She tosses the last of the grain. Pushes any thought of her father from her mind, any thought of his letter. She must rouse the girls. She will tell them “enough.” This peddler’s ghost must depart. He has no use among the living except to annoy the neighbours. Not the worst of uses … Still. Her father might be correct. She should not make too much of the raps. It might be courting trouble, disaster even.
Just then a cardinal, brilliant red, larger than all the others, hurtles to the flagstones. The other birds are no match for him. They scatter as he takes his due from what has been cast down.
A fortnight later, Leah writes a letter of her own. She addresses it to her mother only. The girls have been asking for their mother, and Leah could certainly use her help with cooking and care-taking. And then there is the no small matter of Calvin Brown’s arrival a week ago. Leah knows her reputation is solid as hewn oak. Still, her mother’s presence will thwart any stray gossip about the gangle-limbed Calvin being too handsome and solicitous to be anyone’s adopted brother.
30 June, 1848
Dearest Mother,
I have news of great and terrible import. You must come forthwith to Rochester. The girls and I so need your support and worthy presence. I suppose Father is too busy building that house of his and he has said the knocks need be ignored and are of no consequence anywise. I am in complete disagreement, as one might as well ignore a charging ox or a musical crescendo!
Now, the moment our dear Calvin heard of our travails he came bounding into Mechanics Square. How we needed his manly courage last night. My heavens. My word! Such terror and havoc. The wretched ghost must have stolen the candles, for none could be found in the dark and we were as blind as moles whilst the ghost heaved up our bed and tore off our bedclothes. The ghost was soon joined by others and the horrid things then pelted poor Calvin with carpet balls and struck him with a candlestick, bloodying his lip. That stopped the dramatics, I assure you. I played nurse as best I could. Calvin begged I dab his lip ever harder to staunch the dreadful bleeding, while Margaretta, Katherina and Elizabeth all watched in tears. And then Calvin seized my hand and swore that he would protect us or die in the attempt, that he would give up everything for me, for us, and so on. He drew up all manner of strategies and battle plans. You know how he is.
That, naturally, is not the terrible news of great import. No, it is this: multitudes of spirits are making themselves known now. It is as if a celestial door has opened between the worlds of the living and the blessed dead, who are, I must say, a veritable symphony of woe. As for that peddler, I have sent him packing back to his cellar grave. He is no longer needed as intermediary. The Fox sisters are the sole intermediaries of the spirits now.
Your ever-loving daughter,
Leah
She folds the letter and melts the wax for the seal. “Calvin? Calvin!” she calls. He promptly appears in her bedroom doorway. His lip is still swollen from the spirits’ hi-jinks the night before, and he looks wearied, but becomes all smiles and cheer when she asks him to post the letter to Arcadia.
“I’ll post it smart, Leah,” Calvin says. His voice has a nasal tone and an uncertain timbre and is, Leah thinks, somewhat grating. He pushes a dark curl out of his eyes.
“Yes, is there more, dear?”
“No, except … except that I’d post anything for you, Leah. I’d march it my own self to the world’s end.”
Leah smiles. “Oh, I doubt we need ever take anything that far.”
CHAPTER 5.
On the fifth day of our acquaintance my patient, out of the blue yonder, declared that she would like some candy.
“Candy? What sort, madame? Gibraltars? Licorice? Chocolates from Switzerland? Shall I steam over and buy you a passel forthwith? Do I seem a servant? A lackey of any stripe?”
She smiled. “No, and I am sorry, Mrs. Mellon.” She explained she had been thinking of the Posts and their apothecary. Thinking, too, of Calvin, this “ersatz” brother. “The one I just spoke of? He ever smelled of ginger-root and chocolate from the confections he made. He aimed to have his own shop one day. Alas and such, he would have, but he was swayed from his purpose.”
“Young men are easily swayed. They just follow along, tra-la-la, even if they know better, even if they’re warned, strongly warned, against rose-glassed ideals … and, oh, here is your medicine. Here.” I poured her laudanum into a tumbler, spilling a drop or two, I allow, in my distraction. To explain: I had seen my son swayed by all the rhetoric and brouha that preceded the abolition war. I agreed with the grander cause, certainly, but not the method, by which I mean the method of using young men as cannon fodder, and ditch filler, and numberings on a damned general’s tally sheet.
“Is there more?” my patient asked. She held the emptied tumbler in both hands, like some pauper with a tin cup.
“No, no, that is sufficient for the now. But, if it is of such importance, then I suppose I can bring you some penny candy next visit.” At which I hauled out my knitting (I had still not found its form). “I have time aplenty if you need to talk on, duck,” I added.
A JULY DUSK THICK WITH RAIN, and inside the Posts’ apothecary Maggie looks steadfast at the show-globe that illumines the window as might a green moon. Nearby the clerk tends to a pot of leeches. “They’re God’s creatures, same as any,” this clerk says to Katie.
“Sure had me fooled,” Katie replies. “I thought they were licorice … well, till they squirmed and all.”
Maggie risks a glance at Amy and Isaac Post, who are conferring with Leah at the counter’s far end. The Posts are angular, poke-edged people who fit together with ease, alike a child’s wooden puzzle. Not that there is anything childlike about them, Maggie thinks. Amy wears her plainness with pride. Has a long face and slate-grey hair pulled taut; a forceful gaze. Isaac has the wisest eyes in the world. Usually he wears a beatific smile above his chin beard. Not this day. Indeed, Maggie cannot recall him ever looking so troubled and uncertain.
“I wish Ma were here,” Katie says to Maggie. “Right here, I mean,” she says, indicating the apothecary itself with its shelves laden with tinctures and powders and ointments, and all in clear jars and vials to show their true colours and nature.
“Me, too,” Maggie says. Mother’s unquestioning, supportive presence has become oddly comforting. She left Arcadia the moment she received Leah’s letter detailing the growing manifestations and asking for her help and is now at Mechanics Square with Calvin and Lizzie, Leah having insisted those three stay to see if the ghosts would manifest during the daylit hours. After the ghosts hurled candlesticks and carpet balls at Calvin that night a week past, well, Leah said, anything is possible.
“It’ll turn out all right, Kat,” Maggie whispers.
“What will?” Katie asks, still surveying the apothecary’s marvels.
“Everything.” Yes, everything, Maggie thinks. Because after Leah tells the Posts of the events at Hydesville and Mechanics Square the Posts will nod in bemusement, surely. Then they will sit Maggie and Katie down and say in that comforting, old-timey talk of theirs: “Not to worry, loves. Thou may stop now. It is not too late. All is understandable. Thou art so young.” Yes, that is what the Posts will say. They do not consider childhood an unavoidable malady, nor as a trial to be endured, but as a stage of blessed innocence. As such, they ever dote on children, their own as well as Maggie and Katie and any others in their purview. They do not whip, nor scold, but talk to children as if they have reason and sensible motivations. They certainly do not load children with chores and responsibilities. They have a maid for all that. Machteld. She waits on customers in the apothecary also, is wide-hipped and splotched-faced and eighteen or so.
Maggie chances another look to the counter’s far end. Sees Amy shake her head. In disbelief? Disagreement? Admiration? The response will be an honest one, whichever it is. Amy Post is ever forthright. A champion, really, of all that is good. Of the truth. Maggie mulls over the word: truth. The Quakers give it a capital T
and consider it the same as God, or something like that. And Jesus is the Light complete, but a man entire.
“Not God’s son, then?” Maggie asked Amy once.
“Everyone is a child of God,” Amy replied in her grave and kindly way.
At this Maggie realized nothing was as straightforward as she had thought. Things can be two, even three things at once.
Katie slips up beside Maggie. “You reckon they’ll let us have some licorice? I’ve never tasted it. Never ever. I’ll just die if I can’t try it.”
Maggie puts her finger to her lips. Machteld has turned and is watching them with a peculiar scrunched-up expression that Maggie cannot read.
“Fiddle and fuss, aren’t you a worry-all,” Katie says.
The threesome group of Amy and Isaac and Leah grows tighter. Hushed. The Posts glance over at Maggie and her sister with greater and greater astonishment.
“Kat, Kat, do you recollect the names of Amy and Isaac’s two little ones, you know, the ones that died. When was that, six years ago? Think quick.”
“Mildred? Nope, nope. Matilda and … Henry. And licorice.” She grins. “That’s not a name. I just really want some.”
“For pity’s sake, just ask the clerk … but make your best manners, now.”
Katie does so and the clerk obliges with two ropes. Katie twists hers round her wrist and chews the end. “You a run-off slave, sir?”
“Kat, your manners,” Maggie hisses.
The clerk chuckles. He is youngish and tall and crooked to one side. “No, miss, I’m a freed man. You want to scrutinize my papers? No? Pardon me, then.”
He attends to a boy who has just entered the apothecary. The boy chants, “Coverton’s cure-all. Bay rum hair tonic. A pint of castor oil. Another of worm syrup. A fold of chewing tobbaccy. A peppermint stick.” He nods to show he is done and looks as proud as if he has named every angel in God’s array. The Posts’ apothecary often boasts a line of children. There is no need for haggling, that adult art. The Posts would no more overcharge than become highwaymen and wave about pistols. Instead they tag everything with an honest price. There is no coin nailed atop the counter to compare against dishonest tender, no pawned silver under it. Their apothecary is very successful because of this. Honesty, it seems, pays very well. At this thought Maggie’s throat grows tight.
“You like it, this one?”
Maggie looks up. Sees Machteld, a lint-stuck peppermint in her open palm. Machteld’s English is accented though she has lived with the Posts for several years. Her entire family died of ship fever on the way to America. The Posts are her family now.
“Thank you, but, no, Machteld. Peppermint reminds me of medicine, which I loathe.”
Machteld closes her hand into a fist. She looks so stricken that Maggie nearly apologizes. But, Christ-in-all, why must Machteld ever ply her with unwanted gifts? Ever press Maggie to be her friend, when Maggie, clearly, doesn’t even like the way she breathes?
“But what proof dost thou have? It is too remarkable,” Amy says to Leah, and loud enough that Maggie can easily hear.
Katie chews her licorice rope in trepidation. Maggie understands her thoughts: Amy never ever raises her voice, and what this heralds is anyone’s guess. “Amy and Isaac, they’ll understand it all,” she whispers to Katie. “Them of all people, they got to. And then it’ll be like it was, Kat, I promise. Because things have gone too far. I mean, anyone can see that.”
“I just want to go on back to Mechanics Square. Ma said she’d bake apple flummery. And lucky Lizzie got to help Calvin make chocolate, for drinking, I mean.”
Maggie sighs. Apple flummery. Chocolate. Childish pleasures.
“I think I miss the dull ole countryside,” Katie adds, puzzled. “How can that be?”
“It was simple,” Maggie replies, and pulls her licorice rope in twain.
Katie looks nervously at the two dangling strings. “Ma would say that’s a bad omen. A really bad one.”
“Don’t be niddy-noddy, don’t be …” Maggie trails off as Amy and Isaac hurry over, Leah close on behind them.
“Sit down, dear girls, sit down,” Isaac says. He leads Maggie and Katie to a window bench, the one that is netted with the show-globe’s green light. “Thy dear sister has told us all you have done.”
Maggie stares at Leah. “She has?”
“Ah, loves,” Amy says. “We have always suspected you art special in some fashion. Perchance the time has come.”
“Special?” Maggie asks. “How?”
“What time?” Katie asks.
“The time for the arrival of the Universal Spirit, my dears,” Amy says. “When the world is made whole and in Christ’s design. The hungry fed. The naked clothed. Compassion reigning. Oh, I have told ye of it.”
“Ah, that,” Maggie says.
“I recollect it now,” Katie says.
Amy kneels before Maggie, a strange look on her face, and says, “If it is … if it is a truth, and not, say, a phenomenon of the air or wind or some such, then we might speak with them again.”
“With who? Or … whom?” Maggie asks, even though she knows.
“Why, with our children who have passed on. With darling Henry. And sweet Matilda.”
“Henry. Matilda,” Maggie says flatly. Yes, Kat had the names correct. Maggie comprehends Amy’s expression now: hope run rampant. Isaac’s expression is the exact same. He puts his hand on Amy’s shoulder. “We pray for them, always, but that cannot compare to their dear presence.”
Leah looks at Maggie, then Katie. “I was explaining, my dear girls, how we have spoken with not only the peddler, but also now with other spirits, and how it is the innocence of you girls that beckons them, and that if you two call on this spirit or that, they come, often as not, particularly if their beloved living are also present.”
“Yes, them spirits like us a lot,” Katie says.
“It is ‘those’ spirits, my sweeting,” Leah reminds her.
Maggie works her mouth, but the words she wants to say are impossible to purge. She tries again, but just as the words take form, the apothecary door flies open.
Calvin. He is grave-faced and soaked from the rain. Lizzie, weeping, clutches his elbow.
Calvin gives the dire news. Their little niece Ella is racked with fever. It is doubtful she will live. Mother has already left for Arcadia. They all must follow on.
Maggie is hardly aware of Leah guiding them out the apothecary door, though she does hear Katie babbling, “It was all a real bad omen when Mag broke her licorice. I knew it.”
“Get that out of your head, Katherina,” Leah orders. “Causations are plenty in this world.”
“DID I SAY THEY WERE HONEST? The Posts?” my patient asked.
“Yes, duck, champions of the truth, no less.”
“Let me recant. They were not entirely honest.”
“One is or isn’t,” I muttered (in those days I had little patience for straddle-acts of conscience).
“You see, one night when we were staying with the Posts in Rochester—this was before we moved to Hydesville, before the peddler came—anywise, one night I was awoken by the sound of scuffling and knocks and garbled voices. They came from above me, from the attic. I was terrified, and convinced that the ghosts of Matilda and Henry Post were up there playing Jacob’s ladder or knuckle-bones or some such game. I was convinced they would creep down and throttle me with their cold little hands. None of the other children woke up, nor Katie, but I was owl-eyed the night through. Come morning I discovered the true source of the sounds.”
She fell into a study.
“And?”
“Ah, they were escaped slaves, hidden in the attic. The Posts’ house was part of the underground railroad. It was the first time I’d heard the phrase and ever after I imagined the underground rail as just that, as tunnelled beneath the regular streets and byways, existing as might a fairy world: the depots all tilted and coloured bright, the people so beautiful, and getting on and off the wh
ispery trains with an joyous intent. I imagined glowing stones inset in the walls. Down there, the dark had no power, you see. And down there, a secret was sometimes good. Necessary. Righteous.”
“Such a fanciful imagination you have, duck. You might have been a poetess. An advocate of good causes. A Samaritan sort.”
She gave a bone-dry laugh as if she saw, just then, all the unplucked chances of her life. I cursed my wayward tongue. I am a straightforward person. I do not dissemble, nor varnish the truth of things, by which I mean I am often blunt, even tactless.
“Oh, but you’re spot-on about the laws of men,” I said. “They’re not always good, nor just. And they’re often at cross-hatch with the Higher Laws. Shameful.” I spoke of how slavery was an evil of unchartable depths. I spoke of moral conscience and so forth. My patient, however, seemed to scarcely attend my philosophical chit-chat.
“Damn, but it’s hot in here,” she said, though the garret was cool that day. She shifted the bedclothes, then returned to the Posts, and without the least encouragement from me.
Still, I listened.
“CHRIST-IN-ALL, ARE WE DONE? Can we ever be done?” Maggie thinks. Luncheon at the Posts’ is lasting an eternity this sweltering day in mid-July. Maggie, hot-pressed between Leah and Mother, visions herself melting into a sawdusted slab of ice, the ice-wagon drawing her off. She almost envies the Posts’ four children for being sent back to school.
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