Seven for a Secret

by Lyndsay Faye

  “You are in her stories,” she concluded, passing her fingers over the boot marks on my ribs. “You were part of her life, so you were part of her words. What I am remembering is the apothecary from maybe two years ago? You recall it?”

  I recall all of them. But I’d no notion what she was talking about.

  “In that installment of Light and Shade, there is an apothecary who makes for people medicine. Very popular. They talk to him while he blends their tonics, measures their pills. They tell him all about their lives, then take home the powders and syrups. They feel better. A mistake one day happens, a woman gives her baby the wrong tonic and the baby dies. She blames the apothecary. Innocent he is, but the people are sad for the mother and so they believe. He is thrown in jail and a new apothecary takes his place. The people go to this new man for their drugs, but they do not feel better. They still feel ill. Bad humors. They felt better before not because of the medicine, but because the first apothecary helped them feel less alone. That was you.”

  Shifting forward, I settled myself above her. Elena blinked calmly up at me. There’s a little scar on my shoulder from where I caught myself on a nail in the stable as a boy, a scar I don’t mind thinking of because my mother patched me up again. She pressed it experimentally with her forefinger and I liked the chalky mark still more.

  “That apothecary was an old Russian man,” I pointed out.

  She shrugged.

  “He was you anyway,” she told me. “You are now old Russian man, with great yellow-stained beard.”

  What must have been a peculiar smile crept over my face. I didn’t believe that matters were quite so simple as my landlady had made them out to be. Just because I often feel like an unwilling confessor doesn’t mean that Mercy ever noticed. I spent my days collecting her smallest details, and not the other way around. Still. If Elena was right, even partially right … then maybe I hadn’t been such a tangential shadow after all.

  “When you are looking like that, sad and smiling at once, you should be kissing me,” Elena suggested.

  She’s very clever, Mrs. Elena Boehm. So I kissed her while the sun was rising. And for a blessedly long string of minutes, everything else went away.

  • • •

  Though the following day proved bright and razor sharp, what snow remained had been largely trampled by pedestrians and street pigs, and the cries of the Rockaway sand vendors had been replaced with grocers hawking sweet Carolina potatoes shipped up from the South. I haggled my way into buying a bushel of them for seventy-five cents and left the creamy yellow knobs in Mrs. Boehm’s larder, knowing she’d find them there. Afterward I fixed the front step, noting with absent pleasure that an emerald-green crocus blade was keeking out from a crevice in the none too regular sidewalk. Then I sat at my desk and I wrote a letter. A lot of thoughts yet plagued my head, and I needed to tell Mercy Underhill about them.

  The problem, as I saw it, was that I’d never been able to speak to her in plain English. Before, I’d been terrified of upsetting the delicacy of our equilibrium, and after … there simply wasn’t time. But I was through with standing in the front row with the groundlings, the bearer of a permanent free ticket to watch myself act like a fool.

  So I decided to tell her the truth.

  When I was through writing, I traveled back to Castle Garden.

  The shoreline was whipped by a bright March wind that late afternoon, reddening the noses of passersby and stealing hats from careless dandies. The carpeting was gone, but the decorative boughs remained. They’d been buffeted by salt air and looked about as festive as sunburned shipwreck survivors. I crossed the bridge and sat on the same bench I’d shared with Jim, staring out at the great silver monster of a river. It roiled and frothed in the wind, depths churning with secrets. I thought of the night I’d met Lucy Adams, when so many had lost their lives in the waters I find grimly beautiful. I could have sat there for hours, letting the salt blast me clean.

  But I’d a letter to send. I pulled it out.

  I read back over it as the pedestrians milled about me, long woolen cloaks dragging through cigar ash and spent vestas, shoes skirting the grey pools of melting snow.

  Dear Mercy,

  That I’ve been in love with you for a very long while won’t surprise you much. But I’ve learned things since you left, new things. If words can be maps, as you said they can, then my life lately is an enormous geography, and one hard to capture in letters. I can’t help but suspect you’re keener at this than I am. I’ll do my best.

  The notion of protecting you used to occupy so much of my brain that I never realized how often you were protecting me. You may not remember, or you may have done the same for everyone, but I could scarce spend three minutes in a dark mood in your company before you’d passed your latest poem to me for frank evaluation or demanded I read with you a scene from The Tempest. I confess I can see better from a distance what your company meant to me. And I’ll be grateful for the rest of my life that you were there.

  And don’t suppose I won’t love you so long as that. Given the choice, I’d prefer to miss you permanently than to forget any piece of you. I’m going to have to learn to live without you, though. And not just for my sake.

  About six months have passed with me hating every man who’d ever touched you rather than being happy you were warm. Had I been fighting for you all that while, against them and my own fears and the world altogether for your permanent affections, I could maybe be entitled to such a feeling. But I settled for being near you and hoarded so many invaluable nearnesses that I forgot you knew nothing of my collection, and so can’t indulge such jealousies any longer. I built miles of ramparts in your honor, all in my head. And never showed you a one.

  I could lie outright and say that, now I’ve a woman called Elena for a friend, you are invited to feel the same about me. You are not. I’d prefer you ravenously jealous … because if you can’t be jealous once at least, you can never love me. Can you? You could love me on paper, perhaps. From an ocean’s distance. In theory. With a quill in your hand, meditating on the breadcrumb-teakettle-washboard little details of my life in New York. None of it would be enough. I can live as a mere idea to you. But I want every minute of your every hour and if you don’t want the same of me, in the flesh, then I can’t need you any longer and live as I should. So I’ll allow myself to think that if you never come back, I’ll survive it.

  Whether it’s true or not.

  I’ve nothing left to me you’ve ever touched save these recent letters. The rest burned seven months ago. Fragments of dramas scrawled on the backs of advertisements and Party flyers, mainly, countless notes, the stub end of a single candle after you’d wet your fingers with your tongue and put out the flame. I’m glad that’s gone now. This time I’ll keep only what you give me. I’ll manage the rest of my life—the brown studies, the work, the weight of it—on my own.

  Ask anything you like of me, as ever. I’ve been yours for a very long time. I’m through only with needing you in return. That would have been an extravagant repayment, I can’t help but think. Having you.

  Yours,

  Timothy

  I placed the letter in the repository I’d selected. That was that, then. I stood up and walked toward the little iron railing.

  When I flung the stoppered glass bottle into the Hudson, it tumbled end over end in a magnificent arc. The sun glancing off of it, the paper within sheltered and gloriously untroubled. For a moment I thought it hung suspended, in defiance of all natural law, just as Mercy’s own letters had seemed enchanted. But the world reasserted itself and, making a small plume, the message plunged into the water. I lost sight of it in seconds.

  Our river is nothing if not deep, and dim, and wide.

  Shoving my hands in my greatcoat pockets, I turned my back on it. I struck out for New York City and the people I knew there, the ones who needed me, and the swiftly enveloping twilight that would all too soon settle like a cloak over the narrow streets.
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  I’d write another letter soon. It too would begin Dear Mercy, and doubtless I would feel every separate letter of her name as it pulsed through my fingertips. It would be similar to the first, but it would be for her. Because I know who she is to me. And I know who I am. And that’s something.

  But not now. Now I would find a little warmth for myself. A little comfort, and maybe even a little pool of light.

  • • •

  When I returned to the Tombs several days later following an all-clear note from Chief Matsell, my copper star pinned resolutely to my breast, I met with a sharp surprise when I opened the door to my cave.

  My office had been repainted, for one. That was gratifying. The walls were free of vicious invective and now merely relentlessly plain. I wasn’t too surprised by that, for Matsell could hardly have allowed the Tombs to remain defiled. But mysteriously, a pretty pine desk sat in the center of the tiny room. It was utilitarian but carved with artful grooves, and behind it was a comfortable upholstered armchair.

  That puzzled me.

  Behind the desk stood stacks of books. Dozens of them, scores of them, piled in precarious towers against the far wall. Books of every size and description and color. A veritable mountain range of books.

  That puzzled me too.

  “Thank the risen Christ, there he is.”

  Turning, I discovered my friend Mr. Connell. His square, friendly face was active with amusement as he twisted his head behind him. “Kildare, are ye seeing this plain? I told you he never knew all this was delivered, he’d ha’ been prancin’ with bollocks out through the halls in glee. That’s a dollar you owe me.”

  Shouldering through the door, Kildare sighed, then smiled at me as he passed Connell a dollar bill. “Matsell said ye’d likely turn up this morning. We wanted to see what you thought o’ the furnishings and all.”

  Drawing my fingers over the polished wood and the tiny leaves carved into it, I shook my head. “I think they’re incomprehensible.”

  “And what about the books, then?” Mr. Connell wondered. He picked up a blue leather-bound volume, then a forest-green tome with gilt lettering. “The Plays of Christopher Marlowe. This is naught to do wi’ police work. The Iliad. D’ye read such things, Wilde?”

  “I like to,” I said softly. There was a note pinned to the complete works of William Shakespeare, and I unfolded it. “I like to very much.”

  “But who sent all this?”

  “I’ve my suspicions,” I answered. When the others crowded behind my shoulders, I spread the note out on the desk.

  Dear Timothy,

  We are well on our way north by stage and finding the journey much more tolerable than should be expected, thanks in no small measure to my mother’s influence and planning. Having ample time for reflection, and you forming a portion of my thoughts, I had cause briefly to recall your denseness and was moved to leave this note at the Railroad station where we are presently passing the night. They have promised to mail it to my housekeeper with all speed, along with instructions for her to arrange for the items before you to be delivered to your workplace. I’d have offered you my better desk, but, having been in your office, I fear that particular item would not fit inside. And anyhow, this one will suit you better. The selection of books is haphazard, but then you are a haphazard man as well as a small one.

  I’ll write again when we reach our destination and would be very pleased to hear from you as well.

  Best wishes,

  George Higgins

  Kildare whistled. “And who might this be?”

  “A friend.” Sinking in glad disbelief, I landed in the armchair. I gripped its arms. They were solid. Real. Mine. “He’s a friend.”

  “Sweet Mary, but I’m in dire need o’ more friends.” Connell laughed. “Well, there’s our answer, then.”

  “Ye might want to know that Beardsley and McDivitt are gone,” Kildare added. Crossing his arms, he drew his hand over the black stubble on his chin. “Given their ticket o’ leave and sent marchin’. The fuss they made. Fit to blow the roof clean off.”

  I glanced up from the note in surprise. Matsell’s brief summons back to work had made me at least reasonably confident I’d not find myself harassed or assaulted. But as awed as I’ve always been by my brother, a separate voice within me continually insists he really can’t be as formidable as all that.

  That voice is generally mistaken.

  “How are ye liking the walls?” Kildare asked with a twinkle in his narrow blue eyes.

  He didn’t sound interested. He sounded proud. I gazed around me, so muzzy with gratitude that I could barely answer him. It must have taken several coats of paint to erase that degree of scarlet profanity.

  “You did this?”

  “Oh, myself, and Connell here, and Piest. Piest was that eager, we were sure enough afeared he’d hide us if we weren’t keen. Mad eyes the man has—we daren’t have crossed him. Austin and Clare dropped by to help, and so did Hallam, and Aldenkamp. There’s plenty more stars afterward said they would have offered a hand, to be certain, if they’d known what we were about. Evans and King tidied when we were through. All the while Maguire passed advice about like a tit. But it weren’t no trouble.”

  “Thank you.” I folded the letter from Higgins and tucked it in my coat pocket. “You can’t possibly grasp how grateful I am.”

  “We could grasp it down at the pub sometime, eh?” Connell said teasingly.

  “That would be my pleasure.”

  “I’m fer rounds, then, as are you if you know what’s good for ye.” Connell slapped Kildare on the sleeve of his coat. “I’m to find murderers today, certain sure. I can feel it, and all. I’m to wrestle down great ugly thugs in front o’ puffy rich types who’ll shower me wi’ riches like Wilde here. Watch.”

  “Ye’ll wrestle great ugly drunks bawlin’ in the streets and get showered with naught but piss for yer trouble.”

  “Christ, the cheek of the bastard? I’m a hero, you brute, the pride o’ Bayard Street.”

  Winking at me, Connell followed Kildare out the door, merrily arguing all the while.

  I sat at my desk.

  It really was a very fine piece of furniture. Made from a venerable tree, I’d no doubt, and lovingly crafted. There was a gouge on one of the corners—an old one, likely from when it had been delivered to its first residence or suffered misfortune there. That gouge belonged to George. But I liked it. Spreading my hands wide, I passed them over the glossy surface in a prayerful little arc.

  I was home.

  HISTORICAL AFTERWORD

  When asked to supply reminiscences of the abolitionist cause for William Still’s history of the Underground Railroad, New York activist Lewis Tappan provided the following account: he had been asked to warn two young brothers originally from Savannah, Georgia, that slave catchers were traveling north in pursuit of them. Tappan at once left his home in Brooklyn, posting notices in all the likeliest black churches. He was successful in finding the brothers and requested they tell him their story.

  They informed Tappan that their father was a prominent doctor in Savannah, who had fathered five children by their mother, who was, in fact, his slave. After marrying a white woman, the doctor determined that all the children and their mother should be auctioned off. When the family was placed upon the block to be sold to the highest bidder, the two brothers announced to the crowd that it was a cruel act to sell the six family members and that anyone who bought them would regret it, for they had lived as free beings for so long that their new masters were certain to lose their money. All six were sold nevertheless, but the brothers proved as good as their word and escaped to New York City, where—being of extremely light complexion—they shaved their heads, bought brown wigs, and were hired as white men. Tappan’s warning found them in time, and they fled before the Georgia slave agents arrived in Manhattan.

  So precarious was the position of free blacks born in the North that urban people of color began to form committees
of vigilance in populous areas as early as 1819. The New York Committee of Vigilance was founded in 1835 “for the purpose of adopting measures to ascertain, if possible, the extent to which the cruel practice of kidnapping men, women and children, is carried out in this city, and to aid such unfortunate persons as may be in danger of being reduced to Slavery,” according to their first annual report. The group consisted of Robert Brown, William Johnston, George R. Barker, J. W. Higgins, and founder David Ruggles. Ruggles made himself such a nuisance to kidnappers, slave catchers, and corrupt officials that he was subjected to multiple targeted kidnapping attempts. In one such instance, an ally informed Ruggles in 1838 that he had become so unpopular that a New York magistrate had quietly circulated an offer of fifty thousand dollars to any unscrupulous party willing to capture Ruggles and dispose of him below the Mason-Dixon Line.

  Overwhelming evidence indicates that the practice of kidnapping free blacks for the purpose of selling them as alleged slaves was common, systematized, and almost entirely overlooked by courts and by law enforcement. William Parker, a resistance leader from Philadelphia, reported that this theoretical “crime” was so very pervasive that “we were kept in constant fear. We would hear of slaveholders or kidnappers every two or three weeks; sometimes a party of white men would break into a house and take a man away, no one knew where; again, a whole family might be taken off. There was no power to protect them, nor prevent it.” Such thieves of fellow humans thought nothing of resorting to the most barbarous measures to retain their captives. Methods employed by the infamous Cannon Gang to keep their victims in line included starvation and beating with hickory sticks and saw blades—one member, Patty Cannon, was ultimately indicted when multiple skeletons were discovered buried on her property, but she died in jail while awaiting trial.