We Hear the Dead (17 page)

“I am honored to have made your acquaintance today,” Mr. Patterson said as we alighted. “I thank you for allowing me to intrude upon your afternoon, and I will be proud to be able to claim the acquaintance of the celebrated Fox ladies.”

Mother assured him that his presence had been no intrusion, but I was watching the two gentlemen closely and clearly saw the glance that was exchanged between them. In that moment, with a flash of inspiration, I knew without a doubt that Mr. Patterson's company had been arranged in advance and was no last-minute surprise. Dr. Kane had invited him deliberately so that his cousin could prompt the telling of stories that would entertain us.

I curtsied my farewell with a scarcely hidden, smug smile, pleased that I had inspired the good doctor to such a transparent ruse in order to impress me.

The amazing thing was that he had succeeded.

Maggie

Dealing with skeptics was something to which I had grown accustomed, and although it was never comfortable, it was best to let them express their opinions and go their way. Likewise, with flirtatious gentlemen, it was advisable to remain aloof and cool, allow them to press their case, as it were, and then withdraw into a retreat of maidenly virtue.

Dr. Kane was a new sort of experience, a skeptic who was also persistently attentive. I was surprised when he turned up at our public sitting the day after our jaunt in the city but not terribly so. Somehow, when he appeared in the doorway of the parlor, hat in hand and looking unsure of himself, it seemed inevitable for him to be present. Even then, I must have sensed that our futures were destined to travel a common path.

I might have been nervous in his presence, but perversely, I was not. If he had come to scoff, I planned on being very angry. And if he had come to catch me in deception, then he would be sorely disappointed. I reminded myself firmly that dashing as he might be, Dr. Kane was merely a paying client, unconvinced as of yet but not beyond hope. Perhaps he wished to engage in flirtations, or thought he did, but more likely his grief for his young brother was driving him to pursue the only relief he knew.

My performance was flawless. Strong raps announced the arrival of the spirits. Candles extinguished themselves without a human hand to aid them. I made use of a handful of small tricks, all so simple and yet unsuspected. Lead balls in my petticoats produced a scraping sound when rubbed together.

Dr. Kane was quiet and unassuming. He spoke politely if addressed, but otherwise kept his silence. It was Mother who insisted on asking about Sir John Franklin, and the spirits replied:
His resting place remains hidden for the present.
In the darkness it was hard to read the doctor's face, but I believe he nodded a grudging respect at the spirits' deflection of the question.

Upon the conclusion of the sitting, the clients conversed amiably among themselves and with Mother and me. The good doctor, however, withdrew to a corner alone and spent some minutes writing intently in a small journal. I tried to ignore him but felt his presence distinctly. Even in reserve, the man possessed a luminous character, and I, poor moth, was irresistibly drawn to him.

At last he stood and with that energetic stride crossed the room to me. “Miss Fox,” he said, bowing over my hand, “It has been a revelation to see you at work again.”

“I am honored,” I replied with demurely cast-down eyes, feeling all the while the folded paper he had pressed into my hand. I turned back toward my other guests, but remained aware of his passage toward the door, his polite farewell to Mother, his leave-taking.

For an hour or more I held off the pleasure of reading his note. But when the other sitters had departed and Mother had retired to her room for a rest, I seated myself in the chair he had occupied and carefully unfolded the paper. I was ashamed to see that my hands were trembling.

A poem for Miss Fox.

Now thy long day's work is o'er,

Fold thine arms across thy breast;

Weary! weary is the life

By cold deceit oppressed.

You have many traits that lift you above your calling, Miss Fox. If you would allow me the honor of nurturing your keen intelligence, I would be exceedingly pleased to have you attend my lecture at the Academy of Natural Sciences tomorrow evening. I will send a carriage for you and Mrs. Fox, with tickets, at seven of the clock.

E. K. Kane

A flush of irritation and pleasure sent the blood to my cheeks, as I did not know whether to be offended by his poem or impressed at his impertinent confidence in slipping it to me. One thing, however, was clear: perhaps I was the illumination and he the moth.

***

He was not what I had expected for my very first suitor. To begin with, he was from a social class distinctly beyond my own. He was a skeptic who had called me oppressed and deceitful in a poem written for me in his own hand. Did he think I would take that as flattery?

But of course, I did. He had written me a poem, passed it to me secretly, and informed me that he was aware of my trickery. I felt a perverse satisfaction in finally being acknowledged for my cleverness, and because he had not denounced me publicly, he had tacitly colluded with me. Although I had assumed that my first suitors would be young men I met through the spiritual circles, I suddenly realized how difficult it would be to feel affection for a man whom I had deceived.

I pretended to myself for a time that I was considering declining his offer. But there was never really any doubt that I would go.

Mother was delighted at the invitation. She and Mr. Simmons discussed it at length, with Mr. Simmons trying to take credit for introducing us in the first place. “His father is a celebrated judge here in Philadelphia and has served as attorney general of Pennsylvania,” Mr. Simmons informed us. “His mother is the daughter of a Revolutionary War hero who was a personal friend of Thomas Jefferson. Truly, Mrs. Fox, your daughter could not find a suitor from a better family in all of Pennsylvania!”

***

The carriage arrived at seven, and the driver presented an admittance ticket for two to the Academy of Natural Sciences. Scrawled across the back in handwriting I was now bound to recognize were these words: “Please seat with preference—E. K. K.” Upon our arrival at the academy, we handed over the noted ticket and were ushered to seats at the front of the lecture hall, sweeping past gentlemen and ladies far more elegantly dressed than my poor mother and I.

I spotted Dr. Kane as I was taking my seat, speaking with a gentleman off to the side of the raised platform. I dropped my eyes immediately upon locating him but did not overlook that he immediately turned in my direction, as though he had sensed my gaze.

When the time came for the lecture to begin, a representative of the academy introduced Dr. Kane in the most glowing of terms, beginning with his illustrious family connections and ending with a summary of his career with the navy.

Indeed, the doctor was attired in full navy regalia for his lecture this evening. He looked exceedingly smart, buttons polished, a high collar over which his thick, curled hair tumbled in a boyish manner at odds with his studied dignity. He approached the lectern with a gracious bow to the academy professor and then a second, deeper bow to the audience.

“Twenty months ago,” he began, “I had the honor of receiving special orders to participate in an expedition to the Arctic Sea in search of Sir John Franklin, whose 1845 mission vanished six years ago. As hope begins to wane, many rational persons have begun to assume the worst—that Sir Franklin and his crew have joined the lengthy list of casualties inflicted by the Arctic on courageous explorers since the time of Henry Hudson himself.”

Dr. Kane, who had been speaking over my head to the general audience until this point, dropped his gaze suddenly and met my eyes with a startling and personal intensity. “I am here this evening to explain to you why your fatalistic assumptions may be erroneous.”

Over the next hour, Dr. Kane laid out his logical groundwork for the existence of an Arctic land in the unexplored regions at the top of the world that was fully capable of sustaining life. He described for us the otherworldly beauty of the Arctic, not excluding the months when the sun disappeared beneath the horizon for the midnight of the year: “Noonday and midnight are alike, and except for a vague glimmer on the sky, there is nothing to tell you that the Arctic world even has a sun. The northern heavens resemble a dome of granite, almost forcing the beholder to imagine himself within a cavern of the earth.”

I already knew that Dr. Kane told a great tale of adventure, and I was not disappointed to learn that the frozen wastes of the North were no less exciting than sultry volcanic paradises. “We had more than fifty dogs aboard our vessels,” he said, “the majority of which might be characterized as ravening wolves. They were a mixed blessing, desperately needed for overland travel and yet providing their own inconveniences. No specimen could leave our hands without their making a rush at it and swallowing it at a gulp. I even saw them attempt a whole feather bed!

“To feed our canine companions it was necessary to lay in a supply of walrus and seal. One of these little excursions nearly came at the cost of my life!

“I was traveling upon a plain limitless to the eye and smooth as a billiard table when the dogs began to bark at the sight of seal ahead. I had hardly welcomed this spectacle of easy prey when I saw that we had passed from the firm ice of the plain onto a new belt of ice that was obviously unsafe. The nearest solid floe was a mere lump, standing out like an island a mile ahead. To turn was impossible; the dogs had to keep up their gait lest our weight cause the ice to break beneath us. I urged them on with whip and voice, the ice rolling like leather beneath the sled runners.

“The suspense was intolerable. There was no remedy but to reach the floe, and everything depended upon my dogs. A moment's hesitation would plunge us into the rapid tideway.

“This desperate race against fate could not last. The rolling of the water beneath us terrified the dogs, and fifty paces from the floe, they faltered. The left-hand runner went through. The leader dog followed, and in one second the entire left side of the sledge was submerged. My first thought was to liberate the dogs. I leaned forward to cut the poor leader's traces, and the next minute I was swimming in a little circle of pasty ice and water beside him!

“I cut the lead dog's lines and let him scramble onto the ice, for the poor fellow was drowning me in his panic. I made for the sledge, but found that it would not support me, and I had no resource but to try the circumference of the hole. Around this I paddled faithfully, the miserable ice always yielding beneath my weight. During this process I enlarged my circle of operations to a very uncomfortable diameter!” Some nervous laughter acknowledged his little joke, but most members of the audience leaned forward anxiously in their seats.

“My strength was failing quickly. In the end, I owed my extraction to the rest of the dog team, who in struggling against their traces, managed to wedge the sled runners into the circumference of the ice hole. Only then did it bear my weight long enough for me to inch my way out onto the ice. Thus, the dogs saved my life and would have received my duly deserved gratitude, if it had not been understood that only the driving force of their voracious hunger had sent me out upon that hunt in the first place!”

The audience applauded heartily with laughter and relief, as if they had been living the ordeal along with Dr. Kane. After a smooth bow to acknowledge the accolade, the doctor retreated to a corner of the platform, where he retrieved an awkwardly long object wrapped in cloth. “I would like to present the Academy of Natural Sciences,” he said as he began to laboriously unwind the cloth, “with a relic of one of those hunts.” After a final effort, the cloth fell away, revealing to an audience that gasped in awe a winding, shimmering, spiral horn, fully one foot taller than Dr. Kane. “The tusk, or ‘horn,' of the narwhal, a welcome supplement to our diet and the legendary source of the unicorn myth.”

The representative of the academy joined the doctor on stage to accept the gift as the audience thundered their approval. Together, the academy man and Dr. Kane lifted the narwhal's horn over their heads and stepped to the edge of the platform to give everyone the most advantageous view. When the applause finally died away, Dr. Kane presented his plea for money.

It seemed that the Grinnell Expedition had not managed to find any signs or clues of the ill-fated Franklin Expedition. And thus, another expedition was planned.

“The search cannot,
will not
, be abandoned,” Dr. Kane boldly promised. “That great philanthropist Henry Grinnell has selflessly offered to provide the vessel, and I will have the honor of commanding it…” The doctor had to pause here to receive and acknowledge the applause of an audience totally under the power of his personality. “It is my hope that the academy will pledge its support to this cause. Our country has stained the plains of Mexico with blood to obtain more perishable honors, and men die daily upon the banks of the Sacramento River in pursuit of gold. But good deeds yield brighter laurels than war, and humanity's triumphs are more valued than gold.”

Mother pressed her handkerchief to her eyes to blot her tears, and I could see that she was not the only person in the room to be affected by this patriotic call to nobility. I had no doubt that Dr. Kane would acquire the funds he desired from the members of the academy.

As I joined in the applause and lifted my eyes with a proprietary kinship with the doctor, I understood that he and I were, beyond all expectation, engaged in very similar professions.

Kate

A baby robin, when first emerging from the egg, is wet, bedraggled, and little resembles that which it will become. Its first flights are fluttering, hesitant, and full of risk. Likewise, my emergence as a medium, when little more than a child in Hydesville, was fluttering, hesitant, and full of risk. Begun in childish games, my gift nevertheless made me open to contact with that poor soul buried beneath the Hydesville house. Although I fumbled greatly when trying to rap out his message—and indeed made up many of the details as I went along—it was truly my escape from the shell of the mundane world.

In the following years, my progression toward womanhood, my enforced separation from my sister Maggie, and my isolation at school had all served to temper my gift, much as glass is strengthened through heat. At fourteen, I believed that I had realized my potential as a medium to an extent that I could never have imagined back in Hydesville.

My ghost writing was popular among the clients, and although it was always necessary to manifest some rapping noises, the written word was the best channel for my messages. I can describe the process as a form of mesmerism: a fierce concentration on my task leading to a state of open awareness, in which the messages appeared in my head. The backward writing was a trick I had studied and practiced, but the words themselves came from somewhere beyond my conscious mind.

The spirits, for their part, were very social, although a bit uncertain on details, as if death had severed some of their memories. However, on occasion, I would be seized with an idea so strong and undeniable that I took risks that unsettled Leah. There was a woman who came to us once with her husband, and she had a pinched-up face and a turned-down mouth and she bickered with Leah over the fee for the sitting. My sister set her jaw in a forced bland smile and agreed to the woman's demands, for it was her studied practice to please the clients above all else. The husband of the pair was the true believer, wishing to contact his dead aunt, and the wife was clearly uncomfortable with the whole undertaking.

I knew nothing of these people, save their name and the name of the deceased aunt. They were strangers, people who had read about us in the newspaper and sent their calling card with a request for a private sitting. Yet I looked across the table at the woman, and even in the darkness, her avaricious little face showed such greed and spitefulness that my hand began to write of its own accord:
It is not yours. You are not entitled to it. It is not yours.
The woman recoiled as if some snake had appeared upon the table. The husband snatched up the parchment and rounded on his wife with the outcry, “I told you not to take that pearl ring! She left it in her will to LouAnna!”

His wife, white faced and thin lipped, retorted, “She didn't deserve it! Who nursed the old hag through her final illness? Not your sister!”

“You'll have to give it back!” the husband exclaimed, waving the paper with the spirit writing in the air.

“We told LouAnna it was lost! How are we supposed to give it back now?” shrieked the woman, clasping one hand firmly over the other, shielding her prize.

Needless to say, the two of them left our residence quickly. Leah looked at me in a pained way and explained that this was the sort of situation where she would very much like to slap me but found herself just too weary to manage it.

While we continued to comfort the bereft—and sometimes confound the unbelieving—letters from Philadelphia demonstrated that Maggie was finally recovering from the shock of her experience in Troy. Mother wrote that our morose sister had blossomed under the gentle welcome of the Philadelphia Quakers, who had conspired to keep her well amused, admired, and occupied. There was even, she confided, a suitor for Maggie's affections.

I was taken aback by this disclosure. She was seventeen and clearly the age for it, but somehow it was still a shock. My constant companion for so many years and dearest friend was now eligible for marriage. It was true that one beau did not a marriage make, and a single courtship did not guarantee the end of Maggie's youth. It was the beginning of great changes in our lives, however, and there was no way to deny it.

Leah was also concerned, particularly that all proprieties were maintained and that nothing occurred that might mar Maggie's reputation. Calvin tried to reassure her, pointing out that Mother was there to chaperone any beaux who called upon Maggie. Leah's response was a low, agonized groan. “Mother chaperoned Bowman Fish when he called upon me!” she stated, with no further explanation. However, Calvin and I both knew that Leah had ended up marrying Mr. Fish when she was only fourteen years old.

The letters from Philadelphia were not the only ones we received that spring. Mr. Greeley invited us back to Manhattan. His letter was followed by a dozen more, all from people we had met in New York City the previous summer: the author Mr. James Fenimore Cooper, for instance, and the beautiful singer Jenny Lind. Leah began to make travel plans and discuss with Calvin the possibility of renting a house in the city for a semipermanent residence. “The people of Rochester who would come out of curiosity have already done so,” she said. “We are left with only our regular clients and those persons willing to travel to Rochester to see us. It might be an excellent idea to relocate to a city with a fresh new population of sitters.”

It did not matter to me. I had my clients in Rochester, and I had my clients in New York City. There were spirits clamoring to speak wherever I resided. Calvin began to dismantle the contrivances he had built in the Rochester house, understanding it would be unwise to leave them where others could discover them, and we prepared for an extended journey across the state.

Our travel was pleasant and lively. We were met along the way by banners proclaiming “Welcome to the Fox Sisters” and treated by the residents of each small town with respect and reverence. There was no sign of the hostility that had afflicted Maggie the past fall, although I admit we took care to avoid Troy, and we arrived in Manhattan without mishap. With Leah as the gracious hostess, Calvin as our silent watchdog, and myself as the main attraction, we embarked on a successful second season in the busiest city in the United States. Spiritualism was the newest enthusiasm of intellectual people. The requests for sittings were so numerous that Leah immediately began to search for a house that we could rent and so extend our stay in New York indefinitely.

In the midst of this turmoil and confusion, more letters arrived from Philadelphia. Maggie was circumspect and uncharacteristically discreet, but Mother was more than anxious to give us the details regarding the eager new suitor.

When Leah realized who was courting Maggie, she became very worried indeed.