The Kingdom of Bones

FORTY-FOUR

There was no looking glass in the room, but there was a mirror out on the landing. At this hour of the day there was barely enough light in the stairwell to see by, so Sayers took the mirror from the wall and brought it in. He had a chambre garnie on the top floor of a house kept by a colored woman on Dauphine Street. It was a chambre with very little garnie about it. It was, however, his for fifteen dollars a month, with gaslight and heat extra.

The mirror wasn’t a true mirror, but a framed piece of window glass painted black on one side. Sayers turned himself back and forth, looking critically at the fit of his tails.

In the glass, he looked like Pepper’s ghost. But he supposed he’d pass. This was the suit in which he’d fled Richmond after his night in jail, having no opportunity to change until he was safely out of town. Another of his many betrayals of trust; the suit should have gone back to the Bijou after use. Stoker had spoken up for him in court, but in his pursuit of Louise he’d let down many who could have spoken against.

He hadn’t imagined that he’d need it again. But tonight was the night of the governor’s ball.

For once, Louise had been easy to locate. Almost absurdly so. The New Orleans Transfer Company met all trains and steamships coming into the city, and would check and deliver baggage to private residences and hotels at twenty-five cents apiece. Sayers had gone to their offices, taking the part of an Englishman who’d traveled out to join his sister. She was supposed to have found them a place to stay, but he’d received no message. A little footwork to draw out the name she was using without revealing his own ignorance of it, and there she was—Mary D’Alroy at the St. Charles Hotel.

Mary D’Alroy? After Richmond, she’d have been safer with a change of identity. But she could not have known that Jules Patenotre had been found.

His first impulse was to run over to the St. Charles and make himself known. But the impulse was mixed with a tremendous and unexpected fear of the moment.

And it would not do. Haste could prove fatal—literally so, if the Silent Man should be there. So instead he found himself a spot across from the hotel to wait for a sight of her.

Time passed. They had not met in so long. What exquisite irony, if she were to walk straight by him with neither knowing the other! It could happen. In his heart and in his memory, she was forever the Desdemona of the photograph that he carried.

Then he saw her. Returning from somewhere. It lasted no more than a few moments; she came into view on the sidewalk and then, with a swish of her long skirts, she was entering the hotel and gone. As Sayers had predicted, the Silent Man was right behind her, the pistol in his waistband pushing his coat out of shape.

The brevity of the sighting was of no consequence. If it had been a second or an hour, his sense of shock could have been no more or less profound.

She was little changed. Not so thin, but only as might be expected in a grown woman rather than a girl. It took him a moment to match the two, one overlaying and replacing the other; and by the time the hotel doors had swung closed behind her, Sayers’ mental picture was revised and complete.

He felt shaken. He’d been wise not to attempt to confront her. He’d have been hopeless.

But now, with that moment out of the way, he could begin to prepare.

That evening, still new in town, he went looking for a game. He was broke, apart from an emergency five-dollar bill that he’d kept in his shoe for so long that he’d almost forgotten it. Gambling was no longer allowed or licensed in New Orleans, but it still went on. Secretly in the part of the city around Canal Street, and openly at Bucktown and along the Carrollton levee.

Sayers had learned his play from circus folk. By midnight he had nearly sixty dollars, a promissory note that he knew he’d never collect on, and a ticket for the governor’s ball that one card player had thrown in when his cash had run out.

The next morning, he mailed thirty dollars to the Becker family. Then he scratched out the owner’s name on the ball ticket and wrote in Mary D’Alroy’s before delivering it anonymously to the St. Charles.

Which brought him to this. Tonight.

The night of the governor’s ball.

Toulouse Street, down by the side of the French Opera House, was a jam of carriages and nervous horses. Men and women in spectacular finery were crossing into the grand old building. On the sidewalk opposite, a large crowd of people had gathered just to watch the arrivals.

Sayers walked on to the wing of the theater where the offices and dressing rooms were. There he joined a line of artistes and theater staff at the stage door. Some of the front-of-house people were in stiff shirts and tailcoats like his own. The line moved slowly as the doorkeeper checked off names under the eye of a private policeman. There was a lot of walking wealth in the French Opera House tonight, and nobody wanted any of it to walk off in some rogue’s possession.

Sayers was on the employee list; having no ticket of his own, he’d signed up as a waiter. His lack of experience wouldn’t matter. The moment he was inside, he planned to desert and join the revelers.

And so it went. Once backstage, instead of going to pick up his tray and an apron, he found his way to the pass door and entered the auditorium.

He had to stop and take it in. The opera house auditorium was a wide oval in shape, of extraordinary breadth. The house rose up in five gilded tiers to a high-domed ceiling of decorated panels. Sayers had never seen anything quite like it. It had to seat two thousand or more. Along with all the gilt the decor was crimson and white, and there were flowers set up everywhere. A temporary floor had been laid over the stalls, transforming the lower level into a ballroom. An orchestra was playing, and the dancing was under way.

There was enough jewelry on show to finance a small war. The men were all in dark evening wear rather better than his own, apart from a few in military uniform so gorgeous that it might qualify as fancy dress. The women wore the real plumage, and they glittered. Gems around their necks, diamonds on their wrists, jewels in their piled-up hair. As the couples danced, they swept by him in a wash of taffeta and expensive silk.

Sayers made his way around the dance floor, observing all the women as he went. After that glimpse of Louise in the entranceway of the St. Charles, he knew that he would recognize her. And this time he’d be better prepared. For a moment, she’d stopped his breath, and all but stopped his heart.

But he did not see her anywhere. At the back of the auditorium was a large foyer that was mostly used for promenading between acts. Now it was steadily filling up with new arrivals. As people came in, they spotted friends or groups of friends, or others that they merely wished to impress.

Sayers was conscious that he moved alone. Even the young men hunted in twos and threes. He felt a pang of envy for all of them: For years, he’d known no society other than the company of carnival folk, and even they’d merely accepted rather than embraced him.

When he finally spotted her, it was because she was a still point in all the free-flowing gaiety.

She was standing by a pillar, gloved hand raised to cover a small cough. Her effect on him was still powerful. Without taking his eyes from her, Sayers moved to a spot from where he could watch.

Louise.

Louise, Louise, Louise.

And no one to step between them.

Her gown was adequate for the occasion, but fairly plain. She seemed to be waiting for someone, and he found himself using this as an excuse to hold back for just a little longer.

Her manner was that of a person among strangers, aware of all around her, smiling briefly at anyone who met her eye. Sayers wondered who she might be waiting for. After a minute or so, she moved.

After watching her watch the dancing for a while, and then seeing her move again to another spot, Sayers concluded that she was alone and waiting for nobody. That was an act. She was changing her position lest it become apparent to all that she had no one to speak to, and nowhere in particular to be.

He was finally raising the nerve to approach when some man asked her to dance. She accepted with grace, but not before Sayers had seen her give a telltale glace around and beyond her would-be partner, as if checking for witnesses. They vanished onto the dance floor, and Sayers lost sight of her for a while.

He found her again about fifteen minutes later. Again, she was alone. The dance had been no more than a dance. The liaison had clearly not flourished.

Watching her was almost painful to him. Has this been your life, Louise? Your reward for the Wanderer’s burden? It was a strange kind of predator that waited to be asked.

He could hold back no longer, and moved forward from where he’d been standing.

He positioned himself on her eyeline, and waited to be seen.