She’d heard him. Grunting and panting and gulping and then the harsh, guttural sound he couldn’t completely stifle. She thought he must do it very often, maybe every night. He looked old for his age, old and worn out. Terrible things happened to people who abused themselves. Sometimes they went crazy, like in the stories Mr. Poe had written, which she wasn’t supposed to read, but did.
If she confessed to impure acts, the priest would have to give her the kind of penance she wanted. She didn’t think he would ask for details, but if he did, she could hide her face in her hands and pretend to cry. He’d know she was deeply sorry for her sins, but that wouldn’t stop him from decreeing a harsher penance than three Hail Marys, three Our Fathers, and three Glory Bes.
There was a real sin she could confess, except that she was too ashamed to admit to the way it had ended and she’d done everything she could to forget it had ever happened.
When they were children, and even after they should have known better, she had dressed up as a nun and Joseph had put on a priest’s cassock. They played for hours and hours, never tiring of the game despite its limitations, repeating word for word the scenes they contrived and duplicated over and over again.
He was the parish priest, she the sister teaching in the parish school. Sometimes he was the confessor, she the penitent. Or he recited Holy Mass, and she was his server. She could be the Mother Superior of a convent where teaching nuns lived, a nursing sister in a hospital ward, a missionary dying of cholera or yellow fever.
Then the pretending changed. Joseph changed. He became fierce and angry because she could never do exactly as he directed. It made her gag.
When Joseph was in his early twenties and Alice had just turned seventeen, he ordered her to lower the nun’s habit below her waist and kneel before him again. She refused. She threatened to tell their parents if he bothered her with the game any more. And she meant it. He raised the whip to strike, but she stared at him with the cold authority of his father’s eyes. The cat-o’-nine-tails froze in midair. Neither of them ever spoke of that moment. It was as though none of it had ever happened. Except that Alice still burned with shame when the memory of what he had forced her to do crept past her defenses. She had just about convinced herself that it couldn’t be a mortal sin because she hadn’t consented of her own free will. Or had she? She’d worked so hard at blocking it out that it was hard to remember.
Alice concentrated on the sin she was planning to confess. The worst thing a woman could do was have a child out of wedlock. They called it getting caught because there was no way out except a quick marriage, the street, or risking death at the dirty hands of a baby killer. So maybe what she would do is tell the priest that she thought she was caught and was desperate enough to consider doing away with it … the child. He’d be horrified, furious with her, disgusted, angry enough to give her the stiffest possible penance so she’d change her mind. He’d want her to come back to confession again the following week. And the week after that.
Alice sighed with relief. She’d found the single perfect way to get what she wanted.
And no real danger to it.
*
Prudence wondered if she had ever really seen Joseph Nolan, looked past his expensive clothing and immaculately groomed hair. Short hair, lightly pomaded and combed flat against his head. Piercing eyes that looked out at you from under brows that were too heavy for his narrow face. He held his head high on a long neck, arched slightly back as though surprised by something you’d said. She thought he must be close to thirty, though the dry, dark skin below his eyes belonged to a much older man. Suffering was said to mark a person’s face. If so, Joseph had suffered, was still in the grip of whatever agony possessed his mind and his soul.
I must be very tired, she thought, or losing my mind. There’s a man with a butcher knife in his hand swaying back and forth just steps away from me and I’m wondering how he got those circles under his eyes. I’m sorry for his pain and his suffering.
Joseph Nolan decided there was time for one final scene before he had to go. Miss Prudence could act the part of the young nun, Josiah Gregory the older priest. The novice would make her first vows to the consecrated life of a Bride of Christ, the priest would hold both her hands in his while she pronounced the sacred words, and then he would give her the document to sign with her name in religion. What should that name be? A catalogue of female saints ran through his mind, but the only one that seemed appropriate was Agnes, patron saint of virgins.
“You look like an Agnes,” he said to Prudence. “She was only twelve or thirteen when she was martyred, but she was beautiful, wealthy, noble, and chaste. It’s a good thing Charles Linwood died during the blizzard. If he’d lived, you couldn’t be Agnes because you wouldn’t be a virgin. You’d be a wife.”
It made perfect sense. He picked up the nun’s habit and held it out toward Prudence. When she made no move to take it, he folded it across the push bar. The wimple and veil followed. He draped the cassock and the Roman collar beside the habit.
“You’ll be the priest,” he told Josiah. He brandished the butcher knife, then lowered it when the terrified little man nodded his head vigorously.
“I’m going to count to ten,” Nolan explained. “When I reach ten you will be ready.” He slid a thumb along the blade of the butcher knife, raising a thin line of blood that he sucked dry. “The knife is very sharp. I can make it so you won’t suffer, or the blade can slip and slide instead of slicing deeply. The Chinese call it the death by a thousand cuts.”
Their only hope was to get close enough to him to use the heavy wooden rosary that hung from the waist to the hem of a nun’s habit, and the knotted white cord symbolizing the three vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Or the hooked cato’-nine-tails. It had to be in those few moments when he was counting to ten, when he was distracted by the rustling of habit and cassock being pulled into place. There was no plan, no discussion, just the quick meeting of eyes. Prudence and Josiah. Two minds coming together as one, two determined spirits gambling their lives on the element of surprise and the superhuman strength that sometimes came to victims in the face of attack.
Prudence dropped the nun’s robe over her head and wrapped the white cord around her waist, pretending to tie it but winding it tightly around her fist. The moment Joseph looked away or turned his back to lead them toward the spot he had chosen for his final playlet, she would leap on his back and sling the cord down across his arms and chest tight enough to cause him to drop the butcher knife. Josiah would dive for his legs and wind the heavy rosary around them as many times as he could manage before he fell. And hope it didn’t break. They had to tie off the cord and the rosary before he realized what was happening to him, truss him up like a roast for the oven. No time to think it through, no time to do anything but look one last time into each other’s eyes.
If they did not succeed in overpowering him, Joseph Nolan would kill them.
*
Mr. Washington had a lovely, distinctive scent that warmed Blossom’s nose delightfully. The cold didn’t usually bother her, but she welcomed the flare of his heat dancing through her nostrils, up her long snout, and into her brain. Danny and his horse weren’t traveling very fast, but Blossom was single-minded and paid no attention to interesting distractions. It was Mr. Washington she was tracking and no other.
Billy McGlory had handed Kevin a leash, which he stuffed into a pocket before Blossom could see it and be insulted. He’d explained as clearly as he could that he and Blossom worked best when no one else was along to get in their way, but he wasn’t paid any attention. McGlory ordered the carriage he kept in a stable around the corner from Armory Hall. The two men who had been outside his office when Kevin first arrived returned, accompanied by three others. Kevin thought one of the newcomers must be important because Mr. McGlory stood up to greet him and the stranger was wearing a black wool coat and hat that only toffs and bosses could afford. The man was young, so perhaps he was mistaken. No
names were volunteered and no one shook hands. Kevin nodded his head and Blossom put her paw down and her nose to the pavement.
When Blossom turned into Central Park, then stood to one side of the roadway sniffing the air and dashing back and forth as if she’d lost the scent, McGlory’s two bodyguards jumped out of the carriage following along behind them. Within seconds the men protecting the stranger in the black coat joined them in the roadway.
“Stand still,” Kevin shouted at them. “You’ll confuse the trail.” He watched Blossom as she trotted forward, then backwards as she crossed Fifth Avenue, weaving her way skillfully through the traffic, and then recrossed the street to come back into the park again.
“What’s going on?” McGlory asked, leaning out his carriage window.
“Danny’s cab went into the park, then came out and crossed Fifth Avenue. It looks as though he halted it there for a while before driving back in again.”
Blossom barked to tell Kevin he was right, then started off, faster now as she was more sure of the scent and there were fewer competing smells to have to sniff through. Kevin trotted along close behind her, pacing his stride to hers, breathing in short puffs of air that sounded like small bellows working up a newly lit fire.
The bodyguards climbed back into their carriage. Two other McGlory men in a hansom cab ordered their driver to block the entrance to the park. Money changed hands and weapons were shown. The hansom cab came to a halt squarely across the roadway. And there it sat.
They had nearly reached the Carousel when Blossom suddenly halted, her haunches planted firmly on the grassy verge of the narrow road, her head pointed upwards.
Kevin knelt down in front of her. “What is it, girl? What’s wrong?” He signaled to McGlory’s driver to stop the carriage, shaking his head vigorously as doors opened. “No, not yet,” he called. “Something has changed, but I don’t know what it is. Wait there.”
Blossom wanted to tell him that she’d run into two other scents she wanted to follow, but she wasn’t sure Kevin would understand. Once he made up his mind about something, it was hard to change it, and right now he was determined to find Mr. Washington. Blossom thought Mr. Washington could take care of himself, but she wasn’t so sure about the two people who had stood for a while hidden in the trees before moving out onto the grass again.
One scent was stronger than the other; the human female’s leather paw coverings were thin. Lingering above the main scents were two distinct ribbons of something that wasn’t quite fear, but close enough to make the hairs on Blossom’s back bristle. The woman who had scratched her ears and the man who had given her a saucer of cream had been chasing after the man in Danny Dennis’s cab, the cab Mr. Washington pulled. She remembered the story she’d listened to when Kevin made her sit outside on the kitchen steps instead of crawling indoors to sprawl in front of the fire. Miss MacKenzie and Mr. Josiah. She thought again about what a huge horse Mr. Washington was, how big and powerful his hooves. The boot prints whose outlines she could sniff out were small, and the man was much older than the woman.
Follow me, Blossom barked, then she leaped out from under Kevin’s comforting hand. Running as fast as she could, the scent trail growing stronger with every bound, she raced toward the brightly painted Carousel and its circle of elaborately carved steeds.
McGlory’s driver whipped up his horses, then reined them in sharply as soon as they reached the Carousel. The bodyguards were out and on the ground before the second carriage stopped rocking. The driver tossed a pistol down to his boss, then turned his attention to calming his agitated team.
Onto the platform Blossom ran, through the forest of wooden legs, off to the side, disappearing before Kevin and the others could reach her.
McGlory, who hadn’t done his own work in years, was only a few paces behind Kevin and Dominic Pastore when they heard the screaming.
CHAPTER 28
Blossom hurtled down the horse ramp under the Carousel, nails clicking on its icy surface. Joseph Nolan turned, butcher knife raised to strike.
The dog leaped onto his chest, forcing Nolan’s head backwards, sinking her fangs into his neck. She smelled madness on him, the crazed, confused anger that sometimes destroyed animals in the heat of summer. Humans called it rabies. There was madness of the body and madness of the mind; the man whose soul she was freeing had lost all power of reason. He was scarcely human anymore.
If Nolan could have sliced open the dog, he would have, but in the instant that Blossom hurled herself through the air, Prudence hauled with all her weight on the arm brandishing the knife. Joseph felt a warm rush of blood against the cold flesh of his neck and knew that the animal whose weight had flung him to the ground had found and severed the artery that would bleed him out in the time it took to say an Act of Contrition.
Blossom stopped slashing when the blood gushed against her muzzle. It was over for this human, though he still had a few minutes of life left in him. She didn’t like blood on her fur; it was hard to lick off once it stiffened and matted the fine hairs under her coarse outer coat. She kept her paws on the human’s chest because prey could surprise you, but she pulled back from the spurting that reminded her of the fountains in the park. Except that water was clear and refreshing to drink, and blood was not.
The screams echoing off the walls of the underground horse track ebbed into silence. It had been the surprise and fury of Blossom’s attack that had forced desperate cries for help from Prudence and Josiah’s throats. The dog ignored them, though the high pitched shrieks hurt her sensitive ears and she might have tried to bark them away if she hadn’t had a muzzle full of flesh.
The man and woman lay on the damp ground where their desperate assault had landed them. Joseph Nolan’s blood saturated the nun’s habit and the front of Prudence’s dress. Josiah, tangled up in the cassock and the rosary he hadn’t had a chance to use, was as muddied as a street urchin. But they were alive. Alive and no longer alone with a madman.
The enormous dog whose shaggy red fur smelled equally of wet horse dung and strongly scented soap nosed insistently at one of Prudence’s hands, nudging the fingers up from the ground and onto her head where they began scratching gently, reflexively. Dogs knew that when a human scratched their heads, it wasn’t only the animal who benefited. Even when Blossom’s ears weren’t particularly itchy, she encouraged Kevin to rub them. It calmed him down and brought a smile to his face.
Josiah looked long and carefully at Joseph Nolan before he shrugged off the cassock and began unwinding himself from the rosary. Nolan was bleeding to death before his eyes. Josiah watched as the man’s pupils dulled and his breath ceased to flutter across the pool of blood. He recognized the strange little person who whispered something into the dog’s ear and then winked at her. Such unlikely saviors.
“Get them out of here.” The man’s back was to the ramp entrance, so his face was obscured, but Josiah recognized the voice.
“How did you know?” he asked.
“Blossom,” McGlory answered. “She followed the scent of Danny Dennis’s horse from where he turned around the hansom cab when he saw the police. Don’t ask me how she did it, but she did.”
“And we’ll all say a prayer to Saint Jude for that impossible miracle,” came another familiar voice.
“Mr. Dennis! We didn’t think you’d seen us.” Prudence dropped the bloody nun’s habit onto the ground.
“I didn’t. But you have a fine voice for yelling, Miss MacKenzie. Mr. Washington wouldn’t leave the park. He flat refused. So I turned around and came back. That’s when I saw Mr. McGlory’s carriage and heard the screeching.” He was out of breath from running, but he brandished the whip he carried in one hand and raised the club he held in the other.
Billy McGlory nodded toward Prudence and Josiah. “It’s best if they’re not seen in my rig, Dennis. Can you take them back to Miss MacKenzie’s house?” The bodyguards faded into the deep blackness along the walls.
“I can, sir, of course. Will w
e be needing a doctor?”
“Not for him,” Prudence said. She stepped over one of Joseph Nolan’s outstretched legs and shook some of the mud off her skirts. “And not for me, either. Josiah?”
“I’m unhurt, Miss.” He bent to gingerly stroke the smelly dog who had saved their lives. “What did you say her name was?”
“Blossom,” blurted out Kevin, his hands running over his best friend’s head, legs, and flanks. “Is she cut, Miss?”
“I don’t think so.” Prudence touched her nose to Blossom’s. A quick lick was her reward.
“All right, Kevin,” McGlory said. “Get Blossom away from here, too.”
“I’ll take care of them all, sir,” Danny Dennis volunteered.
“Send me word, but don’t come yourself.”
*
Danny wrapped blankets around Prudence and Josiah, tucking them into the hansom cab like precious, breakable cargo. Kevin squeezed himself in as best he could, and when Danny handed him a blanket, he hid inside its folds.
Real ladies made him nervous; whenever they saw him on the street they pursed their lips and wrinkled their noses. Once in a while one of them tossed him a small coin and laughed when he scrambled for it. He wished he could be in one of his cardboard boxes right now, snuggled under a nice pile of newspapers with Blossom stretched out beside him. He liked to sleep with his head nestled on her fore shoulder, though sometimes when he woke up he found he’d curled right up against the length of her, his hands gripping the thick fur as though he would fall if he let go.
“All right now, girl,” Danny said. “Up you go. You’ll ride outside with me.”
Mr. Washington turned his head to greet Blossom. So this was the dog who’d tracked him through the city streets and into the park. Intelligent and determined. He rolled his lip back in a friendly fashion to show her his teeth.
*
“What do you want us to do with the body, Mr. McGlory?” One of the bodyguards stepped out of the shadows and into the striped daylight coming down into the horse ring from the operator’s perch above. He lit the small carriage lantern McGlory’s driver had brought into the pit.
Lies That Comfort and Betray Page 29