Breath and Bones (44 page)

“Yes. But when I wanted to come to America, the only way was to borrow money from the Saints . . .” She stopped there, unable to explain her decision to marry the man who had lent her the money.

But Edouard surprised her once more: He seemed exhilarated, running his hands through his hair in delighted agitation and regarding her with the light of a rescuer in his eyes. “You married outside your faith, and you converted under pressure. A Mormon union will be easy to annul. We need merely ask this Goodhouse to sign some—”

“Oh, no!” Famke cried. “He must not learn where I am!” She was sure that Heber would come at once, would assert his right as her husband to sweep her up and bear her off to Utah, where Sariah's vigilant gaze would make it even harder to escape than before. Heber loved her; but Edouard was helping her, though even he did not know how much. Soon she would be cured, and
then
she could leave.

Versailles regarded her hands, which lay weak and white upon the quilt, for a long minute. “Was Goodhouse . . . cruel to you?” he asked.

That could explain a great deal. She thrust loyalty and obligation aside, and scarcely hesitated this time as she said: “Yes.”

“And that is why you lied about your memory? So that I wouldn't send you back to him?”

“Yes.”

“And when you came here—when you were looking for your brother—it was so he could rescue you?”

“Yes, rescue me.”

“Well, then,” said Edouard, “we must try to contact him.”

We must try to contact him
. Famke felt a glow deep inside. At last, she would have help looking for Albert! With the Versailles fortune aiding her quest, it should not take long. She had given up hope that he might find his way here on his own.

Almost perversely, however, her mind recognized a related danger: “Whatever you do, I pray you to . . . You must not use my name at all. Mormons . . . They read the newspapers. They post those signs. They have many ways of communicating—if even one of them found out I am here, they would all know, and then . . .”

“We shall certainly be cautious,” Edouard said. “Your brother has a different surname, does he not? Albert Castle?”

Famke thought he was asking for more than confirmation of fact; or perhaps her guilty conscience made her explain more than she needed to. “Orphans in Denmark have only Christian names. We may give ourselves second names if we wish, and Albert lived a long time in England. He thought Castle a good one for a painter.”

Edouard accepted this without further question; and indeed much of it was true. “We will use only his name in the advertisements—‘Albert Castle is asked to contact his sister in Hygeia Springs—'”

He continued drafting the announcement aloud, and with each word Famke's heart sank. Albert might see such an advertisement, it was true; but since he had no sister, he would not respond. He might even think it was one of the
Ludere
who had written to the papers. Either way, this would be no help, and it might somehow draw the Goodhouses; but she could not think how to word an announcement that would call Albert and only Albert to her. And anyway, did she really want him to see her like this, with her bones showing and the blood still blue beneath her skin? Perhaps it was best to stay here and wait till she was well, if Edouard would have her.

Meanwhile Edouard's heart was plummeting, too. Already he regretted his offer to help in this way. Of course he was happy to discover that Ophelia—or Ursula Summerfield Goodhouse, as he must now think of her—had family who might come to her aid; but this brother might think she needed rescue not only from the Mormons but from Edouard as well. And then there was the risk that an emotional scene, whether joyful or distressing, would affect the progress of her cure. In point of fact, Edouard thought, it would be best to make no haste with the search.

He let his voice trail away and simply looked at his patient, who was studying her own hands and clearly had not heard him the last ten minutes.
Ursula
, he thought,
named for the saint who led eleven thousand virgins across Europe
. This namesake appeared to be on the point of tears: her lips were very red, and her eyes had swollen. Indeed, as he watched her, one fat opalescent drop rolled out of each eye and trailed its way down her cheek.

“Perhaps we should not risk it,” he said in the deep silence of that sunny room. “You need your rest, and travel is dangerous in winter. Your brother might be injured as he tried to come to you. What would you think if we waited till spring?”

He held his breath, studying each nuance of her reaction.

At first she did not react, merely continued her contemplation of her hands and the counterpane. Then she wiped her eyes on the backs of her wrists and looked up at him. “I am grateful,” she said, “that you will allow me to stay.”

It was clear that she felt emotional, but he was not sure if gratitude were uppermost. Yet her emotions lent her restored face such grace and loveliness that at last his mind completed its
jeu de mots
:

She, who called herself Famke, was
la femme que j'adore
.

Edouard would not let the words' full meaning sink into his mind, not yet. Instead he blurted out the first question that came to his lips: “Are you skilled with a needle?”

In any Eastern sense there is no rural life in California, and the thing called rustic simplicity is unknown. [ . . . ] The instant you rise to the dignity of a home, with women and comforts in it, fig-leaves disappear and Eve's flounces grow artistic
.

B
ENJ
. F. T
AYLOR
,
B
ETWEEN THE
G
ATES

Among the packing materials for Hygeia Springs' new light fixtures were not only the Wanted posters but also countless sheets of newspaper, some of which might have borne nearly as much interest for Edouard as the yellow pages Beachly found. But as the significant text was small and buried among other notices, Beachly did not see it, and so it was burned along with the rest of the trash.

Harry Noble, However, Had Seen The Item When It First Appeared, In Both The
New York Times
And The
Rocky Mountain News
.

Wanted. Reward
.

Information about oil painting. Features red-haired subject, feminine, posed artistically in a cave. Urgently sought by a serious collector. Painter is English and canvas is large. Please direct reply to
. . .

There followed a New York address, an agent at a shipping company. Harry had seen no reason why he, whose information was slim but genuine, should not see what it might yield him. He wrote to tell the prospective buyer about Royal Barnes's auction of the probable painting; he asked, incidentally, if there were any information to be had about the model. And now here was the reward: twenty-five green American dollars, as much as he got for a well-researched story, his simply for writing a few unpublished lines. The agent thanked Mr. Hermes for providing the name of the painting's
auctioneer and requested that if he came across any other information he should send it on immediately. About the model there was no word.

Harry pocketed the money but made no plan to do further detective work. The funds would buy gaspers and a supper or two in the next month, but then his book would come out and twenty-five dollars would be petty cash indeed.

Or perhaps, he decided on further reflection, he might use this windfall to treat himself to some feminine company. Opal Cinque had recently presented a girl with a cloud of hair as orange as her own, and Harry, like many of Opal's visitors, was curious to see whether the cumulus below matched the cirrus above. The effect must be particularly striking under electric light.

The discovery of Ophelia's true identity sparked a complex reaction in Edouard. With that crude line drawing on the handbill, it was as if a bright light had suddenly shone upon her, revealing details and facets hitherto hidden in shadows. Now, instead of a memoryless waif, she was a wife; and wives commanded respect, even after they had left their husbands. Edouard's own parents had spent more than a decade apart while Edouard, Senior, built his fortune in the mountains up and down California, and their bond had been no less strong as a result.

And yet Ursula Summerfield Goodhouse was a
third
wife; a Mormon. It was a simple matter to rebaptize her, and he had it done immediately; any religion would be preferable to that one and would strengthen her case against Goodhouse, and she knew the Latin catechism well enough. But as long as she stayed married, she was compromised. Who knew what strange rites she might have participated in as a member of that tenebrous faith? What strange beliefs she might now hold? Whether she believed in the infamous Miracle of the Gulls, or that God had a wife to whom men could pray . . . Her mental integrity had been shaken, and though he would never ask her new father confessor to reveal Famke's secrets, Edouard's mind was full of questions. How would it be possible to flush such disturbing notions out of her now? If he could find a way, how rapidly she might improve, how easily she might become fit for a complete life. A complete life such as the one he occasionally allowed himself to envision for himself.

At times, he wandered the grounds, dodging zebra and exotic fanged deer and mulling over other questions. He fed the panthers in the cat house and daydreamed about at last taking a wife and fathering children of his own. He and his hospital would restore life to more than a few; didn't he have a right to happiness as well? But the sight of the small Taj was always enough to pull him up short. Those white walls and moldering sarcophagi marked the fate of those who devoted themselves selfishly to one another, without sufficient view to communal health and hygiene; they indulged in a kind of hygienic flushing, true, through the marriage debt, but it was a limited and necessarily inferior process, dependent as it was upon the passions that so disturbed peace of mind. And yet, Edouard dared to think, with the modern technology there might be a way to introduce the more salubrious galvanic crisis into marriage and still enjoy the other . . .

So the winter waned, and despite occasional setbacks Famke continued to grow stronger. By the time the first daffodils had bloomed, she was able to leave her bed to visit the water closet, and more than once Edouard looked up in his wanderings about the grounds to find her at the windows of her room, gazing down on him. When they met in person, she complained of boredom and asked repeatedly for a pair of spectacles and something to read. He dutifully arranged for an oculist to visit and gave her a book of domestic poetry, and she thanked him unenthusiastically; but he did once catch her reading the more sensationalistic parts of Miss Pym's New Testament—which passages he then carefully excised with his razor, much to Miss Pym's indignation. It was time to find his patient something useful but soothing to do.

Ophelia (Edouard still could think of her by no other name) claimed to be no needlewoman, and the idea of a watch fob made of her own hair struck her as odd; but she informed her benefactor that she had a way with a paintbrush. “Albert taught me,” she said. “He told me I had a natural gift for it.” Edouard thought of the Hygeia painting and frowned.

“You say you do not like the painting,” she acknowledged. “Well then . . . You might let me change it for you—I am sure that will give me useful occupation, and it is quiet work.”

Edouard did not confess that he liked
Hygeia
so little that, after Famke's first brief visit to the house, he had almost succeeded in having the thing burnt. Now he told his three Chinese maids to remove the painting from the
stable, brush off the cobwebs, and deliver it to Ophelia's suite. It was far too big for the inner staircase, of course, so Ancient Jade had workmen remove a large pane of glass from the wall and slide the enormous picture inside.

Famke nearly swooned with the memory of
Nimue
making the reverse journey out of Fru Strand's rooming house a year before. She could not give in to the impulse, however, for then Edouard would not allow her to leave her bed again; so she bit down hard on her lower lip and said, as she had said then, “Treat it gently, please.”

The nurses had been moved out of their bedroom and the space was now dedicated to
Hygeia
, because Famke should not sleep with the odors of paint and turpentine. The inner walls and floor were sealed to prevent the circulation of noxious air in the rest of the house, and Edouard had the carpenters build a special easel and set it against the central wall. The easel could tilt inward, for easy reach. They also constructed a collection of ladders in varying heights, all topped with chairs; no matter what section Famke was working on, she could sit.

But in the brilliant morning sunshine, Famke chose to stand before
Hygeia
in a white wool dressing gown, unsteady on legs that had grown unused to supporting even her slight weight. She put on the new pair of spectacles, made just for her with real gold-plated frames, and studied the canvas gravely. No, certainly not Albert's best work, but his all the same; and because it was his, she found in it a germ of beauty. The ice was very nice, and it contained the familiar dead flowers. Certainly the work held possibility.