The Tinsmith (27 page)

“We heard the rumours,” Ambrose Richardson said. “Many scoffed at the idea that the great man would participate in a seance, especially during wartime, but I understood perfectly. Perhaps, in some way, my sympathy for our enemy's leader was a kind of prophetic vision of my own future. I have thought of this often. Lincoln's grief, had I but known it at the time, was a gift from God; it helped to prepare the ground for my own tears.”

He sighed and raised the cup to his lips. Lowering it again, he looked at Edney with watery eyes.

“They say he returned to the crypt on three separate occasions, wanting one last look at the boy. The embalming had been remarkable. They say the child looked to be only asleep. That man destroyed the hopes of my country, yet I cannot, before God, deny that I would embrace him in compassion for his lonely returns to that crypt. What I wouldn't give, even now, for one last look upon my own dear boy's face.”

He put the cup down and pulled a handkerchief from his vest. Dabbing his eyes, he said quietly, “I did try, I tried even to the point of risking my own life.” His voice caught, but he continued. “I couldn't get to him. He lay in contested ground after the battle. When I could finally search the field, there was no sign of . . . I . . . even now it pains me to think of the poor boys whose bodies I turned over to see their faces, always in great hope, only to have my hopes dashed.”

His hand trembled as he tried to place the handkerchief neatly in his breast pocket. Finally, he gave up and let the handkerchief hang limp from his hand.

“Shovelled into a mass grave by negroes who probably treated him like a slab of fouled meat. That was my boy's fate. I walked that battlefield for hours, blind with tears, and came to feel that I was searching for the child he had been. I thought if I listened for a baby's cry, it would lead me to his body. It is most strange . . .” He glanced at his left sleeve and sighed. “It is most strange how time and sense are altered by death. For years, I consoled myself with the fancy that my arm had somehow joined my child in his unmarked grave, that it was whole and well and cradled the head of that little boy.” He broke off. His head dropped to his chest.

A part of Edney wanted to reach out and touch him, as if, by doing so, she could comfort the child he had lost. But his openness froze her; it was almost a sin to respond to something that she had wanted so desperately since May's death.

Finally the American raised his head and spoke again.

“I would ask you to forgive me, but I know it would be an impertinence. Your feelings are fresh. I cannot claim as much of mine from such a world as this, but I know that I can from you.”

For a moment, Edney feared that he was about to reach out and take her hand. But he merely leaned closer.

“I've given much thought to your grieving. I've asked myself repeatedly how I can help you to come back to God's fold. Believe me, I, too, have known the sin of anger, I, too, have doubted His mercy. But He knows this, He expects it. And I believe with all my heart that He has given us the means to return to Him. He has, in His great mercy, provided a way for us to love this life again before we are reunited in Glory with our own lost lambs. Ah, but lost only to us, only briefly, because of our own weakness. Madam, if you will permit me, I can arrange for you to reach her, to go beyond the veil. In Victoria, I know of the gentle services of a lady well versed in these matters. And I am certain that, at my request, she would be willing to come here and help you to find some of the peace that I've known.”

Edney drew back. His eyes seemed to have taken all the sunlight into them, and his moustache quivered as his lips moved. What he had said hardly reached her; she was still thinking of her undiminished desire to see May's face one last time. But this mention of a lady in Victoria—what could this mean?

“Please, don't be alarmed. Perhaps I move too swiftly. But it is only out of my sincere desire to bring you comfort. I often wish, indeed, that someone had led me to this special and most providential of balms much sooner, though perhaps I would have been too angry yet in my grief at the time.”

He leaned back but did not move his searching eyes from Edney's face. She felt the strange hunger in his look and it confused her. If he had anything to gain, it would only be the Christian comfort of having helped to ease another's suffering. She could give him nothing else. She could not even promise to give him that comfort. But if she did, perhaps the gift would be a renewing of her faith and a cooling of her terrible hatred, a gift her Maker might reward with that one last contact she so desired. It was the teaching she had always known—for the soul to be at peace, the life must do good. Why not let this gracious American, alone, wounded in heart rather than in body, try to help her?

“I don't understand,” she said at last. “What are the services this lady in Victoria provides?”

He smiled and sat up straight. The watery blue of his eyes suddenly brightened. He brought his one hand around and rested it on his thigh. The fingers were long and thin and yellowed with tobacco.

“Ah, she is an expert in the ways of bringing the living into contact with the dead. A medium, a clairvoyant, a spiritualist—but there is no earthbound word that can do justice to those who have the gift of parting the veil. For our purpose, she is the one hope we have of communicating with your child while she is still so close to her corporeal time. Oh, that I had but spoken with Robert sooner! How richer the conversation would have been, how fresher the feeling.” He stared sadly away.

On reflex, Edney looked after him and seeing his empty teacup on the table moved quickly to fill it. The physical act, simple and repetitive, helped to orient her. For the truth was, she could not imagine how anyone could reach May if she, who had loved her so deeply, who, indeed, perhaps loved her even more now, could not do so on her own. But these matters were profound, more so than she could fathom. That someone dedicated to finding ways of contacting the dead could succeed where she had failed was not an impossible idea—Edney did not pretend any great knowledge of life and death. She knew her heart and she knew her duty; if the first was broken, the second could not be properly carried out. So what choice did she have? For her dead and living children, she must repair the break. And if a woman in Victoria, upon the recommendation of the sympathetic soul sitting in the parlour where May's body had lain, could be an agent in that lonely work, Edney knew that she'd be foolish and irresponsible to resist.

The clock ticked heavily. Ambrose Richardson lifted his cup and took a silent sip of tea. The sunlight no longer flowed through the room, but it had the same trembling quality as the American's eyes as he spoke again.

“Of course, I'll make all the arrangements on your behalf. The fee is minimal, considering the great peace that results. However, should you require any assistance . . .” He made the slightest of bows and courteously dropped his eyes.

Edney absently pulled at the end of one of her tight braids. The fee? It was difficult for her to think of money or any other worldly concern in relation to May. But she tried hard, recognizing the intensity of his feelings and the honourable manner in which he expressed them. Not all the Americans she had met—and there were several on the delta—possessed such gentlemanly graces.

“Thank you, but that won't be necessary. As for the other arrangements, I'd be most grateful for your assistance.”

“I'll leave for Victoria on the next steamer. Madam, your faith will be rewarded in the only way that can truly help you. You will speak with your beloved child again.”

The words were so dazzling, his tone so convincing in its promise, that she did not notice for several seconds that they were no longer alone in the parlour. Only when Ambrose Richardson stood, rather suddenly, and a few drops of tea spilled from his cup onto her hand, which rested on the ottoman between them, did she awaken to the world of flesh.

“Arrangements? For what?”

Edney turned at the sound of Thomas's voice, as if yoked to it. But she was not alarmed by his presence or his question, merely surprised by the former as he was generally at work all day in the fields.

“Good day, sir,” Ambrose Richardson said. “Your wife and I have been enjoying a cup of tea and some most uplifting conversation. Why don't you join us?”

Edney watched Thomas carefully but with little emotion. He seemed very far away, even though he was so palpably present. The world that he carried with him, he carried in the same way that a horse did. His face was red and slick with sweat. A few strands of hair were stuck to his brow, and his thick beard was smoulder waiting to flame at the quick light in his eyes. But he had removed his boots and held his hat like a limp pelt in one hand.

“No. No, thank you,” he said awkwardly, and Edney knew that his discomfort came from the simple confusion created by a guest acting as a host. Her husband was not a man who took even a slight change in the proprieties with calm. It was no surprise to her, then, when he pressed on with his questions in an abrupt manner.

“I heard my wife mention arrangements, sir. If they concern your interest in the cannery, it would be best if you discussed such matters with me. And if they concern something else . . .”

Edney felt his darkness shift heavily toward her as he continued.

“. . . well, I cannot think of anything that does not require you to speak with me first. I heard mention of a child. What child did you mean, sir?”

Edney sensed the American's attention settle lightly and briefly on her, but she did not look at him. He cleared his throat. Edney was surprised to find herself hoping that he would answer the question directly, as in “Your dead daughter, sir.” Suddenly she wanted all the surfaces gone, wanted her truth to be the only one. It saddened her that not even her own husband was prepared to stand at her side on that painful, clarifying ground.

But Ambrose Richardson gracefully deflected the question. “My sincere apologies. I realize that I've yet to accompany you on your rounds of the cannery. Perhaps you're free now? It's a fine day and a walk would be most satisfying.”

Thomas's silence spread thickly through the air. His eyes blinked like an owl's but did not appear to take anything in. Edney might even have felt sorry for him, had there not been a kind of savagery in his confusion. But once she had regarded his coiled strength as comforting, a protection against so many dangers. If that same strength seemed dangerous now, she understood that that was as much a result of her own fragility as of any change in him. In truth, he had not changed; the death had not changed him, and therein lay the great danger.

The seconds dragged by. Edney almost believed that Thomas was going to dismiss the mention of the cannery and insist upon an answer to his question about the child. It would have been like a cleansing breeze blowing through the stale parlour; the walls would have collapsed and the three of them would have stood in an open relationship to the insistence of death. Instead, to her strange mixture of relief and disappointment, Thomas finally took the bait of commerce. He shifted his hat from one hand to the other and said, almost meekly, “As you wish. The Chinese will be well at work on the cans, and the Indians are making more nets.”

Ambrose Richardson stood. His smile was so broad that it gathered the skin into bunches on his cheeks.

“Excellent. I'll just retire to my room for a few moments and meet you on the veranda.” He extended his hand to Edney.

She took it, noting the soothing white coolness, which seemed nothing less than an extension of his presence.

“Madam, I thank you again for your most gracious hospitality. Why, I could be treated no better in the finest of Virginia society.”

He did not wink, yet Edney felt, behind his words, a promise that he would not fail either her or May. And, strangely, when he had left the parlour, the child's hovering spirit seemed to depart as well. Edney almost cried out, she almost rose to plead with the slightest trembling of the sunlight that signalled May's flight, but Thomas had stepped in front of her, his body's motion like the swinging of a barn door on darkness. Now it would come, she thought, now his confusion would demand answers. What child? Our daughter. What arrangements? To speak with her again, to know her again. Edney waited, her breath held. Just then, the new child moved inside her, as if a stone had been dropped into the parlour's sunlit stillness.

“I had hoped that you were discussing the cannery with him. You know how important it is that we secure his investment.”

The ripples of the stone's fall did not leave her body. Edney closed her eyes as the ripples returned deeper into her. Quietly, she said, “We weren't discussing business.”

He settled his weight onto the ottoman beside her and took both her hands in one of his, which was as warm as a clench of the sun. “Mother, listen to me. We are in difficulties. I have told you of the debt. You must not dwell on what can never be again. We must live. This man, he is . . . he is our salvation. If he comes in with me, and if the season is even half as good as most predict, our future is secure. I'll be able to compete with Dare and anyone else. You must do what you can to convince him.”

Edney could not even find the will to nod. Her whole body went numb; ice lodged in her joints as she struggled to remember her duty to the dark and pleading man beside her. The child moved again. The clock ticked. The sunlight was bereft of presence. God, she saw clearly, was in her daughter, and her daughter was gone. If she could not bring her back, God, too, was absent forever. A surge of will lifted Edney's eyes to his.

“Soon it will be a year, Thomas. I cannot think of business so close to the time.”

“A year?” He blinked at her, his face rough and raw as split cedar, his wet lips parted.

Edney could hardly bear the sight of him. The mud smell rising off his thick arms could have been his daughter's own grave-dirt and he would not have noticed.