Church of Marvels: A Novel

by Leslie Parry

  Her whole body began to shake. She poured some water into the washbowl and splashed her face. She paused, the water dripping around her ears, listening for any sound from the hall—a footstep, maybe? A creak? But it would be at least another quarter-hour before the nurse returned this way. Besides, she might have been summoned upstairs to help with whatever confusion had broken out. The scuffle had since quieted—Alphie remembered Mother’s Milk, the taste of the bathwater burning in her throat.

  She stripped to the waist and scrubbed her face with the cake of soap, the dream still alive in her mind. She thought she could still taste the mustiness of that hair, feel its weight, though when she licked her lips and touched her eyelids, they were smooth, slippery, nude. She remembered the gawping soap-boy, the way he’d leered—tickled and witless, licking his teeth, his inky hand squirming down to tug at his balls: They must have locked you away for being so ugly.

  She stared at her reflection in the mirror, the lather dripping off her face and running milky down her neck, over the scabbed tattoo. She took out the scissors—they were duller than she’d expected, speckled with rust. Still, she pried them open, held them up to the light. She pressed the blade against her throat, so hard that it rolled with her pulse.

  Then, on the other side of the door, she thought she heard a noise. She froze, her ears straining against the silence, the scissors poised against her neck. There it was again—a feathery, high-pitched wheeze, a brambly scratch against the door. She thought of the nurse’s crabby baton, the old woman’s fingernails. There were rats who lived in the walls, too, who made their nests from human hair and pallet guts. She stood there without moving, breathing shallowly. She waited for whatever it was to pass, but then, after a stretch of silence, the door opened and closed, and someone was in the room with her.

  Alphie flew back, startled, flailing to cover up her naked chest. She dropped the scissors, but a hand swooped out and caught them midair. As Alphie tripped and fell, struggling to cover herself, the figure stepped into the circle of light. A muzzle of brass gleamed at her mouth; her eyes burned colorless over the mask. Quickly, almost without a sound, she pushed Alphie to the ground and straddled her, smacking away her hands and holding the scissors above her heart. She knows! She knows! Alphie felt the vomit burn and chug up her throat—she turned her head to the side, her whole body contracting as she threw up over the floor, into her hair. She shivered and spit while the girl watched, all the while thinking, This is it. The end.

  But after a moment the girl dropped the scissors and fell back, breathing hard through the horn on her mask. Alphie lay shivering on the floor, too scared to move or make a sound. This girl—the same one who’d hidden the scissors in her throat, who’d curled her body through the air as if she had no skeleton at all—hadn’t been startled or confused when she opened the door. She didn’t seem surprised at all.

  “What do I have to do?” Alphie begged. “Please, please don’t tell. I’ll be leaving soon—someone’s coming for me. You won’t say anything, will you?” When she didn’t answer, Alphie only cried, “Please! What do you want?”

  The girl stood up and looked around the room. She reached for the burnt match in the candle dish, but as soon as she grabbed it, it turned to powder in her fingers. She grunted, then fished the wet cake of soap out of the bowl and started writing on the mirror.

  Alphie sat up and rearranged her dress. Her body was weak, too hot. She rubbed away the lather on her face, the dripping sick in her hair, the dot of blood beading through the hairs on her knee. She watched as the girl stepped back and pointed at the mirror, the soap foaming in her hand. Alphie moved closer, lifting the candle so she could see the letters, dripping and ghostly, written around her face.

  WHERE IS SHE

  Her skin went cold. She looked over at the girl, who stood gripping the soap, watching her, the horn whistling as she breathed. Alphie took a step forward, bringing the light with her. She stared into the green eyes above the mask. They were filled with tears.

  Then she remembered exactly where she’d seen Orchard Broome before. She had been in the room with her that night, too.

  THIRTEEN

  THE WOMAN STOOD IN FRONT OF SYLVAN, HER KNIFE DRAWN in the dusty light. It wobbled and twitched at her side, but she took another step forward, close enough for Sylvan to see the freckles on her nose. She was young—around his age, with wavy hair coming loose from its pins, her head cocked to the side as if he were too much of a threat to face plainly. “What’s your name?” she said.

  Sylvan, the dogboy—cornered here in the high light of day, in an alleyway paved with cowpat and swill. And this crooked-looking girl, brandishing a dagger as dull as a stalk of celery. He couldn’t think what she wanted from him—he only had a few cents in his hand. This neighborhood teemed with tough women, of course—he’d known a few misfit boxers, burled with old-country muscle; he’d seen little girls rob grown men blind; he’d even watched a shopgirl clobber a thief with a mallet until the man was nothing more than a wet flank of meat, left to sputter on the floor. But nothing like that had ever happened to him, not even close.

  He told her his name and smoothed the opium-smoker’s jacket against his ribs. It fit better than his own, with birch buttons and tailored cuffs and a hint of cologne. Underneath he could smell traces of tobacco and pomade, a faint spice like Mrs. Izzo’s cinnamon oil, and then something else, something stronger and more medicinal. He smelled good, at least. He lifted his chin.

  The girl’s eyes met his. “I’m looking for Isabelle Church,” she said.

  “I’m not acquainted with any Miss Church.”

  “Isabelle Church,” she said again. “You know her.” She tightened her grip around the dagger. “She looks like me.”

  “You’re mistaken.”

  “You were just looking for her down in the opium den,” she said. “I know.”

  Sylvan’s blood quickened. He stared at the tip of the dagger, at the girl’s angled face. He tried to remember if he’d seen her before—on the street, at a fight—but he could tell she wasn’t from the neighborhood. She didn’t seem particularly wheedling or coy, the way girls around here could be. She didn’t look weak from work or hunger. She didn’t appear to be the kind of woman the butcher-boy had described, someone feebleminded or drugged—or even particularly eccentric, despite the dagger in her hand. He couldn’t place her—not a churchgoing daughter or factory waif, not a dragon-chaser, not a runaway. She had a directness about her, a way of staring at him with her head slightly atilt, as if puzzled, and with a frankness that unnerved him.

  “For Christ’s sake,” he said, looking back toward the street, “put that thing down. No one here’s going to fight you.”

  The blade trembled in her hand, but she kept it pointed at him. “You were asking around for her,” she said again. “She’s my sister, so tell me. Where is she?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is she your sweetheart?”

  “No, no—not at all.”

  “You worked at a place called the Featherbone?”

  “I don’t even know what that is. Please”—he looked back to the dairy, where pails clanked and a woman whistled to the barn cats. “I’ll help you if you want, but it’s not safe to be waving that around. Not here.”

  The girl dropped her arm and sighed. He could see the color in her cheeks, the glimmer of water in her eyes. The wind blew up a flurry of dust; he smelled fresh milk and wet grain, the sweat from her chambray blouse. Out in the street came the songs of the market: a trilling girl with her basket of gingerbread, a suspender-seller clapping two cymbals together.

  “I’ll tell you,” he began, then faltered. He wasn’t sure exactly what she was aware of, or what she suspected. She’d followed him from the poppy box—that much was clear. She knew that he’d been down in the dens, asking around for a woman. But she couldn’t possibly know about the baby, could she? The baby, safe at Mrs. Izzo’s; the baby, whom he’d found only a few blocks a
way. She would have said as much already.

  “I was looking for a woman, yes,” he went on, “but I can’t tell you her name because I don’t know who she is. Just someone who might have visited the dens. An acquaintance of fellows named Lee and Eddie.”

  “Lee and Eddie?” she repeated.

  His pulse flickered. “Do you know them?”

  “I’ve never heard of them.” She began to rub at the skin behind her ear. “Why were you after her? Was she in some kind of trouble?”

  Sylvan paused; a muscle twitched in his cheek. She was frustrated, he could tell—crossing her arms, toeing the dirt, biting her cheeks to stave off tears. He wanted to believe that this wasn’t an act, that her worry was genuine—that she was just as baffled as he was. But how could he know what she was really after? If her sister was the one he’d been looking for, a woman who’d done something so wicked—left a baby to die, disappeared in the night, maybe bought blood in a jar and kept company with wastrels in an opium den—who’s to say she wouldn’t do the same?

  “I’ve never met her,” he said carefully, still eyeing the dagger at her side. “There was some commotion the other night. I’m . . . a night watchman of sorts, and I thought a woman fitting her description might know something.” He licked his lips and tasted a scab, still tender from the fight. “Why would you ask if she was in trouble?”

  “Because I heard you were looking for a woman”—her voice shook, but she lifted her head—“a woman who was going to have a baby.”

  Her face caught the light, and then he could see it: the dimple in her chin. The gold-green eyes. He wasn’t sure what he felt, if it was exhilaration or dread, but he found himself nodding. “Yes,” he said. “Fair skin and green eyes, I’d guess. A baby any day.”

  “What kind of commotion?” She was staring at the marks on his face, the bruises and cuts, which had begun to tighten and itch in the sun. “Was someone hurt?”

  He drew a breath through his teeth. “Nothing troublesome.” He didn’t want to scare her; he didn’t want to see her scream and faint. What if he was wrong about all of it? What if she accused him of kidnapping, or worse? “Only a little riffraff, noise in the street. I wanted to be sure a woman—a woman in her condition—wasn’t inconvenienced. And nothing came of it. I don’t know any more than you.” He felt a bubble of guilt rise in the back of his throat. Quickly he went on, “Did your sister live nearby—near the butcher’s at all?”

  “I don’t even know where I am!” She threw up her arms and looked around the alley, the dimple trembling on her chin. “She left home a few months ago, and only wrote me once. I feel such—ugh!” She turned away and wiped at her eyes with a handkerchief, then kicked at a patch in the dirt. He watched as her shoulders lifted and shook. After a moment she looked back—“You’re a night watchman, you said?”

  “I know these streets as well as anyone.”

  “Are you with the police?”

  He grimaced. “I have respectable work.”

  “Yes, I can see that.” She handed him the handkerchief. “Your cheek.”

  Fumbling, he dabbed at the cut, then flinched when he saw the cloth come back with blood. “I—I won a fight this morning,” he explained.

  “Must have been quite the victory.”

  He felt embarrassed to give it back, but she reached over and took it anyway, folded it down in her pocket. “And here I thought a watchman only snored away in his chair, while the dogs ran off with the sausages.” She eyed him. “My name’s Odile Church.”

  “Where you from, Miss Church?”

  She bent to stash the dagger in her boot. “Coney Island.”

  He’d heard stories about that place—the giant machines that turned you upside down, the animals that were allowed into restaurants and served just like people—dogs sitting at tables with napkins tied around their collars, wolfing crème pie off china plates. And all of that water, eating away at the sand—he’d heard about a wave so big that it swept away an entire street, houses and all—it still floated somewhere out in the Atlantic, neighbors tending their gardens, drinking tea on their porches, tossing biscuits to the whales in their backyards.

  “We were in a show there,” she went on. “A twin act. No woman down there who might have looked like me?”

  “No women at all. It’s a stag den, if you know what I mean.”

  “What about these Lee and Eddie people?”

  “A couple of dragon-chasers, I would think. I’m not sure.”

  “Wait a moment.” She pushed her hand into her pocket and drew out a crumpled envelope. “There is one thing you can help me with. I found this with my sister’s things.” She unfolded a piece of paper and held it out for him to see. “Can you read?”

  “EDGAR,” Sylvan declaimed, just loud enough for the birds to scatter. “Hair dark, skin fair, two-one-three West Thirteen—”

  “All right—Edgar. Does that mean anything to you?” she asked. “What about those numbers—an address?”

  “Up in the Village, I should think.”

  He thought of the rainy afternoon at the party with Francesca, the smell of his borrowed suit, the damp press of the gentlemen’s hands against his. He looked at Odile—at her locket on its funny glass chain, her wild hair wavy with sweat. What had she been thinking, coming into the city by herself?

  “I can take you,” he said. “A good neighborhood, but it’s too easy to lose your way.”

  She looked at him for a moment, considering.

  “I have nothing on me, I promise you.” He pushed his hands into the pockets of his coat, felt his fingers close around something smooth and stippled, no bigger than a pea.

  “Here.” He held it out for her to see, turning it up in his palm. “That’s all. A tooth.”

  FOURTEEN

  THERE WAS A STORY ODILE REMEMBERED, A STORY THEIR mother used to tell. Once, long ago, in Punxsutawney before the war, Friendship’s brother had taken her to see a traveling magic show. It was the first time Friendship had seen anything other than Christmas vespers at the hotel bar, where her uncle, crippled in a mining accident, poured steins of beer for the traveling businessmen. She and her brother had run down the hill from the house; their mother had taken to bed with a spell and their aunties were busy bundling goose feathers in the kitchen. They snuck in behind the miners and toughs and big German families who spoke no English, huddled in a town hall that had seen dances and auctions and even a human dissection by the local doctor. The magician had come all the way from Pittsburgh. When he stepped out from behind the curtain—his hair molded, his moustache waxed, his spectacles gleaming in the footlights—he was holding a large, brilliantly green reptile. Friendship had never seen anything like it before: the medieval, spiny back, the armored wattle, the pink tongue and wizened face. Is that a dragon? she whispered to her brother. But her brother, who knew everything, could only stare at the stage in wonder, unable to answer. Some people in the audience screamed; a few ran for the door. The magician stepped forward and asked for a brave volunteer. Friendship’s brother elbowed her hard, shoving her into the aisle. The magician turned, squinting through the motes of light, shielding his eyes with his white-gloved hand. Then he pointed down and said: Yes. You. And so Friendship walked slowly, apprehensively down the aisle, heads turning to watch her pass. Everything was silent, except for the wooden steps that squeaked on her way up to the stage. She was embarrassed at first, in her hand-me-down dress that smelled like the noosed, oily goose in the smoke shack. But she wanted to get closer to the dragon—nestled there in the man’s arms, claws gripping at his sleeve, the striped, molting tail sticking out like a shoot. Her skin tingled as she stepped under the lights. With a whoosh, the magician spun away from the audience, his back to the spotlight, and instructed Friendship to tug twice at his coattails. She did, baffled and giggling, a little afraid. He hopped up and down, then turned back to the crowd. The animal had transformed in his hands—no longer scaly and serpentine, but orange and furred, yawning in h
is cupped hands. A kitten. Friendship gasped. The magician took a step forward and held it out to her, but she backed away. Go on, he said as the audience laughed. Tell them it’s real. And so Friendship reached out, trembling, and lifted the kitten into her arms. Folded ears and white whiskers. A pink nose that left cold, itchy dots on her neck. She nodded, stunned. That’s your prize, said the magician. Ladies and gentlemen, my lovely assistant! There was a crackle of applause from the crowd, echoing all the way up to the balcony. Friendship felt a rush, a thrill, a sense of being outside herself and yet utterly whole. The cheers grew louder as she stepped down from the stage and walked back up the aisle to her brother. He hollered louder than the rest, whistling and stomping his feet. Something came over her then, and she jumped up on her rickety seat, holding her kitten aloft for everyone to see. The spotlight found her. The audience roared.

  It was the first time she had ever been on stage, in front of all those faces, alit with wonder, and life would never be the same for her again.

  AT FOURTEEN YEARS OLD their mother had only left a note on a sheet of foolscap under her parents’ inkwell: I’ve gone to fight. Friendship Willingbird Church, younger than Odile was now—not just venturing over the bridge to the city, a scant few miles away, but riding off to avenge her brother’s murder, living in disguise, every day running from death and discovery. To have seen battle, to have watched men die beside her—some perhaps by her own bayonet—to have felt a bullet passing through her body (like fire, she’d said). And then, jogged away on a rattling stretcher, smelling the rust and rot in the surgeon’s tent, hearing the grind of the bone saws—weak and bleeding but still trying to stop the nurse, barely older than herself, as she cut away her clothes. She had risked everything for her brother’s honor. To see it done. To know his name. To bear witness to his sacrifice. And then, on crutches, to be helped into a circuit rider’s wagon, to be wheeled away in the dead of night through a Union embattlement—how had she done it?