“They don’t. Some reports say it must have been two, as the ship was too grand and powerful to be breached by just one.”
Sibyl sat, eyes wide, thinking back to the closing image of the vision that she had been revisiting, daily, in secret, alone in her rooms for the past few weeks. First came the one explosion, the shattering impact of something striking the hull, which she didn’t see, but rather felt. Then a second, deeper explosion, the one that she could see through the dining room window, that blew itself outward, shooting water and debris into the sunny afternoon sky.
“The boiler,” she remarked to herself, eyes widening. “It must be.” She turned to him, growing increasingly certain the more she considered it. “Ben! Oh, my God.” As the realization dawned on her, Sibyl sank beneath a crushing wave of guilt.
She’d known. She’d seen it. And she hadn’t done anything to stop him going. She hadn’t understood in time.
Benton leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, looking at her with concern. “What is it, Sibyl? What’s the matter?”
“Lusitania.” She moaned, holding her temples between her hands. “Oh, my God, why didn’t I tell him? Why didn’t I say something?”
“What are you talking about?”
She climbed from her chair and knelt before him, searching up into his face, her lip trembling. “Benton,” she whispered. “I was wrong. In that vision. The one I kept having. I was wrong.”
“What do you mean?” Benton looked stricken.
“It must be. In all those times I never actually saw the name of the ship anywhere. I didn’t see the stern, and didn’t find it written anywhere inside. I just assumed . . . I assumed . . .” She trailed off, still on her heels, newspaper dropping to her lap, hands covering her face. Her voice caught in a sob, and she groaned, “Oh, no.”
Benton looked at her strangely, uncomprehending. “I don’t follow. What were you wrong about? Sibyl, tell me. Please.”
She placed both her hands on his knees and said, “What if—” She paused, afraid to give voice to what she was thinking. “Benton, what if it wasn’t Titanic I was seeing after all?”
He frowned in confusion. “What? Impossible.”
“But you said yourself, the image changed as I practiced. At first all I saw was ocean. Then I saw the ship, but it was nighttime. What if I was seeing the ship at night at first because it’s what I was expecting to see?”
“But your expectations never changed. You always thought you were seeing your family’s last moments. You never wavered.”
“You’re right,” she said, looking desperately up into his face. “But, Ben, I was mistaken. I must have been. The daylight? And then at the very end, Professor Friend? I wasn’t seeing Titanic. I was seeing Lusitania! Oh, poor Edwin.” She choked, the guilt and horror of her mistake squeezing the breath out of her like a vise.
“Coincidence. It must be.”
“How can it be? I couldn’t just make it up. Not and have so many of the details be accurate. Things I couldn’t possibly know.”
Benton stood, moving away from her to stand with his hands propped on the fireplace mantel, his head low between his arms. He shook his head, pressing his weight into the mantel, as if he could push the very idea away from him. “What you’re saying,” he said, his back to her. “I can’t accept it. It’s just not possible.”
Sibyl scrambled to her feet, moving near to him and placing her hand on his arm. His muscles tensed under her touch. “Ben,” she said. “It can’t be a coincidence. It can’t be. The daylight? The explosions? Professor Friend being there, without his wife? I couldn’t possibly imagine all those things. Maybe one or two of them, but not all.” Two tears squeezed out from the corners of her eyes. A baby would grow up without a father because she hadn’t understood. “How else do you explain it? I didn’t understand. I failed. I thought I was seeing the past. But I wasn’t. I was seeing the future.”
He spun and looked at her with a wild expression. “Then why would the image have changed?” he demanded. “Explain that. If you were seeing something real, something that was really happening out there, in the world”—he swept his hand out in an all-encompassing gesture—“then it wouldn’t change, would it? What you’re seeing, it’s just dream stuff, Sibyl. It has to be. You put yourself into a kind of . . . a kind of. . . . Oh, I don’t know. A trance. Self-hypnosis. It’s been known to happen, I’ve seen it myself. And then your imagination shows you a cluster of symbols that pertain specifically to you, to your own subconscious mind. That’s the only explanation that could possibly make sense. It’s nothing to do with what happens to people out in the real world.”
“I know. You’re probably right,” she said. “But what if—what if this scrying glass were like playing music? Or—oh, I don’t know—sewing? You can’t just pick those things up and do them perfectly the first time. They’ve got to be practiced. You should see the first pillow I tried needlepointing. I threw it away, it was so awful. And Eulah! Everyone thought she was this marvelous dancer, but she used to practice her steps so much at night that she’d even do it without thinking, while she was brushing her teeth.”
He eyed her, wary. Sibyl tightened her grip on his arm. “She said,” Sibyl tried again, “Mrs. Dee said the scrying glass was for seeing. But she never told me what I might see, did she?”
“She’s a fraud, Sibyl,” he said, and his voice had a chill in it that she hadn’t heard before. “And you know it. The only thing you’re liable to see in that glass is what’s already in your own mind. You’re just sad that Edwin’s likely been lost. It’s grief. That’s what it is. And you feel guilty. But you couldn’t have done anything. None of us could have. The only thing that would’ve saved Edwin is if the Germans didn’t torpedo that liner.”
She released his arm, dropping her hand to her side and squaring her shoulders with resolve.
“All right,” Sibyl said, her voice calm. “So it’s all imaginary. It’s all in my head. In that case, then, there’s no harm in trying again, is there?”
“What do you mean?” He straightened, staring at her.
“If the images I’ve seen are nothing but a collection of ideas in my subconscious,” Sibyl said, “subject to changes that are also within my mind, then the vision should stay basically the same if I try it again, despite what’s just happened. Right?”
“Do you hear what you’re suggesting?” he asked with a wretched expression. “When both your father and I have warned you about the dangers?”
Sibyl’s eyes blackened to the color of obsidian, and she folded her arms over her chest. Standing with her arms crossed kept her hands from trembling. “I don’t care. I’m going to try it again.”
“Sibyl,” he started to object, but she ignored him.
Turning away, she busied herself at her dressing table. Sibyl still had the bottle of laudanum that she had stolen from her father, and it had a few measures of amber liquid left. She lit a stub of candle, tossing the match into the grate of her fireplace, and paused, running her fingers over the wooden box that held the scrying glass.
She mixed a measure of laudanum in the sherry glass that was now a permanent resident on her end table. She carried it, together with the candle and crystal ball, over to the low table by the fireplace and dropped into the chair. Watching her, face bent in a worried frown, Benton lowered himself back into his armchair and knotted his hands together.
“This is a bad idea,” he muttered. But he made no move to stop her. The space between them hummed with sudden tension. The fire popped.
She took a delicate sip from the sherry glass. Oddly, the bitter taste didn’t bother her as much as it had before. She wouldn’t say she liked it, exactly, but she found herself almost . . . anticipating it. While she swallowed the noxious liquid, Benton fumbled in his coat pockets for his cigarettes and leaned forward to light one on her candle.
He leaned back up, inhaling with a squinted eye against the smoke of his cigarette, watching her closely. She took a
nother sip of her laudanum mixture, and as the liquid passed her lips she observed him lick his own lips, unawares.
“It’s all right, Ben,” she soothed, setting the glass to one side and leaning her head against the back of her chair as the intoxicating weight spread through her limbs. “I’m perfectly fine.”
“We’ll see,” he said, still watching her.
She frowned, but put his comment out of her mind. The smoke coiled up from his cigarette, the only movement in the otherwise silent room. She waited until the weight, the wonderful sluggishness, felt familiar, telling her that she had reached the right level for what she wanted to do. Then she opened the wooden box and withdrew the glass from its velvet nest.
The scrying glass’s surface appeared a dull milky blue, shot through with veins of quartz. Sibyl leaned back in her chair, bringing the ball close to her face. She focused her gaze on its surface, where the glimmers of light thrown off by the candle scattered in warm orange speckles. In the background, Benton’s face grew fuzzy and out of focus.
Earlier in the year Sibyl had attended an exhibition of pictures at the Copley Society of Art. Standing in the narrow Newbury Street gallery, she gazed on a painting that at first looked like nothing but blotches of paint, different colors all rioting in a nonsensical mass. She leaned in closer, bringing her nose almost up to the canvas (so new it still smelled of linseed oil), and the colors blurred together. But then, as she moved away, stepping backward one foot at a time, the colors resolved into a recognizable form. If she softened her eyes and stopped trying to see the component parts of the painting, then its internal structure revealed itself—a narrow bridge, arcing over a shimmering pond dotted with lilies. Sibyl gasped with sudden recognition as it happened, and once she saw the image she didn’t understand how she hadn’t seen it earlier.
In some respects using the scrying glass felt similar to that, like seeing without being aware that she was seeing. Sibyl let her gaze play about, not looking at the surface, instead absorbing the interplay of light and shadow. At first she saw nothing. She let her eyes relax. When Mrs. Dee showed her how to use the glass she made a fetish of hard concentration, but that didn’t seem right to Sibyl. Of course, Mrs. Dee was a fake. Or, if not a complete fake, as she claimed, then her fakery long ago eclipsed any real talent the woman may have had.
Sibyl let these thoughts drift through her mind, and set them aside. The spots of candlelight on the orb’s surface glowed, merging together in a web of light and then drawing into the center of the ball. The collected pinpoint of light deep inside the scrying glass began to release familiar coils of rich black smoke. Sibyl released an audible sigh of pleasure.
“Sibyl?” Benton asked, his eyes growing concerned. When she didn’t respond, he muttered, “I knew this was a bad idea,” and took a long drag on his cigarette.
Inside the ball the black smoke thickened, rolling back on itself. Her lips parted in anticipation, looking for the familiar ocean surface. She waited, and she waited, but for some reason, the image didn’t change. The smoke stayed, moving, always moving, but it stayed.
Her eyebrows lowered in a scowl over her eyes, and Benton edged nearer to her, near enough that she was aware of his breath on her cheek, and he asked, “What is it?”
Then, deep within the smoky haze, Sibyl saw flickering lights. In clusters. A flash here. Another flash there. Like lightning, but not quite. Not the cold white light of lightning, but a hotter light, reddish, and each burst attended by tiny bits of what looked like dirt or debris. She watched this rumbling series of explosions within the smoke as it went on for several minutes. Then, with no further clarity or explanation, the lights slowly receded within the coils of smoke, growing fainter and farther away. The smoke drew into itself, pulling away from the surface of the orb until it vanished, leaving the scrying glass perfectly clear.
Sibyl sighed, dropping the ball to her lap.
“Well?” Benton prodded, stubbing out the end of his cigarette and leaning in to hear what Sibyl had to say.
“What?” she asked, shaking herself awake. She was startled to find Benton staring at her with those delving gray eyes. Benton, in her bedroom. What was Benton doing in her bedroom? She couldn’t remember how he had gotten there. She opened her mouth to speak, and when nothing came out he sprang to his feet and fetched her a glass of water from the decanter on top of the vanity table.
She swallowed, grateful, rinsing away the unpleasant aftertaste of the laudanum.
“Better?” he asked. Benton sat down again across from her. She nodded, setting the glass aside.
“Yes,” she said, pasting a reassuring smile onto her face. But the smile was troubled.
“So,” he began. “Was it as you suspected? Was the vision the same?”
She looked him in the face, her dark eyes wide. She shook her head.
He leaned back in the armchair, bringing a meditative hand up to his chin. “Really,” he said.
“No,” she whispered. “I thought it was at first. It started the same, with the black smoke. But then it was completely different. Perhaps I . . . perhaps I wasn’t doing it right this time.”
“What did you see?” he asked. Sibyl could hear in his tone the faintest sliver of doubt.
“Well,” Sibyl said, trying to sift sense from what she had seen. “There was the black smoke, sort of billowing in on itself. That’s how it always starts. And then usually it parts and reveals the surface of the ocean. I waited, but the smoke never parted this time. Instead, there were these sorts of flashes of light. Inside the smoke. Almost like explosions, because after a time it looked as though with each flash of light there was some . . . stuff . . . dirt, maybe? I don’t know. It would go shooting up in the air. But I couldn’t be sure, because the smoke never cleared.”
“And then?” he prompted, hanging on her words.
“And then,” she said, frowning as she gazed into the middle distance between them, trying to remember. “Then, nothing. The lights receded. The smoke went away. And it was over. That was all.”
Benton got to his feet with a strangled growl, as though his thoughts were racing beyond his control. He stalked back and forth in the small space behind the armchair. “Impossible,” he muttered. “I don’t see how it can be possible.”
“Ben!” Sibyl cried, getting to her feet. “What is it?”
He moved over to her and took her hands in his. His grip was warm and dry, reassuring, and Sibyl’s skin tingled from the pressure of his hands. “The vision. It changed, just as you surmised it would,” he said. “You said that if I were right, and the glass only showed you what was in your own mind, then it wouldn’t change. But if it was showing you something real, something true, then it would.”
“Yes,” she replied, searching his face.
“Sibyl, I— There are those who don’t hold that psychology is a science.” He faltered, his grip on her hands tightening. “But I’ve always considered myself a serious person. A scientific person.”
“But of course,” she said.
In his voice, the sliver of doubt deepened. “If what you’re saying is true . . .” he started, then stopped himself, looking down at his shoes. Then he glanced up again. “I think we should test you. In controlled circumstances. Then we’ll know for sure.”
“Test me?” she echoed. His face was close to hers, close enough that she could see the texture of his cheeks, nubbled with beard. She could smell the tobacco on his breath.
He paused, looking down at her, and his eyes filled with a tenderness that she had never seen in them before. He held her gaze for a long, excruciating moment. Sibyl gazed up at him, feeling her heart thudding in her chest. Benton leaned nearer.
“But there’s . . .” he said, hesitating. “There’s something that I’m afraid I must do first.”
“What?” she asked, eyebrows rising.
He brought his hands to trace along the line of her jaw, cupping her face. His thumbs brushed over the corners of her mouth, testing them
. She held her breath, searching into his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “But I have to.”
With that his mouth found hers, pressing there with tingling warmth and urgency. Her eyes drifted closed, relishing the sensation of his lips on hers, the nearness of his body, breathing him in. The perfect feeling lasted only an instant before he broke away, smiling down on her.
“Come on,” Benton said. He took her hands, and gave them a squeeze. “There’s no time to waste.”
Chapter Twenty-three
Harry Elkins Widener Library
Harvard University
Cambridge, Massachusetts
May 7, 1915
Clusters of college boys strode past the marble stairs of the new Harvard college library, their shadows stretched long by the streetlights that dotted the pathways through the Yard, like the shapes cast by a spider perched on a glass lamp.
“Ben,” Sibyl started to say. “I don’t know.”
Benton gave her a mischievous glance. “I’m a professor, remember? They’ll be open.”
The main library vestibule smelled of fresh polish and paint, and their footsteps echoed through an elegant marble hall. Mrs. Widener would be proud to see her considerable fortune so well spent. Sibyl followed close behind Benton into a room lined with wooden card catalogue cabinets.
“Scrying,” he muttered. “Let’s see, here.”
His sturdy fingers riffled through the cards with astonishing speed. Flip, flip, flip, flip, and then they settled on the card they wanted. “Well, Miss Allston,” he said, in a teasing tone, “it appears that there is a single book in all of fair Harvard’s library collections that addresses our subject matter. And it’s in French. How about that?”
“French!” she exclaimed.
“You read French, don’t you?” He smiled. “I thought all proper Bostonian young ladies could read French and play pianoforte and do needlepoint pillows and dance a cotillion.”
Sibyl rolled her eyes. “But of course! That’s how you can tell we are accomplished,” she said, placing artificial emphasis on the last word.