The Kingdom of Bones

Whitlock’s outstretched body.

“Where’s Louise?” Sayers said. “Becker, where is she?”

Becker didn’t respond until Sayers climbed through the woodwork to where he was sitting. Then the policeman finally seemed to become aware of him, without actually taking his attention from the body.

“I do not know what I saw,” he said.

“You saw a man meet an end he well deserved,” Sayers said. “But what happened to Louise? Was she with him?”

“She went to him,” the policeman said. “He’d flung her aside, but she went to him. She took the blood from his face, and she drew it onto her own. Like tears. I called to her. I would have gone closer, but she signaled me a warning.”

“Against what?”

“I cannot say. But it stopped me as I stood. She took his face in both her hands and placed her lips against his. I do not know if he was dead, or on the point of death. But she drew out his last breath and made it her own.”

Finally tearing his gaze from the dead actor-manager, Sebastian Becker turned his head to look at Tom Sayers.

He said, “It was not physical. Nor material. I don’t know what it was I saw. But I can swear to you, Sayers. I will swear it until my dying day. I did see something happen. I swear that something went from him to her.”

As Tom Sayers had been entering the basement through the star trap, Louise had been leaving it by the ladder. Her heart was calm and her head was clear. For the first time in many weeks, she felt that her life now had a shape and a purpose.

What shape, and what purpose, she did not yet know. She merely sensed the presence of meaning, where before there had been none. It flooded her, it filled her. It was as if she began to have an exact sense of her location in the great scheme of things, all the way from the center of her being out past the sun to the cold, cold stars.

She found the Silent Man and his wife on their way to the pass door. They were a sorry-looking pair. It would have been hard to say which of them was holding the other up.

She stopped them and said, “Listen to me. Whitlock is dead. I have bared my soul to God and offered myself for damnation in his place. I believe that God has considered the condition of my soul, and has accepted my offer. I am in hell already. Let Whitlock find peace. As God is my witness, for the things I have done I will not be redeemed. I have opened my heart to the Wanderer’s burden. Will you guide and serve me as you served him?”

They stared. But she did not doubt that they understood. The Silent Man released his wife and took a step closer to Louise. He was studying her, looking into her eyes as if for signs.

She waited, and allowed it. Her dress was torn to the point of indecency and filthy as well, while her cheeks were marked with drying blood. But she stood there, straight and confident and entirely without shame.

After a while, the Silent Man looked back at his wife. She was waiting for his assessment. When her husband nodded, it was as if she filled out and grew an inch or two. The woman’s eyes brightened and her cheeks flushed with life.

“Come,” the man said to Louise, and led the way out of the theater.

TWENTY-SEVEN

When Elisabeth Becker came down early on Monday morning to set breakfast for the family, she was not expecting to find a visitor already at the table. Especially not one who looked like a convict on the run. He sat like one, too, head down with his arm around the plate as if someone might try to reach in and steal his food. He was wearing the pants and waistcoat of a checked suit that looked as if it had once been loud, but had faded to a sludge color as it lost most of its shape.

She stopped in the doorway. He must have heard her breath catch in surprise, because he looked up at her. He’d just shoveled in a good half a pound of pancakes and corn syrup, and he struggled to swallow so he could speak.

“Please,” she said, raising a hand. “Please continue. Don’t trouble yourself.” Then she backed off into their little hallway. She was still moving backward when she bumped into her husband.

She was about to say something, but Sebastian signaled for her to hold it for a moment and then moved her farther down the hallway. She could still see the visitor from here, but they could speak with more privacy.

“Sebastian,” she said, “who is that man?”

The man at the table had grown self-conscious. He tried to carry on as before, but clearly knew that he was being discussed. He’d straightened in his seat and taken his elbows off the table, as if conscious of the need to make a good impression.

Sebastian said, “His name’s Tom Sayers.”

“Has he been here all night?”

“I let him sleep on the divan.”

“Why?”

“He has nowhere of his own.”

It wasn’t exactly the answer she was looking for. She glanced back at the man again. He shifted uncomfortably on his chair.

“He’s the man from the boxing tent,” she said.

“So he is,” Sebastian said, which brought him a stern look.

“Sebastian,” she said, in a voice with a definite edge of warning to it.

“He’s someone I knew in England,” Sebastian said. “We’ve unfinished business. From the old days.”

“He looks like a criminal. Is he?”

“Things aren’t always how they look.”

They went back into the kitchen, and Sayers got to his feet. Sebastian introduced them. Elisabeth told Sayers that he was welcome in their house and then urged him to sit down again and continue.

When Sayers had finished his pancakes he tried to wash the pan, but Elisabeth took it from him. She sent the ex-fighter and her husband out into the garden, where they could sit and talk while the rest of the family breakfasted.

It was more of a brick-paved yard than a true garden, but it supported a couple of flower beds and a Carolina allspice bush right next to the door. They had a water pump and a bird table, and Elisabeth would have planted a cherry tree as well if she’d been able to squeeze one in.

“You have a nice home,” Sayers said.

“Thank you,” Sebastian said. “It’s a little beyond our means, but I do my best to hang onto it.”

Sayers sat on a wrought-iron bench and Sebastian on a chair that he’d brought from the dining room. They continued the conversation that they’d had to suspend the night before.

Sayers had already told Sebastian of how he’d run straight from the theater to the Marylebone apartments that evening, but either he’d reached them too late or Louise and the two servants had never returned there. He’d waited on the street for hours, keeping watch on the building. After a while, he could hear Whitlock’s lapdog begin to bark. He did not know what had happened to it after that night.

“So Whitlock cheated on his bargain in the end,” Sebastian said. “Where his soul is now, we cannot know.”

“Pursuing Louise was like chasing a wraith,” Sayers said. “She changed her name. I imagine she changed her appearance. In Yarmouth, I heard that she had fled to the Continent. The trail went cold for a while after I tracked her to these shores, but in every new town or city I search for signs of her presence. Every now and again I learn something more. I joined that dog-and-pony boxing show because I heard she had come to the East. She is here somewhere. I know it.”

“Still chasing her after all these years? There’s a thin line between devotion and obsession, Sayers. You can