The Book of Speculation: A Novel

He was a thief, or had been. Though they’d traveled years together, Amos knew little about him, only that he was quick to smile and easy to be around. Amos watched him bend one of the brass pieces, molding it to the door. Then, a flick of his wrist and the lock was open.

“For you only do I do this.” Benno returned his clever keys to the pouch. “Forgive me if I do not stay. I have another matter to attend to,” he said, and hurried back to his wagon, pouch tucked against his side.

With a light push, Amos swung Ryzhkova’s door open. What he found inside was confusing. The cart was stripped bare. The walls bore the faint outlines of where the portraits had hung. She was gone.

Amos staggered down the wagon steps and fled, running toward town. Burlington. She must have gone into Burlington; nothing else was near and she wouldn’t venture to the river alone. He bit his tongue and the blood rose sharp with anxiousness. The road into town was not far behind Peabody’s wagon; he could see chimney smoke from morning fires puffing into the sky and he ran toward that smoke, past the blacksmith and the butcher, and into the streets. The shops were not yet open, the inn was still dark, and the roads were empty save for a half-starved mongrel dog. The streets were so well traveled that searching for her footprints proved impossible. Madame Ryzhkova had vanished as if she had never been. His stomach rolled with a pain worse than hunger. He returned to camp, to Peabody’s wagon.

Peabody lifted the latch and peered out, squinting. Hatless, his scalp glinted pink in the early morning light. He murmured a quick apology and fumbled at a side table before clapping on a curly brimmed hat. “What devil finds you awake? None with a soul is about at such an hour.”

Amos gestured in the direction of Ryzhkova’s empty wagon, but Peabody would have none of it.

“I am aware of what occurs in this menagerie. You quarreled with Madame Ryzhkova,” he puffed. “She is a temperamental creature; I’m certain it is nothing that rest and a new town won’t find the fixing of.” His smile was cut short by a yawn.

Amos seized Peabody by the shirtsleeves and pulled him from his wagon despite his protestations. Heads poked out of doors, Meixel and Nat, Susanna. Evangeline woke. Benno stood on his steps and Melina appeared behind him, rubbing sleep from her eye. By the time they reached Ryzhkova’s wagon, Amos and Peabody had garnered an audience. Amos threw back the door to reveal the barren interior.

Peabody’s face turned ashen. “My dear Amos, I am in terrible need of making apologies. I simply…” His worlds faltered. “Hell. She has done it. No, that is not right. Ah, Amos. I am sorry.” He doffed his hat, touched it to his chest, and wandered to his wagon in a fugue. Amos lacked the will to follow. He sat on Ryzhkova’s steps, dangling his legs and taking note of the air—something of old flowers in it, something like his teacher. He studied each dent on the steps she’d climbed for countless years, outlining the marks left by her boot heels.

Meixel came to him first, giving Amos’s back a rough pat before walking to start the morning’s fire. Nat, the strongman, inclined his head, and Melina squeezed his knee. Their touches did not feel like comfort, more like gifts for the departing.

Benno touched Amos’s shoulder. “I do not pretend to understand why she is gone, but know that it is not for want of caring for you.”

Amos flinched.

*

Evangeline waited, knowing that he would come to her in time. He would learn that she’d quarreled with Ryzhkova, that she was the reason Ryzhkova had left. She wondered if everything she touched would sour and die. I am a killer.

*

They were to leave that day, following the banks of the Rancocas, but they did not. Whether it was in hopes that Ryzhkova would return, or out of respect, Amos could not say.

“One day more or less shall make no difference to those who don’t know to miss us,” Peabody said.

Amos stayed inside her wagon, running his fingers over where she’d draped cloths and hung portraits, looking for the soot stains from burning sage. He kicked the straw-filled sack that served as her mattress and threw himself upon it, only to knock his head on a sharp corner. There, tucked away beneath the edge of her bed, lay Ryzhkova’s card box.

She’d left them for him.

He lifted the lid and the orange backs smiled at him. He touched them to his chest, feeling their smoothness, feeling Ryzhkova in the paper, cackling, teasing and scolding, kissing his cheeks when he’d done well. Teaching. His heart both broke and mended; he would not be lost. He tucked the cards into his shirt and sought Peabody.

Peabody sat with his book, drawing thick black lines through a long column of figures and names. Near the bottom of the page he had begun a sketch, a wagon perhaps, too vague to yet tell. Upon seeing Amos he cleared his throat. “Apologies,” he said. “Terrible. A great and terrible thing, but not your doing. I had recently conversed with the woman.” He drew a small flourish in the air with his quill. “It was less than pleasant. We shall see the right of it, I promise.”

Amos threw his arms around the man, embracing him.