The moonlight was as clear and strong as sunlight on that beach and there was no mistaking what happened, but it was still hard to accept. His brain didn’t understand even though he knew she was a mermaid.
Grey scales climbed her white skin, and as they did, her legs seemed to fuse and then disappear and she fell forward into the water.
Her tail flipped up into the night air. She quickly wriggled out of the shallows and disappeared.
It had all happened so quickly that part of him still didn’t believe it. One moment she was there and human; the next moment she was something else and gone.
Barnum was still, as still as death, and when Levi glanced at him, Barnum’s eyes were straining out of his skull. Levi had never seen someone’s jaw actually drop open in surprise, but Barnum’s practically touched his collarbone.
“Levi?” he asked. He didn’t sound like himself. His voice sounded like it came from far away, like it had to climb out of his chest.
“Yes, Taylor?”
“Did we just see that girl turn into a mermaid?”
Levi grinned. “Yes, Taylor, we did.”
Barnum paused. “Did you see the scales?”
“Yes, Taylor.”
There was another short silence. “You don’t think that was some sort of humbug, do you?”
“I don’t see how it could be,” said Levi.
“I don’t see how it could be, either,” Barnum said. Then, with just a touch of anxiety, “Where do you think she’s got off to?”
Levi had watched the water intently since she disappeared. “I imagine she’s gone swimming. She hasn’t been able to since she arrived at the museum.”
Barnum grunted. “Soon she’ll be able to swim all she wants. Once I have that tank built.”
“I don’t think it’s quite the same, Taylor,” Levi said. “A tank isn’t the size of the ocean.”
“I hope she hasn’t decided to swim away on us,” Barnum said.
He sounded more like himself again—businesslike, his eyes on the main chance.
“It would be a lot of trouble to track her down when I’ve finally managed to catch a real mermaid.”
“You didn’t catch her, Barnum,” Levi said, and his voice was sharper than he intended. “She came to you willingly, and if she wants to leave, she will. She doesn’t owe you anything.”
Barnum made a placating gesture with his hand. “All right, all right, no need to get worked up. The girl is as free as the proverbial bird. Although I did spend a load of money on those clothes.”
“She didn’t ask you for them,” Levi said.
“Fair enough, fair enough,” Barnum said.
Levi didn’t think Barnum would let it go that easily. He was sure to tot up every expense against what Amelia earned. It was up to Levi to ensure he didn’t get away with it.
Just then there was a splash, and Amelia’s head broke through the water perhaps fifteen or twenty feet from shore. She floated there, her head and shoulders just above the gentle waves, staring at them.
Levi crossed the beach, wanting to see her better, wanting to know everything there was to know about her. He stopped when his boots touched the damp sand. He wasn’t afraid of getting wet, but he didn’t want to startle her. She was suddenly more animal than human, like a deer he’d stumbled upon while walking in a forest. She would be still until he moved and then she would dart away, leaving nothing more than a flash of her tail to remember her by.
He couldn’t discern every detail, but it was apparent even from this distance that there wasn’t much of the human left about her. Those shiny fish scales covered her everywhere, not just her legs. Her jaw was longer, the shape of her face a little different, the nose flatter, the nostrils wider. She was altogether a different mermaid than the ones painted by dreamy-eyed artists.
This wasn’t half woman, half fish. This was an alien creature, and she didn’t belong to Barnum or anyone else.
Then she shifted and swam slowly toward the place where he stood. Her head stayed above the water, her eyes fixed on his. Those eyes—they were Amelia’s eyes, grey and straightforward and demanding, demanding that he accept what he saw and not some fantasy.
He kept his gaze on hers and nodded. He understood what she wanted. He saw what she was and not what he wanted to see.
As she reached the shallows, all the details of her body came into sharper relief—the webbing of her hands, the pointed claws, and (just for an instant) her sharp, sharp teeth.
He thought sailors must drink a great deal of rum at sea to believe mermaids were beguiling sea nymphs. This creature looked as though she’d rather slash your throat than seduce you.
Amelia swam toward him—or slithered really, pulling herself along the shallows. She reached for the sand that was just past the licking of the waves, just near where he stood so still and waited for her.
Levi saw the scales disappear, the smooth, pale human skin reappear from the point where her fingers touched the sand and then all along her body. It was almost as if her body turned itself inside out; underneath the mermaid the human mask waited.
She stood, shivering, and he ran to fetch her dress. He averted his eyes as he handed it to her, which seemed to amuse her. Amelia gave a little snort of laughter as she pulled the dress over her head.
Wonderful, he thought gloomily. All those days I tried to make her laugh and the only time I succeed is when I try to respect her sense of modesty.
He took his coat off and put it around her shoulders, for she was still shaking with cold.
“Thank you,” she said, and then glanced past his shoulder. “Well, Mr. Barnum?”
Levi had forgotten Barnum completely. He followed Amelia’s gaze and found the other man giving him a speculative look. Levi wondered what it meant.
“Well, Mrs. Douglas,” Barnum said. “That was spectacular. Indeed, one of the most spectacular events I’ve ever witnessed.”
Amelia nodded her head. “I won’t change without seawater. Do you understand now? Whatever tank you have must have seawater in it, not fresh. And I will need sand or soil to touch when I get out, or I won’t change back.”
“Why?” Levi asked.
Amelia shrugged. “It is the nature of the magic.”
Later, when Amelia was in her room and Levi was in his bed staring at a small brown spider moving slowly across the ceiling, Barnum said, “If that girl is magical . . . what does that mean? Does it mean there are really such things as fairies and witches and ghosts? And if there are, does that mean God made them, or the devil?”
Levi had never heard Barnum talk like this. Taylor didn’t usually worry about problems of a philosophical nature.
“If she’s here on earth, then surely God made her,” Levi said.
He was convinced of no such thing, but he didn’t want Barnum to contemplate the possibility that Amelia was an evil creature. No good could come of traveling down that road.
“The Bible says God created all the animals and people, too.”
“Very true,” Barnum said. “But which one is she? Does she have a human soul, or is she a dumb animal?”
“She’s no animal,” Levi snapped.
“No need to get angry,” Barnum said mildly.
“You can tell just by speaking to her that she has a soul,” Levi said. If Barnum had heard her weeping for her dead husband he’d never think otherwise.
“Doesn’t mean she hasn’t been sent by the devil to tempt man,” Barnum said.
Levi took a deep breath. He had to get Barnum’s head away from this line of inquiry. If Barnum decided Amelia was an animal, he might also decide their contract was null and void, or that he would be within his rights to chain or cage her. Levi couldn’t let that happen.
“The only thing she’s going to tempt is money out of purses,” Levi said. “A real mermaid, on
stage in Barnum’s American Museum. You’ll be turning people away.”
“Too right we will!” Barnum said.
He sounded cheered by the thought. Levi knew then that Barnum would fall asleep counting coins in his head, imagining the clink-clink-clink as everyone in New York paid to see the mermaid.
As for Levi, he drifted off into a restless sleep and dreamed not of money but of Amelia.
He stood on the shore of a sea he’d never seen before, the water stretching out blue and clear into the far horizon. His boots were covered by water, and the water rose and rose to his ankles and shins and knees, but still he stood and waited. The water was at his waist, and then his chest, and then finally she was there.
She emerged from the depths, grasped him in her arms, and pulled him down, down, down. He couldn’t breathe, and it was no longer clear and blue and beautiful but cold and dark. All he could see was the steady gleam of her eyes and her sharp, sharp teeth.
He woke covered in sweat, gasping for air, imagining he could still feel the seawater filling up his lungs. After a few moments he settled down again but couldn’t shake the dream enough to sleep.
He could tell by Barnum’s breathing that the other man was also awake, but neither of them spoke to the other for the rest of the night, though they both knew of whom they were thinking.
CHAPTER 6
August 8, 1842
The crowd gathered outside the New York Concert Hall murmured and swelled and shifted the way large groups of people do, almost as if they were one giant being instead of many smaller ones. Every minute brought another addition, until the gathering was so large there was surely no way for everyone outside to fit inside the hall.
There was an occasional bark of masculine laughter and the answering trill of a feminine voice, but mostly everyone seemed to be in a state of tense excitement. The doors were to open precisely at noon, and as the appointed time approached, there was much rustling of coats and consulting of pocket watches.
The exterior of the hall boasted an eight-foot-high transparency of a beautiful, bare-breasted woman with the caption SEE THE FEEJEE MERMAID hung over it.
For weeks everyone in New York who could read a newspaper had heard about Dr. Griffin, late of London’s Lyceum of Natural History, and the mermaid he’d discovered while on an expedition in Fiji.
By late July, everyone in the city was positively inflamed with mermaid fever. That, of course, was exactly as Barnum intended.
* * *
• • •
Once they returned from Rhode Island, Barnum got to work. He wrote several letters about Dr. Griffin and his mermaid and arranged to have them sent from all over the country to assorted New York newspapers. His name, of course, was not associated with the letters or the mermaid. It was vitally important that no one think this a humbug like Joice Heth.
These letters seemed to trouble Amelia. “But he didn’t catch me, and I don’t know where Fiji is.”
“Don’t tell any reporters that,” Barnum said. “As far as the paying public is concerned, you’re an exotic creature from a tropical island.”
Amelia frowned. “That’s a lie.”
Barnum waved a hand at Levi in frustration. “You explain.”
Levi thought it unfair that Barnum left it up to him to elucidate the difference between a lie and showmanship. Before he could collect his thoughts on the subject, Amelia asked, “And who is Dr. Griffin?”
“That would be, er, me,” Levi said.
She stared at him. She didn’t say that this was also a lie. Her look told him that it was and she knew very well that he knew this and she wanted to know why Barnum was spreading such an absurd tale.
“It’s not a good idea for us to present you as an, uh, associate of Barnum’s. At least not at first.”
“Why?”
The shadow of Joice Heth filled the space between Barnum and Levi. Levi wasn’t sure what to say, but then Barnum spoke.
“Because almost everyone thinks I’m a liar,” Barnum said. “There was another woman who . . . performed for me, and I’m not saying she wasn’t a humbug, but I was just as humbugged as everyone else and I certainly wouldn’t have said what I did if I hadn’t been fooled in the first place.”
Amelia’s brow creased in consternation at this outburst, and she looked to Levi for clarification.
For his part, Levi had never realized Barnum was so sensitive about the topic. Barnum tended to be dismissive of any allegations in that case. Levi had thought Barnum just didn’t care what folk thought of him. He certainly behaved that way most of the time.
Amelia was still looking at him expectantly, so Levi said he would explain another time.
“I still don’t understand why we have to tell so many lies.”
“They aren’t lies. Not really,” Levi said. “Think of it as you’re telling a story. In this story, I’m a naturalist from London and you’re a mermaid from Fiji. It makes everything more interesting if we tell people I caught you in a net in a faraway place and brought you here.”
“I’m not a fish, Mr. Lyman,” she said with the first spark of temper. “I’m not an animal. And your story isn’t true, so why should anyone believe it?”
“Because we’re going to make them believe it,” Barnum said impatiently. “Take the girl to a play so she’ll understand.”
Levi was happy to do this, as it meant he would have plenty of opportunities to hold Amelia’s arm and fetch her a lemonade and hopefully have a conversation with her that didn’t end with him feeling like a fool.
But Charity nixed any idea of Levi and Amelia going out alone. The fact that Amelia was a widow and not a maiden did not feature in Charity’s eyes.
Though Charity still viewed Amelia with suspicion, she had also developed a contradictory feeling of propriety regarding the mermaid.
In Charity’s view, Amelia was a guest in her home and therefore in her care. “Therefore, Levi Lyman, you won’t be going about with this young woman unescorted.”
They were in the Barnums’ parlor when this edict was handed down. Amelia had allowed Caroline to teach her cribbage, which the little girl most definitely did not know how to play. The cards were in a jumble on the table, and Caroline seemed to score according to some arcane rules of her own.
Amelia had looked up at the sharp tone in Charity’s voice and said, in her calm and unhurried way, “I’m not a young woman.”
“What do you mean? You’re not yet middle-aged. One can tell just by looking at you,” Charity said.
“One cannot tell just by looking at me,” Amelia said mildly. “I don’t age the same way you do.”
“How old are you?” Levi asked.
Amelia shrugged. “I’m not certain. I don’t keep time the same way you do, but I think I lived with Jack thirty or forty years, and without him ten or more years after that.”
Levi did some quick calculations in his head. That meant if she was, say, nineteen or twenty when she married Jack Douglas, she could be well over seventy now.
Charity made a small hiss of disbelief. “That’s impossible.”
“So, I am told, is being a mermaid,” Amelia said.
Charity sputtered some more at this, for Barnum had told her that “without a doubt, this lady is a mermaid,” but she would not believe it without the proof of her own eyes. She’d been fooled by Barnum’s tricks before.
“Well, you don’t look a day over twenty, which is how I’m going to treat you,” Charity declared. “And young unmarried women do not go about in the evening with young men unless they are escorted.”
Levi had seen plenty of unescorted young women going about with both young and old men, but these were not respectable women and that was not a topic for a lady’s parlor.
With Charity’s edict firmly in place, it was determined that she and Barnum would attend a show at the th
eater with Levi and Amelia.
Amelia spent the evening being inscrutable, as always, and Levi had no chance to draw her out. He had no inclination to show his hand in front of Barnum, either, especially since Barnum kept peering at Levi like he was one of the exhibits in the museum.
After the play, Amelia turned to Levi and said, “I understand now, about the stories and the show.”
She never spoke again of the “lie” of Fiji, though he could tell she would never be comfortable with it.
* * *
• • •
Of course Amelia had known she would be exhibited. She simply hadn’t thought of what Barnum called “the show.” The idea wasn’t that she would be already floating in a tank and folk would file past her, though that was what Amelia had imagined. She’d been picturing those little miniature scenes in the first saloon in the museum, and the way everyone took turns looking in at them. Barnum thought that wasn’t nearly interesting enough.
“It’s not interesting enough to have a real mermaid onstage?” Amelia asked faintly.
“Got to build anticipation,” Barnum said. “Get the audience excited to see you. Whet their appetite. Levi, what do you think of dancing girls?”
Levi appeared nonplussed by dancing girls. After a moment, he said, “Dancing girls won’t go down smooth with the respectable ladies.”
“I’m not talking about obscene dancing girls,” Barnum said. “I’m talking about girls dressed up in costume who will sing a song about Fiji. Amelia here can dance and sing with them and then the other girls can fall away and leave her alone onstage and then—”
“No,” Amelia said.
Barnum looked startled, his squashed-potato nose reddening at her curt reply. “No what?”
“No dancing,” Amelia said. “If you want to have dancing girls onstage, that’s your lookout, but I won’t be one of them.”
Barnum narrowed his eyes at her. Amelia stared right back. She wasn’t afraid of him. She’d crossed the ocean by herself, and she wasn’t about to be bullied by Barnum. He ought to have known that from the start.
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