by Lyndsay Faye
So I kept my mouth shut. Listening.
“We were no way prepared for flight, however,” Delia murmured. “Lucy and Jonas’s free papers were at West Broadway, and to travel without them … we may as well have surrendered to Varker. Lucy was in such a panic that she proposed I take Jonas at once to a safe house. Here, naturally.” She gestured, a sad and futile spasm of the wrist. “I was to return and accompany her to West Broadway after I’d fetched my own free papers from my lodgings. We knew you’d arrive that morning, Mr. Wilde, and trusted you’d do us the courtesy of escorting us there and seeing no harm would come to us for it. I won’t prevaricate with you—Lucy also wished to see Charles. To see her husband, if he was such. She could not have abandoned him, on the word of a stranger, without ensuring the allegations were true.”
“Nor could you leave without her and your nephew’s free papers,” Julius agreed.
“But by the time I’d arrived back at Captain Wilde’s residence after leaving Jonas here … You saw what I saw, Mr. Wilde. You must have, since my sister later ended up in an alleyway. You were due to call on us that morning, and who else had reason to move her?” Delia stroked her fingers over her throat as if over the purple stain across her sister’s neck. “I fled. We must have missed each other by minutes.”
Exhaling slowly, I stitched together facts as the fire hissed to itself and Delia paced. Bits of truths and half-truths, fragments of stories, the earnest accounts of those I trusted and those I didn’t. Motives, actions, consequences. None of it could be heard above the blaring fanfare of unanswered questions. So I asked a few key ones.
“When your sister found work last month, did Gates raise objections?”
“I see your mind, but I can confirm nothing. He asked her if she thought she could handle the strain and Lucy said yes, she was certain she could. Then he ordered a brace of pheasant and two champagne bottles from the restaurant down the road to celebrate her success.” She fluttered one hand exhaustedly. “But we also believed him to go by the name of Charles, so I suggest you ask me more useful questions, Mr. Wilde. Time runs short.”
“What explanation did Silkie Marsh give for knowing you were at Val’s?”
She paused midstep, raising an eyebrow. “Is she not your brother’s mistress, then? Lucy said Miss Marsh claimed—”
“Of course she did,” I muttered disgustedly.
Silkie Marsh, I thought, is a snake charmer who had four vipers in her basket. Varker, Coles, Gates, and Mulqueen. If only I knew which of them sunk his fangs into Lucy the next morning.
I shook my head, clearing it. “What favor did you wish to ask of me, Miss Wright?”
She sat down again and faced the pair of us. “I want Jonas’s free papers. They’re in Gates’s house, and I’m effectively trapped here. I want you to bring them to me. I retrieved mine on my way back to Spring Street.”
“And why didn’t you ask George to accompany us?” Julius asked.
This provoked another laugh. A species I couldn’t identify—shadowy and deep. “Because I need to borrow a considerable sum of George’s money,” she owned breathlessly, “and if he were here, he’d have simply said yes. My teaching salary amounted to little more than room and board. I’ve nothing remotely sufficient to make a fresh start. I could drag Jonas through fields and forests, could flee like a criminal along the riverbanks, hungry and ever desperate for the next Railroad station, but—”
“But you could much more easily be caught that way,” Julius said simply. “And so, if George was willing to pay for a private coach—”
“Then I could imagine just for an instant that we’ll arrive safely.” A spasm borne of grief and regret clutched at her throat, and she shook her head. “George Higgins doesn’t want me to live out the remainder of my days in Canada. So asking him to fund the enterprise is degrading enough without forcing his answer. Standing before him, as you see me now, would force his answer. You pose the question, Julius. And thank you both for your help—I imagine you can guess what it means to me.”
I could think of nothing further to ask, and our conversation had drained the golden glints from her eyes entirely. “We’ll return with his papers,” I said, rising. “Within a few days, if not less.”
Delia nodded and fell into the armchair. Silent. All but spent. I couldn’t imagine the hell she’d borne over those few days—but it had wrenched her, tugged her lovely face into a grim drape of sackcloth and mourning weeds.
On our way out—past the feverish runaway woman now tended by a black doctor and Mrs. Higgins—I inexplicably thought of magnolias. Of Lucy’s hands working gardenias into hair ornaments for another wedding long ago, the one Timpson had described to me. I could see the summer sun cutting through the window where she worked, feel the caress of a clover-rich breeze sliding lazily in through the half-open door. In my mind’s eye, the blooms began to wither as she touched them. Disintegrating.
“This is a nightmare,” Julius mentioned as we stepped down into icy streets once more.
“Worse,” I said. “We’re not about to wake up.”
Leaning back against the seat of the hack we found, I allowed myself a single uncharitable thought.
I just learned next to nothing, I realized.
Settling further into the dim, I took a deep breath and let it out again.
Fine, I thought. Far be it from me to let nothing discourage me.
But I couldn’t for the life of me shake the feeling that something worse—more specific, perhaps—was amiss. I’d had such premonitions before, a bell in my head signaling something was wrong, and knew there was a mismatch somewhere. An error like a wall unevenly papered. It was in every way sensible that Delia preferred an intermediary when making a painful, humbling request. Laudable, in the circumstances. In fact, I suspected that Miss Delia Wright was more honorable than most of the people I’d ever encountered. Her high character explained everything about our fellow Committee member’s exclusion.
Didn’t it?
And if George Higgins seemed to me a bold man—one who was no stranger to raw force, would have fought Julius’s captors with pistols at dawn, took what he wanted when he wanted it simply because he’d been told he couldn’t—what of that? I liked such men, admired them.
Delia wasn’t afraid of him. Surely.
George Higgins, I thought as the hack carried us farther away from Neither Here Nor There, bears further study. And then fell to wondering why that should be.
nineteen
$50 REWARD. Ran away, from the subscriber, on Thursday last, a negro man named Isaac, 22 years old, about 5 feet 10 or 11 inches high, dark complexion, well made, full face, speaks quick, and very correctly for a negro. He was originally from New-York, and no doubt will attempt to pass himself as free … JNO. SIMPSON, MEMPHIS, Dec. 28.
—THEODORE DWIGHT WELD, AMERICAN SLAVERY AS IT IS: TESTIMONY OF A THOUSAND WITNESSES, 1839
I’d like to say that the scant few days prior to my entire investigation falling to splintering shards of fiery disaster around my ears were in any way pleasant. Restful. Conducive to clarity of thought.
They weren’t, though. They were exhausting. And they were heralded, as so many dusty events likewise make their debut, with the reappearance of Valentine Wilde.
The Liberty’s Blood—the cozily barbaric Democrats-only saloon my brother frequents, to which he summoned me two days after I’d spoken with Delia—was less quiet than it ought to have been on a Tuesday morning, February 24 to be precise. Its front bar, burnished with the oil of thousands of greasy fingers, was well populated with Val’s typical crowd. Irish grateful for a watering hole where Party camaraderie rather than native scorn tints the atmosphere, dead rabbits whose notion of breakfast is a pint of ale and a knife fight, and the sycophants who envy the rabbits’ style and chink but don’t have the spine to muscle their way into politics. I didn’t bother to search for my brother in the front room under the countless American flags hanging from the ceiling and the cobwebs
dangling from the flags. Pushing past a knot of cartmen taking a pine-beer respite, I tugged at a flag hiding a doorway and entered the back area.
I squinted at the familiar specters of its furnishings. The kerosene fixtures on the walls serve the dual purpose of creating soot and shadows. They’re useless otherwise. I picked my way past plush couches where rogues and mabs employ their lips for sweet nothings and far worse after clandestine Party meetings. So early, the place was deserted. Save for Valentine’s mountainous silhouette, half curled on his back exactly where I expected him to be, on a divan beneath the most ridiculous taxidermied American eagle I have ever seen. Having seen many, many taxidermied eagles in my time.
I sat in the armchair adjacent to the small couch, as usual. Val had clearly not yet reached an amicable truce with daylight. Lamplight. Any light at all. Reaching, I tapped him on the forehead.
“Oh, for God’s sake, why?” came the mumbled response.
“You summoned me. Where the devil have you been?”
He twisted from the hip and rolled into a seated position, staring balefully into the gloom. Wincing, he passed a quiet moment with the stars behind his lids. “Albany.”
“Truly?” Of all the possible answers, there was one I hadn’t expected. It was pretty tantalizing, though. “What was in Albany?”
“Some of the purest cut opium I’ve ever blown, for one, courtesy of our state senate. Made it back into town yesterday evening. That’s when I scratched you the note. I think. Have I got that properly?”
Sighing, I left my hat on the table and shoved my head past the flag into the front saloon, calling for a bucket or two of coffee and a plate of rashers from the dining hall next door. Realizing who I wanted them for, the fantastically scarred-up barman shouted for the errand boy. Within half an hour, Val was wiping his fingers on a napkin in our murky lair and making considerably more sense.
“All patched up, then?” he asked.
Comprehension lagged slightly. “Oh,” I said, brushing my fingers over the back of my hand. Only a shiny red spot remained, and my eye—well, the blackened one—was en route to respectable again. I poured myself a second cup of coffee. “I’m fine. Why did you go to Albany? That’s a hard ride in such a short time.”
“Because that’s where the trouble was. Is. See here, Tim.” My brother looked more drawn even than his usual. “You’re going to be a cow about this, but you need to let me run the lay alone from here. So far as investigating the murder is concerned.”
“No,” I replied. “What did you discover?”
“I’m dead beat on the subject, Timothy, you—”
“Matsell hasn’t even taken me off the case, and he likes it little enough.”
“He doesn’t savvy what I do.”
I waited. Ominously silent and profoundly irked.
“All right, here’s a sketch, supposing a sketch will make you any less oafish. Though it won’t.” Val settled back against the divan, finding a cigar end in his waistcoat pocket. He didn’t light it, only twirled it in a meditative fashion, like a card sharp with an ace. “I’m known to a good many of the bushy-tailed partisans at the state capital. From considerably far back. Ran with any number of them as a young Jack dandy, before they dealt in slogans and banners and ribbons and such. I stood for a few drinks and let my old pals buy me a few more. And rumor has it, Rutherford Gates is a silver-tongued cull on the senate floor if there ever was one. Not to mention an essential vote, numerically speaking. And up for reelection against the smuggest Whig bank baron ever to— Fine,” he growled, when my looks began to reflect how grave I found these concerns. “You don’t give a rat’s arse. Fine.”
“So far as it’s relevant to investigating the murder, of course I do.”
“How about preventing your own, you codfish-brained infant?”
His tone was so snappish, I caught myself short.
“You pitched me exactly the same flux last summer, over the kinchin murders,” I protested, spreading my hands. “Nothing happened.”
“And you saved the Party from a thorough lacing when you discovered a bloodthirsty Irish Catholic lunatic wasn’t roaming the streets hacking kids apart. As I have now reminded them. In person.”
“But I can’t—”
“Cross them, and they will hurt you before you die and piss on your grave afterward.” Val abruptly returned the cigar end he’d been studying to his pocket. “You’ve already stolen from blackbirders, disrupted court proceedings, fought a slave-catching Irish copper star to the death, though that wasn’t your doing exactly, and antagonized half the police force. I told the Party bosses I can manage you. Tell me I’m right.”
I shook my head in disgust. “We found Delia and Jonas. They’re hidden in an Underground Railroad station.”
To my surprise, Val clapped his hands once in apparent delight. “Now, there’s a patch of sunshine. Sing me the tune.”
There was a time when I wouldn’t have breathed a word of it to my savage and Party-entrenched sibling, but I’d like to think those days are past. Anyhow, no part of my tale surprised him. Not Mulqueen’s trailing Delia and Jonas, not even Silkie Marsh’s mysterious warning. None of it.
That worried me in ways I can’t possibly express.
“They’re for Canada?”
I nodded, polishing off the coffee.
“Already struck out?”
“No. The Railroad needs to make arrangements with the conductors and the stations en route for such hot cargo. It’ll be four or five days.”
“Never to return, though?”
I glared at him.
“Safer, don’t you savvy? Gates, whose importance in Albany I wish to firmly stamp on your coddled little mind, was being groomed for a governor’s daughter. They’ve been throwing him in her direction after every fete and oyster soiree.” Valentine checked his watch and shot me a meaningful look after snapping it shut again.
“That lying weasel,” I concluded with deepest conviction. “Did he kill her, then? His wife? Is that why you—”
“That’s yet dark to me. It’s just … I’ve a feeling this is a bigger pail of rotten eggs than we thought.”
“Bigger than a corpse in your bed?” I demanded, thoroughly flummoxed. “Bigger than Silkie Marsh’s plan to ketch us?”
Val considered this briefly, then shook his head. As if he were speaking flash and I could comprehend only Chinese. It wasn’t a new expression—a single contracted eyebrow, lungs braced as if stifling a martyred sigh. But an urgency I hadn’t seen him wear often riveted me nevertheless.
“Listen.” My brother leaned forward, lacing his fingers. “I gave some thought to what you said, before. About what that old scar means. As many as I love I rebuke and chasten, be zealous therefore and repent.”
Fighting a shiver, I managed to confine it to my lower back. “And?”
“They’re from Albany, yes? The Wrights? Well, I looked for their kin. People who could help hide them if the Party comes out firing. No one would admit to knowing them, Tim. This is bigger than I savvied. Every colored I could find by the name of Wright did their best to convince me they’d never heard of a Delia or a Lucy. Swore it up, down, and sideways and then tossed me out on my ear with vigor.”
This was admittedly disturbing. “Someone’s frightened them, obviously. All right, so the conspiracy is wider than we supposed. You think the murder is about Lucy’s past and not her present?”
“No, I think you need to sit on your meddling hands and let me manage from here.” Valentine stood, setting his hat on his head. “You’ll be at the Party gala come Saturday?”
My grimace of excruciating distaste answered in the affirmative.
“Bully. We’ll have you back at the Tombs in no time, with a sprucer office and the wind at your back. Watch me. You’ll be a captain within a year.”
“Val, I’m not about to give this up. Swear that if you do work it out first, you’ll tell me everything.”
Valentine was shrugging into
his fur-collared greatcoat, tucking bits of expensively tailored fabric into the folds where he desired them. Wiping his kerchief over his still-haggard face, he frowned. “I sent a message to the Capital. When I get a response, I should know more. And so will you.”
“That’s fair, then. I’m going to help Delia and Jonas make their escape from Manhattan. Don’t tell me not to. I’m getting them away from here.”
I didn’t say, I’m going to retrieve Jonas’s free papers for him. Neither did I say, I have every intention of breaking into the Gates residence with the help of the Committee of Vigilance, which means robbing a state senator for the Democratic Party in the company of Africans. A state senator I strongly suspect murdered his wife.
My guess was that information would have been the sort to ruin a remarkably civil conversation. For us, anyway, it was civil. So I kept my tongue in my head. For two days, I’d been wracking my brains over it. Sleepless, anxious sweat prickling along my brow. But I’d dined the night before with Julius after engaging some friends in a spot of reconnaissance, and despite the enormous risk, he agreed with me. Housebreaking was our only tenable option.
“Of course you’re helping them escape.” Val chuckled in his pained way, donning leather gloves. “You’re an abolitionist. A quiet one. Yes?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He swept out of the room.
I meant it too. If we didn’t manage to keep mouse over cracking Rutherford Gates’s ken, we were all in for trouble of the permanent variety.
• • •
We convened the following evening, February 25, at George Higgins’s residence. Five men seated at a round table inlaid with ivory and shell and honey-colored wood, planning for battle. We were cautious, to be sure, but likewise gladly determined. At last, we were actually doing something. It felt like a mercy at the time.
