Seven for a Secret
Page 1
ALSO BY LYNDSAY FAYE
Dust and Shadow
The Gods of Gotham
AMY EINHORN BOOKS
Published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons
Publishers Since 1838
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) LLC, 375 Hudson Street,
New York, New York 10014
USA • Canada • UK • Ireland • Australia • New Zealand • India • South Africa • China
penguin.com
A Penguin Random House Company
Copyright © 2013 by Lyndsay Faye
Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.
Published simultaneously in Canada
“Amy Einhorn Books” and the “ae” logo are registered trademarks belonging to Penguin Group (USA) LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Faye, Lyndsay.
Seven for a secret / Lyndsay Faye.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-101-65748-5
1. Police—New York (State)—New York—Fiction. 2. Free African Americans—New York (State)—New York—Fiction. 3. Underground Railroad—Fiction. 4. Slave trade—United States—History 19th century—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3606.A96S48 2013 2013008127
813’.6—dc23
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
This one’s for Gabriel, who always thinks I can.
CONTENTS
ALSO BY LYNDSAY FAYE
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT
DEDICATION
SELECTED FLASH TERMINOLOGY
THE COLORED MOTHER OF NEW ENGLAND TO HER INFANT
PROLOGUE
chapter one
chapter two
chapter three
chapter four
chapter five
chapter six
chapter seven
chapter eight
chapter nine
chapter ten
chapter eleven
chapter twelve
chapter thirteen
chapter fourteen
chapter fifteen
chapter sixteen
chapter seventeen
chapter eighteen
chapter nineteen
chapter twenty
chapter twenty-one
chapter twenty-two
chapter twenty-three
chapter twenty-four
chapter twenty-five
chapter twenty-six
chapter twenty-seven
HISTORICAL AFTERWORD
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
SELECTED FLASH TERMINOLOGY1
A.
ANODYNE. Death; to anodyne; to kill.
B.
BAM. A lie; to bamboozle.
BAT. A prostitute who walks the streets only at night.
BLOW THE GAB. Confess.
C.
CHAFFEY. Boisterous; happy; jolly.
CHINK. Money.
COLE. Silver or gold money.
COVE. A man.
CROAKED. Dead.
CULL. A man.
CUTTY-EYED. To look out of the corner of the eyes; to look suspicious; to leer.
D.
DANCE AT HIS DEATH. To be hung.
DEAD RABBIT. A very athletic, rowdy fellow.
DIMBER. Handsome; pretty.
F.
FADGE. It won’t do; “It won’t fadge.”
G.
GRAFT. To work.
H.
HUMMER. A great lie.
I.
INNOCENT. A corpse.
K.
KEN. A house.
KETCH. To hang.
KINCHIN. A young child.
KITCHEN PHYSIC. Food.
L.
LACE. To beat; to whip.
LAY. A particular kind of rascality.
LEAKY. Not trustworthy.
LEERY. On guard; look out; wide awake.
LIBBEGE LINEN. Bedclothes.
LION. Be saucy; frighten; bluff; “Lion the fellow.”
LOWRE. Coin.
LUNAN. A girl.
M.
MAB. A harlot.
MAZZARD. The face.
MITTEN-MILL. A glove fight.
MOLL. A woman.
MOLLEY. A miss; an effeminate fellow; a sodomite.
MOUSE. Be quiet; be still.
N.
NACKY. Ingenious.
NIMENOG. A very silly fellow.
NOSE. A spy; one who informs.
O.
ON THE MUSCLE. On the fight; a fighter; a pugilist.
P.
PALAVER. Talk; flattery; conference.
PEPPERY. Warm; passionate.
R.
RIGGING. Clothing.
RUG. Sleep.
S.
SCRAN. Food.
SCRAPP. A plan to rob a house or commit any kind of roguery.
SHAKESTER. A lady.
SIMON. A simpleton.
SLUBBER. A heavy, stupid fellow.
SNAPPER. A gun.
SPOONEY. Foolish.
STARGAZERS. Prostitutes; streetwalkers.
SWELL. A gentleman.
T.
TANGLE-FOOT. Bad liquor.
TOLD OUT. Beaten; defeated.
TUMBLED. Suspected; found out.
W.
WARE HAWK. Look out; beware.
WHIDDLE. To tell or discover.
Y.
YAM. To eat.
THE COLORED MOTHER OF NEW ENGLAND TO HER INFANT
Thy sparkling eye is full of light,
Thy heart beats high with joy,
And woe, or care, from morn till night,
Disturbs not thee, my boy.
Smile now—for, o’er thy coming years,
A cloud of misery bends;
Disgrace and shame, regret and tears,
Till earthly being ends.
Whose skin reflects a darker hue,
Than that the white man wears,
And for this cause thy earthly dew
Of joy must change for tears!
For thee, from childhood’s gleesome hour,
Through all thy onward track,
Are hard and bitter things in store,
Because thy skin is black!
POPULAR ABOLITIONIST SONG
PROLOGUE
On the day the worst happened to her—and by worst I mean the tragedy you’d die to prevent, kill to prevent, the cruelty beyond endurance—Lucy Adams was working in a flower shop, arranging scarlet and orange hothouse roses whose colors could have put a midsummer sunset to shame.
How little I learned about her, that day when we met. How tragically little. The details would come later. Long after I’d told her that I, Timothy Wilde, copper star badge number 107 and defender of whomever I damn well pleased, would set it all right again. That I would stop at nothing to help her and to that end, I wanted her to spin me a tale.
Just tell it to me like a story, and I’ll fix this.
God, what hubris men can achieve after six months working at a job.
An impossible job, at that. Or maybe just one too taxing for the likes of me. I’d like to say that my brother Valentine manages bette
r, this being a fledgling star police of New York City business, but he’s the captain of Ward Eight and complicated the whole wretched affair the way a kitten complicates a ball of yarn.
So, no. Wildes, in this case—the younger and the elder—made precious few sound decisions.
I could pretend that recording Lucy Adams’s story is important for posterity. Justice, even. But that would be humbug. Smoke obscuring a charnel-house landscape. What truly matters just now to me is that a black saga resides at the back of my eyes.
And the last time that happened, I wrote it all down.
• • •
At six o’clock in the evening on February 14, 1846, Mrs. Adams stood at a worktable behind the front counter of the flower shop, peeling thorns from rose stems. St. Valentine’s Day had dawned frigid and clear, but now winds churned above Manhattan, and snowflakes swooned their way to Chambers Street outside the frosted display window. The shop ought to have closed an hour previous, but still swarmed with men in swallow-tailed coats demanding artificial armfuls of summertime. Scarves flapped, watch chains whirled, acres of forced conservatory flowers disappeared out the door into the snow.
Mrs. Adams hummed a tune as she worked. A melody too old for a name that drifted along the exhalations of her breath. She thought with a pleasant longing of supper, for her cook had promised to stew a pair of ducks for the family, and imaginary scents of orange rind and dried mint teased at her nose.
Minutes ticked past, and still more minutes, and she began to wrap the stem of her bouquet with blood-red silk. Winding it as if casting a spell. Fingers sure and length of ribbon supple as skin. It was the last time she would ever do so. The bow she tied was perfection. A soft, elegant ending.
The shop owner—Mr. Timpson, a former Manchester dweller with kindly eyes and a grey, sagging complexion save for his crimson nose—tutted when he glanced at the clock next to the yellow sprays of lilies. He’d just warmly thanked a trio of departing swells with maroon greatcoats and ivory trousers, and Timpson’s Superior Blooms at last had emptied. All the day long, it had resembled the Stock Exchange.
“I’ll sweep up, dear,” he told his single shop assistant, Mrs. Adams. “It’ll be ghastly out there in a quarter hour, and I’ve only to climb the stairs to reach my supper. Get along home with you.”
Mrs. Adams protested that her final order for the next day wasn’t quite finished. That it was only a little snow, that anyhow her house was round the corner from Chambers, just down West Broadway. But Mr. Timpson insisted, with a jovial clap of his hands followed by a shooing motion. And it was late, so much later than usual, the busiest day of the year, and Mrs. Adams yearned to be home.
And so she went.
The shop windows ticked past Lucy Adams’s vision like the unnoticed beat of a bedroom clock as she hastened homeward. A safe rhythm, familiar as your own pulse. M. Freeman’s Old and New Feathers Emporium. Needle and Fishhook Manufactory. The Museum Hotel. The snow whirled above the cobbles, as if gripped by an undertow, and she pulled her fur cloak close. She passed a man driving a cart piled with burlap sacks and calling, “Sand-O! White sand-O!” A shopkeeper dove out of his dry goods store at the cry, nearly running into her. But she stepped neatly aside, and the whiskery gentleman apologized as he fed coins into the sandman’s palm for the Rockaway silt that would keep his storefront pavements safe a while longer.
And Mrs. Adams went on her way.
When Mrs. Adams opened the door of her narrow brownstone in West Broadway, shivering as she removed her fur, silence greeted her. She dropped the cape on a damask chair in the hallway and went into the parlor. The room was empty. Mrs. Adams fanned her fingers before the waning fire, pulling off her gloves. She unpinned her hat. Her eyes drifted over the pressed flowers framed on the brick mantelpiece, over the pair of tiny china horses and the single holly sprig in a vase of amethyst glass. She called out to the household that she’d arrived.
No one answered.
Unhurried, she went into the dining room. Not the echo of a whisper met her ears. She turned to climb the stairs, still cheerily announcing her return.
All was silence. A quiet deeper than death.
Five minutes later, Mrs. Adams hurtled out of her house into West Broadway, her skirts in her fists and her mouth torn wide in a scream, flying through the gathering storm in the direction of police headquarters at the Tombs.
That’s where I come into it. I work there.
As for me, I sat in the windowless closet space I’d the previous month eked out for use as an office, a glass of Dutch gin in my hand and a crooked smile on my ruined face, toasting the health of my friend Roundsman Jakob Piest. We having just solved a pretty thorny problem and feeling none too humble about it. He lifted his ugly wrinkled fist and tin cup, laughing like the maniac he is, and then Mrs. Lucy Adams stumbled against my half-open door with a bang.
Can I describe her properly, as she was before I came to know her secrets? I suspect not. If secrets are gems to their owners, to be cradled in dark cases, I plundered Lucy Adams’s jewel chest thorough as a highwayman despoiling a carriage. It hurts to be a thief, when what you stole was a person’s history. I am not that man. I loathe being that man. People, all manner and persuasion of people, want to tell me things of their own accord. Always have done, since I was a barman. Even before. But I can’t stomach knowing secrets without an invitation, a wave of the hand to walk inside.
So what did she look like, this mystery of mine, before I laid bare the stories carved into her before we met?
Lucy Adams was dressed for winter so simply that every garment announced its high quality. The toe of one boot keeking out from swirls of a cobalt-velvet day dress was soaked through with snow. So she’d quit the house hurriedly, without donning rubber overboots. An ivory ermine cape around her shoulders had been tied with a violently asymmetrical red bow, and a score of other things about her that evening pleaded for help. White leather gloves gaping, their pearl fastenings loose. No hat, not even a lace cap for decency’s sake and not warmth’s. Just wave after wave after wave of pinned-up chocolate-brown hair in the tightest corkscrew curls I’ve ever seen, with white snowflakes melting tenderly into them.
Something horrible had happened to her. I didn’t need a barman’s sleight of hand to realize that. Lucy Adams’s eyes were the color of lichen on a stone wall, mossy flecks of green shot through the grey, and they stared wide as if she’d just been pitched into the Hudson off a steamer deck. Mr. Piest and I stared at her, shocked. Her lips were very full, very round, and she peeled them open to speak as if the motion agonized her.
She was beautiful. That part of the story is impossible to discount. It matters, unfortunately. She was one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen.
“Are you hurt, ma’am?” I found my tongue at last, leaping to my feet.
“I need a policeman,” she said.
“It’s all right. Here, sit down,” I said as Mr. Piest scurried to pour her a tumbler of water. She seemed not to see the chair until I offered my hand, and then she went like a marionette with a novice puppeteer. “We can help.”
“I pray so.”
Her wracked voice was deeper than her willowy frame suggested. It sent a shiver down my neck, as if she could open her throat and cast ships into rocks. Christ knows enough ships were lost that night, in the storm, packed with New Yorkers who never came home. That wasn’t any of her doing, of course. Most would say it was luck’s, or Fate’s. Or even God’s. But I can’t help but think of her voice that way now. The way it tugged a man, could wrench a steamer off course into cruel shoals.
“You can certainly trust us to try,” I said gently. “Just tell it to me like a story, and I’ll fix this.”
Her eyes met mine. They’d gone pale as slate.
“There’s been a robbery.”
“What’s been stolen?” I asked.
“My family,” she answered me.
one
The evil we complain of is increasing.
Europe is flooding the country with emigrants—Great Britain has appropriated twenty-five million to deport to this country one million of Irish paupers, to compete with and destroy American labor.
—MR. LEVIN OF THE NATIVE AMERICAN PARTY, AS REPORTED IN THE NEW YORK HERALD, 1846
I have come to know my city too well.
Not the pleasantest of afflictions. Presumably this wouldn’t be a problem if I lived in a gorgeously crumbling stone wreck on the coast of Spain, casting my nets for sardines of a morning and catching strains of guitar music long into the night. Or if I kept a tavern in a melancholy little English town, pouring pints for widowers and reading poetry of an evening. I’ve never been away from here, so who can say? My knowledge of other places is bounded in books. It could be possible to know a city intimately and yet like it. I hope so.
No, the main trouble seems to be that I’m a policeman of Ward Six in Manhattan, the only copper star I know of assigned not to walk rounds but to solve crimes after the fact, and that so far I’ve not much cottoned to the content of the crimes. Not by half.
For instance, on the morning of St. Valentine’s Day, I awoke with the faintly sick sensation that a law had been broken by someone or other in this city of near half a million, and I hadn’t yet brainworked out who. The day before, Chief of Police George Washington Matsell—our unquestioned leader, the charging rhino of a man who set me up unraveling riddles—had appeared in my airless Tombs cave.
G. W. Matsell would already be impressive because he is enormous, over six feet tall and three hundred pounds if he’s an ounce. But it so happens he’s impressive because both his mind and willpower resemble a train running under full shrieking steam. He was a prominent justice before being appointed our chief, and thus already famous. Since we copper stars are a controversial band of ragtags to say the least, now he’s infamous. But infamy doesn’t seem to chafe him overmuch.
I heard a scuff and looked up from my desktop. The previous instant, my doorway had seemed a reasonable size. Man-sized, anyhow. Now Chief Matsell stood within, and it had shrunk to a mouse hole. He stared at me placidly. Jowls furrowed into deep fleshy ditches and pale eyes gleaming. I’d used to walk my ward in circles as my colleagues did, on the lookout for trouble and finding it all too often. Since the end of the ghastly kinchin murderer business last August, when the chief decided my brains ought to be at his perennial disposal, I sit at the Tombs and trouble finds me either via notes from Matsell or in person. I’m damned if I know which is more disconcerting.