Seven for a Secret Read online

  Odd, on a policeman’s salary. To say the least.

  “Whatever happened to that negress?” he asked. “The crime victim from t’other night?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea. I removed her from a slavers’ den, as you’ve probably heard. But after that, I don’t know. She’s gone.”

  “Pity,” he said, smirking coolly. “She was an eyeful.”

  Another curt good-bye followed, and I fled.

  Something resembling panic was creeping along the backs of my eyelids. As if I needed a reminder that I was vexed, my scar twitched in petty mockery and I shoved my fingers against it, warding off the tension that would set my head pulsing. I needed my brother. I needed a plan. I needed to blast this day to pieces and sink it beneath the waves like a pirate-ravaged schooner. I needed a cave to crawl into and think things through before the soft edges of the panic hardened and closed round my neck like a noose.

  She’s not cold, I thought as the panic’s slack grip tightened its reins. She’ll never be cold anymore. And for all you know, you’ll never be warm again.

  • • •

  A conference between my brain and my feet to which I was not invited determined that I should go home before I gave the entire affair away by exploding into slivers of ash on some street corner or other. I’m not sorry to have missed the discussion. When I opened my front door, I entered a hearty cloud of orange rind and cinnamon.

  After hanging my hat, I found myself peering down at a small girl of around ten or eleven. It’s impossible to be sure. We don’t know her birth date. It occurred to me that she ought, as Jean-Baptiste had done, select one herself. Bird Daly is an equally discerning, independent-minded sort of creature.

  “Hello, Mr. Wilde.”

  The grin she was wearing belonged on a promontory along the Hudson, to stop more ships being lost in inclement weather. She has a dazzling smile when she likes, and she likes more often now. It changes her entire face, the pale, sober square of it softening into gentle curves. Bird’s dark red hair was done in a prettily worked single plait, and she wore a warm woolen dress of a scarlet hue that didn’t match her tresses in the slightest, having likely come from a Catholic charity box. She resides at the Catholic Orphan Asylum for schooling and takes what comes. The object being that once she’s schooled, she can take what she likes.

  When her grey eyes met mine, the joyful expression crashed to earth in a meteoric descent.

  “Mr. Wilde?”

  “It’s all right. I’m happy to see you. I’m just … happy about nothing else at the moment.”

  “What’s happened?”

  “Is there tea?” I asked of Mrs. Boehm. My voice sounded strangely distant. “Or barring tea, will you pass me the whiskey bottle in my cupboard?”

  Mrs. Boehm made a familiar clucking noise that meant she was very concerned about something, but would defer discussion for the moment. Water from a pitcher promptly splashed into a teakettle. Walking to the table, I sat down and palmed a hand through my dirty blond hair.

  Bird’s fingers lightly brushed my shoulder. Seconds later, whiskey appeared before me.

  A culinary project of continental proportions had been undertaken on the bakery table. The end result looked as if it was going to be tea cakes. Little trays had been set out, dotted with pools of spices and zest and thick batter. Then I recalled that it was Monday, and Bird was missing school in order to visit us thanks to the generous nature of Father Connor Sheehy, and understood.

  “The cakes are for your classmates?” I asked. I didn’t bother hazarding a smile. Bird can read me clear as she can a Democratic political poster.

  Bird’s snub nose twitched as she worked out how best to handle me. Interrogation versus patience seemed to be at war in her head. Having once been a kinchin-mab, she’s very good at it—the handling of people. Children who earn their living in brothels surviving the attentions of adult men have to be good at such things. But my friend Bird has a knack all her own.

  “I thought it would be a flash lark, and Mrs. Boehm didn’t mind.” She squinted, dimpling.

  I released the breath I’d not been aware I was holding. Apparently she was going to allow me to pretend that life was normal, at least for a few minutes. A pinched look of worry had settled between her eyes, but she gamely dipped a wooden spoon into the bowl of batter and passed it to me. I wish to Christ that Bird Daly had never been imprisoned and used like an animated doll for men’s amusement. The thought of it will never cease to make me ill. But her strangely adult gravity can be an unexpected reprieve at times, and I found myself grateful, though I’d have traded it for a display of childish temper in an instant.

  Dutifully, I tasted the spoon.

  “Either you or possibly Mrs. Boehm is the best baker I’ve yet encountered,” I decided. My small friend smiled, a real one. My taller friend shot me an anxious glance.

  Later, I mouthed.

  Nodding, she set the teakettle on the stove.

  I thought about being a child, and not one like Bird: one with parents. As I once was. Helpless and happily unaware of the fact because someone else was doing the protecting. Then I thought about Jonas Adams. His fleet of wooden ships and his shy smile and his round blue eyes. His exceedingly foreboding absence.

  Taking a breath deep enough to reach my toes, I wrenched myself back into some approximation of attentiveness.

  “You’ve been studying sewing,” I mused.

  Bird’s lips pursed. “How do you reckon?”

  “Because you’ve two pinpricks on the fingers of your left hand, and no one told you that you ought to finish off a button with the little knot on the underside instead of the top of your sleeve.”

  “And so? You’ve been spying like a simon-pure nose,” she scoffed.

  “Why the devil do you say that?”

  “Mr. Wilde. It’s from the charity togs. Anyone could have been learning to sew on this frock. You passed by the schoolroom, and you looked through the window last Friday. I spotted your hat. It was me mending it, of course,” she added ruefully. “I’m rubbish at sewing.”

  Smiling didn’t seem quite so difficult suddenly, though I knew the sensation would be very short-lived. “Tell me about school,” I requested.

  She pegged me for desperate, so she obliged. Bird is generous like that.

  Some time later, when the cakes were cooling and awaiting decoration, when I’d listened to her tales of earthworms and grammar and the horrible boy who called her a beetle-eyed vixen, I was near enough to myself again. Mrs. Boehm likewise listened attentively, nodding when I advised that the horrible boy ought to be teased mercilessly for paying any attention to Bird whatsoever and questioned in the closest detail in front of his mates as to why he was looking at her in the first place. Apparently, whiskey at my elbow and a pair of watchful allies are all it takes to pull me back from the edge of mental ruin. That was a nice thing to know about. Comforting.

  “Are you growing to be happy there?” I asked.

  A second or two passed before Bird’s chin jutted up and down in a forceful nod. “I’m very happy. You’d not believe how happy. I’m chaffey as you please.”

  Biting my lip, I hesitated. Bird isn’t allowed to lie if it’s for my sake, since I’m keen to shoulder whatever burdens she passes me. But Bird hammers lies into shields to hide behind, weaves falsehoods into little ships to keep herself afloat, and I couldn’t spot out whether that last fabrication had been for her or for me. Nor how to ask without bullying her. Beneath the queasy anxiety over my discovery that morning, it mightily troubled me.

  “Mr. Wilde,” Bird whispered when Mrs. Boehm had stepped out to feed the yard chickens. She hovered, thrumming with unspoken questions, a few inches from my right elbow.

  “Yes?”

  Her voice fell yet further. “Something happened to you. Was it something like … did you find more kinchin, say? Buried in the woods?”

  Bird and I tend to stay about a foot away from each other—she carries he
rself as if an invisible battalion surrounds her, and I understand why. That is, we keep our distance, barring exceptional circumstances. But this was one, for I’d neglected entirely to imagine what she must have been thinking. So I smoothed a tiny strand of her hair behind her ear in apology.

  “That’s not going to happen anymore.”

  “Do you promise?”

  She spoke guiltily. As if her enduring fear might offend me. That broke my heart a little.

  “I said it already,” I replied as Mrs. Boehm returned. “I don’t need to promise.”

  I hit some mark or other, whether or not it was the bull’s-eye. She nodded. Satisfied, at least for the next five or six seconds. And then, because in several ways Bird and I are very alike, I realized that I needed confession too, of a kind.

  “Bird, might you go up to my room and gather the charcoal and paper? We’ll draw something.”

  “Do you really want those things?” she couldn’t help but ask me.

  “No,” I admitted.

  I’d made it the most obvious ruse possible, knowing she would see through it. Bird—as a deft and experienced liar—can spot a hummer a mile away. But she went anyhow, because Bird is plumber than most anyone else I can think of.

  “Bitte,” Mrs. Boehm hissed on the instant Bird had vanished up the stairs to my room. She sounded almost angry. I wondered why. “What in God’s name has happened?”

  Softly as was possible, I spilled the story wholesale.

  If I could say why I did that, I’d be deeply comforted. At knowing my interior so well and all. I can’t, though. Maybe the events were too big for me and would have seeped out through little splits and fissures if I hadn’t employed the more usual outlet of my mouth. Maybe Mrs. Boehm was a woman to whom the worst had happened already, the unendurably worst, and I didn’t fear hurting her. Her husband and child were dead, after all. Whatever it was, I posted her entirely. Telling the tale was insane, I know. But it felt like necessity nevertheless.

  “And so I’ll be damned no matter what happens, probably,” I realized.

  She twitched an eyebrow, half-seated with one lean flank on the kitchen table.

  “Worse things there are to burn for,” she concluded, “than family.”

  Footsteps approached. Bird deposited the bits of charcoal before me with a long-suffering glare that understood her absence had been what was needed and not means for creative expression. I was about to apologize to her, and tell my friends that I must go find my sibling with all possible speed, when a heavy thud thud thud fell on the front door. My feet were under me in an instant.

  “Stay back,” I said.

  Mrs. Boehm crowded Bird away with shooing sounds while I considered my likeliest weapons. The cleaver looked tempting. I was well spooked by then, after all.

  “Mr. Wilde! If Mr. Wilde is at home, answer for God’s sake!”

  The voice was familiar. My spine still felt taut as a kite string in a whirlwind, but the immediate sense of danger lessened. I pulled the door wide.

  Mr. George Higgins, vigilance soldier by night and by day occupied at a highly lucrative profession I’d not yet divined, stood before me. He looked terrible. In fact, the poor man seemed as much in shock as I was. With a sick sensation, I imagined our distress stemmed from the same cause and wondered how he came to know of the tragedy.

  “I scoured the Tombs in search of you.” Spent, he leaned with one palm against the door frame. “It’s so huge, and I couldn’t find you anywhere. At last I discovered your address.”

  “Bird, I’m sorry,” I called to the anxious girl behind Mrs. Boehm’s rail-thin arm. “Something has happened, and I need to fix it.”

  Her lips tensed into a line. Of course, that look said, something has happened. You utter nimenog. I’ve been managing the wreckage of you all this while.

  “Whatever you need, the answer is yes,” I told Higgins. But I knew what it was. Or I thought I did. By then I supposed that Delia and Jonas must have informed him of the murder.

  “Come with me back to the Tombs, then, at once. We’ve wasted far too much time. Though God knows—I only hope there’s something you can do. I fear there isn’t.”

  Your brother has been arrested, I thought, and will now rot in a Tombs cell until they hang him. If he’s wonderfully lucky, his neck will snap and spare him the—

  “Varker and Coles are old hands at their particular brand of villainy, after all,” Higgins spat out.

  “Varker?” I repeated. My arms were arrowing into coat sleeves.

  “Varker has him. It may well be too late already.”

  “For Jonas Adams?”

  “What? No,” Higgins said, looking agonized. “For Julius Carpenter.”

  nine

  There are few men so hardened against the claims of our common humanity, so utterly lost to the sympathy of nature, as to aid the slave agent in his work of blood. It requires those extraordinary samples of human depravity, which have lately disgraced our city, as police officers and judges, to accomplish such deeds, at which the mind naturally revolts.

  —THE FIRST ANNUAL REPORT OF THE NEW YORK COMMITTEE OF VIGILANCE, FOR THE YEAR 1837, TOGETHER WITH IMPORTANT FACTS RELATIVE TO THEIR PROCEEDINGS

  My circuit at the towering Egyptian-style sepulcher of the Tombs is pretty well established. There’s my closet at the end of a narrow passage. There’s the open quadrangle at the center of the massive hive, where the sky seems very far from the earth and the gallows is assembled on hanging days. Hangings are popular sport among the more vicious of our residents, and the more curious, and among the young philosopher types who imagine they’re more fully experiencing the world. I avoid watching the life snuffed out of rogues whenever possible. But the open square is the quickest route to the prison, and—since I’ve made a fair number of arrests in my six months here, for all manner of crimes—I use it frequently. Then there are the cells themselves, where I bury people alive.

  As for the courtrooms, I’d scarce set foot in them. We’d been addressed by Matsell on day one in a courtroom, but apart from that, I’d only twice been called to give material evidence. The fact I was entering unfamiliar territory didn’t do much to ease my heart, which clenched and unclenched like a piston propelling a steam engine.

  I live five minutes’ hard dash from the Tombs, and Higgins and I took the distance at a jackal’s pace. We talked as best we could, though winded. But there wasn’t much to say.

  “We’d a meeting last night to discuss things,” Higgins gasped. “The rescue, the Committee, the—well, in fact—”

  “Me and the copper stars. And?”

  “Julius never arrived. We thought him late or ill, but on my way home afterward, I checked at his lodgings. He hadn’t returned from work at all. He’s been employed at a chairmaker’s shop since winter set in and construction slowed. I went there at once.”

  “Did Varker and Coles take him quietly?”

  “They dragged him into the middle of the street, put a leg iron on him, and told passersby he was a runaway from Florida. His employers were surprised. But he hasn’t worked there above two months. So they let him go.”

  Stone loomed grimly above us when we reached Franklin Street, blotting out far too much sky. The weird, upward-tapering windows of the Tombs are the height of its full two stories, barred in iron and casting judgment on all who pass antlike through the prison’s monstrous entrance columns. At the threshold, Mr. Higgins stopped me.

  “I went to his house already.” Reaching in his navy greatcoat, he pulled out a folded piece of parchment. “You take his free papers.”

  “Gladly. But why—”

  “Because I’m not white, Mr. Wilde.” His words were bullets, all velocity and sharp points. “I can’t legally testify as to his identity. Do you think I’m too stupid or too cowardly to act as witness myself, if I could? Are you really that dense?”

  “All right. You could be a gentleman about it,” I snapped back.

  A bright gleam of well-
aimed meanness shot through that remark. One I regretted the instant it left my mouth. I like to think of myself as an agile-brained fellow. And so embarrassment—like hurt and helplessness—translates to anger somewhere between my gut and my tongue about nine times out of ten.

  As for Higgins, his eyes turned cindery. “Could I really, Mr. Wilde? Be a gentleman? Heavens, just thinking on it … you truly suppose so, sir?”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, I didn’t mean—”

  “Yes, you did. You could be a man about it.”

  Holding your tongue by nearly biting it off isn’t pleasant, but I prevented making a further ass of myself. It was a near thing, though.

  “In any case, do you think the way I conduct myself has any effect whatsoever on whether or not I am considered a gentleman?” he growled.

  I looked George Higgins over. He was finely clad, tall and agile and self-made. His beard was so meticulously trimmed it looked cultivated, a hedging mask over his rather inscrutable features. As dark a man as I’d ever seen, and as poised a one. There had been something about the way he’d said Delia, it’s me at that wretched slavers’ den that had positively glowed with urgency. Passion, perhaps. I wasn’t yet certain. He wasn’t a docile chap by nature, and neither was he a scrapper, like my brother and me. He was a reasonable man who’d been told countless times, in our rules and our practices and our speech, that he wasn’t a man at all. And it ate away another piece of him every single morning. Tiny holes dotted his heart and his mind as if they’d suffered an infestation of moths.

  “I’m sorry. Fair warning, calling me dense again would be a bad idea even though you’re entirely right.”

  “You’d better try harder, then.”

  He was off again, at a clean, smooth stride through the stone halls. I am a mustard-tempered-enough idiot that some further stupidity might well have emerged from my lips, but Higgins stopped before a wide door.

  My companion entered, beckoning me into the courtroom. Many heads swiveled from the audience benches in our direction. Most native, some Irish, some tourists. A number of uppish sorts educating themselves so that they could better endorse whatever social opinions they already held. Tight-collared ministers, foreign businessmen with wax in their hair and perfume on their wrists. Bespectacled spinsters devoted to serious, salacious causes. Others were poor, and cold, and simply wanted benches. Up on the dais, next to the American flag hanging bright with optimism before the whitewashed walls, sat the judge.