City of Ash (61 page)

He strode fast, pulling me away from the Phoenix, down the street. No doubt he meant to walk that way every step, propelling me along, and I felt every bruise.

“Slow down,” I complained. “He’s not about to get loose from those soldiers.”

“I thought he couldn’t get loose from me and Metairie either,” he said grimly, but he let go of me and slowed, glancing over his shoulder as he did so. “He was right, wasn’t he? That was his wife, wasn’t it?”

And though it was stupid to try, I did. “I don’t know what you mean.”

He gripped my arm so hard I yelped. “The woman in the cape,” he said through clenched teeth. “It was Mrs. Langley. She’s alive, and you’ve known it all this time, haven’t you?”

“You’re hurting me.”

“What game are you two playing?”

I stopped short. “Damn you. Let go of me.”

“It all makes sense to me now. She’s alive and flitting about town, pretending to be her spirit. You’ve convinced Langley that she’s dead, and that she’s haunting him.”

“I don’t know what he thinks he’s seeing.”

“God
damn
you, Bea. It’s
Penelope
, isn’t it? Isn’t it? That’s what the two of you are doing. Christ, why didn’t I see it before now? He’s Barnabus. You mean to turn him mad.”

I glared at him. “What an imagination you have.”

He glared right back at me. “All the time, I thought I was writing it for you, and I was, but only so you could use it as a manual. My God, what have you been doing in the time you’ve spent with him?”

“Fucking him mostly,” I said meanly.

He gave me a little shake. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

There was no point in denying it any longer. “We had to do something! You don’t know what he meant to do to her! He meant to put her in an asylum. That was the reason he let her do
Penelope
to begin with. Nathan and her father meant to have her committed.”

“How do you know that?”

“She found a letter. Nathan wanted her money and her father wanted her out of the way. She was an embarrassment, and so they thought to put her in an asylum and Nathan meant to use me to do it. Haven’t you noticed how much we look alike?”

“I’ve noticed,” he said grimly.

“The things he did … he used me too, Bastian. That’s why he wanted me. Because I could fool people into thinking I was her from a distance. We’re only doing to him what he meant to do to her. We followed your play step by step. Well, except for tonight. Because I didn’t have the last two scenes and—”

“Christ, Bea, do you know how
Penelope Justis
ends?”

“Barnabus goes insane, doesn’t he? You haven’t changed that?”

“Yes, he goes insane,” he snapped.

“That’s all we want. Just for Nathan to be committed so Ginny can be free—”

“Barnabus goes insane, yes, but he commits suicide, Bea. He kills himself. But not before he kills Penelope too.”

I stared at him. “He commits suicide? He kills Penelope?”

Sebastian held my gaze. “Do you understand now?”

“But … why?”

“Because the spirit only appears when Penelope does. Barnabus kills Penny because he cannot kill the spirit, and then he kills himself because of what he’s done.”

“It’s you! It’s your fault. She comes for you!”

“My God,” I whispered. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I had no idea what you were doing, or I would have.”

“Well, it doesn’t have to end that way, does it? Those soldiers have Nathan. Everyone can see he’s quite insane.”

“He’s Nathan Langley, Bea,” Sebastian said steadily. “What do you think they’ll do without a wife or relative to commit him?”

And suddenly I understood the great flaw in our plan. “They’ll take him home,” I said dully. “If he’s still raving, they’ll give him laudanum. And in the morning, everyone will pretend they saw nothing.”

“Yes. And then what do you think he’ll do?”

“He’ll come after me.”

Sebastian let out his breath and raked a hand through his hair. “Unfortunately, I think you’re right.”

I’d been frightened before; now I was terrified. I thought of how Nathan had thrown me against the dresser and his violence after, the wildness of his eyes back there in the theater. I thought
of his scream when he’d seen her. And I thought of her alone in our tent, thinking everything had gone perfectly, and suddenly I was nearly running toward camp, too panicked to care that it hurt. Suddenly, I had to find her; I had to be sure she was safe.

Sebastian hurried after me, pulling me to a stop, and I said, “Ginny’s alone.”

“She’s safe enough for now.”

Of course he was right. There were soldiers with rifles holding Nathan. They would take him home, as Sebastian had said. They would dope him with laudanum. She was safe tonight.

But there was something else, some feeling I had, and I couldn’t put it right. Some panic that snaked its way through me like a lit fuse, and I couldn’t just leave it be. Something was wrong; I could
feel
it.

“I need to see for myself,” I told him. “I want to be certain.”

“Bea—”

I was moving before he could say anything else. In the end he had no choice but to follow. I walked so fast that even my panic couldn’t keep me from gasping in pain, and I saw his little sideways glance and ignored it and kept ignoring it as we hurried the blocks, and it was still taking too long. Too damn long. Then finally we were at the camp, and it looked quiet and comforting as
The Western Home
made the prairie out to be, campfires and lamps glowing through tent walls in the darkness and someone laughing. No chaos at all, no screams of panic. But still I didn’t believe it. Still, I went as quickly as I could to her tent.

I was saying her name even before I burst inside, into darkness. “Ginny?”

Silence.

I didn’t believe it. Where the hell could she be if not here?

“Ginny?”

Sebastian came in just behind me. “Perhaps she’s gone to the privy,” he said, and I dodged around him and was out again, scanning the darkness, searching for her, racing like some madwoman, thinking I could ask someone until I remembered that no one knew us to tell us apart. I was standing right before them; how could I ask if they’d seen
me
?

I ran to the privy, which was empty, and then to the water
barrels, but there was only a little girl there dipping water. Ginny was nowhere; she was gone completely. Where else would she go?

When I got back to the tent, I couldn’t breathe for panic. Sebastian had lit a candle. He stood there, his head bowed beneath the canvas, staring at a paper in his hand. I recognized it as a page from the revision of
Much Ado
.

He looked up when I stepped inside, and held out the paper. “Read this.” His voice was so grim it seemed to stop my heart. “Maybe you can make sense of it.”

I took the paper. Geary had copied Sebastian’s adaptation on both sides; but in the top margin, heavily written in ink that she’d no doubt pilfered from Sebastian’s tent, it said:

Geneva

W
hen I stepped from behind that tent and looked into my husband’s eyes, I knew it was almost over. Not even in our most passionate moments had Nathan looked at me like that, and now, to see the fear that came along with it, how he seemed to almost spasm with it, filled me with a gruesome satisfaction. Bea had said she thought he was close
to succumbing, that she felt it would take one more turn, and I knew the moment I heard his scream that it was true.

But I had not expected to see Sebastian DeWitt standing there, and the sight of him, the recognition I saw in his expression, sent me into a panic. All I could think of was escape. Mr. DeWitt wasn’t supposed to be there—why was he there? Why hadn’t she warned me?

I dodged to the other side of the tent and flew through the darkness. Perhaps we could still salvage something, though how that was possible if Sebastian DeWitt knew the truth, I didn’t know. But I was certain that it had to end now, tonight. Now that Sebastian DeWitt knew, it had to end, and that was the fact that rang in my head, a thought of such brilliant clarity that I knew what I must do, how I must hurry. I was uncertain how long I had before Nathan returned home. I did not know whether they would take him there now or whether he was subdued. Whichever it was, it did nothing to change my plan. If there were people with him, I must only wait until they were gone. If he were dulled into a laudanum haze, so much the better.
One more turn
, she’d said, and I knew I could finish this tonight. I had seen the madness in his eyes, and I knew I could push it further. In any case, I had no choice. Mr. DeWitt’s witness had made certain of it.

The camp was quiet and dark. I went into Mr. DeWitt’s tent, stumbling against the shadow of a makeshift desk, grabbing up the first piece of paper I felt, then trying to find a pen or a nib. There was one, along with a bottle of ink. Quickly I uncapped it and dipped the nib and scrawled a note on the top of the page, and then I put the ink back and took the note to my tent. I laid it upon the bedroll before I started out again, on my way to my house, to finish things once and for all with my husband.

I had no real plan beyond that. To end it was all I thought. To appear to him, to send him screaming and terrified into the arms of Bonnie or the cook, to watch the police come to take him away. And then,
voilà
! I would be myself again. Geneva Stratford Langley returned from the dead, amnesia gone, restored to my life.

I reached the house. Lights—oil lamps, candles—blazed from
every window but that of my bedroom. The carriage stood outside; I pulled back into the shadows of the huge maple until I was certain the yard was empty, and then I hurried through the darkness to the side yard, to the parlor doors. The curtains were drawn; I pressed my ear to the glass and listened for any noise, but it was quiet. Not even the clink of the sherry decanter. Still, I waited; one minute, two. Still nothing. I opened the door carefully and slipped inside, shielding myself in the drapes.

It was then that I heard the footsteps in the hallway, the sound of quickly conferring voices, Bonnie’s quick assent, the light tap of her heels as she hurried away. I froze, waiting, straining to listen. The voices were low—men’s voices. I thought I heard the words
laudanum, needs sleep
, something about morning, and then there were Bonnie’s footsteps again, and her pert voice, carrying beautifully, “We’ll keep a close eye on him, Dr. Berry.”

Berry
. The doctor who had examined me. The thought made me furious again, and more determined than ever. Tonight I would see to it that Nathan never had such power over me again.

I heard the front door open, the sounds of farewell, the close. I heard their steps down the pathway to the street. The front drapes were drawn as well; I could not see the men get into the carriage, but I heard the close of the door, the rattling of wheels, and then they were off, and Bonnie went down the hall again, back toward the kitchen, and it was my chance.

I stepped from the drapes to the parlor door and opened it—just a crack at first, peeking through, and then, when I saw no one, I stepped into the hall. As quietly and quickly as I could, I went to the stairs, hurrying up them, down the hall, and there was Nathan’s room, his door shut firmly. On the table outside was a brown bottle, a pitcher and a glass, a spoon. I touched the lip of the bottle and brought my finger to my lips, tasting laudanum. I wondered how much they’d given him, how deeply asleep he would be. Perhaps not much. Perhaps just enough for tranquility, that wonderful, drowsy languor where everything seemed a dream.

I turned the knob and stepped inside—the small oil lamp at the bedside burning, the flame dancing against the glass,
illuminating Nathan’s pale face, his hair. I closed the door behind me. His breathing was even; but he was tightly wound even in sleep, twitching lightly. Blessed laudanum. It would not be enough to save him tonight. I thought of the great bruise on Bea’s body, her arms. I thought of what he had meant to do to me.

I stepped to the foot of the bed. I leaned down, pressing my hands into the mattress, near his feet. “Nathan,” I whispered.

He stirred, whimpering a little.

I jarred the mattress. “Nathan, my love. Wake up. Wake up and see me. Your darling Ginny come to life.”

A restless twitch.

“You
will
see me, darling,” I said, but this time I went around to the side of the bed. This time I knelt beside it, leaning forward to whisper into his ear, “Wake and be damned, my love.”

He started so suddenly I fell back, fully awake in a moment, blinking, rigid. “Bea!” he said, and then profound confusion. “Ginny?”

I rose, stepping back, smiling. “Do you not recognize your own wife?” I asked him, needling, nasty. “Or have you put me aside so quickly?”

He went white. “Ginny. Why? Why does your spirit torment me?”

“I’m in hell, my darling. And now I’ve come to take you with me.”