Conjurer (37 page)

“C … is …!” The noise is awful with effort. The beggar struggles to raise herself into a sitting position, but the work proves too great for her frame, and she falls back, her mouth open, her eyes blank and lifeless.

Martha bows her head, but Ella continues to gaze at the dead woman. “I've seen her before, Mother … That day at the Shambles … She said her name was Ruth.”

Author's Note

I
T WAS IN RESEARCHING TWO
ancestors, Nicholas Biddle and Francis Martin Drexel, that the idea of
The Conjurer
first took shape. Drexel ascended to power and prominence while Biddle was publicly castigated and gradually eclipsed during the period known as the Great Depression. This financial catastrophe was instigated by Andrew Jackson's deregulation of the banking industry; it was a time of foment throughout the country, but especially in Philadelphia whose status as a preeminent industrial city added to its luster as the nation's first capital. The grinding poverty of the newly emigrated stood in stark contrast to the vast wealth of the old established families; a vociferous abolitionist movement fought an equally determined proslavery coalition; a series of murderous labor strikes and race riots collided with William Penn's heritage of empathy and tolerance. Mesmerism, somnambulism, clairvoyancy, and conjuring became a panacea that appealed to every social class. Philadelphia, considered the “Athens of America” and an arbiter of style, eagerly embraced the vogue.

It's important to note also that as late as 1842 the city remained divided into townships, boroughs, and districts, and at that time had no unified police force. A criminal could break the law in one part of town and escape punishment by fleeing into another area of jurisdiction. The inadequacy of such a system was the subject of much public debate and outrage. The penny papers, gazettes, and broadsheets of the day devoted considerable ink to the problem.

The Library Company of Philadelphia, founded in 1731 by Benjamin Franklin, and the Athenaeum of Philadelphia, whose current home on Washington Square was completed in 1847, provided me with a plethora of primary research materials. Holding the actual newspapers and journals published in 1842, and reading their editorials, their short works of fiction, their articles, essays, and advertising cards was transformative. I was also able to access records and annual reports from the mental asylum referred to in the novel, from the orphanage, and the Philadelphia Gas Works, and of course I read the original of the famous
Seybert Commission for Investigating Modern Spiritualism
. Many, many thanks to Phillip S. Lapsansky of the Library Company and to Ellen Rose of the Athenaeum. Their Web sites
www.PhilaAthenaeum.org
and
www.PhilaAthenaeum.org
provide an inventory of their holdings.

Physically, Philadelphia retains so much of its history that it's impossible to walk down the streets without feeling transported through time. The brick homes, the grand religious houses, and government buildings, even the cobbles and pebblestones of the roads evince a palpable sense of the past. Ghosts, either good or ill, abound. If you're a stranger to the city, I invite you to discover it.

I also invite readers to write to me with queries or comments. I can be reached through my Web site
www.CordeliaFrancesBiddle.com

Turn the page to continue reading from the Martha Beale Mysteries

IN THE WIND, GHOSTS

T
HE GUSTS GROW IN STRENGTH
and purpose, swirling over the ground in rust-colored eddies that pluck up and then discharge particles of desiccated leaves, ocher-brown twigs, gritty pebbles, and the sere, yellowish grasses that were once the verdant summer-scented lawns and meadows of Beale House. When the breeze spins away in order to buffet another area of the property, the wake smells acrid, brittle, and dead, as if no flowery plants had ever graced its path, no fresh green shoot had ever ripened, no inch of soil had ever yielded up a nurturing loam and the dense aroma of burgeoning life.

Standing on the veranda of her father's country estate—her house and property now—Martha raises a hand to her bonnet as she gazes past the gardens with their artfully arrayed statuary, past the
jardinières
imported from Europe, past the formal promenades and rose walks until her view takes in the fields and woods that stretch down to the Schuylkill River's distant banks.
And yet the heavens are blue
, she thinks,
and the river, half full and sluggish though
it may be, is as azurine as hope
. Despite the scorching September afternoon, despite the sun and cloudless sky, she shivers.

Then a voice calling her from within disturbs her reverie; and she turns, as she always does, in habitual and brisk compliance. It will take her many months or many years to unlearn the patterns of her youth.

“Mother,” she hears again, and Ella flies outside, her high-buttoned boots tapping across the stone flags, the skirts of her traveling costume creating miniature storms from the powdery soil that has blown up against the house. “Must we leave? Must we? And why today? Why?”

Martha's green-gray eyes don't lose their clouded apprehension, and her long, aristocratic face retains its pensive stamp, but she smiles for the child's sake. “We must return to town for your schooling, dearheart. As you well know. For your schooling and for Cai's.”

Ella's expression remains defiant. Since she became Martha Beale's ward seven months before, the eleven-year-old's sallow complexion has grown pink with health, her thin shoulders have rounded, and her hair has taken on a lustrous flaxen hue; but her eyes can still spark with mistrust as though she cannot help but anticipate the loss of everything she has come to know and love.

“All pleasant occasions must come to an end eventually,” Martha continues, her words accompanied by a frown that for a moment replicates Ella's.

“But why? We're happy here. You and I and Cai.”

“Mistress Why and Wherefore.” Martha tilts her head and smiles in earnest. “Because the summer has reached its conclusion as it does every year, and always will. And we three must leave the countryside and journey to our home in the city. But we'll return here. This house and these barns and fields won't vanish. They'll patiently await our coming again, just as they awaited me during the times I traveled back and forth to Philadelphia with my father. There will be many more holidays, and many more hours of idle pleasure. Now, you go and find Cai, and then we can have a final tramp in the gardens while the footmen load the trunks into the carriages in preparation for our departure.”

“He's with Jacob and the dogs” is the short reply. “Cai was crying. Jacob took him to see the hens in order to cheer him.”

“Just so.” Martha nods in agreement with this decision. Jacob Oberholtzer is the estate's head gardener and was one of her father's most faithful servants. The old man, for he surely is that by now, will know precisely what to do with an unhappy five-and-a-half-year-old boy. “Well, you go and ask Jacob if he can spare our Caspar for a few moments.”

But before Ella can do as she's bidden, the wind kicks up again, racing across the veranda where the two stand and beating hard against Martha's dark purple
peau de soie
skirts. They fly out stiff and loud while her bonnet, too loosely tied, flies upward before crashing earthward and rolling end over end across the bristled lawn.

“Oh, this wretched wind,” she mutters through clenched teeth as she smooths and rewraps her tangled mantilla. Her hands, unfashionably bronzed by a season spent out of doors, are tense. “And no rain in sight. What will become of the crops? What will become of the wild creatures who dwell in the woods?”

“But the wind cannot be wretched, Mother” is Ella's staunch reply. “It bears the ghosts of all the souls who have gone before us.”

“Who says such things?” Martha's voice is unexpectedly sharp.

“Miss Pettiman. She told me that is why I hear howling in the chimney flue in my bedroom or in the day nursery. She says it's a soul crying out, but it cannot make human noise until it enters a human dwelling.”

“That's nonsense, Ella. When people die, their souls escape to either Heaven or to Hell—”

“Not all of them, Mother,” her adopted child argues in return. “Miss Pettiman said there are folk who cannot quit the earth, that either anger over some outrage accomplished during their lifetime, or grief at forever forsaking loved ones, holds them here. Miss also said that's why Cai is so often quiet and why he sometimes falls into that awful trembling state, because he's listening to the murmurs of the parents he cannot recall. It's doubly hard for him, she told me, being a mulatto child and being born so frail and sickly and everyone believing he was no better than a deaf mute.”

“Oh, goodness me! What foolishness is that nursery maid teaching you?” Martha's cheeks are flushed with irritation. She relinquishes her place on the stone veranda floor and marches away to retrieve her wandering bonnet while Ella, now chagrined and a little frightened by her adoptive parent's quick wrath, trudges warily behind.

“And are Miss Pettiman's heedless words the reason Cai is weeping with Jacob?” Martha demands as she swoops up the dark headdress and thrusts it haphazardly onto her ringlets, retying the long mulberry-colored ribbons in a tight and clumsy knot.

“No. He doesn't want to leave the countryside. And neither do I.” The tone, however, has lost its boldness. Ella has reverted to the supplication and hesitation that were the mark of her younger days. Then she regains a little of her bravado. “Is it because of Mr. Kelman that we're returning to the city?”

“Is that Miss Pettiman's opinion you're quoting?” Martha demands with more warmth than she intends, and Ella's reaction is swift contrition.

“No. It's mine … because he was a guest here on occasion. And he hasn't visited us in a long while.”

“Mr. Kelman was helpful to me during a difficult period in my life. Of course, I would be grateful for his friendship—and happy to see him, as well,” Martha states, although by now her cheeks are very red, and she realizes she's doing precisely what she's warned the children against: She's lying. The problem of her relationship with Thomas Kelman is very much on her mind.

“Cai likes Mr. Kelman,” Ella continues.

“I hope Cai will like many people. And that you will, too” is the ambiguous answer; then Martha adds a more forthright “Now please fetch Caspar, or we will be late for our departure.”

BUT LEAVE AT THE HOUR
allotted, they do. The servants, both the house and grounds servants, line up in front of the entry portico to bid farewell to their young mistress, her two wards, and their nursery maid, who, in a breach of custom, has been consigned to the second carriage with Martha's lady's maid and the various trunks and valises that have accompanied the group for their summer sojourn. Miss Pettiman has already taken her place among the piled boxes, staring straight ahead as if she were studying a distant mountain, although no such heights can be found on the banks of the Schuylkill River.

The housemaids and the cook drop curtsies as Martha passes; the stablemen and farmers bow bared heads, their caps twiddling in their calloused fingers, their eyes fixed to the dirt of the drive. Every face evinces sadness at Martha's leave-taking. Her father garnered respect but a dearth of kindly thoughts from those who served him; the daughter has gained loyalty because all employed at Beale House, from the youngest scullery maid of thirteen to the senior laundress or the most laconic groom, carry in their hearts a desire to please her. She shakes each hand: wide, narrow, rough-skinned and red, or hard and smooth as stone; and extends her thanks on behalf of herself and the children.

Then a footman helps her into the coach, decorously offering her long skirts into her lace-gloved hands before he closes the glossy door. Ella clambers in at the carriage's other side, followed by a silent, stricken Cai. The coachman cracks his whip; the four black geldings strain forward in their traces; the wheels, crafted of wych elm, heart of oak, and ash, begin to turn; and the procession commences.

Martha looks backward as Beale House dodges out of sight: its Gothic Revival turrets and stone tracery, its slate roof and clipped boxwood hedges, its kitchen garden and outlying buildings hidden for a moment and then springing back into view as the carriages proceed along the dappled and winding trail. The unexpected angles are disconcertingly unfamiliar, as if the house were in the midst of being reformed and refashioned.

She turns her head this way and that, pondering the strange mutations to a place she knows so well. Then a gust catches a tree bough, pushing it downward with a sighing snap. The horses start in fear at the creaking wood and the sudden roar of wind rioting in the neighboring branches. The coach buckets from side to side; and Cai, now Caspar Beale, begins to whimper about invisible demons winging through the air. For an anxious moment, his hands quiver spasmodically as though one of his epileptic fits were imminent. Martha coos to him, stroking his fingers, repeating his name, and gazing into his eyes until the threat passes. Then she tries to convince him that the unseen spirits are not ghouls or wraiths come to haunt and harm him, but angels with enormous and shining wings flying close to earth in order to protect him. Cai remains steadfast in his belief that ghosts are riding in the wind.