The Book of Speculation: A Novel

The menagerie fled Charlotte with a swiftness they had not used since a preacher had threatened Peabody with tar and feathers. They moved northeast, making no stops for as long as they could manage, camping at night on roadsides, away from towns, sending Benno or Nat ahead to purchase supplies rather than entering a city proper. They traveled this way until they ran along the Atlantic. “A restorative,” Peabody called it, though all knew the break for what it was. They had been scarred by the drowned village.

With Bess’s birth Evangeline’s stomach rebelled against ripeness and carved itself anew. Her ribs stood out and it seemed each tug of the child’s mouth at her breast sucked away life. She and Amos had spoken little since Charlotte. The cards became tools for divination only.

Peabody was the only buoyant soul. He sat Bess’s tightly swaddled body on the high shelf of his belly, cooing and rumbling as he delighted in her. “Little starling, sweet Bess. Whatever shall I make of you? A fine mermaid like your mother? A gypsy as your father was? I think you will be far lovelier, my dear.”

Had Amos not been consumed by the mother of his child, he would have recognized the profiteering gleam in Peabody’s eyes. But Evangeline had begun to shrink away. When he laced her, the stomacher gapped no matter how tight he pulled.

“I will tell Peabody that I wish to take up swimming again,” she told him one morning as they dressed. Amos flinched, breaking a lace. She sighed and searched for a replacement. “It’s that or I will be a human skeleton. The water act always brought in money and we must be practical; the girl will need things.” Wrapped tight in one of the velvet drapes from the Wild Boy act, Bess dozed in the costume trunk. Bess, whose birth had washed away a town.

Amos acquiesced. Though it cut him, if Evangeline wished to swim he would not stop her.

“Hush,” she said. “I will still speak cards for you. I won’t have you in a cage. Though,” she added, “I would prefer if we begin to think of another act, another way.”

Amos bit back his concerns. He worried at the nature of the water act in light of all that had happened. It had not escaped his notice that Susanna had ceased speaking to Evangeline and Melina barely murmured greetings. Benno had begun to subtly sneer as she passed. Once Amos lunged for him, but Evangeline had held him back with a hand to his chest.

“Stop,” she’d said quietly. “He is afraid. If we give him nothing to fear, he’ll come around.” Nestled in her arms, Bess had cried out. Evangeline had looked at Benno. “I’ve known people like you.” I have killed a woman such as you. Benno had walked away, but he’d shuddered; she’d felt it.

Evangeline had hardly slept since the flood. In candlelight she watched Amos’s chest rise and fall, listened to her child’s snores, and wondered what misfortune she’d brought upon them. Never had there been two such cursed people. While they dreamt, she spent hours with the tarot, asking questions and looking for meanings. What will come of us? What will come of her? A frightening pattern emerged.

The cards spoke of old wrongs, what had sent her running and what had happened since. The wasting death of her mother, Grandmother Visser dead, the disappearance of Ryzhkova, Amos’s grief, the perished fish at the poisoned river, and Charlotte destroyed. She’d felt bold when Ryzhkova had confronted her, strong in Amos’s affection and desirous of a portion of happiness, the same as when she’d met Will Aben by the Hudson. Ryzhkova had been right. Amos’s life before Evangeline had been without worries; that was gone. Since their meeting, his face had gained hard, sad furrows. She touched the deck and her past and future spouted horrors, the paper recoiling from her. Amos need not know these things.

After a second week of clandestine prophesies, Evangeline asked Amos if she might avoid handling the cards during readings. Amos frowned but assented. The cards drove her to approach Peabody about the water act.

Peabody was delighted with the news of his mermaid’s return. An extra half share of pay would be easily recouped by the additional gentlemen patrons that the act drew. The tub was repaired, varnished, and whitewashed. Peabody encouraged Evangeline to bring Bess with her as she practiced.

“We have no way of telling what our magnificent starling shall be.” Peabody had taken to tickling the child’s stomach when he spoke such things. Bess in return watched him, her yellowish eyes slow and unblinking like a rabbit’s. “Broaden her horizons. Teach her cards, water, train her in contortion, juggling, anything she’ll learn.”

Amos abided the resurrection of the swimming tub, observing the sealing and painting from the Les Ferez wagon, but made no move to help. He blamed himself for Evangeline’s apprehension of the cards. He understood fear, but he would not stand for the training of his daughter, not when he suspected that her birth had summoned a deluge and his readings spoke of water yet to come. Charlotte gnawed on their minds like a sickness.

Three months passed. Peabody kept them to a circuitous route toward Philadelphia and eventually New York, toward his son. On an evening before they were due to open in Millerston, Evangeline came to take Bess from Amos.