The Dark (15 page)

“Charge? Charge? We do not charge. We accept gifts, that is all. Because, truly, how am I to pay the rent? How? I cannot teach music any longer. The students keep away with all this spirit business, and the girls must have clothes suitable for society. It is not as if you sew up the latest fashion, Mother. And we must eat. And more and more people are asking us to help them. How can we help them if we have no money? How? The spirits know nothing of money. They do not need to eat or be presentable. They are invisible, which is lucky for them.”

“Please don’t be arguing,” Maggie begs. “Not now.”

“You are quite right, sister. We must be in strict harmony.”

The preacher’s followers kneel on the pretty hooked rugs. A mouse, or perhaps a beetle, skitters under the whatnot cabinet. Mother crosses her fingers.

“What are you doing, Mother?” Leah whispers. “Cease it. He might notice and think …”

But the preacher has already noticed. He approaches the trio as if they are feral dogs. Dips his chalky fingers in a bowl of water clutched by a woman plain, Maggie thinks, as all-sin. The preacher flicks the water about. “Begone! Begone. Draw back to your evil lair. Do not consort with these women.”

Leah checks a laugh. “My heavens, sir, by your manner one would think the Devil has something to fear from us.”

“Leah,” Mother gasps. The preacher’s followers chorus hallelujahs.

Hallelujah until you choke, Maggie thinks.

The preacher holds up his bible like a shield. “The Devil has gained your soul, Mrs. Fish. And the souls of your vixen sisters. You have gambled and—”

A thud. Another. The preacher calls out to Jesus. A third thud. The mantel clock shakes. And now rapid, smaller thuds, like hailstones falling. Or brimstone, Maggie supposes, and nearly smiles.

The preacher’s followers stand.

Leah says, “It may be wise to leave, sir. This instance.”

“I warn you, woman, this is the Devil’s den.”

Leah’s gaze is so cold that the preacher, to Maggie’s delight, shivers. “No,” Leah declares. “This is
my
home.”

The preacher and his followers sneer and hiss as they leave, like villains in a puppet show. Mother shuts the door firmly behind them, and studies her image in the vestibule looking glass. Her reflection, Maggie notes with surprise, is almost formidable.

The night after the preacher’s visit, Maggie is jolted awake by angry voices. She pats desperately about for the candle and the lucifer matches. The lucifer flares on the third strike. Maggie slaps at the sparks as they fall on the bedclothes, holds her breath against the reeking fumes, lights her candle.

“My Lord! What do you think you are doing out here?”

Maggie tenses. But the voice is not in the room, nor even in the house; it is from outside: Leah’s.

Maggie goes to the window and opens the sash, expecting to see some poor robber cowering from Leah’s wrath. But it is not a robber, it is their mother. And Mother is neither cowering nor fretting, for a change. She stands opposite Leah over a smouldering pile. The moon is full and the garden has the metallic, sharp-edged aspect of a tin relief. Both women are in their nightdresses. Flakes of burning newsprint float around them. Even from her vantage Maggie can smell bitterroot, sage, burning hair. She rushes to her
dressing table. Shakes out her hair jar, then Katie’s. The hair, plucked from their brushes, kept for pillow stuffings and hairpieces, is gone, all of it.

Back at the window Maggie notices the bloodied linen wrap on her mother’s wrist. “Is Ma ill? Injured?” she calls down.

“I’m all-manner of fine,” Mother calls back. “That preacher had the wrong tack, didn’t he? But now everything will be lovely, girls. I’ve sent the ghosts away. They’ll not bother us any longer. Sometime the old ways are best, aren’t they? Now, come, let’s inside.”

Maggie runs down to the vestibule and together she and Leah put their mother to bed. Mother plucks at her night wrap, her brief resolution gone. “It will be as it was, poppets, won’t it?”

Maggie and Leah soothe her of one accord, then leave her to sleep. They make their way to the kitchen by silent agreement. They are often of such like mind these days. “I can’t bear this,” Maggie says. “Poor Ma. We should tell her and such. For certain we should.”

Leah shushes her. Points to some crockery as if it might have ears. “Tell her? What? How you and Katherina got that peddler to haunt the old house? How you orchestrated it all? It would be seen as a crime, I tell you.”

“A crime? That’s balderdash, Leah, we—”

“And whatever will Amy and Isaac think? And all the others? Consider. If we cease now, just as we are preparing to show the wider world, then we shall be suspect.”

The wider world? Maggie thinks, and visions the great maw of it before her. Because the preacher and his lot are not the only naysayers. The Rochester papers have taken note of the happenings at the Troup Street cottage. Some writers are calling the Fox sisters charlatans, gross opportunists, humbugs. Others are calling them gifted seers, divine diviners, illuminators of a new age. In short, the battle lines are being drawn between the believers and the doubters. And the spirits want the battle joined. Or so Leah insists. The regulars to their spirit circles are less certain, Maggie knows. Public humiliation is a worry. As is loss of business. Banishment from church. Mobs.

Leah grips her braid as if it were a cudgel, continues, “Indeed, if we turn aside now, Margaretta, our reputations shall be ruined.
Our
reputations, sister. Mine and yours and the reputation of this entire family. As for our honour, it is all bound together like so much rickwood for the fire. No, no, you simply cannot stop now, Margaretta. Even if that is what you truly wish, which I doubt. You have gone too far in.
We
have, that is—for you have taken me along, my lamb. Consider those men who swim. Do they turn back when crossing a body of water? No, they forge on. If they turn back, they shall surely drown in the dark depths. But the other side, ah, the other side. How lovely with its rich, green banks.” She pours Maggie a cider. “No, we cannot for a moment shirk. Never mind the swimmers, we must be like soldiers who charge headlong into battle.”

“And where’d you chance by that comparison? Calvin?”

“Hah, did you ever imagine he would be so enthusiastic about the spirits? After all the tricks they played upon him?” Leah’s seriousness switches, as it often does, and her laugh—her genuine laugh—has a merry trill, unlike her parlour laugh, which is merely grating.

Maggie laughs also then, and says, “Still, it’s got to stop one day. It’s getting grievously dreary.”

“And Hydesville isn’t dreary? Imagine yourself there, all alone but for our dear parents, your life a quiet, endless interlude. Oh, there might be crickets cricketing and bats flapping and owls hooting, those sorts of sounds, but no happy evenings, no friends constantly calling. No spirits comforting the living. No new frocks or nice outings.”

Maggie feels herself on a threshold. “Say it,” she says, low-voiced. “Just once, Leah, tell what is really, truly happening.”

“Dearest Margaretta, some things are best not uttered.”

A silence as Maggie considers. She has the queer sense that her life’s path is being decided, that her next step will lead her to some far-flung outpost, from which return is impossible.

“You said we could be quit of this anytime, Leah. You promised that, back in Hydesville when you made us show you.”

“Indeed, I did say
we
could be quit of it. We. Us, together, not just you. This is not your decision alone. Do think of others, for once, Margaretta.”

Maggie bites her lip to holds back desperate, pleading words. Such words are futile with Leah. She knows this much after seeing Lizzie banished. Instead she says, calmly, “I
am
thinking of others, Leah … of Ma, actually. I am thinking that mayhap her spell worked just dandy.”

M
y patient said, “Mother’s old magic did work for a time, of course, but perhaps she did not spill enough blood or burn enough hair because her spell was not enough to keep the spirits away forever.”

“Surely you didn’t believe in your mother’s spells and charms,” I said.

“No, by that time I had decided to believe in nothing but my own self. Indeed, after the preacher’s visit I never attended church again, nor cracked a bible, nor prayed. Not, that is, until Elisha left me for the Arctic. I was stubborn then.”

“You’re just as stubborn now, duck,” I assured her. “If not, you’d already be dead.”

“Well, yes,” my patient said, and fell into one of her brooding studies.

I put on my best cheery manner. “Well, this garret is certainly as chilled as your Elisha’s Arctic realms. I’ll bring an extra coverlet next time, duck, and a foot-stove, to boot. All right? Yes?” (I should mention it was now the 9th of February and a wet snow pasted the garret’s three linked windows.) “And here is your medicine,” I added.

She took the tumbler without a word and I dusted the garret, all-quiet, so as not to disturb her thoughts. I had hopes, I allow, that she was composing her last words, or debating on a hymn for her funeral. Working out, that is, all those details and considerations one should when nearing imminent demise.

I did try my heart’s best to quit the spirits, Mrs. Mellon, Many times, alas and such. I ever tried. I ever failed.” She set aside the empty tumbler.

I sighed. “Well, I am not amazed. Spirits are everywhere a body turns. They’re sold in every dry goods and chophouse. Are ever a temptation. But they do keep the blue devils at bay.” I picked up my needles, untangled some yarn skeins. “So I’ve been told.”

“Hah, not those spirits. The ghost-talking, I meant. Mind, I did try to be quit of the liquid spirits many, many times as well.”

“Not to worry about that, duck,” I said. “We ever try.”

To which my patient merely replied, “You work too hard.” I should add that she stated this as an absolute fact, which was how she stated many things. She was, to be frank, very hard to contradict. Or doubt.

M
AGGIE’S DAMP
, unbound hair falls over the back of the sofa and nearly touches the coal brazier set on the rug. She holds her novel,
Tabitha’s Dilemma
, away from the smoke. The parlour smells of benozine, of the lavender strewn in the coals. There is the ticking of the mantel clock. The faint snapping as Maggie turns the pages. Otherwise, quiet reigns in the Troup Street cottage. The spirits are silent. Not a thud. Not a rap. And for entire week now. Not even Katie’s return from the Caprons’ has inspired their presence.

But now there is a tap-tap on the cover of Maggie’s novel.

Leah.

“Allow me to guess, little sister. A beanteous and gentle heroine raised in poverty is discovered to be the heiress to vast fortune. The impediments to her fine marriage are thrown aside and all ends joyfully.”

Maggie puts the book aside and inspects her hair, which is now dry and pleasingly fragrant from the lavender smoke. “My, Leah, aren’t you cynical.”

“Cynical? What of you and your little comments?”

“I’m witty.”

“But not wise.”

“Why in tunket does a girl need wise anywise?”

“Nor imaginative.”

“I can ‘imaginative’ you leaving me to read my book in peace.”

Leah looks Maggie up and down. “And what of
imagining
your prospects if the spirits stay gone, Margaretta? With no dowry there’s none will marry you except some ancient farmer, reeking of farm animals. What of
imagining
yourself banished to a kitchen, tending the heat-blasting monster that is the cookstove. You who have taken to an easeful life as sparrows do the blue air? And then the babes coming lickety-split. And if they don’t murder you with their birthing, the likely deaths of these babies, one after the other, will render you aged before your time. Your witty comments will turn into arias of woe. God help you, since I shall not.”

Maggie picks up the novel. Her throat is very dry—from the coal smoke, that is it. She opens a page at random.
Tabitha’s heart split in twain at his mere glance
.

“And here is another
imagining
,” Leah continues, as if she, too, has read the line. “You running off with some swain, your reputation in ruins. Scorned by all. A veritable slattern, and all because some spirits were acting childish.”

Maggie flings the book to the rug. “Childish?”

“Yes. Childish. Brattish. Foolish. Running away without an explanation. Showing ingratitude.” Leah heaves a breath. “Tell me, Margaretta, honestly now, what is required for the spirits to return?”

“I’ve not a glimmer. Mayhap you should go ask Ma. She’s the one who spelled them off.”

“And what of Katherina?” Leah says, as if to herself. She turns towards the kitchen. Maggie follows, grim-eyed.

Katie is at the kitchen table playing with jackstraws. She tumbles one off the edge. Picks it up. Shakes her head. “Now, really, it weren’t as bad as all that. Buck-up … Oh, hallo, Leah.”

Leah stands over her. “Truly, but I miss our invisible friends. Do you not, Katherina? These jackstraw men seem as poor substitutes.”