Interred with Their Bones

  I’d been rushing toward the small house in front of me since I’d dredged it up from old memories twenty-five hundred miles to the east, standing among the shelves of the Harvard Book Store. Suddenly, though, I was reluctant to go any farther. If I stood here, it was always possible that the answer I wanted lay just across the lawn, through the thick oak door. If I went in, I might become certain that it wasn’t.

  As I stood there, the moon rose swollen over the thatched roof. Behind us, an expectant hush fell over the theater.

  I don’t know what I was anticipating. Maybe another tucket of trumpets. What happened was simpler. The door to the house opened and a woman emerged, her long black hair glossy in the moonlight. Her back was to us as she turned a key in the lock, but I could see that her skin was as red-brown as the Utah earth.

  “Ya’at’ eeh,” I said softly. It was the only bit of Navajo I remembered: Hello.

  She checked for a moment and then turned. Half Navajo, half Paiute, Maxine Tom was wholly beautiful, with wide cheeks and a laughing mouth. Standing there in a flared skirt, a slinky zip-up sweatshirt, and funky sneakers, a small jewel winking in her nose, she’d have looked at home in whatever the hippest spot of Manhattan was that week, but she’d have felt at home nowhere else but here, in a surreal crossing of Shakespeare and the desert Southwest.

  Maxine seemed to carry a tangle of surreal crossings with her wherever she went. I’d met her when she was finishing up at Harvard and I was starting. I’d thought her all that was brilliant, and I was not alone. Jobs had come flocking her way with a density that was obscene, given that Shakespeare appointments were normally rare. From the flurry of offers, she’d plucked the one she wanted: assistant professor of English and director of a small archival library among the red rocks and juniper of Utah’s high desert.

  Roz had not been happy. I’d been working just outside her office when Maxine had gone in to break the news. I’d heard a frigid little silence, and then Roz had said, “You could have had Yale or Stanford. Why waste yourself on southern Utah?”

  But southern Utah was what Maxine wanted. It was, she said, where she belonged, or as close as she could get, at any rate, to both her father’s people on the Paiute rez just south of town, and her mother’s over in the Dinetah—Navajo-land—and still spend her days with both Shakespeare and students, some of them Indian. After that, the door had swung closed, and I’d heard nothing more. It was a quiet I found ominous, the silence of birds before an earthquake. As she left, Maxine had tossed me a piece of advice like a coin at a wedding, though her smile was flattened at the edges with sadness: Don’t let them talk you out of your soul.

  Now she looked up and her eyes widened. “Kate Stanley,” she said softly.

  Shouting erupted from the theater, followed by a brief clash of swords; her eyes flickered in that direction. “Come on in,” she said. Then she turned back, unlocked the door she’d just locked, and stepped back inside. “I’ve been waiting for you,” she said as she disappeared into the darkness.

  On the threshold, I hesitated. Waiting? Who had told her I was coming?

  I glanced back at Ben and saw him easing his gun into his pocket.

  With a deep breath, I followed her inside.

  20

  I STOOD JUST inside the threshold, aware of Ben standing tense beside me. “Who told you I was coming?”

  “Roz,” said Maxine from the darkness. “Who did you think?” She pressed a switch, and a warm golden glow flooded the space. “If you want to use the archive, you’ll have to come all the way in.”

  I stepped in a few feet farther. Ben didn’t move.

  Crossing the room, Maxine threw open diamond-paned windows one by one, and the scent of roses drifted in on the night air. “What’s going on, Katie?”

  “Just doing some research.”

  She turned, framed by one of the windows, watching me without seeming to, in the Navajo way. “Roz goes to visit you at the Globe and dies there as the place burns up along with its Folio—on June twenty-ninth, no less. Tuesday, June twenty-ninth.” She leaned back, crossing one leg over the other. “Two nights later, you show up here, just like she said you would. Meanwhile, Harvard’s Folio has also gone up in flames.” She looked me in the eye. “The whole Shakespearean world is buzzing about those fires, Kate. I must have a hundred e-mails in my in-box. And you’re ‘just doing some research’?”

  I winced. “It would be better if you didn’t ask questions I can’t answer.”

  “I have to ask one.” She pushed off from the sill. “Are you working for her or against her?”

  The brooch felt heavy around my neck. “For her.”

  She nodded. “Okay, then. You know how the place works. Let me know if you need help.”

  I looked around. The room was considerably more comfortable than I remembered. The wide tables scattered about the gray flagged floors were the same, but they’d been joined by deep chintz armchairs and silver bowls of flowers. The walls were still lined with oak cabinets holding the cards.

  Maxine rolled her eyes in the direction of the main desk, where brass letters read The Athenaide D. Preston Shakespeare in the West Archive, Southern Utah University. “We got a new patron,” explained Maxine. I knew of Mrs. Preston vaguely. An eccentric collector, not a scholar. She was said to be wealthier than Midas.

  I went to the card catalog. There was one set of cabinets for people, one for places, still another for performances, and one for miscellana. I went straight to the “Persons” cabinet, to the Gl–Gy drawer.

  Goodnight, Charles, rancher (read Shakespeare to his cowhands).

  Grant, Ulysses S., General and President (played Desdemona in Texas, while a lieutenant).

  My throat tightened. I flipped to the next card.

  Granville, Jeremy, prospector and gambler (played Hamlet in Tombstone at the Birdcage Theater, May 1881).

  Hamlet! He’d played Hamlet! Suddenly, Granville seemed close, so close that if I turned my head quickly enough I might glimpse him, standing behind me, shimmering and indistinct, like a figure in a mirage, but there.

  I looked back, but saw nothing but the windows open to the theater across the way.

  Up at the desk, Ben was speaking to Maxine in a low, library hush. She laughed, an exuberant laugh that had nothing to do with libraries. It looked friendly enough, but I could see that even as Maxine laughed, Ben kept the door, all the windows, and Maxine in his view.

  Pulling Granville’s card from the catalog, I put one of the pink “card out” slips in its place. Hamlet. That must be what had brought Granville to Roz’s attention in the first place. But where had she gone from there? I looked down at the card.

  Worked in New Mexico and Arizona, 1870s–1881. Arizona mining claims: Cordelia, Ophelia, Prince of Morocco, Timon of Athens; New Mexico claims: Cleopatra, Winking Cupid.

  Granville knew his Shakespeare, all right: Cordelia, Ophelia, and Cleopatra were fairly obvious Shakespearean names, beloved by miners all over the mountain west. But I couldn’t think why he’d picked Timon—as far as could be guessed, Shakespeare had been feeling downright surly when he wrote that play, and as a result, nobody read it out of choice. As for “Winking Cupid,” it jangled a few faint bells as being Shakespearean, but I’d have to look it up to make sure. It was the Prince of Morocco that really caught my eye, though—not because it was obscure, but because it was pointed.

  In The Merchant of Venice, the Prince of Morocco faces a choice of three caskets, gold, silver, and lead. If he opens the one that holds the heroine’s picture, he’ll win the right to marry her. He chooses the golden one, only to find it empty save for a mocking message: “All that glitters is not gold.” The same line Granville had toyed with, in his letter to Professor Child. Arizona and New Mexico weren’t gold states, but I’d been right. Thoughts of gold were more than a passing fancy to Mr. Granville.

  The card referenced several articles in The Tombstone Epitaph. The last line read, Obit: Tombstone Epitaph, Augu
st 20, 1881.

  So the letter to Professor Child must have been written before that date.

  “Finding what you want?” asked Maxine, and I jumped. Both she and Ben were standing right behind me. So much for paying attention.

  “Sure.” I jotted the article dates down on a call slip for the Epitaph. Maxine disappeared into a back room and came back with two boxes of microfilm, marked “Jan.–June 1881” and “July–Dec.” of the same year. I handed Ben the “July–Dec.” box. “Have you ever read microfilm?”

  “Not much call for it, in my line of work.”

  “There is now.” There were two microfilm readers. I showed him how to thread the reel onto the reader and switched on the light. “Granville’s obituary is somewhere in the paper for August 20, 1881.”

  Meanwhile, I went looking for the articles on his debut as Hamlet. The pages skirled by in a dizzying whirl as I sped forward to May and then slowed. There it was:

  A GOOD BET.—We learn this morning that a gentleman of this city, well known in sporting circles, will make his first appearance as Hamlet on Saturday evening next at the Bird Cage Theater. The gentleman plays the part upon a heavy bet of one hundred dollars, viz., that he could not learn the part (one of the largest in drama) upon three days’ study. Said study of the piece is to commence this afternoon in a certain parlor of fine repute. Look out for an exciting time.

  The article did not list Granville’s name, but it branded him as a gambler, and no penny-ante man either. One hundred dollars must have been a whale of a lot of money in 1881: thousands at least, maybe tens of thousands, by today’s reckoning. More than the amount, though, it was the three days’ notice that impressed me. Hamlet was the longest and most taxing of all Shakespeare’s roles. Most trained actors I knew couldn’t learn it in three days. Such a feat would only be possible for someone already familiar with Shakespeare, so that the cadences and rhythms of the language seemed natural. Someone who was a decent storyteller in his own right, and something of a ham…. Either that, or Rain Man, with words instead of numbers.

  I hit the “copy” button and the machine whirred into life.

  The sound of men shouting floated through the window, followed by a clash of swords. Mercutio and Tybalt must have been at it over in the theater, which meant they would both soon be dead. I forced my attention back to the screen, easing the roll of microfilm forward.

  For three days following, the paper carried brief notices about Granville’s progress under the curious eyes of the town’s swells, in the parlor of one Miss Marie-Pearl Dumont, at her exclusive establishment called Versailles. He was rehearsing, it appeared, in a French whorehouse.

  At last I came to the review, its language oddly luxuriant for the newspaper of one of the most violent, anarchic towns in the history of the American West.

  THE BIRD CAGE.—The performance of Hamlet by Mr. J. Granville at the theater on Saturday night last was a highly creditable one, of which our city may justly be proud. Far from tearing the Dane’s torrents of passion to tatters, he delivered them with admirable smoothness. It was caviar, yes, and champagne, too, but such as the general masses could love. In Mr. Granville’s hands, the hero was not the drooping lily so popular of late on Eastern stages, but a robust soul such as even the most rambunctious members of an Arizona Territory audience could admire. With practice and study, we have all confidence that Mr. Granville would make a most capital actor, but we suppose he prefers to watch and prey.

  I copied that page too. Watch and prey. Was Granville a con man, as well as a gambler and a prospector? I felt a jolt of mistrust. Had he been conning Child about the manuscript, and through him Roz—and me?

  “I’ve found the obit,” said Ben.

  “Get a copy,” I said, shifting to read over his shoulder.

  THE BIRD CAGE.—Saturday last, the friends and admirers of Mr. Jeremy Granville, late of this city, took advantage of the presence of Mr. Macready’s troupe of fine thespians to sponsor at the theater a performance of Hamlet in Mr. Granville’s memory. The gentleman in question rode out of town two months ago, intending to be gone for a week, but has not been seen or heard from since. Rumors of a gold strike have led numerous friends old and new to comb the desert for him, to no avail.

  According to those closest to him, Mr. Granville was no aficionado of funerals, though he was well aware that he might be riding to his own when he left for parts unknown, especially with the Apaches on the warpath. We cannot repeat here the exact nature of the gentleman’s reported commentary, but its general tenor indicated that any words that should one day be required to be read either over him or for him should be Shakespeare’s, as pronounced by a player, and not the prayer-book’s, as read by a priest. In this, his comrades deemed it best to follow his wishes. By general consensus, Mr. Macready did him such justice that Mr. Granville’s chief regrets must be that he missed the performance.

  “Look at the date,” said Ben, shaking his head. “Two months before the Gunfight at the OK Corral. What a way to have oblivion shoveled over your head, rumored gold mine and all.”

  “Tombstone’s in silver country, not gold country, and the smarter folks around him would have known that. If there’d been much chance of a real gold strike out there somewhere, that legend wouldn’t have sunk so quickly, OK Corral or no…. I don’t think his gold was literal.”

  His eyes sparked. “You think it was literary?”

  “He shifted All that glitters is not gold around to All that’s gold does not always glitter. I bet he knew exactly what he’d found in that manuscript and had some notion of what it might be worth…. If it wasn’t imaginary.” I showed him the “watch and prey” article.

  Ben shook his head. “If he’d been conning Child, why skip out before taking him? Not after baiting the trap so elaborately. I think the manuscript existed. So the question is, what happened to it?”

  I shook my head. “According to the papers, the Apache were raiding in strength that summer. Maybe they got him. Maybe the Clantons got him, or Mexican bandits did. If he was trailing even the faintest hint of a gold strike, he probably had three quarters of the population sneaking after him. If we’re lucky, he died on his way there, wherever ‘there’ was, and not on his way back. Because then there’s a chance it’ll still be where he found it.”

  “You think we can track him, when his friends couldn’t?”

  “Roz thought she could.”

  “How far is Tombstone?”

  “Five hundred miles. Maybe six.”

  He scowled. “We’ll need food, Kate, before we can make that kind of a run.”

  “There’s a sandwich place two blocks away. The Pastry Pub. Leave it to Utah to come up with a dry Irish pub serving sandwiches at all hours. You go get food, and I’ll finish here—there’s one more reference at the bottom that I want to check out.”

  He hesitated.

  “Go.” I motioned toward the door. “I trust Maxine, and no one else knows we’re here. So just go. It’ll give us a head start.”

  He rose. “Back in ten minutes, then. Wait for me here.”

  As he left, I pulled Granville’s card from the catalog, putting one of the pink “card out” slips in its place, and took the whole card up to Maxine.

  “Granville, huh?” she said, looking up from her computer.

  I pointed to the last line: Photo 23.1875; PE: PC 437. “Looks like there’s a photograph. Can I see it?”

  “That’s easy.” She crossed to a book display labeled “Fellows of the Library.” Lifting a book from it, she set it in my hands. Roz’s book.

  “Voilà, Jeremy Granville,” she said, pointing to the cover photo of the man in the Stetson, holding a skull. Reached over and the book flipping open, she pointed to the credit on the inside flap of the dust jacket: “Photograph of Jeremy Granville as Hamlet, Tombstone, Arizona, 1881. Courtesy of the Utah Shakespeare Archive, Southern Utah University.”

  “That was before we acquired our new name,” she said.

/>   For the first time, I peered closely at the face under the Stetson. Somewhere in his forties, I guessed. An artist had tinted it, giving him ginger whiskers and rosy cheeks. But the thoughtful eyes and the mouth running a little to seed were all Granville’s.

  Maxine looked back at the reference on the card. “PE. That’s for Personal Effects. Clothes, watches, books, papers. He was an actor; maybe there’s a playbill or two from his performances. And a lot of the old prospectors had maps.”

  Someone seemed to have sucked all the air from the room. “Maps?”

  “PC stands for ‘private collection.’ I can call the owner tomorrow, if you like.”

  “Tonight,” I said. “Please.”

  Maxine sighed. Taking the card from my hand, she typed the code into her computer. Peering at the screen, she reached for the phone and dialed a number. A 520 area code, which meant southern Arizona. Tombstone, I thought.

  “Mrs. Jiménez?” Maxine said into the phone. “Professor Maxine Tom here, from the Preston Archive. Sorry to bother you so late, but I’ve got another request to see the Granville collection. A fairly urgent one.” She paused. “Oh, I see. Yes. Yes. No. Very interesting. Well, thank you. And hello to Mr. Jiménez.”

  She put down the receiver.

  “Can I see it?”

  “No.” She was frowning at the phone.

  “Why not?”

  “They sold it.”

  I swore. “To whom?”

  “Athenaide Preston. Don’t tell me—you want me to call her too.”

  “Please, Maxine,” I pleaded. “For Roz’s sake.”

  “Okay,” she said, “I’ll call her for Roz’s sake. But it’ll be you who owes me.” I heard the line ringing, and then the click of an answer.