“I suppose I would rather have them doubt me than cast me as a woman of sin,” Amelia said. She sighed and took his hand. “I will be relieved when this fiction is over.”
Levi had written to Barnum of their decision to leave the tour. Amelia had written—or rather, dictated to Levi what she wished to say—to Charity separately, for she felt that if Barnum made difficulties, Charity would smooth them over. There had been no reply from either; Levi had assured her that this was not unusual and that occasionally it did take quite a long time to receive mail and even longer to get some back.
Privately he worried that Barnum would take the first available conveyance to Charleston and attempt to force Amelia to stay on the tour. This couldn’t have a good outcome for anyone, and Levi didn’t need Barnum wading into his marriage with Amelia and disrupting their fragile peace. They were both, he thought, trying so hard to mend what had been broken—to make an effort to meet each other halfway, to be patient even when they didn’t want to be, to show each other that they loved each other instead of just saying it.
They spoke often of where they might go to live—a quiet place near the ocean, away from reporters and crowds and any pressure Barnum might be tempted to use to convince Amelia to come back.
“What about Fiji?” Amelia asked.
“That doesn’t seem wise,” Levi said. “If you disappear from Barnum’s show, the first place anyone will think to inquire of you is the place where you are supposed to be from.”
“But I thought you said it’s far away,” Amelia said. “Very far away, and that it would take many, many months to get there by ship.”
“It is,” Levi acknowledged. “That would make the trip difficult for me, if not for you. I don’t like boats.”
“You don’t?” She looked startled.
He laughed. “I never told you how awful it was for me to travel by boat to see you in Maine. The rocking of the ocean made me sick nearly the whole time.”
Amelia frowned. “I’ve never known anyone made sick by the ocean.”
“You lived near a village of fishermen, love,” he said. “Anyone made ill by the sea would be unlikely to stay there.”
“What about one of the other islands on the map near Fiji?” Amelia asked.
“Why this sudden desire to go to an island?” Levi asked. “I thought perhaps we could live somewhere along the coast, in some place where I could be a country lawyer and you could visit the ocean as you did in Maine.”
“I’m afraid to stay here,” Amelia said. “I’m afraid that a reporter will find me, or another madman like Elijah Hunt. If we live on an island far away it won’t matter that they all think I’m from Fiji. No one is likely to travel so far simply to find me again. Even madness has its limits.”
Levi wasn’t so certain, but he had to acknowledge it was unlikely. Still, the idea of a months-long journey to an island in the Pacific did not appeal. Just the thought of that much time on a ship made him feel queasy. But he wasn’t inclined to argue with Amelia again, so he helped her look up the names of different islands and they read about them together and discussed their various merits.
“Ra-ro-ton-ga,” Amelia pronounced carefully, as they studied a map of the Cook Islands. “I like the sound of that place. It sounds like music.”
“It’s nearly as far away as Fiji,” Levi said.
“No it’s not; it’s a whole thumb closer,” Amelia said, placing her digit between Fiji and Rarotonga. “Particularly if you go around South America.”
Levi hoped that if they went so far they would go around South America rather than around Africa. He couldn’t imagine anything more terrible than having to cross the entirety of the Atlantic first, and then the Pacific, too.
Secretly he still hoped to convince Amelia to stay somewhere in the United States, but he thought he would wait to mention this until after they had left the tour. She still seemed fragile, like she might bolt away at any moment.
That evening there was another performance at the Masonic Hall, and the next day another review of the show appeared. This time it was in the Charleston Mercury.
It was written by a man who called himself “the Rev. John Blackman” and it stated, in no uncertain terms, that the mermaid was a fraud perpetuated “by our Yankee neighbors.” The Reverend Blackman claimed to be an amateur naturalist and thus spoke with greater authority than the editor of the Courier.
“Did this man actually attend a performance?” Amelia asked.
Levi scanned the article. “He claims to have done so.”
“But it’s absurd,” she said. “If he saw me then he must know that I’m real.”
“He says that your very presence in the company of such tricks as ventriloquism prove that the mermaid is nothing more than a clever illusion,” Levi said. “I wouldn’t let it trouble you, Amelia. I don’t think that very many people will agree with his opinion, especially if they have attended the exhibition themselves.”
But in that Levi was wrong. Almost immediately letters began appearing in each publication both for and against the veracity of the mermaid. The Courier’s editor, Richard Yeadon, wrote daily pieces dismissing the claims of Reverend Blackman, and Blackman took up the opposite cause in the Mercury.
The crowds that attended each performance swelled. It seemed every person in Charleston wanted to see Amelia for himself and take a side in this very public disagreement.
“Barnum will be pleased, at least,” Levi said. “We are selling so many tickets that people have to be turned away each day.”
There was still no response from Barnum or Charity, a fact that Levi found ominous. He didn’t share his worries with Amelia, however. He still hoped to complete their run in Charleston without the sudden arrival of the showman.
The next night the exhibit went on as usual, at least at first. Levi watched Amelia from the wings of the stage as she climbed the ladder and dove into the tank that Barnum had sent especially for this exhibit.
It was larger than the small wagon that had served as performance space since they left New York, but Levi could tell that Amelia wished for the unfettered freedom of the ocean. There was nothing in her performance any more besides dull obligation.
Not that it mattered, Levi thought. People’s reactions were always the same whether Amelia swam in circles, waved to them, or simply floated in the tank with a blank expression on her face. First surprise, then disbelief, then dawning realization that what they saw was true.
A scuffle broke out at the back of the hall. Levi, fearing a repeat of the first night at the Concert Hall when the crowd rushed the stage, ran out of the wings to see what was happening.
There was a thud, the sound of flesh on flesh, and several people gasped. A small circle of people had gathered around two men who apparently had decided to disagree with their fists.
Levi gestured to two of the men stationed near the front of the stage to break up the fight. The laborers who worked in their wagon train were not as large or as intimidating as the guards Barnum hired in New York, but they were plenty able to disrupt a fight between two gentlemen.
The workers were nearly to the crowd when another fight broke out. This time Levi heard what they were saying.
“Use your eyes, man! How can she possibly be a fraud?” one man screamed at another, his eyes bulging.
“I for one am not about to be fooled by a pack of damn Yanks here to steal our money,” the second man said, shoving the first.