm, our hopes and futures shared.”
Kelman’s eyes shine down upon her. “And you think that Signor Paladino could have?”
“No … No, his mind seems capable of conjuring only the darkest of images—”
“Or inventing them—”
“Oh, they weren’t inventions, Thomas. I’m not certain what his strange visions were, but I don’t believe he created those scenes. They were too close to the truth to be mere fantasy …”
Kelman doesn’t answer. He has no response to this assertion; his conversations with Pliny Earle concerning the phenomenon of second sight have produced more questions than solutions, and Kelman’s not a person comfortable with the nebulous and vague. “I’m glad the man’s life was spared,” he says at length.
Martha nods. “Yes. It took true bravery on Emily Durand’s part to confide what she did. Escaping such a stigma will be difficult, even with a new life in Europe.”
“You were a good friend to her.”
“Oh, no, Thomas, she was the one who rescued me!” Martha laughs, then leans her head against Kelman’s shoulder and stares up into the blue, blue sky. “In all my life, I never realized that humans could experience this kind of joy. Or love. Above all, love.”
At this point, despite all propriety, Kelman would have turned her toward him and kissed her full on the lips, but a shout arrests them both. “Mother!” Ella calls out from the other side of the churchyard. “Come. Quickly! Come here!”
Hurrying to the child, Martha and Thomas find Cai with a stick in his hand. He’d been poking it into a bundle of rags lying within the shadow of the high brick wall when the bundle stirred, revealing the face of a beggar woman, her dark skin so besmeared and stretched over her shrunken flesh that she looks no more than black bone or coal.
“Oh!” Martha says, bending down while the woman strains to lift her head and stare at Cai, who whimpers a fearful “Mother!” then yanks on Martha’s hand as she impetuously kneels on the ground.
“Hush, Cai … Hush … You’re quite safe.” She holds the boy close, then looks up at Kelman. “Find the church sexton, Thomas … No … No, bring Dr. Percival. And take Cai with you. Ella and I will wait here, and I’ll try to comfort this poor wretch.”
The beggar stares at Martha. “C …?” The sound is no more than a croak.
Repellent and ill-smelling as the creature is, Martha’s better instincts guide her. She smooths the stiffened rags around the bony face, then lays her hand on the fevered brow. “In truth, the boy is named Caspar … the inspiration being the physician who attends the children at the orphanage. Cai has suffered much and is now my ward, for which I am most grateful …” Then words fail her; they seem overgarrulous, overbright, too full of hope where none is found. Why would Dr. Walne or an asylum for colored children matter to a person who’s obviously dying? “Help is at hand,” she adds in a subdued tone.
“C—” is the woman’s muffled response, but Martha interrupts with a gentle appeal:
“Hush, dear lady … Don’t attempt to talk. You’re weak now, and tired and ill. But when you’re well—”
The woman stares at Martha. Her lips part. With great difficulty, she opens wide her yellowed eyes. “C … is …”
“Yes, the boy is my ward. We call him Cai although his given name is Caspar—”
“Which he couldn’t say,” Ella interjects while Martha attempts to hush her with a soft:
“We must allow this lady to rest, dear—”
“C … is …!” The noise is awful with effort. The beggar struggles to raise herself into a sitting position, but the work proves too great for her frame, and she falls back, her mouth open, her eyes blank and lifeless.
Martha bows her head, but Ella continues to gaze at the dead woman. “I’ve seen her before, Mother … That day at the Shambles … She said her name was Ruth.”
Author’s Note
IT WAS IN RESEARCHING TWO ancestors, Nicholas Biddle and Francis Martin Drexel, that the idea of The Conjurer first took shape. Drexel ascended to power and prominence while Biddle was publicly castigated and gradually eclipsed during the period known as the Great Depression. This financial catastrophe was instigated by Andrew Jackson’s deregulation of the banking industry; it was a time of foment throughout the country, but especially in Philadelphia whose status as a preeminent industrial city added to its luster as the nation’s first capital. The grinding poverty of the newly emigrated stood in stark contrast to the vast wealth of the old established famili
es; a vociferous abolitionist movement fought an equally determined proslavery coalition; a series of murderous labor strikes and race riots collided with William Penn’s heritage of empathy and tolerance. Mesmerism, somnambulism, clairvoyancy, and conjuring became a panacea that appealed to every social class. Philadelphia, considered the “Athens of America” and an arbiter of style, eagerly embraced the vogue.
It’s important to note also that as late as 1842 the city remained divided into townships, boroughs, and districts, and at that time had no unified police force. A criminal could break the law in one part of town and escape punishment by fleeing into another area of jurisdiction. The inadequacy of such a system was the subject of much public debate and outrage. The penny papers, gazettes, and broadsheets of the day devoted considerable ink to the problem.
The Library Company of Philadelphia, founded in 1731 by Benjamin Franklin, and the Athenaeum of Philadelphia, whose current home on Washington Square was completed in 1847, provided me with a plethora of primary research materials. Holding the actual newspapers and journals published in 1842, and reading their editorials, their short works of fiction, their articles, essays, and advertising cards was transformative. I was also able to access records and annual reports from the mental asylum referred to in the novel, from the orphanage, and the Philadelphia Gas Works, and of course I read the original of the famous Seybert Commission for Investigating Modern Spiritualism. Many, many thanks to Phillip S. Lapsansky of the Library Company and to Ellen Rose of the Athenaeum. Their Web sites www.PhilaAthenaeum.org and www.PhilaAthenaeum.org provide an inventory of their holdings.
Physically, Philadelphia retains so much of its history that it’s impossible to walk down the streets without feeling transported through time. The brick homes, the grand religious houses, and government buildings, even the cobbles and pebblestones of the roads evince a palpable sense of the past. Ghosts, either good or ill, abound. If you’re a stranger to the city, I invite you to discover it.
I also invite readers to write to me with queries or comments. I can be reached through my Web site www.CordeliaFrancesBiddle.com
Turn the page to continue reading from the Martha Beale Mysteries
IN THE WIND, GHOSTS
THE GUSTS GROW IN STRENGTH and purpose, swirling over the ground in rust-colored eddies that pluck up and then discharge particles of desiccated leaves, ocher-brown twigs, gritty pebbles, and the sere, yellowish grasses that were once the verdant summer-scented lawns and meadows of Beale House. When the breeze spins away in order to buffet another area of the property, the wake smells acrid, brittle, and dead, as if no flowery plants had ever graced its path, no fresh green shoot had ever ripened, no inch of soil had ever yielded up a nurturing loam and the dense aroma of burgeoning life.
Standing on the veranda of her father’s country estate—her house and property now—Martha raises a hand to her bonnet as she gazes past the gardens with their artfully arrayed statuary, past the jardinières imported from Europe, past the formal promenades and rose walks until her view takes in the fields and woods that stretch down to the Schuylkill River’s distant banks. And yet the heavens are blue, she thinks, and the river, half full and sluggish though it may be, is as azurine as hope. Despite the scorching September afternoon, despite the sun and cloudless sky, she shivers.
Then a voice calling her from within disturbs her reverie; and she turns, as she always does, in habitual and brisk compliance. It will take her many months or many years to unlearn the patterns of her youth.
“Mother,” she hears again, and Ella flies outside, her high-buttoned boots tapping across the stone flags, the skirts of her traveling costume creating miniature storms from the powdery soil that has blown up against the house. “Must we leave? Must we? And why today? Why?”
Martha’s green-gray eyes don’t lose their clouded apprehension, and her long, aristocratic face retains its pensive stamp, but she smiles for the child’s sake. “We must return to town for your schooling, dearheart. As you well know. For your schooling and for Cai’s.”
Ella’s expression remains defiant. Since she became Martha Beale’s ward seven months before, the eleven-year-old’s sallow complexion has grown pink with health, her thin shoulders have rounded, and her hair has taken on a lustrous flaxen hue; but her eyes can still spark with mistrust as though she cannot help but anticipate the loss of everything she has come to know and love.
“All pleasant occasions must come to an end eventually,” Martha continues, her words accompanied by a frown that for a moment replicates Ella’s.
“But why? We’re happy here. You and I and Cai.”
“Mistress Why and Wherefore.” Martha tilts her head and smiles in earnest. “Because the summer has reached its conclusion as it does every year, and always will. And we three must leave the countryside and journey to our home in the city. But we’ll return here. This house and these barns and fields won’t vanish. They’ll patiently await our coming again, just as they awaited me during the times I traveled back and forth to Philadelphia with my father. There will be many more holidays, and many more hours of idle pleasure. Now, you go and find Cai, and then we can have a final tramp in the gardens while the footmen load the trunks into the carriages in preparation for our departure.”
“He’s with Jacob and the dogs” is the short reply. “Cai was crying. Jacob took him to see the hens in order to cheer him.”
“Just so.” Martha nods in agreement with this decision. Jacob Oberholtzer is the estate’s head gardener and was one of her father’s most faithful servants. The old man, for he surely is that by now, will know precisely what to do with an unhappy five-and-a-half-year-old boy. “Well, you go and ask Jacob if he can spare our Caspar for a few moments.”
But before Ella can do as she’s bidden, the wind kicks up again, racing across the veranda where the two stand and beating hard against Martha’s dark purple peau de soie skirts. They fly out stiff and loud while her bonnet, too loosely tied, flies upward before crashing earthward and rolling end over end across the bristled lawn.
“Oh, this wretched wind,” she mutters through clenched teeth as she smooths and rewraps her tangled mantilla. Her hands, unfashionably bronzed by a season spent out of doors, are tense. “And no rain in sight. What will become of the crops? What will become of the wild creatures who dwell in the woods?”
“But the wind cannot be wretched, Mother” is Ella’s staunch reply. “It bears the ghosts of all the souls who have gone before us.”
“Who says such things?” Martha’s voice is unexpectedly sharp.
“Miss Pettiman. She told me that is why I hear howling in the chimney flue in my bedroom or in the day nursery. She says it’s a soul crying out, but it cannot make human noise until it enters a human dwelling.”
“That’s nonsense, Ella. When people die, their souls escape to either Heaven or to Hell—”
“Not all of them, Mother,” her adopted child argues in return. “Miss Pettiman said there are folk who cannot quit the earth, that either anger over some outrage accomplished during their lifetime, or grief at forever forsaking loved ones, holds them here. Miss also said that’s why Cai is so often quiet and why he sometimes falls into that awful trembling state, because he’s listening to the murmurs of the parents he cannot recall. It’s doubly hard for him, she told me, being a mulatto child and being born so frail and sickly and everyone believing he was no better than a deaf mute.”
“Oh, goodness me! What foolishness is that nursery maid teaching you?” Martha’s cheeks are flushed with irritation. She relinquishes her place on the stone veranda floor and marches away to retrieve her wandering bonnet while Ella, now chagrined and a little frightened by her adoptive parent’s quick wrath, trudges warily behind.
“And are Miss Pettiman’s heedless words the reason Cai is weeping with Jacob?” Martha demands as she swoops up the dark headdress and thrusts it haphazardly onto her ringlets, retying the long mulberry-colored ribbons in a tight and clumsy kno
t.
“No. He doesn’t want to leave the countryside. And neither do I.” The tone, however, has lost its boldness. Ella has reverted to the supplication and hesitation that were the mark of her younger days. Then she regains a little of her bravado. “Is it because of Mr. Kelman that we’re returning to the city?”
“Is that Miss Pettiman’s opinion you’re quoting?” Martha demands with more warmth than she intends, and Ella’s reaction is swift contrition.
“No. It’s mine … because he was a guest here on occasion. And he hasn’t visited us in a long while.”
“Mr. Kelman was helpful to me during a difficult period in my life. Of course, I would be grateful for his friendship—and happy to see him, as well,” Martha states, although by now her cheeks are very red, and she realizes she’s doing precisely what she’s warned the children against: She’s lying. The problem of her relationship with Thomas Kelman is very much on her mind.
“Cai likes Mr. Kelman,” Ella continues.
“I hope Cai will like many people. And that you will, too” is the ambiguous answer; then Martha adds a more forthright “Now please fetch Caspar, or we will be late for our departure.”
BUT LEAVE AT THE HOUR allotted, they do. The servants, both the house and grounds servants, line up in front of the entry portico to bid farewell to their young mistress, her two wards, and their nursery maid, who, in a breach of custom, has been consigned to the second carriage with Martha’s lady’s maid and the various trunks and valises that have accompanied the group for their summer sojourn. Miss Pettiman has already taken her place among the piled boxes, staring straight ahead as if she were studying a distant mountain, although no such heights can be found on the banks of the Schuylkill River.
Conjurer Page 28