“With all due respect, I believe you are more resourceful than you give yourself credit for. I was at the séance and saw for myself the influence you exert over the ladies in your circle.”
“Perhaps,” said Mrs. Bishop. She gave a heavy sigh. “But the business has all but collapsed in on itself. There simply isn’t the money.”
Tabby eyed the expensive furniture, the Oriental carpets, and lamps dripping with crystals. Mrs. Bishop followed her gaze. “It’s all bought on credit,” she said. “Every stick of furniture and piece of bread in the larder.” She buried her face in her handkerchief. “Why, I couldn’t even pay the grocer’s bill this month. Soon the creditors will come banging on the door, demanding their money, and then what shall I do?”
Tabby stood and crossed the room. She had come this far, and she wasn’t going to let Caleb brood about in prison while his mother withered away.
“What are you doing?” Mrs. Bishop watched as Tabby sat down at the writing desk in the corner, pulled out a sheaf of paper, and dipped the pen into ink.
“I’m writing a letter to the good ladies of the Benevolent Society,” she said, as she began to pen her missive. She thought of something. “And the ladies at the temperance coffeehouse.”
Buttermilk jumped up beside Tabby to supervise. “What can they do? We are just women,” Mrs. Bishop said with a sniff.
“Wecan accomplish quite a lot.” Tabby scribbled as fast as she could despite her poor penmanship and the wet, splotchy ink.
Mrs. Bishop’s interest had finally been piqued, and Tabby could feel her come up behind her and read over her shoulder. Buttermilk’s purring filled the silence until Mrs. Bishop finished reading. “Another séance? I’m sorry, my dear, but what will that achieve?”
Tabby sprinkled the wet ink with sand before reading over her work.
Mrs. Dorothea Bishop Humbly requests Your Presence
For an evening of Spiritualism & Mystery
With the medium Miss Tabitha Cooke
Private readings available for a small fee.
The replies to the invitations came flying back. After Tabby’s first performance exposing Minerva Bellefonte, every lady in Boston was eager to have a private reading, and paid generously for it. With Alice and Mary-Ruth’s help, Tabby transformed Mrs. Bishop’s parlor, draping silks over the lamps until the room glowed with otherworldly elegance. Larson circulated the parlor with trays of cakes, and Tabby offered discreet readings to one lady at a time behind a screen. At the end of the night they had raised a stunning one hundred and forty dollars—more than enough to retain the best lawyer in Boston. Caleb would be a free man yet, whether he wanted to or not.
35
IN WHICH THE LIVING LIVE HAPPILY EVER AFTER,
AND THE DEAD REST IN PEACE.
SKELETAL TREES FEATHEREDagainst a gray sky, and a cold, fine mist hung suspended in the air. In its own stark way, December in the cemetery was no less beautiful than spring, and equally full of life. Squirrels darted between the stones, birds huddled on icy branches, quietly chirping, and three young women stood bundled against the gloom, as solemn as a funeral.
“This is the one,” Tabby said, pointing at the overgrown crypt with rusty hinges. She had given Alice the broadest strokes of how she had survived those first days, trying to paint it more as an adventure than as the harrowing experience it had been.
Mary-Ruth trailed a respectful distance behind them. Every once in a while, Alice would look back over her shoulder at her, and when Tabby asked her what she was smiling about, she only smiled the more.
Alice shook her head. “I never thought that you would make a home for yourself amongst the dead, not after what we went through in Amherst.” She stepped around a crumbling stone covered in lichen as they moved away from the crypt. “Are you sure that you want to stay here?”
“It’s the only home I know. Besides, with Eli retiring, someone will need to look after this place. There aren’t many burials here anymore, but there are plenty of souls who still need to be remembered.” She glanced over to the far end of the cemetery, where a sea of unmarked men and women were buried, abused and enslaved in life, and quietly forgotten by all but Eli and a few others in death. Perhaps she could learn their names, their stories, make sure that they were always remembered.
“And how will you get by? Mary-Ruth told me that you were embroidering and doing watching.”
Tabby had been worrying over just this predicament. “I was thinking,” she said slowly, “of using my sight.” At Alice’s horrified expression, she hurried on. Her sister had been skeptical of the séance at Mrs. Bishop’s house, saying she worried that it would take too great a toll on Tabby. “I wouldn’t charge a lot of money, and only to people who can afford it. If there are messages I can pass on to the poor bereaved, then I shall always do so free of charge. But there are plenty of well-to-do people who would pay good money for the benefit of my gift,” she said. And it was a gift, even if it had always felt like a burden, a secret shame. Even if men tried to exploit it and use it for their own selfish means. She could use it to help people, and the thought gave her comfort. She and her sister could rent some rooms together, maybe with Mary-Ruth, and provide the bereaved and curious with messages from the other side for a small price. For as much as Tabby had always feared and abhorred speaking with the dead, she had done so out of necessity many times in the past months, and so long as she was in control, it had lost some of the terror of those early days.
She threw Alice a sidelong look. “And what about you? Do you think you would use your sight?”
Alice had always been quiet about her gift, holding it close to her chest, just as Tabby had hers. Her aunt and uncle had never suspected that Alice was any different than Tabby, that she was simply following Tabby’s lead at those terrible séances. They never suspected that Alice’s gift was a different sort of rare jewel. God only knew what they would have done if they had.
Sighing, Alice pulled her cloak tighter around her and stared down the misty hill. “I don’t know.” She paused, worrying at the ribbon of her hood. “There are dark times ahead for this country in the near future.”
A shiver ran down Tabby’s spine, but she dared not ask what Alice meant. She’d rather the future remain a mystery. If what Alice saw was truly terrible and came to pass, then she was at least glad that she would have her sister by her side.
She was just about to tell Alice as much, when the sound of voices and footsteps made her look up. Mary-Ruth was speaking to someone. Someone she recognized instantly.