The Gods of Gotham

by Lyndsay Faye

  “Hand her over,” I interrupted, “or I’ll have my brother thrown off the copper stars. Watch me do it. I’ve my own neck to think of, should you finish this blunder the way you’re so set on doing. Didn’t you see me guarding her at the Party meeting?”

  It took maybe ten seconds but it was the right combination of words. Scales, who’d longer arms, half stepped onto the footrest, hauled Bird up by her armpits, and deposited her in front of me, sidesaddle so her dress wouldn’t hamper my riding.

  I didn’t wait to say thank you. I was already thundering back into town, in the dark of night on a stolen horse, the instant I had a grip on her torso. When we were south of Union Square Park and obviously free of the baffled hirelings, I nudged her a little, slowing.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Where are we going?” came a tiny voice.

  “Home. To see Mrs. Boehm. Then off to find a better hiding place.”

  Bird nestled in tighter, before I set us to flying again and the wind carried the edges of her words off.

  “I never truly thought it was you sent me away, Mr. Wilde,” she lied. “I never did.”

  I’d heard Bird tell a score of lies for her own sake already. For precaution, for defense, for misdirection, for sympathy. It was easy enough to stomach those lies, because Bird Daly needed lies the way some creatures need shells. And so I’d sat back and watched them tumble out like beads off a broken string. There wasn’t any choice about it. I wasn’t about to stomach that last invention of hers, though. Not for a minute. As I said, I’m full grown.

  “Bird, don’t lie for my sake,” I said as I nudged the horse back into life. “Ever again.”

  “All right,” she whispered after giving that some consideration. “Then I’m glad it wasn’t you.”

  The lights in the bakery windows on Elizabeth Street were fair quivering with watchfulness. When I reined in the long-suffering horse and dismounted, reaching up to hoist Bird down, she was stolen from me again within six seconds. This time by Mrs. Boehm, who flew through the door with her broad mouth cracked in a grin that didn’t match the wet in her eyes.

  “Are you all right?” Mrs. Boehm snapped, sounding considerably put out that Bird had allowed herself to be kidnapped.

  “I think so,” Bird managed. “Are there any poppy seed cakes not sold today?”

  I led the horse across the street to the grocery. Peered around me. All peaceful calm at the streaky sulfur-smelling cabbage display, all slurring good cheer at the plank bar within. Tethering the horse, I gave it a bucket filled at the Croton pump on the corner. I brushed it down a bit with a rag from our side yard and plenty more fresh water. It shivered happily. The entire grim adventure had taken less than an hour. Chalking up another point for the copper stars, I went back inside.

  “Where is she?” I asked Mrs. Boehm, sweeping my hat off and sitting backward in a chair pulled up to the table.

  “Upstairs, with a cake and some milk.” Mrs. Boehm had been wiping down her ovens, but she turned to look at me, her plain, friendly face wrenching sideways. “I let her go. It was my fault, I—”

  “It was nothing like your fault. We’ll just make sure not to let it happen twice.”

  She nodded. Sinking on a long, low exhale, she sat across from me.

  “Mrs. Boehm, I’m sorry about your husband and son.”

  I didn’t want to sorrow her, but it needed saying. Maybe it was selfish of me. Still. The name on the bakery redone to claim her ownership, matched against the steady stream of regulars far older than the paint. The way she talked with Bird, lacking the shadows of more adult concerns flickering along her face as the child spoke. She was actually listening. Practiced poultices, reserves of silent patience, and a pair of nankeen trousers kept locked away in a trunk.

  “Thank you,” she said softly. Then, “That was a question, I think?”

  “Not if it vexes you. Just a fact.”

  “There was a cattle drive on Broadway two years ago. Very sudden, the way they grew frightened. Lost control.” She hesitated, rubbing at a glassy streak of butter on the wood with her thumb. “Sometimes I wonder if maybe I would sooner have heard the danger. The stampede, the hooves. But it was too fast for Franz, and Audie was on his shoulders.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said again.

  Mrs. Boehm shrugged in a way that meant I shared no part in it, not that she no longer bled at the memory. “I have a shop, and a home. A neighbor when it happened said I was lucky to keep so much and that it was the will of God. What a stupid woman,” she concluded. “For God to make something young and perfect and then crush him. Why go to the trouble? Stupid people imagine God thinks like they do. Maybe God is not there, but I cannot believe God is stupid.”

  A knock sounded from behind us. A quiet little rat-tat-tat.

  Cautiously, I opened the door. There had been something odd about the noise even apart from its softness, and I saw what it was when I looked down. The knuckles were pretty undersized, and the striking point on the boards three feet below where it should have been.

  “Neill,” I said. “What’s wrong?”

  Neill was gasping with effort, his bony little shoulders rhythmically flapping. He wore a good quality set of charity togs—cotton shirt and frayed tweed vest and corduroy breeches that didn’t quite cover his shiny half-shell knees.

  “Father Sheehy is needin’ you at St. Patrick’s. Not able to come himself. Sent me. Guardin’ it, he is, best as he can, but needs ye, come on, I’m to bring you quick as possible. Please.”

  “Has someone been hurt?” I demanded after snatching my hat and advising Mrs. Boehm to open the door for no one save myself.

  “Can’t rightfully say,” Neill panted as we broke into a run. “But someone’s been killed, and killed all wrong, sure as there’s a mad Irish devil prowling these streets.”

  EIGHTEEN

  They surely must have been demons in human shape, permitted for a time to have their full sway on earth, in order to strengthen the cause of a purer and holier faith.

  • American Protestant in Defence of Civil and Religious Liberty Against Inroads of Papacy, 1843 •

  There isn’t, though, I thought stubbornly as we sprinted. Please. There can’t be. If there is, we’ll pay too dear for it, much too dear, each and every one of us. If a mad Irish devil is prowling these streets, every reasonable thought is about to be driven clean out of the public mind.

  The scant few blocks north toward the dizzy roofline of St. Patrick’s Cathedral passed unreal, falsely familiar. Paper cutouts for a newsboy’s stage. The air came hot so near the ground, gritty and thick as we flew by a cloyingly stuffed sinkhole, and as I yearned for more speed, I wished I hadn’t yet solved the crime of the horse I had just stolen from the Elizabeth Street grocery.

  We wheeled left at Prince Street, and there was St. Patrick’s, the pale moonlit monument to the Catholic God before us. It was the only time of night in New York when the streets even approach quiet: the sheltered alleyway of lost time lying between three-thirty and four in the morning. Not anywhere near two a.m., drenched in gin and smelling of late-night chops and after-opera coffee and back-alley sex. Not yet approaching five a.m., horses streaming back into the streets and roosters crowing maniacally. Between play and work, when a mab just heading for bed following an all-night debauch might bump into a still sleep-blinded stonemason trudging to his work three miles from home. I turned to Neill, slowing.

  “There isn’t a mad Irishman after Catholic kinchin,” I said, desperate to believe myself. “It’s only a sick rumor based on a worthless letter the Herald printed. They’ve already retracted it, Neill.”

  Neill shook his head sadly at my ignorance, quivering blue veins visible against his white neck.

  A small crowd milled before the triple doors of the cathedral. Mainly Irish. Some American. Most of them buzzing with something I’d seen before: the same sort of eager, frightened, childish looks the bystanders had worn watching half of downtown burn to
the ground.

  “I’ve said nay already,” Father Sheehy was stating, very deliberate. He held a pistol. Cocked and clearly loaded and obviously an old friend, pointed at the pavement, for the time being. “I’ll say it as many times as ye’d care to hear, for as long as you’re lackin’ for better employment!”

  “And haven’t we a right to see what the devil’s work looks like?” a glowering old crone demanded. “When ’tis visited on our own kin, no less?”

  “He’s no kin o’ yours, Mrs. MacKenna. Pray for his soul, and pray for our people, and pray for God’s wisdom, and go back to yer home.”

  “And what about our homes?” demanded a black-bearded fellow with keen blue eyes. Obviously a man with his thoughts on a future Democratic election, and just as obviously a father—I read rational fright in his face, and not for his own sake either. “What about our children? Our livelihoods, when this news comes to be spreadin’ like wildfire? Can we not look the enemy square i’ the face?”

  Sheehy’s lips were set tight as the stonework at his back. “That lad were never the enemy, Mr. Healy, though I take yer meaning proper. You’ve your family’s best t’ look out for, and I know how rightly to do it, son. Walk away.”

  “Back away from the door,” I called out, brushing my fingers over the copper star.

  The by-now familiar first twitches of sneers sprung onto the faces of the bystanders at the sight of a copper star. On several, they grew into angrily bared teeth. But on others, the expression froze and then retreated. I didn’t follow why, though I was grateful enough it didn’t look as if a fight was on my hands. Father Sheehy’s eyes snapped in my direction and then back to his parishioners. He wasn’t strung any less taut, but I’d taken a bit of the weight.

  “Ye heard Mr. Wilde, and none o’ you are fixed to fall foul of a copper star. Go back to your work and to your beds. Pray for the lad’s soul. Pray for the city.”

  As I met Father Sheehy at the left-hand door, several strangers pointed at me discreetly and shook their heads. Opening the tall portal a fraction, the priest stood before it with a hollowed-out expression. I bent down to Neill.

  “I’ll pay you to run quick as you can to the Tombs and find an officer,” I said. “He’s about to check in and then leave for the north edge of the city. His name is Mr. Piest. Jakob Piest. Can you find him?”

  “Sure enough,” the lad answered, winging away again.

  “How do they know me?” I murmured to Father Sheehy as he edged me inside.

  “I don’t suppose ye know anything about a policeman battled three mad Irish forty rounds on behalf of a black carpenter,” he sighed. “That’s mere Irish legend, I suppose. Come, quickly.”

  I turned to the priest, a bit shocked at minor civic fame. We stood just within the entrance for a moment, my eyes blinking as they focused, and I thought myself ready to be enraged by a gruesome picture I’d viewed too many times. But ready as well—truly, I was flush with newfound competence—to do some work.

  Then a slinking animal fear drew a cold line down the center of my back.

  I still didn’t see anything as yet. But there was a smell. A smell echoing the frozen copper penny sensation trickling from my neck to the ground. Something like an ironmonger’s workshop and something like a cut of flank steak and something like a school sink. It tasted of knives and of wet earth. Already horrified, I whirled the rest of the way around.

  There was a little shadow nailed hands and feet to the central cathedral door with something dark pooled beneath it.

  I choked out words likely never before said in a place of worship. It was profane, whatever it was. Staggering backward, my hand clutching at my mouth. It wasn’t my best showing for steady nerves. I’m glad of it. I’m glad even now. Father Sheehy winced, a shattered and wholly human expression, his eyes sliding from what I’d just seen back to me again as we quickly distanced ourselves from the unhallowed entrance.

  “They’d a right to be askin’ after the lad. The neighbors, I mean, though they’d not desire to set eyes on this if they knew it fer what it is. But the word is out this half an hour now. I was too late. Whoever did that unholy work, may we find the creature with God’s own speed, left that door swung wide upon the street.”

  I could only shake my head, my fingers over my lips so my heart wouldn’t fly out.

  What I was looking at simply couldn’t be, but there it was, and two sane men staring into the gaping red jaws of lunacy. Neill hadn’t seen it for himself, I knew without asking. He’d been ivory-toned and papery, but steady. This death would’ve done far worse by him than mere news of a fresh murder.

  “Then who discovered it first?”

  “I couldn’t say that, the door bein’ open to the road, but I learned it from a beggar who sweeps the streets for coin on this block. She’s not fit t’ be seen, bless her. Lord knows who else has heard tell of it, for when I found her, she was screamin’ fit to raise the dead. I’ve closeted her in the music room with food and drink and a plentiful dose of laudanum. God help me.”

  Find Piest, I begged in Neill’s general direction as my eyes flinched shut and then forced open again. I need one thing just now, and that is a better pair of eyes.

  The yawning carved cross was really the least of my troubles. He was a slender young boy. Maybe eleven years old, by the looks of his face and the size of his very visible rib cage. Irish, obviously, the ruddy hair and speckled skin told me as much. Not a laborer when I forced myself to look at his hands. He’d been a kinchin-mab, I’d have staked my life on it, and there were traces of kohl at the edges of his eyes where either he or the murderer had failed to wipe it away completely.

  But the rest of it … there was so much blood. So much blood, and the body so small. Soaking his torn clothes, pooling on the floor, dripping down the thick oak boards to which he was nailed hands and feet. Surrounding the body like a border were pale markings streaked messily onto the wood.

  “What are the symbols painted with?” I asked hoarsely. “These, these—all these crosses. I count seven of them. Why? It’s different, that’s never happened before. And what was used? It looks like ordinary whitewash to me. Is it whitewash? It looks so.”

  “To me as well.”

  “It’s not dry, but it’s close enough. That might be helpful.”

  “What d’ you mean?”

  “How long does it take whitewash to dry?”

  “Oh, I see. Yes, yes, of course, I should say not above ninety minutes, perhaps, when done tha’ thickly?”

  I forced myself a step closer, my upper body curved like a question mark. I took a breath. The air was stifling, greasy as lamp oil. Incense mingled with the tang of sacrificial blood.

  “Do you know him, Father?”

  “Nay, never by sight. I tried. I can’t say who he is.”

  We stared a while longer. Stupid with helplessness.

  “This isn’t right,” I whispered, though what I meant by that escaped me.

  A banging from the other side of the abominable door sent me haring out of my skin. Father Sheehy hissed something between his teeth in his own language and passed his fingertips over the glossy baldness of his pate, lurching toward the undefiled entrance at the left like a badly mastered puppet.

  “I must see Mr. Timothy Wilde on a matter of civic emergency!” shrilled the voice of a lobster half-dipped into the bubbling pot.

  My shoulders straightened. I’d never fought in anything resembling an army. Not a brigade, not even a gang of dead rabbits squalling over territory. But maybe that’s what it feels like when reinforcements arrive, I thought. Like you’re a man again. Simply because you aren’t the only one. Alone, I was a bent-over ex-barman glaring terrified at death. Two copper stars turned me back into one policeman.

  “Neill,” I said over Father Sheehy’s shoulder into the blank, hushed air, “thank you. Now I need Dr. Peter Palsgrave. Quick as you can.”

  When I’d delivered Neill the address and sent him away again, and Mr. Piest h
ad slipped through the opening with his lantern half dimmed, I stepped aside with Sheehy. My fellow copper star turned to have a look. Stood there, heart visibly stalling. Not paling, though. He turned bright as a fireman’s shirt, his lips curling back over his jagged teeth, and that was when I realized that he was as enraged by this whole bloody business as I was.

  “First,” Mr. Piest said. “First. What to do now. What is first?”

  “Shall we take him down?” the priest asked, voice purposely roughened so as not to sound cowed. “’Tis an offense to the Holy Church. To God Himself.”

  “No. Wait for the doctor,” I replied. The words fought like hell to lodge in my craw.

  “And Chief Matsell,” agreed Mr. Piest. “I sent him word at once.”

  I nodded, turning back to Sheehy. “The front door in question was open, you said? But the cathedral surely was locked?”

  “Yes, yes. I keep my keys in the rectory, ye’ve seen for yourself.”

  “Has anything been broken? Windows, locks?”

  “I can hardly say. It’s all been so quick, and I had to be guardin’ the entrance. Here are my keys, and they were right where I left them. Someone must have forced the door.”

  “Have you not yet searched this entire sanctuary, then, Father?” Mr. Piest inquired, stepping back from a more careful look over the body.

  “I—nay, apart from makin’ certain the fiend had gone. And shall I now, then?”

  “Father Sheehy, take Mr. Piest through the building and keep a sharp eye open for anything out of place,” I suggested. “I’ll borrow your keys. I’m going to see if I can find out how our man got in.”

  “Very good. The chief will waste no time in arriving,” my colleague added, his hand hovering near the priest’s elbow protectively. “Let us find something to show him when he does.”

  I took the small lamp Sheehy had been using, and Mr. Piest drew back the shutters of his smoking bull’s-eye. We separated, moving fast but careful. I could hear Mr. Piest questioning Father Sheehy in a practiced monotone. Little questions designed as much to produce comfort as facts. What sort of night had he passed? A busy one, presiding at the cathedral over a joint Catholic and Protestant meeting debating proposals for a Catholic school. A dozen leading figures had been present. And dead set against him.