The Spiritualist (34 page)

When I reached the third floor, I paused. My bedroom door was closed, as was Michel’s. But Dorothy’s was open, and two of her nurses were inside, folding towels and mixing potions with the stiff, weary motions of those who wished for sleep. I went to her door, pausing just outside, knocking softly so that Charley turned to see me.

“Is she awake?” I asked. “Might I see her?”

He glanced over his shoulder toward the screen that hid Dorothy’s bed. “I suppose there’s no harm in it. I don’t guess she’ll get much sleep tonight, ma’am. Nor will any of us, I’ll warrant.”

“Is she alone?”

“For now. Mr. Jourdain’s due back shortly.”

I stepped into the room. “Where did he go?”

“To mix more of her cordial.” Charley stepped ahead of me, poking his head around the screen to say, “Mrs. Atherton’s here, ma’am, if you’d care to see her.”

“Yes.” Dorothy’s voice was more of a moan. When Charley stepped back and I went to her, I was startled at how ill she looked, how tiny and drawn, her plump cheeks fallen, her skin gray. Her hair straggled about her head in wispy flyaway tendrils.

I went to her, sitting on the side of the bed. “Please forgive me. I didn’t mean to distress you.”

She twisted, raising her hips from the mattress, as if she could not get comfortable. “No, no, no,” she said. I wasn’t certain if she was moaning or answering me.

I put my hand on her shoulder. “Dorothy, what can I do?”

“It was a miracle.” Her voice was crackly and strained. She moved beneath my hand, shrugging, as if my touch hurt, but when I pulled away, she grabbed me back again, whimpering. “You gave me memory. Doesn’t… it… amaze—” Her breath came fast. Her fingers entwined in mine, and she made a little mewing sound of pain. “They keep the smallest things.”

Then she cried out, releasing my hand, and I turned anxiously to see Charley watching from the screen. “What is it?” I asked. “What’s wrong with her? What can I do?”

“Just talk to her, ma’am, until Mr. Jourdain gets here. There’s nothing else to do.”

“I’ve never seen her this way.”

“Sometimes she gets like this when she’s overexcited.”

Dorothy was keening softly and tossing her head. “Johnny, oh my Johnny…”

In distress, I reached for her hand, trying to still her restlessness, but she slapped at my fingers and jerked away.

“Where are they? Where are my boys?”

“I’m right here, Dorothy,” I said. I touched her face; her skin was moist with sweat. “Their voices…” She moaned again, and began to cry, and I had no idea what to do, how to soothe her.

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered uselessly.

There was the sound of hurried footsteps behind me, a bustle behind the screen, and Michel came into the room. He looked exhausted, and he was in his shirtsleeves, his shirt mostly unfastened to reveal his under vest, his hair tousled, as if he’d run his hands through it. He carried a glass half full of liquid. He barely spared me a glance as he rushed to Dorothy’s side.

“It was too much,” he said. “I could’ve told you.”

“I didn’t—”

He silenced me with a glance. Dorothy turned to him, reaching out her hand as one blind, feeling in the air. “Michel? Is it you?”

“
Oui, chère
, it’s me.” He spoke soothingly. He bent close, holding the glass in one hand while he slipped his arm beneath her, lifting her. “Come now. I’ve your medicine.”

She pressed her hand against his chest. “I want to hear my sons.”

“Your sons have gone to sleep,” he said calmly. He tried to bring the cordial to her, but she turned her head away.

“I want to hear them again.”

“Not tonight,” he said firmly. “
Madame
Atherton was just leaving.”

She cried out in dismay.

I said, “I can stay—”

“
Non
. Look what you’ve done already.” He was clipped and angry, but then he turned back to Dorothy, and his voice became soothing again and quiet. “Come, come,
ma chère
, you must drink.”

Dorothy’s fingers clawed at the wool flannel of his under vest. He hefted her again, pressing the glass to her lips, and when she drank, he soothed, “Ah, that’s the way,
ma pauvre chère
, drink it up.”

When she was finished, he reached over her to put the glass on the bedside table. Her head fell back, and she sighed, but her fingers still moved ceaselessly against his chest, trying at the buttons, failing. Breathlessly, she said, “I want to touch,” and impatiently he brushed her hand aside, slipping the buttons free to bare his chest, and then he took her hand—gently now—and pressed it to his skin, where she flattened her palm and stretched out her fingers, sighing with relief and pleasure.

He looked up at me. His eyes were harder than I’d ever seen them. “It’s time for you to go,
Madame.
”

The look he gave me was so cold. I had not realized how used I was to his too intimate warmth until it was gone. This was worse. Much worse.

T
he strangeness of the night seeped into my skin like poison, and I did not understand what had happened to me. I could tell myself all I wanted that the spirit writing was only a manifestation of my own thoughts, and so explain it as some strange delusion brought on by strain or lack of sleep. But I couldn’t say the same for tonight. I’d had no knowledge of the things I’d seen. Where had it all come from? Who was I?

I felt vulnerable and undone and frightened. Because whether or not the visions were real, Dorothy thought they were, and Peter had lost his life attempting to break Michel’s bond with her. What now would happen to me? I paced my room, unable to be still, agitated beyond measure.

The quick, sharp rap on my door stopped my step. I glanced at the clock on the mantel. Four a.m. It seemed suddenly inevitable that he would come, that I would let him in, and I was well aware of the irony of the fact that the man I was most afraid of had the power to ease my fears. To help me or to hurt me was his choice. I did not know which he would make.

“Come in,” I called. “It’s not locked. Not that it would matter to you if it were.”

The door opened. He stepped inside, closing it softly again behind him. He looked much the same as he had when I’d left him in Dorothy’s room. His under vest was still unbuttoned to show his skin, which seemed to gleam golden in the light.

“I heard you pacing,” he said. “Nightmares?”

I laughed, and had to look away when the laugh turned into a sob. “I think I must be going mad.”

“Non,”
he said, and the calm assurance in his voice made me look at him again. “Remember what I told you before. Let them in so you can control them.”

Desperately, I said, “How can it be real? How do you know I’m not losing my mind?”

“Tell me what you saw tonight. In the circle, what did you see?”

“I… there was a voice. It was your voice, and then it wasn’t. It was a woman’s. I didn’t know her. But she asked me to listen. And then it was like a memory, but not my own.”

“The boys swimming?”

“Yes. They were laughing. And then she came down the bank—”

“The woman who told you to watch?”

“No. No. This was their mother. Dorothy. She was younger. She had cherry tarts.”

“And that was how it was? Just a memory? You don’t remember speaking?”

“No. I was watching. It was as if I were far away, but everything was so clear. Like a dream.”

“Or a nightmare?” He came toward me, and it was very like that evening in the parlor, when he’d first threatened me. The slow pace, the way he let his fingers dangle to caress the furniture, as if he owned it, and I felt again that same fear, but this time, there was something that made me wait for him to reach me.

“Did you know any of these things before you came here?” he asked gently.

“I knew Dorothy had two sons who died.”

“You never investigated her? Not with your
papa
?”

“No. No, I knew of the Bennetts, of course, everyone does. But nothing else. Not until I married Peter.”

“What did you know then?”

“Only that she was an invalid,” I said.

“What about the things Peter told you?”

“He told me nothing.”

“Ah.” He was right there, just before me. “You aren’t lying to me about how the visions come? Did you eat something? Drink something? Laudanum, like your
maman
, perhaps?”

I shook my head. “There was the liqueur you gave me. I drank it each time before the spirit writing—”

“That was just a liqueur, nothing more.”

“Then no.”

His expression went thoughtful. He murmured, “Unbelievable. How strange to find you here. I hardly expected it. Peter was right, eh? An angelfish among the eels.”

I felt a sad tug at the familiar words, but I said nothing, and he went on, “I think you are that very rare thing,
chère
. A real medium. I confess I’d not thought one existed. I’ve seen some that made me wonder, but in the end, they were just clever women.”

“The way you’re clever.”

“
Oui
. But it doesn’t matter whether you’re real or not. You know I’ll do everything I can to discredit you? I’ll fight you, and you can’t win. Not with Dorothy. Not against me.”

His honesty took me aback.

“You want to take from me what I’ve spent months working for. You want to prove that I’m guilty of murdering your
beloved
husband. You want to save yourself by ruining me. Should I not fight back, Evie?”

I took a deep, shuddering breath. “I’m not going to jail.”

His gaze did not leave mine. “Work with me,
chère.
Work with me and I’ll teach you everything I know.”

Then he kissed me.

I pressed my palms flat against his bare chest. I knew I should push him away. But I didn’t. Instead, I curled my fingers, and he pressed closer, putting his arms around me, trapping me against him, and suddenly, we were breathless and fumbling. I felt his fingers at my back, slipping each of the tiny buttons of my gown from their loops, and I was pulling his shirt from his trousers, pushing it off his shoulders, yanking at his under vest, pulling back only long enough for him to peel my sleeves from my arms, long enough so I could undo the hooks at the front of my corset while he loosened the ties of my crinoline. I was impatient, and so was he—our movements were hasty, jerking, our breaths coming in hard little gasps as we removed the layers of our armor: my gown, his trousers, my petticoats and chemise, his underclothes, and then we were naked, and he was pulling me down onto the floor, and I writhed beneath him until I was no longer myself.

W
HEN IT WAS
over, it took only a moment for the world to return to me, to remember who he was. I felt his silky hair against my shoulder, the rise and fall of his breathing against my breasts, and I was chagrined and furious with myself.

“Ah, not yet,
chère
,” he whispered against my throat. The movement of his lips tickled. “Don’t banish me yet.”

I pushed at his shoulders. I felt near tears. “I want you to leave.”

He sighed and rolled off me. I scrambled away from him, hiding myself as best I could until I reached my gown, which I held to my breasts.

He watched me with a rueful expression. Then he got to his feet. With no care for his nakedness, he came to where I sat, surrounded by our clothing, and with a patience that made me want to scream, he separated out his own. He said nothing as he pulled on his trousers, and then he bent to retrieve his shirt and his underwear, balling them in his hand.

I buried my face in my gown so I wouldn’t have to look at him. I saw him in a succession of images—bending close to Dorothy, unbuttoning his vest for her, pressing the laudanum to her lips. I heard Benjamin—
Benjamin!
—saying,
“I think he killed Peter.”
How easily Michel had worked me, with the skill not of hands or kisses or charm, but of challenge and conversation, of
answers
. I heard him cross the room, and then the soft click of the door as it opened, his little hesitation before he went out, and then I was alone.

I sat there for some time, my face buried in my gown. I wanted to cry, but the tears wouldn’t come, there was just a terrible heaviness behind my eyes that wouldn’t go away. Then, finally, I looked up. The dawn light was creeping around the edges of the curtains.

I rose. I was sticky, and I ached. I went to the washbasin and poured water from the pitcher into it. The water was cold, but I dipped a cloth into it anyway and washed myself everywhere he had touched. My skin pimpled with gooseflesh, but I kept at it until I was certain every vestige of his presence was gone. Then I pulled on my dressing gown and collapsed upon my bed, too exhausted and sick at heart to even crawl beneath the blankets, though the fire had long since died. To sleep—even for an hour to find my way into dreams instead of nightmares, to find solace… I longed for it. I closed my eyes, and for a moment my mind was empty, and I was certain I would sleep at last. I felt my body relaxing, fading, giving… .

Then I felt the sagging of the mattress, as if someone had just sat upon it. I opened my eyes quickly and saw a shadow there, the figure of a man, but before I could move or exclaim, a light flared and suddenly he was illuminated, but it was an odd kind of light, as if it came from within him and not without, and the rest of the room was in abject darkness, even though moments before it had been dawn.

“Peter,” I gasped.

My husband was sitting there, his hair matted and wet, his face pale, his lips blue. His eyes were closed. When I spoke his name, he opened them, and I saw they were gone, eaten away by fishes and eels, and he reached out to touch me, my name upon his lips, and I found myself scrambling away, falling off the bed in my haste, screaming so the sound seemed to spiral in my head—