The Book of Speculation (7 page)

Before and after lessons Ryzhkova cleared the wagon with a smoldering bushel of herbs that stank of horse sweat. “Smudge,” she coughed. “This is how to clear with fire, how you keep cards clear. Clean.” She wrote words in the air with smoke plumes. “It is not the cards that tell the future as much as the person holding them. Me, you, whoever asks the question.” She tapped the herbs against the wagon’s door, sending embers and ash tumbling. “People touch the cards, leave themselves behind. Dreams. Hope. All trapped inside the cards.” When the room became oppressive she threw the door open and let in the night air. “You. Me. We have no need for dreams from others. Sometimes bad thoughts, bad ideas, get caught in them. You and I, we clear them. Clean, good cards.” She tossed the burned herbs to a blackened spot on the floor and snuffed the embers with a boot heel. She patted his head and the boy and the animal inside him smiled.

She taught him how to bind his hair, giving him one of her silks, a beautiful cloth covered with complex purple and gold patterns. She first twisted his hair into a coil, then folded the silk around it and wound it about his head.

“Good for appearance.”

His scalp ached, but in time the pain eased, and the effect was dramatic. He was transformed from a nut-brown boy easily mistaken for a savage into an elegant, foreign young man. Ryzhkova clapped in praise of her efforts. “Now you look a proper young man of fate and destiny.” Under her watchful crinkling eyes he felt himself changing. Inexplicably he began to think of the little house and the brown-haired woman who had smelled so familiar.

*   *   *

Amos was a solitary creature. Too many eyes on him at once made him itch, and meals with the troupe were like being trapped in a game with unknown rules. He liked to while away rainy mornings paging through Peabody’s book, tracing his fingers over sketches. When Ryzhkova was too tired to teach and shooed him from her wagon he spent his evenings with the small horse, a lovely animal called Sugar Nip, who was ruddy brown, but for a white blaze down her muzzle. She was perfect, except in that she was one eighth the size of what she should be and did not seem to know it. She snorted and stamped as well as any of the cart horses, but was quiet when Amos sat with her. When he hunkered in the straw and pressed his forehead to hers, he felt a warm calm. He enjoyed the quiet that came from combing her forelock, and snatched carrots and apples for her, tucking them deep into the pockets of his britches.

Three days after Ryzhkova bound his hair, she waved him off after a complex lesson on reversed cards. “To bed, boy. You make me weary.”

Amos made his way to the wagon Sugar Nip shared with the animal known as
llama
. He dug through his pocket, searching for a radish he’d kept for her. He was running his hand around it when he walked into Benno. Startled, he gasped.

Benno laughed. “Did I surprise you, Amos? I’d thought that difficult to do.” He leaned against the wagon, stretching so that inside his striped pantaloons his knees appeared to bend backward.

Amos shrugged then nodded. From time to time he’d sat beside Benno at meals and watched him perform, but he knew little about him other than that he was friendly, and seemed well liked among the women.

“Melina spied you leaving Madame Ryzhkova’s wagon,” he continued. Benno said the juggler’s name with an approximation of a smile, as his scar held half his mouth fixed.

Amos warmed at the mention of Melina. He’d watched her too, from across a campfire and through the curtains of the Wild Boy cage as she kept spoons and knives, eggs and pins spinning in flight. She had curling red hair, a sweet face, and a supple way of moving.

“She claimed Madame had worked a change upon you. I quite agree.” Benno tugged at his own brown hair, tied neatly with a piece of black ribbon. “Perhaps if I pull my hair up rather than down, Melina will look at me, too. Do you think?”

Amos’s brows drew together and Benno chuckled. “Worry not. I laugh at myself, not you, my friend. Madame Ryzhkova has afforded you the opportunity to show you are fine of face, whereas I…” He shrugged and touched his scar.

Amos looked at the corded skin, how it made a perpetual grimace, then took Benno by the arm and led him into Sugar Nip’s wagon. He gave Benno the radish to feed her and shared with him the simple peace that came from stroking the little horse’s nose.

They passed an hour in silence, after which Benno said, “I had thought you merely interesting. I was mistaken. You are a friend.”

He clapped Benno lightly on the back, as Peabody had done with him.

*   *   *

Ryzhkova began teaching Amos how to behave with her clients—most of whom were women. “History is a man,” she said. “Future is a woman; that is why they come.” When women came in, their skirts filled the front half of the wagon with yards of fabric; thick with sage smoke, tallow, and the warmth of three bodies, the space became a dreamlike sanctum. Amos noticed that people stammered when first speaking to Ryzhkova. He’d once felt that unease; Ryzhkova could be terrifying, but he’d learned that she was soft, too. She touched their hands during readings, a reassurance here, an encouragement there.

She urged specificity in questions and excruciating detail. “Truth brings more truth, yes?” Men asked mostly about their businesses, future harvests, or the identity of the fellow who stole a pig. Nearly all the women asked Madame Ryzhkova about love. Amos liked these readings best because Ryzhkova cooed, petted, and praised them. He pictured Melina’s round cheeks, her quick hands, and wondered if she dreamt about love.

Once the women left, Ryzhkova cursed their idiocy. “Can she not see the man is sleeping with other man’s wife? You see this card? Look, look.” She jabbed a finger at the Ace of Cups, which sat firmly in the position ruling the present. “See the water?” Streams of water spilled from a cup held aloft by a mystical hand. “Information. Communication. Rivers of lies he tells.” She laughed.

Amos enjoyed seeing her face move from sweet and kind to disgusted, all of which melted into tired laughter.

Months passed with Amos learning, listening, and at last turning cards for Ryzhkova, clearing them with herb smoke, and taking them from and returning them to their fascinating box. He ate meals with Benno, stole glances at Melina, and spent nights listening to Peabody tut over his books or the occasional correspondence he received from Zachary. Peabody remarked that Amos had begun to smile more. Amos shrugged.

“You’ve grown into your skin,” Peabody said, peering over the top of a letter.

Amos nodded, but he felt empty, like he’d stretched but his insides had remained small. His dreams were scented with curing tobacco.

A year into Amos’s apprenticeship the menagerie stopped on the banks of the Schuylkill as they ventured toward Philadelphia. The fog off the water hung heavy. Amos had been sitting on the hinged steps to Peabody’s wagon, watching Nat haul water from the river in sloshing buckets, when Ryzhkova’s gnarled hands curled around his and pulled him toward her wagon. Her knuckles crushed his fingers and he thought of chicken bones scattered around the fire after a meal.

“Come. It is time to learn who you are,” she said. Amos could do little but follow. From across the wide circle of wagons, he caught Benno’s eye. The acrobat winked. “I will read your cards, and after you’ll be an apprentice no longer.”

They had of late acquired two small stools in Croton, but Ryzhkova’s stare told him to sit on the floor. She tapped his shoulder and urged him down. “More grounded.” She patted the boards. “Good for cards.”

She had draped the walls and ceiling with cloth as she would for their clients, but the portraits looked out from between the folds of fabric. She gestured to the paintings. “It is good for them to watch. I paint them from memory. Except Katerina. My Katya sat for me.” Each portrait was illuminated with gold. “When my hand was steady, before the fingers bent.”

Her eyes trapped him as she began the ritual of cleansing. She produced a bushel of herbs from an unseen apron pocket, lit them with a candle, and began making symbols in smoke.

“Today, you,” she said. “To tell others what will be is to become part of fate.” The popping of hips and back preceded her sitting. She winced, folded her legs, and faced him. He realized the cart must be uncomfortable for a woman of her years. “You must know your own fate to read the cards, so not to mix your tale with others’. You see?”

She smacked a card to the floor. The Page of Pentacles, a young man, dark in skin and hair, holding a single star, would represent Amos in the reading. “Smart, eh? Like you. Stubborn. Scared. Young body, old mind.” She tapped the center of his forehead with a sharp fingernail before turning another card. She moved so quickly Amos could barely follow.

“Queen of Cups. Much water. Change. She dreams, yes? Rules over you.” A fair-skinned woman, dark haired, light eyed. Ryzhkova’s crooked fingers danced and twitched as she spoke. The wagon began to feel small, as though it could not contain them and his body might burst through it. Something was happening. Ryzhkova turned over a card and blanched. A dark card. Lightning cut across its background.

Her stooped spine jolted straight. Her eyes rolled back, unseeing. Amos reached for her and she clamped down on his wrist. A flat, strange voice flowed from her.

“Water comes, strangling what it touches as if made flesh. Father, mother, all will wither. You will wear and break until there is nothing. For you it will be as water cuts stone.”

A whisper crawled up Amos’s neck. He snatched his hand from Ryzhkova. She shrieked.

He jumped, feet skittering on the floor, then leaned in to look at the reading. Ryzhkova quickly covered the cards and cleared them away, muttering in a language that was a hypnotic mix of thumping and lilting. She folded the deck into a scarf and stuffed it back into the box, then closed her eyes and breathed. Amos could not say how much time passed before she moved again, before she said, “Strong future. Much change. Beware of women.”

She departed, leaving him alone in the wagon.

A month passed. Ryzhkova made no mention of the reading, though she took to asking him to spend more time with her at the close of day. He did not pry.

In summer the roads through New Jersey flooded and the wagons became mired, slowing northward travel to the promised prosperity of the Hudson River Valley. Days of backbreaking pulling, pushing, and digging wore on the troupe. Amos and Benno were too tired to stand straight, and even Nat’s strength was exhausted. By the time they reached the Hudson, Amos was unable keep his eyes open to study cards.

When his head drooped, Ryzhkova brushed his muddy cheek. “I would paint you,” she whispered. “I would put your face with my family.”

That night, Amos tried to sleep in Peabody’s wagon but could not. His legs ached with restlessness and his mattress stuck him no matter which way he turned—odd, as it had not bothered him before. Racing thoughts plagued him, of the reading Ryzhkova had done, the seer’s hands moving the cards around, of the dark one he’d seen only briefly. Its image refused to take shape. He’d sat through countless readings and had never seen Ryzhkova have such a spell. Perhaps she was ill. The thought troubled him. He opened the wagon door, silencing the hinge with his palm so as not to disturb Peabody. Peabody talked to himself, sketching and scrawling as he murmured the occasional comment about “impossible roadways.” Amos smiled despite his disquiet.

Outside the sky flickered with heat lightning and balmy air made his limbs slow. He heard the snapping of a fire that others tended and watched their shadows trip from the flames, Susanna’s cracking and twisting as she practiced contortions.

From the woods came movement.

A volley of electricity lit the night a bright purple, illuminating the campground with the harshness of midday. Were it not for the flash, he would not have seen the girl stumble from the trees, drenched, shivering, clothed in a nightdress that clung to her legs, dirty and sodden. She wore no shoes. Her feet were bloodied, and her black hair hung to her waist, riddled with knots and leaves. She was a convergence of angles and curves, light and dark. His feet hit the ground noiselessly as he moved toward her.

*   *   *

Peabody watched Amos leave the wagon and run toward the woods. He gazed in the direction the young man traveled and his eyes widened. Between fog, lightning, and moonlight, the girl looked utterly impossible. Had he not been a skeptical man well versed in fantastical embellishment, he would have thought her a wood sprite. He observed Amos running and could not help but smile.
20th May 1796. Hudson, past Croton. Spring lightning storm brings excellent potential and a woman of unsurpassed, most ethereal beauty.
He snuffed the candle he’d been working by and stood by the door to the wagon in hopeful observation. “Yes, dear boy, bring her to us.”

*   *   *

From her doorway, Madame Ryzhkova saw the girl’s pallid complexion, the ink-dark hair, that she was soaked to the bone. The storm was dry and the river lay in the other direction. Through the dirt, her skin shimmered as if made of water. No woman, no girl, looked as such. The girl was something Ryzhkova had not seen in long years, not since her father had gone missing. She’d left everything she’d known to flee from it. She would not say its name. To name such things was to give them power, and yet it was impossible to stop her mind from whispering.

5

JULY 2ND

Finding information on Verona Bonn has proven something of a snipe hunt. I started in the simple places, ancestry websites, public records, filling the time between book requests and cataloging with casual queries. But beyond a newspaper clipping of a svelte woman balanced on a diving platform, not much turns up. The deeper hunting lies locked beyond paywalls or affiliations with institutions. At the moment I don’t have the cash lying around for a casual foray into genealogy. Like Mom, my grandmother seems to have worked under different names. Verona Bonn must have been her last incarnation, leaving little clue as to why someone would scrawl her name in the back of a very old book, a problematic book.