“The New York Herald. I’m Johnny Green. I’m still a junior copywriter, so I have to earn some extra coin however I can.”
“And your employer doesn’t object to your choice of venue?”
He scratched the back of his neck. “Naw, they let me do as I please. Besides, you wouldn’t believe the tips you pick up working in a place like this.” Johnny cocked his head as though listening, his ears attuned a sound I could not hear. “Ah, here she comes now. I’ll leave you two in peace.” He tipped his hat to me and quietly slipped out.
I gasped when a gray-haired, plump woman entered, leaning on a cane. We had shared a carriage the night before, but I had not been expecting to find her here. “Madame de Ford.”
A spark of recognition lit Madame de Ford’s eyes. “My oh my, what a joy to see you again. Less than twenty-four hours. That is fate. Mrs. Woodhull, was it?”
“Yes, ma’am. I must say I’m surprised. I didn’t think…”
“That I was a madam?” Madame de Ford supplied, stroking the length of pearls wound round her throat. “Not many people do, my dear, and I strive to keep it that way. Why, if I had known you were a working girl, I’d have offered you a position last night. You and your sister would fetch a pretty penny.”
“Oh no, Madame. I’m not in that line of work.” I handed her a card.
Madame de Ford squinted at it. “A healer and medium, eh? Aren’t you the talented one. What kind of healing do you do?” She gestured to the couch, indicating we should be seated.
“My sister and I are both magnetic healers, but we also specialize in herbal remedies. I can offer your girls methods to prevent pregnancy, but I don’t traffic in abortifacients. We also have a sweet water that is excellent for cleansing as well as a clove oil that prevents pain and helps make a woman’s desire apparent to her partner.”
Madame de Ford considered me. “And what can this ‘magnetic healing’ of yours do for my girls?”
“It’s good for anything that ails you. All I do is touch you and let the invisible healing energy flow through my hands and into you, sort of like how words flow through telegraph wires. It helps heal all manner of pain. I’m happy to demonstrate it for you if you’d like.”
Madame de Ford raised a finger. “I have just the girl in need of your help.” She called to someone named Minnie.
A small mulatto girl with long dark hair plodded in, eyes downcast. I suppressed a shudder. Minnie couldn’t have been older than thirteen. Her face was bruised and swollen, and she stood with one arm hugging herself as though to ease the pain in her ribs. What I hated most about my job was knowing the girl had likely done nothing to provoke the wrath that had rendered her nearly unable to stand. At least I could help speed her recovery.
While I worked on her injuries, Minnie slowly relaxed, eventually telling me of the experience that had led to her injuries.
“A couple of times a year, the rich men hold grand parties where the rules of society are suspended,” she explained. “On those nights, us girls are their property to be passed around. You would not believe the things they do. They treat us worse than worms, and we can’t report it; they very men we would tell are the ones who hurt us.” Minnie shrugged, grimacing, indicating the movement caused her pain.
“Why does Madame de Ford allow you to attend such parties? She seems to me to be a kind woman who would not wish you harm.”
“She has to. She’s indebted to those who protect us—the police, the politicians, other men. I don’t know who all.”
I shook my head, inwardly railing at the injustice of such traditions. While I understood that men needed a place to satisfy their needs, that did not mean mistreating women—or girls, in Minnie’s case—was justifiable. But as she said, what could one do when the very men who were supposed to protect them were the perpetrators? And how was this any different from wives being abused by husbands? No matter where I looked, women were getting a raw deal.
I was just finishing up Minnie’s treatment when a knock sounded at the door. A woman bearing a tray of tea and sandwiches entered soon after. Minnie waved her away. “Take that to Alice, please. She needs it more than I do.”
The woman was momentarily taken aback, but then she silently nodded and backed out of the room.
“Minnie, you need to eat. You have to keep your strength up in order to heal,” I chided.
She ducked her head. “I know, but your magic has made me so relaxed all I want to do is nap.” She yawned. “Besides, I know Alice hasn’t been making enough money to cover her keep lately so she goes without food.”
I watched the battered girl carefully getting to her feet in front of me. This was a special soul, to be so young and endure what she has with such strength then to still be able to put the needs of others before her own.
Then suddenly, Minnie turned, throwing her arms around me with abandon I had only ever seen from Byron. “Thank you, Victoria. Please, come back often. No one had treated me with such care since my mother left me.” A tear rolled down her tanned cheek.
For a moment, I could not speak, stunned by her gratitude. Here was a girl desperately in want of a mother figure, and she felt she had found what she needed in me. “I promise,” I croaked, throat thick with suppressed emotion. It was a vow I would do my utmost to fulfill.
When Tennie and I compared notes from our day that evening, we sat by the fire in the parlor, sipping glasses of applejack provided by Katherine to celebrate the end of a successful first day. We had secured several clients, all brothel owners. But the healing session with Minnie wasn’t far from my mind. My own experiences with a good beating mixed with my memories of Minnie’s bruised and broken body.
“I can’t abide to watch those women suffer. I have to do something for them, for Minnie if no one else,” I added.
“You only like her because she reminds you of us,” Tennie observed.
“Yes, true, but that’s not all of it,” I said, watching the amber liquid curl around itself as I stirred it with my pinkie finger. “It’s more than the kinship I feel with that girl. How many women have we seen over the years who were suffering from maltreatment at the hands of the same fathers, brothers, and husbands who then blame them for bringing on such abuse?”
Even now, when I thought of that time, my throat constricted and I struggled to breathe. I closed my eyes and willed myself to be calm. That was the past. Buck would never raise a hand to Tennie or me now, not with James to protect us.
I swallowed hard. No woman should be made to feel that way—ever. I hadn’t had a savior, but maybe I could be one for other women in my situation. If Demosthenes was right and I was meant to be a queen, then they were half of my subjects. I would do all I could to protect them—starting now. I had to convince Tennie to join in my cause.
“I understand what you’re saying about unfair treatment,” Tennie said. Her cheeks were rosy from the drink. “While I was visiting, Miss Wood had a row with the local minister. He refused to bury one of her former girls who died from consumption in an asylum up north. Said she was too vile for a Christian burial, yet he was one of Miss Wood’s best clients.”
“Someone has to do something. Stand up, fight back. Why not us?”
“But we’re only… us.”
“So? Do you think President Lincoln imagined he could end slavery when he was living in that log cabin in Illinois?”
Tennie scoffed. “We can’t even vote, and you’re comparing us to a former president? You sound like one of those suffragists James speaks so highly of.”
“Maybe I am.” I stared off into the distance, my vision blurring. “I don’t know very much about them, but perhaps I should listen a little more closely to my husband in the future.” I rubbed my weary eyes. “Mark my words, we may not be influential yet, but we will be someday. Demosthenes didn’t bring us all this way to work in brothels. ”
Tennie’s eyes lit up, and she dashed out of the room, stocking feet thumping on the stairs. I shook my head. What w
as my unpredictable sister up to now?
In a flash, Tennie returned, waving a small, green leather-bound notebook. “We may not be important yet, but we know a few people who are.”
“What is that?”
“You told me to keep a list of wealthy people we meet or hear about. This is it.” She opened the book, and I snatched it.
A list of more than a dozen names written in pencil ran the length of the page: John Jacob Astor, Horace Greeley, Benjamin Butler, Boss Tweed, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Henry Beecher. I recognized some of these names. They frequently appeared in the business papers.
“Tennie, are all these men clients of the houses?”
Tennie shook her head, sending her auburn curls swinging. “A few are, but the rest either are friends of people we’ve met or simply names I jotted down from conversation. No lead is too small, right? We need to start building up our wealthy clientele anyway. The brothels are solid income, but they’ll never elevate us to the heights to which your spirits aspire.” She gave me a friendly poke in the ribs. “What do you say we start tomorrow by tracking down their secretaries, agents, mistresses, or whoever has their ear?”
Weeks stretched into a month, and still James hadn’t arrived from St. Louis with my precious babies. He sent a telegram explaining it was taking longer than expected to transition his legal and accounting business to his brother, so I went about my business, praying every night for their safe journey.
One morning in early September, my prayers were answered. Less than a minute after Katherine announced their arrival, seven-year-old Zula Maude burst into my room, all bright smiles and bobbing brown curls.
“Momma!” she cried, throwing her arms around me. “I’ve missed you so.”
I smiled and pulled my daughter close, running a hand over the girl’s hair, a few shades lighter than my own and just as unruly. “I’ve missed you too, my girl. Have you been good for James?”
Zula nodded. “He promised that after we unpack our things, we could see the city.” Her dark eyes were huge with excitement.
I was going to say we’d see about that, but I didn’t get a chance to reply before James and Byron appeared in the door.
“Hello,” James called. “We were waylaid by your lovely landlady, but I see our young filly found her way.”
I rose to hug Byron, who had grown into a handsome young man with his father’s dark eyes and hair. He smiled broadly, grunted his greeting in his special language few others could understand, and planted a wet kiss on my cheek. Then I embraced my husband, rising to tiptoe to kiss his cheek.
“I am so glad you are all here. It is wonderful having our family back together again.” I turned to my children. “Would you like to see your room? You’ll be staying across the hall with Aunt Tennie.”
Getting them settled in was simple, but convincing them to nap before their next adventure was another story. Zula whined in a high pitched singsong that she wasn’t tired. When James agreed they needed to rest before venturing out in the city, Byron threw one of his fits, groaning, grunting and waving his arms about wildly.
“Hush, son,” I cooed, rocking him in my arms as if he was a babe, not a young man of fourteen. I made soothing sounds and stroked his hair until he finally calmed enough for sleep to overtake him.
“I’m sorry for overexciting him,” James whispered as we quietly sneaked out of the room and shut the door. “He wants to see the animals in the Central Park menagerie.”
“Do not apologize.” I wrapped my arms around him. “It doesn’t take much to upset the boy. In that respect, he takes after Canning. I wish his father had some of Byron’s kind, gentle nature.” Shaking off thoughts of the past, I turned my attention to my husband. “What about you? Would you like to rest before we set out again? You look as drawn as death.”
His dark eyes were bloodshot, his thick brown hair disheveled from travel, and his side whiskers were too long, as though he hadn’t groomed them since leaving St. Louis. But he sighed and sank onto the bed as I kneaded his shoulders. “I would. But there is one thing you should know first. When we were traveling in from the station, our carriage stopped to take on additional passengers. You will not believe who one of them was.”
“Who?”
“Buck.”
My hands ceased their motion. I searched James’s face for signs of jest, but his eyes held no mirth and his lips were pressed into a straight line. “My father is here?”
“So it appears. The rest of the Claflin clan too. Utica and Maggie were with him. He wouldn’t acknowledge me. Still sore about us rescuing Tennie from their household and their schemes, I reckon. The carriage dropped him off in a rundown part of lower Manhattan the driver called Five Points.”
“I know of the area,” I said, but I wasn’t listening. I was fighting a wave of panic that started in my gut and was crawling up my throat, threatening to bring my breakfast in tow.
How had he found us? And why were they here? With my family, everything was done by design for their own profit. But what did they stand to gain from me? I wasn’t destitute, but I was by no means rich.
“Victoria? You look ill. Have I erred in telling you?”
I smiled benignly at him. “Not at all, dear.” I kissed him softly. “I appreciate the warning.” I helped him remove his clothing until all that remained were his underclothes and socks. Then I tucked him into bed. I kissed his forehead before placing my hat on my head and taking up my pocketbook. “Rest well. I have an appointment but will be back by noon to show you the city.”
Once in the hall, I leaned heavily on the door, my mind spinning. No good could come from the Claflins taking up residence in New York. Wherever they went, trouble—usually in the form of lawsuits for fraud and the ire of swindled customers—was sure to follow. It was one of the many reasons I had left them behind. Or so I’d thought.
I slowly descended the stairs, biting the inside of my lip as I tried to decide what to do. As I neared the bottom, my heart skipped a beat. What if they were here to get Tennie back? She was an adult now, but they could easily have dragged her back into the fold by blackmail—they had plenty of secrets to use—or by force, if necessary.
What was worse, my poor sister was all alone in the city right at that very moment, completely unaware of the familial threat lurking around any corner. I had no idea where Tennie had gone, but thanks to James, I knew where to find my family.
I hurried out the door, already scanning the street for a taxi whose driver could be convinced to take me into the slums. It would take only a quarter of an hour to reach my parents; hopefully I would not be too late.
The stench of rotting garbage, slaughtered carcasses, and excrement invaded the carriage long before the dilapidated buildings of Five Points came into view. I clutched a handkerchief to my nose and swallowed the bile rising in my throat. We slowed near the center of town, hampered by the sheer mass of people in the streets yelling, cursing, and calling to one another in a variety of languages. Chickens and goats wove in and out of the throng, adding their own cries to the cacophony.
The driver pulled to a stop beyond the neighborhood water pump. “This looks to be as far as I can go. You’ll have to go the rest of the way on foot.”
“This is fine,” I said, passing a few coins to him after he helped me out of the carriage.
I lifted my skirts enough to rescue them from the filth underfoot and began the slow ascent up the hill to a storefront with glass windows bearing the name Claflin Cancer Clinic and Cure-All.
I shook my head. My father was back to his old tricks. Had he learned nothing from his brushes with the law, including more than a dozen charges in three states? In the window, lined up like soldiers for inspection, were rows of dark green bottles bearing Tennie’s likeness, now ten years outdated, along with the name “Miss Tennessee’s Magnito Life Elixir for Beautifying the Complexion and Cleansing the Blood.” For the patients’ sakes, I hoped the contents weren’t a decade old too.
Insi
de, Pa was sitting behind a desk, his feet propped up, a lit cigar hanging from his mouth. I took a deep breath. No time like the present. I pushed open the door to the dimly lit shop.
“You’re still selling that snake oil?” I said by way of greeting.
“The prodigal daughter returns.” Buck looked up from the newspaper on his lap, not showing an ounce of surprise. “There will always be a need for healing, Victoria.”
I scoffed. “You mean humbuggery. I know what’s in that medicine of yours, Pa.”
Buck rose, appraising me. “Didn’t take you long to find me.”
“Dirt has a way of coming back—even when you’re sure you’ve scrubbed your hands free.”
Buck threw down the paper and grabbed my arm. His face was a hairsbreadth from mine, his breath hot and ashen on my cheek. “Ungrateful wretch, that’s what you are. How’s about I teach you some respect?”
I shrank back, a reaction based on years of fear. Experience warned me not to push him too far, especially when his voice took on that black tone. I was saved from responding by the creak of the door as a customer entered. Buck’s dark expression changed to one of pleasantry in the space of a breath.
“What can I do ya for, sir?” he called to the small, stooped man while throwing me a look that said we were not finished.
While Buck swindled the unsuspecting resident out of his hard-earned money, I browsed, opening jars and inspecting their contents. I sniffed at one that contained a greasy yellow paste and immediately recoiled at the pungent, metallic scent. That was the stuff Buck had once claimed could cure cancer, the same “cure” that ended up getting Tennie charged with manslaughter in Illinois since she had been the one who applied it to the unfortunate patient. I set the jar back on the shelf and perched on the side of the desk until my father’s transaction was complete.
As the man left, letting in a fresh gush of rotten air, my eyes watered. “How do you stand it down here?”
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