THE ROOM WAS plain. On one side, a bureau, with a statue of the Virgin Mary atop an embroidered cloth. Across from the bed, a fireplace, and above that a wooden crucifix. The walls were white—painted plaster. The room was close, and smelled of clean linen.
Joseph sat beside Moody. The photographer was sleeping. There was a bandage wrapped around his head.
For two days Moody had wavered in and out of sleep, awakening now and then, his eyes fixed in desperation. He was having visions. He had lunged out more than once. Perhaps in his weakened state, he had mistaken Joseph for the demon.
At other times Moody had spoken, but the words had been muddled. Conversations … confessions … imagined exchanges. Moody seemed to be communicating in some other distant world. Sometimes the mumbling was loud—sometimes nothing more than a whisper.
The priest entered the room.
“Has he awakened since I left you?” he asked.
“No,” Joseph answered. “But his murmuring continues. I have made out the name … many times now. It is her name—always her name.”
Joseph gazed down at Moody. The negative had saved him. The murderer’s knife had struck the negative’s case, then slid down Moody’s side, and cut him. Had the negative not been in Moody’s breast pocket, the knife would have plunged through his chest and into his heart.
Isabelle had saved him. It was proof that she was guiding him. Moody was the one she loved.
Joseph had been foolish for thinking that Isabelle ever would have fled with him to Canada. And she had scolded him—scolded him as if he were nothing more than a child. He hadn’t understood back then, hadn’t fathomed how dedicated someone could be to a cause. He had been so consumed by his own survival that it had blinded him to the trials of others.
But that wasn’t true. He was a good man—an honest man. He had taught others to read, once he had learned himself, in Canada. He had helped build a house for a family of fugitives … sowed potatoes with them in their yard, skinned a rabbit for them and roasted it. He had only been well-intentioned. Even the photographs—
He had been selfish.
He had been selfish and he could no longer hide it from her. There was nothing she could not see. There was nowhere for him to hide.
And here he was again in this room—the room that had briefly concealed him. And once again, as if captured from a dream, he saw himself running away.
L’Archevêché. It was the place some still called “the convent,” since the Ursuline nuns had originally built it and later given it over to the archdiocese. First the bishops, and eventually the archbishops, gladly occupied the stately property, which stood out like a countryside mansion amongst the cramped townhouses of the old French Quarter. Those first bishops roamed its cool, tiled hallways, in those dark days before the war. And so too roamed the servants—the many well-dressed and well-cared-for servants—all of whom were nevertheless still the property of the archdiocese.
They were baptized—saved souls. And yet the bishops sold them to pay debts.
One of them had helped Joseph. She was the first, after Father Thomas. The first of many on that path up the river to St. Louis, and then on to—
Her name was Tilly, and she was a kitchen maid. She was the one who had caught Father Thomas sneaking Joseph into the residence. It had been dark, and Father Thomas did not have a plan. Only later did the priest reveal how terrified he had been.
Father Thomas O’Shaughnessy, the man who had appeared like a vision: a tall, black-clad, unearthly vision that stood before Joseph in the street. Joseph was fleeing from the levee after a great explosion. The steamship that was to transport him upriver had exploded.
Such accidents were common in those days—the boilers exploding—and survival oftentimes depended on one’s distance from the boiler room. Of course, as with any accident, survival also depended on luck. The trader in charge of Joseph’s coffle had been unlucky.
Joseph was chained to five others—there were six of them total—all held together by a long string of iron. The padlock at one end secured the entire group together. Strangely, it was their captivity—their immobility—that had saved them. Had they been coming down the staircase, they too would have been killed. In an instant the explosion had devoured a number of moving men.
The trader had the key, and he now lay on the splintered deck. Blood covered his clothes, and the broken banister pierced his neck.
Joseph and his chained companions pulled themselves toward the dead man. The key was somewhere inside the bloodied waistcoat—they had all seen the man place it there. Joseph fumbled through the pockets and felt nothing at first. And then at last, the key was in his fingers.
It was a fine key—silver—much finer than the keys he was used to seeing. Similarly, the lock it would open was not the kind of thing normally used for the coffles. This lock and this key … they did not belong on a chain. Rather, one might have expected to find them guarding the trunks on a fancy carriage. In Joseph’s rough hand the key looked an odd specimen, its surface bashfully mirroring the bright flames from the explosion.
Beyond the flames and the smoke and the eviscerated boat, the levee was a chaotic scene of panic and confusion. For the towers of cotton bales still waiting to board the steamers had been drenched in a shower of the explosion’s fiery debris. When Joseph jumped from the boat, a metropolis of cotton bales greeted him … its lanes and tunnels afire, but beckoning. Offering him places to hide.
But there was no time to hide … there was only time to move. And Joseph moved, burrowing through the bales, like some blind but determined creature. He jumped from one group of bales to the next, inching himself away from the steamboats. There were gunshots—measured gunshots. Someone was firing. But that endless maze of cotton bales was his path to freedom.
At Levee Street, the horses and mules had grown frantic, and everywhere people rushed to and from the waterfront. In the confusion, Joseph was able to travel a short distance up another street, hugging the walls of the buildings, trying to make himself one with the shadows.
And that was when he saw him—when the vision of Father Thomas first appeared.
Their eyes locked, and Joseph could see that he had been discovered. Father Thomas knew at once what Joseph was—and what he had done.
But luck was with Joseph, for on that street, in the darkness, he had come across one of the few white men in New Orleans whose conscience was conflicted. One block to the left, or even half a block to the right, Joseph surely would have encountered a planter—or worse, a trader. But on that walled, empty street, not two blocks from the levee, a sympathetic spirit had miraculously come into being.
The priest eyed the runaway. He had only a moment to decide.
“In here, quickly,” he said.
And he opened a narrow gate. That gate was there, in the wall, hiding like a sly observer.
That was how it all began—Joseph’s journey toward freedom. An accident, some luck, and the appearance of fortuitous spirits. When Tilly, the kitchen maid, caught Father Thomas smuggling Joseph in through the refectory, her knowing glare paralyzed the guilty priest in his place. Father Thomas was not a man who had done anything like this before, and the look of terror in his eyes revealed his inexperience. But Tilly was no stranger to the wrong turns made by hapless runaways. The girl had seen it all before, and knew what needed to be done.
She had rushed Joseph into a storage room, then a sick room, and finally into the room once used as the orphans’ dormitory. With Tilly’s help, Father Thomas had been able to keep Joseph out of sight for two days. Then the day came for Father Thomas to travel upriver, and he boarded the steamboat with a manservant. Joseph’s new clothes had been plucked from the laundry, which Tilly also oversaw.
It wasn’t until they had reached the boat that Joseph realized he had failed to thank her. She had opened the gate, shoved him out, and then shut it. There had been no time for thank yous or goodbyes.
“TILLY,” JOSEPH SAID, for the name had seized upon him. “After the war … do you know what became of her?”
“Sadly, I do not,” the priest replied. “The bishop sold her after the epidemic—not long after you left here. The fever brought great losses.”
“Tilly,” Joseph repeated. “One of the many souls who saved me.”
“And me,” Father Thomas said. “She could have shouted—given us both up. I’ve never been so afraid. But God was with us in that moment, Joseph. God was guiding us both through that darkness.”
It was the first time they had spoken of Joseph’s escape since that night, for the letters to and from Canada had remained purposefully innocent of the past. Before the war, the policies of the archdiocese had aligned with those of the southern states, and anyone involved in abolitionist activity would have been branded a criminal. The archbishop would have excommunicated Father Thomas for what he had done. Even after the war had ended, neither Joseph nor Father Thomas dared refer to their experience in writing.
“I am sorry, Joseph,” Father Thomas said. “I am sorry that I could not go farther with you. It might have—”
“You have nothing to apologize for,” Joseph replied. “You took me as far as St. Louis. Had you accompanied me any farther, you would have put yourself in even more peril. The railroad took me in then, and you see …”
The priest nodded. But something in his face said that the guilt was still there.
“I advanced in those years—after you were gone. First chaplain to the Ursulines. Then Diocesan Chancellor. And finally, the Vicar General you see before you now. But through all that time, though I never spoke or wrote of it, I could not suppress the memory of that journey we took together. How every moment of that journey was a step toward cleansing my soul. When I returned from St. Louis, I was forever a changed man. It took everything in my power to keep my beliefs a secret.”
“Those were dangerous times,” Joseph said. “For all of us.”
“But the others,” the priest said, “the thousands and thousands of others—”
“Millions,” Joseph said. “There was no way for you to save them.”
The priest lowered his head.
“And we will forever be atoning for that sin.”
Moody stirred. The groan was loud … louder than any sound Moody had made that day. Joseph moved closer to the bed, and placed his hand on Moody’s arm.
“Edward,” he whispered. “You’re safe.”
Then Father Thomas stepped forward, and touched the top of Moody’s head.
“In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus—” he began.
But the gentle words seemed to have a sudden effect, for Moody opened his eyes, threw off the bedclothes, and leapt to his feet. He stood there before them, his arms outstretched, as if he had gained the strength of a thousand men.
“I know what I must do!” he cried. “I have seen everything, and I know!”
“Edward!” Joseph exclaimed. “You are badly hurt. You must not—”
“Curse the wound, Joseph!” Moody said. “Here it is, and what of it? I am no madman—I remember everything. I looked into his eyes … looked into those eyes of evil, before the fist thrust out to strike me. I know what it is that we face, and I am not afraid of it. In that darkness, I received the most beautiful gift. I saw everything, Joseph, and there is only one thing left for me to do—”
“Edward, you must do nothing right now. You must—”
But Father Thomas touched Joseph to quiet him.
“I’ve seen everything,” Moody said. “She was hidden away, where no one could find her … where no one would ever be able to know her for what she was.”
“Isabelle—” Joseph whispered.
“She has been guiding me,” Moody said, “just as you have always suspected. How long have I been here? There is no time to waste. We must go. I must bring her back!”
Moody was pacing, his cheeks colored bright red. His life had returned to him, and he had reawakened with a mission. He understood that the priest had saved him, and that Joseph, too, had been guarding his soul, but there was one thing that had become undeniable in the face of so much doubt:
Only he, Edward Moody, the spirit photographer, had the power to raise the dead.