Seven for a Secret

by Lyndsay Faye

  Jean-Baptiste’s hands curved into angry talons.

  “Come on, then.” The sweepmaster turned back to ascend the stairs.

  “Jean-Baptiste, is it?” Julius whispered.

  The lad’s mouth dropped, forming a circle as the light retreated. He took two steps toward Julius, uncomprehending. Then his sleepy and inflamed eyes lit on myself and Piest, and he gasped.

  “We’ll explain in a moment,” I told him.

  Jean-Baptiste trotted willingly enough up the stairs. Ahead of us, a clang from the sweepmaster’s lantern hitting his tabletop sounded just before a furious flipping through of accounting ledgers. When we entered the front room, our host was running a thorny finger down the columns of a separate book, one taken from a shelf. Grunting, he wrote the words Cockroach: Private Services.

  “That one had better be healthy enough to climb a chimney tomorrow,” he advised.

  Grinding my teeth to sand began to seem imminent when Jean-Baptiste shot us a glance of alarm. Piest placed a finger aside his nose with a subtle wink, and the moment passed.

  Clucking sadly, the sweepmaster took another swig of liquor. “I mean it. Nothing to ruin the next day’s wage. Trust to your own natural delicacies where he’s concerned and think feelingly of my sorrows, gentlemen. I lost another to the cancer last week, and we’re short till I can find another.”

  The cancer, my ever-helpful brain supplied. Chimney sweeps’ cancer. Cancer of the scrotum due to sweat mingled with soot that’s never washed away, beginning in an open sore and ending in death.

  Julius paid for Jean-Baptiste’s time. How much, I’ve no idea. The chink belonged to Higgins, anyhow. Words were exchanged. Not that I listened to them. I was busy with my usual dilemma, wondering whether to clap the nameless sweepmaster in irons, evacuate his establishment and raze it, or else to attend to the actual business at hand.

  Before I quite knew what had happened, we were all in the alleyway, Jean-Baptiste looking up at us with a mystified expression. Piest sank to his haunches with a hideous, overwhelmingly kind smile.

  “What a scoundrel you work for. You remember me and Mr. Wilde, yes?”

  Jean-Baptiste nodded.

  “We’ve a proposal, Jean-Baptiste, and we hope that you will consider the mission with due care,” my fellow copper star continued. “We wish you to climb down one last chimney and remove some papers from a house. Papers that belong to noble parties unable to retrieve them. It would be hero’s work, the essence of chivalry, and afterward you would be placed in a school and never sweep a chimney again. God and fate willing. What say you?”

  He said not a word, of course. It took us ten minutes, in the mouth of that unholy crack in the sea of brick, to convince the boy that we truly meant to take him away from his sweepmaster. That we were copper stars, lawless lawbringers, and so cared not one whit about indentures or apprenticeships. That he didn’t “belong” to anyone. And that I wanted him to steal something when I’d explicitly instructed him never again. The challenge of speaking half English and half bizarrely comprehensible sign didn’t aid matters.

  My ethics didn’t help either. I’d not known, not until seeing it, the sort of scars he’d earn in that dungeon. And by the time we’d near to convinced him, I felt filthy. I didn’t blame Piest or Julius; they’re good men, the best of men, and kinchin drift through our streets like so many bits of river trash along the shore. I’m not exceptional, on the contrary.

  I’ve simply been river trash. And I can’t abide bullying.

  “Stop,” I said at last. All eyes swept to me. “Stop all of this. Jean-Baptiste, you’re leaving that bastard’s employ either way. You don’t have to help us. I’ll find you a new ken.”

  My friends shifted their feet.

  “He’s right.” Julius smiled. “You’re not going back.”

  The boy’s eyes made every effort to widen, but scratched against coal dust and blinked frantically.

  “As to the quest—it’s once, and once only,” Piest said. “You make the choice. There’s risk, but we’ll do everything we can to protect you.”

  “It’s for someone the same age as you,” I said softly. “Another boy, called Jonas. This is wretchedly unfair and I’m sorry for it. But you can rescue him. Are you willing?”

  The kinchin drove the back of his wrist into his watery eyes and rubbed hard. Gave a little heave of his shoulders. Smiled faintly.

  “You have to say yes or no,” I admonished.

  He nodded.

  “Good man,” Julius said to the boy, shaking his hand.

  We fell into a line as we set off for West Broadway. A moment later, my friend Mr. Piest noticed that I was in serious difficulties. He sidled over and touched my arm.

  “You want to throw that soulless wretch in the Tombs on brothel-keeping charges. But you’re … not presently capable of making an appearance at our workplace.”

  Forcing the stifled air from my lungs, I nodded. Attempting to expel the mad responsibility that I personally rid New York of adults who suppose undersized kinchin bodies to be bartered and sold, small slaves of every color and description. I’d thought to exhale my self-imposed duty and focus on Jonas’s free papers.

  It didn’t work.

  “Don’t worry about that pimp another instant, Mr. Wilde. You need not trouble yourself.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’ll arrest him for you at daybreak,” Mr. Piest trilled, charging into the gloom. “I’ll put the scurrilous blackguard in the westernmost cell block, on the ground level where the floor never dries.”

  “Lord, but you’re a prize,” I exclaimed. And meant it.

  If Piest wasn’t a grown man—and a peacekeeper at that—I’d have sworn that he giggled.

  “Come along, Mr. Wilde,” he called. “And do stop pretending as if you’re still a mystery to me, following a six-month association. I may not be quite so gifted at unraveling enigmas as you are, but I’ve considerably more practice. And you aren’t so very puzzling, you know. Now, quick march! There’s work to be done.”

  • • •

  There comes a point at which events leave your control. After the hard push of the sled over the icy crest of the hill, after the reins have broken and the horse has abandoned its wits. After your foot leaves the cliffside and your balance can’t be regained and you’re falling, a wide emptiness in your chest and only the rush of gravity and the salt spray on your lips where once you could still have said no.

  You can’t always feel that moment, though. I certainly didn’t. Not on this occasion.

  I stood with Jean-Baptiste in the rear yard of 84 West Broadway, which boasted several long flower boxes wreathed in white. Our breath visible, hearts beating in a rapid duet. The moon had revealed itself, leering with crooked teeth. I wanted to drag the clouds over the distant lamp illuminating all our designs. Pulling out my watch, I was able to see the time. That was infuriating. Not the hour, the visibility. Herding the kinchin back underneath the stunted awning above the servants’ entrance, I shook my head in the general direction of the sky.

  I was minutes away from sealing a number of fates, as it happened. Though I was blissfully unaware of it at the time.

  Jean-Baptiste arrested my sleeve and aimed an eyebrow at me.

  I held up a single finger, meaning wait.

  Tapping his palm against the wall of the building at a furious tempo, my small friend indicated his impatience.

  But there were procedures in place. Signals. Schemes as intricately rigged as the sails of the great ships in our harbors. Patting the lad’s shoulder, I watched as a raccoon slunk over the gate opening onto the rear alley. Paws silent, eyes yellow and dark ringed, searching for bones. Then two sets of human feet passed by—a pair of men, by the sound of it. For a harrowing instant I thought that they slowed. But it was only my restless energy, for the steps crunched away.

  When they’d passed, I sank to my haunches and repeated very low, “You’ll come straight back if the flue seems to
be closed?”

  Jean Baptiste nodded. He drew the long shaft of a flue in the air, ending in a sharply angled space that I’d soon enough guessed to be the chimney pot. When he showed me a particular angle of attack and shook his head, followed by tracing a shallower progression and a nod, ending with the full stop of his palm in the air, I’d an excellent notion of the sorts of spaces he generally contorted himself into. I knew without being told that they were dark as death, and all too often baking from the recently doused fire in the grate. But apart from that, chimneys are about a foot wide. When they’re not smaller. For me, the act of crawling into one would be a personal nightmare.

  “But you’re usually climbing up them.”

  He smiled, shrugged. The boy’s hand made a whooshing gesture of sliding down the flue and landing, with a puff, in the soot pile.

  “There won’t be a soot pile. You’ve not cleaned it. I’m serious about you taking care.”

  Ducking, he mimed bracing his back against one surface and his knees against the other, shuffling downward to the hearth using his arms.

  “Doesn’t that hurt?”

  He pulled up his sleeve. The skin at the back of his arm had been polished with something abrasive, likely vinegar or acid scrubbed in with bristles and vigor. His elbows were shiny, like halfshells. Like scars.

  “He did this to you?”

  Jean-Baptiste spread his palms wide.

  He does this to everyone.

  I was half tempted to murmur Forget the sodding chimney, someone needs killing when the faint sound of music reached my ears. The tune was a spiritual, the voice rich and affecting, genteel in accent if not in execution. As a matter of fact, the singer could be nothing save half a jug deep in rum or corn whiskey.

  Oh, carry me away, carry me away, my Lord

  Carry me to the burying ground.

  The green trees a-bowing … Sinner, fare you well!

  I thank the Lord I want to go,

  To leave them all behind—

  “Halt, if you please, sir!” came a much shriller warble from the sidewalk before the front entrance to 84 West Broadway.

  There. Our pair of watchmen had taken position before the house.

  I lifted a finger toward Jean-Baptiste’s nose. “You’re never going back to your sweepmaster, no matter what happens. Be careful.”

  He nodded. Beyond, Julius Carpenter’s raucous singing continued. Punctuated intermittently by Jakob Piest’s voice raised in hearty lawkeeping protest.

  In retrospect, I ought not to have been worrying about my small friend’s climbing skills. In retrospect, I ought to have been anxious over literally everything else.

  In retrospect, I am very nearly as sharp as I pretend to be.

  Treading silent as I could, I whisked a crumpled sheet away from the building’s rear wall and retrieved the ladder I’d deposited there the night previous. Setting it against the side of the house, I pulled a small grappling hook attached to a rope from an empty cistern, a tool I’d likewise planted. I clenched the rope, wound it a few times around my fingers, and commenced climbing. It was a tall ladder, and it creaked beneath my weight, though Jean-Baptiste would doubtless have an easier time of it.

  “I tell you, I must see some identification,” Piest squeaked from the roadway. “Public drunkenness is a crime, but however you crawled into the bottle, sir, I’ve no wish to drag you to the Tombs whilst you find your way out again.”

  Ping.

  I’d missed. I hazarded a glance down from the top of the ladder, saw Jean-Baptiste staring back, and tried again.

  Ping.

  The hook lodged in the chimney.

  Thin scraps of cloud drifted above us, as if the sky were peeling, moonlight shining through the sickly grey ribbons. Testing more than half of my weight on the rope, I determined it would hold a boy who could probably count the hearty meals in his history on one hand. Then I swiftly descended, half listening to our watchdogs as Julius allowed Piest to harass him in the least apt display of efficient police work to date.

  When Jean-Baptiste was three rungs up, I spoke in his ear.

  “You recall what Miss Wright told me—once you get in through the topmost floor, go down the stairs to the left and into the master bedroom. In the back of the wardrobe is a teak box, unlocked. Bring every paper inside to me. If that chimney grows too dangerous for any reason, come back. Use the rope for as far as you can. Yes?”

  He scurried away. Up the ladder like a fireman, up the rope like an acrobat, onto the roof’s lip like a bird coming to rest. By the time he was down the chimney’s mouth, taking the rope along because I’d told him to, I might have dreamt him. A sooty spirit drifting through the night like smoke from a ninepin cigar.

  “It’s a damned outrage!” Julius’s voice cried. “Since when have star police the right to manhandle free citizens? What’s a cheering song on a winter’s night to do with you? I’ve half a mind to knock you down.”

  “I’ll have you for violence, as well as for drunkenness.”

  “I’ll have your teeth in the mud!”

  “Do not try me too far—”

  “I’ll send you flat on your face and the crowds will line up to shake my hand!”

  Smiling at the exceedingly peaceful fray at the front of the house, I slung my hand over a rung of the ladder and commenced waiting.

  Waiting, for a man of my temperament, is next door to unbearable.

  A whistle like the distant shriek of a forgotten teakettle rang in my ears beneath the sound of my friends blithely quarreling. Meanwhile, my eyes were pinned to the chimney bricks, neck craning as I willed Jean-Baptiste out of the lightless shaft. So close. So close. I smelled the bright tang of success in the very air around me, felt the bittersweet ache of finally getting something right, goddamn it pulsing beneath my fingernails.

  So close.

  Minutes passed. Insults were exchanged in the icy street beyond. I waited, statuelike. As if I’d been carved centuries before and the smallest breath could shatter me.

  Then Julius, after shouting a furious expletive I’d never heard emerge from his lips in my life, commenced singing again.

  “Oh, carry me away, carry me away, my Lord …”

  “Christ,” I hissed under my breath. My skin frosted over, hairs prickling in fright.

  For of course that was the other signal. The one that I’d been keen to avoid.

  “What’s all this about?” called a new voice. “By Jesus. Piest, is that you, you scoundrel?”

  Beardsley, I thought, gripping the ladder rung as a jolt of recognition rattled my teeth. And with McDivitt, no doubt.

  “Is that boy after givin’ you a bit of trouble, then?” McDivitt’s brogue chimed in. “Isn’t it lucky we came along. Ye might imagine that we’d be sore after having a gun waved at us, but the honor o’ the copper stars demands we come to your aid.”

  “I can see to this, gentlemen!” Piest crowed, his voice gone reedy and anxious. “And I hope you understand I was acting on behalf of a friend when we quarreled at the Tombs. As were you, I gather. Professionally, we are all brothers in arms, eh?”

  “Oh, so you don’t want help from the likes of us, then?” McDivitt’s voice sneered.

  “Don’t you like us, Mr. Piest?” Beardsley added in a marrow-freezing tone. “I think he doesn’t like us, McDivitt. I think this doddering old maggot doesn’t like us at all.”

  “That’s very unkind,” McDivitt lamented. “Strikes me right in the heart, it does. To hear such a thing.”

  The inky seep of fear that gripped me commenced flowing outward through every channel it could find. Twin urges of Don’t leave your post and Don’t allow your friends to be thrashed senseless without you tore at me. Meanwhile, I removed the ladder from the wall and raced to cover it. It was a risk, but also a shortcut, for I couldn’t possibly leave it there when we fled. A rope dangling from the side of a building that doesn’t nearly reach the ground would be mistaken for a snapped laundry line. But a ladder
propped against a wall meant broken windows and an infestation of Irish. The alarm would have gone up at once if I’d left it.

  Just as I’d hidden the blasted thing, I heard from beyond the repulsive crack of a fist hitting bone. Followed by a muffled moan that could only have emerged from Mr. Piest.

  I was flat against the edge of the rear wall an instant later, chest thumping as I listened to cackles from the other copper stars. I was almost ready to act as hotheaded as I generally do. But then a shout of inebriated glee went up and a pair of feet flew away down the street.

  “That darkie bastard! After him!” McDivitt shouted.

  More bootsteps rang out in pursuit. More cries echoed through the quiet. I couldn’t imagine what had happened, couldn’t know if Piest was badly injured or not. Quivering on the edge of taking a dive streetward for worse or for better, I stopped to look up at the roofline.

  A tiny face stared down at me, mouth wide in soundless surprise.

  I ran the few paces back into the rear yard. Jean-Baptiste had pulled the rope up after him and flung it over the edge of the tiles to reach the ladder, which of course was no longer there.

  “Come on, I’ll catch you,” I hissed, going to the wall.

  The lad lost no time in grasping the cord, and it was the work of four seconds for him to slide halfway down the building. When he neared the end of the line, however, he hesitated—instincts demanding he clutch it for dear life rather than take the freefalling plunge he spent all his waking energies avoiding.

  Understandable. His nightmares consisted of a sudden drop and a sharp stop. But I hadn’t the time.

  Jump, I mouthed up at Jean-Baptiste, pleading.

  His eyes said he’d as soon throw himself headfirst down a chimney.

  Leaning with my palms against the brick, I stared up in mounting dismay. The child’s shirt had rucked up against the rope, and I could see where he’d belted a number of papers to his skeletal chest.

  This kinchin just accomplished the impossible for you, and he’s determined to live the rest of his days dangling from the side of a townhouse.

  “Jean-Baptiste, please,” I insisted softly.