City of Ash (39 page)

“Lucius has procured a tent. And a permit,” Jack said.

“ ‘Once more unto the breach, my friends, once more!’ ” Lucius smiled heartily.

“So you do plan to perform?” Sebastian asked.

“Well, what else is an actor made for? We shall enter into rehearsals tomorrow. The people ache for entertainment, a way to ease their weary cares, and we shall provide it. For a small fee, of course.”

“Of course,” I said.

“You can’t mean to do
Penelope,
” said Sebastian. “Not with Mrs. Langley missing.”

Lucius clasped his hands. “Oh dear no. In deference to our concern, we must wait on that a bit. At least until a new waterfall can be built. We shall start with a little Shakespeare, I believe. A comedy.” He gestured to the gray and bony city
beyond. “Here’s enough tragedy for a year, I’ll warrant. ’Tis best to make people laugh. Have you
Much Ado About Nothing
in your repertoire, my dear?”

I glanced to Jack. “Jack and I both. And I know Aloys does as well.”

“Excellent! I shall need you, Mr. DeWitt, to refine the play for us. Cut out the extraneous parts. Find a spot for a song or two. I would do it myself, but there is so much to be done I haven’t the time.”

“Yes, of course,” Sebastian said.

“It has the added benefit of keeping you near our Bea, eh?” Lucius gave me a ribald smile.

I said quickly, “Where do you mean to put your tent, Lucius?”

“Why, my dear, atop the ashes of the Regal. Where else?” He sighed. “I’d have it there already, but for Mr. Langley’s insistence on searching for his wife’s body.”

“He thinks she’s
dead
?” Sebastian asked—and there was a shock and dismay in his voice that pricked at me.

Lucius shrugged. “Who knows? I think Langley is simply ruling out all the possibilities.”

“Perhaps she hit her head and don’t remember where she is,” Brody put in.

“Ah, the amnesia plot,” Jack said with a wry grin. “A classic, with good reason. Nothing better than a bump on the head to explain the mysterious. Perhaps we should advance that theory to her husband.”

I remembered why I was there to begin with. “Does Nathan intend to search with them?”

Jack shrugged. “Oh, I doubt he’ll get his hands dirty, but I expect he means to supervise. Leave no ash unturned, as it were.”

“When does he mean to search?”

Jack leaned back against the pile of stakes and canvas, crossing his arms over his chest. “Today, I believe.”

“When will they be there? What time?”

Jack glanced at Sebastian and then raised his eyebrows at me. “What a greedy little thing you sound, my sweet. With one hand already full, you think to fill the other. Women are trying things, don’t you agree, DeWitt?”

“Men are more trying,” I said sharply. “Particularly when they concern themselves with affairs that are not their own.”

“True. True. ’Tis not my affair.”

“What
time
, Jack?”

He shrugged. “He may be there already. He was going after breakfast, he said. However it is that rich men can eat when the city starves around them.”

“The relief tents are just up the hill,” I said stonily, clutching Mrs. Langley’s packet of bread. “There’s no need for anyone to starve today.”

“We mean to go up there when Aloys and Mrs. Chace return,” Jack told me. “So someone can watch the tent.”

I nodded. “Then I’ll see you at rehearsal tomorrow.” I was anxious to leave now, to get to Mrs. Langley and tell her Nathan’s plans. I started off, and suddenly Sebastian was beside me.

“Where are you off to in such a hurry?”

“Nathan’s at the Regal site,” I said.

“You mean to talk to him there?” Sebastian looked surprised.

“I haven’t seen him since the fire.”

“He won’t thank you for hunting him down, you know. Not in public. Not while he’s looking for his wife.”

“Perhaps not.”

“Then why go now? Why not wait until he seeks you out?”

I kept my expression as even as I could. “What if he doesn’t?”

Sebastian regarded me thoughtfully, and I had the uncomfortable sense that he saw right through me, that he would call me a liar, but he only said, “He’d be a fool if he didn’t.”

“I just want to be certain.”

“Then what will you do?”

“I don’t know. Come back here, I suppose.”

“Come to my tent instead,” he said in a low voice. “Spend the night with me.”

I sighed. “Sebastian, please. Don’t be a fool.”

“Ah, if you’d only warned me sooner than this,” he said with a smile. “ ‘Answer a fool according to his folly,’ isn’t that what they say? You’re my folly, Bea. Come to my tent. I’ll find you apricots. I know they’re your favorite.”

I couldn’t help myself; I laughed. “Do you never surrender?”

“Not until you do,” he said. “But then I think I can guarantee a most enjoyable captivity.”

I made the mistake of catching his gaze, and it went like a jolt clear through me. I had to admit it to myself; I still wanted him. And why shouldn’t I have him, at least for a time? Just one more night. He was still writing my play; I
did
want to keep him happy. And things were moving even more quickly than I’d hoped. Unless I missed my guess, Mrs. Langley would be gone by tonight, and I would need a place to sleep. It wasn’t as if I was committing to him, after all. I could leave whenever I chose.

“Where did you say the tent was?”

He looked so surprised that I laughed.

“Eleventh and Lane,” he said quickly.

“I’ll be there later,” I promised him. Then I gave him a smile and set off alone, heading south a block or so as if I were going toward the pile of ashes that was the Regal, but when I knew they could no longer see me, I turned back to the Boston block, and Mrs. Langley.

Geneva

I
was starving, and bored, and apprehensive, with nothing to do but worry and watch the city come alive. Smoke rose from the ashes like a fog, curling and wisping, then settling like a miasma over the landscape. The Boston block loomed over everything like a great ogre; all the rest was spires and outcroppings like eroded rock in the middle of the desert, the formations
I’d seen from a distance through the windows of a train, there and gone and yet leaving a lasting impression. Lonely. Desolate. And weirdly beautiful.

There were men about now, spraying down the ashes of their buildings, militiamen poking about, watching, shooing away dogs who had yet to find their masters. I eased to the back wall again, farther out of sight, and wished Mrs. Wilkes would return. I was anxious to get on with things, to leave this place. I knew just how to get into the house, the paned doors that opened from the parlor onto the side yard. I would have to find a way to creep down the hall to Nathan’s study unseen, but there was only Bonnie and the scullery maid and the cook, and I did not think it would be so difficult to evade them. With any luck, I could be in a wagon on the way to the nearest steamer dock tonight, and then on to San Francisco. And from there … I’d thought perhaps the Continent. Somewhere far enough that Papa’s reach, and Nathan’s, did not quite extend, somewhere to contemplate my next step. I had no hope of reconciling with any of the friends I’d known there—who were my father’s as well, of course. The rumors of
Andromeda
and Marat would have reached them; they would be no more accepting of my behavior than had been my friends in Chicago. But some of the artists I’d known—perhaps one or two—were in Europe now, and they would welcome and harbor me until I could be assured of my father’s support. That was my only hope. To win Papa—because Nathan and I were done, and there was nothing for it. I would not put myself in my husband’s hands again.

Still, the task I’d set before myself was daunting, and I could not predict its outcome with any certainty. Papa would be difficult. The letters he’d written me had bristled with hurt and disappointment. I knew what I had not realized in Chicago, that my behavior since my marriage had tried him past all patience.

No, I wasn’t hopeful. I was desperate, and becoming more so with each passing moment.

The others who’d been huddled behind the building near me rose and left, one of them—a whore, I assumed—informing me that the relief tents were open. A kindness, but I only nodded curtly and a bit rudely, and they left without troubling me.

When Mrs. Wilkes finally showed again, she looked tired and cross, her hair hanging loose as mine. Still, I was relieved to see her. She held a small parcel in her hand.

She handed it to me without a greeting. “Here’s your breakfast.”

I tore it open. Thick slices of bread, slightly compressed from being carried, and at the sight of them I was suddenly so hungry I could not contain myself. I only just refrained from shoving the entire package into my mouth.

“We haven’t got much time,” she said. “Nathan’s at the Regal now, searching for your body. I guess he’ll probably be there for a while.”

I nearly choked on the last bite of bread. “My body?”

“He’s afraid you’re dead. Everyone thinks you must be dead.”

I crumpled the butcher paper and threw it onto the ground. “Did you speak to him?”

She shook her head. “Jack told me. But I don’t know how long they’ll dig or how many men he has—”

“Let’s go then,” I said. “It may be our only opportunity.”

I began to walk, and she fell into step beside me as we left the Boston block and moved away from the burned district, that strange journey into a world unchanged, where the only evidence of fire was an acrid fog that curled and hovered as it rose.

“What else did you discover?” I asked her.

“Lucius got his tent. We’re performing
Much Ado About Nothing
as soon as he can raise it. No one’s allowed to sell liquor. There’re only three restaurants left in town and no groceries. The army’s giving away tents to whoever needs one. And Mr. DeWitt showed up.”

How casually she said it. As if he didn’t matter in the least. I glanced at her. “Unhurt?”

“Unhurt. Unscathed. Lucius has set him to revising
Much Ado.
”

I was more relieved than I wanted her to know. “That’s … thank God. Perhaps he’ll be willing to help after all.”

She gave me a quick look. “Why involve him? I said I’d get you out of town.”

I could not explain, not to her, though I wanted to. I wanted to say:
I want to see him one last time before I leave. I want to reassure him that what I feel for him is no pretense, and to see that he feels the same for me. I want to tell him I will help him when I can, that I won’t forget my promises to him
.

But I felt too how explaining this to her would cheapen my relationship with him, and so I only said, “I just feel I should explain things to him before I go.”

“You haven’t explained them to me,” she complained. “Do you want to get out of town quickly or not?”

“Quickly, yes.”

“Then we haven’t time for Sebastian. I’ll be happy to deliver a message for you when we’re done.”

I took a deep breath. “I suppose that will have to serve.”

“I hope you’ve thought of a plan for getting in.”

“The side doors to the parlor,” I said, my breath coming shorter as we climbed the hill. “They open onto the yard. We can go in through there. I’ll have to get down the hall to Nathan’s study, but it should be simple enough.”

“You know where the key to the safe is?”

I nodded. “It should only take a few moments. And then we can hire a wagon and I’ll be off.” Just saying the words was a relief.

“After you give me my portion.”

“Yes, of course. I promised it, didn’t I?”

“Just making sure you didn’t change your mind.”

“I’m not in the habit of going back on my word.”

After that, we toiled on in silence. Up one block and then another. Trees gave some shade, though their leaves too were dusty. The closer to my house we got, the more I began to cling to the shade, to let my hair fall forward to hide my face. I daren’t look at any windows, or at the carriages that went by, and luckily most of the men in town were preoccupied with the fire—and the women too, I assumed. The Ladies Relief Society must be in full force, and no doubt plenty of women had gone to help. No one paid any attention to us. I was glad she was with me; I was uncertain I could have gone this far without being recognized if
I’d been alone. But anyone looking for me would not be looking for two women—Geneva Langley had few friends, after all, and none of them female.

I stopped when we were two houses away, pointing out my home to Mrs. Wilkes, and then I took her down the street instead of into the alley behind, where the stables were and the stableboy and the driver, and the kitchen where the maids did most of their work. Past the rhododendrons flanking the porch that grew so tall they hid the side yard from view. I dodged behind one, and she followed, and then I crept to the edge of the parlor doors, angling myself to see inside without being seen. The parlor was empty, the doors to the hall shut.

“There’s no one there,” I told her, quickly twisting the handle of the door, easing it open. It creaked slightly, and I froze. Mrs. Wilkes went still behind me. Nothing. We slipped inside.