The Vespertine

by Mitchell, Saundra

  Tenderly, Zora touched my brow and my cheek. "You know it's not disapproval. I like him well enough."

  I twisted myself around, curling up and laying my head on her lap. "He says I speak into him."

  "Well, he should say pretty things," Zora replied.

  "It's more than that," I said. "I call out, and he appears. Like I'm the only firefly in the dark for him."

  Zora smoothed my hair. Her touch was so gentle, I might not have realized it, if the scent of her rose water hadn't washed away Nathaniel's bay rum. "Well, I have a solution, I suppose."

  I asked, "Have You?"

  "Look into the sunset, and see if the answer is writ there."

  How simple an answer, and yet one that now terrified me. What if I should see him cloaked for his wedding day to some other? What if I should see him broken and dying?

  And yet the molten gold of Sarah's fate had not been set because I saw it. Hardly so! She would have been so much worse off if I'd never looked. So many thoughts swirled around me, I found it hard to settle on just one. I turned to confidences instead.

  "Before we danced, he met me alone on the balcony."

  "Amelia!" Zora blinked at me, equal parts scandalized and delighted. She answered in a whisper of her own, as if wicked secrets carried more readily than ordinary conversation. "What happened?"

  I pressed my fingers to the setting sun at my throat, quiet for a long moment. Then, at last, I said, "Everything."

  ***

  "Chase me," Agnes shouted at a fat little puppy who wanted nothing but a nap in Mattie's skirts.

  We had spread out on the lawn to enjoy a late picnic, and it was pleasant enough except for Agnes' constant interruptions. Mattie coddled her the best, but even she resorted to chattering about her geometry lessons. Agnes couldn't abide figures, so that ran her off neatly—for a while.

  "Come on, Sullivan!" Rounding back toward our blanket, Agnes whistled and clapped her hands. "Come on!"

  Under her breath, Sarah urged Mattie, "For all that's holy, give him up. Please."

  Mattie sighed, then set the white puffed pup on his feet. With a firm nudge, she sent him staggering onto the lawn, where Agnes finally caught his attention with a little stick.

  "He was perfectly happy," Mattie said.

  Sarah shrugged, not at all apologetic. "He was the only one."

  Laughing, I wished I could lounge back on my elbows like the boys did. Perhaps, for that moment, I wished I could kick off my shoes and play barefoot on the grass and fly along the brook in the distance without a care. If there were some way to do all of that and keep my new walking dress, too, I should have been blessed, indeed.

  Fortunately, the violet embroidered checks on my polonaise so delighted me that I could satisfy myself by running bare fingers across them. It was rather like strumming a tiny picket fence, a childish amusement, perhaps. But amuse me, it did.

  "Where have you got to?" Sarah asked, leaning across our empty basket to wave fingers in my face.

  "Oh, she's in love," Zora said. "Haven't you heard?"

  Sarah stopped picking at her lemon cake. "Are you? With Mr. Witherspoon?"

  "Rich man, poor man, whom shall I wed?" Mattie sang, clasping her hands together and turning her face to the sky—play-acting at my expense.

  "You think overmuch about proposals," I said.

  "Isn't that where it all leads?"

  Zora groaned. "Surrender! We surrender! You marriage-sick wretch! Let us have our romances first!"

  "I shall get married one day," Agnes announced, pressing her hands to her chest. "My husband will be a sea captain. And he will sail to extraordinary places! And return to me with untold riches."

  "There You go," I told Mattie, and didn't even try to hide my laughter. "You've found your kindred in Agnes."

  Taking that for an invitation, Agnes abandoned Sullivan and threw herself onto the blanket. Still too young for a corset, she had the freedom to wallow in the tightest of spaces, and, to our delight, the space she chose was the crook of Sarah's arm. "Who will you marry?"

  Sarah glowered at us but answered once more, "Someone who works for a living."

  "Oh." Agnes had not the guile developed to hide her disdain. "Well, I won't."

  "A sea captain," Mattie repeated, daring to goad Sarah with a most innocent expression. Pride swelled in my breast for her, for taking the shot when it presented itself. I wondered if I worried overmuch about Mattie's ability to fend for herself.

  Agnes fingered the lace hem of her skirt, thoughtful. "And we will have nothing but sons. Four of them. I've dreamed it, you know."

  "A premonition in a dream, really?" Sarah drawled—and, oh, at once, I saw the retribution in her eyes. She slipped an arm around Agnes' shoulder and pointed to me. "Amelia can see the future."

  I waved at the suggestion. "Only at twilight. And only for grown ladies, I'm afraid."

  "You're not grown," Agnes pointed out. How I loathed the crow-like rasping of her voice.

  "In any case, you've dreamed your future," I said. "I'm sure my sendings would agree. Sea captain for a husband, four handsome sons."

  "They're not handsome," Agnes said. She corrected me as she stood. "They're babies."

  Reclaiming Sullivan when he nosed in for a taste of cake, Mattie wrapped her arms around the puppy and smiled at Agnes. "Babies do grow up."

  "Mine don't," Agnes told her. "They all die."

  With that, she skipped off across the lawn. Throwing her arms out, she seemed to embrace the sky, spinning and tumbling across it like the puff of a dandelion set free. We watched her in quiet for a moment, suspended by her terrible dream. Zora broke first.

  "That child is strange," she said, gathering dishes to take inside.

  "You should look," Mattie told me.

  I cast a wary glance to the west. The blue sky had darkened with clouds, waiting to swallow the sun. I wondered if I really did need the light to see. Then I shuddered to think of seeking out something so awful as Agnes' dream babies.

  "I don't want to, Mattie. I don't just see; I live it. Like I'm in the moment."

  "Ohhh," she breathed. Then, rubbing her cheek against the pup's, she asked, "What would happen if you foretold someone's death, I wonder?"

  I chilled. "I wouldn't know."

  As if this had all been a mental exercise, like a game of I Spy gone philosophical, Mattie offered a smile and a new subject to discuss. "Do You think we'll have had many callers in our absence?"

  "We can hope," I said, forcing false cheer. "And hope alone. Some things are better left to the mysteries of time."

  ***

  The glory of Baltimore had dimmed not at all during our time in Annapolis. It seemed more real to me, more honest with its brick-faced row houses standing as soldiers and its parlors tight and cozy.

  Good, sweet scents greeted us when we came through the door. Good, sweet Mrs. Stewart, softened by our days away, greeted us with cinnamon-dusted embraces.

  "Back here," she said, hustling us toward the kitchen. "Let's hear all of it."

  "We behaved," Zora said, dropping into a chair by the back door.

  Holding a bowl of brandied raisins out, Mrs. Stewart waited for me to take one, then offered the bowl to Zora. "I know that; you're good girls. Did you fill your dance cards?"

  "Nearly," I said, rolling the plump fruit between my fingers. "My corset's stained with punch."

  Zora nodded. "It is. We rubbed it with vinegar, and now it smells like pickled limes."

  Mrs. Stewart busied herself at the oven, leaning over to peer at her bread. "I don't think your brother sent enough for a new corset, Amelia, but we can see."

  "Since I'm the only one sniffing it, I imagine I'll survive the insult," I said.

  "Thrift," Mrs. Stewart said, letting the iron door clang closed again. "It's a good quality to have."

  "What's all this for?" Zora asked, reaching for another raisin and nodding toward the extensive spread of sweets and breads that covered the counters.
"Are you having a party?"

  Mrs. Stewart straightened up, smoothing her hair from her sweat-damp brow. "As if I could afford you and a party besides. No, these are to take on your calls."

  "What calls?"

  Plucking a familiar box from the shelf, Mrs. Stewart turned its contents out on the table. A rain of cards spilled out, fifty at least!

  Immediately on our feet, Zora and I pressed against the table, reaching into the bounty. Choosing randomly, we both pulled out cards pour pré senter. Name after name, few familiar, all clamoring for our company.

  It had been steady before our trip, but this! It seemed like an entire phalanx—all hoping I could be their conduit to the sunset beyond.

  And against all reason, I could hardly wait.

  ***

  Barely home, and we went off again, Zora and I. I had tucked in my bag an entire clasp of my new calling cards, finally lifted from their boxes and granted, as tickets, to the front doors of what seemed like every row house in Reservoir Hill.

  Though crowding crushes continually left me overexerted, I began to appreciate the joys of a wide circle met in small increments.

  Some plied us with sweets, and others with clean copies of their cards, for it seemed lately that it was fashionable to make collections of them. "Do come back," they all said, leaning out their doors to judge the sky. Calling hours could last only so long, and I apologized again and again that I had but the briefest window into the future.

  And trust Zora to make the most of that window, indeed. She'd spent the morning arranging us, deciding who might wait, and whom we wouldn't care to see at all, but of greatest importance would be those who took our visit closest to dusk.

  This is how we came to present ourselves at Caleb Grey's door just as the shadows grew long. It was a curiosity, for the card in our box had actually been marked Lucy Grey—Caleb's baby sister, who couldn't have possibly invited us on her own. We weren't meant to call on young men unless we had business with them, so it was a clever lure, we both agreed.

  "Hurry," he said, peering around us to see who might glimpse us at his door, and then closing it quickly to silence any possible rumors.

  We followed him not to the parlor but to a music room—small but handsomely appointed, with a pianoforte at the window and violins sitting in their hooks on the shelf.

  Absurdly, I longed to pluck the strings, just to hear them hum, a remnant of the ball recaptured and released.

  "I'm sorry to compromise you," Caleb said, his face drawn.

  For he had, in truth, done just that. Caleb was no cousin to Zora, and no friend even to me. Though Zora and I chaperoned each other, there would be no end to the stain on our reputations if it was known that we met alone with boys in their houses. We were naughty enough to take correspondence and steal kisses in the ballroom's shadows.

  But Zora knew him well. Quiet with concern and unconcerned with propriety, she caught his chin in her hand and raised his face to meet hers. "What's the matter, then?"

  Turning to me, Caleb came too close, then jumped back a step, as if caught by a spark. Something dark moved through his expression, a wildness—a terror that I couldn't quite name. How many times had Nathaniel thrilled me with his inconstancy? But Caleb's same temperament frightened me.

  "How do you see?" he demanded.

  I stammered, "Is there some question I could..."

  Caleb pressed closer, but Zora stayed him. "If You can't reveal your distress, how can she possibly illuminate it?"

  Fire seemed to travel beneath his skin, leaping from place to place, and giving, altogether, an impression of a blaze far greater than his body could contain. Finally, his voice rough and defeated, he said, "Sarah. That's my distress. Ask for nothing more, I beg you."

  "That's not a question," I said.

  Another flare of temper blackened his eyes. "Mind your place and ask for nothing more!"

  "Mind your manners," Zora snapped.

  He tried to brush her aside, reaching once more for me—as if he had some right to put his hands on my personage, after luring me to his house by trickery. "You read for anyone, why not me?"

  Zora intervened. To be specific, she rapped him on the arm with her bag. Quite honestly, if she'd had a newspaper, I think she would have rolled and wielded it, as if he were a misbehaving puppy.

  Then she offered me her elbow and said, "We'll be going. We've got hundreds of callers who won't abuse the mystic."

  Lunging in front of us, Caleb all but threw himself against the door. I really thought he might try to lock us in. Struggling from the inside out, his mouth twisted uncomfortably, until it finally settled into something like a smile. Slowly, he said to me in a forced voice, "I apologize, Miss van den Broek. Please stay."

  Zora shook her head slightly, but I wavered. Shamefully, I longed to know more—for my first impression of Sarah and Caleb was of two magnets, held apart only by force. But everything Sarah had said since, that she cared not for Caleb's intentions and intended to marry beneath her—I admit it, I hungered for a taste of gossip.

  "Very well," I said, swallowing down nervousness. We returned to the music room, sunlight making threats on the strings of the violins. I took a chair that turned my gaze to the window and offered a hand. "Think on her, and I shall try."

  Caleb grasped my hand, rather too hard, but I bore it with grace. His skin felt so hot as to be fevered. Beneath his skin, he quavered, a tight trembling that disconcerted me entirely. Thus, with trepidation I took my clearing breaths, spilling myself out so the sunset might pour in.

  A crimson beam streaked across my face, a rosy sunset full of wine hues, extraordinary to admire but different from the usual gold that tempted my sight.

  I drew again, exhaled once more, gazing with a blinkless stare that took in no more and no less than the window and the aventurine curtains that surrounded it.

  Just when I lifted my face to offer my condolences, the world turned scarlet. Not an intimation of it—all was scarlet, in truth.

  Warily, I moved, for I felt very much myself inside this sending, as if I could stand up and wander the Greys' house unseen. As if I had only taken a step to the side, instead of a leap toward the future.

  The weight of a gaze touched my bare neck; I felt the hair rise. I said, Nathaniel.

  And he answered, Are you well?

  Coming round to face him, I circled and circled, examining the shape of him in this vision, the shade of him. Are you yourself? Or is this only sight?

  Both?

  We had an awareness here, a privilege of motion I hadn't felt before when calling on the vespers, I took this moment; it didn't take me.

  Part of me very much wondered what Caleb and Zora saw as I approached Nathaniel; did I sit still in my chair, frozen? Did I fall and fit before them, in Privalovna's hysterical way?

  I'm looking for Sarah, I said, but as the words slipped out, they lost meaning for me.

  I wanted to press myself into Nathaniel's arms; I wondered if here, he could loop his fingers in my hair and kiss me again with no fear of reprisal. I didn't know what my flesh might do, so I held back. My lips stung in memory, in desire. A look, I decided—I could satisfy myself with a look.

  Nathaniel felt no such hesitation. His hands bare, he dared frame my face with them. His thumbs swept at once, beneath my lip and up to trace the curve of my cheeks. I would say, then, you haven't found her.

  "Nathaniel." My lashes sank, gentle in spite of the painful winding of anticipation that gripped me otherwise.

  "Amelia," he answered, but suddenly his voice was not his voice.

  Snapping my eyes open, I peered up into Caleb Grey's face. Oh, I could have wept, distraught with frustration, but likewise relief that I came to in my chair. My trance had, if nothing else, turned Caleb pale and still, water on the fire that devoured him from within.

  "I see nothing," I told him.

  He shook as he blew out a breath. "And that means?"

  To comfort, I offered a smile.
"I've seen tragedy before. Whatever mysteries you have remain, Caleb, but ... if you tremble, I would fear not."

  How I believed that as I spoke it; how very boastful my certainty sounded. Oh, the pride.

  My terrible, terrible pride.

  Fifteen

  IT SEEMED OF LATE, I sat nothing but sunsets. The whirlwind of it scarcely taxed me, but soon the clamor grew in a way that had the force of a demand behind it.

  With the end of day so short, when a storm interfered with the light, I could only slip into so many visions. My path to the future was limited—at least, until the discovery on Camden Street.

  I suppose I had never been entirely explicit about taking single callers, after speaking to Miss Lawrence, because I found myself in the middle of eight girls in an unfamiliar parlor. I recognized their sharp, hungry looks, though. They yearned for a vision, and this hostess, Miss Brosmer, pressed paper and pencil into my hand.

  "I don't understand," I said, tipping my head back to gaze at her. "Didn't you wish me to see?"

  Dropping herself into the chair beside me, she straightened a stack of papers, flattening them on top of a book before offering it all to me. "Have you heard of automatic writing? Mayhaps you could take down messages for all of us."

  "She's never done it that way," Zora said. She came with me always, protecting and prodding me at turns, and I wouldn't have trusted myself to see without her.

  "Couldn't you try?" Cutting her gaze toward the window, our hostess forced a pleasant smile.

  I held the pencil with an uncertain grip. "I don't know..."

  The brittle smile cracked, and Miss Brosmer asked quite bluntly, "Are you after a fee? We heard you don't take one."

  Once when I'd been asked that, I trembled—now I burned. Did I have no good reputation? Did I not bring forth visions on command and give my gifts freely? It was an insult, and I put the pencil down sharply. "I most certainly do not, and you offend me greatly in the asking!"