“No!” I inhale sharply, jumping to stand. Dumbfounded. But he was here. Was he here? If he was, he has slipped from the surface. I’m panicked, shocked by the moment, its power and its brevity. No, no, it’s not enough. Not nearly enough, after all that I’ve been through. After all my efforts in trying to find him.
Something in the room has shifted. A subtle nuance, but the moment dangles, teasing me as I work to solve it.
Of course. Both clocks have stopped.
I must stay calm. Will’s presence hums through me like a hymn. When I glance down and see the cat, I jump and scream.
“Psst! Scat!” The animal has been crouched motionless at the foot of my chair all this time. Was that what Will’s gesture had indicated?
“Psst!” I hiss again. “Shoo, cat!” It doesn’t move no, it’s not a cat, not a living thing at all. It’s some sort of object.
And yet…I’m sure it wasn’t here when I first came into the room.
I drop to a crouch, and my hands scoop darkness until my fingers swipe the cold metal of the buckle and clasp. Locke’s satchel. Yes, that is exactly what it is. I slide closer, unbuckle it, and withdraw its contents. Glass ambrotypes. My fingers count nine in all.
My heart beats with curiosity and fear. In a scramble, I find the box of matches on the mantel, and I relight the lamp.
“All right, William,” I whisper. “I know that that you’re here and that you’ve summoned me. Now. What do you want me to see?”
The light is dim illumination. I unknot my dark shawl and drape it over the back of the armchair. Then I arrange the table lamp to shine directly in front. I prop up the first image.
It is a drummer boy, not more than ten years old. An innocent.
In a different dress he could be one of Geist’s cherubs. I set the plate down and set another against the dark fabric. Here is a colonel or possibly a general, all bristling epaulets and waxed mustache.
Something has changed. The room has gone so cold my teeth chatter. My urge to leave this room is so violent it almost overwhelms me. I’m not sure I can reckon with the truth I might uncover here. But the motions of my body do not listen, and stay mechanical, working smoothly, capably. I exchange the general’s image for another. Fallen soldiers, sprawled in the long grass. It twists my heart. The Wilderness, perhaps? It could be any of the countless, unnamed battles.
In the end, what does the name or the place of death even matter?
The next image shows a line of young men. Six in all, but I recognize two. At one end, sitting on the ground, Nate Dearborn. Standing over him is a short, square man with a slack and bearded jaw and a bristle of dark hair, holding the defiant stance of the leader. Is this Curtis? Must be.
And there, second from the opposite end, is Quinn. His shoulders defiant, a tourniquet wrapped around his eye. I don’t need the identifying caption at the bottom of the plate to know that I’m looking into the eyes of the Raiders. All dead now, all but one. And William Pritchett is not among them.
On closer inspection, I see the date scratched in the bottom. July 10, 1864.
28.
I stumble from Geist’s. I have no money for a hackney, and the local trains have stopped running. All I’ve got are my own two feet, and the distance is long. It’s dark now, besides, and the night is further obscured by an icy spitting rain. Few travelers or carriages take up the road, and none that pass trouble themselves with me.
After one too many stumbles, I break the heels off my shoes as easily as snapping chicken bones. They’re ruined anyway, from the muddy gutters. I send the heels sailing into an alley. Good riddance. I’ll never wear heels again for the rest of my life.
Soon the roads widen and the spaces between buildings open as I leave the city behind. There are miles of darkness before me. I want to rest, but I push on, hurrying and then slowing to catch my breath before picking up pace again. After a while my legs ache with the desire to stop, and it is only my anxious energy that vaults me forward, onward, charged with no greater impulse than to run.
“Jennie!” The sound of my name slices the night and stops me cold. My skin is a thousand pinpoints of prickling dread. I’d convinced myself to fear neither the dark nor the journey, but his voice is a bullet ripped clean through my body.
Standing in the shadows by the bridge, he has been watching my approach. Waiting for me. I slow.
“Where are you coming from? Why did you leave the house? Jennie, you’ve missed everything. The entire dinner, even the baked Alaska, which was a splendid sight. By the time I left, they’d moved onto dancing.”
“I…had to go.”
“Go where? You’ve been gone for hours.” Quinn steps forward. His evening clothes are impeccably tailored to his body. Combed and pressed and clean-shaven, the moon reflects him as exquisitely groomed as I’ve ever seen. He is the Quinn I used to know.
For a split second I’m sorry I couldn’t have witnessed him at tonight’s party. It is easy to imagine him presiding at the table. His princely manners, his tapered fingers balancing the stem of his champagne glass as he raised it in toast. I can hear the gale of laughter that would follow one of his reposts. I can feel the flat of his hand on the small of my back as we might have danced, later. The collective flush of all the other girls’ envy as I sailed through the night on his arm.
I’ve come to a standstill. Quinn continues to advance. Courtly, cordially, as if he might request a waltz. “Dearest Fleur, if you’d had any trepidation about this party, you might have given me fair warning. As it was, Mother told the guests you came down with a sick headache.”
“I’ll have to remember to thank her.” My voice sounds girlish and scared.
Quinn stops close enough that I see the glint in his eyes, silver and uncomprehending. The injured eye, almost healed, has taken on an unfixed and cloudy focus. Quinn had once confessed that it hardly diffuses more than light and dark.
Suddenly it is this eye that frightens me most an eye gone nearly dead that keeps up a pretense of functioning. An eye that stares at me but sees nothing. I jump back as he takes a step forward. A fresh patter of rain blows in on us, briefly blinding.
“But I don’t understand. What made you go away? Did one of those absurd Wortleys slight you?”
“No…” I realize I am too scared to speak.
“You can’t imagine my frustration to come home and not find you anywhere. Mavis said that when she saw you on the stairs, you looked pretty as a painting. I thought you might be taking a walk around the pond. But your hair, your frock and what’ve you done with your beautiful new shoes?” The concern in his voice has an edge of suspicion now.