“If only you knew,” Charlotte said bitterly. “How solicitous I have been, you might think—”
There was the sound of a door opening and closing heavily down the hall at this, and I darted unceremoniously into my mistress’s chamber to toss Charlotte her dressing gown, point to her bed, blow out her candle, and snatch Prudence Graham from off the floor where she sat at my mistress’s feet and hustle her into my closet. From beyond the door, I could hear Charlotte vaulting into her bed a few moments before Mrs. Walden began to knock at her daughter’s door.
Putting my finger to my lips, I motioned Prudence to be still as Charlotte feigned sleepiness to bid her mother enter. Their voices low, I could hear her mother’s queries, Charlotte’s quiet reassurance, and the sound of Augusta Walden closing the door behind her. When her footfalls had echoed away, Prudence and I peeked our heads into the dimness of Charlotte’s bedroom. She peered at me from her bed, her skirts ballooning suspiciously from under the coverlet.
“Please see Miss Graham out,” she whispered, and I nodded, taking my unlikely guest by the arm and leading her down the back stairs. Agnes was nowhere to be seen, and we crossed the kitchen silently before stepping together out into the mews. I drew my arms across my chest against the chill.
“Shall I get the carriage for you, Miss Graham? Or hail a hansom?” I asked, trying to be as solicitous and natural as my mistress would wish me to be.
“No, indeed, I shall walk. The hour is late, and the sound of hooves on the cobbles wouldn’t do.”
“What, alone, miss?” I said, for while I would not have thought twice of walking abroad myself at such an hour, I could hardly expect Prudence Graham to do it.
She shrugged, her diamond earbobs swaying. It struck me then how very hardy and practical she was behind her fine, elfin features, and she reminded me quite suddenly of Liddie. It seemed strange that I had never noticed it before, nor how much more delicate Charlotte’s sensibilities were, for all she was the less ethereal-looking of the two. “Thank you for your assistance, Ballard,” she said. “You have been most gracious this evening.” And she strode purposefully off into the dark.
* * *
Having spent the days after my altercation with Johnny at the Hibernian, I forbore to take my night off the first Thursday following my return. Instead, I spent the evening sitting quietly in the kitchen with a cup of tea while Mrs. Freedman told me stories about her girlhood and mixed dough for the next day’s baking. Meandering, good-natured stories, commonplace and comforting, sprinkled generously with advice on culinary technique. She reminded me of Da, training a skittish yearling: her low tones soothing. She talked of everything and nothing, interrupting her own tales to remark upon the ingredients she was adding, or the proper technique for kneading, before resuming as though she had never digressed. The table was covered in a fine dusting of flour, which was liberally smudged on her cheeks and apron. She drew absently in the flour dust, abstract spiral patterns that called to my mind the carvings you might see sometimes on the old monument stones back home in Ireland. As she went on drawing and erasing, her voice rising and falling, I felt lulled into the comfort of Mrs. Freedman’s kitchen, and when my head began to nod, she shook me gently by the shoulder and sent me up to bed.
The following Thursday, Charlotte abed for the night, I made my way down the stairs to the kitchen. Mrs. Freedman, who was assembling the ingredients for her baking, looked up as I descended.
“You all finished for the night?” she asked. I nodded assent. “Then you best dress warm. The breeze’s picked up again, and you don’t want to catch a chill so soon after you’ve recovered.”
I lingered at the bottom of the stair, my hands behind my back, pressed against the wall. “I wasn’t so sure I’d go out tonight,” I said, almost shyly. “If it’s getting breezy again.”
Mrs. Freedman turned to look at me, her hands on her hips. “I didn’t peg you for the type who’d let a little breeze stand in her way. It’s all well and good to rest up when you’re needing rest, but if you let every stir of air keep you in the house, when you do finally set yourself outside again, you’ll be blown off course. Not,” she said, as I bit my lip, “that I mind your company. But you’re too young to hang about my kitchen for fear of what you’ll find if you head out-of-doors. Now, don’t you think that aunt of yours must be missing you?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, fetching my cloak.
“Then there’s biscuits in the basket on the table, and a bottle of buttermilk for your aunt besides.” She raised her brows at me. “And you see you get that basket back to me tomorrow morning, hear?”
“Yes, Mrs. Freedman.”
“Young Frank is off down to Broadway later, if you’ve a mind to wait for him,” the cook said carefully. “I’m sure he wouldn’t mind escorting you as far as Houston if you’re minded to the company.”
God help me, but I actually considered letting a beardless boy squire me south of Washington Square, but then the fear that, in his gallantry, Young Frank might offer to bring me directly to my nonexistent aunt’s door held me back. Besides, she was right. I couldn’t hang around the Walden kitchen forever. Instead, I met her eyes and shook my head determinedly.
“Good girl,” she said, cocking her head at the door. “Now get.”
I stood on the back steps into the mews, pausing for a moment with indecision. There was no one to wait for in the Waldens’ carriage house. Liddie would be out making her circuit at this early hour. Screwing up my courage, I tramped down to the Hibernian.
Though light streamed from the windows and a fair crowd could be seen inside, the Hibernian felt deserted to me. The few men I thought I recognized turned aside when I entered, avoiding my eye. The rest were strangers, some who leered at me as I made my way toward the bar, some who ignored me altogether. It felt strangely like my first night, three years ago, and in my displacement and disorientation, I wondered if it was possible to live those three years over again, away from the Walden household, with my brother by my side.
Dermot approached me, a full mug ready in his hand. “Wondered if I’d see you tonight,” he said, his voice husky.
“Ah, go on,” I said, favoring him with a genuine smile. “If you’re still pouring for me, you’ll not keep me away.”
He folded my narrow hands into his big ones. “There’s my best lass. Ah, Maire, I’ve done wrong by you, I see that now.”
I squeezed his hands. “I’ll not hear that sort of talk from you, Dermot O’Brien. You’ve been a true friend to me these three years, and I’ll hear naught against you, not even from yourself.”
“Might not feel that way once we’ve had a bit o’ time to sort things out,” Dermot said gruffly. “How does this suit you? Ale’s on me today, and when this place clears out, we can talk a bit, aye?”
“Aye, that’ll suit grand,” I said, releasing his hands. “I’m not bothered, Dermot. Whatever it is you need to say to me, I’m not bothered a bit.”
He nodded, his eyes growing hard as he stared around the room behind me. I turned around. The patrons of the Hibernian, either openly or covertly, had their eyes fixed upon us. I lifted my chin, staring round the room, and Dermot’s hand reached over the bar to squeeze my shoulder. The low rumble of voices had hushed. I sniffed audibly and turned back to the bar, draining my mug.
“I’ll have another now, Dermot,” I said loudly, bringing the mug down with a bang.
“Right so, lass,” Dermot replied, filling it with ale. “There’ll always be another pint ready for you here at the Hibernian.” He turned blandly to the next customer, and I stood there, slowly sipping my ale. It was cool; my cheeks burned. It was the longest drink I ever had in my life, save for the one that came after it, and then the one after that. No one spoke to me, save Dermot, who came to refill my mug, and, as the night drew on, chat with me about terribly ordinary things: the weather, the price of ribbon, the fact that there were so many carriages nowadays that you could hardly walk down the street w
ithout being mired in shit. When the last patron had left, Dermot threw the bolt on the door and had me pull a bench up to the fire while he went for a bottle of whiskey.
We sat, sipping the amber liquid in silence a moment before Dermot spoke at last.
“You’ll wonder, I suppose, how it is I’m a bachelor all these years, seeing as how I’m my own man with my own business and handsome as the devil himself to boot.” He grinned rakishly at me, offering me the bottle.
“I had always wondered, now that you call it to my mind.”
“Truth to tell, I was in love once,” Dermot said. “Tiny slip of a thing, auburn-haired she was, come over from an estate in Meath. Never been off the estate her whole life, and scared to death of every noise and ruckus in the city. Didn’t have your gumption, Mar, that’s for certain. She was staying in the basement of the boardinghouse next to Trinity for nearly a week, and every day she’d come by with three or four other lassies to see if I had heard of any work for them. I thought maybe by and by she’d grow more used to the place, maybe less frightened. Ah, she was a sweet thing! A kinder, gentler soul I’ve never met. Sure, she was wasting away here downtown, her nerves jangled over every little thing. So finally, I found her a position up in the north of the island in Harlem Heights. I thought the country might put her in mind of home, and do her some good.”
“And she liked it so well she stayed there and you’ve never heard of her since?”
“No.”
“Or, no, let me guess. She married a farmer and bore his children and lived happily all her days?”
“No.”
“Well, what then?” I asked. “Why didn’t you fetch her down again and woo her properly?”
“She hanged herself on Michaelmas Eve, nine months to the day after she arrived.”
I stared at Dermot, and Dermot stared at the fire. “Jesus fucking Christ,” I whispered, crossing myself.
“I’ve spent years,” Dermot said quietly, not looking at me, “wondering if it was my fault. If it was being there—and it was I who found her the position, she’d not have been there but for me, make no mistake—but if it was being there, so far away from her own people, that made her do it. Or if she would have done it wherever she’d ended up.”
“I’m that sorry, Dermot,” I said softly, slipping my hand into his.
“Her name was Maggie McArdle,” Dermot said. “She’s been gone seven years and more now, God rest her, and you’ll wonder besides why I’m telling you about her now.” I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. “Well, it comes to this. There isn’t a day that goes by I don’t think about Maggie and wonder if, when I thought I was doing what was best for her, I wasn’t laying the path that sent her straight to hell. And I’ve done my best for you and for your brother, but I don’t know that I’ve done you any better service, seeing the state things have come to, and I only hope I haven’t made as terrible a botch of things this time around.”
“Dermot,” I said carefully. “You’d better start explaining things, for you’re beginning to frighten me.”
Dermot retrieved the bottle from me and poured himself another before he began. “You’ll mind how when I pulled you off himself that there’d be those as wouldn’t care overmuch for it if you clawed out his eyes?”
“That’d be the Order, I suppose,” I said, staring at my drink.
Dermot snorted. “Aye, sure enough. I knew that light-skirts of yours was deeper in it than she’d let on.”
“Not so deep,” I said with a rueful laugh. “Possible now the Order was deeper in her.”
Dermot chuckled. “Aye, men do like to talk once the deed is done. Like as not she doesn’t know the true ins and outs, but what she does know is more than’s good for her.”
“But you’re going to tell me.” It wasn’t a question.
“Oh, aye,” he agreed.
“She told me,” I said slowly, “that they were doing more than protecting the churches. She said they were protecting Irish businesses. For money. And that the money was going to buy guns and ammunition to be sent back to the Republicans and anti-Unionists in Ireland.”
Dermot shook his head. “Aye, that’s so. And, as I figured, more than is good for her, and sorrow on the fool who told it all to her.”
“She said she saw a cache of guns at St. Patrick’s one night, and Seanin was there,” I said. “She’s clever, and she pieced it all together. I don’t think anyone told her outright.”
“Then I suppose she’s safe enough,” Dermot considered. “If no one but you and I know how much she’s privy to, there’s none as’ll trouble her, and now that your brother knows about the two of you, he’s like enough to leave her alone.”
“And what about you?” I asked. “Are you part of the Order too?”
“I am,” Dermot said. “But not the way you’re thinking of, the way Seanin is. That’s a young man’s game, brawling and carrying on the way they do. Nor do I pay protection the way the other alehouses and shopkeepers do. But when you’re raising the kind of capital they do, you need a way to filter it through the proper channels, so. It doesn’t do for a groom or a drover or a bricklayer to be buying up their own arsenal. Doesn’t do for a publican either, when you come to it. But there’s all types going in and out of an alehouse, and there’s always money passing hands. So there’s all types coming and going here, and every coin they have in the bargain.”
“You’re a go-between.”
Dermot looked affronted. “You might as well call me a pander,” he said. “Go-between indeed! Why do you suppose I call this place the Hibernian?”
My eyes went wide. “Then what on earth are ye—”
“I don’t run the Order, and I didn’t found it either,” he said, interrupting me. “It’s part of something far older, far deeper back home in Ireland. But I did my part in summoning together the parties at St. James last year, for there’s not a man of them that hasn’t passed through this alehouse. And I do keep this branch of it organized, so far’s the Democratic party is concerned, sure enough. There’s more to it than protection money and gun running. That’s just the part your bit of skirt traced out. You don’t have a group like that running that wide a racket in the city without Tammany’s blessing. And I make sure we have that. Your brother may be a big man on the streets, but he’s never the ward boss.”
“And you are!”
“I am. I keep things sweet between the Order’s taisechs and Tammany. We came to an understanding last week. He and his’ll be drinking elsewhere from now on,” Dermot said, taking a meditative sip of his whiskey. “I’ve introduced him around, and there’re plenty of Irish doors open to him now.”
“Where will he go?” I asked.
Dermot looked at me, considering. “I think perhaps it’s better if you don’t know. He’s better at making his way than he was three years ago. Better at a lot of things. And if he’s looking to cut ties with you, well, I’m not.”
I could feel the tears forming in the corners of my eyes, and blinked them rapidly away. Dermot discreetly refilled my glass.
“It seems,” I said carefully, “that all the men talk here is politics. Well, I suppose if you’ve got the vote you might very well go on and on about it. And from what I’ve seen, half of being political is thrashing the other side on Election Day.”
“And every other day in between,” Dermot said, rolling his eyes.
“But it strikes me that the other half is having the right alliances.” I took a swallow of liquor. “Seems to me that my brother makes a better ally than I do.”
“His lot isn’t the only strong arm in the ward,” Dermot said. “They’re not even the only strong arm that drinks here, as you’d know if you came here any other day than Thursday. And besides, I’m not lacking for allies, lassie, on either side of the herring pond. But for all that, I’ve very few true friends. It took courage, coming back here tonight. It took courage to come banging on my door like a wee mad thing those years ago. I admire courage, Maire.”
“There’s that too,” he said. “Did I not say you were mad?”
I smiled, opening my eyes again. “You did at that. Ah, Dermot,” I said. “You are a good friend to me. And I’m proud to be a friend to you.”
“And you aren’t angry at me for what I’ve done for your brother?” he asked. “For helping him rise in the Order?”
“Go on,” I said. “How could I be angry with you? Liddie said it was the only way to get ahead for someone like him, and I’d be a fool indeed to be angry at you for helping him get ahead.”
“You know that’s not what I meant,” Dermot said. “There’s ways to rise without taking up a brickbat or putting on lead knuckles. Precious few for an able-bodied lad like Seanin O’Farren, but I have the ear of enough Tammany Democrats that I maybe could have found one.”
“Tell me,” I asked. “If you had, do you think, truly, it would have stopped him from joining the Order?”
“Stopped him? No.” Dermot scratched his head. “Redirected him, maybe. But after the fires two summers ago, your brother was a changed man. He was here almost every night of the week, sneaking out late, until he and his lot started meeting up at St. Patrick’s maybe a year back. That’s when they formed this branch of the Order, banded up all the small groups together. You see, Tammany doesn’t mind the protection take—they get a cut, of course—and there’s none of them as minds the brawling. But Tammany would rather the money was staying in the city, and it’s not. The Order has a branch in Boston, and they’ve even had something to do with the coal miners in Pennsylvania. But they have a finger in every Irish pie this side of the Atlantic, and your brother is one of those who’s always looking to see how they can be of benefit back to those on the other side.”
“He would never have come here if it wasn’t for me,” I said. “Of course he’s always looking back at Ireland. If there’d been anywhere else for us to go, any opportunities at all, we’d not have come here.”
The Parting Glass Page 16