Conjurer (10 page)

“Why should I be?” is the angry retort, then Simms's voice abruptly ceases, and his steps begin treading purposefully toward the door. Rosegger's wife shrinks back within the corridor's shadows as the key is turned decisively, and her husband's door is locked. “Of course Beale drowned. The day watch has stated as much … but this … this hope that Kelman continues to hold aloft for the daughter—”

“You call it hope, Mr. Simms? I would not.”

“Have you no heart, man? The young lady is most distressed. In fact, I have already made arrangements to remove her from the city tomorrow morning. She needs the wholesomeness of country air.”

“Perhaps what she needs is her father, Mr. Simms.”

Whatever Owen Simms replies, Mrs. Rosegger cannot discern; it's a sound that travels through the door as a growl only. If there are words attached, they elude her. Then silence seems to envelop both men.

“I told you I was in, sir,” Simms states at length, but his tone remains bitter and surly.

The reaction to these words is a smug chortle. “In lieu of your master. Yes, you did … But I needn't remind you that fifty thousand dollars is a good deal of capital for a confidential secretary to raise.”

“Are you doubting my abilities, sir?”

“I'm merely observing that Lemuel Beale must be a generous employer. A generous employer who is now either tragically drowned or—”

Owen Simms releases an angry breath.

“Am I not summarizing the situation sufficiently to your liking, Mr. Simms?”

The answer is slow in coming. The tone remains sullen. “What about the cost of the breaking and screening equipment?”

“Included in the original price of two hundred thousand dollars.”

Mrs. Rosegger hears Simms fairly gasp at the number; in her silent place at the door, she suppresses her own astonishment at so enormous and unattainable a sum.

“But what assurances are there, Rosegger, that the city will require our company's services? The Northern Liberties is not an area that would seem to warrant modern amenities such as gas lighting and sewer lines.”

“It will.”

“You seem very certain.”

“I am, Mr. Simms. I am.”

When Beak's secretary doesn't respond, Rosegger eventually continues. “As you know, Henry Derringer, the firearms manufacturer, is up there. Resides in the area, too. On Tamarind Street. Some other fellows I know also keep houses there, private places for entertaining certain personal guests. Then there's Globe Mill, which has forty-seven looms in operation. One hundred sixty men and women in their labor force, and more than twice that number of children. Naturally, it pays the mill owners to employ locally so that time spent away from the looms is minimalized—”

“People who work in mills don't require gas lighting—”

“Perhaps not. But that isn't the point, is it?”

Simms remains silent, and Rosegger's calculated voice moves steadily forward:

“Let us agree—as you formerly noted—that many, nay,
most
of the denizens of the Northern Liberties dwell in a pestilential wasteland with domiciles too near the tanneries, ironmongers, and so forth. But let us also agree that the city is fast becoming the workshop to the world. Gas lighting should surely be available to all its citizenry. Not only the Derringers and other moneyed men of our fair town—”

“Which in turn produces the
appearance
of prosperity and health, do you mean, sir?”

Rosegger laughs lightly. “Which appearance, in turn, induces manufacturing companies to increase, and their labor forces to grow—”

“And the rents on leased property to double or even triple.”

“Or more,” Rosegger agrees, then adds an amiable “It's a shame that your master has vanished from the scene, Mr. Simms. Both he and I own sizable parcels of land in the Northern Liberties. But then, you must be well aware of his numerous investments.”

Simms responds, but his voice is too soft for Rosegger's wife to hear—as are the exchanges that follow. She is beginning to quit her post when a newly energized and incisive question issues from her husband.

“What do you know of John Durand, Mr. Simms?”

“Why do you ask?”

“No reason.”

“Come, man, be frank. Does this subject have some bearing on the other?”

“Durand wishes to meet with me. His letter indicates a good degree of urgency.”

Then the voices hush again, and Rosegger's wife is suddenly aware that one of her children is summoning her, and that the importunate voice is coming dangerously near to where she is hiding.

Covered head to toe in a hooded wool mantle of a weave and texture neither obviously costly nor overtly plain, Emily Durand slithers into the Demport House Hotel on lower Chestnut Street. It's a grand place, spankingly new, full of gilt and velvet and damask. She lowers her shrouded head in quick recognition of just how perilous this rash decision is; she almost decides to flee but then realizes that she's unwittingly attracted the attention of a number of patrons—all male, of course. Hotels only rarely cater to lady guests. She can feel rather than actually see the men regarding her, and she stands, frozen and powerless. It's a sensation Emily has never before experienced.

The smells and sounds of transitory male bonhomie fill her nostrils and ears: pipe tobacco, smoked herrings, onion tarts, shouted opinions, and a coarse and braying laugh that she's certain is aimed at her.
The man assumes I'm the hired companion of a hotel patron
, she tells herself; and the thought makes her heart beat violently and blood race into her brain.

She hurries across the crowded reception room and almost leaps upon the double stairs, where she must purposely slow her stride in order to avoid running upward. Within the thin kid of her glove, the hand grasping the banister is drenched and icy. Emily gasps for air; her vision blurs; she pushes on. By the time she reaches the hotel's third floor, her body is almost not her own. She hurries to the end of the corridor and raises her hand to knock upon a door.

The turnkey twists the jangling metal in the thick lock. Ruth hears the sound and shrinks back against the stone wall until her body is almost fused with its rough surface. Beneath the thin wool of her garment, she feels rock jab at her flesh.

“Won't do you no good,” she hears as the man removes the key and enters her cell. With him come the light and the view of the corridor, the sight of other doors, the miracle of noise. Ruth's eyes dart past the turnkey; she hears an iron pot banging against a wooden surface; she hears a singsong moan issuing faintly from a cell to her left.

“Won't do you no good trying to hide there.”

Ruth doesn't respond, and the turnkey throws a dark sack toward her. “Cover your face,” he orders.

She takes it up; panic rattles within her chest. “I cannot—”

“Cannot or will not, missy? Cover your face, and be quick about it.”

Ruth gazes at the guard's pale countenance. “Please, sir … Don't …”

“Hurry it up. I'm not here to gab.”

Despite her own sternest exhortations to the contrary, Ruth begins to weep. “Please, sir …”

“Cover your head, I said!”

Ruth raises the mask. It stinks of fear. She pulls it over her hair. The turnkey yanks it into place, scraping her neck and collarbone. Ruth quivers, then forces herself to stand defiantly still.
Thy people shall be my people
, she thinks,
and thy God, my God
. Bile rises in her throat as she decides:
No, their people are not mine. I'm not like them, nor will I be. Not ever. I will be Ruth, black Ruth. I will be hard where they are soft, fierce where they tremble
.

When the guard grabs her, she shakes herself free. “Suit yourself,” he barks. “You refuse to see the Warden, no one can make you, I s'pose.”

Ruth's covered head jerks up.

“Thought that'd make a difference. Suspicious wench, ain't you? Thought I'd come to have my way with you, didn't you? That would be the rare day, when I'd rely on Negresses like you.” He shoves her into the corridor, then looks back before banging the cell door shut. “Anything you want to take?”

Her head now thoroughly shrouded in the sack, Ruth doesn't answer.

“Suit yourself.”

Awkwardly, they walk through the compound, the guard half pushing, half guiding, as Ruth tries to peek at her feet through the bottom of her mask. They cross the upper corridor where she was housed, then stumble down a steep flight of stairs that feel wet under Ruth's thin shoes. The guard propels her forward through another silent hall, then finally out into the cold afternoon air. Ruth jumps in reflexive surprise. Her head still wrapped, she looks up, imagining she's gazing into the darkening sky, the moon perhaps beginning its faint glimmer, the skeletal branches of the trees reaching longing fingers toward each other. Despite the rough fabric covering her nose and mouth, despite the stench of the prison, she smells freshness and hope. She's out of doors. For the first time in nearly three years, she stands within the sight of Heaven.

The turnkey shoves her forward, then hands her to another guard. “B415,” he says to this person. “To the Warden's office.” Ruth passes ahead in wondrous silence, then is pushed through a door, which shuts behind her with a bang. The space in which she finds herself is warm, scented with wood smoke, tobacco, and a metallic aroma like polished brass. She's told to remove her hood.

“Ruth, maid-of-all work, beggary, larceny.”

The man (Ruth assumes it's the Warden) looks up at her from a chair that sits behind a long oaken desk. His face is as translucent as an ear of summer corn; his fair hair is silken.

“I am Ruth,” she answers.

The Warden appears disturbed by her quick reply. “You are free to go,” he tells her after a moment.

“Go?”

“Are you dull-witted, girl? Leave the penitentiary. Go away from this place.”

“But—” Ruth begins.

The Warden interrupts. “I have no time to spare in argument, girl. You will present your prison clothing to the matron and receive, in return, the garb in which you arrived. Then the gate facing Fairmount Street will be opened, and you will be set free. It is the prison managers' fervent hope that these months and years of enforced reflection and meditation will have proven instructive, and that you will have been forever reformed from your evil ways. It is also our fervent hope that you will become what God intended, a willing and exemplary citizen of this fair city, and that you will apply yourself to wholesome work and so resolve to strive to live a pure and righteous life.” He returns his glance to his desk to indicate the interview is over.

“My son?” Ruth asks.

The Warden looks up, annoyed. “I know of no son.”

“My little Cai … He was—”

“I know of no son.”

A spirit of rebellion overtakes her. “My Cai … He was with me in the court. A little boy with the falling sickness—?”

“Your affairs beyond these walls are your own.” The Warden resumes perusing the sheaf of papers lying upon his desk. “Insolence will force the penitentiary managers to reconsider their leniency. Take care, girl.” Then he adds a curt and bitter “And if you happen upon a club-foot tailor limping along in some secretive alley, you should consider it your duty to alert a member of the day watch.”

“A tailor—?”

The Warden sneers. “Never mind. We'll catch the miserable fellow quick enough. He won't find it so easy to escape from this fine house.” The tone that utters these words is filled with both resentment and revenge.

“Escape?” Ruth echoes in fear.

“Are you stupid, girl, that you must repeat my words? Yes, that's what our unfortunate tailor did, and the managers don't look kindly on that type of transgression. When we haul him back in, he won't find his life so easy. But you've won your freedom honestly. Now go.”

What seems like mere moments later, Ruth stands in the street, a free woman. Dray horses pulling great carts rumble past. Bone-thin dogs dodge between the wheels; some hurriedly bury their snouts in fresh and steaming piles of manure; others bite the carts' wood siding as if remnants of food can be found there; all dart about as though anticipating blows and hard-booted kicks. Ruth has forgotten how noisome the city is, and how unfriendly. The day is now waning; evening will soon approach; and she has no place in which to lay her head, no coin with which to purchase her supper, no friend she can remember.

She plunges into the melee and begins the two-mile walk down into the city proper.

“Aimilee … bimba triste. Non piangere.”

Emily's quite dry and untragic eyes sweep around Eusapio Paladino's rooms. She spots his assistant, hunched and watchful in a corner; and the little man's pose, rather than appearing sinister and fearsome, emboldens her.

“What do you wish from me?” she demands. “If it's money, I won't supply it.”

But all Paladino responds is a lilting
“Aimilee … Non piangere.”

“I'm not crying,” Emily insists. She stands taller, statelier, although even as she strikes this pose she remembers the reflection in her mirror: the woman she didn't recognize, the one with the sorrowing eyes. “If it's gold you're seeking—”

“Bimba triste,”
Eusapio interrupts, and the toadish assistant hurries to translate:

“Sad little girl—”

“Yes. Yes. I know that,” Emily briskly interrupts. “Ask him what he wants. I cannot stay here all day.”

A swift consultation ensues; Emily cannot understand a word of it, but as she tries to ascertain its sense her eyes take in Paladino's rented rooms. She's shocked to see a large and canopied bed through the open door, and even more disturbed to note her reaction to such an inappropriate scene: “Voluptuous” is the word that springs to mind. The bed with its hangings, eiderdowns, and pillows seems as hedonistic as a pasha's lair.