Seven for a Secret

by Lyndsay Faye

  “Hush.” Pressing the cloth lightly back in place, he perched on the edge of the desk. “For God’s sake, Timothy. I’m angry. I’m not angry at you.”

  I pressed my fingers into my eyes the way Val often did. It didn’t dislodge the spear through my skull, but it went a fair way toward hiding my expression. Or such was my fervent prayer. I’m ninety percent sure it would have troubled him.

  “I’m sorry anyhow.”

  Val deemed silence the best response to my continued apologies.

  “And that was …” Wiping my hand over my face, I sat up a bit. When I pictured what my brother had done at Tammany Hall, I realized I hadn’t the words for it. “Thank you. But you still look like you’re going to croak someone and then cure his hide for boots.”

  Val shook his head, seeming ninety years old instead of thirty-four. “Christ, but you exhaust me. You’re my kid brother. I honestly can’t imagine— Tim, I met you ten minutes after you were born, making about as much sense as you do now. How do you want me to look when I find you hog-tied and bleeding?”

  I shook my head with my eyes squeezed shut, saying the only relevant thing I could summon that wasn’t still I’m sorry.

  “Julius Carpenter is dead. So are Varker and Coles.”

  My brother sucked a breath in and then whistled it out again. “Anyone get out of it in one piece?”

  “Lucy’s family left this morning. They’re as safe as circumstances allow.” Glancing up at him, I added, “You told me at the Liberty’s Blood that you’d sent a message to the Capital. Have you gotten a reply? You asked someone you trust to question the auction pens about missing deliveries two years back, didn’t you?”

  Val’s eyebrows tensed. “I did, yes. Tim, those people—”

  “They really were escaped slaves. Don’t tell me their names,” I requested. I needed that, needed it in ways I didn’t even understand. “Just leave them be.”

  Valentine shrugged. “When no one in Albany would admit to knowing them, I started to have my doubts.”

  The wind in the streets was picking up, tumbling through the road like a runaway carriage. Val shifted and clapped me on the knee.

  “Come along, bright young copper star. We’ll find a sawbones and patch you back together. It wasn’t a straight flush, dragging Gates here, but it wasn’t a pair of twos either. The Party bosses have been watching him unravel for weeks now. The chief will say that you delivered him here for safekeeping. They’ll probably give you a medal.”

  Before I knew quite what was happening, my arm was over his shoulder and we were halfway across the room. That was plenty mortifying. But I was clearly in no state to make my own escape, and I’m not exactly popular at the Tombs.

  “What would you have done?” I asked. “If those Tammany men hadn’t listened to you.”

  “I’d have worked out a different lay.”

  “And if that failed?”

  “I’d have thought it out again fresh. And I’m the leery sort, you know, plenty active between the ears. I’m even capable of keeping my mouth hinged and thinking at the same time, which is a trick I should teach you.”

  “I know you are. You always did take more after Mum.”

  I don’t quite know why I said those words. I only knew it mattered to me very much that I did. My brother’s step hitched, and I think he produced a perplexed little cough before we moved on.

  Maybe I said it because he was all that I had, and we shared a history that couldn’t be mentioned between us. Maybe I possessed a string of mad fantasies about Mercy Underhill and an equally mad anchor back to myself by the name of Valentine. He was my entire context. Maybe I was grateful and wanted him to know it in absolute terms, because I hated the fact that neither of us took our alliance for granted, neither accepted it without question, and the doubt was half my fault, and I loathe that skepticism more than I have ever hated any single thing, bar none.

  It’s difficult to be certain. I can’t recall quite what I was thinking. But after that there were only miles of looming stone, and wind with sharp fangs, and rays of sun like tiny arrows through the endless air.

  twenty-six

  Margaret was the first that met me. She did not recognize me. When I left her, she was but seven years old, a little prattling girl, playing with her toys. Now she was grown to womanhood—was married, with a bright-eyed boy standing by her side. Not forgetful of his enslaved, unfortunate grandfather, she had named the child Solomon Northup Staunton.

  —SOLOMON NORTHUP, TWELVE YEARS A SLAVE, 1853

  Since last summer, I’ve a habit of waking up in my brother’s bed with head injuries. It’s unspeakably tiresome. On this occasion, at least I didn’t also find myself permanently disfigured for the second time.

  So there’s a blessing, I thought, gingerly sitting up.

  The painting of Thomas Jefferson had been righted and the decanter replaced. My boots and cravat and jacket were gone, but I still wore the shirt and trousers I’d been given for the Party ball. Touching the back of my head, I’d a vague recollection of someone stitching me together as if I were a rag doll. According to the clock, only a few hours had passed. I faced late Sunday afternoon, the first day of March, and I yearned to erase ninety percent of it as if it had never existed.

  Something was roasting. I could smell it sending thick trickles of brown fat into the pot.

  When I wandered into the kitchen, I found my brother pulling an iron cooking vessel from the fire and James Playfair sitting at the table wearing an anxious expression. More than usually pale. Around his neck he’d arranged a gleaming yellow scarf that failed to quite hide the strips of bandaging. I wondered whether he might likewise have a key to Val’s rooms and then decided I didn’t care. I’d never previously experienced happiness when encountering one of Val’s friends. It seemed prudent to cherish the occasion.

  “Oh God, sit down!” Jim leapt to his feet and shoved a chair under my legs. It was startling but well intended. “You aren’t meant to be wandering about willy-nilly like a street cat. The doctor said—”

  “I feel much better,” I told him.

  Val cocked a dubious eye at me and then used a fork and knife to lift the roasted lamb leg onto a carving board. It had been stuffed with rosemary sprigs and bits of amber garlic. My brother was dressed in red flannel and black trousers, so a shift at the firehouse appeared to be imminent.

  “I feel wretched over—” Jim began.

  “If only I could have, I’d—” I said at the same time.

  We paused.

  “There was nothing you could have done save for what you did. And it was damnably good of you to do it. Are you all right?” I asked.

  Jim flicked his fingers as if dismissing a soured wine bottle. “It’s a scratch.”

  “A scratch,” Val growled, apparently not having recovered his good humor. “It isn’t a scratch, you mincing little twit, it’s a gash in your fucking neck, and last I saw you, you looked like you’d taken a bath in your own ruby. If I have my way about it, McDivitt and Beardsley will be kissing their careers farewell if not their bollocks, preferably both.”

  “My gracious, but you’re terrifying, Valentine,” Jim said pleasantly, winking at me. I couldn’t help but smile back at him.

  “I don’t like my own meddled with, and if they touch either of you again, I’ll lace them personally. I’m keen to lace them now, but the Party might manage it better.”

  Jim flushed ever so slightly. “Shall I give you my handkerchief to protect you in battle?”

  My brother sniffed in sardonic amusement, covering the meat with a bowl. Entirely oblivious to the fact it had been only half a joke. I wondered whether he’d yet cottoned to the notion that molleys engaged in sincere affection in addition to widely reviled deviances. Because I was sold that they did. That seemed a long conversation, though.

  “Why are you doing that?” I asked instead, nodding at the covered roast.

  “Because after ten minutes, it’s better that way.
Matsell said to tell you he’d released one other prisoner, colored fellow by the name of Tom Griffen. According to the chief, no one has pressed any charges against the man, so he’s free to go. Any story there?”

  For an instant, I couldn’t recall. Then I did and felt about as grateful toward the chief as is possible.

  “Tom Griffen killed Sean Mulqueen,” I answered.

  “Did he now? I’ll have to post him a thank-you.”

  Val revealed a loaf of bread and passed it to Jim, who’d already found a knife. On the instant a crust had been sliced, I appropriated it. For some reason, I was suddenly ravenous. My brother pulled a cork from a wine bottle and began setting out glasses.

  “You need to spill what happened this morning,” Val announced. “Best get it off your chest sooner, and I think I’m entitled to that story, you know.”

  I did. And crossing Val seemed like bad luck just then.

  So after we’d migrated to the parlor for supper, I told them. Quietly, I wove a picture of magnolias at a sun-soaked wedding. Of people who were figments of their friends’ imaginations and a mother who was unspeakably brave. Between my brother smoking furiously and Jim looking appalled, I was at least blessed with an audience who shared my sympathies on the subject. And the roasted lamb proved helpful, as did the first bottle of wine, and the second.

  By the time we’d tidied up, the sun was setting. Jim wandered over to the window and twitched the curtain back, staring out into the gathering night. My brother reached for his jacket. Then he shot me a look I couldn’t get to the bottom of.

  “She’ll have to be dealt with,” he said. “One of these days.”

  Ah. Silkie Marsh and her affection for heartbreaking chaos.

  “I know,” I said.

  “I’m for the Knickerbocker Twenty-one, then. Jim, stay for a spell if you like, but I’d be grateful if you were clear by tomorrow.” He smirked wickedly at me, donning his gloves. “The Society of Young Irish Widows is planning a fund-raiser and means to pay us firedogs a call. I’ve been angling for a piece of one in particular for weeks now. Not too grieved, you understand. She asked to speak me privately afterward, and I don’t think she means to say much. Anyhow, you’re likely better off snug home and resting, eh, Jim?”

  “Doubtless,” Jim said evenly, about as composed as an Astor House flower arrangement.

  It didn’t fool me for an instant.

  “Tim, keep what little wits you have about you, yes?” my brother admonished.

  And then he’d disappeared. I walked across the room to where Jim stood staring at the closed door.

  “I don’t know how you do it,” I noted.

  Jim turned toward the window again, pulling his scarf tighter with one slim-fingered hand. Outside, the evening grew steadily colder, crystallizing into frosted shadows as the living things huddled together for warmth and the unliving things grew brittle and fragile.

  “It doesn’t matter who Val thinks he is,” he answered. “I know who he is to me. That’s something. And I know who I am. That’s something too. And not a soul in the world can take either one away from me.”

  I stared into the afterglow beside him, doubtful that I’d ever heard that particular sentiment laid out in quite that fashion. He said nothing, and I said still more of nothing, until the nothing had twined thickly between us.

  “I feel so alone here,” I heard myself murmur at last.

  “Really?” Jim answered with a small smile. “I never do.”

  “How is that possible, in a city like this?”

  “Look at it,” he said, gesturing. “This window looks down upon hundreds more panes of glass, and behind those panes live thousands upon thousands of lost souls. When I feel cast down and helpless, scores of other men do as well, and when I am bitterly angry at feeling cast down and helpless, countless other people languish in concert with me. When I’m happy, it’s the same. It’s a bit like … I used to play chamber music. It’s like a vast orchestra. And so I shan’t ever be alone.”

  Looking out along the brick void of the street, I tried to conceptualize what he was saying. I imagined doubles of myself everywhere, matched my mood in my mind’s eye with that of faceless others, and found he could only be in the right. If I felt alone, I could not possibly be alone in that feeling. Not in a metropolis as cruel as ours. Feeling the comfort he derived from city dwellers he would never meet, however … I wanted that brotherhood so very badly and instead grew only disgusted at the immenseness of our inability to help one another.

  “I can’t tell you how much I envy you,” I confessed. “I’ve never felt such a thing from New York.”

  “Of course you haven’t.” Jim touched me on the shoulder, a brief but comforting gesture. “You were born here.”

  • • •

  James Playfair and I quit my brother’s house after a little brandy and soft, unhurried conversation. I was unsurprised to learn he had a key, and he was surprised to see I didn’t plan on remarking over it. He went back to his new digs, I imagine.

  I hailed a hack and headed straight for Greene Street and Selina Ann Marsh.

  And for once in my life, it wasn’t out of stupidity or impatience that I waltzed open-eyed into the lioness’s lair. The way I saw the chessboard, the latest match was a draw. On the one hand, Lucy and Julius were dead and I’d mourn that fact for an indefinite period punctuated by my demise. On the other hand, Val was never directly implicated, and the beleaguered family was well on their way to Canada with a man who loved at least one of them. And so far as ruining me goes, she’d not yet quite managed it. But she’d come close.

  I needed to know what was necessary to make it all stop.

  I found Silkie Marsh alone in her mirrored parlor, sitting in an armchair reading a letter. She seemed profoundly distressed by its contents—gnawing at her lip, her striking hazel eyes skimming the lines while she twisted a piece of her golden hair. It was down, falling about her shoulders like light piercing through a cloud. She smiled upon seeing me. That’s due to my being an enemy. If a friend had interrupted her during a private moment, she’d have scowled like the very devil.

  “Mr. Wilde.” Her attention flickered between me and the page before she folded the paper, resting it on her lap. She wore the crimson dressing gown, its folds spilling graphically onto the carpet. “You aren’t wanted just now.”

  “What would happen if we stopped?” I asked, removing my hat and sitting on the sofa.

  Passing her tongue over her lower lip, Silkie Marsh considered this query. Since it had surprised her considerably, she took her time.

  “I was expecting questions, but not that one.” She pressed her nail along the letter’s crease and then set it on an adjacent claw-foot table.

  “I’ve answered most of the others on my own. You were paid a hundred dollars by Gates to get rid of his wife, for a start.”

  She gazed at me, silent.

  “It can’t matter now whether or not you tell me the rest,” I argued.

  “What do I get in return?”

  “I’ll leave your brothel sooner rather than later.”

  She blinked at me, jaw tight with impatience, and began to glance at the letter again before fixing her attention on her embroidered slipper. “My poor friend Rutherford was so worried. And I quite understood—the Party is cruel when they want to be, as cruel as a mob, and either one might have gone after him if he’d been found out. The situation was unacceptable. Bad for Rutherford, dangerous for his wife, potentially disastrous for Tammany. I was asked to assist, and I did.”

  “But a paltry hundred wasn’t enough for you,” I returned. “If instead of relocating them, you arranged for Varker and Coles to sell the family, you’d earn a fat share of the proceeds. When that scheme fell through, you lit on a new one. I don’t know how you realized Lucy and Delia were hiding at Val’s, admittedly. But I do know Gates told you they were slaves.”

  She sighed. “When Seixas described the men who assaulted him, I knew of cours
e it was you and Valentine. Sean Mulqueen searched a number of colored hotels as well as Eighty-four West Broadway for Lucy the next day, but that was a wash. When I asked him to have a look at Val’s residence instead … well. The sisters weren’t careful about windows. And Val isn’t careful about beautiful women.”

  Silkie Marsh was right, so I didn’t bother to argue with her.

  “Mulqueen was always your man, wasn’t he? I thought he worked for Varker and Coles at first, but I’d lay money that you invented the whole filthy system. Mulqueen the copper star, Varker and Coles the dealers, and all you had to do was appear in court when they needed you.”

  Adjusting a fold of her exquisite robe, Silkie Marsh shrugged. She seemed tired. Worn. “I didn’t like losing Sean—he was quite capable. He signaled me when the woman calling herself Lucy Adams was at last alone in the apartment as well. Delia Wright or whatever her name was led him in plenty of circles thereafter, but Sean had already done his duty.”

  “Who gave Gates away to the Party?”

  “I did, of course, after the sister and son disappeared. They appreciate the power of secrets, as I do. Exposure could have been devastating for multiple campaigns, the scandal would have rippled endlessly—better to be prepared for the worst. It would have been madness to leave Tammany in the dark. From the moment Rutherford told me of his endangerment, I saw an opportunity to be of use to them. I took it.”

  “Along with his blood money.”

  “All money is blood money, Mr. Wilde,” she snapped, impatient rather than hurt.

  “You told Lucy the truth that night, didn’t you? That Gates was being groomed by the Party, that the job in the flower shop was too public, that she was an escaped slave who had to be eliminated from the picture. And then you were inspired to strike a deal. If she made my brother look a heartless killer, you’d leave her kin alone. You as good as held them hostage—their lives for one faked garroting.”

  “She agreed soon enough,” Silkie Marsh said, picking at a thread that clung to her robe. “It was childishly easy. It was the least messy option left to me, in fact, compelling the problem to solve herself.”