Even with the fear coursing through me, or perhaps even because of it, there was something exhilarating about the night. The air was so clean and sweet, every breath made me want to cry. The breathing of my companions was quick and audible, and I savored it. Martha’s breath was low-pitched, steady. Phoebe was almost panting with the effort—she hadn’t been exercised as frequently as those of us in Terpsichore had been—but we didn’t dare slow down to accommodate her. Celia’s breath was the lightest and shallowest, but I could still hear her. I wondered if the fire had burned her lungs as well as the rest of her. I couldn’t imagine what it was like to be her, to live her life, before the fire or after. But I was grateful to her, because she would save me from marrying a man who was a monster. A monster who was brother to the man I loved.
As we charged southward through the dark, Henry’s was the face I couldn’t get out of my mind. My parents would be furious when I returned with Phoebe in tow, but we were family. They had always forgiven everything else. We were still their daughters, the only children they had left. But I couldn’t see how I would ever find my way back to Henry, to regain the fleeting intimacy we’d shared or to turn it into something more.
I was about to destroy his family’s hopes, after all. George would not get the perfect political wife he’d been promised. He might even go to prison. There was no question of keeping silent, even if it meant my father’s debt would not be erased. I couldn’t let George escape unscathed when Celia bore the terrible scars of what he’d done to her every single day. I could never overlook that, neither for love nor family duty, no matter how much I wanted to.
The rain began just as we spotted the lit windows of Goldengrove.
We went from dry to soaked inside of a minute, the rain coming down in sheets like I’d never seen before. Lightning split the sky once, twice, three times. Storms like this were rare at home, and I’d heard they were even rarer up here, where the sun soaked the valley all summer long. But this storm, rare or no, was a miserable, dangerous gift. Its threat had brought us to the vineyard, given us the chance we needed. I would suffer whatever else it could throw at us for the sake of that initial blessing.
I was crying with relief, the tears on my face mixing with the rain, knowing that now, at least, we knew where we were. Without discussing it, Martha and I skirted the edge of the fence to the right, leading the others in haste toward the one place we recognized and knew intimately: the hill.
The lit windows were far off, and I wondered who was inside, who had lit the lights. Was Nora the only one in Darkness, or were there others? Should we go inside to let them free? If we went in, I feared we would never come out again. We didn’t know how many attendants, doctors, nurses were still there. I remembered the names Phoebe had listed for me, the women driven to violence by other people’s wrongs. Jennie Murphy. Louise Webb. Ola Doggett. And the women from my own ward, whose crimes weren’t crimes at all: quick, bright Hazel, stubborn Irene. Life might be hard for them out in the broader world, but it was unjust not to give them the chance to live there and try. The best thing we could do was make it out and tell our story.
Up the hill we went. Up and up and up. I was used to it now, this hill I’d once considered a mountain, and I moved almost as quickly as I had on flat land. I gave thanks again for my surefootedness, something I’d once done in Darkness. If we were caught, would we be sent there, perhaps for weeks? Or would some worse punishment be devised for us as a warning to the rest?
I pressed forward so I would never have to find out.
Every few minutes as we climbed without stopping, I stole another glance backward. The building got smaller and smaller behind us. It was an island in a sea of nature, something man had made that was both beautiful and terrible, and then we crested the hill, and it was gone. In all the times I had climbed this hill, I had never passed the summit and found myself climbing down instead of up, away from the asylum. It was the oddest feeling and the most wonderful.
I had never walked in rain this heavy. At times, it felt like we might drown while walking upright. The water came and came without stopping. The wind rose and fell. Yet we put one foot in front of the other, reaching out to help anyone who stumbled, gasping for air and sputtering when our lungs drew in water instead, moving forward. Moving down. Moving on.
Hours later, we were tired. Exhausted. Soaked to the skin. Almost unable to move another step—but only almost. We knew what would happen if we stopped. They might catch up with us if we paused to take any kind of rest. They might catch up with us anyway.
* * *
The storm had petered out, and light was beginning to touch the edges of the trees when the land flattened out underneath our feet, letting us all breathe a little easier. It was stunning how good the air felt when it was no longer a curtain of rain. I felt buoyant, light, free. Soon, we would likely know whether anyone was following us or whether we had made it safely away.
Martha was grinning broadly, and I was so shocked to see a smile on her face, I said, “What’s got you so happy?”
“We’re out. She’s not.”
“She?”
“The matron.”
“Out of where? The asylum? She might’ve been somewhere in the field, but it doesn’t matter now.”
“She wasn’t in the field,” Martha crowed. “I fixed her flint all right. She was in the chair.”
“Chair?”
“I put her in the Tranquility Chair, that inhuman twat,” she said. “Waited until she sent her lackey ahead to the field, seized my opportunity. Swapped her out with the girl in there—Russian, I think—sent that one up to the matron’s quarters to get a good night’s rest.”
I was incredulous at the brilliance of it. “You didn’t hurt her.”
“Mother Mary, I wanted to,” she said. “But this was better. She’ll be found, no harm done, but it’ll take them a good long time. And in the meantime, she’ll see there isn’t much difference between her and us.”
I was temporarily speechless. I both respected and feared Martha’s capacity for violence, and I hadn’t imagined that she also had the patience for such an ironic and appropriate punishment for the matron, when she could have done much more. A woman’s mind is a powerful weapon. She had used hers quite brilliantly.
“Look there,” said Phoebe, and we all turned our heads, though our steps barely slowed.
Across a field, there was a barn. During the day, it likely stood out, red against green, but in the predawn, we could just make out its outline. Yet the barn alone wasn’t the only thing to see. Barely visible in its shadow was a cart—open and flat, clearly intended to haul cargo.
We stood for a moment, just breathing, thinking, looking.
I was the first to speak. “Could we take it?”
“No choice,” said Martha.
“Horse?”
“Check the barn.”
Celia said, “I’ll go,” and before any of the rest of us could move, she was dashing across the field, skirts held high. My imagination furnished a hundred horrible outcomes before I even blinked. Would she be spotted from the house? If she was, would we run or stay and fight? Worse, would a shot ring out? Would she fall, arms flung wide, and slump into the dirt? I clapped my hand over my mouth to stifle a cry, the image already too clear in my mind, as if it were happening right in front of me. Celia vanished into the shadows, too far off to see. I heard the barn door give a low, long, soft creak. I did not relax, but at least the nightmare scenarios shifted. She had made it there. Now all she had to do was make it back.
We waited in silence. I heard nothing but my companions breathing and the rush of my own blood in my ears.
Celia came from the barn leading a horse as naturally as if she’d broken and gentled him herself. I began to move, but she caught my motion and gestured for me to stay still. So the three of us waited for her at the edge of the woods, and once she’d hitched the horse to the wagon, she moved him as silently as possible toward the road, then moti
oned for us to follow the tree line to meet them.
Once out of sight of the house, we moved in concert toward the wagon, which Celia slowed but did not stop, leading the horse forward by his bridle. Phoebe leapt up and offered me her hand, which I took gladly. Martha swung herself onto the driver’s seat and helped Celia clamber up next to her, still holding the reins. I let myself laugh at the fact that I’d never seen a woman in the driver’s seat of a coach before, and here were two, without the least hesitation. Truly, we were a strange and powerful band.
We were in motion, and shortly after that, we were on the road. The cart stank of wet hay. The boards were rough, clearly not fully sanded for the comfort of human riders. Fragments of leftover straw pricked my skin as we jounced without cushion over the rut-ridden dirt.
Dawn broke softly upon us. It was the first sunrise I’d seen in ages that didn’t come from the top of the high hill next to Goldengrove, and I prayed that I would see another, and another, and another free of that place. I saw the backs of Celia’s and Martha’s heads, their shoulders high, and tears wet my cheeks. We were free.
Phoebe lay next to me, and I bade her close her eyes.
“You can rest,” I said. And for the moment, at least, it was true.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The streets by which we entered San Francisco were no more familiar to me than those of London or Borneo. We were home, in a sense, but complete strangers in this quarter. The noise and scramble were almost intolerable after the seclusion of Goldengrove. Laughter fought with anger, shouted insults, raucous come-ons from every quarter. This was not my San Francisco. Still, I was overjoyed to see it.
And it was best that we came in through the most disreputable part of the streets at the busiest part of day. No one gave us a second glance, even though we were four women—dirty, worn, damp, exhausted—in a cargo wagon carrying no cargo but our own bodies. In my neighborhood, we would’ve been not only noticed, but likely intercepted and questioned by the constabulary. We were not ready for questions.
I moved as close to the front of the wagon as I could, just behind Martha’s and Celia’s backs, pulling my skirt free of the splinters that snagged it. “Where are we?” I called up to Martha.
“Barbary Coast,” she said, tossing the words back over her shoulder. She took the reins while Celia tried to restore order to her hair, now that we’d entered some kind of civilization. The driving rain had washed away the outermost layers of dirt and grime from parts of our bodies, but we were mud-caked from the knees down, and our best hope was to make our top halves presentable.
I checked on Phoebe, who somehow still slept despite the hubbub, snoring lightly. Our escape had left us all both exhausted and relieved. My reaction to having those feelings had been for my body to light up like a star, but I could see why hers had been to collapse and rest at last.
And in its way, the Barbary Coast was a revelation. We couldn’t have been more than a few miles from the plush comfort of Nob Hill, but it felt like the wildest of villages. I could understand the name; this was like an island of pirates, miles from the civilized world, a place where you scrabbled for status and turned your meager gold into whatever you could in order to keep yourself alive. The open, hungry water beyond us was the same seen from Telegraph Hill or the Crocker mansion, but everything else was a world apart.
There were fortunes to be made in this madness. That much was clear from the occasional well-dressed buccaneer strutting in the street or parading atop a black steed with a gilt-trimmed bridle. Fortunes had also been lost, as you could see from men in tweed suits grimy with coal, their eyes bloodshot white marbles in a sea of blackness. They moved with a desperate, hungry air. Yet we, a wagonload of dirty, unguarded women, were left alone. This place had its own rules. I didn’t want to stay long enough to thoroughly learn them, yet I was glad the rules existed, for I would not have been safe on my perch if they hadn’t.
For a moment, I imagined living in this merry, bawdy riot of color. It was as different from Goldengrove as Goldengrove had been from the mansions of California Street, Powell, Taylor. And I was unsuited to it, but I had been unsuited to Goldengrove, yet I had found a kind of happiness there.
Could I be happy here? Could Phoebe? I let myself wander down the paths of possibility. It would be a struggle, to be sure. It was clear that nothing in this maelstrom came easy. The more I looked at the street scene, the more I saw the almost-invisible women who made it run. The washerwomen hauling sacks of cotton and linen. The cart sellers calling in hoarse voices, lemon for scurvy, lime for scurvy, here’s lemon, here’s lime. Their work was bleak, perhaps, but honest. They sweated, and they earned. And I had realized that the life my mother had envisioned for me, married to an upstanding man and commanding an army of servants like a staid domestic general, was unappealing. Especially knowing what I had learned. I’d rather live as a drudge, washing the underclothes of the unruly, uncouth men we saw on these streets, than live out my days as George Sidwell’s brood mare. Whatever happened, that would not be my fate.
Still, I hardly intended to walk into a laundry and ask for a position, making a new life for myself out of nothing but the labor my two hands could provide. My plan to free my sister was not yet fully complete. I still had to make it home. I wanted to stand on the front porch of my parents’ house and show them I had brought Phoebe back, that there was nothing wrong with her that justified her exile, that we were both their daughters, both worthy of love.
I realized I hadn’t doubted for one minute that I could force my parents to take my sister back. They’d committed her in haste. They’d had their minds changed before. Phoebe herself had set the example.
When she was sixteen, they had forbidden her a dozen times over to wear a red gown to a Christmas party held at the Harringtons’. But she had secretly negotiated with the tailor, swapping out the hunter-green velvet she’d pretended to agree on with Mother for a bright-crimson silk.
The secret was she’d known exactly how far to go. The design was unchanged—modest, becoming, youthful—and only the color was a shock. And when she came downstairs the night of the ball wearing the dress, Mother and Father at first forbade her from wearing it. But she posed prettily and covered Mother’s cheeks with kisses and bubbled with enthusiasm and cheer, and in the end, they agreed it could do no harm. So in this case, as many others, Phoebe had gotten what she wanted. It was a trick I’d never tried with our parents. I was hoping for beginner’s luck.
My thoughts were interrupted by the loud whinnying of the horse, which pulled up short and tossed its head as we came to a halt.
“Here we are,” said Martha, calling over her shoulder almost merrily. “The House of Open Flowers.” The name was familiar somehow, but I couldn’t quite place how I knew it.
The house itself was unremarkable to my eyes, neither proud nor shoddy. It had been painted some kind of green within the past few years, its doorframes and windows crowned with a brighter blue. The overall effect was a genteel one, only slightly shabby, and inviting in its way. It looked like someone cared enough to keep the place from falling down around their ears, which was more than could be said for some of its neighbors. I swung my limbs with some difficulty over the low back of the wagon, then helped Phoebe down, both of us graceless with fatigue. Celia paused a moment to stroke the horse’s nose, wiped the back of her hand across her forehead, then followed.
Following Martha, we shuffled up the steps. I knew we were a motley crew at best, still wet and muddy, but Martha sailed up as if none of that mattered a shred. Her regal carriage wouldn’t have been out of place in a ballroom. She rang, and the door swung wide, though I could not see who had opened it.
Within, the house far outstripped its plain exterior. There was so much color, it hurt my eyes. Not only did sumptuous pillows line the window bays, the swags of curtain along the windows were rich shades of burgundy and plum. And all around—lounging, milling, posing—were women in low-cut, gaudy dresses, their ey
es looking past us to the door.
I wanted to say out loud what I knew immediately, but I kept myself hushed.
Phoebe did not. “Martha! You’ve brought us to a bawdy house!”
Martha’s smile was broad. “Indeed I have,” she said.
Phoebe said, “But girls like us don’t—I mean, we’ve never—”
“First time for everything.” Martha was still grinning. I believed she was rather enjoying herself.
“But I thought you were going to take us to your father’s.”
“Why would I do that? The old man hates me. He’d clap me right back into that prison. He sent me there in the first place. Don’t spit in the lion’s mouth if you don’t want your head bitten off, that’s my advice.”
“Isn’t there anywhere—better?”
“There’s nowhere better than this,” came another voice. It took me a moment to recognize her, given the crown of curls atop her head and her heavy mask of kohl and rouge. I’d been accustomed to seeing her face as plain as ours, unadorned, and her hair straight as a curtain.
“Jubilee!” said Martha, flinging her arms wide. “Here we are!”
“I don’t believe my own eyes.”
“I could pinch you if needed,” said Martha with a mischievous grin, stepping forward.
Just as quickly, Jubilee stepped back, saying, “Oh, that’s all right. Let’s consider it believed.”
The time since her release had clearly agreed with our former wardmate. An earthy smell rose from her as she drew nearer, but it was laced with a trace of violets, and I believed she cultivated it by choice.
Jubilee evaluated us all in one sweeping gaze and said, almost merrily, “You look like the devil used you to stir a bucket of fresh shit, the lot of you.”
“I should introduce you both,” I said to Phoebe, who looked overwhelmed, and Celia, who as usual betrayed no emotion one way or the other. “This is Jubilee, or at least that’s how we knew her. Wait—still Jubilee?”
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