The Book of Speculation: A Novel

Used to the plain dress and people of Krommeskill, Evangeline found Peabody’s manner and appearance shocking. She could not decide on which thing to stare at—his excessive attire, the garish wagon interior, or the young man whose hair was bound in purple cloth so dark it bordered on black.

“We are fortuitous! A stunning specimen, aren’t you?” Peabody burred and rolled. He surveyed her from tip to toe, and under this perusal her feet felt rooted to the floorboards. In the back of the wagon, the young man sat on a clever little bed that unfolded from a wall. His gaze tracked her too, but she found it reassuring.

“Evangeline, you say? A refined sounding name. Yes, you’ll keep it.” He jabbed the end of a quill against a leather-bound book before inclining his head toward the wagon’s other occupant. “You’ve already met our Amos.”

“I have.”

The older man paced, a feat that required him to crouch slightly and caused his velvet-clad elbow to brush her arm. “You have the look of someone who has been running.”

“No, sir,” she replied.

“Pish. You’re a terrible liar.” He laughed, bouncing his stomach. “Even I have run from time to time. Have you any family?”

“None to speak of.”

A grin peeked from under his moustache. “Excellent. We are all orphans here. Take this fine young man.” He gestured toward Amos. “No relations at all. Mute as well, poor lad. Myself? My own mother is many years gone, may the Blessed Lord keep her.” He executed a practiced flourish.

So, the young man was a mute. She remembered his touch as being kind, his palms rough as a farmhand’s. He watched with passive curiosity.

“And what do you do, my dear?” Peabody asked.

“Do?”

“We all must do something. While it would be lovely to have you, we are, to state it crudely, a business.” His tongue lingered on the word. “Each must pull his weight. Myself,” he drawled, “I run the day-to-day, plan the routes, speak when speaking is needed, and manage what profits we might have. Amos is our fortune-teller’s apprentice and occasional Wild Man.”

A flush crept across the silent face. Amos’s eyes flicked to his bare, dirt-covered feet.

“Though I am charitable, it is beyond my capabilities to take on one without earning potential. And so, lovely child, what is it that you do?”

I kill. I am a killer. She bit her lip and thought of what Grandmother Visser said about her long-ago baptism, what she had discovered in the river’s cold heart. “I hold my breath. What I mean to say is that I swim.”

A white eyebrow arched beneath the brim of a curled hat. “Many swim.”

“To be precise, sir, I cannot be drowned.”

A twitch of a smile. “Excellent.” He marked something down in a book. “Good that you are pretty,” he murmured. “Undrownable Beauty, a mermaid—most wonderful. Very well, the young man will help see to your arrangements. We cannot simply turn you away.”

Well into the night, Peabody sketched the myriad ways to display a mermaid. It would not do to have her simply hold her breath; he’d require a vessel that held a good amount of water, but was small enough for transport—a variation on a hogshead barrel, though comparatively squat, and not as large as the casks used in fermenting wine. He fancied it should be able to be taken apart, hoops and staves collapsed, in case the girl was not what she promised. He scribbled until his last candle left him in darkness.

After a private juggling exhibition by Melina helped negotiate a favorable price, Peabody enlisted the services of a Scottish cooper in Tarrytown. The completed tub was simple. It was a pretty piece of work with hammer-marked hoops around perfectly locked staves, wide to hold enough water to swim, yet low enough that a standing man could see into its depths.

While camped and waiting for the tub’s completion, Peabody had Benno set to work on building a series of small benches that could hold a group of ten. With Amos’s help, Benno repurposed costume trunks and a washtub to make sturdy risers.

During an afternoon of hammering and cobbling, Benno remarked in passing, “The mermaid girl is quite striking. I have seen you looking at her.”

Amos nodded. Curls of wood peeled away as Benno chiseled a joint.

“Not near as comely as Melina, but pretty.”

Amos braced a board and tilted his head. He’d hardly spared a thought for Melina since Evangeline had arrived.

“You are hopeful she will remain with us.”

A knot tied itself in Amos’s chest, an emotion he had no name for. He shrugged.

“Best not pine until we see how long she means to stay. Susanna, though. Think how she bends!”

Amos kept his eyes on the board, unwilling to answer his friend. Not thinking on Evangeline was impossible.

The tub was filled a bucket at a time by the troupe save for Peabody and Madame Ryzhkova, whose hands and back would not bear the work. Peabody oversaw the labor, delegating and directing, while he honed what would become Evangeline’s introduction.

She was a mermaid from long-sunk Atlantis, a miracle of mystic seas and secrets. In an unusual splurge, Peabody commissioned a sign painter to create placards depicting Evangeline with a long tail fin.

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