He could take a false name, lie about his age, and apply for work as an airman on a different ship, but that option offered little hope as well. Word traveled fast among airmen. By now, everyone knew or would soon know that Gavin Ennock, cabin boy for the Juniper, hadn’t made ransom in London, and his reputation, however unfairly, was already ruined. A “new” airman who nosed around the city looking for work would be painfully obvious. Gavin’s only option was to somehow earn enough money to buy passage back to America and beg a job on another Boston Shipping and Mail airship. BSMC knew it wasn’t his fault he’d lost his position, and he technically still worked for them, anyway. He just needed another ship.
Gavin breathed hard. How would he earn that kind of money? The only trade he knew floated high in the air above him, untouchable as a star.
Sorrow for his friends from the Juniper crashed over him, and the realization that he would probably never play for Old Graf again forced a choked sound from his throat. He swallowed hard and swiped at his eyes. He wasn’t going to cry. Not down here, in the dirt and mud of the airfield. He wouldn’t give Keene the satisfaction. Besides, he had his life; he had his freedom; he had his fiddle. He was in much better shape now than he had been an hour ago.
So get to your feet and do something to help yourself, he told himself. No one else will do it for you.
Gavin got to his feet, shifted his fiddle case on his back, and trotted down to the rail line that ran between Wellesley Field and London proper. He knew from previous Beefeater runs that a train ran every ten minutes on the dot, shuttling passengers and airmen to and from the city. Airmen, identifiable by their white leathers, rode free. Luck was with Gavin-a train was pulling away just as he arrived at the platform, and he hoisted himself into an open-topped third-class car jammed with men and women alike before it picked up too much speed. He wedged himself into a corner, unable even to sit. The locomotive coughed harsh-smelling cinders over them, quickly covering everyone’s clothing with a patina of ash and dulling Gavin’s coat to a dirty gray. At least it wasn’t raining.
Gavin flung a last look over his shoulder at Wellesley Airfield. The hangars had already receded into the distance, and a moment later, a series of row houses flashed by. His old life was gone. Sometime later, the train pulled into Paddington station, and Gavin climbed out of the car, feeling battered and sore. He made his way away from the swirling crowd and screaming whistles of the platforms until he could find a quiet corner to take stock. First he checked his fiddle. By a miracle, it wasn’t broken or even cracked. He must have hit Stone under the chin just right. He spared a moment’s thought for the pirate, chained in the Juniper’s hold and soaring high above the earth while Gavin roamed the ground below, free but unable to fly. Which of them was better off?
In the jacket pockets, Gavin found a few small coins and a used handkerchief. He also had the jacket itself, which would keep him warm. He could sell that, if it came to it. And he’d eaten today. So he had a few resources.
He left Paddington station and vanished into the dirty, swirling throng of London. Horses, carts, cabs, and carriages clogged cobblestoned streets. Women in bustled skirts and men in waistcoats and hats rushed up and down the walkways. A spidery automaton clicked over the stones, ignoring the piles of horse apples it stepped in. Smells of urine, coal smoke, and roasting meat washed over Gavin beneath a heavy gray sky. A ragged little girl begged to sweep manure aside for pedestrians who crossed the street. Everything was dirt and noise and oppression.
An idea occurred to Gavin. Hope bloomed, and he trotted off down London Street until he found an omnibus heading in the right direction. It cost him a precious penny, but he was able to find his way to the pillared building that housed the London office of the Boston Shipping and Mail Company. He had forgotten they had a headquarters here. Inside, an enormous open-floored wooden space sported rows of desks, each with clerks scratching in ledgers or poking at enormous engines that clacked and spat out long lines of paper. In the corner, a huge multi-armed automaton sorted mail and telegrams. Its arms blurred as it flung bits of paper into bins or thrust them into the hands of waiting errand boys. Voices rose and fell, and footsteps clattered ceaselessly across the worn floorboards.
Gavin snagged a mail boy, who pointed him toward a set of desks in the back. A small freestanding sign read EMPLOYMENT. Easy enough-BSMC knew his qualifications and would give him a job on another ship. His heart beat faster as he approached one of the desks.
“We’re not hiring,” the balding clerk said before Gavin could even take a breath.
“I already work for BSMC,” Gavin said. “I’m from Boston. The Juniper.”
“Oh yes.” The clerk opened a letter and scanned it. “The cabin boy. We don’t ransom cabin boys.”
“Uh… I don’t need to be ransomed,” Gavin said. “I need a position on another ship.”
“What are your qualifications?”
Gavin stared at him. Hadn’t he just said? “I’m a cabin boy. Six years’ experience. In a few weeks, I’ll qualify for airman.”
“Can your captain vouch for you?” the clerk asked.
“He was killed in the pirate attack,” Gavin replied around clenched teeth. “Along with my best friend. Then a pirate tried to… to take my trousers down, so I killed him, and the pirates beat me bloody for it.”
The clerk took dispassionate shorthand notes. “Why didn’t they kill you?”
Gavin blinked. This conversation was becoming more and more surreal. “I played fiddle for them. They liked my music and decided not to kill me. One of the pirates especially enjoyed my playing, and I escaped when he let his guard down.”
“I see.” More notes. “So you’re saying your captain can’t vouch for you, you had illegal carnal knowledge of an enemy airman, and you deliberately collaborated with and gave comfort to the enemy?”
Gavin’s face burned. “It wasn’t anything like-”
“In any case, we have no positions for cabin boys on this side of the pond,” the clerk finished with a dismissive wave. “Check with the Boston office.”
“What? How am I supposed to get to Boston?”
“You should have thought of that before you decided to fiddle for pirates with your trousers down.”
For the second time that day, Gavin hit a man. This time it was with his fist. Even though the blow had to travel across the clerk’s desk, it landed with enough force to knock the clerk ass over teakettle. The entire floor went silent except for the clatter and hum of the sorting machine in the corner as everyone turned to stare. Gavin stood at the desk, panting, his fist still outstretched.
“Get out!” the clerk bawled, scrambling to his feet. His nose dripped blood on his spotless white shirt. “Get out! You’ll never work for us again! Police! Police!”
Gavin turned on his heel and stomped out.
An hour or so of mindless walking later, he managed to calm down, and anger gave way to fear. He forced himself to think. Money was the main issue. He needed it for the short term, and, unless he wanted to risk a life of crime, there was only one way to earn it. Eventually he found his way to Hyde Park.
Hyde Park wasn’t simply a park-exhibition halls, gazebos, outdoor auditoriums, carnivals, and other attractions peppered the place, and thousands of people visited every day. It was late spring, and many of the bushes were in full bloom, scenting the air with sweetness. Couples with chaperones, groups of young people and families, and schoolchildren on outings trod the roads and footpaths beneath green trees, some wandering aimlessly, some scampering with glee, some walking to a specific event. Food sellers with trays around their necks or pushing small carts hawked their wares. Gavin found a likely corner, got out his violin, dropped two of the small coins from his pocket into the open fiddle case at his feet for seed money, and set to playing.
He had done this before, busking street corners in Boston as soon as he’d been able to scratch out a tune on his grandfather’s fiddle. Being hungry had provided a certain am
ount of impetus to learn music faster; people didn’t give money to bad players, even when they were little boys with big blue eyes. He had done some busking again on three or four other occasions when he’d been caught short in other ports and needed some quick money, but it had never occurred to him that his livelihood might once again depend on his music. He smiled with all his might at passersby and nodded his thanks whenever someone dropped a coin into his case.
It felt better than playing for pirates.
Sometime later, he had several farthings-quarter pennies-and a few pence in his case, enough to buy half a loaf of bread. He kept on playing. A woman in a wine red velvet dress, unusual for spring, paused on the path to listen. Gavin knew from experience that if he met her gaze for long, she would feel awkward and move on, so he avoided looking directly at her, though he studied her out of the corner of his eye. She was tall for a woman, slender, and old enough to be his mother. Her hair was piled under a red hat, and the buttons on her gloves and shoes were actually tiny gold cogs. She carried a walking stick, also unusual. Behind her came an automaton, a stocky brass mechanical man with a boiler chest and pistonlike arms and legs. It carried a large shopping basket. The woman practically screamed wealth, and Gavin swept into “O’Carolan’s Argument with the Landlady,” a particularly difficult tune with complicated scales and turns. The woman stared at Gavin as if she were a lion and he a gazelle. Gavin felt uncomfortable, and he looked elsewhere so he wouldn’t make a mistake. The song rippled from his fiddle, and when it ended, applause fluttered about the park. A small audience had gathered. Gavin smiled and bowed. Several people tossed farthings into his case and went on their way. The woman in red velvet was nowhere to be seen. Gavin scooped the coins out of his case to avoid tempting thieves, and among them he found a shilling. He stared at it. This was enough to feed him for two days. Had it come from the Red Velvet Lady? It seemed likely-she had been the only one in the crowd who looked wealthy enough to throw that much money into a busker’s case. He went back to his fiddle. Maybe he could do this. He could earn enough money for a ticket back to Boston, where he could plead his case to BSMC in a country where he knew the people and where-he hoped-they wouldn’t have heard about Gavin punching a clerk in the face.
The rest of the day Gavin earned very little, though he played until his fingers burned and his feet ached from standing in one place. When darkness threatened and the automatic lamplighters clanked from lamp to lamp, he bought a day-old roll from a vendor who was on her way out of the park and searched the area until he found a hiding place between a bush and a boulder. Safe from night marauders and patrolling bobbies, he wrapped his ashen coat around himself and curled up to sleep.
Gavin jerked awake with a yelp of pain. His body was so stiff he could barely move. His back howled with pain when he sat up, and he hobbled about with old-man steps in the damp morning air, breathing sharply and heavily, until his body relented. In the interest of saving money, he skipped breakfast. At least the sun drove the plague zombies into hiding and he didn’t have to worry about them for the moment.
Hyde Park was largely deserted in the morning-no point in playing-so Gavin spent the time looking for a better place to spend his nights. Public buildings such as train stations were bad because the bobbies would make him move on, possibly with a crack on the head first. He considered looking for a job, then discarded the idea. The factories were almost all automated and hired few human workers. His reading and writing were decent for everyday use but not up to scratch for an office. And the thought of manual labor that required him to strain his half-healed back made him shake. The main trouble was, he had no real skills except music and flying.
He was wandering aimlessly around side streets, fiddle case on his back, and eventually found himself taking a dogleg through an alley. Brick walls broken by windows and ragged doors rose up to a narrow strip of sky, though the alley itself was quite clean-trash attracted plague zombies, and people rarely left it out. Still, human refuse might show up at any moment. Gavin hurried his steps, then paused. A trick of the light brought his attention to a ground-level window. It was supposed to be boarded over, but he could just see that the wood was coming loose. Gavin glanced around to ensure he went unobserved, then pushed the boards aside, crawled through the opening, and risked a drop into darkness.
A damp, echoing room of stone lay beyond. The only light crept in through the window he had just violated. Rats scattered as Gavin came to his feet, groaning with reawakened pain. Then he cut the sound off. What if this place was used by plague zombies as a daytime hiding place? He froze, listening, until his eyes adjusted to the gloom. The cellar room was small, maybe ten feet across. A pile of crates jumbled up in one corner, and a door loomed opposite them. No zombies. Gavin heaved a relieved sigh and examined the door, which had no knob and had been nailed shut from the other side. A real piece of luck at last-no one would enter from the main building. It wouldn’t be safe to leave anything valuable in here, but it would be a place to sleep.
He piled the crates under the window as a makeshift staircase and crawled cautiously back into the alley. His stomach growled, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten at all that day. Furtively, Gavin moved the loose boards back into place and hobbled away. He deserved lunch, at least.
Gavin spent the next two weeks playing Hyde Park for farthings in the afternoons and evenings. After nightfall, he spent a precious penny to ride an omnibus to the West End, where he played for people entering and exiting the music halls and theaters. He arrived in his cellar long after dark, feeling his fearful way down the alley away from the gaslights and toward potential plague zombies. Fortunately, he didn’t encounter any. Unfortunately, even this frugal lifestyle didn’t allow him to save much. Some days he didn’t earn the two pennies it cost him to get to the theater district and back. Some days it rained, preventing him from playing at all. The dampness in the cellar finally forced him to buy a blanket, which ate up several days’ money. He had to buy food, of course. And sleeping in the cellar seemed to stop his back from healing completely. Every afternoon he jerked awake, stiff and sore, every muscle on fire. He never woke slowly or peacefully anymore, not since his encounter with Madoc Blue and the first mate’s lash. One day he spent nine pence at an apothecary’s, and the medicine helped with the pain, but only for a time, and then he was right back where he started. Gavin was beginning to feel desperate. Eventually, spring and summer would end, bringing the chill winds of winter. He would be in deep trouble then.
One soft afternoon in Hyde Park, he had managed to wash up a bit in one of the ponds and was feeling a little better. Gavin’s skin itched terribly under his clothes-he hadn’t even rinsed them since the Juniper. Maybe today he would catch sight of the Red Velvet Lady. She had shown up twice more with her automaton to listen to him, and both times he had found a shilling in his case, though she never said a word. If she came today, maybe he’d use the money to visit a bathhouse and have his clothes laundered to boot.
A fog rolled in from the Thames and mixed with the ever-present coal smoke from the chimneys and streetlamps, creating a thick yellow mist that covered the park in a sulfurous cloak. Gavin sighed as he walked. So much for optimism. Fewer people would be out in weather like this-the chill kept people indoors and lack of sunlight let the plague zombies roam. The damp also worsened his back. Clip-clop hooves and quiet voices mingled with the mist, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere. Men in coats and women in wide dresses ghosted in and out of view. The itching under Gavin’s coat was growing worse, and he pulled his jacket off to scratch vigorously once he arrived at his usual corner.
At that moment, a commotion broke out somewhere in the distance. A woman squawked in fear or outrage. Voices shouted, and a pistol shot rang out. Gavin froze. Footsteps pounded down the walkway toward him, and out of the yellow mist emerged a boy a year younger than Gavin. With a start, Gavin realized he was Oriental and dressed in a red silk jacket and wide trousers. He tore down the footpath wi
th angry voices coming behind him, their owners still hidden by fog. The boy skidded to a halt in front of Gavin and grabbed his elbow.
“Help me!” the boy begged in a light Chinese accent. “Please!”
Gavin didn’t pause to think. He pushed the boy to the ground in a crouch and flung his filthy jacket over him. Then he sat down on the boy’s covered back and opened his fiddle case just as half a dozen angry-looking men came into view, sliding out of the mist like sharks from murky water.
“Where’d the little Chink go, boy?” one of them snarled. He brandished a pistol.
Gavin could feel the boy shaking beneath him. “That way, sir,” he said, pointing down a random path.
The man flipped Gavin a small coin as the others tore off. Gavin caught the coin and pulled his fiddle from its case as if nothing interesting had happened. The boy didn’t move. Once the noises of pursuit died away, the boy shifted a bit.
“Don’t,” Gavin murmured. He set bow to strings and played as if he were simply perched on a rock covered by his jacket. Not much later, the men materialized out of the mist again.
“Did the little bastard come back here?” the man with the pistol demanded.
Gavin shook his head and continued playing a bright, happy tune, though his fingers felt shaky. The men conferred a moment, then rushed off in another direction. When their footsteps and voices had faded completely, Gavin whipped his jacket off the boy, who leapt to his feet.
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