The Kingdom of Bones

by Stephen Gallagher

  Oh, God…if Becker died now. She’d be turning around and taking her dead husband home. They’d had a boy killed on the road once, half his head taken off by a flying cable, and his widowed mother had come all the way out to the tent show to take his body back with her. They’d all followed the hearse down to the station, and he remembered the sight of the baggage car with the casket on board. It was ebony black with silver handles, raised from the boarded floor on two firm trestles and lashed so that it wouldn’t slide around. An empty chair stood alongside it.

  If that was to be Sayers’ gift to the Beckers, after all the other blind damage that his obsession had brought…then let the Lord take him now, for in his time on this earth he’d surely done nothing but harm.

  Anyway, he didn’t need to worry about seeking Elisabeth Becker out. She came and found him. He was dressing to leave, but the effort was exhausting him. He looked up, and there she was.

  “How is he?” he said. His injury was healing, but his voice still didn’t sound like his own.

  “Spare me your concern.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Sorry does nothing for me, mister,” she said. “I had a home, a good man, and a family with a future. Now I’ve got this.”

  “The fault is all mine,” Sayers said.

  “And may you never be forgiven for it,” she said, and then turned her back on him.

  FIFTY

  After Sayers had quit the hospital, he set out on foot for the River Road. He rode a streetcar to the end of the line and then struck out toward the river country beyond. Even hitching a ride on a wagon, it took him most of a day to get to the Patenotre plantation.

  The grass in the long driveway was all beaten down, and in places it had been churned into raw dirt. As he walked toward the house, he saw that the gates were wide open. When he went through them and stood before it, he glanced down and found that he’d acquired a dog.

  The animal followed him as he circled the house. He was looking for a way in. When he climbed the outside stairs to the upper deck, he found that someone had neglected to secure one of the doors. The dog followed him, and promptly set off on its own to explore. He could hear its claws on the boards as it trotted elsewhere in the house, occasionally crossing his path in some hallway or on some landing.

  The tour told him little. It was an old place with no life invested in it. He descended the main staircase under the domed skylight, and sensed no presence other than his own and that of the animal that had followed him.

  When it came time to leave, the dog was at the door waiting.

  He left the place more secure than when he’d found it, and walked out into the grounds behind. It was there, near a row of cabins, that he met a young black man of around eighteen or nineteen. He was in baggy field hand’s clothes, leading a horse by its bridle.

  The young man stopped and watched him until he’d drawn close enough to hail.

  “Ain’t nobody here,” the young man said.

  “You’re somebody.”

  “But it ain’t me you’re looking for.”

  “Who am I looking for?”

  “Same woman the sheriff’s men came looking for? They didn’t find her, neither.”

  They started to walk together down the track. Sayers said, “Why do you think that is?”

  “’Cause there ain’t nobody to find.”

  Sayers looked at the horse he was leading. It was a dapple gray. He said, “Yours?”

  “What of it?” the young man said.

  “Woman I’m looking for hired a wagon, and a horse just like that one along with it. Nobody’s seen either since.”

  “I wouldn’t know about that,” the young man said. “This one’s mine.”

  “You got papers for it?”

  “Horse don’t read,” the young man said. “Keep looking. But don’t waste your time looking here. Try on down the river.”

  Sayers looked at him sideways. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. Out past the next bend. About three, four miles. Look for a yeller church. That’s what I’d do.”

  “Thanks,” Sayers said.

  He had an hour or two of daylight left. He started to work his way outward through the estates on the River Road, staying off the road itself and sticking to paths and dirt tracks.

  Shortly after leaving Patenotre land, he came upon the burned-out remains of a wagon in a lane. Nothing remained but the ironwork among the ashes. But it was recent; the smell of the burning still hung in the air, and it would take a rain or two to wash it away.

  He’d expected to lose the stray’s company when he reached the limit of its territory, but the dog stayed with him. It kept a slight distance in case he should suddenly turn and run it off, but otherwise it seemed happy to tag along.

  Most of the big houses along here had burned just like the wagon, or else they’d been pulled down or had their roofs taken off. Occasionally, there’d be one that still had a family living in it, but they’d be like survivors camping in the ruins of an older civilization. The houses showed all the signs of having been abandoned by those who’d built them, their planks springing and with goats and chickens wandering in and out.

  The land that he crossed was still being worked, but the big estates had been divided up into smaller holdings. Subsistence was now the aim, where once had come forth riches.

  As darkness fell, he settled for the evening in the abandoned shell of an overseer’s house. He lit a fire in the empty grate, then broke out the provisions he’d brought.

  He didn’t see the dog for a while, but then it came back carrying something dead, which it settled down with and tore up while he was eating. By now it was too dark for him to see what it had caught. The dog would retch on the bones and gristle, cough them up for further chewing, and eventually strangle them down again. This process seemed not to bother it at all.

  Afterward, Sayers wrapped himself up in the blanket that he’d been sitting on, and bedded down with his pack for a pillow.

  Sleep was a strange journey. It was as if he rolled off ledges into deep crevasses of insensibility, to be borne back up again by some rising force. He’d come so close to waking that his senses returned for a few moments, although the power of movement did not.

  During one of these brief episodes, he was aware of the dog sitting in the doorway of the ruined cabin, looking up at the full moon. It turned its head to look back at him. Then he rolled off into the depths again.

  FIFTY-ONE

  When Sebastian Becker awoke in his hospital bed for the second time that day, it was to find himself looking up at the very face that he’d left behind in his dreams. Waking and sleeping, life and death; in that moment, the two states seemed to merge and become one.

  “Hey,” Elisabeth said.

  “Hey yourself,” he tried to say, with only partial success.

  She reached over and smoothed away a couple of strands of hair that had become sweat-plastered to his forehead. He closed his eyes again for a moment, the better to experience her touch.

  “How do you feel?” she said.

  “Pretty good,” he said, opening his eyes. This time the sound came out more or less as he meant it to, and the words held together.

  “That’s the morphine,” she said, managing a damp-eyed smile. “Don’t get too fond of it.”

  She made a sudden sound of protest when Sebastian tried to flex his shoulders and raise his back from the bed. His bandages felt too tight. His entire chest felt too tight, and his stomach felt as if it had been punched with unbelievable force.

  But, thanks to the morphine, this caused him no distress. When they came to withdraw the opiate, he’d feel differently. But until then…

  He subsided onto the mattress. Small though the movement had been, the effort had all but exhausted him.

  He took a breath and then said, “I had my chance at the reward, Elisabeth. She was right there before me and I missed it. She walked away from me. I’ve let everyone down.”

  �
�Sebastian,” she said with a note of warning, “don’t say that. I won’t hear it.”

  “But we’ve lost everything.”

  “You’ve kept your name. You still have your reputation. And, by God, though you came within an inch of losing it, you’ve hung onto your life. Your son has a father and I have a husband. What compares with that? Anything else, we can rebuild.”

  “I don’t know how.”

  “Don’t worry about how. We’re the same people we were before. What we managed once, we can achieve again. Let Sayers pursue that blighted creature if he must, and let Sayers take the consequences of the chase. They’re no part of our lives now.”

  One of the Sisters came to check Sebastian’s dressings, and Elisabeth stepped away for a few minutes.

  When she returned, she studied him with some concern and said, “Is this tiring you, Sebastian? Should I leave? You won’t need to worry. I won’t be far away.”

  He shook his head, and reached for her hand.

  She settled again onto the chair beside him and said, “I’ve spoken to Mister Bearce. He’s a very nice man.”

  After a moment, she said, “You must try not to laugh, Sebastian. You might cause yourself some damage.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  She said, “As soon as I can get you home, I’ll find us somewhere cheaper to live. Shhh,” she added before he could object. “Mister Bearce will hold a position for you. He promised me. And perhaps I can find some kind of employment as well.”

  “Work? You?”

  “I’m sure there are all kinds of things I could do for a living.”

  “Maybe Sousa needs a euphoniumist.”

  “I was thinking of something behind a counter at Gimbel’s,” she said. “I’ve dealt with those women often enough. I’ve seen what they do. Yes, ma’am, no, ma’am. How hard can that be?”

  “Before anything else,” he said, “we have to pay back Frances.”

  “Frances understands. She has no regrets.”

  He tried to tighten his grip on her hand, using what little force he could muster.

  “Aren’t I lucky,” he said.

  She gripped it back with enough strength for the two of them.

  “Aren’t we just,” she said.

  FIFTY-TWO

  There was an old frame church out in the middle of a cane field. It had been painted yellow, and from a distance it looked whole. Only when Sayers drew nearer did the reality begin to show. The roof had been stripped down to its laths and the window openings were like holes in a skull. No one had prayed here in some time. But someone had moved in.

  He saw the Silent Man at about the same time the Silent Man saw him. Sayers was crossing the field toward the church, way out in the open. The Silent Man was pumping water and he stopped, resting his hand on the pump handle and watching as Sayers drew nearer. After about a minute, his wife, the so-called Mute Woman, came out and stood on the stoop. Both continued to watch him, and neither moved as he drew closer.

  Sayers had grown so used to the stray dog’s presence that he now sensed when it wasn’t there. It had peeled away and moved to a spot about a hundred yards from the building, where it seemed happy to stay for now.

  As Sayers got closer, the Silent Man took his hand from the pump and straightened up.

  Sayers said, “Is she inside?” but the Silent Man continued to stare at him. Sayers noted that the man hadn’t shaved in a few days, and his clothes had grown shabby. Over by the church, his wife was looking no better. Once lithe, she’d gone to fat. Of all of them, she was the one who had changed most over the years.

  Sayers said, “How is she?” and the man glanced toward the building. He seemed to be looking to his wife for guidance. Sayers saw her make the faintest move by way of response. If it wasn’t a shrug, it was intended to mean more or less the same thing.

  Sayers met with no interference as he covered the last few yards to the church, but he was aware of the Silent Man abandoning the water pump and following him.

  The Mute Woman stepped aside as he entered the building. Sayers remembered her eyes. They hadn’t changed. Dark, and intense. They were on him as he passed.

  It wasn’t one of those simple one-room churches. In its day, it must have been something. The nave was a jewel box of a hall, with a curving balcony and fancy detail in the rails and paneling. There had been a real pipe organ, but that had been ripped out. The pews were all gone and it looked as if animals had been kept here for a while, leaving a mess that made the ground floor unusable. Sayers climbed a stairway to the organ loft and found Louise in a room behind it.

  One of the old pews had made its way up here and she was sitting on it, feet apart. She was looking rough and hollow-eyed. There was a bowl of water on the floor before her. Her hair was up and her blouse was more or less white. Her skirt was nondescript and her boots were dusty. She’d been splashing her face, and had nothing to dry her hands on.

  She wiped her face on her sleeve. She didn’t seem surprised to see him.

  “Tom,” she said.

  “Have you been keeping up with the news?”

  “They’re looking for me,” she said. “I know.”

  The Silent Man and the Mute Woman came around from behind him and stood by her, one to either side.

  Louise looked down in utter dejection.

  “You tried, Tom,” she said. “And for a minute you almost made me believe it. Then I had to go and ruin it all. No excuses this time.”

  “I don’t know what these two have told you,” Sayers said, “but Sebastian Becker didn’t die.”

  Louise raised her head.

  The Silent Man was to the left of her. Sayers drew the Bulldog pistol from his coat and shot him once in the chest. He swung around to cover the Mute Woman and fired again. This time he shot high, but it didn’t matter. Blood and brains flew up the wall. She was starting to crumple before her husband hit the floor.

  Louise was frozen in the middle, hands half raised, eyes glancing from side to side as if she was frightened to move her head.

  The Silent Man was writhing and making an unpleasant noise. Sayers went over and shot him again in the head. His entire body bucked once and then he stopped moving.

  Sayers returned to his place in front of Louise, and carried on as if nothing had happened.

  “There,” he said. “Less for you to worry about. Think of it as the end of an era. You’re going to walk out of this place and not look back. You know what the book says. Go forth and sin no more.”

  “No!”

  Her sleeves had been rolled back for washing. He reached forward and gripped her arm above the wrist. It was slender and wiry, her hands long-fingered and powerfully tendoned. They were the hands of a grown woman, not a soft girl. The nails were bitten.

  “Look at you,” he said. “You’re not lost. Your guilt’s devouring you. The longer you stay away from the world, the worse it’s going to get.”

  She pulled her arm away. “I’m a destroyer,” she said.

  “You’re no destroyer,” he said. “And now you’re no Wanderer, either. Look at us. You were right about one thing. You and I are creatures of our time. There’s only one way forward for us now.”

  He reached out and touched her cheek, where a tear ran.

  He said, “If love can redeem, then you should know that you are redeemed many times over.”

  He transferred the tear to his own cheek, as she’d once taken the blood from Edmund Whitlock’s.

  “What are you doing?” she said.

  “You are loved,” Sayers said. “By your own confession, I am not.”

  She jumped to her feet and almost fell back over the bench trying to get out of his reach. “Tom,” she said. “Don’t do this.”

  “Too late,” he said. “Come on.”

  Louise didn’t move. So he took her by the shoulders and turned her toward the doorway. He walked her past the bodies of her onetime servants. She gave no resistance as he steered her to the organ-l
oft stairs and down.

  She just said, “You mustn’t. You mustn’t do this,” while allowing herself to be guided.

  Sayers’ dog was waiting down in the nave, looking up toward the organ loft. It watched as the two descended the stairs, which were narrow and turned awkwardly.

  Sayers walked Louise to the door of the church. There he stopped and turned her to face him. He held her at arm’s length so that he could look into her eyes, and he studied her for the very last time.

  “I release you,” Sayers said. “It’s all on me now.” And then he shoved her out the door.

  “Go.”

  FIFTY-THREE

  On Friday, the first of January, 1904, the British theatrical knight Sir Henry Irving received a note at his Washington hotel. Acting manager Bram Stoker opened and read the mail as usual, and conveyed the message to his master. It came from the White House, inviting him to attend the president’s reception later that same morning.

  For over a century, it had been a New Year’s custom for the president of the United States to receive all government officials based in the capital, along with all the ambassadors and any common citizen who cared to turn up and get in line to pay their respects to the nation’s chief magistrate. Irving’s invitation specified that he should go to the private entrance around the back of the White House. From there, he and Stoker were led straight up to the Blue Room, where Irving was given a place in line after the officers of the Marine Corps.

  The reception marked the launch of the official social season, and with close to seven thousand hands to be shaken there was an unusual level of personal security for the president. Secret Service men and extra police were all over the building. No one was allowed to approach the receiving party with hands in pockets, or concealed in any way.

  As soon as President Roosevelt saw Irving and Stoker, he stopped the line and they conversed for several minutes. To Stoker’s delight, the president remembered him by name from the time when he’d invited him to share the bench at a New York Police Department disciplinary hearing.