The Gods of Gotham

by Lyndsay Faye

  Forgiving the old Dutch madman for every problem that wasn’t his fault, I nodded. “Miss Underhill identified the kinchin. Name of Marcas, from a bawdy house by the dockyards. I mean to learn how he was missed and who last saw him.”

  “Wonderful,” he exclaimed. “Best of luck to the both of us, then.”

  “I’m grateful for your eyes, and you should know it, Mr. Piest. I don’t have much else to be grateful for in this investigation.”

  “Seeing is an honest craft.” He smiled, an ugly and a wonderful expression. “And a learned one. I do my best.”

  “How did you come to be doing it?” I couldn’t help but ask.

  “My parents were Dutch fur traders.” He leaned forward with his palms on the back of the nearest pew. “They lost their fortunes before losing their lives, and so I lost my inheritance. But one day a fine old friend of my father’s complained that he had lost three hundred yards of very costly silk from his warehouse, which could only have been taken by someone who knew that the back window locked improperly, an employee or close friend, and it outraged him so badly that he offered to pay a ten-dollar reward to whoever could find it. The look on his face, Mr. Wilde. The hurt at the feeling he’d been robbed by one of his own. I never forgot it and I never will. It haunted me, you see, because my own father’s partner had embezzled heavily, which is how I came to be dismantling my bed for firewood. There is hardly a worse feeling than having something stolen away from you.”

  I nodded, knowing it true. “You found the silk and gained the reward, I take it, and discovered you’d a hidden talent?”

  “Talent had very little to do with my original success, as I’d stolen it in the first place.” He laughed readily at my upraised eyebrows. “My father’s old friend offered me a position instead of the reward. But I took neither. The next day, I signed up for the night watch and also placed an advertisement in the paper. Lost valuables found at the rate of ten percent of cash value. I’ve never been hungry since, and I’ll never be rich. But I’m in the right work. Be careful as you go, Mr. Wilde.”

  I was halfway to the rear entrance before his voice stopped me.

  “How did the young lady … Miss Underhill, you said? How did she come to be here?” he asked politely.

  “Disquiet in the street before her window,” I called back. “We must be doubly cautious now.”

  “Ah,” he said. “No doubt.”

  But small mobs are as common in New York as the pigs. And not a thing—far from it, in fact—to leave the house over. As I quit the cathedral, I mulled over whether the rumor of one would ever have sent me from my bed unarmed before turning copper star. Still dreaming over the question and vaguely ashamed of myself for it when I reached Prince Street and Valentine Wilde.

  My brother walked with his head drifting attentively from side to side, making sure of his surroundings. Scales and Moses Dainty flanked him, on the left and right, respectively. Val was watchful. When he spied me, his step hitched, though it was ever so small.

  Here’s the advantage to being someone’s brother, whatever brand of man that brother happens to be: you can read him. Easier than strangers. Easier than yourself, truth be told. You know after watching two blinks of his green eyes how much morphine he’s had (plenty, but at least four hours ago). You also know what sort of mood he’s in (cautious, hedging his bets, but ready for a tussle if one finds him). You know why he’s there (the Irish are near enough his entire voting population, and he’s keen to hocus them into thinking he cares about croaked kinchin-mabs).

  Knowing him doesn’t mean you need to spare him, though.

  “Tim!” Val boomed down the lightening street. “What’s happened? Good, you can post me. I had to—”

  “Knowing you,” I hissed as I drew close, “and for my whole life, I should have figured you’d order Bird off to the House of Refuge the second you knew where she lived.”

  “Tim—”

  “After everything else you’ve done in your days, I shouldn’t be flummoxed that you’d send a battered little kinchin off to the same place as flogged you and then packed you into solitary confinement.”

  He got quiet. It wasn’t his angry quiet, and it wasn’t his dark quiet either. His face hung still, prey only to gravity. It seemed a picture of Val as he actually was: tired, depraved, sick of it, and ever looking for another dose of distraction. And that disturbed me.

  “Fine, Timothy,” he said through his remarkably good teeth. “What do I have to do to make you quit? How do I make you notice you’re purblind muddy in the brains, and get out of it?”

  “If your answer to this problem, to any problem at all, is to send kids to the House of Refuge, then I want nothing more to do with you,” I announced.

  I meant it, too.

  “It isn’t,” he said carefully. “But you have to stop—”

  “Get out of my way,” I interrupted.

  I didn’t care that he was huge and I wasn’t, didn’t care that he was better in more ways than I’d ever dared to count and still dead set against me. Val let me go, the dumbstruck Democratic lackeys exchanging spine-sapped glances from behind him. I turned my face toward the salt air, and toward the docks.

  Fighting with Val generally feels a bit like shaving, or buying a cup of coffee. But that one left me with my skin shrugged on wrong and my fingers twitching into fists. The man had punched me in the jaw for considerably less insult, and by the time I’d reached the masts standing thick as weeds along Corlears Hook, walking under a striped canopy of ship prows, I was itching for a brawl. Since I seemed to have just been robbed of one.

  The Corlears Hook area down by the ferry stations is Ward Seven, and I don’t envy whoever’s beat takes him there. The ferry docks rippled with all sorts by the time I arrived, the lusty summer morning drying salt crust into the flapping sails. And so, mingling with the Brooklyn dwellers who come daily into the city for work, the East River’s particular brand of whore was already making a frontal assault. Mabs in short pinned skirts and mabs with skirts slit. Mabs winking, sitting on pilings fanning themselves with old newspaper, and mabs in their own doorways, not having bothered to cover their breasts just yet. Mabs smelling of saltwater and gin and other people’s sweat. They were covered in tinsel and likewise covered in nautical pox scars, and they make me feel equally as if I ought to be bundling them off to a charity hospital, or marching them indoors to improve the scenery. Irish, it goes without saying, teemed thick as the stench of the docks. I didn’t know what shipping line had recently put in, but there were a hundred or so of them huddled in a crowd by one of the piers, bones showing through skin like the stays of a corset, looking at each other and at their alien surroundings with expressions of blank fear. All I could think as I passed them was that they’d picked one hell of an inauspicious morning to arrive.

  Reaching the dwelling Mercy had indicated, I looked up. Typical of the neighborhood, it had once been a rich merchant’s house. Built to impress with fine stone trim, then later converted to squalid housing and disreputable occupations. Edges crumbling, probably since the Panic, or maybe the fellow had struck still richer and decamped to Broadway, but either way, his house was left a corpse.

  I went through the front door without knocking. I was in that sort of mood.

  Outside had been better than inside. A piano caked with dust disintegrated next to a shelf filled with liquor jugs and a very badly done picture of the Greek notion of a pleasant afternoon in the woods with your men friends. The mistress seemed to be the person lying on a vermin-infested fainting couch and lazily pulling at an opium pipe. What air there was to speak of was near solid with the smell of it, half rotting sweet corn and half tar.

  “You’ll have to give me a minute, love. There’s not one of them awake at this hour, it’s not Christian.”

  “I’m a policeman,” I said, showing the star. “Timothy Wilde.”

  “Does that matter, dear?” she wondered blearily.

  “You’ll find that it does.
Who was Marcas’s last client?”

  “Bless me if I can remember. Must have been hours ago. Done something, has he?”

  “When did you first come to miss Marcas?”

  The hag’s rhinoceros eyes drooped, puzzled. “Haven’t missed him a bit, have I? He’s upstairs. Third on the left. Go on then, if he’s your fancy, I needn’t bother lining up the others.”

  Turning in disgust, I ran upstairs. The third door on the left was open. In the room, I found a bed, a lamp, a chamber pot, a makeup table, and cheap theatrical paint in the first drawer. Not much else. So I quit that barren chamber and knocked at the next.

  A small face of thirteen or fourteen keeked out at me. Not curious. In fact, so very deadly incurious about who I was and what I wanted that I could have sent my fist through his wall. His clothing was male but ridiculous—all cheap satin and lace cuffs and brass jewelry. He hadn’t been sleeping, for his brown eyes were clear.

  “I wonder if you could tell me when Marcas left this house. I’m a policeman, and it’s important,” I said.

  “We have policemen?” he asked, genuinely surprised.

  “We do,” I returned wearily.

  “As for Marcas, I wouldn’t know. Might have been anytime, come to think, what with Missus riding the pipe these two days. Marcas was pogy as a sailor yesterday afternoon, could hardly stand up. One of the guests must’ve shared some of his rag-water. He left, you said?”

  “Yes. Is anything missing from his room?”

  The boy padded around his door and into the adjacent chamber. Looking about, he shook his head.

  “Naught. Oh. His journal is generally there, on the vanity. He leaves it out for us. We’ll visit when we’ve a free moment, write notes to each other. Jokes. I don’t see it.”

  After a quick search, the diary remained missing. I didn’t see how that could possibly help me, though, and so soldiered on.

  “Did Marcas have any particular friends?”

  “You mean our sort, or the clientele?”

  “Both.”

  “Nah, Marcas has a stammer, doesn’t he. An awful one. That’s what the journal is for. We’ll say hullo, he’ll write back an hour later, we’ll read it. Those as can’t write draw pictures. It’s a game we play.”

  The lad’s face clouded. There were already worry tracks for the lines to settle in, too. Thicker than they should have been, and deeper than Bird’s. By three or four years, of course.

  “You said did Marcas have particular friends,” he whispered.

  “I’ve got just one more question, and then I’ll explain,” I vowed.

  “And what’s that, then?”

  “How long would it take you to quietly gather everyone below sixteen who works here, and find them all some shoes?”

  There’s some would argue that the precious minutes needed to march six boys—led by my enthusiastic new assistant, John, who turned out to be the eldest—downstairs and away from that pit might have been better spent. I’d not agree with them. And it might have taken a good deal longer, but the harpy with the opium pipe had fully surrendered to it by the time the seven of us left, piss stains yellowing her dress as she snored like a thunderstorm. Supposing I felt like throwing her headfirst in the Tombs, I’d be back. But just then I couldn’t be bothered.

  So, all told, it was only two hours later when I arrived back at St. Patrick’s, hoping Father Sheehy had been released by that time. He was in his small rectory garden with Neill and Sophia, sunlight reflecting off his bald head, everyone pruning the tomato leaves and sending their dark, peppery smell seeping into the humid air.

  “And what’s this, now?” he questioned when he saw me approach.

  “Peter, Ryan, Eamann, Magpie, Jem, Tabby, and John,” I answered.

  “God be praised.” The priest grinned. “And here I was certain that nothing on His earth could make me smile today.”

  I went home.

  Mrs. Boehm was baking, shoving her palms into the dough, leaning forward with her bony hips. She blew a piece of dull hair away from her mouth as I went over to her.

  “Is there a place you can go that’s safe?” I questioned. “For a day or two, with Bird? If I keep the shop locked up and pay you daily what you’d earn? The Democrats would cover it, and I don’t like the cast things are taking. Please say yes.”

  She stopped kneading. Sent her watery blue eyes up and down me, calculating.

  “My cousin Marthe, she lives in Harlem. Not a long journey. I always mean to visit her. Now would be a good day.”

  “Thank you,” I said, hugely grateful. “I need to talk with her first.”

  “Thank you,” she returned as I climbed the stairs, “for stealing that horse. Oh, Mr. Wilde?”

  “Yes?”

  “It was a very good installment of Light and Shade in the Streets of New York. Plenty of … interest.” Her lips cracked into a shy smile. “I left it outside your door.”

  “Mrs. Boehm, you’re a treasure,” I told her, smiling in return.

  Bird wasn’t in Mrs. Boehm’s room. She was in mine, studying the amateur sketches and using my blank butcher paper with a pencil in her fingers. Her square face melted into a tiny smile when she looked up.

  “Hope it doesn’t vex you, Mr. Wilde.”

  “Of course not. But I’m not lucky enough to have a pencil. How’d you manage to lay hands on one?”

  “Mrs. Boehm gave it over. She doesn’t seem as hot at me any longer.”

  I sat down with my back to the wall a couple of feet from Bird, dreading what I was about to do. Altogether sour in the stomach over it.

  I took my hat off first. Then the strip of cheap cloth. Setting them next to me, I slung my arms over my knees. Just me, and Bird, and my whole face, because she deserved that much, and the memory of a church door stained with blood. The image lending me some much-needed courage.

  “I need to know everything,” I told her. “It pains me, but I do.”

  Bird’s eyes turned panicked. Wide and split like thunderstorms. Then she closed them. Soon enough, gave a small shrug. Crawled the few feet over and likewise sat with her spine to the wall next to me, clutching her knees after she’d neatly arranged her embroidered dress, otherwise quiet.

  If you want to know what courage looks like, I can’t think of a better picture.

  “True, this time,” she whispered.

  “True,” I agreed.

  We sat there for a little. Then Bird abruptly dropped into the story, and I tumbled along after her, fighting the sensation of falling every inch of the way down.

  TWENTY

  Keep always GOD before your eyes

  With all your whole intent;

  Commit no Sin in any wise,

  Keep his Commandment.

  Abhor the arrant Whore of Rome

  And all her Blasphemies;

  And drink not of her cursed cup

  Obey not her decrees.

  • The New England Primer, 1690 •

  Liam wouldn’t stop coughing,” Bird began. Her eyes were fixed very hard on her hands, hands fixed very hard to her knees. “Not for days, and so they sent for Dr. Palsgrave. He was so worried. He snapped at everyone no matter what they’d done, and then begged their pardon after and shared his caramels until he hadn’t any left, and so we knew how it troubled him. Stayed with Liam overnight once, and he hasn’t the time for that, there being so many children he tends to. Thousands and thousands, I guess. That made us all think that Liam might die.”

  “From the pneumonia.”

  “Yes. That was before, though, two weeks maybe. Liam began to get well, gain his color back. Because of Dr. Palsgrave, though I’m sure he forgot about Liam the minute he could. But then Liam went outside one day, and the cough came back. It sounded terrible. Next morning, his door was locked and the mistress told us he felt better, but that he needed his rest and we mustn’t plague him.”

  Bird stopped. I didn’t nudge her, exactly. Just shifted an inch so my elbow was in contact wit
h her upper arm. She closed her eyes.

  “That night,” she said.

  “August twenty-first.”

  “Yes.”

  I waited.

  “I came down the stairs, wanting some milk. Mistress never minded if we wanted things of that sort. Extra food. She’s flush enough that the milk is always good, too, she doesn’t mix it with water and chalk to cover the spoiled taste like some of the others said happened in their last houses. I poured some and drank it. I didn’t have—there weren’t any callers, save for one with Sophia, I think. So I went to the front room to see out the window, look at the ladies’ dresses.

  “The carriage was there. The one the man in the black hood uses. I knew it by sight, and I went cold all over.”

  “Can you tell me what it looks like?”

  “Big and dark. Four wheels pulled by a pair. There’s a little painting on the side, but I could never make it out exactly.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Ducked away from the window. Thinking maybe I ought to hide in my bedroom, having seen what happens when— I’d never said anything about it to anyone. That I’d caught glimpses of us being carried away. Wrapped in black cloth, but I could tell what was underneath. I’d only broken things and not said anything. Teacups, a lamp once. She never whipped me for it, but her eyes got cold, and I had to be awake for longer for a few days.”

  “How long had you lived there, all told?”

  “I don’t remember. Ages, polishing the silver. She says I was born there. I don’t know if that’s true or not. I went to work when I was eight, though. I remember that.”