“I’m very much afraid I’ve come completely empty-handed.” My cheeks grew hot and I wished there were some way to go back and purchase a lace hankie or a fancy hair comb for her.
“I expressed myself poorly. I meant, which is your psychic gift?”
If I had not promised myself to go straight, the temptation to feign psychic ability would have been overwhelming. Between that question and the apparent séance I had interrupted, the pickings here were sure to be easy. Even with the promises I had made to myself it was going to be a test of my will not to fall back into my old ways. I conjured the image of Johnny lying motionless on the floor of the show tent and felt my resolve return.
“I’m afraid I haven’t any,” I said, hoping this would not influence whether or not Honoria would offer to let me stay.
“Nonsense. All the women in the family have a gift for divination and the like. Your grandmother could see ghosts, your mother was a medium, I have prophetic dreams. You must have some sort of gift.”
“My mother claimed to be a medium?”
“She didn’t claim to be one. She was one.” Honoria’s eyes widened. “Didn’t your father ever mention that to you?”
“Not a word.” Father had never said my mother had any extraordinary gifts. He did his best to never mention her. Even so, I was surprised that he hadn’t trumpeted that story to bolster my credentials as a medical intuitive. The rubes lapped that sort of nonsense up as eagerly as our old horse did water at the end of a long day’s work pulling the wagon. Honoria shook her head in disbelief.
“Preposterous. Still, there must be something. It is unthinkable that you are the first woman in the family to have no metaphysical abilities.”
As kind and welcoming as she had been, I didn’t know Honoria well enough to mention the voice. Hearing disembodied whispers was the sort of thing that got a person sent to an asylum. And even if she did believe me, I was not convinced myself that the voice was more than an amplified version of my intuition. However, desperate times called for desperate measures. And no one was so desperate as a girl left as much to her own devices as I had been. Clearly, I had to tell her something.
“I wouldn’t claim to be gifted, but I sometimes turn to these for advice.” I reached into my purse and pulled out the small deck of worn tarot cards I always carried with me. I fanned them out on the table positioned in front of the settee and held my breath, hoping they were enough to secure my position. Honoria leaned forward, knocking over a vase in the center of the table in her excitement.
“Where did you get these?” Honoria snatched them off the table and thumbed through them carefully, examining them one by one.
“I don’t actually know. I’ve had them so long I can’t remember ever receiving them.” From the way tears threatened to fall from her eyes, I regretted revealing the cards. Honoria stood and crossed the room to a small mahogany desk. Unlocking the drop front with a key dangling from the chatelaine at her waist she slid open a drawer and withdrew a silken drawstring bag. Returning to the table, she handed it to me.
“Open it,” she said, sitting back on the settee once more. I loosened the smooth cord and slipped my hand inside. Wrapping my fingers around the contents, I discovered a deck of cards very much like my own. The artist seemed to be the same and the amount of wear suggested they were of a similar vintage. The backs of her cards matched mine, but the images on the front were unfamiliar. “They are all from a deck your mother and I shared as children. The night she slipped out of the house and off to a new life with your father we shuffled the deck and divided it in half.”
“Do you know how to correctly read these cards?”
“Your mother and I learned to read tarot before we learned to read the written word. Delphinia was always more adept at it than I. The night she left I urged her to take the entire deck as she valued it so highly but she refused, saying she would feel comforted if a part of her remained here with me.” Honoria brushed a tear from her cheek. “You read them yourself?”
“I’ve always made up my own stories for the pictures. I would dearly love to know what they really mean.” I slid the pile toward her and watched with anticipation as she scooped up the deck in its entirety and shuffled the cards with a deft hand.
“First, I’d like to watch you do a reading, to hear how the cards speak to you with no outside influence.” She placed the deck in front of me and nodded encouragingly.
I had performed hundreds of readings for visitors to the show over the years, but this was different. Most of the querents’ body language had been simple to read, and providing the information they wished to hear was an easy enough task.
But this time I could not help but feel I was the question. Was Honoria using the card reading to determine if I would be welcomed to stay at the Hotel Belden? And if so, was she using my ability to read the cards to decide or was she relying on the cards pulled to advise her?
“If you’d like me to, I will. I usually think of a question of my own if I am alone, or I ask the sitter to think of one if I am reading for another. Do you have a question in mind?”
“I do.” Honoria leaned forward, gripping the edge of the table. A bead of sweat I attributed to nerves trickled out from under the hairline at the base of my neck and rolled down my back. “And then what do you do?”
“I shuffle the cards until one of them calls to me.” As soon as the words left my lips a card jumped out of the deck and lay facedown on the table. Honoria’s eyes flicked toward it but she turned her attention back to my hands.
“What do you do with a card that captures your attention?”
“I lay it facedown and repeat the process if I feel led to choose additional cards. I often pull three cards, sometimes more. Every now and again I pull only one. Especially if the picture on the card seems right to me.”
I steadied my hands the best I could but was certain she could see them trembling ever so slightly as I shuffled the cards, wishing I felt more sure of what I was doing.
I concentrated on the feel of the thick deck in my hand. I sent up a silent wish that the cards would convince my aunt to offer me a place in her home. Allowing instinct to guide me I chose three cards and placed them on the table between us. I turned them over one at a time and looked closely at the images before me. Two cards were unfamiliar. The third was one from my original deck.
“What do these mean to you?” Honoria asked. I touched the first card from her deck. As I opened my mouth to answer I heard the familiar voice in my head speak more clearly than ever in my left ear.
“Homecoming. Celebration.”
Bearing the warning in mind I took a deep breath and shared what it said. “Four of Wands. This card looks like good news. It tells me it concerns a homecoming and a celebration.” Honoria’s grip on the table loosened just enough for some pink to return to her knuckles. Watching her reaction I dared to hope I might be on the right track.
I tapped the second card. “The High Priestess,” I said before repeating the next thing the voice whispered in my ear. “Trust your inner voice. Knowledge of other realms.” Honoria nodded slightly.
I touched the third card and paused, waiting for guidance from the voice. It came again without delay. “The Wheel of Fortune means destiny and events set in motion. Unstoppable forces.”
Honoria released her grip on the table and tapped the card I had neglected to turn upright, the one that had jumped from the deck.
“And what of this one?” she asked. I turned it over and revealed the only card from my deck I feared. I didn’t need the voice to speak to me for this one. It had appeared in my readings with an accurate prediction too many times for me to be uncertain of its meaning.
“The Tower. Upheaval and catastrophe.” I felt my mouth grow dry. I fought the urge to nibble on a thumbnail. If Honoria was counting on the cards to advise her, it looked like she would be unwise to exten
d an invitation to me to stay.
“Your mother shared one of her gifts with you. But there is room for you to develop your natural talents. Cards like the Tower have a positive side as well.”
“They do?”
“Yes. The Tower also asks you to notice which parts of your life are built on falsehood. It warns you to prepare for unstable foundations to crumble.”
“I am afraid I don’t see how that is a positive card.”
“It makes way for that which is solid and beneficial. It sweeps away complacency and demands improvements that serve the greater good.”
“I see.”
“Shall I tell you what I asked of the cards?”
“Only if you wish to do so.” I was torn between wanting to know and being terrified to hear her thoughts.
“I asked what your arrival meant.” Honoria smiled at me and I felt my worry ease a bit. “The cards told me nothing surprising. They also did not reveal how you came to be here.”
I thought again of the hours on the train I had passed, carefully considering which aspects of my story I thought best to mention to my aunt. Despite my vow to go straight I’d been contemplating snipping and stitching the truth to cast Father as the victim of the accident that ended Johnny’s life. It might make Honoria more inclined to welcome me if she believed I had no other family. As I opened my mouth to apply that bit of embroidery to the facts, I once more heard the voice speak with breathtaking clarity in my ear.
“Speak only truth, however conservatively.”
I had always worried the voice was a sign I would end up in an asylum. It occurred to me that perhaps the events of late had driven me mad. Or maybe the blow to my head when I fell had caused some sort of damage to my brain. Only insane people heard voices so frequently and with such clarity. Then my gaze swept over the High Priestess card, the one that spoke of intuition and the inner voice. Bearing it in mind I took a deep breath and took a chance on the truth. Or at least a tidy version of it.
“My father and I argued bitterly. I decided enough was enough and that I would take the chance that you would be here and would be glad to see me.”
“Just like that? Without planning of any kind?”
“I know it sounds rash and I don’t wish to sound disloyal, but my father can be quite unreasonable as well as unreliable.” I decided to gamble that she would be favorably swayed by a sob story. “This argument, like so many others, ended in violence. When I left, my only thought was for my safety.” While strictly speaking that was the truth, I felt a twinge of guilt at the way I had presented it.
“He was heedless and impulsive when I knew him. I am sorry to hear that with age his faults include a tendency to violence. Not that I am at all surprised.” Honoria reached over and patted my hand. The sparkling stones set into the many rings decorating her thick fingers sent flashes of colored light jouncing against the creamy striped wallpaper. “I’ve always said your place was here with me. That’s just what I wrote to Ivory when he let me know my sister had passed on.”
“You offered to take me?” This was news to me.
“Certainly, I did.” Honoria dabbed at her eyes with a ruffled handkerchief. “Of course I knew Delphinia was expecting your arrival. She wrote to me several times after she left home. When her letters stopped and I began to dream of her instead, I knew she was gone.”
“I never knew anything about my mother other than her name and what she looked like from the photograph you sent her.” I reached into my purse once more and offered her the same envelope I had shown Officer Yancey. She removed the picture and stared at it silently for some time, tears cascading down her cheeks.
“Oh, my dear girl. I knew I should have persisted unrelentingly until Ivory gave you into my care. I offered to take you as soon as he contacted me about Delphinia’s passing but he refused. He said you were his daughter and he would raise you himself.” Two bright spots pinked Honoria’s cheeks. It appeared little love was lost between my aunt and father.
I felt a lump forming in my throat. I told myself it was just the strain of recent hours causing me to weaken. I pride myself on not falling prey to sentimental foolishness.
“That was very kind of you.”
“Nonsense. I wanted you desperately. I was convinced he was holding out for a monetary consideration in exchange for you.” I felt myself stiffen at the thought of my father behaving so crassly and then slumped back into the settee as I acknowledged Honoria had rightly noted Father’s priorities. As long as I’d known him, easy money was his true north. One of my greatest fears was that I was cut from the same bolt of cloth.
“And he didn’t take you up on your offer?”
“To my amazement, when I suggested giving him a large sum outright he said you were not to be sold like a spring lamb or a suckling pig.”
“And?”
“And, I never heard from him again. I sent letters and telegrams. I placed advertisements of inquiry in papers throughout New Brunswick, Quebec, and even Ontario but no one had heard of either of you.” Perhaps Father’s haphazard wanderings and countless name changes were less aimless than they had seemed.
“I wish word had reached us. I would have liked to have come to you before now.” I spoke those words completely without guile. Sitting there with my aunt, knowing someone had wanted to give me a stable life in a normal home felt too good to be true. Life on the road had been backbreaking and dirty. But worst of all was the loneliness. The only other child I had befriended on a show had succumbed to scarlet fever before we had known each other more than a few weeks.
“You’re finally here and that’s all that matters.” Honoria placed a plump finger under my chin and tilted my face to meet hers. “You look remarkably like her, you know. I was certain Delphinia had finally appeared to me when you made your entrance downstairs.”
“I’m sorry to have disappointed you. And for interrupting your group.”
“Your appearance was in no way a disappointment. Besides, it is the business of the Divination Circle to welcome the unexpected. We must have been as much of a surprise to you as you were to us.”
“I admit I was startled. Is the Divination Circle the group you were with when I burst in on you?”
“Yes. A few friends and I have been meeting together twice weekly to strengthen and develop our prognosticating abilities.”
“You mean séances and such?” I felt a tingling of excitement over the surface of my skin. When I was quite young, a medium joined our show and her performances drew vast crowds. After seeing the money Madame Zeroska raked in every night, Father bemoaned the fact that we had no experience with such things. In fact, it was that very medium who gave me the idea to start reading tarot cards between shows.
“Exactly that. In truth, the Divination Circle is the inspiration for the concept of this hotel.” Honoria beamed at me.
“How so?” The feverish light in Honoria’s eyes suggested the hotel was her passion. If I was going to stay, I hoped it was a passion I could grow to share. Nothing is as intolerable as a zealot with whom you disagree.
“Should I assume you know nothing of the history of the hotel?”
“Until today I knew nothing more than what you can see in the photograph.” We both looked at it once more.
“I would dearly love to thrash your father over the head with a parasol for keeping you in the dark concerning your heritage,” Honoria said, giving me a start. Did her psychic developments extend to clairvoyance? “The property the Hotel Belden sits upon has been in the family for generations. In fact, our family has been here since the early seventeen hundreds.”
“But the hotel doesn’t look anywhere near as old as that.” For someone as rootless as I, the idea of having family in a single spot for almost two hundred years was astonishing.
“It isn’t. Early on we were farmers and merchants. It wasn’t until the Stapl
es family opened their farmhouse to boarders that the hospitality industry began to grow.”
“And your family took part in it?”
“Our family, my dear.” Honoria gave my hand another firm squeeze. “We started taking in summer guests in the 1850s. Over the next decade we added small cottages around the edges of the property. Your grandparents built this hotel in 1874.”
“Are your parents still here?” I watched as a crinkle developed between Honoria’s eyebrows. I wished I hadn’t asked the question.
“They both passed suddenly the year your mother left with your father.” Honoria let out a deep sigh and forced a smile back to her face. “I inherited the hotel as quite a young woman and had little in the way of guidance in its running. I muddled along year after year, despairing as I watched the competing hotels becoming larger and more elegant.”
“It seems very grand here to me.” What little I had seen so far had impressed me greatly. The furnishings appeared plush or gleaming. The carved woodwork was ornate and the windows and passageways generously proportioned. The unobstructed view of the beach and the bay beyond only added to its charms.
“The Old Orchard House is comprised of three hundred rooms and is planning an elevated walkway connecting it to the train station. The Fiske boasts a telegraph office and a bowling alley on site. I determined if I could not add physical amenities, I could offer a unique experience instead.” Honoria rose to her feet and paced the room. “The Hotel Belden caters to Spiritualists and other seekers of enlightenment.”
“You’re courting psychics?” I thought of my father and how he would love just such a scheme. Something about the passion in Honoria’s voice and mannerisms suggested she was more of a true believer than a cagey businesswoman.
“Exactly. The plan is to offer immersion in a multitude of spiritual subjects. I have hired experts in a number of disciplines to lead discussions, share knowledge, and to provide divination services. Table tipping, scrying, dowsing, astrological predictions all have a place here at the Hotel Belden.”
Whispers Beyond the Veil Page 4
