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  It was a clear, cold night, the leaves crunchy with frost. It smelled like snow, but for now the clouds hovered on the horizon leaving the sky a layered scrim of stars. She was glad for the shawl, but wished she had put on a hat. She crossed the courtyard and dumped the slops into the foul wooden barrel that sat behind the box hedge and was just turning back when she saw a dark figure standing in the shadows. An abrupt memory of her grandmother’s warnings about white slavers sent a crackle of fear through her.

  “Who is it?” she called out, trying to sound brave.

  “Ever look at the constellations, Lulu?” It was Madame, her thin shawl thrown around her shoulders, her head tilted back, her eyes on the sky. She was shivering but seemed unaware of the cold. “It’s a good night for it. Look, there’s the Great Chariot.”

  Reluctantly, Lucia glanced up at the sky. “I don’t see a chariot.”

  “See? Right there.” Madame Curie came over and pointed up at the stars. “Here, follow my finger.”

  Lucia did not want to, although despite her effort to stay aloof, she found herself following Madame Curie’s pointing finger.

  “See? There is the box and there is the shaft. Can you see it now?”

  She could see it and said as much, forgetting for the moment that she was supposed to be upset.

  “It’s part of Ursa Major. You know Ursa Major?”

  She shook her head.

  “It makes up the tail of the Great Bear and its hindquarters. See there is Merak and Dubhe. See the two stars? They’re neighbors. Now, come closer. If you move away from Duhbe and go over there to that bright star”—Lucia leaned in to follow her mistress’s finger and got the smell of wood smoke and unwashed hair—“you come to Polaris. It’s not the brightest star in the sky, but it’s brighter than the others in the constellation. Can you see it?”

  Lucia nodded. She loved looking at the stars. Babusia always called them God’s quilt. She often imagined the angels in heaven snuggling down beneath them.

  After that there was an explanation about Polaris, how it was important to sailors and to celestial navigation. Madame Curie explained that it was also called the North Star and that the entire northern sky rotated around it and that’s what made it so important if you wanted to know where you were going.

  While Madame went on, Lucia’s mind began to drift back to the laboratory, to the pile of pitchblende in the corner, to the noxious fumes, and the boiling mass. “Why do you work so hard? Why do you keep going?”

  Madame Curie hesitated before answering. “I’m looking for something, Lulu. Something important. And I think I’m about to find it.”

  “The miracle rays.”

  She laughed. “Yes. They are a miracle I suppose. At least they seem that way. But that’s because we don’t know enough about them. They are breaking the rules, you see.”

  “Energy out of nothing.”

  Madame gave her a sidelong glance. “You’ve been talking to Papa.”

  “I was curious. Is that wrong?”

  Madame Curie stopped and regarded her with a look of sudden interest. “No, that is not wrong,” she said. “In fact, that is right. Very right.”

  She stood there a moment longer and then pulled her shawl up around her shoulders and started for the stairs. “Come along, Lulu. Put on your woolens. We’re going out.”

  “Now? But it’s late.”

  “Dress warmly. The clouds are blowing in. It’s going to snow.”

  A few minutes later they were dressed for the cold and climbing back down the stairs. They stepped out into the frosty night just as it was beginning to snow, flat white paddies drifting through the lamplight. They walked the few blocks to rue Lhomond, to the hangar in the courtyard. It was dark and Madame had to fumble with the key in the lock. When she finally got it open she stepped inside, leaving Lucia to stop at the threshold and gape in amazement.

  “What’s this?” she whispered, astonished and alarmed by what she could not explain. She looked around at the jars of solutions on the shelves, clear and colorless in the daylight but glowing blue in the dark. It was like nothing she had ever seen before. It was some kind of magic. The entire room was glowing blue. She thought this must be what a fish sees swimming in a lake, looking up through the layers of sunlit water to the surface. The jars shimmered blue like the robes of the Blessed Virgin Mary, blue like the sky in heaven, not of this earth, of another realm, ethereal, and frail. And in that moment Lucia realized it was everything she had been waiting for. The reason Saint Lucyna sent her to be with this odd family. Here was the Blessed Trinity, made visible for human eyes. God was in this room with them. This was his light.

  “It is so lovely,” she breathed. So lovely, in fact, that it nearly brought tears to her eyes. “Some kind of miracle,” she murmured.

  “No. Not a miracle.”

  “What then?”

  “Radium.”

  “What makes it glow like that?”

  “Radioactivity.”

  “And what makes the radioactivity?”

  Madame Curie smiled. “Exactly.”

  II.

  CHAPTER 7

  March 1903

  Morris Arlington was not one for the ocean. He hated swimming in it or traveling on it. Even the smell of the briny air or the feel of sand between his toes set his nerves on edge. He was never one to stand on the shore and watch the waves roll in with nauseating regularity, which is why he lived in Cincinnati, about as far away from the sea as anyone could get. Unfortunately, he was often called to Europe and while he could usually put off one or two trips, there inevitably came a time when he had to make the crossing. When that time came he employed various strategies for surviving an ocean voyage, some better than others, although none were as effective as staying home.

  On this particular trip, he and his wife arrived in New York City a few days early and checked into their little hotel on the West Side across from the park. It was not a particularly fashionable establishment, but a comfortable one where they were known and where they could count on good service. As soon as they were settled, Arlington laid down for his nap, while Edith went to the shipping office to look over the passenger list.

  She wanted to find a suitable cabin mate for Arlington. Since she rarely made the crossing herself, he would be required to share his cabin with a stranger. There were always problems living in such close quarters with someone you didn’t know, but he had strategies for that too. For example, he had found over the years that it was best to book a cabin with a fella employed in a conservative occupation, like a minister or a banker. The thought being that a man of the cloth or a bank manager might naturally have healthy habits: one who kept early hours, a moderate drinker, a fresh-air enthusiast.

  Unfortunately, occupation alone didn’t always guarantee that. On one painful crossing, Arlington shared his cabin with an accountant who had a story for every occasion and liked to tell them well into the night. On another trip, his cabin mate, a recently widowed dentist, refused to keep the porthole open even in calm weather. It was a mystery to Arlington why anyone would pay extra for a deck-cabin and put up with the noise of the promenade deck only to keep the porthole closed. The whole point of a cabin above decks was fresh air.

  Edith came to see him off on the day he was to set sail on the S.S. St. Paul bound for Southampton. They arrived in a cab and had to wait their turn on the wharf so they could get closer to the stevedores, who were loading the trunks. The wharf was mobbed with passengers and visitors, stewards, longshoremen, and hawkers. The second- and third-class gangway was crowded with passengers, an undulating mass of parasols, hats verdant with vegetation, men in homburgs and straw boaters shuffling up the gangplank with suitcases in hand.

  A band played somewhere on the upper decks while stewards and bellboys in crisp uniforms hurried about, seeing to the first-class passengers and their luggage. Edith forged on ahead to the second-class dining room, the first of many stops to see to Arlington’s requirements. She was
a breathlessly pleasant woman, well mannered, diffident, and agreeable, who liked nothing better than to compliment and thank those who served her. However, when it came to securing her husband’s comfort, she could be demanding and even unreasonable on occasion. Once or twice she had lost her temper in public.

  It had been a great sorrow to Edith that she could not have children, although Arlington never minded. Nevertheless, one of the consolations of being barren was that she was able to keep her figure well into her thirties. The other, at least as far as Arlington was concerned, was that she seemed to have an endless supply of time and energy to devote to his endeavors, a circumstance they both came to expect.

  That morning she strode into the dining room, found the head steward, and told him to reserve a table in the center of the room. She always booked a table there for steadiness. Then she spent an hour meeting passengers on deck and in the lounges, until she found just the right people to fill it. Since Arlington would be sitting at the same table throughout the voyage, Edith knew it was important to people it with an interesting, lively group. After that she booked Arlington’s baths with the bath steward and his midmorning and late-afternoon tea with the cabin steward, checked in with the purser to make sure his trunk was accounted for, inspected his cabin, and put out a framed photograph of herself on the nightstand.

  By the time the Blue Peter flag was hoisted up the foremast signaling one hour before castoff, Edith was in the lounge having coffee with Arlington. She lingered there until the big horn blew, said her good-bye on the gangway under a hail of bright streamers, and blew him two kisses from the wharf as the tugs got underway. He felt like a fool returning them, so he didn’t bother.

  Arlington spent the next three mornings in a steamer chair under a heavy blanket with his eyes locked on the horizon because he had read somewhere that it would calm his stomach. He made a point not to look at the choppy waves tipped with white foam—instead focusing on the faint gray line where the sea met the sky. He avoided using words like rolling waves and omelet, because they tended to bring up what little was left in his stomach. Despite these precautions a good deal of his morning was spent within easy reach of the railing.

  On the third morning they were locked into a fog bank that blanketed the sea and left a filmy layer of moisture on the jacket of his unread book. The steward came by at midmorning to bring him the tea his wife had ordered. Arlington liked it with milk, but she specifically left word to leave it out as she knew how he would be feeling on those first few mornings. The clear broth arrived at noon just as the fog was beginning to lift; he didn’t have the stomach for it and left it to grow cold on the little table beside his chair.

  Arlington was a big man, over six feet tall, with the body of an athlete. He prided himself on his rigorous regime of healthy diet and exercise. Every morning at home he sat in the sauna by the side of the house and then jumped into the nearby pond to invigorate his pores and get his circulation pumping. Each month he fasted for two days, and, believing in the efficacious properties of tobacco, allowed himself a cigar every night. He knew that anyone looking at him would not think that any part of his body could be weak. Yet his stomach let him down during every crossing, laying him low and causing him much embarrassment. So much so, that for the first three days, sometimes even four, he would have little to do with his fellow passengers, shunning any activity that required him to get up from his steamer chair or berth.

  “Mr. Arlington, let me introduce myself,” the stocky gentleman said, as he held out his hand. “Professor Lilliman. Pleased to meet you.”

  Arlington had seen the fella approach but assumed he was going for one of the empty chairs down the row. He was sure they had never met before, although his face did look familiar: the bland watery eyes, the moist, eager mouth, the thicket of coarse gray hair combed neatly to one side. A man of his age had no right to so much hair. Arlington’s had thinned considerably in the last few years, to the point where he felt more comfortable wearing a hat than not.

  After they shared a brief handshake, the trespasser continued: “I’m not actually a professor, mind you. That’s only my stage name. My real name is just plain Lilliman. Alfonse Lilliman. I’m telling you this because I want you to know that I’m being honest with you.”

  Arlington knew that he should invite the fella to sit down, but he didn’t want him hanging around. He had no idea who he was and didn’t want to find out. Though, it was somewhat gratifying to see how his powers of observation had not dimmed despite his present misery. It was obvious that this poor fella lived on a diet of starches, fats, and salt. He could tell that in a glance by the yellowing whites of the man’s eyes, his sweaty palm, and his pasty complexion. This was not a healthy man.

  “You all right, Mr. Arlington?”

  “Yes, ’course I’m all right,” Arlington replied, with as much conviction as he could muster.

  The man looked a little dubious but went on. “You may have seen my poster in the lobby—Professor Lilliman, Test Medium? I’ve been hired by the line to perform in the Regency Lounge on alternate nights. I get a pretty good crowd in there. Can’t say it’s me who brings them in. We’re on a boat in the middle of the ocean. Where else are they going to go?”

  Arlington gave him a nod, for any other movement in that moment might have proved disastrous. The Regency Lounge was where they served breakfast. Breakfast brought up eggs, and eggs brought up omelet. “What is it that you want, Mr. Lilliman?”

  “Well, when I heard that you were on board, I’ll admit it did make me a little nervous. My wife urged me to speak to you. She said you looked like a reasonable man.”

  “Speak to me about what?”

  “About my performance. Of course, I know all about you and your work. I’m a member of the SPR.” Arlington was the president and a founding member of the Society for Psychical Research. “I get the newsletter. I read about Mrs. Boyne and the Martin sisters. I’m just a showman, Mr. Arlington. I only wish to entertain. I’m not really a medium. I do tricks, not very good ones, but people go along with them. They are generally nice and forgiving. They like to be entertained, so they make it easy for me.”

  “And what’s it got to do with me?”

  “The thing is my wife and I agree that someone of your stature, exposing the best as you’ve done over the years, well, someone like you is bound to see right through me. So, that’s why I’ve come to you. I don’t want you to give me away. It’s all for fun, you see. I don’t hurt anybody. I just give them a good time.”

  “Mr. Lilliman, you’ve got nothing to worry about. I’ve no desire to expose you. I won’t even be attending your performance, so I won’t have the opportunity.”

  “Mighty decent of you, Mr. Arlington. The wife will be much relieved. She was having bad dreams ever since we left port. Afraid they would tar and feather me or some such malarkey.” Here he paused as if trying to decide if a handshake was in order. “Yeah, well, I won’t trouble you again. Get some rest. And thanks again.”

  By the time Arlington returned to his cabin he had to admit that he was feeling better. He was even hungry and ate a few slices of dry toast. After that he straightened up and organized his things. Fortunately, his cabin mate was out—a chiropractor from Columbus, a regular sport. The man had thoughtfully left some room in the closet and had lined up his things neatly in the lavatory. Arlington hung up his shirts, put out his shaving kit, threw out the tea that had been ordered for him, and put his wife’s photograph back in the trunk.

  Four days later the ship docked in Southampton and then it was on to Le Havre by ferry and finally the train to Paris where Edith had booked him and Eusapia Palladino into the Balmoral in the rue de Castiglione. He had braved the Atlantic Ocean, spilled his vitality on the rolling waves, all because Sapia was doing a series of sittings for some of the best scientific minds in Paris and he could not trust her to do it on her own.

  On the night of the first sitting Arlington lingered in a corner of the hotel lobby,
half hidden by a dusty palm, waiting for the illustrious Eusapia Palladino to make her entrance. After a half hour or so she stepped off the lift like the grande dame she imagined herself to be, a monarch striding forth among her people, shoulders back, head up, chest out, eyes straight ahead. She was a plump woman in her fifties, not elegant or attractive, but substantial, a solid presence, heavily corseted in her full skirts. Her eyes were her best feature; dark and deep set, they gave her the requisite air of mystery. Arlington suspected that without them she would have looked like what she was—a coarse Neapolitan peasant, barely literate, who had somehow stumbled upon an extraordinary gift. For all her faults he knew her to be the most talented medium in Europe, perhaps in the world, which is why he put up with her balderdash.

  It was her habit to wear her black hair swept back off her forehead, prominently displaying a swath of white hair growing on the left side of her scalp just above the hairline. It was said that she acquired it after an accident when she was a baby and that it was a sign of her powers. On several occasions, while Sapia was entranced, Arlington and the other sitters felt a breeze coming from that spot. Not a cool breeze, but a definite movement of air.

  Arlington could gauge her moods just by looking at her. She didn’t speak a word of English and neither of them spoke French well, yet the moment he saw her walk into the lobby with its dark wood paneling, faded chintz, and hoity-toity English tourists, he knew she was in a good mood. That made him happy and a little nervous.

  He hesitated just for a moment, a heartbeat really. The phrase girding one’s loins came to mind as he lifted a hand and walked over to greet her. She seemed calm, and that wasn’t like her. Usually, she was self-absorbed and histrionic. Her composure was unnerving and at first he didn’t know what to think about it, until he bent down to kiss her cheek and smelled the alcohol on her breath.

  “You’ve been drinking,” he muttered, as he escorted her out the door.