Chauncey taps his steel-tipped cane to his boot. “The scrawny ones are the most obdurate, I’ve noted.”
Scarce-Teeth nods. “And stubborn, too. This one’s got a bounty of two hundred dollars on him. Ain’t that something?”
Pustule-Face whacks his companion. Says to Chauncey, “Ignore him. He’s an idiot. No, sir, the fee is just the usual ten dollars from the law.”
Chauncey dips his free hand in his pocket. “Allow me to assist you.” He looks down at the young man, who glares up at the lot of them.
“Appreciate your good citizenry, sir,” Pustule-Face replies. “But … fuck the devil. What?”
Chauncey levels his pistol at Scarce-Teeth, his stell-tipped cane at Pustule-Face. Pustule-Face reaches into his belt. Chauncey stabs him in the throat with his cane. He drops gasping beside his quarry, Chauncey’s boot on his neck.
“Untie him,” Chauncey orders Scarce-Teeth, and cocks the pistol. “Or I’ll blow out your idiot brains and let the fucko pigs lap them up for breakfast.”
Scarce-Teeth slobbers out an insult but obeys. And then Chauncey beats him and Pustule-Face senseless with the butt of his pistol, his fist and, for good measure, his hessian boots.
The young black man spits out the rag. Rubs his wrists. Eyes Chauncey, who tells him, “You’re a bloodyo idiot yourself, getting caught. Canada’s naught but a boat ride off. I advise you getting your carcass there forthwith.”
The young man stammers out his thanks.
“Oh, I’m merely making my sainted mother proud, as would any man. Here.” He hands the man two dollars. “Now bugger off.”
The man does so and Chauncey pockets his pistol and wonders how much money he has lost playing the valiant these days. Seems these damnedo escaped slaves are around every corner. And he can ill afford it. Ah, but his sainted mother would be proud—his mother who was not, of course, the same mother as Heman’s, nor Edwin’s. No, Chauncey’s mother was the cook, Hester. Chauncey’s father freed her after she birthed Chauncey, but she stayed on, brave woman. Endured Mrs. Burr’s hatred for it, though Mr. Burr senior treated Chauncey like his own son, which, of course, he was.
Chauncey leaves the slave-hunters moaning in pig shit and continues on his path. Yes, he knows exactly what the Fox women are about. He, too, hides in plain sight, as Heman likes to remind him. It is the best place to hide and certainly beats acting the happy, servile nitwit like his whip-smart mother had done, so as to keep her employ and her son. As for the Fox sisters, they are only acting the part allotted them: empty-headed women, innoncents incapable of subterfuge or calculation or any kind of guile.
At last: Barnum’s Hotel. It is five storeys with a pillared entrance and little balconies on every window. It would be a marvel in some village, but here, in this city of astounding edifices, it is of average wonderment. In the lobby Chauncey flings off his coat, and sets aside his cane so as to look less imposing, less Chauncey Burr-ish. Near on, a boy porter kicks surreptitiously at a heavy trunks. A maid scrubs the marble floor. Chauncey stands out of the arc of her suds and rummages up his smoothest persona: “Madame, would you chance to know if the remarkable Fox women are still about?”
The maid shakes her head. “They’re gone.”
Chauncey lowers his voice, asks if, when cleaning their room, she overheard any comments about toes.
“Toes?” the maid whispers back. “If it’s toes you’re wanting, my aunt runs a place.” She winks, and Chauncey thanks her and hastens on to other game. The boy porter only says that the Fox ladies were kind and merry and tipped handsome. Chauncey turns on his heel. Ah. There: A man who is like a statue vivified by some pagan god. Though truly, what god would bother giving such a countenance life? It has no significance whatsoever. The man waters a fern as if he has done so all his days, though Chauncey knows he hasn’t, no indeedo.
“Alfie, is it? Forgive me, I’m ignorant of your family name.”
Alfie stares up. “It’s Kincaid. How you got my acquaintance?”
“I witnessed you at the Fox ladies’ ‘séance’ in August. I heard Mrs. Fish call to you. She seemed to rely most heavily upon your presence. Forgive me, I am the Reverend Chauncey Burr.”
Alfie considers him, then takes the proffered hand.
He doesn’t even have an odour, Chauncey notes. No smell of hair grease or rot-mouth or sweat or musty wool. The perfect accomplice. I’d cherish a tenfold of him my bloodyo self, he thinks.
“May I treat you to luncheon, Mr. Kincaid? There is a well-spoken-of establishment a block from here.”
Alfie agrees to meet him there in an hour. Chauncey nearly skips out the door. Leah, Leah, you are not the only one adored by Lady Lucko! For the situation is obvious. An argument, a misunderstanding, and Alfie given the heave-ho, resentment like cement in his veins. Hadn’t Alfie barely considered whether to meet him? He must be burning to spill the beans.
“Oh, March,” Chauncey says to the skies. “You lovely, traitorous month.”
Chauncey is correct and righto. Alfie gives up the goods, but only after pondering the menu a quarter-hour. His job, he informs Chauncey, was to take care of the books, count the takings and hand them to Leah, who then doled out the money to the others. “Tight-fisted, that one. Said she worries about how the girls spend, but I think she likes a short leash on ’em, is all.”
“Yes, I imagine she does, Mr. Kincaid, I imagine it well.” Chauncey orders more wine, more dreaded oysters. He is sparing no expense and does not hurry Alfie Kincaid. Looks him straight in the eyes and says his name at every turn, taking a page from the manual of Leah Fox Fish herself. It is enough. Alfie becomes more animated, garrulous. It isn’t the wine, the pullet, the costly fricandeau of veal. It is the attention given a lonely man who cannot even comprehend that he is lonely, so accustomed is he to the state. I might be of the minor pantheon myself, Chauncey thinks, as Alfie’s cheeks flush, as he emits a rattle sound that might be a chuckle.
Chauncey speaks of Mrs. Fox Fish with respect, even admiration.
“Sure, sure. But she’ll cut you down, that one,” Alfie says, and extracts a morsel from his teeth. “I did everything for them. I was their dog’s-body. Loyal as a knave. And here Mrs. Fish accuses me of skimming. She were bug-eyed on a laudanum brew then. They get lie-down-and-cry headaches, all three of them.”
“Do they? I am aggrieved to hear of it. But it must be difficult for such honourable women to be so … on display. And difficult for you, as well, Mr. Kincaid, to cope with their feminine ways and overwrought demands.”
“She’ll ask me back. Heed me on that score.”
“I heed you. More wine?”
“I offered myself to Barnum’s Hotel when she tossed me to the midden heap. Not that I like it any … To the top now.” He indicates his glass. Chauncey keeps pouring. Alfie keeps talking. “The job takes no braining at all. Water this plant. Haul that up.” Alfie has not yet shown any curiosity as to Chauncey’s purpose, Chauncey’s profession. Still, he must understand that more pointed questions will come with the cream cakes, the brandy, the cigars.
Chauncey says, “The doctors in Buffalo unearthed a Mrs. Patcheon who could make a knocking sound with her knee joints by slipping them in and out.”
“But you’re betting it’s the toes.”
Chauncey sits back in surprise.
Alfie slurps the wine and rattles out another chuckle. “I know what you’re about. I’ve seen your show. ‘Imagination, Ghost-seeing and the Temperament of Genius,’ was it? Weren’t the worst show ever.”
“I see, righto. My lectures, you mean.” Chauncey leans forward. “Tell me more, Mr. Kincaid. I am abrim with curiosity.”
“They don’t let me in on the all of it. And I’ve never caught them in any kind of … indelicate doings.”
Chauncey contemplates him. It is not a lie. Chauncey, having to lie constantly himself, can spot one a league off. “What of other, ah, employed persons? Those who have, alike you, offered their services, their loyalty
, their skills to the Fox sisters, or their associates?”
“Associates? Like the Posts. Their maid Machteld? Wouldn’t know. Would I?”
“No, I suppose not,” Chauncey says, barely containing his glee.
“Too bad she’d hang by her neck, that Machteld, before she’d gift anyone with conversation—anyone sides those Posts, I mean.”
“I see. Mr. Kincaid … Alfred. You’ve been about the family aplenty. Surely there’s someone who might know. Who might wish to reveal … who has seen with their own eyes … You understand, Alfred, that taking money from the bereaved is neither right, nor moral?”
“Right and moral has got sweet all to do with it.”
“Yes, of course,” Chauncey says hastily. He has put a step wrong. Morality? Righteousness? These things hardly mattered to one such as Alfie Kincaid. Getting even is his tipple. Sure enough, he evades Chauncey’s questions about what else he did for the Fox women besides organize their accounts. A dull man but not a stupid one, Chauncey realizes. For Alfie’s spying—and Chauncey is certain now that Alfie spied out information on the dead to pass along to the sisters—might be a matter for the law. It thus takes all of Chauncey’s resources and several costly brandies and several promises not to utter Alfie Kincaid’s own name, to pry out the name of the one Fox kinfolk who might be of any use.
“ ’Course, you’d have to go to Arcadia,” Alfie adds, and licks the cream out of a puffed shell.
CHAPTER 18.
“And were you betrayed?” I asked my patient. “By whom? What kin would do so?”
“Guess.”
“I don’t like to guessing games. I’ve told you that … It wasn’t your father, was it?”
“The good grief, no!”
“Katie? Was she in Arcadia then?”
“No. She was at the Greeleys’ home in Turtle Bay when the tell-all appeared in the Times. Mother and I were there, too, on a short visit from Rochester. And how could Katie have betrayed us? She loved us, not to mention that she believed in her own magic by that time, lock and stock. Indeed, I recall her denying the tell-all so strongly to the Greeleys she nearly had me convinced of her version of things.”
“And did the Greeleys send you packing anyways? I would have. And in a Saratoga trunk, to boot.”
She smiled. “No, Mary Greeley was a stalwart supporter of us by then, and of Katie certainly, though she still couldn’t abide the woman. Horace continued to be supportive, too, though I suspected he was having doubts about the wisdom of his connection with us.”
“Then perchance he had sense after all.”
She smiled at this, said, “The tell-all sent Leah into a fury, of course. I wasn’t near as bothered. Our little prank had grown into a juggernaut, and it would not be swatted aside so easily, not by jealous kin, not by the likes of Burr. Not by proof, really, of any shape or size.”
“NO, AMY, DON’T STRIKE THE TINDER,” Leah orders. She regrets her vexed tone straightaways, but assures herself that Amy Post, being a Quaker, would never judge nor condemn Leah for mere ill-temper. Nor for anything at all, surely.
Leah sits up. Lets Amy plump the pillows. Sundown and Leah is only now coming awake. She has become a night creature since returning from Buffalo. Her veins bleed fire. Light hammers her brain. Dizziness assaults her. And her poor soul. Last night it detached itself and floated over her bed and observed the woman there—the abundant chestnut hair with its glimmers of silver, the brow etched with worry, the shoulders weary from carrying her family pigback. And yet a most handsome woman even so, the soul observed. One would never guess her at thirty-six years. Leah has not told anyone of this event, not even Amy—the better to forget it. The idea of her soul taking a practice walk is terrifying. She does not wish to contemplate her own demise. She has to contemplate everyone else’s. Surely that is enough.
Amy measures out several drams of elixir and hands it Leah. Leah tastes hellebore, as well as tolu—dear Isaac is always tinkering with his remedies. Leah offers her gratitude to Amy. “And to your Isaac as well. You have both stood fast through these trying days.” Unlike Margaretta and Mother, Leah nearly adds. They have left her to join Katie at “Castle Doleful.” And all because Katie has threatened to drown herself in the shining waters of Turtle Bay should she be left alone a moment longer with Mary Greeley. “Ignore Katherina’s letters,” Leah counselled. “She is merely being her usual dramatic self. And I do need you here.” Maggie and Mother left regardless. Granted, they left before the betrayal, before Leah fell ill with shock. Still, Leah cannot but feel abandoned.
“As well you should,” said Lemira Kedzie, Amy’s trusted friend, and now Leah’s, apparently. She kindly offered to lead Leah’s sittings while Leah recovers. An offer that Leah just as kindly refused. As for Calvin, well, he would be at her side every minute if she allowed it, but Leah prefers he does not see her thus. Anywise, Calvin seems to need rest of his own these days, as if he weren’t blessed with manly strength and youthful energy.
Alfie slips into the room and places a sweet roll and a sheaf of newspapers on the table beside Amy. He hands Leah a folded telegram. Dear Alfie. Leah never fully realized his usefulness until he was absent.
“Thank you kindly,” Leah calls, though Alfie has already gone. Three weeks ago she wrote and asked for his forgiveness. He gave it, though she cannot recall his exact reply. Something, likely, about her accusation being an understandable mistake, seeing that she has so many adversaries, seeing that jealousy and treachery abound. She has upped his pay, of course, has even offered him the money she accused him of stealing back in New York and that she much later found in her reticule, just where she then recalled she had put it for safekeeping.
Amy brings a lamp close and looks through the newspapers. Are Ruth’s lies printed among them? Leah wonders. That hoyden. That damned bitch. Yes, Ruth Culver is so far beyond the pale she has forced Leah to think in curses.
Leah dares not ask Amy if she has confronted Machteld, who is clearly the “Dutch servant girl” mentioned in Ruth’s self-serving attack on her own kin. Nor does she show Amy the telegram Alfie just handed her. It is from New York. From Maggie.
Not Kat’s Fault, it reads, nothing more.
“Is that from our Horace?” Amy asks.
“No, though I am certain he will write or telegram forthwith. He is a very busy man, dear Amy.”
Amy gives Leah a strange look—not an exasperated one, surely.
“Yes, soon, very soon,” Leah continues. “Horace will give his rebuttal to this latest slander. The girls and Mother are at his country house. They are the mediums for his son, Pickie, that importunate little spirit. And the consolers of his wife, Mary, that … Mary. He cannot continue to stand upon neutral ground.”
“I grant thee: it is difficult ground to stand upon,” Amy says dryly.
Leah nibbles on the sweet roll, sips Isaac’s elixir. Nothing eases her. “A pen, Amy, the inkpot. Now that you have put Horace in my mind it seems I must … ah, thank you,” Leah says as Amy, without another word, hands her the writing tray and implements.
Amy takes up her needlework while Leah writes.
5 April, 1851
Dearest Horace,
I am writing to tell you that Ruth Culver is obscure and talentless and resents to Heaven and the Spirits the growing fame and remarkable abilities of me and my sweet sisters, and that she is green-appled with jealousy at how the papers describe us as “divinely countenanced” and “lovely seeresses” and so on, because Ruth Culver, it must be said, has a face like a ripped bun, and anyone can see that the so-called-Reverend Chauncey Burr is behind all this and surely fed Ruth lies as one feeds a wallowing old sow slops left over from a table …
Leah lifts her pen. The ink drips and blossoms black on the page. Yes. Chauncey damned Burr. Ruth Culver must have contacted him somehow after his failed, so-called expose in New York. Surely none of their intimate group would have directed Chauncey to Ruth. And here Leah purchased that fancy shawl to ke
ep sour-faced Ruth from jealousy’s beck, as if she had known somehow that Ruth had a traitor’s soul. Leah presses her hands to temples. I must take some blame for this disaster, yes, she thinks. I should never have allowed Katie to spend time with Ruth during the cholera fright last year. But Ruth had insisted, and Margaretta had been ill and my nerves on screeching edge and … damn Ruth to hell.
Leah re-reads her letter to Horace. Tears it in half. The wording is too frank, yes, too frank and honest by far. Amy glances up from her needlework, but she doesn’t admonish Leah for the flagrant wasting of paper.
“I will purchase a quire more, Amy, don’t look at me so.”
“It is just, just that I must go now,” Amy says. “Lemira and I have a meeting for the women’s cause.”
“My spirits, another meeting?”
“Yes, dearest. Women will never win the battle for suffrage without meetings. Now, don’t thou sigh.”
“But Amy, Amy, a battle rages here also. Nasty forces are aligning against the spirit world. But you are much occupied. I understand that.”
Amy sits beside Leah on the bed. “Dearest, perhaps each world should be attended to in its time. The spirits live in a world of justice and love, but we, well …” She takes Leah’s hands. “Come with me and Lemira when thou art feeling better. Thou would be such an asset to the women’s cause. Is it not galling to thee how we women are treated as if we are simple children incapable of an original thought or action? As if we are frail and silly, weak of will, bereft of any true intelligence?”
Leah considers this. “It is galling to be so discounted and … underestimated because of one’s sex, certainly. And if ever the spirits desert me, I promise I shall march with you wherever you ask. But of course I have my sisters to consider. They do need me every moment.”
“They do, yes,” Amy says, and shuffles the newspapers again, leaving the New York Express atop the pile, folded there at Ruth’s damned lies.
Why-ever would Amy do that? Leah wonders. Ah, Amy does not wish me to relent, that is it.
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