The Kingdom of Bones

by Stephen Gallagher

  She stared. “You’ve always known this?”

  “What do you think I would do? Consider you spoiled, and turn away? Caspar set out to destroy you for his own amusement. Whitlock continued the work so you could serve a purpose of his own. But Louise, you are not destroyed. You think you’re cursed beyond forgiveness. I know all about the life you’ve led since. But if I can pick myself up from in front of a train and forgive you…If I can face the loss of my name and my reputation and forgive you…If I can live in dirt and love no other and still forgive you…You don’t have to love me, but will you not do me the sheer common courtesy of at least trying to forgive yourself?”

  She opened her mouth to speak. But he could see that she was at a loss.

  She looked away. Her hand flew to her lips. She tried to draw a breath but could not take one deep enough. Her color had become alarming.

  When she started to sway, he quickly gathered her up, catching her as he had on that moving train so many years before. She was now a little more substantial, and he was a little less spry.

  No matter. Looking to remove her from public view, he carried her into the narrow passageway that led all the way around the backs of the loges.

  He pushed open a door and took her inside, settling her onto one of the four ornate chairs that he found there.

  These boxes offered more privacy than most. Each was screened from the rest of the Dress Circle by a lattice. Total seclusion could be obtained by the release of a velvet curtain that was tied back with a tasseled silk rope.

  When Louise began to revive after a minute or so, Sayers said, “No wonder you fainted. Forgive me, but I loosened your stays.”

  “The dress is a size too small,” she admitted. “I rented it.”

  “This suit is from Wardrobe,” Sayers said. “I got in as a waiter.”

  “What a sorry pair of frauds we are.”

  Then, after the thought had sunk in, she said, “You loosened my stays? There was a time when you were embarrassed to look me in the eye.”

  “Life with the carnival can knock the innocence out of a man,” he said. “I pulled three drunk women naked out of a river one Christmas Eve.”

  “What were they doing?”

  “They called it frolicking. I call it drowning. Or freezing to death. Take your choice.”

  “Did they thank you?”

  “With abuse the like of which you have never heard. Two of them had husbands. We were chased out of town.”

  She sighed and looked down. “You’d still have your old life if it wasn’t for me,” she said. “I wish I deserved you.”

  “Old life, new life, it’s all one,” Sayers said. “Nothing stands still. Don’t you hear yourself? How does that square with the soulless thing you suppose yourself to be?”

  Down below, the waltz ended and the orchestra struck up a patriotic song. Attention began turning toward the stage.

  Louise said, “I kept the name of Mary D’Alroy because of a document I needed to use. I had some foolish notion that I might be able to stop moving around and find myself a new place in the world. That’s the kick in the Wanderer’s curse. It’s not the commitment you make in a moment of self-hatred. It’s when the moment has passed, and you realize that you’ve traveled too far down your chosen road to go back.”

  “Suppose there were no such road. I have a friend who would argue that the Wanderer’s contract is only a construct of the human imagination. One by which we once lived, but whose day has now gone.”

  “What use is that to us, Tom? We’re creatures of our time.”

  “What time would that be? I’ve been living for tomorrow. You for yesterday. You’re right, Louise. We are a sorry pair of frauds.”

  The stage lighting came up on the first of the tableaux down below. The house applauded. Sayers barely gave it a glance. Something with ships and waves and Napoléon.

  As the cheers rang out below, she said, “I think I knew that James Caspar was rotten when I fell for him. Then, when he died, I just continued to fall. I saw no way out. I came to consider myself a lost soul.”

  “Lost to whom, Louise?” he said. “Never to me. In all these years, there has not been an hour in which I have not thought of you.”

  “I’ve taken life.”

  “With intent? I don’t think you have. Be honest, Louise. Name me one man that you’ve actively struck down.”

  For a long time, she watched the stage. Her expression gave no indication of what was going through her mind, but he did not want to interrupt her. Down before the audience, the French army was on the march. Spain was involved in it, too, somewhere, and the Spirit of America under an enormous waving banner.

  “I know how the games work,” he said. “I know how they die. No one seeks it. But sometimes it happens. The risk is the pleasure. And the risk is their own.”

  “Tom,” she said. “I’ve told you I cannot love you. I believe that all possibility of love has died in me. But I do wish it were not so.”

  She looked at him then. He understood that look.

  While it was true that he had loved no other, his had not been a life entirely without female company and the occasional rehearsal.

  “What are you saying?”

  She closed her eyes for a moment, as if reaching deep into her memory, and said, “That there can be passions and appetites which are neither loathsome nor unnatural, but which celebrate God and the way that he meant us to be.”

  Then she opened her eyes again.

  “Here?” he said.

  She looked around the box and said, “Why not?”

  “No, Louise,” he said. “Not like this.”

  “It’s not wrong.”

  “It is if you feel nothing for me.”

  “That’s my point. No other has loved me. I cannot say what I may feel.”

  On the stage, the actor playing James Monroe was holding up a rolled parchment to represent the treaty. Louise stood up and unhooked the silk rope so that the box’s velvet curtain fell free. Then she drew the curtain all the way around and across, screening them not only from the Dress Circle but from the rest of the theater as well. That vast auditorium was suddenly reduced to one small and private space. Now they had no light other than that which spilled in from around the edges of the velvet, and the fan of yellow from under the door to the access passageway behind them.

  She stood there, a shadow in shadows.

  “Wait,” he said, and he got up and moved to the back of the box where he threw the latch on the door.

  Then he turned to her and said, “Louise, you ought to know there is no way I can refuse you. But do not enter into this just to reward me and then walk away.”

  “Tom,” she said. “That’s not my intention. I tried to extinguish my own spirit. You make me think it still lives. Bring me back. If anyone can do it, you can.”

  Off came her gloves, and then she reached for the fastening on the rented gown.

  “Help me with this,” she said.

  He could barely keep his hands from shaking. A few moments later, the gown slithered to the floor of the box.

  He said, “I have dreamed of this moment in one form or another.”

  “I know,” she said. Stitches tore in his frock coat as he struggled out of it. On the other side of the door, there was a heavy-footed rumbling in the corridor; someone rattled it against the latch and then moved on to try elsewhere, with muffled voices and giggling.

  “Please,” he said, “don’t be offended by the tattoo. A moment of folly from my drinking days.”

  “I think that’s enough talking for now,” she said.

  Sayers began to explain how the Chinese tattooist had come to misspell her name. But he seemed to lose the power of speech as she drew the last of her layers over her head and off. She held out the chemise and let it fall at arm’s length. It was not so dark that she did not glow, pale as white moonlight. With her arm outstretched and her weight resting on one foot, it was as if she knew exactly the effec
t that her pose would have on him. So profound was Sayers’ appreciation of it, he thought that he would faint.

  The floor of the opera house box was of hard, painted boards.

  As if that mattered.

  FORTY-SIX

  Out on Bourbon Street, at the corner where it met Toulouse, Sebastian Becker stepped into a saloon for a schooner of beer and to listen to some piano, and very soon realized that the place he’d chosen was not a respectable one. The restaurant section for unescorted ladies was little more than a showroom for the bordello that seemed to be operating upstairs. He fended off a couple of approaches, declined a street hawker who tried to sell him a booklet, finished his beer quickly, and departed, leaving a nickel on the bar.

  The day had been a washout, frankly. A public holiday was not the best time to be rolling into town. He’d found offices closed, and no explanation given. Given the scale of tonight’s celebrations, he rather feared that the next morning would be no better.

  Elisabeth had once voiced an interest in visiting New Orleans, but he reckoned he’d be reluctant to bring her here. It had all the color and romance that she imagined, but it was a disconcerting town. The areas she’d probably enjoy most were the very ones a woman needed to be kept away from. The Creole heritage of the Vieux Carré was fading fast, and a strange, new kind of immorality had taken its place. It was like a better world, but turned entirely upside down. Sinful deeds were conducted with the strictest courtesy. The finest mansions and parlor houses advertised themselves, not as brothels, but as “sporting palaces” their madames were “entertainers” and the girls were their “boarders,” and their trade was carried on openly and with the most elaborate decorum.

  Outside of the old quarter, the greater Crescent City ran its business like anywhere else. Department stores had opened and skyscraper-style buildings were beginning to rise. But Sebastian found that it was this part of town, this continuous unmasked ball of discarded inhibitions, that commanded the attention. He’d been told that they held a Carnival on these streets, every Mardi Gras. But how would one ever know it? Making his way through the nighttime crowds, hearing different music from every bar and dance hall that he passed, it was as if Carnival ran all through the year.

  It might have been tailor-made for Louise Porter: a place where a flogging, strangling, and choking whore could engage in her perverted endeavors alongside the regular trade, and draw no attention to herself at all.

  The biggest gathering was outside the French Opera House. A floating collection of people, constantly losing numbers into the taverns and being replenished with new faces from the same source. They were here to watch society go by, to spot the prominent citizens and marvel at the expensive gowns. Those who passed before them were people they’d never know, leading lives they could only imagine. Imagining those lives was their evening’s entertainment. A large number had packed the sidewalk to watch the arrivals, and a lesser number now stayed around to catch the departures.

  He’d gone to the telegraph office that afternoon. He’d sent a wire home so that Elisabeth would at least know that he was well. But he’d said nothing of setbacks, or the increasing bleakness of their situation.

  The crowd around him showed a sudden interest when a uniformed footman opened one of the entrance doors to the opera house. Some people were coming out. That was all.

  But in having his attention drawn, Sebastian saw something that he otherwise would have missed. Or rather, he saw some one.

  Striding along on the raised wooden banquette at the fringe of the watching crowd, fists balled by his side, pacing like an ape and with his anxious gaze fixed on the doors for his mistress, was a man whose appearance he remembered only too well. Last seen in Maskelyne’s, many years before, letting rip with a revolver with which, fortunately, he’d shown no great proficiency. Shaven of head, bony of skull, and not much changed at all. Whitlock’s so-called Silent Man.

  He seemed to sense that he was being watched, because he looked and saw Sebastian in that same moment. Sebastian turned away. Was he too late? He doubted that the Silent Man would know him after all this time. But to be stared at always arouses a man’s suspicions.

  He risked a glance back. The Silent Man was watching him now. Damn! Sebastian broke the eye contact again quickly, but it was probably too late. That second look would have given him away.

  So he abandoned any attempt to conceal his intentions, and started toward the Silent Man.

  The Silent Man broke from the crowd and started to cross the street. Sebastian tried to change direction to intercept him, but that wasn’t going to work. The man was too far away and too far ahead of him. Now he was at the doors and going in.

  Sebastian didn’t see what happened then, but when he entered the foyer he saw a uniformed man down on the floor and a well-dressed group of people gabbling in shock, as if a banshee had just ripped through them. Of the Silent Man, he saw no sign; up at the top of the carpeted stairs, the doors to the auditorium were still swinging.

  Or maybe that was just his imagination, and the way he’d remember it later.

  Sebastian grabbed the nearest usher and had him call for the house manager. When the manager appeared, Sebastian showed his Pinkerton credentials and told him that he was in pursuit of the man who’d just entered the building. When one of their private policemen had tried to get in his way, he’d come to violent grief.

  “I believe he’s trying to reach and warn his mistress,” Sebastian said, “who herself is a dangerous woman. For the security of your guests and their property, give me two of your best men and let me go inside. I will promise you the minimum of disruption.”

  With one man down and bleeding, he was met with no argument. Before they went in, he switched coats with one of the ushers in order to be less conspicuous when he was out on the floor.

  Two of the biggest employees were assigned to Sebastian. The rest of the staff dispersed throughout the house to look for signs of trouble.

  The tableaux and the speeches were all done with, and the dancing had resumed. As he emerged onto the outskirts of the horseshoe-shaped arena and looked up at the vast interior of the building, Sebastian realized that a search here would be no small task.

  It was hot. The dancing men and women were all as flushed as they were eager, and it was as if a red haze hung in the air around all the lights. Sebastian eased his way through the people around the outside of the dance floor, ignoring the dancers but looking closely at the watching faces. The two theater employees followed him, waiting for instructions.

  After he’d scanned the watching crowd, he looked up at the Dress Circle. The temporary dance floor had raised the ground level of the theater so that the proscenium boxes were at a walk-in level, and the lower edge of the Dress Circle ran just above them.

  One of the ushers was signaling for attention. Others in different parts of the house had seen him and were moving his way. The man pointed across the Dress Circle to where one of the loges was curtained off. No other was.

  Sebastian turned to the man behind him.

  “Are boxes supposed to be closed up like that?”

  The man said not usually, no.

  It was as well that Sebastian had his two guides. Otherwise, he’d have been lost within a minute. They led him to the staircases and to the narrow corridor that ran behind the boxes. The passageway ran in a curve, following the line of the Dress Circle. Three ushers were there already, but the house manager had yet to arrive.

  The back wall of the boxes was flimsy, and the numbered doors in it were flimsier still. They got to the one they wanted and then Sebastian kicked it open.

  It wasn’t secured. It flew back and bounced off the wall with a bang like a gunshot. There was feeble light from the passageway, and it fell across disarranged chairs and a heap of old clothing. Out from under the clothing, there stuck a bare arm.

  Sebastian dropped to one knee and drew the tailcoat aside. It had been laid over the unclothed body on the floor, draped with
some care like a blanket.

  “Sayers!”

  Sayers was lying on his back. His body was pale, his face was dark. On one side of his bared chest there was a tattooed heart with the word Louse woven through it.

  There were some other surprising details as well, but for the moment Sebastian didn’t take them in.

  For the moment, all that he could register was a length of silk rope with tassels on its ends, wound twice around Tom Sayers’ neck and twisted tight.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  On Tulane Avenue, at the corner of Johnson Street, stood the Hotel Dieu. As often had to be explained to tourists, this was not a hotel at all, but a private hospital run by the Daughters of Charity. Begun with only five patients and growing until it occupied most of a city square, it had been the only institution of its kind to stay in operation throughout the Civil War. After a few more years of running it as a hospital for seamen, the Sisters had decided to expand the building further and had accomplished this by means of having the entire structure raised up on jackscrews with the patients still inside. It was a hospital used both by visitors to the city, and by citizens without homes. Charges for those who could pay ranged up to five dollars a day, but that included meals, medicines, and the price of medical care.

  One of the city’s most eminent doctors had been present at the Centennial Ball and had been summoned to the fallen man’s aid. Sebastian had the cord off the fighter’s neck by the time the doctor had been located, but he was unable to find a pulse.

  The doctor had served as a contract surgeon with the U.S. Army during the Spanish-American War. He’d once saved a man after a summary hanging. He checked Sayers’ windpipe for any crushing injury and got him upright. Sayers’ color immediately began to improve. The physician determined that a pulse was there, but it was weak. Pressure on the jugular veins had caused blood to back up in Sayers’ brain, causing rapid unconsciousness and then a slow decrease in respiration. Fatal asphyxia had been only minutes away. Already the damage might be too great.

  A horse ambulance was sent for. Sayers was transferred to the Hotel Dieu and the doctor returned to the ball. Sebastian followed the ambulance to the hospital and waited around for a while, but it was late and the sisters made it clear they didn’t want him there.