Shanghai Sparrow

by Gaie Sebold

  Colour flared along his cheekbones. “You... you... petit salope!” He made for her, and Evvie slid off the desk and danced out of the way behind it.

  “Oh, and don’t think about something happening to Treadwell, or me. There’s letters, all over, I left ’em with a bunch of people. I left one with the man who got me in here. Either of us gets sick or has maybe an accident or something like that, them letters is going to get sent. Sent to your pretty fiancée and her parents. Sent to the Times. Sent to the House of Commons. Sent to the Reverend at that nice little church you got set for the wedding. St James’s, eh? Right posh, that is.”

  He gripped the edge of the desk. “Who will believe the word of a little street thief?”

  “Who says I signed ’em?” she said. “Oh, they may not believe ’em, and even if they did ask, I bet Treadwell won’t say a word. But that’s how rumours get started, isn’t it? Rumours that might make a lady look very carefully at who she’s getting married to, and what she might do about keeping her money in trusts, so Dear Husband don’t have a lot in his pocket for going on the town and getting up to pursuits unsuitable to a married gentleman.”

  He lunged around the desk, and the knife she’d concealed up her sleeve shot into her hand, gleaming in the weak afternoon sunlight.

  He blinked at it. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Little street thief, you said. Yes, I am. I had to use this more’n once not to get used like you done Treadwell, so don’t think I won’t. Protecting my honour, I am. They’ll believe me about that. I found them books and pictures, too. And some of them are still where you hid ’em – but some ain’t.”

  He hadn’t even been that careful about hiding the pictures. Maybe the thought of one of the girls finding them and being too shocked and embarrassed to say anything had added to his excitement.

  “One more thing, monsewer,” she said. He looked at her with a dislike so intense it should have burned her skin like etching-acid. She grinned, but it was a fox-grin, sly and full of teeth. “This place, it’s turned out to be a proper education and no mistake. I’m getting good at doing what we’re taught here. See, I’m like a sparrow, me. I get everywhere. Can’t tell me from a thousand others, once I’m in amongst ’em. And those letters, they’re staying where they are, even once you’re gone from here. But me, I’ll be keeping an eye on you. I think you’d best leave Treadwell alone, don’t you? And any of the other girls. And any maids, and any daughters you have.” He actually managed to look shocked at that, which she ignored. “From now on you’d better be keeping that cock of yours for your wife and her only, and treat her decent, because it seems to me you’re getting far better than you deserve.”

  He writhed like a worm on a fishhook, but in the end, he complied. Two days later she had the money in her hand. She’d made an enemy, she knew; but so long as he believed in the letters, she reckoned she was safe.

  So she’d probably better write them. At least her penmanship and grammar had improved enough while she was here that they probably wouldn’t read as though they came from a little street thief.

  “HOW DID YOU... no, don’t tell me,” Beth said, at the same time as Eveline said, “You don’t need to know. So, how long before we get the stuff?”

  “Some of it not long; the rest, weeks, probably. I have to get a message to the blacksmith’s son in the village, and he’ll get it for me, and deliver it to the rear gate that no-one uses.”

  “Weeks? We can’t wait that long.”

  “Well, she’ll run as she is, just not as well. And if it rains, we’ll get wet.”

  “I slept out in the rain often enough.”

  “Oh, you won’t be sleeping,” Beth said, with a grin. “I’m almost sure of that.”

  COLLAPSING AGAINST THE corridor wall between classes, Eveline felt a presence and opened her eyes. Treadwell was standing in the corridor, looking at her.

  “I gotta go.” Eveline pushed herself away from the wall.

  “You had a French class.” Treadwell had turned away and was looking out of the window.

  Eveline looked at her back. She could see the blonde curls trembling slightly. “Yes.” Did Treadwell somehow know, what she’d done to Monsewer? How?

  “He’s... he’s... you have to be careful.” Even from behind, the rigidity of Treadwell’s posture was obvious. “He’s a bad man.”

  “Oh, listen, ’sall right.”

  “No, it isn’t. You don’t know.”

  “Treadwell, I know, all right? I dealt with it.”

  “How?” Treadwell’s hands gripped the windowsill.

  “I put him off. And I don’t think he’s going to mess with no-one else while he’s here, neither.”

  “What? What did you do?”

  Eveline wasn’t going to confess to blackmail. “You know what? If it was up to me, wouldn’t just be in here they taught Bartitsu. Most girls I know could do with knowing it. Next time anyone tries it on, maybe a person oughta use some of the moves on them. See if she can give him something to remember her by. ’Specially if maybe she happens to be good at Bartitsu, like you are. I got to go to class.”

  “Wait.”

  “I’m late.”

  THE SACAGAWEA PUTTERED gently out of its tumbledown shed, shuddering beneath them. Its makeshift engine hummed as quietly as a purring cat, an odd blue-green light flithering over it like marsh-gas. Eveline wondered what the two of them must look like, muffled in cloaks and goggles, her keeping her eyes open for trouble, Beth muttering over her instruments.

  She had created an ingenious device of branches sweeping behind them and a box of fallen leaves to cover their tracks, and Eveline had dealt with the dogs by means of some stolen meat and a raid on the box of patent medicines that Miss Prayne kept in her room. Eveline clung to whatever came to hand and tried not to squeak whenever they ran over a bump. Two carriage lamps hung from hooks at the front, but they wouldn’t risk lighting them until they were out of the grounds.

  The girls had their nightgowns on under the clothes they wore in the Old Barn. Eveline had insisted.

  “Why?” Beth asked.

  “If something happens and we’re caught in the grounds, you were sleepwalking, I saw you go out and followed you to bring you back.”

  Beth looked at her with admiration bordering on fear.

  They had decided to go out by the rear gate. It had a much simpler lock than the main one. The padlock was horribly stiff, and Eveline broke two hairpins wrestling with it, expecting any minute to hear shouts and see lanterns bobbing among the trees. Then Beth pushed her impatiently aside and dripped something from a nozzle into the lock, after which, with a little more persuasion, it snicked open.

  Then there was the path through a thin belt of woodland, and more rattling until Eveline was fairly sure every bone she had was out of its socket. At least it was a good clear night, with a hard frost and a bright moon. Rain would have made everything harder, and slower.

  It was slow enough as it was. She knew from the maps that Watford wasn’t far, and Beth seemed sure they’d make it there and back with time to spare, but she herself wasn’t convinced. They’d had to wait until everyone was well abed, and it was already past eleven before they got away. Now they were going at little more than walking pace.

  Finally the road appeared through the trees – a flat grey ribbon like a frozen river. They bumped and rattled their way to the fringe of the wood, and there it was, in the moonlight, clear and silent.

  “Well,” Eveline said. Suddenly, she had no idea which way to turn. When she had arrived, had they turned left or right into the gate? But that had been a different gate. She swallowed hard and turned to Beth. “Beth...”

  “Yes?”

  “I don’t know which way.”

  The moonlight gleamed on the lenses of Beth’s goggles, turning them white, as she tilted her head up and looked at the stars, bright and sharp as needlepoints pricking through black silk. “It’s all right,” she said. “I do.” She hauled
on the wheel – a giant cogwheel from who-knew-what, wrapped in cloth to stop the teeth jabbing into her hands – and sent the Sacagawea in a ponderous turn to the right. This surface was definitely smoother, Eveline thought. Maybe they would be able to go a little faster.

  Beth lit one of the lanterns, then paused. “There’s got to be a more efficient way to do this,” she muttered. “I should be able to feed power from the... hmm. Yes.”

  “Beth?”

  Beth gripped the wheel, her shoulders hunched, staring ahead. Something about her posture worried Eveline. She looked as though she might leap out of the makeshift cab and scuttle back to the school.

  “Beth?”

  “You might want to sit down now,” Beth said. “And hold on.”

  “All right.” Eveline sat gingerly on the bench, hoping it wouldn’t collapse into sawdust beneath her, and gripped the side of the cab.

  The engine’s purr deepened. The bluegreen light that fluttered and gleamed among the coils flickered faster.

  The Sacagawea began to roll, the road unfolding smoothly before her. The trees swept up, and strolled past.

  Then they weren’t strolling any more. Wind whipped Eveline’s hood from her hair and sent her coat billowing out like a sail.

  She gripped the side of the cab, feeling rust beneath her fingers. “Beth, what are you doing?”

  “Testing the engine!” Beth laughed aloud. “Oh, I knew I was right, I knew it! Come on, my beautiful, come on!”

  “Beth! We’ll hit something! Even trains don’t go this fast!” Trees were whisking past her like twigs blown on the wind. The moon raced them above the treetops, smiling serenely down, and Eveline stared at it and wondered how it went so fast. A moth batted her face, some creature’s eyes glowed like twin moons in the undergrowth. They shot through a village, rattlebang along the street, the houses in the swinging lantern light like faces shocked from sleep.

  Rattle, jangle, twang, clank, ping, swish, vrrrrrrr... The Sacagawea sang her mad chorus along the moonlit road and Eveline held on with both hands, tried to swallow her stomach back down where it belonged and hoped that Beth knew how to stop this crazed machine.

  After an hour of this, Eveline began to believe that the machine wasn’t going to blow up or fall apart. She unclenched her teeth a little. The outskirts of the town were on them suddenly, buildings poking up out of the night. Eveline tugged on Beth’s shoulder. “Slow down!” she shouted.

  “Why?”

  “Because this ain’t the country any more! Even this time a’ night there’ll be folk around, so haul back before we come round a corner and find we’re nose-to with the London mail coach.”

  With obvious reluctance, Beth pulled on a lever and the Sacagawea slowed, the feathery bluegreen light around the coils dropping back from its feverish coruscation to a soft shimmer.

  The chorus of creaks, groans, pings and twangs also died back, though some of the rattling had got more persistent. Eveline’s backside felt like dough kneaded by a bad cook.

  She took a breath that was laden with hot metal and sewage and coal. A faint, persistent thumping, a labouring heartbeat, undercut the silence.

  “Phew,” Beth said. “What’s that smell? And the noise?”

  “I know, stinks, dunnit? I’d forgotten. London’s worse, though. The noise is factories.”

  “Where now?”

  “Thought you were the navigator.”

  “I got us to the town, Eveline. I don’t know where the house is.”

  “It’s off the main street. Just go along, slow. I’ll recognise it.” But the town seemed much bigger than it had been, and the street they had entered by was not the one she remembered. Ghosts of herself and Charlotte trudging along a snowy street haunted her memory – but it hadn’t been this street. They passed a blacksmith – there had been no blacksmith, in her time, or if there had she didn’t remember it. There should be a draper, Hadforth and Sons, was that the name? But no Hadforth and Sons appeared.

  With increasing desperation she looked for a landmark; any landmark. Over to their left she could see the sullen furnace glow of the underlit clouds: the factories. Uncle James’s house had been closer to them. She remembered the river of millworkers passing under her window. “Over that way,” she said.

  They worked their way slowly towards the glow, thud and boom becoming deeper, more solid, until it pounded up through the wheels like a fist. The Sacagawea seemed to shake more in protest, and an occasional ping added itself to the chorus of noises.

  Eveline tried to watch out for anyone taking an untoward interest in the two young women and their odd machine, at the same time as she stared about for something she recognised. A familiar tall-hatted silhouette made her gasp and duck.

  “What is it?” Beth said.

  “Peeler. Quick, turn down there, maybe he hasn’t seen us!”

  “I can’t turn down there, it’s too narrow! Besides, we’re not breaking the law!”

  “Aren’t we?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Well go slow and smile sweet,” Eveline hissed, “like the actress said, and keep yer fingers crossed he’s thinking about his nice warm bed and don’t want to stop us just on the off-chance.”

  The policeman raised a curious brow at them, but in the end only touched the brim of his helmet with his fingers as they puttered past, rattlebang, purr, ping, ping, ping. Eveline kept her head down. Unlikely a peeler in Watford would know her face, but you never knew.

  “What actress?” Beth said.

  “What?”

  Ping, ping, ping, ping, clank.

  “Oh, bother. What actress were you talking about?”

  “No-one real, ’sa joke. What’s wrong?”

  “It’s one of the eccentric rods – it’s shifted and it’s hitting the regulator.”

  “Is that bad?”

  “I’ll have to adjust it.”

  “We can’t stop!”

  “We’ll have to.”

  “Wait... look! It’s there,” Eveline said. “It’s right there. You can stop.”

  “We’re stopping anyway.” They rolled to a halt, a final ping sounding forlornly, a single tiny noise against the huge thunder of the factories.

  There were the lions with their blank shields, sneering at the empty street; the big ugly house, up to its ankles in the dank gloom of the laurels, its windows frowning down. Eveline felt cold dark swamp her, as though the night itself had clamped around her like a wet, filthy cloth.

  They had made it. And she felt nothing but a powerful desire to turn tail and head back, anywhere, anywhere away from this house.

  Woking

  BETH JUMPED NIMBLY down and started poking at the engine. Eveline didn’t move. “Eveline?”

  Don’t be such a milksop, Eveline Duchen. But still she sat, staring. How could it not have changed? After everything, how could it look so much the same?

  “Eveline, are you all right? Is it the right house?”

  “Yes. Yes, it’s the one. You stay here, I won’t be long. Oh, the factory workers come along here, or they used to, so it’ll get crowded. You might want to try and get that into a side-street or something.”

  Beth’s eyes went round. “But what should I do?” She backed against the Sacagawea, holding up her spanner like a weapon, but without much conviction.

  “They ain’t lions, Beth, they’re just people. Most of ’em’ll be half off their legs with hunger and too dog-weary to care about some machine. And that’s just the ones going on shift. The ones that come off, they’re like the dead, most of ’em, they can barely shuffle.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the factories chew people up like dry bread, that’s why. Why’d you think I went thieving? I seen what they look like, them as last – and a lot don’t. You never seen what happens when that’s all the work you can get? You ain’t got out much, have you?”

  “No,” Beth said quietly. “No, I suppose I haven’t.”

  What are you doi
ng, Duchen? She was picking a fight with poor Beth. It wasn’t Beth’s fault that she’d had a decent life until she got sent away into Miss Grim’s clutches. It wasn’t her fault that Eveline saw Uncle James’s house standing there and felt it ready to stuff her back into its chilly gut to live through all of it again.

  I’m Eveline Duchen. I’m the best thief in London, and that makes me ten times the best thief in pissy little Watford. I’m buggered if I’ll turn tail and run.

  “You going to be all right here?” she said.

  “I haven’t exactly a choice, have I?” Beth said. “Just be quick, please?”

  “Oh, I plan to. And if anyone does give you any trouble, you tell ’em... you tell ’em you work for the post office. Everyone trusts the post office. And keep your goggles on and that hat and speak low, they’ll think you’re a boy.”

  “All right.” She took a deep breath, then said, “Good luck. Please don’t get caught.”

  “En’t planning on it.” She took the bundle she’d brought from the well of the machine, jumped down, and made for the house, walking open and easy, a girl on an errand, respectable, right out there for any passing peeler to see.

  And around the corner was the side-alley that led past the back of the house.

  The high fences were still there, but the one that protected what had been Uncle James’s garden from prying eyes was new. Most of the rubbish and rag piles had gone.

  She couldn’t see any bundles that suggested people slept here still; that was good, because it meant there was no-one to raise the alarm, but it put her back hairs up. This was a quiet place, though not very sheltered except for a few overhanging trees. So why was no-one sleeping here?

  She couldn’t hesitate longer; there was no time. She found the gate. It was the right one, she could see the top of the house, the window that had been Mama’s workroom.

  The memory of Charlotte hit her, the baby’s hair against her cheek, the weight in her arms, the weight she hadn’t been able to bear. For a moment Eveline paused, leaning a hand on the nearest fence, as pain clutched at her. But Charlotte was gone, Mama was gone, and there was only Eveline. She looked at the roof of the house hunched against the glowering sky. Once she had Mama’s notes, she need never come back here.