His name stirs up nausea. Of course he’d be the one to contact.Thomas has taken control in the vacuum of all Forsyths. If he caught us, what would he do with me? Would he charge me with murder and kidnapping, or is he still set on the asylum? I’d lose Liney either way. That’s the much more important detail I can’t allow this propaganda to distract me from.
I want to set my bag down and tear down the poster. What if that’s noticed? Who else would tear down “missing” posters? My grip tightens instead. The rough canvas scratches my callouses in a painful, yet needed, release.
A copy of a daguerreotype takes up the middle of the poster. My father stands in the back, his hand on my mother’s shoulder as she sits in a gilded portrait chair. My sister and I are comically young, as our next photograph would’ve been taken during the wedding that never happened. This celebrated Liney’s first communion. Me, thirteen, awkwardly standing beside my father, while Liney, seven, sits on my mother’s lap. She wears a white dress, the photograph taken only a few hours after her first Eucharist. Liney cried when she tasted the church wine. I pinched her in our pew to distract her from the bitterness. Every woman’s portrait involves white. Her baptism, communion, wedding, even death portrait. All white. Unless her husband dies first, then she turns to black.
I’m gangly beside her, tall for my age but not yet filled into my height. My hair is piled up into a complicated style, while Liney’s is a golden halo around her.
Thirteen-year-old me has a careful smile, exactly as instructed. Her world’s already been written in ink before her, every expectation one indelible line to follow. She read her own life instead of writing it. Until she took hold of the pen herself and made it a knife.
“Beautiful,” says a man beside me, so quiet he might be speaking to himself. I still. “Don’t you think, Elle?”
I don’t turn. Could he have a companion with him? Could angelsbless me with other impossibilities if I stand here and wish enough? I didn’t bring enough money to gather these supplies a second time, so I can’t abandon my cargo. But I’ll never outrun my pursuer while loaded down.
So, violence.
“I know what you want,” he continues as I prepare to turn. His voice is familiar. Not Thomas. Not Mr. Croxton, though I’m a fool to stop at a glass shop when he’s an apprentice of the craft.
What does it mean that I feel relief at recognizing the Devil’s voice?
“Find me the usual way,” he whispers. “Tonight.”
I turn. He’s already gone. I face only glasswork and an old photograph of a child accused of murder.
Finding the Devil will, once again, not be the hard part. It’ll be convincing him to help me when he already knows he holds all the cards.
* * *
I run down to the docks before dark. The harbor safety society’s building is small. A place for hardened men of the sea and their meager wages. There should be a collection of Douglas’s earnings waiting for me. I’m careful not to ring the bell beside the door when I slip in. The inside is unimpressive. Empty tables and chairs at the front, a few posters advertising opportunities for wickies and sailors along the walls, a wall behind the counter full of labeled cubbyholes, and a door to a back room. No one’s seen me yet.
I slide over the counter and gently set my feet on the other side. The labels are ordered alphabetically by location.
I don’t need the money. I took enough before my escape to ensure supplies for years to come. What matters is that, on written record, a living Mr. James Douglas took his earnings.
I find theDevils Island–labeled cubby. It’s empty. I peer deep into the wooden hole in the wall. Not a letter, not a cent. Nothing but cobwebs.
Disappointment cools me. I examine the counter. There are books of record underneath. I peer over to the back door, but there’s no sign of life. I may be alone, but I won’t act as such. I remove the top ledger, markedRecords of Payment, 1861–with a blank for the year to be filled in at the book’s completion. I heft the tome to the counter, setting it down quietly, and flip through the transactions until I reach October. The scrawl is hard to read, but I find the payment line.
Oct. 20, ’62 | Payment to James Douglas | Devils Island | Sole Keeper $325 | Approved HC
HC?
Hugh Croxton. He conned me.
I stifle a laugh as I put the book back. He didn’t come to the island worried for Douglas’s health or spurred by the wanted posters. He saw that a line in the bookhe kepthadn’t yet been claimed and took advantage. When he found me, he must’ve seen through my disguise and known something was afoot but not the whole picture.
I sneak out of the harbor safety society office, renewed in hope. Mr. Croxton was never interested in coming back. He can have Douglas’s money for the rest of his life as far as I care. It benefits him not to ask questions. Thirty years of earnings would rival the poster’s reward, though I’m sure he hasn’t put those pieces together yet. Otherwise, wouldn’t he collect both?
I head back to the inn, hungry for the first time in ages for a good meal. I order the dinner special of veal cutlets with rolled bacon slices paired with a winter salad and carrot pudding. I indulge in a glass of port with a small selection of chocolate squares, watching the parlor fill and empty around me. It’s a busier spot lately, and the food has a kind of savory I can never get in my own cooking. The people don’t set me on edge as they once did. On my first few trips to the mainland, I nearly starved in my room. I ate only a slice of bread sacrificed from my purchased supplies, terrified to show my face anywhere unnecessarily.
But I’ve learned that gender is a tricky thing, malleable to my will yet complete in its concealment. Anyone who’s taken notice of the posters is looking for a young woman, and the teenage photograph of me shows a girl with none of the muscles I’ve developed since.
As a young man, there’s no issue in me sitting alone at my dining table, eating my fill and reading the newspaper. I cut out the wanted poster and a few articles on the war that Liney would find disturbing. Details of the past few months are sprinkled throughout the paper. State governments defecting, towns falling prey to ransacking, battles and skirmishes across farmers’ land and the wilderness. The death of a Union colonel gets a half-page feature and a footnote about his soldiers drowned in the frigid Potomac. The rest of the page is a mixture of poetry, literature reviews, and the beginning of the business directory.
The letters in my father’s study I found before escaping detailed ship commissions, past and future. I fear I know which side had the funds and which he’d have connections with through the Seymours and their Virginia coal mines. It curdles my stomach to consider where the money that would’ve fed and clothed us was planned to come from. His dealings with the Seymours were only the tip of the crooked iceberg that C. J. Forsyth Shipbuilding Co. dealt in. While Nova Scotia under British rule may be a neutral party, his company picked a side.
My father was prepared to tack toward whichever way the tides of power shifted throughout the decades. Crafting low-cost fishing ships and transport steamers wasn’t enough. Having happy daughters matched to gentle young men without consequence was unthinkable. When that portrait used to condemn me as a kin slayer was taken, while my sister gulped down cheap, anointed wine, my warmonger father conspired. Everything he did was a stepping stone toward the next greatness he was destined to capture. Greatness churned in blood.
My own failings reflect his: self-importance in the guise ofprotection, ambitions to outplay everyone I cross paths with. What did he shape in me?
