Band of Sisters

by Cathy Gohlke

  And where is Drake? He’s been gone at least ten days with no word—no letter or telephone call, no telegram. Dorothy had said he’d left after giving her a peck on the cheek and a casual “Business trip—nothing to worry your pretty head. I’ll be back in a few days. Don’t give away the furniture while I’m gone.”

  It was a petty but serious remark, reminiscent of his displeasure upon learning that Dorothy had contributed her last year’s overcoat and gloves to the Immigrant Aid Society, still desperately in need of warm clothing.

  Olivia forced herself to mentally berate Drake, to focus on fury he so richly deserved. But into the back of her mind crept images of Curtis as they had done constantly of late: Curtis smiling. Curtis offering to help her find Maureen. Curtis sitting beside her in church. And then Curtis telling her he was going away with Maureen and Joshua, asking her to keep it all a secret, guaranteeing they would be back within the week. But none of them were, and the days were passing.

  With each day, Katie Rose shredded the remnants of her sister’s reputation anew, grinding both Joshua and Curtis into the dust, casting them as fools lusting after a woman’s skirt.

  Dear God, was I a fool to believe him?

  The clock in the hallway had just bonged four when Maureen heard footsteps outside the study door. The knob turned as she dropped behind a hearthside leather chair. A light played slowly over the room, flicked off, and the bearer closed the door.

  Maureen lay still until she heard the scrape of a chair outside the door and the faint, off-key hum of a satisfied Collins.

  With two hands she gripped and pushed the andiron. One bookcase slid behind the next, and Maureen slipped through the opening. Running her hands above the lintel as she’d seen Harder do, she found the small lever. Barely a touch, and the bookcase slid closed, clicking into place.

  Maureen stood in the cold dark and buttoned her cloak, praying that Collins had not heard.

  She pressed against the stone wall, swept her light down the steeply spiraling steps, and took them one at a time.

  How far she descended she could not guess but was certain she’d burrowed at least two floors beneath the main floor of the house, into an under cellar of sorts—where the stairs stopped short, hit a rough landing, and turned a sharp corner. She shone her light ahead. The path shot forward, tunneling through the dark.

  It was four thirty. Olivia half dozed in a chair by Dorothy’s bed. She’d not heard the door open and was startled awake when a sharp thud came from Dorothy’s adjacent dressing room.

  She’d risen and was about to admonish the maid to keep quiet, to lay the fire later and let poor Dorothy sleep, when she realized it was not the maid after all, but a man in overcoat and hat going through her sister’s vanity. And yet, the figure was familiar.

  “Drake?” Olivia bit her lip to make certain she wasn’t dreaming.

  Drake dropped the necklace he’d plucked from the open jewelry case but scooped it deftly from the floor.

  “What are you doing with Dorothy’s pearls? What are you doing here at this hour?”

  Drake’s face blanched, but he composed himself so quickly, and with such sarcasm, that Olivia felt two people stood before her.

  “I live here, in case you’ve forgotten, Sister-in-law. In fact, I must ask you the same question.”

  “I’m here, Drake, because Dorothy is ill.”

  “I thought surely she would have rallied by now.” He sounded critical, as if Dorothy’s constitution was a deserved judgment upon weak character. She watched as he slipped the pearls into his coat pocket as though she could not plainly see him.

  “She did rally but is down again.” She stepped closer. “Those are the pearls Father gave Dorothy on her eighteenth birthday.” Pieces of a puzzle began to slip into place in Olivia’s mind as she watched her brother-in-law: Drake’s annoyance over Dorothy’s generosity; the pieces of silver Dorothy maintained Drake had packed away for safekeeping, as if their staff had not always been completely trustworthy; Dorothy’s diamond earrings that had suddenly gone missing. “If you need money, Drake, I’ll gladly advance you some. Please don’t take Dorothy’s pearls.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” he snapped. “My train got in early. I promised Dorothy I’d have her clasp attended to before she loses the pearls, and I mean to do it before another day goes by.” He made to brush past her, but Olivia stood in the doorway.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  He stopped. “You’re out of line, Little Sister, and quite beyond your realm. It’s time for you to go home and put your wild imagination to penning schoolgirl novels.”

  “Gladly,” Olivia said and, despite his demeaning and spiteful barb, meant it. “But I cannot leave Dorothy. Do you understand how ill she is? Do you know her condition, her . . . her prognosis?”

  “I understand that she’s my wife and therefore my responsibility, not yours.” He moved toward her. “Now, shall I have George call for your car?”

  “Drake?” Dorothy moaned from the bedroom.

  Olivia stood aside, but Drake made no move to go to his wife.

  “You’ve become meddlesome, Olivia.”

  “And you’ve become cruel and irresponsible. Do you—?”

  But Dorothy cried again, “Drake, are you there?”

  Drake pushed past Olivia, locking the bedroom door behind him.

  Olivia’s heart caught for her sister, but she admonished herself. He won’t openly strike her. He wants too much from her. She clasped her temples. Dear Lord, please help Dorothy. Please show me what to do.

  She hesitated, hoping for a clear answer. Tempted as she was to listen at her sister’s door, she knew she could not, that Dorothy wouldn’t want it.

  Olivia left the dressing room by the hall doorway and walked slowly down the stairs, already regretting her challenge to Drake. If I’m to help Dorothy, I can’t afford to alienate him.

  She waited at the bottom of the stairs another twenty minutes, not wanting to leave before she knew Dorothy was all right. George appeared with her coat.

  “You shouldn’t have waited up, George.”

  But the older man simply smiled and nodded. He’d just called for her car and driver when Drake descended the stairs.

  “Still here?” He didn’t look pleased.

  “Please, Drake. I don’t wish to quarrel. I’m worried about my sister.”

  “She’s under the weather.” He sounded as though he were speaking to a child. “She’ll be fine in a day or two.”

  “Is that what she told you? Have you spoken with Dr. Blakely?” Olivia pressed. “Because this means you’re both infec—”

  “You forget yourself.” Drake drew himself upward. “I’ve tolerated your meddling and forward remarks because you’re Dorothy’s sister and she loves you. I love my wife, Olivia—though you don’t seem to think so—and I indulge her where you’re concerned. But don’t cross me if you wish to remain welcome in my house.”

  Olivia swallowed. She knew she’d gone too far and that Drake could and likely would forbid Dorothy to see her. No matter what, she couldn’t let that happen. “I’m sorry, Drake. You’re right. I’ve overstepped my bounds.”

  Drake looked as though he didn’t believe her.

  “It won’t happen again.”

  He hesitated, buttoned his coat, then smiled indulgently with the victor’s magnanimous condescension. He leaned forward, curling a stray wisp of hair from her forehead round his finger and tucking it behind her ear.

  She felt her face flame, felt his breath feather her hot cheek.

  “You need someone—a husband of your own—to keep you occupied, dear Olivia. As soon as I’ve taken care of my own business, I’ll see what I can arrange.”

  A sharp retort was on her tongue when the front door opened and her chauffeur bowed discreetly. “Your car, ma’am.”

  Relieved, but still holding her breath, Olivia turned her back on Drake and pulled on her gloves. “Thank you, Ralph.”

  “New
driver?” Drake asked.

  “What?”

  “You fired your foundling Irishman?”

  “No, and Joshua’s hardly a foundling. He only drove for me until he began working for Curtis. He and Maureen are both working with Curtis the past week or so,” Olivia replied. Even as she said it, she remembered Curtis’s warning to tell no one that Maureen was connected to him in any way, that it might endanger her. Surely he didn’t mean Drake. They’re working together, aren’t they? But she wondered again that Maureen had not returned to Morningside, that Curtis had not been in touch. And though she didn’t want to believe Katie Rose and her cruel accusations, she feared the growing relationship between Curtis and Maureen. How could a man work so closely with a woman as striking as Maureen and not notice her? “You’ve been working and traveling with Curtis too, haven’t you—for business?”

  “Is that what he told you?” Drake smirked, his jaw and eyes hardening.

  “I assumed.” Something’s not right.

  “Did you?” Drake buttoned his coat, pulled on his leather gloves, jerking the fingers into place, and walked out the door.

  Maureen’s waning light danced crazily up and down the tunnel walls as she stumbled along its uneven path. Please don’t let the light give out, not here!

  She could not guess how far she’d come but felt at last a slight stirring, a breath of air against her face. She stopped, burying the light in the folds of her skirt. Muffled voices, some soft and moaning, others gruff and coarse, came from a short distance ahead. Maureen reached a flat wall, where the tunnel turned sharply. A pool of light lay on the path round the first corner, and beyond the next a flight of stone steps, leading down into a rock and earthen cavern the width of three Pullman cars and the length of two.

  Maureen pressed back against the tunnel wall as her eyes adjusted to the dim light of the damp room. Three double-sided rows of what looked like barred animal pens—the bars three finger widths apart—ran the length, each ten to twelve hands high, with a perimeter big enough to stall a cow or a couple of sheep.

  Maureen crept closer. Broken boards and fragments of boards stood between the locked stalls, and tattered blankets hung crooked over the fronts, isolating the cages from one another. To the top of each cage was wired a small board, with a number crudely drawn: 28, the next 29, the next 30. A hole the width of a rolling pin and perhaps a hand high was cut into the front door of each pen near the floor. As she stepped nearer, tin cups, clutched by clawlike hands, pushed through several holes to the aisle.

  The hairs on Maureen’s arms rose. She peered both ways, then gingerly pulled a corner of blanket from the door of the first stall. She stared but couldn’t credit what her eyes were seeing. She leaned closer.

  Half-asleep, and curled like a newborn calf, lay a woman, her hair knotted, her skirt and waist torn, soiled beyond redemption. The woman looked up sleepily and crooked her finger. “Take me; I’m good.” Her head dropped toward her chest, but jerking herself awake, she repeated in rote, “Come—take me.”

  The next young woman, not older than Katie Rose, looked up with a blackened cheek, covered her face with her arm, and moaned, “No, no,” curling her limbs into her torso. It was not so much an answer, Maureen thought as she dropped the blanket into place, as a response to anything or anyone that came near. She bit her lip and pressed forward.

  Hands trembling, Maureen pulled the blanket from the front of the next stall and the next—on down the line until she pressed her fist against her mouth to keep from vomiting at the sight of the women and girls, some barely twelve, some beaten, their faces marked and eyes, jaws, lips, or fingers swollen.

  The farther down the line she crept, the cleaner and healthier, less bruised but also less aware the women became. She recognized two of the women who had been brought up to serve the night of the poisoning.

  As she stepped in front of one of the cutout holes, another hand shoved a tin cup through the small door, rattling it against the floor, begging for water. Dozens more women followed, shoving hands through their small doors, banging cups against the stone floor. Beyond the aisle she walked, Maureen heard more stamp their cups.

  “Knock it off! You crazy—” a crude voice cut the air. Maureen froze, prepared to run, but a man twice her size rounded the corner. “Well, well, what have we here?” He leered. “You don’t look much like our general merchandise, missy.”

  Maureen backed away, sorely tempted to make for the tunnel and the long trek back to the house. But she sensed that another came around the opposite end of the aisle, behind her, cutting off escape. And so she bluffed.

  “Mr. Belgadt sent me down.”

  “Not his usual method of adding inventory,” the voice behind her grated. “But we’re willing to oblige. He wanted us to break you in, did he?”

  “He wants you upstairs, all of you. He told me to keep watch while you’re gone.”

  “It’ll have to wait. We’re shipping the lot out as soon as Flynn gets here. We’ve already started druggin’ the best ones.”

  Maureen shrugged, forcing her voice above the din of rattling cups. “He said now.”

  “Shut up!” the beefy one bellowed, slamming a wooden club against the cages.

  Maureen jumped. The clamoring stopped.

  “Go tell him if we don’t get ’em outta here before the water’s over the bags, they’ll drown. Not that I care, but it’s a stinkin’ waste of inventory.”

  “I’m not one to waylay Mr. Belgadt’s plans.” She looked at them pointedly. “That was a mistake Harder made.”

  The men glanced guardedly at each other. “So what’s he want with us? We didn’t have nothing to do with that, didn’t even know about it till Cook told us.”

  “He knows that,” Maureen soothed, “but he wants to lay before you his change in plans. He said to wait at the end of the tunnel until he opens the door. He’ll call you when he’s ready.”

  “Boss is consultin’ us now?”

  “Why don’t we just go up through the cellar, like usual?”

  Both men frowned, and she knew she’d overstated herself.

  “He’s had investors in and out this whole week,” she patiently explained, doing her best to sidestep the water streaming across the cave floor. “He doesn’t want them to know where he keeps the women, so you have to wait until he’s alone in the house and can open the bookcase.” She wrinkled her brow and peered down the aisle. “It’s just the two of you to look after all these women? I thought there’d be more.”

  “Flynn’s comin’ out from the city. Ought to be here before the tide rises. He’s expectin’ to get ’em out before daylight.”

  The first man hoisted his suspender over his soiled shirt. “If he gets here before we get back, tell him to wait. Just in case the boss changes orders.”

  Maureen nodded, steeling herself against her choking fear of Jaime Flynn.

  “‘Shave and a haircut, two bits,’ against that door.” He pointed to an indentation at the far end of the room, a tunnel less than a broomstick long that led to a solid-looking door. “That’s his signal. Don’t open to nobody else for no other reason.”

  Maureen squinted into the darkness. “He’s got no key?”

  “It only opens from this side—we don’t need no visitors. And don’t open till he knocks. Flynn knows to watch the tide. We’ve got sandbags on the other side. But with this storm and the tide comin’ in soon, they ain’t much good. The whole place is gonna flood—door or not. That’s why we’ve gotta get ’em out, and soon.”

  “But where can Mr. Flynn take them in this storm?” Maureen did her best to sound nonchalant, but the men exchanged an uncertain frown, and she knew she dared ask no more.

  “Know Jaime, do you?”

  She shrugged. “We’re from the same county—a long time ago.” Maureen forced herself to return their stare.

  “Never mentioned anybody he knows workin’ in the house.”

  “Would you?”

  The taller one
hesitated, then motioned toward the cages. “Keep these locked. They’ll beg and carry on. Let ’em.”

  Maureen shivered involuntarily but crossed her arms, lifted a jutting chin, and nodded as though he’d addressed a hardened woman of New York’s underworld.

  Maureen waited until Belgadt’s men had climbed the stairs and the echo of their footsteps died in the tunnel before she began pulling back more blankets.

  “Alice?” She whispered at first, running down the aisle. “Eliza?” From cage to cage she ran, forcing herself to push away the faces of misery in hope of finding her friends.

  But it was no good. More than half of the women responded.

  “Here!” one cried.

  And “Help me! I’ll be Eliza if you want!” called another.

  Hands reached through the small doors, clawing the ground, begging with outstretched fingers.

  After a dozen false hopes, Maureen knew that the names she called meant nothing to the women desperate to escape and that doors without begging hands housed women likely too weak or beaten, too intimidated and frightened, too sick or malnourished to plead.

  Eliza and Alice could be behind any one of these blankets, or they might not be here at all. But how can I leave these women here—any of them?

  She gripped the bars of a cage door and shook it until her teeth rattled; not a bar gave way. “Keys . . . keys . . . there must be keys,” she whispered, flashing her light across the cages. And then louder, “Where are the keys? Do any of you know where they keep the keys? Help me, tell me, and I’ll let you out!”

  But the room had gone silent.

  “I’ll help you, I swear it, but you must help me before they come to take you away!”

  A timid voice called, uncertainly, from across the room. And then another and another.

  “Maureen?” a voice, thick and husky but familiar, separated itself from the others.

  “Alice? Eliza?” Maureen cried.

  “Maureen?” the voice came again, closer.