The Dark (53 page)

Maggie presses her face to the pillow.
Katie, Kat, Katherina
. Maggie misses her even more than she misses Elisha. Hell, then, is not a fiery well crammed with sinners. Hell is a black, cold place, barren of anyone. For what fire and torment can compare to the self left alone?

Over the next year Maggie, as Elisha warned, does not receive any news of the expedition. Nor does anyone.
The
Advance
is beyond civilization’s beck and call, though Dr. Kane is surely quite safe, and surely having quite an adventure
—such is what the expedition’s sponsor, Mr. Henry Grinnell, writes to assure her.

The months spin by and though Maggie tries hard to be a good student of Miss Turner’s, a good guest, the lights of New York beckon her on, as if she were a small-brained insect. The Turners object to Maggie’s toing and froing, but they cannot deny her right to visit her family. Maggie feels badly for going against Elisha’s wishes, yes, but at least she keeps the promise she made Elisha to never sleep again within Leah’s house. Not that Maggie has a need to stay with Leah now. Mother and Katie have moved into an apartment on 10th Street and she stays with them whenever she is in New York.

I want to be my own Mistress, too
! Katie wrote to Maggie when she first moved to Tenth Street.
So much that I could scream. And Leah is such a bossy-bird. “Don’t drink that, my dearest dear! Another glass? Don’t talk so loud!” Well, you know how she can go on. When I called her a battle-axe she said she’d battle-axe my cabinet of spirits. “But everybody wants spirits with their spirits,” I said. Wasn’t that a clever quip? And then I reminded Leah that she was the one who wanted me to have a spirit cabinet. She turned near purple at that—because of course she meant one of those people-sized cabinets for our séances, the ones she gets from that Pettifew
.

“But please, please, Mag, it’s no fun on my own,” Katie pleads this autumn day of’54. Maggie is staying with her and Mother again at the 10th Street apartment.

“No. I swore to Lish that I’d never rap again. Ah, don’t stay cross, Kat. It’s still me. I’m still here.”

“Gosh-it-all. You haven’t forgotten about Mr. Intrigue yet?”

“No, no, of course not.” Maggie hasn’t forgotten him, just the hollow and giddy way she felt when with him. Just the exact way he looked and sounded.

Katie does not stay cross at Maggie for long; she never does. And she is earning plenty on her own, without Maggie’s help. Mr. Partridge, the match magnate, has hired Katie to give séances to the public, all for the improvement of mankind and for the betterment of the world order, or something like that. Twelve hundred per annum. Imagine a young woman of seventeen earning so much, Maggie wryly thinks. Imagine being able to shop for whatever lovely clothes and pretty rings you wish. Maggie swallows her envy. She lives on the modest funds that Elisha set up before he left and that are administered through Mr. Grinnell. How quickly that money vanishes, however And how sour Grinnell’s letters are becoming in reply to her polite pleas for more funds. He does not understand that she must continue her studies of German and sketching and speech and deportment if she is to be worthy of the Elisha-who-returns. And Maggie has to be dressed in some semblance of the latest style.

Intends
? Maggie thinks.

Winter of’54–55 passes, and then the spring of’55, and Maggie is even less at her lessons, less in Crooksville and ever more out enjoying New York’s entertainments. She wonders if she should return to rapping. She does miss the fun of it at times, as well the challenge, the gratitude of the clients, the money-all-her-own. Some days she does not think of Elisha at all, that is until someone reminds her what a grand hero he is, how esteemed and intelligent and really quite handsome, and how easy it must be to love such a man.

“D
o you mind reading today, Mrs. Mellon? My eyes ache and blur so.” (My patient had just quaffed down her medicine. We had long dispensed with measurements.)

“Certainly, duck.” I reached into my satchel. “Here. I have the almanac … the
Times
, an issue of
Godey’s Lady’s Book
. Not current, but does that signify?”

“None of those. This.” Mrs. Kane shoved Elisha’s book across the bedclothes.

“Sortilege? Another go? I suppose we could … Not that I hold with it.”

“No. Not that. Not today. You must read out all the names you find. Perhaps you can see what I cannot, because I’ve searched it over and over again. Searched it to see if I’m mentioned. If my name is writ there—if, that is, Elisha thought of me at all when he was gone. Oh, I know his book is all about men and their adventuring, but still why won’t he tell of me? It’s as if I don’t exist. Not at all. And yet when I was with him, I felt as if I existed as much as I ever would.” She stared at her thin little hands then as if they were disappearing (they were not). Those brown eyes of hers took on a lost and wild cast. But then she was ever at a loss with this shilly-shally man.

“Settle yourself, duck. I’d be happy to read now—”

“Begin with the crew, please.” She found the page. “There.”

I did as bid, then soon wished I had never touched her damned book. “Henry Brooks, first officer; Isaac Hayes, surgeon and officer; John Wilson, sailing master: August …” I cleared my throat and squinted. “The light. It’s far too bright.” I shifted the ladderback away from the slant of sun.

She waited, said nothing.

“August Sonntag, astronomer and officer; James McGeary, executive officer: Amos Bosnall, photographer and naturalist.” And so on. I read the others without even hearing them, the name of August rang so loud.

August was my son’s name. I called him thus, not because he was born in August (he was born in March, as I have said) but because it is a tradition in my family to name children after the months, which is why I am called June. March would have been a ridiculous name for my son; August, however, suited him like a kid-glove, his manner being as warm and genial as a New England’s summer day.

I could read no more and told her this fact.

“Perhaps it’s a riddle,” she muttered, and took the book from my hands.

T
HURSDAY
, O
CTOBER 11
, 1855,
1:10
p.m. and the steam-ship
Release
arrives in New York Harbor with Elisha and his surviving crew aboard. Maggie hears the news of his return, of the loss of Elisha’s ship the
Advance
to the Arctic ice. She hears the boom of cannons in the harbour, the cheers of the throngs at Battery Landing. The
Advance
left New York Harbor in June of’53. This means, Maggie calculates, that two years, four months, ten days, and five hours have passed since she last beheld Elisha. Now that she will soon see him again, her feelings for him have returned in a shot.

“Come, lamb, you’ll wear a gutter in our new rug,” Mother says. “Sit. Will you?”

“I can’t! I can’t! Where is he?”

Five o’clock and Elisha has still not called at the 10th Street town-home Maggie, having given up on the Turners altogether, now
shares with Mother and Katie. Maggie has her own private parlour, very small, but all her own. She insisted on that.

“He’s detained, that’s it,” Katie offers. “Or, or he’s ill. You know he’s ill a lot.”

“I’ll go to him! I will. I should have gone to see the rescue ship arrive! Why did you stop me, Ma? Why in tunket do you keep me trussed to your damned apron strings!”

“That is enough. Enough! Sit down, Maggie Fox. Ladies wait. They do not seek out men as might, as might … oh, never mind. And they do not ever speak to their mothers so. Nor do they cuss.”

Maggie apologizes. Sniffles. Resumes pacing.

They wait. And wait. The clock chimes midnight.

Katie hands Maggie a glass of spiced rum. “For her nerves, Ma,” she says at their mother’s sharp glance. Katie is arrayed in fawn and amber, but it is Maggie who looks the heiress in a gown of changeable blue silk. It is trimmed with figured lace and tiny crystal drops and fits her every curve. The cost was exorbitant. Enough, as Mother groused, to keep plain wholesome food on a table for a year.

Maggie finally permits Mother and Katie to coax her to bed. They unfasten her buttons and hooks and ties. Loosen her corset. She refuses to take the dress off entirely. She wakes at first light, shivers at each hour-dong of the clock as if it were a death knell. At just past eight, the newspapers are delivered. Elisha’s name is emblazoned everywhere, the front pages columned with his exploits. Maggie snatches the papers up and reads them over once, twice. The first account describes in detail how the
Advance
was trapped in ice for two years, how the intrepid Dr. Kane gave orders to abandon ship and then led his stalwart men south on foot, a harrowing eighty-three-day journey to the whaling post of Upernavik. Only two of his crew died in this epic adventure.

The next account tells much the same but adds how, though Kane sought hard for more clues to Sir Franklin’s demise, he sought in vain, and this because in April of’54 one Sir John Rae, a Scot, found evidence that the Franklin expedition had made it as far as the Boothia Peninsula, which was a thousand miles away from where
the
Advance
had searched. And then the Esquimaux in those parts had reported seeing mad, hideous white men gnawing on their dead comrades. Not that this, the account stresses, could be considered anything more than primitive fancy. At least the Grinnell expedition sighted the Open Polar Sea and Dr. Kane can now present firm evidence for its existence at last.

The final account gives much the same story, though it adds hints of desertion, a near mutiny, a near murder or two, and the news that Dr. Kane will soon be marrying Miss Margaret Fox.

Maggie stares at these lines.
Marrying
? Their engagement had to remain secret, or else be placed in jeopardy. Elisha had assured her of this several times. And who gave the rumour to the paper? Leah? Could she have done so? She had certainly been afume ever since Maggie refused to help with séances. “You might as well marry Dr. Kane,” Leah said. “That is, Margaretta, if he doesn’t return a cadaver, and even if he does, for all I care. Secret engagements. What poppycock. At least if you marry, people will cease calling you his mistress, his wh—his what-have-you.”

Thinking on this, Maggie pats at her gown. It is too snug-fit. Too aglitter.

Katie reads out from her paper: “
Dr. Kane is much improved in physical appearance. He has a bronzed face, a long and heavy black beard, a stouter body and a hand with a hearty grip
.”

“He’s not ill? Not at all?” Maggie asks.

“Well, I mean, he could be underneath … Here, let me get you a soother.” Katie opens her cabinet of spirits. “There you are, my pretties.” The bottles are arrayed on the insides of the doors as well as on the shelves: champagne and whisky. Gin and brandy. All are of fine vintage, the bottles of every colour. The crystal glasses of every size and shape. And every one is of crystal.

Katie mixes Maggie a martinez, and then one for herself. Mother sighs.

By six p.m., Maggie is at last ready to take off her blue silk gown, which looks, she allows, rumpled and desperate in the failing light.

“The door! He’s at the door!” Katie cries. “You didn’t hear the knocks?”

Maggie rushes to the looking glass. Fusses with her hair, pinches colour into her cheeks. “Open the door, Ma. Open it! But without showing your agitation! Please!”

Mother does not show agitation, only astonishment. “Mr. Morton?”

Morton takes up the offer of tea. There are awkward pleasantries and strained small chat, then Morton says, “Righty, then. The letters, you see. His love letters, that is, to you, Miss Fox. He wishes, that is, he pleads with you … pleads that I should retrieve them. His mother, you see, has also read the reportages and these, uh, rumours about an impending marriage.” Morton attempts a laugh. “Gossip and all, but …”

Maggie clenches her teacup. Katie frowns. Mother shakes her head. All of them, Morton included, sit on the edge of their brocaded chairs, stiff as effigies.

When Maggie finally speaks, she is surprised at her own becalmed voice. “The letters are mine. Mine. Why is he not here? He should be here if he wishes such a … such a thing.”

“He’s indisposed and unwell.”

“The papers said he’s hearty as a walrus!” Katie blurts out. Mother nods. Maggie stands, giving Morton no choice but to stand also. “Mr. Morton. Tell your master to never come here. And to never contact me again, in any way.”

Elisha arrives the next afternoon. He is indeed bronzed and hearty looking, and is dressed in full naval regalia—braids and epaulets and gold buttons and such. His expression when he sees Maggie atop the stairs is astounded, intent, alike those of the new-convinced at a séance. Maggie’s resplendant blue dress is crumpled, her cheeks a burning red, her hair a yanked-at mess. She looks her worst. And she hardly cares.