The Dark (24 page)

Leah nudges Maggie, then Katie. “Edge closer. The both of you. This is of such importance.”

“Isn’t every old thing,” Katie mutters. Maggie nods in agreement with Katie But they both edge closer to Barnum and Horace, as told. Maggie concentrates on shutting out the marvelling comments of the other museum attendees, the rustling of their museum guide books, the snickering children. Near on Mother watches enthralled as Mr. Nellis the Armless loads a pistol with his toes. She is, as usual, no help at all.

“The how?” Maggie hears Horace say. “Phineas, I can’t imagine there is a ‘how’ at all. They’re country girls and little educated. Miss Katie, the one in the lilac affair, she’s just on thirteen. Miss Maggie, the doe-eyed one there, in the green, she’s sixteen, I believe. And Mrs. Fish, she is, what, twenty-five? Or passes for that at least. My point is that I can’t imagine any of them duping a baby out of his rattle, let alone duping the worthy men who’ve tested them.”

Barnum snorts. “Two correct questions out of ten. That’s what their spirits average, Horace. That’s what you told me. And if the spirits ain’t infallible, I might ask, what deuced good are they?”

“Solace?”

“Not a bad commodity, that,” Barnum concedes, and eyes Horace with what might be pity.

Just then the piebald boy points at Horace. “He gonna be one of ours?”

Barnum roars with laughter. Horace
is
odd in appearance, Maggie allows. Like one of our spirits made visible, she had thought with faint alarm when he first called upon the Fox sisters last week at their hotel.
He is wraith pale. Has the flaxen-white hair seen only in children. Is rarely without his droopy white hat, round spectacles and white linen duster, the pockets of which are always stuffed with notes and newspaper. His face owns scarcely a wrinkle and his voice is high-pitched, grating really, especially compared to Mr. Barnum’s rumbly one. Maggie finds it hard to believe that Horace Greeley is the most powerful newspaperman in New York. Leah said that Horace is a “genius,” a “polymath,” an opinion swayer, a president maker. She said that when he started writing his personal opinions for the front page of his newspaper, every other editor followed suit. He has no fear of the powerful, nor of controversy. He writes scathingly about slavery. And he supports the causes of the weaker sex. Has even hired a woman to write for him. Miss Fuller? Yes, that is her name. Miss Margaret Fuller. She corresponds from Europe at the moment. Apparently all kinds of revolutions and wars and government experiments are going on over there.

Barnum’s laughter sputters off. “What do you say, Horace? Half ghost! Half man! You could lug about a coffin, one foot in, one foot out, that kind of thing.”

Horace smiles. “I should hope I make a better journalist than a freak.”

“You’re a deuced better journalist than ever I was. Let’s say we display you as the Amazing Incorruptible Man. The rags wouldn’t dare cry
you
down.”

Horace and Barnum smile and nod in unison at this, and in the way, Maggie notes, of old trusted friends. She edges even closer, Katie keeping step.

“I look forward to Miss Fuller’s return to America.” Horace continues. “She should be on board the ship even now. Yes, I should very much like her opinions on the spirit rappings. It could be seen as a revolution and she is my chief expert on those.”

“She is damned remarkable. All the beauty of the female. All the brains and ambitions of the male. She’d draw mightily if she’d lecture here.”

Horace’s voice grows higher yet. “She has taken up with, that is, has succumbed to the attentions of, a petty Italian noble, a would-be revolutionary, a good few years younger. I admit some feelings of
betrayal. Not, no, not in that manner, Phineas. It is just that she was as a second mother to Pickie when she lived with Mary and me, and now she has this son of her own.” Horace sighs and roots about in his duster. Pulls out a sweet and gives it to the piebald boy. Manages a smile. “How old are you, my boy?”

“I be seven and a half.”

“I bought him in the Carolinas,” Barnum says. “He’s free to bugger off, of course. He’s got his papers. But it’s a far kinder life here than in the streets. And Clarissa there has taken him under her wing, as it were.”

Maggie looks to where Barnum points. Clarissa the Fat Lady does indeed have a wing: a dewlap of fat that sways as she nibbles a turkey leg.

“Seven and a half,” Horace says. “Pickie is the same age.”

“Is?”

“Yes.” Horace adjusts his spectacles.

Barnum stares at his friend. “Jumping Jesus! Don’t tell me he spoke to you.”

“No, no. They don’t speak. He, ah, that is, he rapped. The raps are the loudest about Miss Katie.” Horace grows animated. “He said he was happy and that he was with his brothers and sisters. They grow up in Heaven, apparently. Well, the ladies call it Spirit Land, and vow that everyone is at their best age there, whether they had to grow to such a state or return to it.”

“Spirit Land, eh? So are there heavenly nurseries? Angels for governesses? Don’t tell me we must carry on working above.”

“I know it sounds ridiculous. But, truly, the young ladies were as perplexed as any in the room.”

Barnum wags his head. “Caution, old friend. Heaven is the show of all shows. I ain’t doubting that. And I ain’t doubting we’re all happy as the larks when we’re with the Good Lord. But for now we’re in the waking world. Stick with corruption. Stick with unmasking human wretchedness in all its shapes and guises. That’s where you hold sway.”

“You think them charlatans?” There is no challenge in Horace’s tone. Only curiosity. He adds, “You of all people would know, Phineas.”

“Oh, the good grief,” Maggie mutters as her view of Horace and Barnum is blocked by a party of what must be factory-men, given their ill-fitting jackets and caps, given that one man wears an eye-patch, another is missing three fingers and a third has an ear burned away.

“What is it, Maggie? Katie?” Mother calls. “Is it the Rubber Man? He is just wondrously dreadful, isn’t he?”

The girls ignore their mother and circle round the factory-men to pick up the conversation.

“… so, in truth, Horace, I rather think they’re geniuses. I’d pilfer their show, that I would, but for the matter of a conscience.

Maggie shams interest in the antics of the Rubber Man as Horace and Barnum approach. Katie does likewise. The hall of human curiosities near empties of spectators, as if Barnum has given some silent command. He approaches and makes the slightest of bows. “Ladies, I am intrigued. And Horace here makes a swell case for you.”

Leah smiles, her dimples on full display. “We shall need your lecture hall, of course. This sort of general display is not seemly for our dear girls.”

“Gracious evers. Not at all!” Mother puts in.

“The cost of entrance can be divided and …” Leah pauses as Maggie taps frantically at her throat, a signal for quiet.

“I don’t recall talking up an agreement,” Barnum says.

Leah frowns. “But Horace has assured us that you were a man of perception and—”

Barnum holds up a hand. “My friend vouches for you, no falsity there. But to work upon grief? To presume Heaven? I do no harm with my humbuggery. But you, ladies, well, you risk giving charlatans a bad reputation.”

“If you are attempting humour, you are failing, sir. Utterly,” Leah says. “The most reputable people in New York are eager for our acquaintance. We are highly spoken of and in the … highest circles and … grandest places.” Leah is as imperious as ever, but Barnum has unsettled her. Maggie can tell by that hitch in her voice, that throb in her temple.

Barnum chuckles. “No doubt. But I needn’t pilfer my Madame Forer’s crystal ball to scry your coming infamy, nor to know that a contract will never share the names of Barnum and Fox.”

“You are too forward, sir. Entirely,” Leah says, and in her coldest voice.

“Hah! Better than backward, ma’am. Now, do excuse me, ladies … Horace. I’ve business to attend to. Oh, and ladies, I hear you’ve booked into my cousin’s hotel. Do bid him capital day for me if you espy him about. He’s doing a bang-up business, but then ain’t every self-promoter and showman keen-set on taking rooms at a Barnum’s Hotel.”

Horace gives Leah a helpless shrug. Leah, chin raised, takes a step towards Barnum. Maggie grips her elbow. “We thank you so much for your time, Mr. Barnum,” she says hastily.

“Yes, we really, really do,” Katie adds.

Mother echoes this. Leah inhales, gathers herself, says, “Yes, our thanks. And I agree: it is best we work in separate spheres.”

And best we not make an enemy of Phineas T. Barnum, Maggie thinks. Why in tunket can she see this, but not Leah? A surprising idea comes to her: Perhaps Leah is not as all-knowing as she seems. Perhaps she needs Maggie to keep her steady, just as Maggie needs Leah for all manner of things. Perhaps Leah needs Katie and Mother too. Somehow, this comforts Maggie.

“I’m near starved to death,” Katie says. “Can we lunch at Delmonico’s again? Can we, Leah?”

“Certainly. Delmonico’s is a finer establishment than this by far. Horace, will you join us?”

Horace will. “Follow me, dear ladies,” he says solicitously, and leads the way out of Barnum’s museum. They are soon lost. The crowds have become too thick. The corridors and rooms and distractions too many. A dead end here. Confusing signage there.

They stop short. Maggie looks about in astonishment. They are in the hall of curiosities. Again. The piebald boy hollers, “You’re back!”

Zip the Pinhead nods his tiny head. The giantess has, improbably, vanished.

“Stay a while,” suggests Mr. Nellis the Armless.

“Stay forever,” adds Mr. Diwali the Snake Charmer.

“It’s like a dreadful maze,” Maggie says to her mother and sisters, to Horace. “That’s what’s wrong with this place. That’s what so blamed distressing about it all.”

“D
O YOU BELIEVE IN SIGNS
, Mrs. Mellon?”

“As in, from Providence?”

“Well, yes.”

I considered this, then said, “I suppose that like anyone I believe in signs. And portents, yes, and auguries and omens, but only when they suit my purposes.”

My patient gestured to the garret’s three linked windows. “They are why I chose this garret, Mrs. Mellon, I took them as a sign.” She did not say more about this. One did not need to be an oracle sort, however, to see how they might have represented to her the Fox sisters three, the two outer windows being small and squared and discreet, at least compared to the centre window, which was fat and arched and seemed in command of the garret’s variant light.

“Did you want some air?” I asked. “The centre window is fixed as the firmament, but those outer ones should crack open with some encouragement.”

She chuckled at this and then talked again of Chauncey Burr.

“I
T’S CLOSER THAN
a bloodyo tomb in here,” Chauncey declares to his brother Heman, and hauls up the boarding-house windows in defiance of the landlady’s orders to keep them shut fast. He thrusts his head out and “takes the air,” as they say, this air that is shot with August heat, with manure dust and coal smoke, with gnats and bluebottles, and with that high din of banging, rattling and shouting that is so particular to New York and that reminds Chauncey of a desperate, enraged leviathan shaking loose its shackles.

He pulls his head back into the room. “I say again, Heman: Gotham is a cesspool of the ignorant and the arrogant. Mark you the cousined soundings of the words.”

Heman chews a plumbago stick. Does not look up from the heaps of papers and periodicals, likely because Chauncey is using his stage voice, the one that discourages a two-way conversation.

“A ‘spirit sitting’ packed with a baker’s dozen of blue blood hotty snot literati? Oh, oh, it must be ghosties since we fucko geniuses of the age can’t figure the why of it. Did that Cooper’s romantic blather about doomed Indians gives him a tinker’s worth of credibility? And what ho the grand historian, Bancroft? Surely he knows that any pea-brain can get intelligence about the high-up dead. Isn’t their every mutter and fart inked on broadsheets and chiselled on their damnedo crypts? Phineas T. was bang-bang and righto! There’s a sucker born every minute, and not one of them ever dies.”