“Bethesda!” I cry, standing up so quickly that the room spins. The white marble floor seems to ripple under my feet as I rush toward her. I grab the hand that holds the pin and wrench it away from her other wrist. She stares up at me and I’m startled once again by the color of her eyes. That pale blue I noticed this morning is actually a film that has crept over her irises. Flow blue. I hear the words inside my head, but I don’t understand them. What I do understand is the look of hate that emanates from those eyes.
“Haven’t you stolen enough from me!” she spits out. I feel her wrist twist in my grip and break free. She brings up her hand, the pin held out, and strikes for my eyes.
I lunge away from her, my feet slipping on the wet marble floor, and fall against the well. As she comes toward me, still holding out that long pin, I grab one of the white stones and, as she swoops down on me, bring up my arm and smash the rock into the side of her face. For a second the blow seems to make the whole room shake, and then I see something happen to Bethesda’s eyes. The blue film slips away, like water gliding off a stone. Bethesda sits down hard on the floor, blinks, and raises her hand to her face to touch the rising welt on her cheekbone.
“Damn, Brooks, why’d ya—” Then she looks down and notices the pin in her hand and the scratches on her wrist.
Before I can answer—not that I have any good explanation for what happened to her—we both feel the floor beneath us shudder. This time, with my back against the well, I can feel it’s coming from deep beneath the ground. I pull myself up and look over the edge of the cistern. Water is rushing into the well, churning over the white rocks, which have been pushed into a sloping pile blocking the pipe on the north side. Which is why, I suddenly realize, the water level is rising. It has no place else to go.
“We’d better get out of here,” Bethesda says, leaning over the well next to me. “If the water floods the crypt, we could drown.”
I nod, pulling myself away from the frothing water, which seems to have a mesmerizing effect on me. Just as I’m taking my hand away from the rim of the well, though, I feel something rough graze my hand. I look down and see that it’s a rope on the edge of the cistern jerking back and forth. I grab it and tug, but it’s held taut by something under the water. A bucket, I notice, is bobbing free on the surface. Bethesda is also staring at the rope as if trying to decipher a mysterious rune.
“Did David tie the rope to something in the well?” I ask.
She nods. “It was tied to the bucket,” she says slowly, as if trying to remember something that happened days ago, “but then he said he was afraid the water might start rising quickly once he uncleared the pipe on the south side of the well. So he tied it to his waist.” She looks up at me and then we both look down into the dark water.
“I’m going in,” I say. “You stay up here. I may need you to help me get him up if he’s unconscious.”
I hoist myself onto the rim of the cistern and, grabbing the rope, swing my legs around. Bracing my feet against the wall, I lower myself down into the water, gasping at the cold. Above me I see Bethesda’s face leaning over the well, framed by the oculus above her. Snow is swirling across the opening, spiraling in tight circles like the water that wraps itself around my legs. It feels as if the water is trying to suck me, and all of Bosco, down into its maw. I draw in a long breath and go under.
At first, looking down into the water, all I see is blackness, but then, lit by the light from the oculus, I can make out the faint glimmer of white stones on the bottom and, crouched above them, a dark shape. I use the rope to draw myself down through the water. As I reach out my hand to grab him, David turns and his face, stained white from the chalk dust, floats out of the dark, his eyes opened but unfocused. I nearly scream in the water, but then David’s eyes fix on me and they widen with recognition. More than recognition. I can see a look of longing in them, as if he’s been waiting for me all along, there at the bottom of the well. He reaches out his arms and I take his hand, pulling him up toward the surface. For a moment I feel myself being pulled down, but then, with my other hand on the rope, I manage to break us both free of the water’s pull.
We surface, gasping in the cold air, and Bethesda reaches down to help first me and then David over the edge of the well.
“What the hell were you doing there?” Bethesda screams at David. “You could have drowned!”
“I was trying to read the inscription on the pipe,” David says, surprised as I am, I think, at the hysteria in Bethesda’s voice.
“You were willing to risk your life to read an inscription?” I ask.
“I know, I know. I don’t know what came over me. When the water started pouring in, all I could think about was that it might be my last chance to read it. I know it sounds crazy.”
I’m about to tell him that it was crazy, but Bethesda’s nodding as if his explanation made perfect sense. “No, no, of course you had to read it. Were you able to?”
David gives her a smile full of gratitude for her understanding and begins to tell her, but I stop him before he can. “I’m sorry,” I say, “but we just don’t have time for this. Something’s wrong with Zalman.”
Diana and Daria Tate are with Zalman when we get to his room. Daria is scrubbing at the pink stripes on Zalman’s cheeks with a washcloth; Diana is taking his pulse.
“I see you’ve cleared the rocks out,” he says as Diana plucks the thermometer from his mouth, “and unblocked the spring.”
“Zalman’s told me all about the stones in the well, and the bones,” Diana says, shaking down the thermometer. “As the rest of you should have yesterday.”
“We were afraid that a police investigation might put an end to our residencies here,” Bethesda says, stepping forward. I’m impressed that Bethesda is so quick to take the blame. I have a sudden vision of her as a girl at boarding school, facing the headmistress when something got broken or her hall was put on suspension.
“But clearly the police should be called,” I say.
“Well, I don’t know about that,” Diana says. “Those bones have probably been there for a hundred years. I don’t see what good the police will do now.”
“But can’t you see that something’s really wrong here?” I say, pointing to David and Bethesda. I only mean to bring attention to David’s wet clothes and Bethesda’s scarred hand and bruised face, but I realize I was about to say something else—to accuse them of some more personal betrayal. When I look at the bruise on Bethesda’s face, I can almost feel the weight of the rock in my hand when I struck her. The memory appalls me, but I notice that my fingers are clenching and unclenching—as if they missed the feel of the hard rock. “I mean,” I say, pronouncing each word carefully, as if I can’t quite trust what will come out of my own mouth, “David nearly got killed in the well and someone decorated Zalman with war paint—”
“It was Aurora and the children,” Zalman says patiently. “They don’t really mean any harm, but they very much want to have their story told.”
“Like those people who keep calling the office,” Daria says, “looking for a writer to tell their stories. It’s kind of sad, really.”
Bethesda nods. “As if that’s all it took: a story to tell.”
“I’ve always felt,” Diana says, “that there was some kind of force here at Bosco that speaks through the artists that come here. I’ve felt it more than ever this year.”
“It’s because of you,” Zalman says, taking my hand. “You’re a medium. They’ve been waiting for another one since Corinth Blackwell. They want to speak through you.”
“I am not a medium,” I say, the blood rushing to my cheeks, horrified at the thought of anyone speaking through me, forcing foreign words up through my throat and out of my mouth. I turn to David, the only one present who knows how I feel about my mother’s profession, but instead of helping me he gives me away.
“But your mother is,” he says.
“And you grew up in a town full of mediums,” Diana adds.
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“How . . . ?” But then I remember that of course Diana has read my application and knows I was born and raised in Lily Dale—a known center for spiritualists. I just hadn’t thought that that part of my background would be of the slightest interest to anyone at Bosco. I’ve spent most of my life trying to evade the taint of mysticism that clings to me like the scent of Mira’s patchouli incense. This is the last place where I thought it would catch up with me. Now everyone in the room is looking to me as if I were the answer to all their troubles. The one person whom I could count on to express a healthy dose of skepticism is absent.
“Where’s Nat?” I ask, as much to deflect everyone’s interest in me as to find out.
“He was in the kitchen with Mrs. Hervey when I came in from the office,” Daria says, “but then he asked me if he could get some stationery out of my desk, and I told him to go ahead—”
“He’s alone in the office?” Diana says, rising from Zalman’s bed. “That’s very irregular.”
Daria rolls her eyes at her aunt. “I can’t control what these people do,” she says.
“I think we should all be here if we’re going to decide what we’re going to do about . . . about these incidents,” I say. “I’ll go get Nat—”
“That won’t be necessary. I’m here,” Nat says, coming into the room. He’s carrying a stack of files, which he lays down on Zalman’s night table. “How are you doing, Zal?”
“Oh, I’m fabulous, Nathaniel. I’ve always wanted to catch a glimpse of the visionary realm since my days studying Yeats.”
“Yes, you mention that in one of the poems you included in your application to Bosco.” Nat sorts through the folders, selects one, and pulls out a page of typescript. “ ‘Mysticism in the 1890s.’ A good poem. I like it.”
“Why, thank you—”
Diana glares at Nat, her face as pink as Zalman’s had been when covered in war paint. “When the Board finds out that you’ve been going through the other guests’ files—”
“The Board might be interested to know that you’ve been weighting the selection process in favor of artists who are pursuing projects of special interest to you,” Nat counters. “Bethesda’s biography of Aurora Latham; Zalman’s series of sonnets inspired by the gardens of Bosco, coupled with his interest in nineteenth-century spiritualism, Ellis’s novel on Corinth Blackwell and her family history of spiritualism; and David’s research into Lantini’s plans for the garden. Everyone here is doing work on something related to the events that transpired during the summer of 1893.”
“You’re not,” Diana says coolly, the color in her cheeks subsiding. “As far as I can tell, you’re not working on anything.”
“No, you’re right. But I think I’m here for another reason, and it has to do with my family.” Nat takes out a folder from the bottom of the pile. “I was talking to Mrs. Hervey this morning about my family’s old camp on the Great Sacandaga Lake and it turned out she knew it! Why, she even had a picture of it. It seems that it was originally owned by Milo Latham.”
“That’s quite a coincidence—” Diana begins.
“Not half as much a coincidence as the fact that you own it now.”
Diana shrugs, but I can see that she’s even more unnerved by Nat’s unearthing this information than she was by his violating the privacy of the office’s filing system. “Milo Latham promised that land to my great-grandmother and then reneged on his promise. When you mentioned your first year here that your father was selling it, I thought it was a good opportunity to get it back into the family. And yes, I’ve sometimes expressed my opinion to the Board that artists working on projects related to Bosco history should get preference. Why not? Bosco has a rich history; why shouldn’t its story be told? It wasn’t just the family and their guests who were affected by what happened here that summer.”
“Your great-grandmother was the head housekeeper that summer,” Nat says.
“Mrs. Norris?” I ask, unable to keep the excitement from my voice. “Your great-grandmother was Mrs. Norris?”
Diana nods. “You needn’t act so surprised. She had ambitions for her children. Milo Latham promised to send her son—my grandfather—to college for some work she did for him. He also promised her the cabin on the Sacandaga, which was built on land originally held by her family’s people, but then after he died Aurora Latham reneged on both promises. My grandfather worked his whole life here as a gardener and my mother worked here as head housekeeper, saving every penny so that my sister and I could go to college. My sister went to a fancy art school in New York City,” she says, casting a spiteful glance at Daria, “and has squandered her talent in drink. When it came time for me to go, we could only afford a secretarial school in Albany and I couldn’t even finish because Mother had a stroke and I came back to look after her. Evelyn White, the director, hired me as her administrative assistant and when she died, I was made director. No one knows as much about Bosco as I do, but the one thing I don’t know is what happened to my great-grandmother that summer.”
“What do you mean?” Bethesda asks.
Diana smiles. “For all your research into Aurora Latham’s life and your research for your novel,” she says, turning to me, “neither of you have noticed that there’s no record of the housekeeper after that summer. Apparently a mere servant wasn’t of interest to you.”
“I guess I thought she was old and died,” Bethesda says, looking uncharacteristically abashed.
“From what I read in the pamphlet I have, I thought she might have been let go,” I explain, unhappy to be cast into the role of social snob. “It was suggested that Mrs. Norris might have been working with Corinth Blackwell to produce the effects of the séances, but I can’t remember why—”
“Because she was Native American,” Diana says, tilting her chin up defiantly. “She was born in an Abenaki settlement on the Sacandaga Vly.”
“ ‘Vly’?” Bethesda asks.
“It means meadow,” Nat answers. “It was the rich meadowland and marshes in the Sacandaga River valley before the river was flooded and made into a reservoir. My grandfather told me stories about the Abenaki and Iroquois who lived there, how their burial grounds were underneath the reservoir.”
“Are you saying that just because she was Native American, Aurora believed she had something to do with kidnapping Alice?” Bethesda asks. I can tell she’s distressed at the thought that her biographical subject might have been prejudiced against Native Americans.
“Well, there was one other thing,” Diana says. “On the night of the second séance, the night that Alice Latham disappeared, my great-grandmother also disappeared. She was suspected of aiding the kidnappers, which is why Aurora Latham refused to honor her husband’s promises to my family. But I’ve always believed she died trying to protect little Alice Latham—she practically raised her—and that she never left Bosco at all. And now you all may have proven me right. I think the bones in the well belong to my great-grandmother, Wanda Norris.”
“I think so, too,” David says.
Everyone turns to him. He’s hardly spoken since we’ve come into Zalman’s room—except to identify my mother as a medium. I had imagined that he was still stunned from almost drowning in the well. Now, although everyone is looking at him, the only one he’s looking at is me.
“How could you know that?” I ask.
“It’s something I felt when I was reading the inscription.”
“And what was the inscription?” Zalman asks. “I’d like to hear what’s written at the source of the spring.”
“Mnemosyne,” David says, “the Greek word for memory and the mother of the Muses. The instant I read it I could hear someone saying the word aloud, but then the longer I heard it, the more it sounded like Ne’Moss-i-Ne and the surer I was that whoever had been buried in the well was calling on the Indian maiden whose statue is in the rose garden. Who else but another Native American would pray to an Indian maiden? I was so sure of it that when I saw you, Ellis, I thought
for a moment that you were the statue come to life—that you were Ne’Moss-i-Ne.”
David reaches out and gently touches my arm, that same look of longing he’d had in the well burning in his eyes. His hand slides down my arm to grasp my hand, but at just that moment Nat brushes by me, jarring my hand out of David’s reach, and storms out of the room, muttering something about returning the files to the office.
“Excuse me a second,” I say to David. “There’s something I’ve got to ask Nat.”
Ignoring the look of hurt in David’s eyes, I follow Nat into the hallway, catching up to him just as he steps out of the east door under the porte cochere. He wheels around when I call his name and smiles, but it’s not a friendly smile. I notice that his eyes have acquired the glittery green of that old glass bottle in his room.
“You read the recommendation letter Spencer Leland wrote,” I say, “didn’t you?”
Nat looks momentarily startled, but he quickly regains his poise and shrugs, feigning an indifference that comes off instead as coldness. “Yes,” he says. “Apparently I had great promise but a fatal flaw. He said I lacked form and discipline, but that if I found those, I might one day become a very fine writer indeed.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad—” I begin.
“No? Do you want to hear what your mentor, Dick Scully, had to say about you?”
I hesitate and Nat tilts his head back and barks a single “Ha!”; his breath condenses in the cold air into a white puff that hangs between us like an evil genie summoned by malice.
“Or did he show it to you already?” Nat asks. “It certainly reads more like a love letter than a recommendation, but then, Dick Scully always was a charmer and he always managed to pick the prettiest girl in the workshop to seduce.” Nat lifts one eyebrow and waits for me to contradict him, to deny that I was sleeping with my teacher, but of course I can’t.