Speak Through the Wind (11 page)

Ben gripped her hand tighter and led her through the crowd, which parted for him much as she imagined the Red Sea did as Moses led his people out of their bondage. Men on either side clapped Ben’s shoulder, shouting, “And who’ve we bagged tonight, eh, Bennie?” Women in brightly colored skirts and scandalously low-cut blouses stepped out of the sea entirely, standing square in front of him, leaning in to whisper. Kassandra couldn’t hear what they said, but whatever it was, it brought Ben to smile like Kassandra had never seen before.

As they made their way to the back of the room, the notes of the musicians became clearer, the tune distinct, and Kassandra recognized it as one Ben often whistled to himself on the path between Reverend Joseph’s back door and the gate. When he came to a door at the far end, he turned and motioned to her to stay put while he opened the door just a crack and peered in. Seeming satisfied, he opened it wide and ushered her through into utter darkness.

“The stairs are right here,” he said, still needing to raise his voice above the barely muffled din behind them. “Stay close.”

He needn’t have warned her. Kassandra wished there were some way to meld her feet to his, lest she be left alone in this blackness. With one hand she grabbed a handful of his shirt and braced the other against the wall as they made their way up a narrow passage. When they got to the landing on the second floor, she was relieved to see a dimly lit hallway.

“You stay off this floor,” Ben said, not pausing in his stride. “This is where some of the girls from downstairs bring their men.”

“Their men? Oh …” The warning was clear when she saw three women clad only in chemises and pantalets lounging in open doorways.

The hallway on the third floor was completely dark, and the noise downstairs had diminished to a low, consistent rumble. Kassandra stepped onto the landing, never letting go of her grip on Ben’s shirt, and allowed him to lead her down, down, down the narrow hallway. She followed so closely that when he did stop, she nearly knocked him over.

“Sorry” she said.

“Wait here.” He reached behind him to pry his shirt out of her grip.

Kassandra heard the sound of a doorknob, then found herself alone in utter darkness for just a moment, until the sound of a striking match brought welcome illumination.

“Now then,” Ben said, returning to her at the door’s threshold, “seems only fittin’ that I carry you across.”

The entire room could fit within Reverend Joseph’s parlor. Ben nearly ran the few steps it took to cross the room to the opposite wall. “We got two windows.
Two!
We’ll get sunlight durin’ the day, and a nice little breeze at night.” As if in response, the thin fabric hanging on either side of the pane gave a faint ripple.

A shelf ran the length of the shortest wall, holding Ben’s meager supply of cookware and dishes, and in the corner opposite the door was a small cookstove. In the middle of the room sat a small table covered by a faded floral cloth and two chairs. In the middle of the table, a single kerosene lamp now burned, bathing the entire room in warm light.

Then, in the farthest corner, the bed. It had an ornate iron headboard and a colorful quilt. According to Ben’s current chatter, his mother had brought it over from Ireland. Next to the bed stood a dresser—four drawers and a washbasin on top—but Kassandra’s eyes fell back on the bed.

“Where am I to sleep?”

“Ah, now, Kassie dear, surely you know the answer to that.”

She did, of course, although all the fantasies stemming from Bens kisses fell short of the piece of furniture glaring at her from the corner of the darkened room.

“Right now? Tonight?”

“Ach,” he said, uttering a noise that captured a mixture of amusement and frustration, “you’re spent now. C’mon. Sit.”

He pulled one of the chairs out from the table and gestured to it grandly. Kassandra sank down in it, comforted by its sturdiness. She scooted down until her head came to rest against the chair’s back. “I could just sleep here,” she said.

“Give me your foot.”

Kassandra opened one eye to see Ben kneeling at her feet, her boot propped on his knee. He untied the laces, then gently slipped it off.

“Stockin’, too.” He reached up her skirt to find where the top of her stocking was cinched tight, just above her knee, and peeled the stocking away, then repeated the gesture with the other foot.

“How’s that?” He held her foot in his hand, gently massaging first one and then the other, and the sensation was nothing short of heaven.

“Now, let’s find your nightgown and get you into bed. You’re exhausted.”

He gently set her foot onto the floor and began to go through her things. The first item brought out of the bundle was Clara’s Bible. “This’ll be handy,” he said, fanning through the pages before placing it in the middle of the table right next to the lamp.

Next he unfolded her blouses and skirts and walked to the wall next to the bed where a blanket hung from a rope spanning corner to corner. He pulled the blanket back, revealing a series of hooks where two shirts and a pair of trousers hung. Ben moved some of his clothing aside, making room for Kassandra’s, then closed the blanket back over the lot.

“Quite fancy, eh?” he said with amusement as he pawed through her underthings before opening the top drawer of the dresser to deposit them.

Finally, he came across her nightgown.

“Careful,” she said. “There is something wrapped inside it.”

“Is there now?” Slowly he turned the bundle, until the top of the little china bird popped out of the fabric. “Well, isn’t this a pretty?”

He lifted the figurine out of its flannel nest, and Kassandra let out a grateful breath knowing it was intact.

“This’ll go right up on the dresser,” Ben said.

In just a few minutes, every item that was a part of Kassandra’s life was placed away neatly in Ben’s world.

“Come now, love. Let’s get you undressed.”

He took her hands in his and pulled her to her feet, guiding her the few steps across the room to the bed. He kissed her once, softly, then went to work unfastening the row of delicate bone buttons down the front of her bodice. She brought her hands up to grip his wrists.

“Stop that.”

Ben smiled, lifted his hands up and kissed Kassandra’s fingers until she loosened her grip. A little. He took her face in his hands and kissed her deeply, once, then gently, twice.

“Listen to me,” he said, his voice a more serious, intimate tone than she had ever heard from him before. “I won’t do any-thin’ to hurt you. D’you believe that?”

Kassandra nodded.

“An’ I’ll be good to you. And gentle. Have I ever given you any reason to fear me?”

Kassandra broke her gaze away and looked around the room, sparse and foreign and throbbing with the sounds of the saloon downstairs and the laughter of those women on the floor below.

“Not this place,” Ben insisted, commanding her attention again. “Me. Ben. You trusted me enough to come away with me, didn’t you now? You can trust me here.”

“But Ben, we’re not … Should we not get married first?”

“All in good time, my love. All in good time. Now, I’m goin’ downstairs to have a drink. Let you settle in.”

He gave her one last peck on the cheek before turning and walking out the door. Left alone, Kassandra sank onto the mattress, unable to take any comfort in its softness. Something told her she should cry, but tears seemed childish as she sat on this bed that she would share with this … man.

A sense of calm resolve overtook her as she resumed undressing, hanging her clothes on one of the hooks behind the blanket and dropping her summer nightgown over her head, loving the feel of it as it settled on her shoulders and billowed protectively around her. She picked up her brush from its new home on Ben’s dresser, took down her hair, and sat on the edge of the bed, brushing it thoughtfully just as she had every evening of her life.

“Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers …” she recited with each stroke. It was a game she’d played with Clara, a way to prepare herself for Reverend Joseph’s Bible lessons. She wondered if she would ever again be called upon to recite these books. By the time she reached “Jude and Revelation,” she was so tired it seemed a heroic effort to be able to replace the brush on the dresser top. She did, though, just before pulling back Ben’s mother’s Irish quilt and sinking beneath it.

She was in bed. Ben’s bed.

Kassandra had vague ideas about what it meant for a man and a woman to share a bed together, pieced together mostly from sly passages in forbidden novels and giggled conversations in the school yard. Sarah James was a particularly fertile source of information, having accidentally walked in on her Uncle Stephen James and the third-floor maid one afternoon, but her account of what she saw was fraught with such comic implausibility that Kassandra had dismissed it.

She got out of bed and padded across the room to turn out the lamp, and it wasn’t until she was alone in utter darkness that the enormity of her decision hit. Her knees buckled beneath her, and she fell to them and crawled until her outstretched hand met the intricate Celtic stitching. Instead of climbing into the bed, however, she remained on the floor.

“Holy Father,” she said, then stopped. Had she fallen to her knees earlier in her own room, by her own bed, would she be here now? “Forgive me, Lord, for not seeking Your will.” But surely she wasn’t the first person ever to act on impulse. Did Jonah not flee from God? She opened her eyes and was able to make out a few shapes in the room with the little light let in through the small window. It wasn’t exactly the belly of a whale.

“Please, dear Father, hold Reverend Joseph close to you.” Right now he was probably mad with fear, calling her name, searching the neighborhood, calling on friends, anyone, asking if they had seen his little Sparrow “Help him to find peace and comfort. Speak to him, Lord. Let him know that I am … well.”

She climbed up into the bed and pulled the quilt up to her chin. She turned her eyes to the ceiling beams above her and whispered, “Please, dear God, keep me from harm. Amen.”

She must have fallen asleep, though she would have sworn that the noise downstairs and the fear in her heart would have kept her awake. But sometime in the night she was awakened by the sound not of an opening door, not of a footstep, but of the rustle of a mattress and the whisper of her name.

“Kassie, my love. Turn to me.”

Strong hands willed her to obey.

“I have never—”

“Ssh, ssh now, darlin’. I’ll be easy.”

She should have panicked. Should have pushed him away, run screaming from the room. Thrown herself into the crowd downstairs hoping that at least one soul would take pity on her. Take her away. Should have cried out through the window for Reverend Joseph who, for all she knew, had followed them every step of the way and was waiting outside right now—his carriage ready to once again take her out of this place and back to his safe, chaste home.

But she did none of those things, because on that first night Kassandra came to two conclusions. For as much as he promised to be gentle, Ben was a man of his word. And Sarah James was right about everything, down to the last detail.

he stench reminded her, in the first hours of every new day, that she was once again a creature of the city The tiny apartment window, thrown open to alleviate the stifling heat of the summer night, ushered in some semblance of a breeze, but with that came the fetid evidence of the teeming life three stories below She had lived in this filth as a child—scavenged through it, fought through it, bedded down in it—without ever giving any thought to its source. Now, though, her senses could pick out each element in isolation. Putrid, rotting food left for the foraging pigs that roamed the streets and alleys. Animal carcasses left too long at the slaughterhouse. Piles of muck left from the countless beasts that pulled the countless carts of vendors and artisans mingled with the sewage seeped out of overburdened outhouses. It clung to her skirts and stuck to her shoes, wormed its way into her home, swarmed, inescapable, over every inch of her life.

Except, perhaps, their bed.

Long before daylight would revive the relatively quiet streets, Kassandra would lie in bed, eyes closed against the predawn shadows, and search for something clean to smell. If she’d had a chance to do a washing, she would bring a corner of the bed-sheet to her face, cup it around her nose and mouth, and breathe in deep the odor of the cheap soap that lingered in the worn fibers. When she could, she would buy a small bunch of violets from one of the wide-eyed little girls on a street corner and sleep with it under her pillow until its fragrance became little more than a faint hint of green.