Breath and Bones (23 page)

F
REDERICK
E. S
HEARER
, E
D
.,
T
HE
P
ACIFIC
T
OURIST

Good-bye, Sariah and Myrtice; good-bye, Prophet City; good-bye, ward house, where the empty hoosegow still stood in dire commemoration of Harry Noble's visit. Famke beamed alike on all of them, and she waved to her former neighbors as the wagon rolled briskly by. Heber caught some of her gaiety, saluting with the whip and his hat, forgetting to worry. He had not felt so happy, so carefree since leaving Denmark—though of course he would not wish to return to the days abroad, he reminded himself soberly; for Copenhagen was far from his home and children and business, and he'd hardly known Ursula—his Famke—before loading her onto the
Olivia
.

He thought how like a bride Famke looked now; the bride of a rich man setting out on her wedding trip. “My dear, you are radiant,” he blurted as they left the little town behind. If he could have trusted himself to say it right, he would have told her this: He'd fallen in love yet again. How could Sariah say that Famke was no more in a condition than she herself or Myrtice? It was clear that the most delightful change of a woman's life was upon her. One picture had filled his mind's eye all night: Famke lying in a bed, her beautiful face strained and exhausted, but a new little life tucked into the circle of her arm. Heber felt dizzy with pride and pleasure.

“You are wise to ask for a doctor,” he commented, his throat choking with emotion. “That cough of yours might prove troublesome as your . . .
condition progresses. But Doctor Finstuen used to tend several of Brigham Young's wives; there is no one better.”

Famke's mind was working too fast to reply. Inside its hoopskirt cage (borrowed from Myrtice, never to be returned), the yellow pocket slapped against her thigh. It was laden now with her tinderbox, the sketch, three newspaper clippings, Myrtice's old spectacles, and thirty dollars Famke had taken from the cashbox at the back of Sariah's wardrobe. Yes, she had money now, the means of travel; she had only to elude Heber, and she would be stepping into her destiny.

Heber said gently, as if breaking unpleasant news, “I am afraid we must make the most of our time in the city. You may rest in the doctor's office as long as you like, but I will have to visit the warehouses to see about buying some spindles. Sariah says our supply is much smaller than I had thought, and we must have them when the worms do their spinning.”

Famke suppressed a smile and imitated Myrtice's manner of speaking when she murmured, “Of course I understand. I am sure I will be quite comfortable while you are gone.” That had been a stroke of inspiration—burning half the spindles in Sariah's stove last night, dropping them one by one through the lids and stirring with a vigorous iron poker.

“But we may enjoy this drive together, any road,” Heber said, and he let his arm brush hers in a daringly open manner. He drove slowly, protecting his most precious cargo.

Famke could say nothing against it, but with each turn of the wagon wheels, her impatience grew. Every time Heber paused to let another traveler by, her stomach clenched until the butterflies inside it threatened to choke her. She had to ask Heber to stop the wagon so she could relieve herself, and she spent precious minutes checking the contents of her pocket behind a bush.

She imagined Albert's face among the stunted branches.
Albert, I am coming
.

They reached Salt Lake City in late morning, navigating through countless buggies and wagons, men on horseback, ladies strolling under parasols, housekeepers toting baskets. Traffic was especially thick in a section of town lined with fruit trees, where the smells of peaches and plums—fruits Famke had scarcely ever seen, let alone tasted—weighted the air, and narrow
ditches of running water sparkled in the yellow light. Train whistles were the sound of sweet music, every bit as lovely as the lyrics the farm girls had sung around the well in Dragør. Already she felt closer to Albert.

In Doctor Finstuen's book-lined, leather-upholstered waiting lounge, Heber took a lingering leave of his youngest wife. His gestures were tender and solicitous, treasuring her, as if he expected yet another profound change to overtake her with the examination.

Famke looked past Heber's dusty spectacles and into his kind brown eyes and felt a now-familiar twinge of guilt. He had been good to her, and she discovered she actually liked him. Life on the farm was not so dreadful after all; there were those nights with him, and she liked his young daughter Miriam. But she wouldn't miss Sariah or Myrtice or Heber either; why should she think so? So she did not kiss him (which would have been unseemly in a doctor's office), but merely thanked him for bringing her this far and wished him luck with the day's transactions.

“Do not rush,” she said, knowing nonetheless that he would buy the spindles as fast as he could. “Aunt Sariah says the price is always high to one who shows haste.”

Heber allowed himself to squeeze her slender hand, its bones like a bird's wing in their white cotton covering. What an excellent helpmeet she was proving to be.

There were 132 rooms in the Continental Hotel, and the desk clerk refused to tell Famke which one contained Harry Noble. “I will send a boy with a message,” said the spotty man who had first declared himself her servant and then looked askance when told of her wishes. “Please be so kind as to wait.”

Famke flung herself into a blue plush sofa and waited with very little grace. She was vexed with the clerk and with Doctor Finstuen, who had poked and prodded and asked her repeatedly if she was absolutely
sure
of her condition. A plea for a glass of water had been all it took to run out and escape while he was at the taps. And then it had been an easy matter to dash from Finstuen's office on South Temple Street to the hotel on West Temple;
but now she was caught up in a web of rules, and she had to play the fly rather than the spider. Her head was throbbing, and she would have been glad for that glass of water.

After nearly an hour, the spotty clerk approached again. “So sorry, madam, but Mr. Noble is not in. If you would like to leave a formal message—”

“Tell him that Ursula Summerfield wishes to see him, after saving his life,” she said, and flounced out to the street again. She had no clear idea where she might go—she knew there was little hope of finding Noble in the city—until it occurred to her that she might walk directly to the newspaper offices and speak to local correspondents. Perhaps she could even place a notice: “Nimue, Calafia, Gunnlod awaiting Albert Castle at Continental Hotel.” Naturally she would not use her actual name; she was determined never to return to Prophet City, never to be traced by the Goodhouses.

But the newspapers, large and small, were scattered throughout the city, whose grids looked so deceptively tidy from the hillside and were so entangled when one was in them. Walking in the hoopskirt whose caginess now reminded her of Noble's hoosegow, Famke was afraid to ask directions. She didn't want to call attention to herself—or, worse, to run across Heber in the streets—and once she reached the office of
The Utah Daily Miner
, she realized that placing an advertisement would engrave her in the inkslingers' minds forever, such that it would be all too easy for the Goodhouses to find her before Albert could. She made a vague and fruitless inquiry about him, then left.

Much better to return to the Continental and wait for Harry Noble.

After confirming with the clerk that Noble had not returned, she settled on the plush sofa again. She was vexed, hot, and agitated, but she was also worn out. She sank into soft blue cushions that reminded her of something, something from the orphanage, perhaps a statue or a picture . . .

She slept.

A woman approached from the far side of the lounge, gazing at Famke with Sister Birgit's sad eyes. Those eyes were exactly the color of the thick blue veil draped over her hair, though she appeared to be wearing
nothing but a nightdress, and it was made of ice. The nightdress crackled as the woman bent over Famke and slid a thick needle made of glass through her left nipple. In the needle's eye there writhed a worm.

The woman vanished somewhere to the left. Famke lost interest in her, however, because she discovered that her own body had become transparent, and by bending her head she could see deep inside. She was not surprised to see the worm gnawing away at her lungs, growing with each thrust of the jaws, for she had seen it many nights in the past. But this time there was one difference: Its top was the normal blue-gray color, yet its back end was swollen and red—like the head of a lucifer match, she thought. And indeed the worm's red part began to glow, and it made her hot, and hotter, till she rocked with the heat . . .

Famke woke. A new clerk was shaking her, an older man with a mustache that made Famke think he probably was not a Saint. Famke opened her eyes pushing against him as if he were Heber.

“Miss,” he said, withdrawing in alarm, “you can't sleep here. If your husband or father would like to engage you a room—”

“I am waiting for a guest,” she said with all the dignity she could muster. Her hair and wig were soaked with perspiration; the dream had brought on a fever, and Famke recognized, in the corner of her mind that was all she could spare for such thoughts, that the illness was waxing within her again. More than ever, she needed to find Albert, to take away that sickly morbid feeling and replace it with the lovely longing live one he had given her all through the winter. She pulled off her gloves and fanned the flush on her face.

The clerk remained at her elbow. Famke emphasized, “I am waiting for Harry Noble,” and picked up a magazine from the array on the side table, for all the world as if she had an actual right to be here in this hotel lounge. Nonplussed, the clerk faded away, murmuring something about the mail.

There was quite a choice of publications:
Harper's, Godey's, Frank Leslie's, The Wave
. In
Harper's
, Famke thumbed past a vaguely worded report of new electrical vibration devices that brought on “hysterical crises” in various patients; she read a feature on the Bohemian girls of New York City, who worked as writers and illustrators for newspapers and who were known to drink, smoke, and “softly!” swear. In the engraving that accompanied the
text, they were all dark and tousle-haired, with round shadowed eyes that spoke mutely of their dissolution. What would Albert have to say about such behavior?

Famke felt a surge of impatience, as if she were living in the marvelous glass-domed house of another picture; as if someone had thrown a brick through the wall and filled her skin with prickling slivers. She was no Bohemian girl, but she was no longer a Mormon wife, either. It was time to be doing something, taking action.

She tossed
Harper's
aside and took up
Frank Leslie's Illustrated Magazine
because it was, as its title promised, full of pictures, and pictures suited her restless mood. There she came upon something that interested her very much: a feature about the propriety of unclad female forms in artwork. There were a few engravings on the first page, naked women bathing or dreaming, all with that artistically misted cleft. This she had to read about. It seemed that, in the words of one gallery superintendent, “when a painting of the nude by its spirit and surroundings directs the mind away from the element of artistic beauty it becomes vulgar.” Famke gathered that this meant Americans did not want naked women to remind them of sex, nor in fact of real women, only of beauty. Indeed, the reporter—a female herself, perhaps one of those same Bohemians—drew much the same conclusion, and she dropped some dark hints about America's Puritan heritage. The next page promised several tasteful representations of paintings recently sold in New York.

When Famke turned the page, her eye fell on what it knew instinctively was an enormous canvas. An enormous canvas with a fierce nymph. A nymph creating a prison for the wizard who had betrayed her.