Silence the Dead

by David Crossman

  The girl ignored him. “You turn me loose, you!” she spat over her shoulder at Thomas. “I’ll have the law on you, I swear.”

  “That you do,” said Thomas. “An’, like the boy says, it ain’t very ladylike.”

  “Takes one to know one,” said the girl.

  Thomas wasn’t sure what she meant by that, so he changed the subject. “You tried to pick my pocket.”

  “I never!”

  “You did,” said Tiffin.

  “You did,” said Katy. “I saw you.”

  The girl laughed. “I wasn’t pickin’ your pocket, mister, I was just bein’ friendly like.” She pressed herself against her captor.

  Thomas, flustered in the extreme, slowly let her go, as cautiously as he’d loose a badger. “Well, you’ve got nothin’ to gain by us, so be off.”

  “I was just wantin’ to help, is all,” said the girl. Katy’s description had been accurate. The thief had long brown hair surrounding her oval face in knotted ringlets, and her blue eyes flashed an impossible mixture of innocence and mischief. Thomas put her at about fourteen and suspected that, somewhere under the layers of the tattered clothing she wore, was a woman in the making. Her green shoes, several sizes too large, seemed painfully impractical, and he couldn’t resist the notion that somewhere between here and wherever this person came from was a large woman who was going about in her stocking feet.

  “We don’t need your kind of help,” said Thomas, pulling his brother and sister after him into the crowd. He felt uneasy with the girl nearby, especially knowing she had fingers light enough to reach into his pocket without his knowing it. He wanted to check the bedroll, but he was afraid to draw attention to it.

  “I ‘eard wot you said,” the girl remarked with her curious accent. “‘you need to make change, am I right? Wot you got, a quid?”

  “A sovereign,” said Tiffin, before Thomas could stop him.

  “Tiffin!”

  “Tiffin, is it?” The girl, sticking to them like glue despite Thomas’s efforts to use the throng to scrape her off, smudged Tiffin’s hair. “I’m Sarah.”

  Tiffin bowed slightly, as he’d been taught to do when meeting a lady. “Pleased,” he said.

  “Ooh, wot a li’l gentleman!” Sarah cooed, curtseying. She looked slyly at Thomas. “An whole sovereign, is it?”

  “None of your business.”

  “Maybe not. But I can get it changed for ya, without you get cheated, is all.”

  “We can manage, thank you,” said Thomas, still tugging his familial retinue against the human tide. Sarah kept up.

  “Oh, I’m sure you can, Greenie,” she said.

  “Why did she call you that?” Tiffin wanted to know.

  “I’m hungry,” said Katy.

  Thomas didn’t want to know what ‘Greenie’ meant. He could tell it wasn’t a compliment.

  “‘Greenie’ is someone straight off the turnip cart, Tiffy, my boy. Someone’s as likely to get ‘is pocket picked, or his throat cut, or be cheated out’ve all ‘e owns as ‘e is to reek of onions.” She sniffed the air in Thomas’s wake. “Whew! I never smelled onion so strong!”

  Thomas spun on his heel, nearly yanking Katy off her feet. “Will you just leave us alone! You . . . succubus!”

  It was Sarah’s turn to be drawn up short. She cocked her head back. “A what?”

  Thomas was as surprised as she was. His subconscious must have been listening all those late nights as Tiffin read his moldy books out loud. He wasn’t sure what a succubus was, but if ever a word fit just by the way it sounded . . .

  “I don’t think that’s what he means,” said Tiffin, who knew what a succubus was by definition, even if he didn’t understand it.

  “I know what I mean,” Thomas hissed angrily, “and I mean what I said. Now clear off!”

  “Well, I’ve been called a lot of things . . . but never . . . ”

  Sarah didn’t finish her thought. The little vortex of trouble in the distance had spun itself closer to the center of attention, widening its sphere of influence by sheer volume and the human detritus it accumulated in its progress through the crowd.

  “Two boys and a girl!” A policeman was shouting. “Wanted for assault with intent to kill! Two boys and a girl, wanted for assault with intent to kill!” As he plunged through the crowd, with two lesser officers in his wake – both armed with billy clubs – he loudly described Thomas, Tiffin, and Kate. At one point, he looked directly at them. But his attention was focused more on the impression he was making on those around him than on the job at hand, while the others, watching carefully, were looking elsewhere at that moment.

  Alarm and guilt spread over Thomas’s face like a plaster poster. A fact which did not pass Sarah unnoticed. “Come this way!” she said, grabbing his hand and pulling him after her. Tiffin and Katy followed, under a fishmonger’s cart, through a pile of empty baskets coated with tar and slime, and down an adjoining alley.

  When they’d put a safe distance between themselves and the policemen, Thomas pulled up. “Where are you taking us?”

  “I know a fuller wot takes ‘is cart down Monktown every morning ‘bout this time.”

  “What’s Monktown?”

  “The crossin’, this side,” Sarah explained impatiently, “over to Rushbrooke. From there we walk to Queenstown, or Cobh, or whatever ya call it.”

  “That’s where all those boats were going, isn’t it?” Tiffin asked.

  “Indeed. Which is where the lollies will be lookin’ for ya. Which they won’t be,” she added, making a significant gesture with her finger on the side of her nose, “on the Monktown road.”

  “We’d best break up,” said Thomas. “You go on ahead with those two. I’ll follow behind.”

  Sarah approved with a smile. “Two girls an’ a boy. That’ll throw ‘em off.”

  Chapter Five

  They found the fuller, his wagon full of hay, just making for the road. He apparently had at least a passing acquaintance with Sarah, and with the promise of thruppence at journey’s end, agreed to convey her and her two young friends to the Monktown crossing.

  “I thought you said he was a fuller,” said Tiffin as he jumped aboard the cart. “What’s all this straw?”

  “Hit’s for the ships. They needs it fer beds, fer livestock feed, fer paddin’ to keep things from rollin’ around. A right useful commodity is hay. On the way back, he brings cloth.”

  “From where?”

  “Oh, here and there,” Sarah said, noncommittally.

  They rode for a while in silence, and Katy took advantage of the straw to re-stuff her doll. Now and then, sitting rearward on the tailgate, they caught a glimpse of Thomas haunting the countryside as he followed the wagon as covertly as the largely open terrain would allow. The donkey which provided the vehicle’s motive force set a leisurely pace, and the driver seemed in no rush. He sat on his seat smoking his pipe with nary a backward glance at his passengers. So Thomas didn’t have difficulty keeping up.

  “Where are you from?” Tiffin asked at length.

  “Me? I’m from Lunnon.”

  Tiffin had never heard of Lunnon. “Is that in England?”

  “Lunnon? Bless y’er ignorant little heart! Course it is. The biggest city in the ‘hole world is Lunnon!”

  “You mean London?” Tiffin ventured.

  “S’what I said, in’t it? Aye, Lunnon’s grand, it is. No end’ve streets and shops, an’ great parks, an’ ‘ouses. Some as you could get lost in was you in an ‘ansom cab with a week’s leisure!”

  Tiffin followed her eyes to the near distance, but she was seeing things he couldn’t see. “Why are you here?”

  Sarah’s reverie was quickly broken. “Me Mum was Irish. Things didn’t . . . well, they didn’t work out f’r ‘er in Lunnon, did they? So she meant to come back ‘ere, where she ‘ad family.” Sarah hung her head. “But she died, din’t she?”

  Tiffin knew what she was feeling. “I’m sorry.”

  Sarah sw
iped at her eyes with her capacious sleeve. “Aye, well. Anyway.”

  “What about your father?”

  “Dunno,” said Sarah, turning her liquid eyes to the distant horizon. “‘e was a sailor, wan’t ‘e? That’s what ‘e did, too, sailed off one day an’ never come back.”

  “You think . . . he’s lost at sea?”

  Sarah sniffed. “Lost to me, anyroad. Gone. Drownded. Run off with a pickaninny or a lotus-eater. Who knows? ‘e never come back. Never sent no letter. Me Mum . . . ‘er as left ‘ome and country to follow ‘im to Lunnon in the firs’ place . . . died of a broken ‘eart, she did. That’s ‘ow I sees it.

  “Anyway, when we come back ‘ere, would ‘er fambly take ‘er in like Christians? Not ‘alf of it, they wouldn’t. Turned ‘er ‘way from their fine red door with the big brass knocker like she never was nuthin’ to ‘em. ‘Ard folk, them people. An’ me? They wouldn’t even shave me a glance. Like it ‘urt their eyes to look at me! ‘We’re best off clear on ‘em,’ I tells me Mum, I says. But she din’t ‘alf cry, did she? Cried ‘erself to death, that with starvin’ ‘erself to feed me. And charity? None of it!”

  Tiffin, whose spirit was disposed to be gentle with broken things, patted her on the shoulder. She leaned into him and let silent tears flow. Though barely able to take her weight, slight as it was, Tiffin propped himself up with his free arm and supported her manfully.

  “When did she . . . ?”

  “Goin’ on a year now,” Sarah whispered into his coat.

  He patted her again. His was the first kind touch she’d had from anyone other than her mother in as long as she could remember. She became moist and runny, and was unsure how to deal with the unexpected sensation of her insides melting. She raised her eyes to his for a second and burned upon his retinas an image that would stay there all his brief life. It instantly became his most cherished possession.

  “Y’er a queer one, you,” she said, once more lowering her head to his chest. “‘ow old are you?”

  Tiffin sat up as straight as possible. “Twelve and a quarter.”

  “As old as that?!”

  “Aye.”

  “I know men five times y’er age, ‘oo ain’t ‘alf as old.”

  Tiffin didn’t know what that meant, but didn’t say so.

  Sarah stifled a laugh as, a few hundred yards behind them, Thomas’s head appeared over a hedge, then disappeared. “Don’t mind me. Mostly what I say ‘as no meanin’ to anyone but me.”

  Katy laid down and put her head in Sarah’s lap. Sarah gently rubbed her hair until she fell asleep. “What’s ‘er name, then?” she asked.

  Beginning with Katy’s name, Tiffin told her all of the Conlan story that he knew, to the rhythmic squeak and crunch of the wheels on the gravel road.

  No one followed them to Monktown, a shabby collection of workers’ shacks and a few channel-side dwellings held together by little more than gaudy paint and curses. Sarah found a pub – the only one in the settlement, by all appearances – whose landlord gave them fair change for one of the sovereigns. She gave the driver his thruppence and he, having deposited his passengers on a coil of rope at the water’s edge, went about his business while they waited for Thomas to catch up.

  “Over there’s Rushbrooke.” Sarah nodded across the channel. “Just beyond is Cobh, where y’er goin’.”

  “What about you?” Katy asked.

  “What about me?”

  “Where are you goin’?”

  “Me?” Sarah shrugged, her voice fell. “Nowhere.”

  “Where do you sleep?” Tiffin wanted to know. “Where do you eat? Who looks after you?”

  “Looks ar’ter me!” Sarah laughed. “Bloody nobody, that’s ‘oo. I looks ar’ter mesself, is wot, in’t it? As for sleepin’ an’ eatin’, I sleep where I can find a bit of ground, church doorways is good any day but Sunday, ‘cause they kick you out f’er services, don’t they? Eatin’? Well, I eats pretty good, so long as me fingers is faster than the costermonger’s eyes.” She swore for no particular reason other than to punctuate the wicked laugh which followed the declaration.

  “Why don’t you come with us?” said Katy.

  “Come with you? Where?”

  “To ‘merica?”

  “America!”

  “It’s a good place, Thomas says. They have food and beds.”

  Sarah’s returning smile was full of doubt that there was such a place. “‘The end of the boot, an’ the back ‘and of blessin’,” she said. “That’s what the likes ‘o’ me an’ Ma gets. Don’t matter where we go.”

  Tiffin thought a while. He didn’t exactly understand Sarah’s jargon, but he got the meaning. “Why don’t you?”

  “Don’t I what? Come with you to ‘merica?”

  “Aye.”

  “Costs money, me darlin’, is why.”

  “We’ve got two sovereigns. Well, one and most of the second.”

  “An’ passage is four,” said Sarah. “I’ve ast ‘em.”

  Four sovereigns! A fortune. Where could anyone come up with that kind of money?

  “Well. Two will get you half way.”

  “That’d be about right,” Sarah laughed. “Alf way, then overboard!” She sank her head and seemed to be concentrating on her fingers as they smoothed through Katy’s hair. “There’s nothin’ fer me in ‘merica, anyways,” said Sarah, sniffing back a stoic tear. “I can get kicked here jus’ as well, an’ avoid the seasickness!”

  “Thomas says there’s something for everyone in America.”

  “I said what?” said Thomas who, unobserved, had just come within earshot.

  “I thought we’d los’ ya,” said Sarah.

  “Why can’t Sarah come with us to America, Thomas?”

  If ever Thomas had been hit with a bolt from the blue, this was it. “Don’t be stupid!”

  “Why’s it stupid?”

  “Because.”

  “That’s the answer for everything with you!”

  “Well, it is.”

  “Is what?”

  “The answer.”

  This time, Tiffin didn’t respond. He just waited and stared. Sarah was pretending not to have heard the conversation.

  “She doesn’t want to come,” Thomas whispered harshly.

  “How do you know?”

  “Besides . . . she lives here. Her family would . . . ”

  “She doesn’t have any family,” Tiffin prevaricated. “At least none that wanted her.”

  Sarah got up and walked nonchalantly along the wharf. Tiffin had put a notion in her head that she had never entertained in her wildest thoughts. True, she’d once asked the price of passage, but only out of idle curiosity. This was an entirely unanticipated turn of events and, while she couldn’t imagine the stars performing so unnatural a contortion in their alignment as to bring it about, she felt it couldn’t hurt to sit back and see what happened. She paced casually within the fringes of their conversational orbit.

  “ . . . and, we only have papers for three.” Thomas held up three fingers to emphasize the point.

  “Passage costs four sovereigns,” said Tiffin. “That means we only need to come up with two more.”

  Thomas was stupefied at the mention of such a monumental sum. Had the landlord really paid so much to be rid of them? “How do you know how much passage costs?”

  “Sarah says so . . . she asked.”

  “Did she?” Thomas looked at Sarah, who looked out across the channel and chewed on a vagrant lock of hair. “Did she say she wants to go to America?”

  Tiffin demurred. “Not right out, but . . . ”

  “Then she must want to stay here. This is her life.”

  Tiffin tilted his head a little. “What life?”

  Sarah used her acquaintance with a local boatman to win the Conlans and herself passage across the channel. Thomas was amazed how many friends she had, and how willing they seemed to do favors for her at prices far below what he suspected was the going rate.

 
As they walked through the cobbled streets of Rushbrooke, Thomas carried Katy and walked a few paces behind his brother and Sarah, who seemed never to come to an end of things to talk about. How did they do that? In company, Thomas was always at a loss for things to say beyond ‘how’s the weather’ and ‘the ewe’s fair-to-middlin’.’

  Generally, his inner conversation wasn’t much more robust. He thought straight ahead in verbs and nouns: things he could touch, or smell, or taste, pick up and throw, or reach out and grab. Abstracts – like tomorrow, or dreams, or grand expectations, or lofty thoughts – were shape-shifters, veiled, mysterious, and intangible. And yet . . . this grain of sand Tiffin had stuck in his mental oyster was beginning to irritate and gather relieving fluids about itself. He watched Sarah. Somewhere in the bundle of clothing that defined her was a flowering person that animated the laundry in a rhythmic, female way. He shook off the thought. She was smart, smart in ways he wasn’t. He knew livestock, and crops, building, and soil and weather patterns. She knew . . . everything else. The world.

  Stupid thought. Why would she want to toss her lot in with theirs, as if it was any better than her own? Was it any easier to go all the way to America to die . . . and probably drown in the bargain?

  Besides . . . two sovereigns! Two sovereigns! That was more than his father made in eight weeks’ worth of market days, and that at harvest time!

  Entertained by the fruit of such impossible, impractical thoughts, the local scenery – massive warehouses squatting fat upon groaning piers, a forest of ships’ masts and smokestacks extending out across the vast cauldron of Cobh harbor, so it seemed one could walk out among them as surely as if they were woodland and farms on dry land – passed by unnoticed. It would be good to have a girl to help him take care of Katy. And she was obviously good company for Tiffin. He wondered, could she cook? Or do laundry?

  No doubt she could eat, and that would cost. Of course, she was skinny now, but that was probably for want of opportunity.

  And it would cost them all they had. What he’d hoped to use to buy extra food – for he’d heard the rations aboard ship were neither wholesome nor regular – and make the beginnings of a life for them once they reached the other side.