Shanghai Sparrow

by Gaie Sebold

  “I’ve spent most of my life hungry, Mr Holmforth. Plenty of times that would have seemed like manna from heaven, that bun.”

  “Yes, I’m sure. Well, if you do not do anything foolish, you will find yourself adequately provided for and will not need to hoard like a little squirrel afraid of the winter.”

  Afraid? Eveline thought. Squirrels weren’t afraid of the winter – they were sensible. If they didn’t store food, they died. Those were the words of a man who’d never been nose-to-nose with starvation.

  Trees meandered past the windows, eventually giving way to stretches of farmland, the harvest long gathered, the fields now brown and empty under the grey sky. Eveline found herself mentally comparing the carriage with the Sacagawea. It might be more comfortable, but it was so much slower!

  She sneaked glances at Holmforth, who was reading a small book bound in black hide. Now she knew what to look for, his heritage was clear – in his face, in his narrow, long-fingered hands and faintly iridescent nails (which he kept so short the skin around them looked raw), in his skin.

  Well, well. Whether or not it was a lever remained to be seen. So far as she could tell, he made no effort to hide it, and it couldn’t have done him much harm; he was well dressed, well-educated and worked for the government.

  It probably didn’t mean much at all, then. Except to remind her to be wary, as though she needed that.

  IT SEEMED TO take forever to get to London, and even longer once they were in the mess of streets.

  London seemed, in her absence, to have become busier and noisier, to have been packed full with people and vehicles thrown all together and scrambling about, like a bucket of crabs. Even Watford had not been so loud, or so crowded, or so thick with smoke. The sky was nearer brown than grey, and a yellow pall lay over everything. The air tasted heavy and bitter.

  But still Eveline felt a surge of pleasure at being back. This was her territory, the place she’d made her own, where she’d been Evvie the Sparrow, little unnoticeable Evvie who could get in anywhere and nip away with the prize before anyone had a chance to notice it was gone.

  And there were no Folk in London. Apart from Holmforth, of course; and maybe other half-Folk like him. There were people in London of every other shape and size, after all.

  “Here,” he said, as the carriage drew to a halt. “This is the hotel.”

  It was a small, discreet place with a green-painted door. It smelled faintly of polish and carbolic soap. Eveline, out of habit, assessed the paintings in the lobby – not bad, though not fashionable – and the pen-set on the desk. Two crystal inkwells in a rosewood stand with a pair of silver pens, worth a few bob, together or separate.

  Holmforth spoke a few murmured words with the man seated behind the pen-set.

  There was no porter. They stepped into the lift, Holmforth pulled the brass gates closed behind them, and they rattled and creaked their way to the top floor.

  Eveline’s room was, by her standards, luxurious, with a thick quilt on the bed and a fire already lit. She stretched her hands to it, closing her eyes with pleasure as heat tingled through her fingers. Then she removed her few things from the top layer of the Gladstone bag, dropped them on the bed, put her cloak back on and was waiting when Holmforth knocked on her door.

  “Are you sure you need that with you?” he said, looking at the bag.

  “I thought I should have something to carry things in. You going to carry it for me, squire?”

  “Don’t be impertinent.”

  Eveline hid a smile as he marched ahead of her down the stairs. Full of yerself, aren’t you, Mr Holmforth? Well, you don’t know as much as you think you do.

  As they left, a shadow detached itself from the mouth of a nearby alleyway and followed them.

  THE STREET THEY eventually came to was lined with small shops. From the workshops behind them came the sounds of battering hammers, clangs and thuds and the hiss of white heat meeting water; the reek of sweat and the bitter tang of hot metal.

  “You should find what you need here, if anywhere,” Holmforth said. “I need not remind you to be sensible, and not to attempt to run away?”

  “I’m not planning on going anywhere, Mr Holmforth.”

  “Go on, then.”

  Eveline made for the first of the shops, and looked at the window for a long time. There were tools and bits of pipe and things she had no names for on display. She made as if to go in, and shook her head, and went to the next shop.

  She had seen enough mediums and mentalists to know that you didn’t make it look too easy. You had to show that you were working at this mysterious thing that the audience couldn’t understand, that it took effort, and couldn’t just be plucked out of thin air.

  The next shop contained a display of cogwheels in two dozen sizes, from one bigger than her head to one smaller than her smallest fingernail, laid out on black velvet as though they were fine jewels. The next, bits that looked similar to some of the things she had seen Beth using, wheels and levers that must belong to steam-cars and such.

  She hesitated at the cog shop. She was aware of Holmforth watching her, like someone waiting for a dog to learn a trick.

  She went in, and Holmforth followed. After whispered consultation, she picked out two cogs about the size of her palm and one tiny one.

  Without discussion or argument, he paid.

  They went back to the other shop, the one full of levers and tubes and dials. Eveline forced herself to focus. Spent minutes staring at a case full of dials, frowned, and finally picked one – mainly because the hands were finely tooled and the numbers very smartly painted in black and gold. She touched nothing herself, only told Holmforth which one she wanted, in a whisper.

  She became aware that the shopkeeper perched on a stool behind the counter, a small grey wrinkled man with a long nose, who put her in mind of an elderly rat, was regarding them over half-moon glasses with a scowl of suspicion.

  He beckoned his assistant, a lanky young man with very red hair and a fancy waistcoat, muttered to him and pointed in their direction.

  The young man began to walk towards them.

  Eveline felt a ripple of anxiety creep up from her ankles. What had set him off? They both looked respectable enough, surely? It couldn’t be Holmforth. Was she losing her touch? Had her time at the school rubbed the sheen off her ability to fade into the wallpaper until she wanted to be noticed?

  “Can I help you?” the assistant said.

  “We are still in the process of making our selection,” Holmforth said.

  “Mr Wallis says please be quick.”

  “Oh. And what pressing appointment does Mr Wallis have that necessitates such urgency?”

  The assistant swallowed and looked back at his master. “He says... he says this is a respectable shop.”

  “Is it?”

  Eveline’s senses shivered. Something in Holmforth’s voice made her back hairs stand on end.

  “Yes,” the young man said. A blush crept up his neck, swamping his freckles in red. “He says we don’t want anything happening to the stock, that shouldn’t.”

  Holmforth looked at the shopkeeper. The air between them twanged.

  “Tell your master that we will leave when we have finished our business,” he said.

  “That one,” Eveline burst out, tapping the display case. “That one in the middle of the bottom row.”

  She didn’t know what was going on, but it was to do with Holmforth, not her, that much she did know. And she wanted to get out of here.

  The dial was extracted, and wrapped – not very well. The shopkeeper took the money Holmforth handed him and counted it, deliberately; he rapped the coins on the counter, and even removed his glasses and took a jeweller’s loupe out of the pocket of his snuff-dusted waistcoat and screwed it into his eye to peer at them. Eveline stood there trying to project a church-every-day starched-linen respectability, not daring to look at Holmforth. The shopkeeper raised his head, dropped the loupe into his pal
m, looked her up and down and sniffed.

  “You have some comment to make to my ward?” Holmforth said.

  “Ward, is it?” he replied, putting more filth into the word ward than even Eveline would have thought possible. “No. Now if you’re done...”

  “Oh, we’re done,” Holmforth said. “I shall be sure to mention the name of this fine emporium to my employer.”

  “Why don’t you do that.”

  And with that, they left the shop. They hadn’t quite got out of the door when the shopkeeper said, quite clearly, “Folkgotten filth.”

  Holmforth paused for the barest moment, before striding out and letting the door swing shut. Eveline still didn’t dare look directly at him; but a glimpse of his hand, rigid at his side, showed the knuckles standing out stark white and the tendons of his hands so tight she could have played them like a fiddle if she’d had a mind.

  “Mr Holmforth? I’m ever so tired,” she said. “Could we go back?”

  “Very well.”

  They made the short journey in silence.

  “Mr Holmforth?” the man behind the desk said as they arrived. “There’s a telegram for you, sir.”

  “What?”

  “Here, sir.” The man handed Holmforth the flimsy paper.

  Holmforth, frowning, opened it. Eveline pretended interest in a set of wax flowers under a glass dome.

  “Miss Duchen, I will have to go out. I suggest you rest. I have asked the proprietor to check on you every hour, until I return, you understand?”

  “Yes, Mr Holmforth.”

  He escorted her to her room, and locked her in.

  TEN MINUTES LATER Eveline waved at a hansom cab that was waiting in the street behind the hotel. Its driver leaned down. “Where to, madam?”

  “You did it!”

  Liu laughed. He had a greatcoat and a tricorn hat on, which gave him a strangely piratical look. “Did you think I wouldn’t?”

  “Haul us up, then.”

  “No, you must sit inside or you will not look respectable.”

  “S’pose you’re right,” she said. “What did you put in the telegram?”

  “A great deal of nonsense that suggested that someone with information about Etheric science wished to speak with him, as you suggested.”

  “Well, it worked. How long?”

  “Who can tell? I shall do what I can.”

  “Liu...”

  “Yes?”

  “Thanks. I owe yer.”

  “Yes, you do. Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m not in the habit of driving hard bargains.”

  Eveline smiled at him and climbed into the cab.

  She would rather have sat with Liu, but she had far too much to think about. As for the hotel proprietor... well, she’d done what she could.

  Bedlam

  EVELINE LOOKED AT the vast imperious frontage of the Bethlehem Hospital, its pillared portico and central dome, and tried to rub some warmth into hands gone suddenly chilly.

  Her mama was somewhere in there, in that great height and depth of stone, behind those rows of windows gleaming cold.

  She extracted some papers from the false bottom of the Gladstone bag and walked up to the entrance.

  “I’M DR PETERS. We have had no notice of a visit,” the doctor said. He was a smartly-dressed man with a confident moustache, at odds with eyes like an anxious spaniel’s. “And the Physician-Superintendent is not here today.”

  “A visit without notice was considered the best way of keeping this unfortunate situation out of the public eye,” Eveline said. “You do understand that the family would prefer that the Lunacy Commissioners did not become involved, let alone...” – she leaned close and muttered – “the Press.”

  “The Press! But we have... there have been so many reforms in the last years, the place is quite different, and the situation of the patients altogether improved.”

  “So I understand. But if it were to come to light that either of the doctors who signed her committal papers were involved in any other cases where there might have been a monetary advantage...” Eveline left the sentence hanging. “You said yourself that Mrs Duchen has been a model patient.”

  “I believe there were some problems at first, but of course if it were all a misunderstanding...”

  “Misunderstanding? I should rather have said fraud!” Eveline snapped.

  “Quite, quite. Would you like to see the lady?”

  “Yes, I think that would be best,” Eveline said, swallowing down the sudden rising panic that tightened her throat. “I would like a private interview, is that possible?”

  “Of course. I will have her brought to one of the side rooms.”

  After some back and forth with messages, Dr Peters led Eveline from the office down the wide, echoing corridor, chatting as they went about how the bathrooms were now tiled, and the majority of the patients no longer subject to restraint, and properly clothed... Eveline smiled and tried to look interested, but all she could do was scan the faces of every patient as they passed the rooms. Many of them looked like people one might meet any day on the street. In fact, Eveline had encountered a number of people who looked a good deal more disturbed than most of the residents, although here and there one gesticulated at nothing, or sat rocking and staring. One woman in her middle years with something familiar in the line of her back caught Eveline’s eye, but turned on her a gaze so utterly blank that Eveline shuddered, staring for a moment in terror in case this poor, empty, slack-faced creature should be Mama.

  It wasn’t. The woman turned indifferently away. Eveline hurried after Dr Peters.

  The place was better than she had expected: lighter, and cleaner. She had spent most of her own last few years in considerably worse circumstances. But still, it was a prison, in which her mama had been unjustly locked... she felt her hands clench. How much longer? This corridor had been going on forever.

  “Here we are,” Dr Peters said brightly. “Mrs Duchen? You have a visitor.”

  The woman standing facing the window was dressed in a black stuff gown. Her grey hair was pinned neatly onto her head. “A visitor?” she said. Her voice was thick and slow.

  Eveline had a sudden desire to cry out, to ask her not to turn around, to simply run. The movement seemed to take a desperately long time, as though the woman in the window were standing on a very, very slow turntable.

  She could hardly bear to look, but had to seem calm, aware always of Dr Peters at her side. Don’t cry, Eveline. Don’t you dare. “Mrs Duchen?”

  Mama. Older, a little plumper – but unmistakably Mama.

  She looked at her daughter with no recognition at all.

  “I shall leave you to speak with her,” Dr Peters said. “Please ring the bell when you are done, and someone will come to escort you out.”

  “Thank you,” Eveline said. To herself, her voice sounded so very strange she expected Dr Peters to say something, but he only left, shutting the door quietly behind him.

  He did not lock it.

  Mama stood there patiently, looking at the young woman who had come to visit her.

  “I...” Eveline said. She felt the tears coming, but she could not, could not cry. “I don’t s’pose you know me.”

  “I’m afraid not,” Mama said. Oh, her voice. So quiet and slow. “You must forgive me, did you come with the inspectors last time? My memory is not what it was.”

  “No. I... would you like to sit down? I think perhaps we should both sit down.”

  There was a scuffed wooden table, two chairs. Amenably, Mama sat down. So did Eveline.

  Eveline started to speak, stopped, tried again. All the words piled into her throat and lodged there.

  “Is something wrong?” Mama said.

  “It’s me, Mama. It’s Eveline.”

  “Eveline. Eveline? You’re my daughter?”

  “Yes.”

  Something was rising under the surface of that calm, placid face.

  Not recognition or love. Horror.

 
; “No,” Mama said. “No. It’s a trick. Please go away. This is very unkind.” She reached for the bell and Eveline put a hand over hers. Her hands had aged; they were red and swollen.

  “It’s not a trick, Mama. It’s me.”

  Madeleine Duchen searched her face. “Eveline? Eveline. Is it you?”

  She suddenly stood up, pushing her chair back so violently it fell over. “No. No, not this. I... Any injustice they did me, I could bear, but not you too. What did he do? Eveline, what did he do? Did he get you put in here too? James? Oh, Eveline... I thought at least you were safe... I can’t...”

  “Mama, no. No.” Eveline stood up too, took her hands and held them firmly. “No, I’m here... I’m a visitor, I’m not a patient. And Uncle James is dead.”

  “Dead.”

  “Yes. Mama, please, sit back down.”

  Still staring, she let herself be led back to the table, and sat in the righted chair, clinging to the sides as though she were afraid she might float away, and watching her daughter as though she were a vision that might disappear at any moment.

  “Uncle James... he told me you were dead. And then I had to run away. And I didn’t know. I only found out a few days ago that you were alive, and where. Mama, I’ve come to get you out.”

  “James... James told you I was dead.”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, that is so like him.” And there, in the way she threw her head back in exasperation, Eveline caught a glimpse of the mother she remembered. “But Eveline, what happened? And where –”

  With a horrible feeling that the next words would be, “Where is Charlotte?” Eveline forestalled her. “Mama, we can’t talk now. I’ll explain everything. But I have to get you out, and we have to do it in secret. I’ll explain later. But we have to get you out.”

  “Do you have papers?”

  “No. Well, sort of.”

  “They’ll never let me out without papers. They want papers for everything. One could drown in paper.”