The Bone Garden: A Novel

Thirty-five

NORRIS HEARD THE SPLASH, even from Lechmere Point. He could not see what had just fallen into the water, but he spotted the carriage stopped on the bridge ahead. And he heard a howling dog.

As he drew closer, he saw the boy's body sprawled beside the carriage's rear wheel. A black dog crouched beside it, teeth bared and growling as it held off the man and woman trying to get near the fallen man. It's Billy's dog.

— We couldn't stop the horse in time! — the woman called out. — It was a horrible accident! The boy ran straight in front of us and… — She stopped, staring in recognition as Norris climbed out of the shay. — Mr. Marshall? —

Norris yanked open the carriage door but did not see Rose inside. From the floor, he plucked up a torn strip of cloth. From a woman's petticoat.

He turned to Eliza, who stared at him, mute. — Where is Rose? — he asked. He looked at Wall-eyed Jack, who was already backing away, preparing to flee.

That splash. They'd thrown something into the water.

Norris ran to the railing and stared into the river. He saw rippling water, silvered by moonlight. And then a shudder, as something broke the surface, then sank again.

Rose.

He scrambled over the railing. Once before, he had plunged into the Charles River. That time, he had docilely surrendered his fate to the whims of providence. This time, he surrendered nothing. As he flung himself off the bridge, he stretched out his arms as though to seize this one last chance at happiness. He sliced into water so cold it made him suck in a startled gasp. He surfaced, coughing. Paused only long enough to heave in and out several deep breaths, washing his lungs with air.

Then he plunged, once again, underwater.

In the darkness, he flailed blindly at anything within reach, feeling for a limb, a bit of cloth, a fistful of hair. His hands met only empty water. Out of breath, he popped to the surface again. This time he heard a man's shouts from the bridge above.

— There's someone down there! —

— I see him. Call the Night Watch! —

Three quick breaths, then once again, Norris dove. In his panic, he did not even register the cold or the growing chorus of shouts above. With every passing second, Rose was slipping away from him. Arms churning, he clawed at the water, as frantic as a drowning man. She might be only inches from his grasp, but he could not see her.

I am losing you.

A desperate need for air drove him back to the surface for another breath. There were lights on the bridge above, and more voices. Feckless witnesses to his despair.

I would rather drown than leave you here.

One last time he dove. The glow of the lanterns above faintly penetrated the dark water in shifting ribbons of light. He saw the shadowy strokes of his own arms, saw clouds of sediment. And drifting just below, he saw something else. Something pale, billowing like sheets in the wind. He lunged toward it, and his hand closed around cloth.

Rose's limp body drifted toward him, her hair a swirl of black.

At once he kicked upward, pulling her with him. But when they broke the surface and he gasped in lungfuls of air, she was limp, as lifeless as a bundle of rags. I am too late. Sobbing, gasping, he hauled her toward the riverbank, kicking until his legs were so exhausted they would scarcely obey him. When at last his feet touched mud, he could not support his own weight. He half crawled, half stumbled out of the water, and dragged Rose up the bank, onto dry land.

Her wrists and ankles were bound; she was not breathing.

He rolled her onto her stomach. Live, Rose! You have to live for me. He placed his hands on her back and leaned in, squeezing her chest. Water gushed from her lungs and spilled out of her mouth. He pressed again and again, until her lungs were empty, but still she lay unresponsive.

Frantic, he tore the bindings from her wrists and turned her onto her back. Her face, smudged with grime, stared up at him. He pressed his hands against her chest and leaned in, trying to expel the last drops of water from her lungs. Again and again he pressed as his tears and river water dripped onto her face.

— Rose, come back to me! Please, darling. Come back. —

Her first twitch was so faint, it might only have been his desperate imagination. Then, suddenly, she shuddered and coughed, a wet and racking cough that was the most beautiful sound he'd ever heard. Laughing and crying at once, he turned her onto her side and brushed sopping hair from her face. Though he could hear footsteps approaching, he did not look up. His gaze was only on Rose, and when she opened her eyes, his face was the first thing she saw.

— Am I dead? — she whispered.

— No. — He wrapped his arms around her shivering body. — You're right here with me. Where you'll always be. —

A pebble clattered across the ground, and the footsteps came to a standstill. Only then did Norris look up to see Eliza Lackaway, her cape billowing in the wind. Like wings. Like the wings of a giant bird. Her gun was pointed straight at him.

— They're watching, — Norris said, glancing up at the people who stood on the bridge above. — They'll see you do it. —

— They'll see me kill the West End Reaper. — Eliza shouted toward the crowd: — Mr. Pratt! It's Norris Marshall! —

Voices on the bridge rose in excitement.

— Did you hear that? —

— It's the West End Reaper! —

Rose struggled to sit, clinging to Norris's arm. — But I know the truth, — she said. — I know what you did. You can't kill us both. —

Eliza's arm wavered. She had only one shot. Even as Mr. Pratt and two men from the Night Watch gingerly worked their way down the steep bank, she was still standing there, undecided, her gun swinging between Norris and Rose.

— Mother! —

Eliza went rigid. She looked up at the bridge, where her son was now standing beside Wendell.

— Mother, don't! — Charles pleaded.

— Your son told us, — said Norris. — He knows what you did, Mrs. Lackaway. Wendell Holmes knows, too. You can kill me here, now, but the truth is already out. Whether I live or die, your future has already been decided. —

Slowly, her arm dropped. — I have no future, — she said softly. — Whether it ends here, or on the gallows, it's over. The only thing I can do now is to spare my son. — She raised her gun, but this time it was not pointed at Norris; it was aimed at her own head.

Norris lunged toward her. Grabbing her wrist, he tried to wrench the gun free, but Eliza resisted, fighting with the viciousness of a wounded animal. Only when Norris twisted her arm did she finally release her grip. She stumbled back, howling. Norris stood pitilessly exposed on the riverbank with the gun in his hand. In the space of a heartbeat, he realized what was about to happen. He saw Watchman Pratt take aim. He heard Rose's anguished scream of — No! —

The impact of the bullet slammed the breath from his lungs. The gun dropped from his hand. He staggered and sprawled backward on the mud. A strange silence fell over the night. Norris stared up at the sky but heard no voices, no footsteps crowding in, not even the swish of the water against the bank. All was calm and peaceful. He saw stars above, winking brighter through the clearing haze. He felt no pain, no fear, only a sense of astonishment that all his struggles, all his dreams, should come down to this moment at the water's edge, with the stars shining down.

Then, as though from far away, he heard a sweet and familiar voice, and he saw Rose, her head framed by stars, as though she gazed down from the heavens.

— Is there nothing you can do? — she cried. — Please, Wendell, you must save him! —

Now he heard Wendell's voice as well, and heard cloth rip as his shirt was torn open. — Bring the lamp closer! I must see the wound! —

Light spilled down in a golden shower, and as the wound was revealed, Norris saw Wendell's expression, and read the truth in his eyes.

— Rose? — Norris whispered.

— I'm here. I'm right here. — She took his hand and leaned close as she stroked back his hair. — You're going to be fine, darling. You're going to get well, and we'll be happy. We'll be so happy. —

He sighed and closed his eyes. He could see Rose floating away from him, carried on the wind so swiftly that he had no hope of reaching her. — Wait for me, — he whispered. He heard what sounded like a distant clap of thunder, a lonely blast of gunfire that echoed through the gathering darkness.

Wait for me.

Jack Burke yanked up the floorboard in his bedroom and frantically scooped out the money he had hidden there. His life's savings, close to two thousand dollars, clattered into the saddlebag.

— What're you doing, taking it all? Are you mad? — asked Fanny.

— I'm leaving. —

— You can't take it all! That's mine, too! —

— You don't have a noose hangin' over your head. — Suddenly his chin shot up and he froze.

Someone was pounding downstairs, on the door. — Mr. Burke! Mr. Jack Burke, this is the Night Watch. You will open this door at once! —

Fanny turned to go downstairs.

— No! — said Jack. — Don't let them in! —

She looked at him with narrowed eyes. — What'd you do, Jack? Why've they come for you? —

Downstairs, the voice yelled: — We'll break down the door if you don't let us in! —

— Jack? — said Fanny.

— She's the one did it! — said Jack. — She killed the boy, not me! —

— What boy? —

— Dim Billy. —

— Then let her go to the gallows. —

— She's dead. Picked up the gun and shot herself with the whole world watchin'. — He rose to his feet and slung the heavy saddlebag over his shoulder. — I'm the one'll be blamed for it all. Everything she paid me to do. — He headed for the stairs. Out the back way, he thought. Just saddle the horse and go. If he could get a few minutes' head start, he could lose them in the dark. By morning, he'd be well on his way.

The front door crashed open. Jack froze at the bottom of the stairs as three men burst in.

One of them stepped forward and said, — You're under arrest, Mr. Burke. For the murder of Billy Piggott, and the attempted murder of Rose Connolly. —

— But I didn't— it wasn't me! It was Mrs. Lackaway! —

— Gentlemen, take him into custody. —

Jack was hauled forward so roughly he stumbled to his knees, dropping the saddlebag on the floor. In an instant Fanny darted forward and snatched it up. She backed away, hugging the precious contents to her breasts. As the Night Watch yanked her husband back to his feet, she made no move to help him, said not a word in his defense. That was his last glimpse of her: Fanny greedily cradling his life's savings in her arms, her face calm and impassive as Jack was led out the tavern door.

Sitting in the carriage, Jack knew exactly how it would all turn out. Not just the trial, not just the gallows, but beyond. He knew where the bodies of executed prisoners invariably ended up. He thought of the money he'd so carefully saved for his precious lead coffin with the iron cage and the gravesitter, all to defeat the efforts of resurrectionists like himself. Long ago, he'd promised himself that no anatomist would ever cut open his belly, hack at his flesh.

Now he looked down at his own chest and gave a sob. Already, he could feel the knife begin to cut.

It was a house in mourning and a house shamed.

Wendell Holmes knew that he was intruding upon the private agonies of the Grenville home, but he made no move to depart, and no one asked him to. Indeed, Dr. Grenville did not even seem to notice that Wendell was in the parlor, sitting quietly in the corner. Wendell had been a part of this unfolding tragedy from the beginning, and it was only fitting that he should be present now, to witness the end of it. What he saw, in the wavering firelight, was a broken Aldous Grenville hunched deep in a chair, with his head bowed in grief. Constable Lyons sat facing him.

The housekeeper, Mrs. Furbush, timidly entered the parlor with a tray of brandy, which she set down upon the end table. — Sir, — she said quietly, — I gave young Mr. Lackaway that draught of morphine you requested. He's asleep now. —

Grenville said nothing, merely nodded.

Constable Lyons said to her: — And Miss Connolly? —

— She won't leave the young man's body, sir. I have tried to pull her away, but she stays by his coffin. I don't know what we'll do with her when they come to take him in the morning. —

— Leave her be. The girl has every reason to grieve. —

Mrs. Furbush withdrew, and Grenville said, softly: — As do we all. —

Lyons poured a glass of brandy and put it into his friend's hand. — Aldous, you cannot blame yourself for what Eliza did. —

— I do blame myself. I didn't want to know, but I should have suspected. — Grenville sighed and drank down the brandy in one gulp. — I knew she would do anything for Charles. But to kill for him? —

— We don't know that she did it all herself. Jack Burke swears he's not the Reaper, but he may have been involved. —

— Then she most certainly instigated it. — Grenville stared down at his empty glass and said softly, — Eliza always wanted to be the one in control, ever since we were children. —

— Yet how much control does a woman ever truly have, Aldous? —

Grenville's head drooped, and he said softly: — Poor Aurnia had the least of all. I have no excuse for what I did. Only that she was lovely, so lovely. And I'm nothing but a lonely old man. —

— You tried to do the honorable thing. Take comfort in that. You engaged Mr. Wilson to find the child, and you were ready to provide for her. —

— Honorable? — Grenville shook his head. — The honorable thing would have been to provide for Aurnia months ago, instead of handing her a pretty necklace and walking away. — He looked up, torment in his eyes. — I swear to you, I didn't know she was carrying my child. Not until the day I saw her laid open on the dissection table. When Erastus pointed out that she'd recently given birth, that's when I realized I had a child. —

— But you never told Eliza? —

— No one but Mr. Wilson. I fully intended to see to the child's welfare, but I knew Eliza would feel threatened. Her late husband was unlucky with his finances. She has been living here on my charity. —

And this new child could claim it all, thought Wendell. He thought of all the slurs against the Irish that he'd heard from the lips of the Welliver sisters and Edward Kingston's mother; indeed, from almost every society matron in the best parlors of Boston. That her own darling son, who had no talent for earning a livelihood, would now have his future threatened by the spawn of a chambermaid would be the ultimate outrage for Eliza.

Yet it was an Irish girl who had, in the end, outwitted her. Rose Connolly had kept the child alive, and Wendell could imagine Eliza's mounting fury as the girl managed to elude her, day after day. He thought of the savage slashes on Agnes Poole's body, the torture of Mary Robinson, and he understood that the real target of Eliza's rage was Rose and every girl like her, every ragged foreigner who crowded the streets of Boston.

Lyons took Grenville's glass, refilled it, and handed it back to him. — I am sorry, Aldous, that I did not take control of the investigation sooner. By the time I stepped in, that idiot Pratt already had the public in a blood frenzy. — Lyons shook his head. — I'm afraid young Mr. Marshall was the unfortunate victim of that hysteria. —

— Pratt must be made to pay for that. —

— Oh, he will pay. I'll see to it. By the time I'm finished, his reputation will be dirt. I won't rest until he's hounded out of Boston. —

— Not that it matters now, — said Grenville softly. — Norris is gone. —

— Which offers us a possibility here. A way to limit the damage. —

— What do you mean? —

— Mr. Marshall is beyond our help now, and beyond further harm. He cannot suffer any more than he already has. We could allow this scandal to simply die quietly. —

— And not clear his name? —

— At the expense of your family's? —

Wendell had been silent up to this point. But now he was so appalled, he could not hold his tongue. — You'd let Norris go to his grave as the West End Reaper? When you know he's innocent? —

Constable Lyons looked at him. — There are other innocents to consider, Mr. Holmes. Young Charles, for example. It's painful enough for him that his mother chose to end her own life, and so publicly. Would you also force him to live with the stigma of having a murderess as a mother? —

— It's the truth, isn't it? —

— The public is not owed the truth. —

— But we owe it to Norris. To his memory. —

— He's not here to benefit from any such redemption. We'll lay no accusations at his feet. We'll simply remain silent, and allow the public to draw its own conclusions. —

— Even if those conclusions are false? —

— Whom does it harm? No one who still breathes. — Lyons sighed. — At any rate, there's still a trial to come. Mr. Jack Burke will almost certainly hang for the murder of Billy Piggott, at the very least. The truth may well be revealed then, and we can't suppress it. But we need not advertise it, either. —

Wendell looked at Dr. Grenville, who had remained silent. — Sir, you would allow such an injustice against Norris? He deserved better. —

Grenville said, softly: — I know. —

— It's a false honor your family clings to, if it requires you to blacken the memory of an innocent man. —

— There is Charles to think of. —

— And that's all that matters to you? —

— He is my nephew! —

A voice suddenly cut in: — And what of your son, Dr. Grenville? —

Startled, Wendell turned to stare at Rose, now standing in the parlor doorway. Grief had drained her face of all color, and what he saw bore little resemblance to the vibrant young girl she once was. In her place he saw a stranger, no longer a girl but a stone-faced woman who stood straight and unyielding, her gaze fixed on Grenville.

— Surely you knew you fathered another child, — she said. — He was your son. —

Grenville gave an anguished groan and dropped his head in his hands.

— He never realized, — she said. — But I saw it. And you must have, too, Doctor. The first time you laid eyes on him. How many women have you taken advantage of, sir? How many other children have you fathered out of wedlock, children you don't even know about? Children who are even now struggling just to stay alive? —

— There are no others. —

— How could you know? —

— I do know! — He looked up. — What happened between Sophia and me was a long time ago, and it was something we both regretted. We betrayed my dear wife. Never again did I do so, not while Abigail lived. —

— You turned your back on your own son. —

— Sophia never told me the boy was mine! All those years he was growing up in Belmont, I didn't know. Until the day he arrived at the college, and I saw him. Then I realized… —

Wendell looked back and forth between Rose and Grenville. — You can't be speaking of Norris? —

Rose's gaze was still fixed on Grenville. — While you lived in this grand house, Doctor, while you rode in your fine carriage to your country home in Weston, he was tilling fields and slopping pigs. —

— I tell you, I didn't know! Sophia never said a word to me. —

— And if she had, would you have acknowledged him? I don't think so. And poor Sophia had no choice but to marry the first man who'd have her. —

— I would have helped the boy. I would have seen to his needs. —

— But you didn't. Everything he accomplished was by his efforts alone. Does it not make you proud, that you fathered such a remarkable son? That in his short life, he rose so far above his station? —

— I am proud, — said Grenville softly. — If only Sophia had come to me years ago. —

— She tried to. —

— What do you mean? —

— Ask Charles. He heard what his mother said. Mrs. Lackaway told him she didn't want another one of your bastards suddenly showing up in the family. She said that ten years ago, she was forced to clean up your mess. —

— Ten years ago? — said Wendell. — Isn't that when— —

— When Norris's mother vanished, — said Rose. She drew in a shaky breath, the first hint of tears breaking her voice. — If only Norris had known! It would have meant everything to him, to know that his mother loved him. That she didn't abandon him, but was instead murdered. —

— I have no words in my own defense, Miss Connolly, — said Grenville. — I have a lifetime of sins to atone for, and I intend to. — He looked straight at Rose. — Now it seems there is a little girl somewhere in need of a home. A girl whom I swear to you will be given every comfort, every advantage. —

— I'll hold you to that promise, — said Rose.

— Where is she? Will you take me to my daughter? —

Rose met his gaze. — When the time is right. —

In the hearth, the fire had guttered out. The first light of dawn was brightening the sky.

Constable Lyons rose from his chair. — I leave you now, Aldous. As for Eliza, this is your family, and how much you choose to acknowledge is your decision. At the moment, the public's eyes are on Mr. Jack Burke. He is their current monster. But soon, I'm sure, there'll be another one to catch their attention. This much I know about the public: Their hunger for monsters is insatiable. — He nodded farewell and left the house.

After a moment, Wendell, too, rose to depart. He had intruded upon the household far too long, and had spoken his mind too bluntly. So it was with a note of apology in his voice that he took his leave of Dr. Grenville, who did not stir but remained in his chair, staring at the ashes.

Rose followed Wendell into the foyer. — You have been a true friend, — she said. — Thank you, for all that you've done. —

They embraced, and there was no awkwardness despite the wide gulf of class that separated them. Norris Marshall had brought them together; now grief over his death would forever bind them. Wendell was about to step out the door when he paused and looked back at her.

— How did you know? — he said. — When Norris himself did not? —

— That Dr. Grenville is his father? —

— Yes. —

She took his hand. — Come with me. —

She led him up the stairs to the second floor. In the dim hallway she paused to light a lamp and carry it toward one of the portraits hanging on the wall. — Here, — she said. — This is how I knew. —

He stared at the painting of a dark-haired young man who stood beside a desk, his hand resting atop a human skull. His brown eyes gazed straight at Wendell, as though in direct challenge.

— It's a portrait of Aldous Grenville when he was nineteen years old, — said Rose. — That's what Mrs. Furbush told me. —

Wendell could not tear his gaze from the painting. — I did not see it until now. —

— I saw it at once. And I had no doubt. — Rose stared at the young man's portrait, and her lips curved into a sad smile. — You always recognize the one you love. —