Conjurer (40 page)

“Theodora!”

Too late, Dora understands her mother's meaning. She sends a frightened glance toward her father, who returns a conspiratorial wink, then strolls away on the pretext of admiring the likenesses framed upon the gallery walls.
Womenfolk and their foibles
, his stance attests,
mothers and daughters, aunts and nieces: What a good deal of fuss the distaff side fabricates
. When he spots a portrait of Becky Grey he pauses, fully aware of his wife's reproachful gaze. He settles his shoulders as though relishing her disregard.

WHEN THE CROWTHERS ARE CONDUCTED
at length into the daguerreian's operating room, it's husband rather than wife who experiences misgivings. A slanting skylight smudged with dirt and ash blocks the sun, making the place appear somber and forbidding; the artist's backdrops drape the walls, their colors tomb-like and eerie: bluish gray, dark Roman ocher, moleskin. Then there are the cruel-looking iron headrests and armrests that hold a body immobile for the long moments each exposure requires. The entire scene seems suggestive of death. “A trick of the light. It's no more than a trick of color and light,” Crowther mutters as an assistant to M. Baptiste-Gourand escorts Dora to her place, leaning her delicate neck against a headrest, then pressing her temple against the cold metal and moving one hand to trail a nearby Corinthian column.

Dora's eyes, so habitually lively, grow dim with discomfort. She affixes a smile on her face, but the expression appears wan and tortured.

“The portrait lens is designed by Josef Petzval of Vienna,” the parents are informed by another assistant, this one with an ingratiating and murmuring manner. “The Voigtländer lens is more famous, but is often counterfeited, having a forged facsimile of the Vbigtländer signature engraved on the tubes. Naturally the forgery is of little consequence …”

Crowther doesn't reply; instead, he watches a stranger's hands manipulate his daughter's body. “Iodide of silver in order to coat the plate,” the second assistant continues, “then vapor of mercury to develop the latent image, and immersion in a solution of sodium hyposulphite, which fixes the features. It is intended as a keepsake for Miss Crowther's fiancé, is it not?”

Harrison begins to answer but finds he's standing beside a series of horrifying pictures he hadn't noticed previously. They're quarter-plate memorial portraits of dead infants and children, set in ghostly white frames of mother-of-pearl. The daguerreotypes so upset him that he jerks backward in alarm.

“Oh, Papa, must you startle me?” Dora complains. “One would think you didn't want Percy to have his lovely gift. Please do keep still, or Mama and I will be forced to banish you from the room.”

THE LOST PARASOL

T
HE DAY AFTER DORA'S VISIT
to the daguerreian's studio, the neighborhood in which she dwells is visited by a force of nature unprecedented in the city. In an instant the afternoon sky above St. Peter's churchyard turns tarry black while the sun's gold rays are transformed into a spidery and threatening yellow. The pedestrians strolling along Pine or Fourth Street look upward in alarm, expecting an onslaught of thunderclouds and rain—or hail, as has been reported in the countryside. But not one drop of moisture falls. Instead, the air begins to crackle as though desiccated and sere; and a windspout springs to life on Lombard Street, whipping at the elms and the streetlamps as if trying to pluck them from the earth. The monstrous whirling thing grows in height and breadth until it's half as tall as a house and as wide as a heavyset man, then veers northward on Third, where it leaps over the brick wall encircling the church's memorial garden and begins playing havoc among the graves and Osage oranges and shaded brick paths.

Tree limbs as thick as human torsos are snapped in pieces, then hurled to the ground, toppling ancient marble headstones as they plummet. The noise of the spout is like the communal moan of a hundred voices; householders on the facing streets either hurry to their windows in order to witness the extraordinary event or scurry down toward their cellars, shooing their children before them.

Those who watch see three people huddling in terrified positions within the lee of the southern wall. They're an odd grouping: a woman who is obviously pregnant and whose elegant ensemble bespeaks wealth and a position in society, an older Negro man whom most recognize as the church's sexton, and another gentleman, shabbily clothed but bearing, despite the awkwardness of his pose, a proud and defiant bravado. The tall hat on his head may have seen better days, but it's clamped down tight as if the possessing of such an article were a mark of royalty. This unlikely trio touch hands with one another, then clasp their fingers together as though praying that the joined weight of three bodies will be enough to withstand the blast. Remarkably, the beaver hat remains in place.

Then the vicious gust hops away to torture other sections of the city, and the sun reappears, smiling down indifferently.

BECKY GREY—FOR SHE IS
THE
lady—finds she's weeping as she creeps away from the wall and stands. One side of her face is sore and scratched from the rough brick and mortar; the sleeve of her gown is rent; her parasol has been wrenched from her hand and tossed high into a tree; her bonnet is battered; the lace trimming her skirt hangs in strips as if the fingers that knotted it had forgotten the pattern. It's not from her ruined clothing or abraded skin that she cries, though, but from terror. She straightens her body and cannot stem her tears while the Negro man offers to bring her water and then hurries away, and the other man—after some shambling hesitation—supplies a threadbare handkerchief.

In former times, such ministrations would have brought her solace. Now, the efforts only make matters worse, and she continues to sniffle and cry as though she were a lost child rather than a woman six months pregnant. A woman who, by the strict rules of Philadelphia society, should not be venturing abroad without a serving maid or footman to await her wishes.

Becky doesn't care, for lost and frightened is precisely how she feels. Fearful for her physical safety, so recently threatened; and lost because the freak storm has proven once again how much she misses her homeland and all that was familiar and beloved.
Why did I settle in this provincial place?
her thoughts rail.
What did I imagine my life would be within the confines of such a narrow world? This is not London or Paris, after all. Why, oh why was I blinded by William Taitt's handsome face and his honeyed words!
“‘Nought's had, all's spent, where our desire is got without content,'” she mutters aloud. If she were alone, she would certainly add an oath.

“I'm guessing you're an actress,” the man who offered the handkerchief states. The tone is rough, as though assessing the physical attributes of a horse.

If this had been last week or even yesterday, her response would have been very different. She would have drawn herself to her full height—and she is not a petite woman—and corrected the speaker with a disdainful “I am Mrs. William Taitt of Philadelphia and Charleston.” Now she merely nods. “I was.”

“If you was somebody once, you're that same somebody now,” the man argues with a sudden frown; and Becky notices that his forehead is flinty with dirt, that his clothing gives off an unwashed odor, and that his linen is dingy and ill patched. “Who you be is who you be. No one can take that away from you,” he continues with the same stolid inflection while Becky dangles the handkerchief from increasingly hesitant fingers. She would turn and depart from her insalubrious companion, but something warns her to take care. His manner and movements may seem bovine and dull, but it's the deceptive quiescence of a bull in an empty pasture.

“Thank you for your aid,” she says instead, pressing the handkerchief upon him and opening her reticule in order to give him a coin.

“Do I look like a beggar to you, missus?”

He does, of course, but Becky shakes her head. Beneath his hat's low brim, his angry stare grows. “Because I'm not. I'm an honest man. As honest as any actress parading about on the stage.”

Becky makes no answer. She wishes the sexton would return, or that some passerby would venture into the wind-whipped arena.

“More,” he adds with a growl. “More.”

Becky takes a step backward, then, with great relief, notices the sexton's reappearance. She calls out to him that she needs no further aid as she hurries off into the relative safety of Pine Street.

BECKY DOESN'T IMMEDIATELY JOURNEY HOME
, however. The storm and its human aftermath have unsettled her, leaving her raw outside and in. So she pulls her mantilla tightly around her shoulders, trudging along as she weighs the words delivered in the churchyard.
If you was somebody once, you're that same somebody now
. She shakes her head, wishing the statements would vanish, but their echoes remain.
Who you be is who you be. No one can take that away from you
.

Except William Taitt
, she reminds herself.
Except Taitt with his houses and servants and the luxuries he dangled in front of my eyes
.
And the willing bride who bartered her career and her future in exchange
.

Her face full of distress, Becky plunges on until she comes to the boisterous open-air market appropriately known as the Shambles. As it's midafternoon, most of the shopkeepers have packed up their goods, leaving behind a malodorous assortment of ruined fruit, trampled vegetables, oyster shells, fish scales, and straw. Fresh and white-yellow this morning, the straw covering the long stone floor has become flaccid and gray; in the heat, it gives off a fetid odor of rot and horse dung.

Becky lifts her long skirts to avoid the mire; as she does, she notices a gypsy woman who has positioned herself beside a makeshift table where she's offering to prophesy the future. Such sights were so common in London that Becky's heart lifts and she rushes toward the woman, yanking off both gloves and thrusting forward her palms for the gypsy to read. “What is my past history, good dame? If your answer is true, I'll let you cast your cards and tell me what to expect in the future. Come. What was I once?”

The woman glances at Becky's hands, then snaps her fortuneteller's cards together, hiding them away in the bosom of her gown, a thing stitched of so many odds and ends that it looks like a cloth merchant's sample. “You are no mother” is all she says, but Becky responds with a wry laugh.

“You're correct, good lady. The role of maternal parent isn't one I've studied. However, I'm known to be diligent, so I warrant I'll learn my part in time. Now tell me who I once was—”

“Not in time. Or ever.”

Becky continues smiling, although the severity of the gypsy's tone begins to disconcert her. “I have no choice but to learn. But let us leave this dull discussion of motherhood. Tell me who I was in the past. And how lauded—”

“You are no mother,” the gypsy repeats, “and your small abode is filled with phantoms and apparitions.”

Becky stifles an impatient sigh. “You've mistaken my existence for another's. I have several homes—large ones—and I am obviously great with child.”

“You will have nothing” is the retort. “Now, cross my palm with a coin, missus, and then take yourself away.”

“Oh!” Becky can no longer contain her ire. “You'll get no monies from me. You're nothing but a fraud.” Despite these declarations, she reaches for her reticule. Too late, she remembers that pickpockets make a habit of circulating among crowds where gypsies and other street buskers perform.

“The man took it,” the fortune-teller says while fixing Becky with a steady gaze. “The man creeping among them white graves.”

IT'S BY HAPPENSTANCE THAT MARTHA
doesn't encounter the now clearly agitated and homeward-bound Becky while she also walks along Third Street. Having left her father's former brokerage offices near the Merchants' Exchange, her first thought on hearing of the freak storm is to ascertain the condition of his memorial marker. Instead of the former actress, however, it's the lady's husband Martha spots as she enters the churchyard. Her steps cease, and she considers retreating because she finds William Taitt an unlikable person. Despite his outward cordiality and courtliness, despite his wide acquaintanceship and the position of respect he enjoys throughout the city, he strikes her as being intrinsically secretive and even sly.

But Taitt, ever vigilant and mindful of his aristocratic role, calls to her before she can escape. “Ah, Miss Beale, and looking as handsome as ever. Your sojourn in the countryside agreed with you.” He smiles, but the expression goes no deeper than the surface of his skin. “I had heard you'd returned home. And the children you adopted, naturally. How fortunate for them that your paths crossed as they did, and they may now enjoy both the Beale name and estate.” He rocks back on his high and fashionable heels, his well-formed, patrician features no more than a mask of empathy. Or so Martha decides.

“Yes. It is” is all she has time to answer before he dispenses with the subject of her wards and returns to studying the devastation that spreads about on each side. A blanket of yellow-green leaves covers everything: shorn tree limbs, broken monuments, hacked-apart shrubbery, and the splintered benches that line the paths. Small clusters of people wade through the debris, their bodies bent as though they were trudging through snow or a pounding surf.

“This will cost us a pretty penny to fix, but at least the church roof doesn't appear to be damaged. Let us hope that a majority of the stones are also untouched. The vestry cannot afford additional repairs.”

“I came to ascertain whether my father's tablet was harmed,” Martha tells him. “If so, I shall pay to have it replaced. And I'm certain other individuals whose family members are interred here will do likewise.”