After Hours: Tales From Ur-Bar

by Joshua Palmatier; Patricia Bray

  “And rent—”

  “A shilling by Friday,” Tiller said. “Yes, I know.”

  Peter exhaled the way Papa used to. “All right then. Good day, Thomas.”

  “Good day, Peter.”

  He waited until Peter had gone back into the house and closed the door before walking to the cart and pushing it out of the yard onto Leverett’s Lane. It rattled loudly on the cobbles, pots and pans swinging on their hooks and clanging together, old blades and rusted tools bouncing in their wooden compartments, the empty bottles he had carefully arranged the previous evening falling over one another like drunken sailors.

  There had been seven pence in his pocket when he counted just before going to bed. He could get the other five today or tomorrow. Peter wouldn’t have to put him out. That’s what he told himself, anyway. But he pushed the cart down to the wharves, his eyes raking the streets, searching for anything that he might find and clean and sell. It always amazed him, the things people lost. Books, jewelry, coins sometimes. Once, a few years ago, he had found a half-crown in the North End on Charter Street. He often went back to the same spot, hoping to find money again, but so far there hadn’t been any more. Still, that wouldn’t keep him from checking later.

  He didn’t see much today, at least not right off. A scrap of metal here, another bottle there. Once he crossed over into the North End, he found a bit more: a knife with a broken blade, which might fetch a few pence; a full copy of Monday’s Gazette—someone would pay a penny for that, if they hadn’t read it yet; and a lady’s linen kerchief that was almost clean. He tied that to the top of the cart beside the pans, so that people could see it. It was sure to sell.

  Crumbs rode on his shoulder for a short while, but then flew down to the harbor’s edge to scavenge for food. The water was still, but dark as ink. Tiller could smell salt and dead fish in the air. The wharf workers shouted at him and laughed; he wasn’t sure what the men said, but he could tell that it wasn’t kind, and he tried to ignore them. After a few minutes he made his way up from the docks.

  He stopped first at the foundry on Foster Lane. Paul, who worked there, was always kind to him, and often bought an item or two. Tiller had started seeking out goods that would interest him, and earlier in the week he had found a small hammer, its head only slightly rusted, that he thought Paul would like.

  He rummaged through the cart until he found it, and entered the smithy. He found Paul at the forge, his round face ruddy with the heat, his sleeves rolled up, revealing powerful forearms. Seeing Tiller, he raised a hand and stepped away from the fire.

  “Good morning, Tiller.”

  “Hello, Paul.” Belatedly, Tiller snatched the cap off his head.

  “Where’s your bird today?” Paul asked.

  Tiller shrugged. “Eating somewhere,” he said. “He’ll find me later. I have something for you. Found it in Cornhill.” He held the hammer out to the man.

  The smith’s forehead creased and he came forward. “This is very nice, Tiller,” he said, taking the hammer from him and turning it over in his hands. “Very nice, indeed.” He rubbed his thumb over a patch of rust. “A bit of polishing and this will be good as new.” Paul looked up at him. “How much?”

  Tiller gazed up at the ceiling, as if considering this, though he had already decided. “I dunno,” he said, his gaze meeting Paul’s for an instant before darting away. “Five pence maybe?”

  The smith smiled. “Five pence seems more than fair.” He dug into his pocket and took out a sixpence. “I don’t have it exactly. How about we settle on six and call it even?”

  “I have a penny,” Tiller said, reaching into his own pocket.

  “It’s all right, Tiller. Six is a good price.”

  Tiller took the coin, a grin on his face. “I found a good one, didn’t I?”

  “Yes, you did.”

  He hesitated a moment, wondering if he should say more. At last he put his cap back on. “Well, thanks, Paul. I’ll see you again in a few days.”

  “Good day, Tiller. May the Lord keep you.”

  Tiller left the shop and immediately Crumbs fluttered down to his shoulder.

  “Got rent, Crumbs,” he said, holding up the sixpence.

  The crow bent toward it, his beak open.

  “No, you don’t. I need that for Peter.”

  He slid the coin into his pocket and started pushing his cart again. He stopped at a few other shops, but didn’t sell anything more. By midday, he was back in Cornhill, and he made his way to the public houses, hoping to trade for a meal. He stopped first at the Bunch of Grapes and when the innkeeper there refused to look at his wares, he went on to the Light House. That proved no more fruitful. Against his better judgment, he then made his way to the Brazen Head, on Cornhill Street.

  Mary Jackson, who owned the tavern, had never liked him. She called Crumbs “that filthy bird” and insisted that the crow stay outside. And she talked to Tiller as if he were a little boy.

  He knew that he wasn’t as smart as some people, but he had gotten by on his own for a long time now. He didn’t need Miss Jackson telling him how to take care of himself.

  Occasionally, though, he had something she liked, and she gave him a free meal in exchange. He hoped that the kerchief might catch her eye.

  She was at the bar when he walked in, and she greeted him with a frown. Her hair—black, streaked with silver—was drawn up in a bun, and she wore a pale blue gown with a stomacher of white linen. Tiller noticed that her stomacher matched the kerchief perfectly.

  “What do you want?” Miss Jackson asked, the lines around her mouth and eyes making her appear angry. Tiller had seen her smile now and again, and each time he was surprised by how pretty a smile made her look. He thought that she should smile more. “I’ve told you I’m not interested in buying the rubbish you find in the streets.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Tiller said, stopping just inside her door and removing his cap. The tavern was crowded, and most of the people were craning their necks to see him. Tiller tried hard to ignore them. “But I have something I think you’ll like.” He held up the kerchief for her to see.

  She stared at it briefly, wrinkling her nose. “What is that?”

  “A kerchief, ma’am. A nice one. Linen it is. With a bit of cleaning—”

  Miss Jackson began to laugh, and it didn’t make her look pretty. She glanced back at the others and they laughed as well. “You think I want to buy someone’s dirty kerchief? You’re mad!”

  Tiller slowly lowered the hand holding the kerchief. “I have some other....” He stopped. Their laughter was only growing louder. He started to leave.

  “Wait.”

  He faced Miss Jackson again.

  “You spend some time at that other pub, don’t you? The Fat Spider?”

  “Yes.” That was where Tiller intended to go next. It was a long walk, but Janna and Gil—who ran the tavern—they were his friends. They always fed him, even when he didn’t have something on his cart that they wanted.

  She beckoned him toward the bar. “Come here. Are you hungry . . . Tiller, is it?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said quietly, still standing by the door.

  “It’s all right, Tiller.” She indicated a stool with an open hand. “You can sit right here.” She glanced at her barman, a tall thin man with a high forehead and long plaited hair. “Johnny, fetch some chowder and bread for Tiller, will you?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Johnny said, and went back to the kitchen.

  Tiller crossed to the bar. Some of the others were still watching him, but they had stopped laughing. He halted by Miss Jackson, who nodded in encouragement.

  “That’s it. Sit down.”

  He sat on the stool beside her.

  Miss Jackson narrowed her eyes, which were the same color as her gown. “What can you tell me about that woman at the Fat Spider? Janna, right? What can you tell me about her?”

  “Um . . . well ... she’s very nice. She . . . she gives me food sometimes and—�
��

  “Where’s she from? Do you know that?”

  “An island somewhere, I think. Her skin’s dark, and she speaks with an accent.”

  “I know that.” She sounded the way Peter sometimes did when Tiller couldn’t figure things out. But then she exhaled slowly. “Tiller, have you ever seen her do strange things?”

  “You mean magical things?”

  Her face brightened, and she smiled at him, a pretty, friendly smile. “Yes, that’s exactly what I mean. How smart you are.”

  “I’ve seen her do that,” Tiller said, pleased with himself. “I’ve—” He stopped, his cheeks burning. He had been about to say that he had felt her magic, too. That it made the ground hum beneath his feet. But Janna had warned him about telling anyone that, and while Miss Jackson was being nice to him right now, he was smart enough to know it wouldn’t last, and then he would be sorry that he had told her. He wondered if he had been wrong to say that Janna did magic. He knew that men and women were still hanged as witches in New England. He didn’t think that Miss Jackson wanted to get Janna in trouble, but still he regretted saying as much as he had. “I’ve heard that some people do it,” he said, keeping his eyes fixed on the bar. “It might not have been Janna. I don’t know who it was.”

  “It’s all right, Tiller. She won’t mind that you told me. I want her to do magic for me. I’ll pay her for it. She’ll be glad that we had this little talk.”

  Tiller wasn’t so sure. But before he could say anything, Johnny emerged from the kitchen with his chowder and bread.

  “You want ale with that?” Johnny asked.

  Tiller looked at Miss Jackson.

  “Of course he does,” she said. She smiled at Tiller again. “Janna doesn’t like me very much, Tiller. Did you know that?”

  “No,” he said. A lie. Janna didn’t like anyone very much. She liked Gil, and she was nice to Tiller, but he had never seen her show any sign of liking other people. And she sometimes said bad things about Miss Jackson. Like that she was a lying snake, and that she couldn’t be trusted to care for her own Mama, much less anyone else.

  “Well, she doesn’t,” Miss Jackson went on. “And so I need your help. I need you to convince her to do a little magic for me. Can you do that?”

  “I don’t know,” Tiller said. “It might not have been Janna.”

  “Of course. But if it was Janna, what kind of magic did she do? Can you remember that?”

  He didn’t know what to say. None of this had gone the way he wanted.

  “I’ve heard people say that she does love spells,” Miss Jackson said, her voice dropping to a whisper. “Is that what you’ve seen?”

  Tiller stared back at her, too afraid to speak.

  “Do you know how much people pay her for the charms?”

  When he still didn’t answer, her expression turned hard. “That’s my food sitting in front of you, Tiller. I want answers. Now tell me: Does she do love spells?”

  Tiller nodded. “Yes, ma’am,” he whispered. “I don’t know how much money she gets for them.”

  “Do they work?” Miss Jackson asked, hunger in her eyes and in her voice. “Is the magic real?”

  “I think so,” he said. “I’ve ... I’ve heard people thank her.”

  She smiled like someone who had just won at cards. “That’s what I needed to know. Thank you, Tiller.”

  Johnny put a cup of ale in front of him.

  Miss Jackson stood. “Make sure he gets whatever he wants,” she told Johnny. “He’s our guest. You understand?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Johnny said.

  “You go to the Fat Spider when you’re done, Tiller.” Miss Jackson bent toward him, forcing Tiller to look her in the eye. “You tell Janna that I’m coming, all right?”

  Tiller nodded, taking a spoonful of the chowder, which was very good. “Yesh, ma’am,” he said through the food.

  She patted his arm and walked away. Johnny moved to the far end of the bar to talk to the men sitting there. Tiller was left alone. He didn’t mind. He ate and he drank, and when he finished, he got up and left the Brazen Head. No one seemed to notice.

  His cart still stood outside the tavern where he had left it, with Crumbs perched on the edge. The bird cawed crossly at Tiller.

  “I didn’t forget you,” Tiller said, taking a piece of fresh bread from his pocket. “Here you go.”

  Crumbs took the bread and hopped to the far end of the cart. There, he began to tear at his food with his thick black beak.

  Tiller pushed the cart down Cornhill and onto Marlborough, passing the lofty spire of the Old South Church and the solid brick façade of the Province House. Soon, the closely packed houses and shops of the South End gave way to more open ground—pastures and fields, country homes and rolling lawns. Still Tiller pushed the cart, sweating now, despite the cold.

  The Fat Spider sat by itself on a lonely stretch of Orange Street on the Boston Neck. It didn’t look like much from the outside. It was made of old, graying wood, and it seemed to lean to one side, as if too tired to stand straight. Its shingle roof sagged in the middle, and the sign out front—which showed a fat, smiling spider crawling across its web toward a fly—had been bleached of color by years of rain and snow and sun.

  Inside, though, it smelled of roasted fowl and fresh bread, pipe smoke and musty ale. Aside from his own room, it smelled more like home than any place Tiller had ever been. A fire burned in the hearth, and spermaceti candles glowed in iron sconces around the great room, casting flickering shadows on the walls.

  There were never many people in the tavern, and today there were fewer than usual—just a pair of old men sitting in the back, talking quietly. Tiller recognized them both; they came here often.

  Crumbs flew to his usual perch over the hearth. Tiller went to the bar, his cap in hand. Janna was polishing the ancient wood with a dirty white rag, her back bent, her head tipped to the side.

  “Hi, Janna,” Tiller said.

  Janna didn’t look up. “Afternoon, Tiller. You hungry, darlin’?”

  “No, I ate.”

  At that, she stopped and raised her head, her eyes hawklike—dark and fierce. He had seen men twice her size flinch under that gaze. She was small and bone thin, with white hair so short that you could see through it to her brown scalp. Her face was bony, wrinkled, and forbidding, even when she wasn’t angry. Tiller had been afraid of her for a long time, but he wasn’t anymore, now that he knew her.

  Janna had been a slave once when she was a little girl. She had told him that. She and her family had worked on one of the islands. But when she sailed with her master to the colonies, their ship encountered a storm. Everyone was killed except Janna. Tiller didn’t know any more. He had heard people say it was a miracle she hadn’t been taken by another slave owner. Others said that she had been, but had eventually bought her freedom. Tiller didn’t know which was true. He only knew that she and Gil owned the Fat Spider together, and that Janna didn’t like to answer questions about her past.

  “Did you sell somethin’?” she asked Tiller, starting to polish again.

  “I did, but that’s not how I got food.”

  “Who’d you sell to?”

  “Paul, up in the North End,” Tiller said.

  “He’s a good man. An’ where’d you ge’ th’ food?”

  “From Miss Jackson.”

  Janna scowled. “What’d she want?”

  Tiller opened his mouth to answer, but then closed it again. The more he thought about what had happened back in the Brazen Head, the more he realized that he had done wrong. He didn’t know how to tell Janna. Maybe he was still a little bit afraid of her after all.

  Janna straightened, resting her hands on her hips. “Tiller, what’d she want?”

  “She asked me questions about you,” he said, speaking to her belly. “She wanted to know if you could do magic. She wants you to do a spell for her, so she told me to talk to you. She knows you don’t like her.”

  “She’
s right abou’ that last,” Janna muttered. “An’ she wanted you t’ arrange it for her.”

  He shook his head. “Mostly she wanted to know if you really did magic. And ... and she asked me to talk to you. I’m sorry, Janna.”

  “Look at me, Tiller.”

  Tiller raised his eyes to hers. His gaze kept sliding away, but each time it did, he forced it back.

  “I ain’t angry with you. You didn’ do nothin’ wrong. You understand me?”

  He stared back at her, wanting to believe her, but still feeling that he had done a bad thing.

  “Wha’ kind of magic she want? She say?”

  “Love spell, I think,” Tiller said. “She’s coming here to talk to you.”

  “Who is coming here?”

  Janna turned. Tiller stayed utterly still. Gil stood in the rear doorway, a cask of wine resting on his shoulder, anchored there by a large, powerful hand.

  “Don’ worry about it, Gil,” Janna said. She started polishing the bar again, but she cast a quick look Tiller’s way and gave a small shake of her head.

  Gil walked behind the bar and put down the cask. He extended a hand to Tiller, as he did whenever they met. Tiller gripped it, watching as Gil’s hand appeared to swallow his own.

  “How are you today, my friend?” Gil asked, his accent more subtle than Janna’s, and harder to place. He had the dark curls of a Spaniard, the pale grayish green eyes of a Scotsman, and a black beard and mustache, with long, thin braids hanging from either side of his chin that was unlike anything Tiller had seen on any man.

  “I’m fine, Gil. How are you?”

  The barman frowned. “I would be better if I had an answer to the question I asked a moment ago. Someone is coming to my bar, and Janna is unhappy about it. I would like to know why.”

  Janna rolled her eyes. “Tiller, would you like an ale?”

  “Yes, all right.”

  She filled a tankard and handed it to him. “Why don’ you take a seat over there near th’ fire.”

  He did as he was told, knowing why she was sending him away. He sat with his back to the bar and stared into the hearth. But he listened.

  “It’s Mary Jackson,” Janna said, her voice low. “She sent tha’ boy here t’ get me t’ do magic for her.”