The Kingdom of Bones

tram fare yesterday. That would have to wait; only Mr. Bearce could give authority for a payment from the office’s petty cash reserve.

Sebastian went very still. Then he got to his feet.

He went into Bearce’s empty office and around the manager’s desk to the safe. It was a mighty cabinet of iron and brass, older than the building it stood in. It took the largest of the keys, and when the door swung open, it did so with the mass of a Babylonian gate.

“He took it,” Sebastian said bleakly. “The cashbox was empty. The entire office cash reserve, including the money we keep to pay informers.”

Elisabeth said, “Do you know how much?”

“Twelve hundred dollars and some change. Bearce keeps the record in a separate ledger so the informers’ names won’t get out.”

Twelve hundred dollars. A dismayed silence prevailed as they considered the implications of Sayers’ theft.

They were sitting on Frances’ bed. After spending most of the day looking for some trace of Sayers at the railway terminus and asking around all the steamer offices in town, Sebastian had returned home and gone straight to his sister-in-law’s room. There he’d broken into the prizefighter’s cabin trunk and searched through it in the hope of finding some clue to the man’s plans. After managing to stay calm for several hours, he now grew steadily more frantic.

He couldn’t be sure at what point Elisabeth appeared in the doorway. He only knew that she’d been watching him for a while before she moved in beside him and interceded with a gentle hand, stopping his efforts and insisting on being told what was wrong.

“Your trust was betrayed,” Elisabeth now said.

“I doubt that he even considered that,” Sebastian said. “His obsession is his entire horizon.”

“How long before the loss is discovered?”

“Two days. Three at the most.”

“Maybe someone could have seen Sayers going in?”

“That isn’t the point,” Sebastian said. “I’ll still be held responsible.”

Twelve hundred dollars. In Tom Sayers’ mind he’d have been taking the money from the agency, with no thought of any consequence to his host. But when Bearce returned and the money was found to be missing, Sebastian would be called to account for it. Blaming Sayers would not help him.

He looked down at the books and clothing that he’d strewn all over the floor. Nothing here was of any help. “I don’t know what to do,” he said.

Elisabeth said, “We have almost eight hundred dollars saved. And we’ve the certificates in my name from before we were married—they’re worth about two hundred now. We can cash them in or I can borrow against them.”

“To do what?”

“To replace what’s missing before anyone else finds out about it.”

“That’s no solution, Elisabeth,” Sebastian said. “That money’s our future.”

“If you lose your job and reputation,” Elisabeth said, “we have no future. Take our savings, replace the money in the safe, and then go after Sayers and get back what he took. He’s only been gone a few hours, and you know he’s gone to Richmond. I know you can find him. He stole from the Pinkertons. How bright can he be?”

“It won’t work,” Sebastian said. “We can’t raise enough.”

“There’s Frances. I know she has some money stashed away. I’ll talk to her about it.”

“No,” Sebastian said helplessly, and put his head in his hands.

It was a disaster. How had it come to this, and in a matter of only hours? In his heart, he cursed Tom Sayers and he cursed the moment in which he’d turned around and gone back into the boxing booth, when he could so easily have walked away. Twelve hundred dollars was more than he’d earned in the past year. The sum was no great fortune to a business, but it was the kind of money that could make or break a family.

And now Frances was to be asked to pitch in. He knew why she put money away from the tiny allowance they were able to give her. Although she’d no beau and no immediate prospect of one, she was saving for her wedding.

Sebastian knew the worth of what he had. He’d endured a cold upbringing and a loveless youth, and he took none of his present happiness for granted. He’d once been ambitious, and sought success. Now his life was modest, ordinary, and filled with small pleasures—a less spectacular prize, but one he valued more.

Elisabeth said, “Everyone in this house depends on you. And God bless you, Sebastian, you’ve built a decent life for all of us. Let us support you now, or everything that you’ve worked so hard for will go for nothing.”

She made him look at her.

“Get it back, Sebastian,” she said. “Follow him. Tell them whatever you have to tell them and do whatever you have to do.”

THIRTY-FIVE

Tom Sayers traveled by the Pennsylvania Railroad to Washington, and changed there for the Richmond train. The southbound service had three coaches, a diner, four Pullman carriages, and two baggage cars. For a while Sayers mostly wandered, restlessly, up and down the aisles. In his coach were a couple of families and a group of seven or eight men of business. The men all seemed to know each other, and were passing the journey by playing cards and talking politics. They wore middling-good suits and talked too loudly.

Outside, farmland gave way to wooded Virginia countryside. Sayers could see that his wandering was making the porters nervous. So he sat for half an hour, and fidgeted instead. When an attendant came through announcing lunch, he went along to the dining car, took a table, and ordered a steak. He could afford to live decently, at least for now. Dead broke and being punched daily for a living was no way to keep himself presentable for Louise. With each day that went by, he felt less like a dispirited slugger and more like the Tom Sayers of old.

He wondered if the Pinkertons had discovered their loss yet. Sebastian would be mad at him, for sure.

On the arrival of the plate, he found himself looking down at the food without much enthusiasm.

In a way, it was easier to keep on yearning for one’s goal than to be taking such a definite step toward it. Day-to-day life could continue, and the goal remained a safe and distant dream. There’d be none of the uncertainty that he felt now; none of the fear that he might make a wrong move or a bad decision, and so wreck his hopes forever.

He glanced out of the window. They were on a trestle bridge passing over a wide, slow river. A flock of birds took off from the water as the train went by.

One thought sustained him. It was of that night back at Maskelyne’s, when Louise had looked down from the stage and told him to forget her. She’d finally come to understand the truth of him. If only he could now make her see the truth about herself.

She was not lost. He couldn’t believe that. Abused, manipulated, misled…all of these things. But never fit to be damned. All of the evidence so far suggested that her steps toward hell were no more than consensual games of harm, enactments of evil without the guts of evil in them. Charged with inflicting pain, she sought out those whom pain would make happy.

That might change, of course; the incident with the child in Yarmouth had pointed to a much darker prospect. Only sheer luck had kept the child alive that night. Louise might have taken on the role of the Wanderer and shaped it to suit herself, but she moved forward with the guidance and coaching of the Silent Man and his equally taciturn wife. They served Wanderers, not impostors. They would waste no opportunity to propel her ever closer to the edge and, if the chance came, to tip her over it.

Louise was not pure. But who was?

Sayers picked up his knife and cut into his steak. For a man with no appetite, he went at it pretty well from then on.

The train got into Richmond early in the evening, crossing the James River within sight of the old Tredegar Iron Works and entering Main Street Station in a great cloud of venting steam. Sayers climbed down from the coach