The Dark (32 page)

“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.”

“N
O
, A
MY, 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.

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 keep 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.

Amy leaves, suggesting rest, sleep. No, courage is what I require, Leah decides. She thinks of the Corinthian Hall investigations, of the mob at Troy, of Buffalo and the naysayers there. Mulls over all the difficulties she has overcome ever since she was a girl and her father left, and then Mr. Fish demanded marriage, and then Lizzie came squalling into the world, and then, well … and so on and so forth.

Leah drinks down more elixir. The headache is receding. Another day, perhaps two, and she will be herself again. Know thine enemy, Leah thinks, and reaches for the newspaper and reads again the traitorous lines:

I was getting suspicious of the spirits’ origins and so when Katie was sent to me during the cholera I asked if I could help in the manifestations—we had other kin staying—and Katie said yes. She said that when my cousin
Orville consulted the spirit, I must sit next to her, and touch her arm when the right letter was called
.

Leah reads how Katie then told Ruth the knocks were made by the toes—shades of Burr, who could not see it? Apparently Leah’s own daughter, Lizzie, was in on the discovery that one could make loud raps by cracking toes against a headboard or, indeed, any conducting surface—floors, table legs, doors.

Leah licks a plumbago lead and writes in the margins,
When? In Rochester when Mrs. Fish brought Lizzie and Katie there? Lizzie is known to be a mischief maker. And it hardly explains the initial hauntings in Hydesville
.

Lead poised, Leah now reads Ruth’s in-depth instructions on this fine art of “toe cracking”: how one must warm the feet first and then practise many hours. How it is best to begin when one’s toes are young and pliable. How one should vary the pitch and loudness of the sounds, and look earnestly here and there so the knocks seem to come from the ceilings and walls, from farther off or closer.
And Katie said that I had better have a child at the table with me, and make folks believe that the child was the medium, for they would not suspect a youngster of any trick
.

Leah’s plumbago lead nearly drills through the newspaper as she writes,
And what of the trances? What of the tables moving? Of the sounds of coffins being made? Bells ringing? What of spirits writing through the hands of others? What of the known fact that women are incapable of deception and guile, being so frail, silly and weak, and bereft of true intelligence?

Next comes the foolery about how to read a countenance. The worst, however, is the accusation of accomplices, such as the Posts’ “Dutch servant girl” who had, apparently, often made knocks with a broom.

And what of Katherina pledging on a bible that Ruth is telling lies? That she recalls nothing of what Ruth claims
? Leah writes. The bible is a nice touch, she decides. And likely Katie
would
pledge on one, if Leah asked.

She puts aside the plumbago, then carefully tears the story from the newspaper, folds it smaller and smaller still. She studies her handiwork. Here are Ruth’s lies rendered small and inconsequential, the size, really, of a medicine tablet.

She wonders, even as she opens her mouth, if some mysterious force is guiding her own, is directing her to swallow that folded newsprint and wash it down with the entire bottle of Isaac’s elixir. She wonders if, indeed, she has stumbled upon some rare and peculiar magic. And then she doesn’t wonder at all. She is intent only on struggling through a webbing that is warm and viscous. When she breaks through she is a young girl again, afire with projects, belted with emotions. She is in a field that is dark-edged with forest, and she is staring, pole-axed with astonishment, as the forest undulates as if in readiment to break free. She is running towards the forest when her father appears. Her true father, John-Before. He tips back his Coke hat and grins. “Don’t you polka-dance with the Devil like I did, Leah-Lou. Best you stop now, you hear.”

Leah wakes, hours later, to a bell-clear mind. I shall stop, Pa, she thinks, and vows to God and the spirits to never again overindulge in stimulants, alcohol, or soporifics of any kind. She will henceforth drink only tea and coffee and the occasional glass of watered wine. She will order her sisters to also cease overindulging. Surely with some firm encouragement they will be happy to do so.

That night, Leah sleeps well for the first time in days. Come early morning she finds Calvin in the dining room. “Leah! You’ve rallied. I’m so glad of it,” he says after much throat clearing.

“My pardon? Ah, yes, I am a grand sight better. Tip and top of the scales, thank the spirits.”

She is layering her sweet roll with butter and quince jam when Isaac rushes in. He brandishes a telegram. Tells her in breathless detail of Chauncey Burr’s latest nefarious attack.

“He is slandering you directly now. He calls thee, forgive me, a woman of notoriously bad character. I have telegrammed Cleveland. It is too dangerous to keep your engagement. And Ruth and her …” Isaac’s voice trails off, his gentle face terrained with worry.

“It might well be dangerous. Indeed, I might expire under all the gross scrutiny but, dear Isaac, you know that I must confront this horrid Burr, and now.”