In the middle of my inbox, hidden among the spam, is a message from Raina at Shoreham. She’s found Greta Koenig — rather, Greta Ryzhkova. My hunch was right, only she didn’t bear her mother’s name for long. It seems that her mother remarried, and Greta took her stepfather’s name. A Victor Mullins of New Orleans. In 1826. The Mullins name pings back a glut of hits. But why the remarriage? Katerina Ryzhkova was widowed. I flip through the book, running my fingers along the warped pages. Toward the middle, before the switch in handwriting, there is a delicate drawing of a boat — it looks like a rudimentary prototype of the kind of steamers that once crawled up and down rivers throughout the country.
I look up to see the light still on at the McAvoys’, and Frank and Leah’s silhouettes on their living room couch. This is how it’s always been. I’d thought it had been Leah watching us, but it was me on the other side of the glass, wanting in.
Then I begin the hunt. A hunt for a flood between 1824 and 1826, the kind that might swallow a troupe of traveling performers, perhaps a floating circus. The kind that might have killed enough people to imbue any objects left behind with a spirit of loss deep enough to cause a curse. I know in my heart this is poor research. Wild chases go against the fundamentals of good research. But the book found its way to me, which works against all logic as well.
Hours pass before I discover it. In 1825, the Mississippi River floods, inundating New Orleans. Katerina Ryzhkova remarried in New Orleans. It fits geographically and with the timeline.
I catch sight of a small sketch on the page opposite the little steamer boat. I’d seen it before but it hadn’t seemed important, just another absentminded doodle of a man prone to think through sketching. At the corner of a page, just above a quickly jotted note about oppressive heat and fog, is a delicate brown illustration of a horseshoe crab.
I shut the book and leave the house as quickly as my ankle allows. I need to get into the water, to clear my head. My foot and the stairs make for slow going. The bottom two steps have washed out, but someone installed a pool ladder on the bulkhead, so I’m able to tumble down. On the sand, crabs scramble around my feet and over each other. The tide has come up since the afternoon, hiding the thousands more horseshoes that lurk beneath. They seem to part, making way as I shuffle into the water.
Three deep breaths, in, out, in, out, in, out. One last deep sharp breath down, spreading the ribs wide, stretching each muscle and filling it with air, and then I am in the black relief of night swimming. Below is life, tails switching against shells, above is water, then sky — in the in-between there is only me. I swim farther into the dark.
I open my mouth for just a moment, tasting the salt.
There is a cycle at work. My mother knew her mother drowned. My grandmother must have known the same. They must have feared, like every member of the Wallenda family who takes to the wire knowing the specter of death is a breath of wind away, until the wire becomes a curse. A combination of thought and tragedy makes it so. Binding Charms and Defixione, that bulky text Churchwarry sent, puts the source of curses as the written word, intent manifested through language. Below crab tails smack against shells, conjuring the image of Peabody’s drawing. The boat, too, followed so shortly by the water-damaged pages, as though the sketch itself called a flood. My stomach rolls with a cold undercurrent.
Curse tablets bore the names of their targets, sometimes little more. To name a thing is to set it apart — imbuing it with power, or steering it toward destruction. Bess Visser. Amos. Evangeline. Curse tablets were hidden, buried where they wouldn’t be discovered until long after the charm had done its damage. A discovered tablet could be smashed, breaking the charm, just as burning letters can exorcise old lovers. The book hid itself, through flood, finding homes with people interested in books and old things, people who wouldn’t dare destroy such an interesting piece of history. Until it found its way to me.
It’s ready to be undone.
I let my breath out and sink down to the sand bed, dangling my feet until they touch the smooth top of a carapace. It shoots out from under me, slick, and unknowably old. For the first time in days I feel like smiling, and almost gasp in the salt. By the time I emerge from the water, shivering, dawn has crept up.
I know what to do.
22
Peabody was elated at the prospect of Evangeline’s pursuit of fortune-telling; it solved the problem of Amos’s employment and afforded him the opportunity to exercise his creative capabilities. He spent days and nights sketching, searching through chests, and confiscating any errant piece of cloth or bit of ornamentation from other wagons — an intricate piece of ironwork from Melina’s door, a length of muslin Susanna had left out, a tin of silver dust that Nat had held onto from his days as a smith — all snatched, borrowed, wheedled, and cajoled away. He refurbished Ryzhkova’s wagon in what he deemed the highest style. Blue, yellow, and white paint on the exterior, trimmed with flourishes and fleurs-de-lis. Swags of cloth were hung inside the door and the interior was painted an eggshell blue typically reserved for women’s skirts. Peabody painted compasses and stars along the walls, and supplied cushions from his own wagon. When finished, he conceded that he’d transformed Ryzhkova’s lair into a passable replica of an ostentatious French parlor. His book noted the change. A single line scratched through Mme. Ryzhkova, svc. Occult, under which was written M. & Mme. Les Ferez, svc. Oracular. Evangeline became Apprentice Seer, and next to Amos’s name Wild Boy had been emphatically stricken and replaced with Seer; small changes that meant a wholly altered life for Amos and Evangeline. For purposes of record keeping they became Etienne and Cécile Les Ferez.
“Russians are passé,” Peabody explained as he bestowed a costume trunk upon Amos. “Les vêtements,” he said, dropping the box. It thudded to the ground, sending curls of dust into the air. “Think, Amos, all this time you’d been sleeping atop your future. Costumes from my last trip to the Continent.” When neither Amos nor Evangeline took his meaning he elaborated. “France, dear children.” He shook out an age-stained floral scarf. “La France. The very height of civilization, fashion, and art!”
Amos balked when presented with the trunk brimming with stiff white fabric, lace and ruffles. Peabody cleared his throat. “Changes are difficult, but ’tis this or déshabillé. I understood you were not well pleased with being a savage.” He sized a pelisse against Evangeline’s increasing girth. “Most concealing, most concealing,” he murmured. “The French are — how shall it be phrased? Accommodating to ladies of parturient condition.”
The voluminous garb of a Gallic bohemian well disguised Evangeline’s pregnancy when she sat, and she sat a great deal. In her new employment she found that, were it not for the occasional pain and sudden bouts of sickness, pregnancy was not the inconvenience she had feared, and that she liked some of the changes reading cards brought.
Peabody spoke at length on aristocratic attire, the elaborate coiffures, wigs, and powder. “Lice,” he chuckled, “the fiends are rife with lice.” Evangeline took on the task of dressing Amos’s hair in the heavy ringlets Peabody stated were fashionable. Each night she used a fine wooden comb to part his hair into sections, twisting each into a corkscrew, which she then tied with cloth scraps. While she combed, she practiced her accent, pursing her lips. By evening’s end her face grew tired from overuse and Amos looked like a dandelion. While Amos seemed at first embarrassed by the task, after a week’s time she felt him longing for the quiet moments and the simple pleasure of having his hair brushed. She would sit on a chest while he sat cross-legged on the floor, bracketed by her thighs, and gave himself to her ministrations. She watched his breath slow with each pass of the comb. It was good to care for another.