The Gods Of Gotham (40 page)

“We have policemen?” he asked, genuinely surprised.

“We do,” I returned wearily.

“As for Marcas, I wouldn’t know. Might have been anytime, come to think, what with Missus riding the pipe these two days. Marcas was pogy as a sailor yesterday afternoon, could hardly stand up. One of the guests must’ve shared some of his rag-water. He left, you said?”

“Yes. Is anything missing from his room?”

The boy padded around his door and into the adjacent chamber. Looking about, he shook his head.

“Naught. Oh. His journal is generally there, on the vanity. He leaves it out for us. We’ll visit when we’ve a free moment, write notes to each other. Jokes. I don’t see it.”

After a quick search, the diary remained missing. I didn’t see how that could possibly help me, though, and so soldiered on.

“Did Marcas have any particular friends?”

“You mean our sort, or the clientele?”

“Both.”

“Nah, Marcas has a stammer, doesn’t he. An awful one. That’s what the journal is for. We’ll say hullo, he’ll write back an hour later, we’ll read it. Those as can’t write draw pictures. It’s a game we play.”

The lad’s face clouded. There were already worry tracks for the lines to settle in, too. Thicker than they should have been, and deeper than Bird’s. By three or four years, of course.

“You said
did
Marcas have particular friends,” he whispered.

“I’ve got just one more question, and then I’ll explain,” I vowed.

“And what’s that, then?”

“How long would it take you to quietly gather everyone below sixteen who works here, and find them all some shoes?”

There’s some would argue that the precious minutes needed to march six boys—led by my enthusiastic new assistant, John, who turned out to be the eldest—downstairs and away from that pit might have been better spent. I’d not agree with them. And it might have taken a good deal longer, but the harpy with the opium pipe had fully surrendered to it by the time the seven of us left, piss stains yellowing her dress as she snored like a thunderstorm. Supposing I felt like throwing her headfirst in the Tombs, I’d be back. But just then I couldn’t be bothered.

So, all told, it was only two hours later when I arrived back at St. Patrick’s, hoping Father Sheehy had been released by that time. He was in his small rectory garden with Neill and Sophia, sunlight reflecting off his bald head, everyone pruning the tomato leaves and sending their dark, peppery smell seeping into the humid air.

“And what’s this, now?” he questioned when he saw me approach.

“Peter, Ryan, Eamann, Magpie, Jem, Tabby, and John,” I answered.

“God be praised.” The priest grinned. “And here I was certain that nothing on His earth could make me smile today.”

I went home
.

Mrs. Boehm was baking, shoving her palms into the dough, leaning forward with her bony hips. She blew a piece of dull hair away from her mouth as I went over to her.

“Is there a place you can go that’s safe?” I questioned. “For a day or two, with Bird? If I keep the shop locked up and pay you daily what you’d earn? The Democrats would cover it, and I don’t like the cast things are taking. Please say yes.”

She stopped kneading. Sent her watery blue eyes up and down me, calculating.

“My cousin Marthe, she lives in Harlem. Not a long journey. I always mean to visit her. Now would be a good day.”

“Thank you,” I said, hugely grateful. “I need to talk with her first.”

“Thank you,” she returned as I climbed the stairs, “for stealing that horse. Oh, Mr. Wilde?”

“Yes?”

“It was a very good installment of
Light and Shade in the Streets of New York
. Plenty of … interest.” Her lips cracked into a shy smile. “I left it outside your door.”

“Mrs. Boehm, you’re a treasure,” I told her, smiling in return.

Bird wasn’t in Mrs. Boehm’s room. She was in mine, studying the amateur sketches and using my blank butcher paper with a pencil in her fingers. Her square face melted into a tiny smile when she looked up.

“Hope it doesn’t vex you, Mr. Wilde.”

“Of course not. But I’m not lucky enough to have a pencil. How’d you manage to lay hands on one?”

“Mrs. Boehm gave it over. She doesn’t seem as hot at me any longer.”

I sat down with my back to the wall a couple of feet from Bird, dreading what I was about to do. Altogether sour in the stomach over it.

I took my hat off first. Then the strip of cheap cloth. Setting them next to me, I slung my arms over my knees. Just me, and Bird, and my whole face, because she deserved that much, and the memory
of a church door stained with blood. The image lending me some much-needed courage.

“I need to know everything,” I told her. “It pains me, but I do.”

Bird’s eyes turned panicked. Wide and split like thunderstorms. Then she closed them. Soon enough, gave a small shrug. Crawled the few feet over and likewise sat with her spine to the wall next to me, clutching her knees after she’d neatly arranged her embroidered dress, otherwise quiet.

If you want to know what courage looks like, I can’t think of a better picture.

“True, this time,” she whispered.

“True,” I agreed.

We sat there for a little. Then Bird abruptly dropped into the story, and I tumbled along after her, fighting the sensation of falling every inch of the way down.

L
iam wouldn’t stop coughing,” Bird began. Her eyes were fixed very hard on her hands, hands fixed very hard to her knees. “Not for days, and so they sent for Dr. Palsgrave. He was so worried. He snapped at everyone no matter what they’d done, and then begged their pardon after and shared his caramels until he hadn’t any left, and so we knew how it troubled him. Stayed with Liam overnight once, and he hasn’t the time for that,
there being so many children he tends to. Thousands and thousands, I guess. That made us all think that Liam might die.”

“From the pneumonia.”

“Yes. That was before, though, two weeks maybe. Liam began to get well, gain his color back. Because of Dr. Palsgrave, though I’m sure he forgot about Liam the minute he could. But then Liam went outside one day, and the cough came back. It sounded terrible. Next morning, his door was locked and the mistress told us he felt better, but that he needed his rest and we mustn’t plague him.”

Bird stopped. I didn’t nudge her, exactly. Just shifted an inch so my elbow was in contact with her upper arm. She closed her eyes.

“That night,” she said.

“August twenty-first.”

“Yes.”

I waited.

“I came down the stairs, wanting some milk. Mistress never minded if we wanted things of that sort. Extra food. She’s flush enough that the milk is always good, too, she doesn’t mix it with water and chalk to cover the spoiled taste like some of the others said happened in their last houses. I poured some and drank it. I didn’t have—there weren’t any callers, save for one with Sophia, I think. So I went to the front room to see out the window, look at the ladies’ dresses.

“The carriage was there. The one the man in the black hood uses. I knew it by sight, and I went cold all over.”

“Can you tell me what it looks like?”

“Big and dark. Four wheels pulled by a pair. There’s a little painting on the side, but I could never make it out exactly.”

“What did you do?”

“Ducked away from the window. Thinking maybe I ought to hide in my bedroom, having seen what happens when— I’d never said anything about it to anyone. That I’d caught glimpses of us
being carried away. Wrapped in black cloth, but I could tell what was underneath. I’d only broken things and not said anything. Teacups, a lamp once. She never whipped me for it, but her eyes got cold, and I had to be awake for longer for a few days.”

“How long had you lived there, all told?”

“I don’t remember. Ages, polishing the silver. She says I was born there. I don’t know if that’s true or not. I went to work when I was eight, though. I remember that.”

My fingers flexed, but I held my tongue.

“I was already frightened when I saw the carriage. I didn’t want him to come for me, too. But then I was worried for another reason, because … because Liam’s door had been locked, you see, and what if that was because the man in the black hood had come for Liam? I thought maybe this time that I could let him out instead. I liked Liam, he knew bird calls. He said because of my name, I should know them too. We hadn’t gotten to the hard ones yet, he was to teach me more that week.”

Bird had started to cry a little, but it didn’t change her voice so much as a tremor. Tears just silently wetted her cheeks.

“The locks to the rooms aren’t hard to pick. Robert taught me, when I was seven. Anyway, I fetched a thick hairpin from my bedroom and made certain no one was in the hallway. I picked the door open, keeping quiet as I could. Thinking I’d let Liam out the back. There were other bawdy houses he could go to, maybe, or— I didn’t know. Maybe he could get well and go to sea. That’s what I thought. But I was so stupid.
Stupid.
I didn’t look under the door.”

“Why should you have?”

“Because it was completely dark in there,” Bird choked. “If he was there, and awake, his lamp would’ve been lit. And when I did get the door open, and I snuck inside, I was only few feet in, by the edge of his bed, when I tripped over a great bowl.”

I didn’t need to ask what was in the bowl. Not the way her
eyelashes were shuddering. Two terrified moth wings fighting the pull of a tallow candle.

“Did you light a lamp?” I asked instead.

“No. I could see Liam in the starlight on his bed. He wasn’t breathing. There wasn’t any blood in him. It was in the bowl. Just in the bowl. And all over the floor then, all over my dress.”

I passed an arm around her shoulders, very lightly. She didn’t object, so I let it stay there.

“I ran back to my bedroom, where the lamps were lit. Needing the light. I wanted to scream, I think I was about to, so I put a pillow over my mouth until I knew I could be quiet. Then I tied some pairs of stockings together and knotted them to the window catch. I was frightened someone was watching me, so frightened my hands shook. Some places have … holes in the walls. I’d not heard of anyone ever finding one at Madam Marsh’s, but maybe she was too clever for us. She’s too clever for most. But no one stopped me. And then I ran. I couldn’t live there anymore. I never saw the man in the black hood that night. Just his carriage. But I knew what he was about, all along. I knew he would tear Liam to pieces.”

It’s not something I’d have figured I’m any good at. Sitting on the floor with my arm around a skinny ten-year-old kinchin, trying to keep her bones from shaking out of her freckled skin. People might tell me things, but that doesn’t make me practiced at piecing those people back together. And maybe I was as big a milksop as I ever am, and no damned good after all. But God, what a try I gave it.

Bird shivered tearfully. “I’ve felt wrong before, but that was different. The blood was new. Like I’d never get it off. Like nothing would help.”

“I wish I could do something to make it better.”

“Nothing can make it better. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. I just— I liked you. You brought me inside.”

“It’s all right, Bird.” If she gets to lie as she pleases, then by God, so can I from time to time. “You’re no different than I am, and it wasn’t your fault. Not any of it. We’re exactly the same.”