Page 59 of The Orphan of Cemetery Hill
Alice spat, hitting Mr. Whitby neatly on his polished brown shoes. It was satisfying in the extreme, but the only acknowledgment he gave was a slightly raised brow. “You’re only making this more difficult for yourself. You only have to open your mind, accept the message that this spirit wishes to impart.”
The corpse beside her was still, but she had caught a glimpse of it jerking around when she had first come in, as if it would sit up and get off the table. Dr. Jameson caught her gaze. “The simplest thing in the world, Miss Bellefonte,” he said, not unkindly. “Relax your mind and your body, let yourself become an open receptacle.”
“Relax my body, should I?” she said, jutting her chin at the silver tool Mr. Whitby still clutched in his hand.
The doctor frowned. “Richard, perhaps we could forgo the forceps?”
When Mr. Whitby had placed the instrument back on the table, Alice made her decision. She would mine her reserve, as Mr. Whitby had instructed. She would relax her mind and invite her intuition to take over. She would do everything they said, just not for the results they were hoping for.
With a curt nod, Alice closed her eyes. Her heart was pounding, her worry for Tabby nearly debilitating. She just needed time. They might think that Sergeant Hodsdon was one of their own, but she prayed that his revelation of conscience was strong enough. She just needed time until he got there.
“Good,good, Miss Bellefonte. I am so glad to see that you are willing to cooperate in this most noble venture. I thank you, and the scientific community thanks you. Now, please tell me the name of the woman beside you.”
Alice had no idea what the woman’s name was, and she certainly had no idea how to find out. But she would give the men here a show that they would not soon forget. Rocking back and forth in her seat, she began a low hum that grew into a wail, the eldritch sound of it making even her hair stand on end.
“What are you doing?” Mr. Whitby asked urgently. He turned to the doctor. “What is she doing?”
Her eyes were still closed, but she could hear the doctor. “Perhaps this is her method. We must let it take its course.”
The humming had been strictly for the benefit of the men, but the wail that continued to spill from her throat was real, the result of her mind being yanked and wrenched in unnatural directions. Then the voices grew fuzzy and faraway. Alice was standing in a white expanse so like the void of her dreams, and yet different. Light where the void was dark, open where that was suffocating.
An image flashed before her, a tall, raven-haired woman that she now recognized as Mary-Ruth. She was standing on the bank of a river, wind in her hair as she smiled up at Alice. Her heart swelled with love. Then the image shifted, and Alice was looking out over a vast battlefield, the aftermath of a terrible skirmish. Though carrion birds pecked and squabbled amongst the carnage, there was no sound accompanying the images. There was a war coming to this country, and soon. She wanted to retch, the sheer magnitude of it all becoming unbearable, but then the image was shifting again. Scene after scene, some containing recognizable faces and places, others so foreign that she could hardly believe they were real.Whitby. I need Whitby.
It was not the future that would give her the answers that she needed about Mr. Whitby, but the past. Her conversation with Caleb in Edinburgh came back to her and she remembered the jest about his alias, how stupid she had thought it at the time. She remembered the conversation they’d shared about the grave robbers, and all the details therein.
Her head pounded, the white of the expanse blinding her. And then there it was. Everything she needed.
33
THROUGH THE VEIL AND BACK AGAIN.
TABBY’S EYES WEREheavy and dry, but she forced herself to open them. For a disorienting moment, she expected to see the cracks in the ceiling of her prison room, but instead it was the dimly lit rafters of the auditorium that greeted her.
Voices. No, just one voice. A feminine voice that tickled at the edges of her memory. Then she recalled the glimpse of face that had flashed before her. Alice. Could it be? Was her sister really here?
Still too weak to move much, Tabby gingerly turned her head so that she could see the red-haired woman in the brown plaid dress, careful not to draw any attention to herself.
Alice was sitting straight as a board in the chair, eyes closed, mouth moving. She was more beautiful than Tabby remembered, mature and dignified, and all at once the magnitude of the time they’d lost together hit her. But there was no time for sentimentality. Tabby forced herself to focus, to parse out her sister’s words from the ringing in her ears.
“I have made contact with a spirit, though it is not the spirit that you wished me to reach.” A heavy, drawn-out pause. “A man.”
Mr. Whitby’s voice, eager. “What man? What is his name?”
“A Mr. Pope,” she said. “He comes bearing a message for you, Mr. Whitby.”
“Are you certain?” Tabby could hear the frown in his voice. “I know of no Mr. Pope.”
“That may be, but he knows you, and what you have done.”
As soon as Caleb set foot back in the holding cell, it was as if the last six months had never happened. The leak in the corner was still dripping, a fresh crop of drunkards was lazing about, and the air was still damp and heavy.
He sat down on the bench, but was too nervous to be idle for long, and jumped up again, pacing back and forth. He hadn’t liked watching Alice disappear out the door and he liked the idea of her confronting Mr. Whitby even less. The worst part of being imprisoned again wasn’t the foul air or the pungent belches of his cell mates, but that he had no clue what was happening in the world beyond the damp stone walls.
He was wearing grooves in the floor with his pacing when Billy approached the bars. “They’re going to move you to Charles Street, they’re just waiting for the cart.”
Caleb nodded. It was off to the big new prison across the city for him. He’d known that he couldn’t expect any liberties or concessions. He was an escaped convict, wanted for murder. The drunk cell was too good for him.
“Sergeant? Sergeant!” A man, out of breath and hatless, tumbled into the hall. He looked around and, on seeing Billy, panted a big sigh of relief. “Sergeant Hodsdon,” he said. “You’re needed at the Harvard Medical School. There’s been an incident.”
