Seven for a Secret Page 15

  • • •

  I kept Julius under guard in my office while Higgins ran for a stretcher. A wheelbarrow, a handcart, a sleigh. A dog and a sled. Anything. Thankfully, when he proved unsuccessful, the pair of spindly British abolitionists still lurking about like playgoers at a stage door offered their private carriage to convey the freed man to the residence of Mr. George Higgins. That gentleman—of course he was a gentleman, the things that emerge from my mouth at times genuinely frighten me—having insisted that Reverend Brown’s medical care would be much preferable to suffering the smallpox aroma wafting through the colored wing of New York Hospital.

  Higgins was right. So I didn’t argue with him. Learning quickly is one of the few redeeming aspects of my character. Anyhow, from my own brief but careful emergency investigation in my office, Julius’s injuries required more nursing than doctoring. They seemed to be upward of forty lashes, a head injury that explained the fainting spell, and a cigar burn on the right forearm.

  I’ve no wish to diminish the extent to which those injuries pained Julius. They must have been excruciating. But they hurt me too, in another sense, and George Higgins was likewise inwardly smoldering when between us we deposited our friend on the seat of the abolitionists’ carriage. The starch-collared Britishers looked as if they’d won a lottery prize of some sort as they drove off. That was bully. At least someone was having a pleasant afternoon.

  The plummeting violet darkness of February greeted me when I found myself alone on the Tombs steps in the late afternoon, staring at the tracks left by the enthusiastic abolitionists’ carriage. Finding Val could wait no longer. Diving back into Franklin Street, I headed north toward the Ward Eight station house. A narrow alley divides the block between White and Franklin, a common shortcut for the copper stars, and I took it, pulling my muffler up to my ears and attempting to ignore the faintly nauseous feeling of not having eaten since dawn.

  Then a shadow crossed the path ahead, and I paused.

  A hulking figure loomed at the end of the alleyway. Its posture in stillness was weighted to one side—a threatening, almost feral stance. Nevertheless, there was elegance in the curve of the heavy hand, in the unhurried gravity of such a large, potentially clumsy form.

  I’d envied that unstudied air of cool savagery for decades. Even when it infuriated me.

  “Val,” I said. A monumental weight left my shoulders just at the sight of him. Only to crash back into place.

  He didn’t know. Couldn’t know.

  “Evening, Tim.” My brother’s voice was calm. But he doesn’t normally stand like a pugilist for my benefit, and there was no one else in the corridor. “I gather you’ve spent your holiday at policing.”

  “Valentine, I found—”

  “Nish,” he interrupted, ordering me quiet. “I was looking for you, and I went to your ken. That Mrs. Boehm is a square shakester, blew the whole gab.”

  So he did know. Mrs. Boehm had told him. I didn’t have to say strangled to death again, or left the corpse in an alleyway under some old newsprint either. My brother made a neat about-face and exited the passage the way he’d come while I struggled as usual to keep up.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Someplace safe where you can whiddle me the scrap.”

  “Good,” I murmured. “That’s good. Then we need to find Jonas and Delia. If Coles and Varker have them, I don’t know where. They aren’t at the wine shop by the docks. We need to start searching.”

  “So we will, once you’ve told me the tale.”

  “Val, Silkie Marsh is involved in this somehow. She just testified at the Tombs for Varker and Coles.”

  Valentine stopped dead in his tracks.

  “Silkie Marsh.”

  “Yes.”

  “Silkie—who loathes us from cap to boot soles—has joined ranks with the blackbirders. The blackbirders we bunged up proper and then robbed of two captives.”

  “Apparently, she often provides testimony for them. And it’s three, now. I’ve just helped recover Julius Carpenter.”

  This information required a moment for Val to absorb.

  “Are you trying to get us croaked?” he wanted to know.

  “Of course I’m not—”

  “Close your head. Of all the— Jesus, Timothy. The theme is ware hawk from here, do you understand me?” Val demanded, plunging into the void of another corridor. “Silkie Marsh. Doesn’t that beat the Dutch. Christ almighty, Tim, if the pair of us are still healthy by the end of this week, I will be very pleasurably surprised.”

  ten

  He chained the large boys two and two, but not the small ones. They travelled generally on bye roads. Were not permitted to talk to anyone they met, always encamped out. Were severely whipped by Johnson, for saying we were free.

  —INTERVIEW WITH KIDNAP VICTIM PETER HOOK OF PHILADELPHIA, 1826

  My brother kept to back alleys at first, where snow lay piled in chest-high drifts against weeping brick walls. In the middle of the corridors, the ice runoff had mingled with the perennial dank mud and melting rubbish and chicken blood and animal manure to create a truly awe-inspiring mash of the sort referred to by political cynics as “corporation pudding.”

  Once we reached the open road again, my eyes flitted uselessly from stranger to stranger. Needing to glimpse Delia’s serene beauty beneath every winter bonnet, Jonas’s small round face above every child’s scarf. Wondering how to search for two missing persons when my parameters were New York City.

  If they were still in New York at all. Shivering, I trotted forward in a quick burst to catch up with Val.

  If they are on Manhattan Island, I will find them, I vowed to the air. I will find them if I have to search every house from the Battery to Chelsea and back again.

  We were deep in Ward Eight on Mercer Street and half a block away from Valentine’s engine house by the time I realized that was our destination. I avoid it, habitually. In fact, I’ve only been inside twice, having previously imagined that Val was a fireman due to hateful bloody-mindedness, and not due to ingrained lunacy and a blighted conscience.

  It’s not actually clear which is worse. I’ve been trying to work it out and have come up nix.

  The firehouse for Knickerbocker Engine Company Number 21 is brick, two stories, with a carriage-style portal for the engine. They keep that fantastical machine glistening like a dragon lurking in the dark of its cave. Manhattanites adore firemen. The dead rabbits of the engine companies are exempt from conscripted military service, from juries, and from eighty or ninety percent of our laws. And—like my brother—the balance of the firemen earn their rum and oysters by politicking. Engine companies are a veritable scoundrel’s brotherhood. I didn’t wonder that Val found his the safest port in a storm. Every mother’s son of them has broken a man’s pate or smashed a fellow’s nose at one time or another, since the glory of dousing a fire rests in who claims the fireplug with a barrel and a set of brass knuckles first. Rascals to a man, I mean to say. But they also walk into sheets of flame when citizens are wailing inside fiery death boxes, their axes swinging while sparks rain down on their long leather helmets.

  And so they are adored. And every week, another dies, smothered in the bowels of a blazing warehouse or toppled from the remains of a charred ladder.

  It’s tempting to ponder arranging somehow for Val’s leg to be amputated—just the one—so he couldn’t run head down into hellscapes any longer. Until he physically can’t anymore, he will be the most recklessly brilliant firedog this heartless city has ever birthed. And I will loathe that fact while absently owning that it is admirable.

  We entered by the side door next to the shuttered archway for the engine and kicked off our overboots. We didn’t bear close scrutiny. Val hung his hat and fur-collared greatcoat on a peg in the short hallway. He wore his fireman’s togs beneath, I saw, an indifferently buttoned shirt of blood-red flannel neatly tucked into perfectly brushed black trousers.

  “Have you even been home yet?
” I asked.

  “No. I’d the Sunday labor appointments yesterday. And after Mrs. Boehm spilled this afternoon, home seemed a nasty prospect. She is a dimber slice of creation all round, Tim. How she manages to have a perfect arse when the rest of her is thin as a stick is beyond me entirely. I may well take the plunge myself, seeing as you’ve turned monk. What’s the story, lads?”

  We’d entered the engine room, which was populated and the reason I failed to defend the honor of my landlady immediately. Or to ask Val what Sunday labor appointments meant. Leather fire buckets lined one wall, hung from brass pegs, and a healthy supply of pine ladders reposed beneath them. There the engine sat, painted scarlet and black and ivory with the gaudiest brass fittings imaginable, resembling a garish version of a child’s seesaw mounted on enormous carriage wheels. After attaching the apparatus to a street-side fireplug, two men operate the brakes, pumping the wooden arms from either side to send Croton water gushing through the hoses. Two volunteer firemen lounged in armchairs before the crackling hearth playing at piquet, cigars tucked in their mouths and braces hanging round their knees. One of the card players, a sandy-haired fellow who flashed the glint of two gold front teeth at us, jumped up in greeting.

  “Val, there’s a family of Paddies out back, claim they can’t wait till next Sunday. It’s probably gospel, they’re short as pie crust. I’ve warned them off twice, but— Oh, hello, Tim,” the oddly familiar fireman greeted me.

  “Tim, you remember Jack,” Val said dryly. “Last you were here. Eighteen thirty-six, thereabouts.”

  “It’s not decent, Val, them skulking about the alley fixing to die any second,” Jack continued. “When I said the copper stars would have them for vagrancy, they said so long as it was you, they’d risk it.”

  “A family? How many men?”

  “Two.”

  “Well, that’s something. Don’t let Riley bilk you at cards when you still owe me three dollars. Step smart, Tim, we’re for upstairs once I settle this.”

  I followed him to the rear of the building, dodging sandbags and lengths of neatly coiled leather hose, passing shelf after shelf packed with cured leather helmets and mysterious cogs and nozzles. When Val opened the back door, an arctic gust invaded the engine house.

  “Aye?” he prompted, not unkindly.

  Outside waited four individuals. The sun had abandoned us, so they were lit meagerly by the faint orange echo of the fireplace beyond. Thus I’d no notion whether they actually had skin the complexion of lard or no, but they seemed pale as is possible. Directly before us stood the father. Irish by feature, with wiry russet hair, sans gloves, and clutching a swaddled baby. Next came a frail grandfather of approximately sixty years who’d sensibly wrapped himself in burlap. A little redheaded girl stood before the men. Dull of eye, sunken of cheek, clutching a pail. She shook from head to toe in a thin cotton summer dress printed all over with lilac plumes. When Valentine revealed himself, the breadwinner of the family stared up at him as if my brother were the risen Christ.

  “Captain Wilde! Thank you for seein’ us, sir, and on such a night.”

  “Fit to freeze you right down to your pocket ends,” Val agreed. “Friends of the Party, I take it?”

  “Oh, aye, none stauncher.” The man nodded frantically. His hand was cupped over the baby’s exposed ear, with its head pressed to his shoulder.

  “Glad to hear it. Applications for day labor along with complimentary supper, rum, and hot Newark cider are distributed at the Knickerbocker Twenty-one on Sundays directly after mass at St. Patrick’s, as I think Jack informed you. Rain or shine, sure as the post. You’re better than welcome. I think we’re due for leg of mutton this week.”

  “Please,” the man whispered. “It’s nay for me.”

  “Is this Sunday?” Val insisted. Again, not unkindly.

  “Have ye any work at all? I’ll fetch, carry, clean, shovel. Muck out your gutters. Your stalls, your privies. Anything for a shilling. Even for sixpence. Name it.”

  “Unfortunately, we’re fairly spruce just now.”

  “Do y’fancy a tune, then? A finer voice for a ballad ye’ve not heard.”

  Val laughed, wincing sympathetically. “I set up no less than forty-eight of you with casual labor yesterday. It was a Sunday, to begin work this morning. I’ve no fresh positions the next evening, not in winter when the construction’s stopped. I wish I had, believe me.”

  “Two such loyal voters as ye’ve ne’er seen, sir, that’s me and my da here. Democrats to the very bone. We’ve nary had milk in three days, and my Alice is passed on.” He shifted his hand so it covered a sliver more of his infant’s face. The babe was still as death. “Mary here has some coal she found in the road. Don’t ye, Mary? Will ye buy coal from my daughter, sir, as a Christian?”

  Valentine glanced down into the emaciated girl’s bucket and heaved a dark sigh. “Jack!” he shouted over his shoulder. Then his green eyes shifted back to the emigrant. “Can you actually sing?”

  The unfortunate man launched into a rivetingly melancholy Gaelic lullaby. At least, I think that’s what it was. Its life was cut short soon after birth. As often happens in these parts.

  “Enough, enough. Jesus, but that was high ropes. You’ve a pipe organ in there and no mistake. Right. Can you sing that way on a Sunday?”

  The man’s face fell into a waxen mask. “Yes, sir.”

  Jack appeared, smiling inquisitively.

  “Hand over my chink,” Val ordered. Grumbling, Jack obliged, passing him three dollar bills and then wandering off again. “Here’s an advance.” My brother tucked the money into the Irishman’s sagging coat pocket.

  My disbelieving eyes attempted to blink away what they were seeing. It was a huge sum—a week in a room with a roof if they weren’t particular about bedding, company, or privacy. And a hot meat pie a day if not full meals. The Irish family seemed to find my brother equally in a state of delirium, the child lurching forward to deliver him her small treasure trove. Val neatly snatched the coal bucket from her hands and passed it back to the father with a meaningful shake.

  “I said advance, not payment, we’re not half through this cold spell.” When the emigrant opened his lips to protest, my brother’s quicksilver temper finally frayed. “Don’t be thick—do I look like I need coal? Learn to pay attention or you’ll find this an unlucky neighborhood. Listen, I don’t want you now. I want you on Sunday, warbling ditties of the mother country all through the hot supper, giving us a bit of cheer. Do you understand the word Sunday at all?”

  “God bless ye, sir,” whispered the old man. “I’ll light a candle for ye at St. Patrick’s when I’ve means.”

  “Thank you,” his son cried. “I’ll sing such tunes as will make your voters fall at your feet, Captain Wilde.”

  “Good Christ. Sing such tunes as will make my voters cast votes. Thank you for your support and good health to you, patriots,” Val said, and then emphatically shut the door.

  He turned. Only to discover I was staring at him as if he’d produced a dove from his top hat. I may as well have just watched Valentine Wilde fly.

  “That’s a natty imitation of a dead trout, Tim,” my brother said testily, setting off for the staircase we’d passed on our way inside.

  I couldn’t help myself. Because charity, in New York, is synonymous with setting bones out to attract the rats. Particularly where the Irish are concerned. And my brother, for all his scorn and his swagger, had just exchanged hard cash for … nothing at all.

  Not a gesture I’d expected of him, and not one we’d often encountered when reduced to living by our wits.

  This is the way I understand folk who accept a leg up from time to time: it isn’t that we aren’t industrious, or that we expect charity we don’t deserve. It’s mainly that human creatures want to live, and—when we can’t come by flour, or heat in the silvery frosts—we fight. Some fight by stealing (that was primarily Val’s territory). Some fight by seeking out charity workers (as we’d both d
one on occasion). The unbalanced, disreputable charity workers who didn’t insist you were scrubbed gleaming and already healthy. Most Bible-fearing benevolent types figure that poverty is a sign of moral weakness and disease evidence of God’s thorough dislike for your person. And best not to cross God, after all, not when He handpicks the wicked meant to writhe for their sins. Only the fanatics fail to equate suffering with vice, and my childhood friend Mercy Underhill had grown up to become just such a rare and liberal-minded font of generosity.

  As had Val, apparently. The shape didn’t quite fit between my ears. I hastened after, catching him at the stair.

  “Are you some kind of … of almshouse administrator?”

  He scowled over his shoulder. “Of course not.”

  “You just gave your own money to a penniless emigrant. On condition he sing for you.”

  “A penniless voter. Part of roping them in, isn’t it? I’m the police captain of Ward Eight and its Party boss, not to mention the senior Knickerbocker Twenty-one engine man.”

  “That means you’re a dead rabbit, not a charity director.”

  “Yes, I am a dead rabbit. And the things you don’t know about politics would run Harper Brothers dry of ink.”

  “Then aren’t you going to tell me about them?”

  “No. You treat this place like a quarantine hospital. And since you know nothing about politics, then nothing about politics should surprise you.”

  I confess myself stung. And over accusations of political apathy, no less. Scrambling up the stairs, I searched for a hole, any hole, in his weary-sounding statement. None seemed apparent.

  The upstairs room proved cozier than the engine shrine. Night tapers flickered in brass sockets along the walls. An iron pot on the hearth emitted a heady smell of rich brown stew that set my stomach roiling. Bunks had been attached to the plaster, the way berths are rigged in a ship, which explained where Val had been sleeping. Without preamble, he ladled some stew into two wooden bowls, produced pewter spoons from a drawer, and took a seat at the table in the center of the room, shoving an abandoned card game, several dice, an empty corn whiskey bottle, a box of cigars, and a copy of the Herald aside.