“Dickens!” Breese said, his nostrils flaring as the tantalizing smell of the pies met his nose. “I thought we might work on our song tonight. I know someone who is forming up a comic piece that’s already been purchased for tour in the provinces, and he needs songs right away.”
“I have other work to complete,” Charles told him.
“You should do it, Charles,” Fred insisted from his seat on the hearthrug, where he was wiping soot from their crockery. “You need extra money for all the furniture Kate wants.”
Charles glanced at his meat pies. “Seems like good beef, Gadfly. Are you hungry?”
“Certainly. We can go to my piano after we eat.”
After they finished, the trio went to Breese’s rooms on the other side of the building. Fred stretched out on the sofa with an Ainsworth novel when Breese dragged a chair next to his piano stool. Breese and Charles sat in front of a blank page.
“What should we write about?” Breese asked.
“If we’re writing for a specific piece, surely you have a topic already,” Charles suggested.
“Oh, young love, you know the sort of thing.” Breese played a chord on the keyboard.
“Keep playing that,” Charles suggested. “I’ll think of something.” The feeling of Kate’s hand on his arm, for instance.
Breese played the chord again, then embellished it, before starting over.
“In the sunlight, oh, my sweetheart,” Charles improvised. “Now switch the key after that.”
“I’ll start over.” Breese stopped and began again.
“In the sunlight, oh, my sweetheart,” Charles sang. “When your glove lays soft on my arm.”
“Very nice,” Breese said. “Then, how about ‘I can think of your kisses when we know it’s strawberry time’?”
They worked on the song for another hour, draining more from Breese’s ale jug whenever they felt parched, until Charles felt quite dizzy and full of laughter. Then something disrupted his giddiness.
He frowned. “I think I heard a knock on the door.”
Breese dropped the fallboard over the keys. He stood, then stumbled a little as he went to the door.
“Is Charles here?” asked an anxious voice at the door.
Charles stood, frowning. Fred snored on the sofa, the volume spread open over his face.
When Charles went to the door, he saw Julie Aga in an old, ill-fitting organdy dress that had probably once belonged to her late half sister, mud clinging to the hem. She had dirt on her cheek, too, and a wild expression in her eyes. Her bonnet had gone missing, and tendrils of her wild red hair were in her eyes. This girl reminded him more of the old actress Julie than the polished, pretty young matron she was now.
“William?” he asked, concern sending tendrils of sobriety through the ale haze. He pulled her inside.
“No, Charles.” She flipped stray hairs off her face. “It’s our mudlark friend Little Ollie. He gashed his hand almost to the bone. It’s a long, ugly cut. We were down at the river, and I wondered why he had it tucked in his waistcoat.”
Charles’s thoughts moved slowly. “What do you need?”
She screwed up her features. “It’s infected. We need money for a doctor.”
“Did William stay with him?”
“Yes. They are in a hackney, outside. Do you have any money left from the charity fund? Or should I go to my aunt?”
“No,” Charles said, feeling quite sober now. “Prov-providentially, I did collect some money recently.”
Charles dashed across the hall, which seemed to tilt slightly, and poured out the contents of his charity collecting box, then found a shawl Mary Hogarth had left on his peg a few days earlier. He wrapped it around Julie, who didn’t seem to notice her damp skirts. They went outside to where the hackney waited.
After handing her up and swinging in himself, he could finally assess the situation in the faint light of the lantern inside the hackney.
“How is he?” Charles asked William. He could smell the copper scent of blood and already knew it was bad.
“Not good,” William whispered. “I don’t want to wake him.”
Julie pulled the shawl off her shoulders and tucked it around the small boy, who whimpered a little. Only about seven, he wasn’t quite too old for tears in the face of hardship. “Should I go back in and fetch some laudanum?” she asked.
“No. Let’s get to the doctor quickly. I can’t stop the bleeding,” William said. “You know of doctors near, yes?”
“Dr. Manette is on the old turnpike road, and he lives and works in the same house,” Charles said. He opened the window and told the driver where to take them, then sat next to William and applied pressure to Ollie’s wound while Julie cried softly and folded her arms over her chest for comfort.
When they reached the house, the men sent Julie ahead to attempt to rouse the inhabitants. Charles jumped down; then William handed the boy to him. Little Ollie’s chest was sticky with blood where his wound had bled through the various bits of cloth—their handkerchiefs and neckcloths and the shawl—they had attempted to wind around his hand.
“Why did you come to Chelsea?” Charles asked, glancing down at the pale face. “He might have died from blood loss.”
“I panicked.” William wiped his bloody hand across his face. His cheeks were bleached of color, too, as if in sympathy with Little Ollie. “I didn’t know what to do. Julie was hysterical at first. I suppose I thought to leave her with her aunt, but then I remembered you and knew you’d manage us.”
Charles frowned. A year ago, when they’d first started working together, he’d looked up to William, the elder and the far more experienced one of the two of them. Had he superseded his teacher already?
“The door is open,” Charles said as they walked to the house. Ollie started crying, letting out soft, helpless sobs of fear and exhaustion. In the hallway, behind the young housemaid he remembered from visiting here in the winter, when he was researching Christiana Lugoson’s mysterious death, Charles saw Dr. Manette coming, still buttoning his tailcoat over his shirt-covered round belly, wearing no waistcoat.
“Mr. Dickens?” the doctor inquired pleasantly, despite the hour. He must be used to such visits.
“You have a good memory for names, sir. I bring you a paying patient. This is Ollie, and he’s hurt his hand badly.”
“Let’s have a look.” The doctor came up to them and put a hand on the boy’s head. “I’ll take care of you, son. You needn’t worry.”
The boy’s eyes rolled up, and he swooned.
The doctor put his fingers to the boy’s throat. “Just fainted, poor mite. What is he? A beggar?”
“Mudlark, sir,” Charles explained.
“Let’s take him into my examination room,” the doctor said. “This way. Sarey, please light the fire and all the lamps.” The girl scurried ahead of him. Then they all followed.
“It wasn’t metal, at least,” William said. “Another of the mudlarks was carrying a heavy piece of wood. It fell right on Ollie’s hand. He was digging on the foreshore.”
“Crushed?” Dr. Manette asked.
“Pierced,” William said.
A well-scrubbed table took center place in the examination room. The walls sparkled with whitewash, and mirrors gleamed on each of the four walls, reflecting the lamps. Between the mirrors were glass-fronted cabinets filled with all manner of curiosities, but Charles could think of nothing but Ollie.
Charles laid the boy down on the table. It could have held four of him. The pitiable mite’s copious freckles stood out on his pale face, and his stick-straight sandy brown hair was crusted with sand around his scalp.
The doctor pushed his spectacles against his eyes and wiped his hands with a clean white towel, then began to unravel the makeshift bandages. Dark blood oozed from the wound, followed by a gush of new, fresh red blood.
Julie moaned, and her head lolled on her neck. Charles reached for her as she sagged, and caught her just before she collapse
d to the floor.
“Take care of my wife,” William begged. “I’m covered in blood.”
Trying to keep from gagging himself at the heavy scent of blood, of wrongness, Charles picked Julie up and carried her out of the room, unable to forget that the last time he had done this, the girl had died.
But this time, he didn’t hold the injured party, but one very confusing actress married to his best friend. He walked down the passage to the receiving room he remembered. The doctor must have been sitting there, for a fire still glowed and the room remained warm. He placed Julie on the sofa and poured her a glass of the ruby port that sparkled in a decanter.
Then he sat her up slowly and put the rich liquor to her lips. She drank a sip, made a sluggish face of distaste, drank again. A couple of sips after that, she pushed the glass away and sat up, her head still parallel to her lap.
“Is Ollie going to die?” she asked.
“Not if infection can be prevented,” Charles said. “But obviously, he is badly wounded.”
“His hand is open to the bone,” Julie said. “I saw more than I wanted to when we tried to bandage it with William’s neckerchief.”
“You did the best you could.”
“William never goes out with money. He says it is unwise after dark. And I never used to have any. Maybe it would have been better if we’d gone for help in London.”
“The only difference is if this cost him too much blood,” Charles said. “I don’t think that is the problem here. Yes, there was blood, but not a mortal amount.”
“How I hate the sight of blood,” Julie whispered.
“Most people do.”
“Don’t you ever despair, Charles? You’re always so . . . cheerful, so competent.”
“I have very dark thoughts at times,” he admitted, pouring a glass of port for himself. “But I mean to get ahead in life. That means making friends, as I started out with none, and no one likes a gloomy fellow.”
“Is there a part of you in your sketches? Some of them are very dismal, like your ‘Watkins Tottle.’”
“I try to reflect our world as I see it.” Charles drained his glass.
She shuddered. “I’d rather imagine something better.”
“Aren’t you happy, Julie? William is the best of fellows. You have family now, nice furniture and clothes . . .” Charles trailed off. What else could a seventeen-year-old girl want?
Her lips turned down. “I don’t have a spot in the theater. I don’t have a child.”
“You don’t need to work, and you haven’t been married long enough to have a child,” Charles pointed out.
“I want to do something. I met your Kate in the lane the other day, and she could speak of nothing else but your latest mystery. Remember last winter, when I helped you? I enjoyed that. Now I feel merely ornamental.”
“You’ve been a great comfort to your aunt,” Charles soothed.
William came in long after Charles had lost track of time. Charles saw his friend’s pale face and immediately poured him a drink.
“What has happened?” Julie asked. She rose and touched her husband’s arm.
“Dr. Manette had to amputate his hand.” William swallowed hard, as if he was about to lose the drink he’d consumed. “I couldn’t leave. I had to help hold Ollie down.”
“Poor darling,” Julie whispered.
“We put enough laudanum into him for sleep now, and he’ll stay here,” William added slowly. “The doctor has a room for patients.”
Charles’s stomach clenched. He bowed his head and whispered a prayer.
“It’s going to cost rather a lot,” William said.
“I’ll get the money from my aunt.” Julie took the glass from William and set it next to the decanter. “I know we aren’t responsible, not really, but we like these children.”
“Yes,” William agreed, staring down at his shoes. “His life as he knows it is over.”
“We need to get our little friends out of the mudlarking trade,” Julie said. “Talk them into leaving the foreshore.”
“That will just send them to the workhouse,” Charles protested. “We need an actual plan.”
Julie bent her head. William went to the fireplace and leaned against it, staring into the dying flames.
Charles wondered why William didn’t comfort his wife. Was there trouble in the marriage already?
* * *
By the time Charles pushed himself up in bed the next morning, the sun had already risen quite high in the sky. When Fred had poked at him, trying to get him ready for church with the family, he’d growled and sent the boy away.
Now he felt sticky, and his head ached from either too much port or too little water. He wasn’t even sure why he was awake.
After padding to the jug and basin, he dunked his head in what water was left between them, an inch or two of tepidness, then made his ablutions. When he went to pull up the blankets on the bed, he heard a thud overhead.
He glanced up at the ceiling. Someone was in Miss Haverstock’s rooms. Outrage, heightened because of the nightmare with Ollie last night, sizzled through his veins. He reached for his clothes and threw them on without his usual fastidiousness.
Still tying his neckerchief, he climbed up the stairs. He knew the Agas weren’t in their rooms, because they’d gone to Lugoson House in order to beg money for Ollie first thing that day.
When he reached the top of the stairs, he saw a chair come flying through the door. His memory flashed back to the Gordons.
“Ferazzi,” he muttered. Then he called the name again. “Mr. Ferazzi!”
He heard the stomping of boots, and the old foreigner appeared in the doorway. “If it isn’t Mr. Dickens,” the man snarled, putting a hand to his glossy black, pasted-down hair.
“Why are you disturbing the building?” Charles demanded. “There is no one here to impress upon the notion of paying one’s rent. The lady is dead.”
The old man sneered. “Miss Jaggers, Miss Haverstock’s foster daughter, has taken what she wants. I have the right to clear out the rest.”
“Why destroy these items?” Charles asked, pointing at the chair that had been tossed. One leg lay apart from the rest of the chair, sheared clean off by the impact against the wall. “Shall I direct your attention to the mark that chair made on the wall?” Charles then pointed out the black scratch next to the Agas’ door. “That’s your responsibility, sir. You’ve just spent your own coin.”
Reggie Nickerson, Ferazzi’s assistant, appeared at the door. “Due to be painted, due to be painted, Mr. Dickens. At the end of the season.”
Charles doubted that. “I don’t care to be disturbed in this manner,” he said stiffly. “If this is how your tenants and their possessions are going to be treated, I shall ensure that I do not reside in your buildings again, and neither will my friends or my family.”
Mr. Ferazzi’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t trouble yourself about me, sir. I was prosperous before I ever heard the name Dickens.”
Charles turned, and the next thing he knew, he saw the old man’s boot kick out a box of tea things. He recognized the teapot Miss Haverstock had kept filled when he visited her.
“Enough!” he cried. What if some crucial detail pertaining to her demise was being destroyed? “I’ll buy what’s left. How much?”
Mr. Ferazzi’s pale lips curved. “I’ll let Mr. Nickerson make that bargain.” He pushed the little man aside and went down the stairs, the skirt of his frock coat swinging, his legs underneath poking out as thin as a spider’s.
Charles grimaced. “What will you charge me?”
Mr. Nickerson rubbed his scruffy chin. “Some nice things here.”
“All of which your employer was willing to pulverize into rubble,” Charles said. “I’ll give you thirty shillings for the lot.”
“You knows better than that, Mr. Dickens,” Mr. Nickerson said, leaning against the doorjamb. His eyes glinted. “Five pounds, and not a shilling less.”
Charles
knew a thief when he saw one. He only wondered if Mr. Nickerson had done more locally than display mere greed. Kate seemed to think so.
* * *
“This is already a much-improved morning,” Charles said on Monday, sitting at the place of honor at the end of his improvised dining table as Kate placed hard-boiled eggs and toast in front of him.
Mary poured tea for him and Fred; then the girls sat down to watch the Dickenses eat.
“Very nice,” Charles praised as he poked at a yolk. “Just how I like my eggs, darling.”
Kate smiled. “I’m glad. Another of your favorites checked off my list. But what are all these crates doing here? And that trunk?”
“I bought what remained of Miss Haverstock’s possessions yesterday. Cost me the rest of my cash, but it was worth it to have Mr. Ferazzi’s men stop desecrating her things.”
“They came yesterday?”
“Yes, and treated everything like they had the Gordons’ things.”
“Landlords can’t be sentimental,” Mary said. “I expect it’s a very hard business.”
“So you won’t marry a man of property?” Fred asked in a rather hopeful tone, speaking for the first time.
“No, I’ll marry a lawyer, like father used to be. Maybe a judge,” Mary said. “A man of learning.”
Fred stared listlessly at the books stacked on the mantelpiece. Charles glanced at Kate. They both held back grins. Fred still had feelings for Mary, and she returned them in no way whatsoever.
“What will you do with it all?” Kate asked, indicating the trunk.
“Look for clues, of course. Books, albums, although Evelina Jaggers probably took all that and Miss Haverstock’s personal ornaments. I really need to pay a call on her.” Charles rubbed his eyes.
“I expect so,” Kate agreed.
“You should go through all the textiles. Take the clothes and rework them if you can, or sell them to a secondhand dealer or a rag merchant.”
Kate nodded. “We can put the money toward our furniture budget. Come, Mary. Let’s go through these crates before Mr. Dickens has to leave for London. We can’t stay when he is gone. It isn’t proper.”
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