The first few moss-heart cards fell short. Lavender sought Arlo Snook’s opinion. After teasing her about “her secret admirer back again,” meaning the orchid, the boy said, “The moss-craft holds promise, Vender. I think these will be very nice.” Always the diplomat, Arlo. Then he skittered off to work, avid as an elf in a folk tale. Clearly, the Stables’ allure exceeded the parlour’s crafts. No doubt the girl, Lavender thought. Then: Let the boy breathe, allow him his life.
With effort, her cards improved. They’d no calligraphy; she wasn’t adept at it. What could offset their plainness? A lavender sprig pressed within! Her namesake plant scented the cards in a pleasing way.
Two days later, Lavender had enough cards to warrant a trip to the train station market. The train would arrive soon; there wasn’t time to change out of her drab brown work dress. It didn’t matter anyway, her coat would conceal it. She bundled herself, and set out with her basket. Wagons and buggies rolled past, as usual. No need yet for horse-drawn sleds.
At the station, train waiters palavered as usual. Gentlemen’s talk centred on “the wondrous Miss Trout,” her astonishing powers, arousing face and form (their wives being out of earshot). Their thirst for another “spectacle.” Lavender circulated on the platform. How people loved to prattle and prate. When the subject wasn’t the approach of Christmas, or whether Mr. Lincoln would become president, it was Oracle, Spellbinding Lady Allegra. Lavender tried to hear concrete evidence of another performance, but couldn’t discern enough to bind variant words into a nosegay of meaning. So she perambulated, sending out her barker’s cry: “Hearts of moss! Handcrafted greetings!” Not her finest turn of phrase perhaps, but people approached, she sold several cards. A girl in rags asked to see them, fancied one, but confessed, sorrow admixed with shame, she hadn’t the money. So well acquainted was Lavender with that feeling, how often she herself longed for a candied apple, or new shawl, she gave the girl a card.
At the same moment, sunlight brandished the sky’s dishpan grey.
Mistress Dot Tickell painted at the station. After Sampson had sped away, eastbound, the artist hailed Lavender.
“What is it you sell now, Daughter of Amaryllis?”
Lavender drew forth the moss-heart cards. The painter scrutinized one, opened it, and the sprig of lavender fell out, purpling the ground. If only the painter could pass along a pleasantry and leave it be. But Mistress Tickell’s temperament ran against the grain.
“Moss? So now, Daughter, you grub at the earth for your bread and butter?”
“So it seems, Mistress.” Lavender knew better than to mine for praise, but also knew the painter didn’t speak these words from spite. Lavender smiled, and wished Dot Tickell luck with her paintings.
“Damnable sun! It’s spoiling my colour scheme!” Lavender heard the artist grumble as she carried her remaining cards back into town. She’d see if Mr. Becket, the strange miniature bookseller, might take an interest in them, keep some for sale.
Lavender never reached Mr. Becket’s shop. At the business district’s edge, Robert Trout, in his fine wool overcoat, hurried towards her. His expressive, marred face right there. She stopped.
“What a fine, snowless day it is, Miss Fitch.”
An odd salvo. It seemed he meant to scrub the spirit board clean, erase Allegra’s thorniness. The awkwardness at the courthouse. A game of sorts?
She’d play.
“Fine it is, Sir. Are you by yourself?”
Robert Trout smiled. “No, Mr. Whitman walks with me.” He patted his coat pocket. Then: “Did the Snook boy give you my note?”
Lavender nodded—slightly. Not yet ready to board that buggy; Robert plunged in too quickly. “Quite the triumph at the courthouse, Mr. Trout. I commend you—both.”
He thanked her—weakly. Then the time for sport seemed over. He drew himself to his full height, his expression austere. “Might I speak with you? It’s a matter of urgency.”
Several ladies walked near them, whispering. The town had once again become a glass tank for fish.
She nodded—strongly. “Right here on the street?”
“I was thinking of—your house. It would afford privacy. Also, after my Whitman recitation, you alluded to some spiritual presence in your parlour. I’d like to investigate it, with your permission. It would make for interesting research.”
Garters and stars. “When?” she asked.
“At present? If it’s not an undue intrusion? And you’re not otherwise occupied?”
What could she say? That she’d been gluing moss to paper? But having him in her parlour? But then, why not? It wasn’t as if he came to her house as a suitor, or beau. By his own admission, he was a spiritual researcher. Arlo Snook was at the Stables, and had been returning home later with each passing week. Lavender hadn’t ever been alone with a gentleman in her parlour. Mrs. Rose’s arranged meetings with suitors had taken place at her own house, or in some public venue like a church picnic. But with Robert Trout, Lavender sensed no sinister or untoward design. In the name of heaven, he walked around with a volume of poetry—what harm could come to her? And she could, at last, give him the Ebenezer Wood pencil.
“Yes,” Lavender said. “I mean no, I’m not otherwise occupied. But what of your—obligations? Where is your famed counterpart?”
Robert laughed, wistful. “Allegra? Gone to the shops. The courthouse profits dictate a new frock.”
The thought of the Spirit Medium bristled Lavender. Some ladies got new dresses, others didn’t.
Averse to more clacking tongues, peering eyes, Lavender advised Robert that they arrive at the house at different times, a few minutes spaced apart.
She sent him a significant look. “You know where my house is, I think, Mr. Trout?”
The fair side of his face shaded pink. “Yes. Such information isn’t hard to glean in this village. People are very free with their words. Which allowed me to leave a stem of blooming yarrow and, much more recently, an orchid on your doorstep. I hazarded a fairly safe guess that you liked flowers.”
So, the mystery was solved. She laughed, warmth suffusing her cheeks. “They were lovely surprises, Sir. And were people’s ‘free words’ also how you know Arlo Snook, to whom you gave the note after the courthouse event?”
He shook his head. “No, I know the boy from the Stables. I secured a buggy to purchase some supplies for our work.”
Arlo hadn’t mentioned it, but then he was home much less lately. Lavender added directives: when Robert arrived, he should dodge around the side of her house and enter through the back garden. There was a latched, though not locked, gate. She’d meet him at the rear door.
The pact sealed, she hurried home to a chilled parlour. Typical of November. Chagrined at having no cake or tarts there to offer her guest. Plush as moss, Lavender’s heart; frayed as old rope, her nerves. She tossed kindling and wood into the fireplace, lit some used brown butcher paper under her hasty arrangement.
Robert arrived, as instructed. She led him into the parlour, unkempt with strewn paper and moss. Apologized for the room’s untidiness.
“Here, Sir.” She bid him sit on the horsehair chair.
The parlour now held a kind of—vibrational aura.
Lavender brewed tea for them, and while it steeped, she perched on the fainting sofa’s edge. Someone arrives, someone departs, someone remains. Someone had certainly arrived. She stared across the parlour at Robert Trout, who studied the floor. Perhaps he too wobbled for a way to converse. But the visit had been his proposal. For an instant, Lavender had this dreadful waking dream that Allegra strode, in those boots, right into the parlour, wielding a sabre and—
Robert Trout was speaking. The red-scarred side of his face seemed about to ignite into flames. He couldn’t let another day pass, he said, without apologizing for Allegra’s deplorable behaviour at the courthouse. Lavender supposed he meant being called a thief? He did.
“Oh, Allegra behaved with equal incivility when she read my tea leaves, Mr. Trout,” Lavender said, pouring the tea.
“What do you mean?”
“She warned me to keep my distance from you—those words linked, I assume, to her accusation of thievery.”
His eyes became rudderless boats in ponds of distress. “Yet now, despite this rudeness, you invite me into your parlour and graciously warm me with fine tea and a cozy fireside.”
Lavender swallowed more tea. “I was only following your advice—to not give up. Besides, the rudeness did not emanate from yourself.”
The parlour warmed.
Robert sipped, set down his cup. Gazed around the parlour. His eyes misted and Lavender grew alarmed. Her guest appeared about to—sprout tears. She’d only seen a man cry once, her father, weeping after his wife’s death, while young Lavender had cowered on the very fainting sofa on which she now sat.
“Sir, have I said something to offend you?”
“Of all the heavens, no, Miss Fitch. I was just suddenly overcome by the rustic coziness of your home, the hearth’s heat, and its beauty—even a harp on a stand. That’s all I dream of, having a home.”
“The harp belonged to my mother,” Lavender said. “Gone almost twenty years.”
A buggy rumbled along Pinnacle Street.
“I know,” Robert said. “And am sorry. I’ve seen her grave marker at St. Thomas’ churchyard, and your father’s.” He circled back to his topic. “I’d give anything to have a home. I’m so weary of this rootless wandering, this—circus existence. It’s not an easy road; people sometimes adore us, other times revile us. We’ve had stones thrown at us, Allegra too. She’s been called sorceress, worse names. I was beaten in an alley once. I live like a trained animal, going round and round a treadmill. The moment I beheld your floral cart at the train station that day, everything seemed—different. Possible.”
Lavender glanced over at the harp. It emboldened her somehow. “I think I know what you mean. Allegra does seem to keep you constrained within a very strict surveillance—”
In the hearth, a flame cracked open.
“If Allegra discovers I’m here, there will be retribution. For I’ll have disobeyed her circuit-tour edict, which is, ‘Fraternize with the locals only enough to gain information—death-related details—or to promote the performances. Do not form attachments.’ And she’s used to people doing her bidding—as women of exceptional beauty are.”
His last remark flooded Lavender with a sense of her own dowdiness—there in her patched-over brown work dress.
“Retribution? What can she do?” Lavender probed.
“She can remove herself and me from Belleville immediately, and place us back on the circuit.”
Nothing could be worse. If Robert left, Lavender would become taxidermy, one of the glazed-eyed creatures on Dr. Minyard’s office wall. Or the skeleton’s jangle of bones. This sudden knowledge struck at her marrow; she hadn’t felt so alive in years, ever since the day Robert Trout approached her floral cart.
Her thoughts zagged like stricken larks. Then landed. “I don’t believe Allegra will tear you from this place just yet. For one thing, there’s too much profit to be earned. I mean, her courthouse triumph—surely you made a vast deal of money. I saw the overflowing admission box.”
Even when Robert scowled, he looked—chin so well turned, high forehead so refined, so heightened—so deeply human.
“You make an apt point, Miss Fitch. But Allegra regards a subsequent spectacle with dread and trepidation.”
“Why? The townspeople clearly ascribe to her powers. She has them, as if feeding birds, pecking crumbs from her hand. People will gladly pay to witness another spectacle. For many, she might just stand there on the platform and do nothing, and they’d willingly pay, just to behold her.”
Robert sighed. “A second spectacle requires much skill, for it must outpace the first. It’s a throw of the dice, Miss Fitch—”
“Please explain this to me.”
He continued. “One successful performance serves as an advertisement for us. People travel from town to town, now that you have trains and somewhat passable roads, and, doing so, they tell others about the Oracle. Which greases the axle for our next stop. But if Allegra’s second showing falls short, people hear her labelled fraud and stay away. And the papers print it, too. It undercuts profit. And it’s no salve to her confidence, either.”
People pay to see me fail. Allegra’s words in the churchyard ricocheted back to Lavender.
Robert pushed a lock of hair from the fair side of his face. “Right now, she’s trying to decide what to do, stay or leave. The choice is hers. And until she arrives at a decision, she’ll be, due to her agitated nerves, most churlish to live with this next while. Right now she shops, but after that will sit in her room and stew. But, dervish-like, she won’t be still for long. To ensure people remember her, and to amass extra income between spectacles, she’ll continue her tea-leaf and tarot readings at the railway station market—while the wave of her credibility crests high.”
Carriage wheels outside, a bone-clacking noise. The parlour’s flames had settled, and the room grew so subdued Lavender heard the plink plonk into the bucket upstairs. Rain had started, or maybe it was sleet.
“But why must you fall in line with her? Surely you receive your share of the spectacles’ admission fees, and have your own means?”
“Allegra keeps most of the proceeds,” Robert said flatly.
The injustice of the whole thing rankled Lavender. “And why can’t Allegra simply find herself a new assistant?”
Robert seemed about to reply when the harp began to play. He jolted in his chair, and turned, and beheld, as Lavender did, the moving strings, dulcet strains. Robert Trout gazed, open-mouthed, showing his heavenly teeth, at the harp as the music continued. The instrument issued, really, the most fervent sounds.
Then he stared openly at Lavender, a locked look, similar to that domed moment at the railway station when the world disappeared. “What in Jehovah’s name is this, Miss Fitch? Who is this?”
The fugue carried forward, mellifluous as a spell.
“It may be my mother,” Lavender said. “The harp belonged to her, as I’ve said. It has played once before, but only when I’m alone in the house—until today.”
“Is this the phenomenon you’d mentioned to me on an earlier occasion?”
She nodded. “You’ve witnessed many things mystical, Mr. Trout. Can you advise me on how an instrument might play of its own accord?”
Robert thrummed his fingers through his dark, lush hair. “I’ve not witnessed anything like this, but I’ve heard of a French piano that, allegedly, by some device of valves and paper rolls, is reputed to produce sound of its own accord. But its music is dull and mechanical, not like this—wonder—with its range of affectivity, nuance and dynamics. It’s as though its strings were plied by a poet.”
How celestial he looked, thrumming his hair like that.
“Then you don’t know, Mr. Trout, what causes the harp to play, from where its music originates?”
He cast soulful eyes on her. “On the contrary, I do know. The music can derive from one source alone. You, Lavender.”
His words quaked her hands, her name syllabling forth from him. For at that moment, in that intimate, domestic setting, it didn’t feel too forwardly familiar. What he’d said spawned many questions. But then, “Hey O, Vender, I’m home!”
Arlo Snook clicked the front door open, and seconds later stood in the parlour, smelling of horses, and halting in his tracks on seeing Robert Trout, who greeted him with courtesy. “Hello, young gentleman.”
Arlo could hardly have appeared more stunned if a sabre-bearing woman on a horse had galloped into the parlour. “You’re the magic man,” the boy said dumbly. “And I remember you from the Stables, too.”
Robert laughed, swivelled a graceful finger towards Lavender. “No, she’s the magic one.”
Arlo took this as an arcane quip of some sort, and let it pass. Lavender feared the boy might mention her scorched soup, burnt biscuits or other culinary catastrophes to contradict this claim of her miraculous powers. He didn’t. Instead, he traded pleasantries with Robert Trout. Praised the courthouse spectacle. An icicle of reminder jabbed Lavender’s scalp: if Allegra Trout discovered Robert’s visit to the parlour on Pinnacle Street, all would be over, she’d take Robert away. This must not happen. Lavender needed more time to understand Robert, sort through the tangle that was him, that was her.
Just then, the beautiful tangle caught Lavender’s eyes. He had registered the same concept, which freed the words lodged within her throat. She turned to the boy. “Arlo,” she said, “you mustn’t tell anyone that Mr. Trout has come here today. Can you promise that?”
His young shoulders lilted. “Suppose so, though I don’t see any great secret in it, as folks like to visit each other all the time.”
“This is different, Arlo. Please. You must guard this secret with your life.”
He promised, stiff-faced, then left the parlour “to wash the horse-dung whiff” from his person.
With Arlo out of earshot, Robert turned earnest. “Miss Fitch, I’ve greatly underestimated your talents. They far surpass the floral. I stand—rather, sit—in amazement. Can you pardon a fool?”
She forgave him—though for what, she wasn’t sure.
“Can the boy keep his word?” Robert asked.
By all the perennial blooms in her summer garden, Lavender hoped he could. “And, Mr. Trout, you must not disclose the business with the harp. I need to fathom more of it.”
He agreed readily. Then laughed, his voice tinged with irony. “Allegra would be most envious were she aware of your power to conjure music from air—with no external enhancements.”
“She must not find out,” Lavender said. “I’m already in a scrimmage enough with her. Above all, she can’t know you visited here today.”
“And will again,” Robert said. “It’s a risk, but I can’t restrain myself. A home—your home—is medicine for my soul. Equal to Mr. Whitman’s words. Would you allow me to recite more to you—here, by the fire?”
Lavender mulled this. Thought it risky. Then said yes.
“And then I might hear that transcendental harp music again, for it brings me more light, even, than your riddles.”
He had, Lavender reminded him, heard only one riddle, that day by Blacklock’s store.
The fair side of his face pinkened, then shadowed, as he withdrew a pocket watch and glanced at it. “It’s later than I thought. In the meantime, I’ll hunger for more riddles, more mystical harp song, and you’ll hear Mr. Whitman’s divine words two days from now, around this same hour, three o’clock, for we don’t know how much longer we have.”
Mrs. Rose’s words reverberated, like ghosts, through the parlour: Feel what you can. Life is short.
“Very well,” Lavender said. “Two days. Come around to the back door. And be prepared to hear me plead my case why you should pursue your own life—and break free from your chains.”
“I will let you try, Miss. But know that there are impediments to my freedom.”
Then he left her house on Pinnacle Street, but the hum of him remained. Arlo Snook beckoned her from the kitchen. He’d made them toasted bread with cheese. Lavender called back that she’d be there in two snaps. First she wanted to seat herself on the horsehair chair that, so recently, Robert had warmed, and collect herself.
The situation had become a puzzle. Lavender sensed that Robert understood the vaulted nature of their association. This thing had split itself into two stories. One was a mirage, a well-executed parlour trick, a sleight of hand spun from illusion, from the appearance of no meetings between herself and Robert Trout. The mirage would hold him in their village, provided Arlo guarded the secret. Allegra would believe she prevailed, and kept Robert coerced, subjugated. But—a puzzle piece shaped like a tiny scabrous rogue wiggled loose, worrying Lavender—she should have advised Robert to return with his poetry at night, when he’d be less noted on the streets, for even without his unforgettable face, his tall, aristocratic form cut a conspicuous figure on their streets. She could only hope he’d be discreet; they needed but one set of prying eyes to see him enter the house on Pinnacle Street to ignite a firestorm of talk that might well reach Allegra Trout. The illusion was burdensome to manage and maintain.
Arlo from the kitchen: “Vender! Come eat your toasted bread before it cools, and tell me about the magic man!”
“One moment!” she called back to the boy.
In the other story, the real one that must be nurtured with the gentleness of a seedling plant, two days hence would bring leaves, grass and Robert Trout. His visit must remain clandestine, his company continue; there were too many questions, too much poetry to hear, more harp song perhaps. And the genial hum of him. Peculiar to feel such kinship with a stranger. And sympathy for his rootless plight filled Lavender like an interior stream—a rill and beck that coursed through her veins and chased the coracle of her heart along at a pace so rapid she trembled at the risk of it capsizing, tossing her onto the shores of some barren, alien planet.
The tea leaves rang true. He’d arrived. He’d departed. But, tragic as his face, it seemed impossible that he’d remain. Her heart was moss in a storm, clinging to its rock by a thread. In the distance, a train’s skirling wail. Which direction it tracked, she couldn’t tell.