Griffin
We lingered over slices of what was alleged to be pie, although in my experience pie ordinarily had less dough and more filling. Scarrow took his leave, wishing us both a pleasant evening and inviting us to services next Sunday should we be so inclined.
I considered suggesting a stop by the saloon, but I doubted Whyborne would care for the atmosphere. Nor would he be particularly welcome at the card tables. He had a knack for card games that bordered on the uncanny, which tended to lead to accusations of cheating.
“I imagine it’s been long enough for them to have become reacquainted, as it were,” I said at last, checking my pocket watch. “Don’t you think?”
“I’d rather not think of it at all,” Whyborne muttered.
I chuckled. “Don’t be such a prude.”
“I’m not,” he objected. “But Christine is like a sister to me. I wouldn’t wish to think of it even if...” he waved a vague hand. Even if he possessed the slightest interest in women, I took him to mean.
Many of the men I’d had liaisons with in the past had been married, or planned to marry. Glenn, who died horribly beneath Chicago, had a wife and five children. I myself had slept with women, at first in an attempt to understand my own feelings, and later as part of my various investigations. So when I’d first met them, I’d rather feared Whyborne and Christine were lovers. It hadn’t prevented me from pursuing him, but I assumed I’d be forced to share his affection. And for the first time in my life, the thought pained me.
Iskander had assumed the same, and God only knew how many of the museum staff. In reality, I’d quickly discovered Whyborne was one of those men who lacked even the slightest ability to appreciate a woman in such a fashion. He’d made no attempt to please his family by courting a girl as a youth, or even tested the truth of his proclivities in a brothel.
But Whyborne knew himself in a way I could only envy. It hadn’t always made him happy, but it gave him the courage to find his own path, despite the desires of his father or anyone else. He refused to be anyone but himself, and the world could go hang if it disapproved.
If not for him, I might have married Ruth. Made Pa happy. Stood by Ma at Pa’s graveside, my wife and children at my side, pretending it wasn’t all a horrible lie.
“Griffin? Is everything all right?” he asked quietly.
I blinked back to myself. “Yes. Sorry. Just lost in thought.”
He nodded. “Come. Let’s walk back to the cabin. We’ll go slowly and knock discreetly when we arrive.”
We bundled back up in our mittens and scarves, tugging our parka hoods over our heads. It was bitterly cold outside of course, and the smoke and flames from the mineshafts gave the camp an ominous feel, like something from a story of hell and devils. The Northern Lights blazed and pulsed above the mountains, and I heard...
Something. Like a voice speaking from another room, the volume increasing and decreasing with the intensity of the lights.
“Do you hear that?” I asked.
Whyborne looked at me blankly. “Hear what?”
The rippling light faded a bit from its apex, and the distant voice died with it.
“Nothing. I must have imagined it.” I was tired after our long travel, and my mind was surely playing tricks on me.
As we made our way over the frozen ground by the combined light of the aurora and an oil lamp, Whyborne said, “You can go to church if you want, you know. Just because I don’t believe doesn’t mean I disapprove.”
Did he think it the concern that had troubled me earlier? And perhaps, in a round about way, he was right. “I know,” I said. “But how can I sit in a pew and have faith that the man in the pulpit speaks for God, when most such men would condemn us to eternal torment for loving one another?”
“Well, yes,” Whyborne agreed hesitantly. We passed what appeared to be the local brothel, no more than a wooden front with a canvas tent behind. “That would rather be my question as well. But it isn’t the same for me. It probably wouldn’t have been even if I’d regularly attended First Esoteric.”
“Probably,” I agreed. Considering First Esoteric restricted its congregation to the old families of Widdershins, their beliefs were rather likely of the sort to be seen as blasphemous by the more orthodox denominations. I’d heard the Christmas carols sung in Widdershins, after all.
Either way, Whyborne had never had faith. Never believed in a benevolent providence arranging our lives in ways that might seem incomprehensible, or even cruel, but would ultimately be revealed to be a part of some divine plan from which only goodness would spring.
“I’ve heard of sympathetic clergy,” I went on. “Who marry men or women like ourselves. Not in the church, of course, but in small private ceremonies. But the fact they would immediately be stripped of their collars for doing so would weigh on me, even if I found such a one in Widdershins. Not everyone is turned against us, and yet...”
The words stuck in my throat. I swallowed hard and forced them out. “Pa died believing I’m bound for hell.”
Whyborne sighed. The moisture in his breath turned to ice in the frigid air. “I remember.”
Remembered the last words Pa and I exchanged, he meant. When I’d tried to explain what Ival meant to me, and Pa refused to listen. No doubt Pa had thought the same, that I was the stubborn one who wouldn’t hear the voice of reason.
“Did it...did it trouble you much?” Whyborne asked quietly. “Not your father; of course that did. But...I assume you believed the same thing at one time.”
I still remembered the feelings of shame and pain during the sermons when the parson warned the sin of buggery would bring down the wrath of God on America. At times the guilt felt overwhelming.
But that was a long time ago, and life had put a great deal of distance between me and that frightened, desperate boy. “Of course it did. At the time, I hated leaving Kansas, being driven out by the very people I’d spent my life trying to please. But in some ways it was the best thing that could have happened. In Chicago I met many different people, men and women. Worldly people, who didn’t cling to the narrow-minded beliefs I’d been raised with.”
“People like Elliot.”
“Yes,” I agreed, because Elliot had been an important part of my life. “And others. Good men, good women, who made the world a better place. And I couldn’t...I couldn’t believe any murderer or thief would be more acceptable in the eyes of God simply because of whom they fell in love with. What sort of heavenly father gives a woman to her rapist, but throws good men into hell for the crime of love?”
“I had the same questions,” Whyborne said dryly. “Though to be fair, I read the Bible alongside the legends of the Greeks and Romans, with no particular weight given to any of them. Although considering the head of one pantheon was the lover of his cupbearer Ganymede, I will admit to a personal preference.”
“I thought you a youthful devotee of Bacchus.” I gestured at the saloon as we passed. “Here is your temple.”
“Don’t forget Pan,” he added. “Although it was more for the freedom they represented than anything else, I think. I was a bit too young at the time to understand the lure of the satyrs.”
I shook my head. “I can’t imagine it.” Our lives had been so different.
“I know.” He stopped and turned to me. The green light of the aurora combined horribly with the puce scarf about his neck, and picked out odd highlights from his dark eyes. “Griffin, I’m sorry about your father. And I hope you’ve found family in Jack, but please always remember—”
As if Whyborne’s words summoned him, Jack’s voice sounded indistinctly on the cold air.
We both froze, although of course we weren’t doing anything wrong. Merely two friends having a discussion.
“Listen to me!” Jack shouted, the words muffled. A moment later, I realized they came from the cabin behind the saloon. The freezing air carried sound far more clearly than it would have otherwise.
Turner’s voice came in reply. “No! You listen to me, Jack Hogue. You’ve been deceived.”
Whyborne and I exchanged a glance. My years with the Pinkertons removed any shame I might have harbored about eavesdropping, and I strained my ears to hear more. But apparently they’d reined back their tempers, because only the slightest sound of conversation followed, quickly dropping to nothing.
At least I could now account for the voice I’d heard earlier. Just someone talking in a distant cabin, and a trick of the wind and cold had brought the sound to my ears and not Whyborne’s.
I began to walk again, and Whyborne fell in beside me. “I wonder what that was about,” he mused.
Likely it was none of our business. I knew almost nothing about Nicholas Turner, or his relationship with Jack. If Turner had any questions about our expedition, he would have brought them to us. Still, I couldn’t help but worry. Who might have deceived my brother—and how?
A woman, perhaps. A sweetheart he’d left here, thinking she’d stay constant, who strayed during his absence. Or some other small matter, a hired man or a gambler. I couldn’t ask Jack about it directly without betraying my eavesdropping, but I knew how to casually question a man without him even knowing he was being interrogated. And if it proved to be something more serious, I’d offer my support to him.
Pa might have died thinking me a lost cause. But I’d stand by Jack if he needed me to. I’d prove myself. And if he found out about Whyborne and me...
Well, it didn’t matter. There was no reason to think he ever would.