The Isis Knot

by Hanna Martine

He shoved her toward the slit in the brick facades, the place they called home. He let go of her arm only for a moment, but it was enough to wrench herself free, to wiggle away from his hands, which were slow and inaccurate in his drunken stupor.

  She dashed the opposite way down Whitechapel, smiling to herself.

  She ran past Stumpy, who was slinking in the shadows. His brown eyes shimmered up at her. Poor little boy, so small and fat and stupid. He didn’t know he could run away from Father if he wanted to. Stumpy would learn, though.

  Soon she’d be old enough to venture out into the world beyond these gray streets. She’d see where all the roads led. Then she’d come back and take her little brother away from that alley. From Father’s fists and his stinking breath. Perhaps they would find someone who knew Mother—someone who could explain what happened to her, why she was taken away from them. Father only cried when she was mentioned.

  As Elizabeth ran down Whitechapel, Father bellowed after her. It made her laugh despite knowing she’d get an even more severe beating when she returned. And she would go back because she had to. She had nowhere else to go.

  As she crossed Whitechapel at Greatorex Street, she looked back and saw Father trip over the cracked curb. He fell into the same gutter as the stablehand. As Stumpy waddled over to Father, she turned her back and disappeared into the curves of Plumbers Row, all misty with rain and temporary safety.

  Here the street narrowed, the buildings leaning over the lane only wide enough for one horse and carriage. She careened around the curve, her breath hammering her chest and making her head all fuzzy. At last, after she could no longer hear the commotion of Whitechapel Road, she collapsed against a corner of a building, hands on knees and glee in her heart. She could not stop laughing.

  “What do you find funny, my dear?”

  She gasped and straightened, searching the foggy darkness for the source of the clear, composed voice.

  “Pardon?” She remembered her manners, even with Mother not there to remind her.

  A man detached himself from a lamppost. He wore a tall hat and a natty coat. One hand rested leisurely in his pocket while the other gripped a shiny cane. He tilted his head back, letting some of the lamplight catch the hard lines of his cheeks and a fascinating dimple in his chin. His straight brown hair hung long and he’d clubbed it at the nape of his neck. Even in the dark she could tell he had brown eyes. Stunning eyes that crinkled with sophisticated age.

  He wasn’t dirty. Not like that man who’d wanted to buy her body. Not like Father.

  “I asked what made you laugh.”

  The dapper man leaned the cane against the lamppost and removed a pipe and flint and tinder box from an inner coat pocket. The pipe was apparently already filled with tobacco because he stuffed it between his lips without delay and lit it. The sweet smell formed a cloud on the corner, making her recall a more peaceful time, not three years ago, when she and Mother and Father and Stumpy lived in a house, and Father used to rock in the chair near the fireplace, a pipe balanced in one hand, a small smile on his face.

  “It’s late for a girl your age to be out on the streets.” The stranger spoke casually, easily.

  Oddly enough, she didn’t feel threatened by him. Still, she felt it necessary—in order to avoid another scene like that with the ugly stablehand—to say, “I’m not like those women. I’m not one of them.” She pointed to two prostitutes who appeared around the bend, their heels clicking on the cobblestones.

  The stranger glanced their way with disinterest. “I know. Are you hungry?”

  The rumble in her stomach answered for her. He produced an apple from somewhere in the folds of his fine coat. Saliva tingled the inside of her cheeks. She had never seen a piece of fruit shine so deliciously. She snatched it from his hand before he could take it back or make her do something to get it. He let her take it without protest, and leaned against the lamp to watch her eat.

  His head tilted from side to side as he puffed away on his pipe. She didn’t care; she let him stare. The apple was the most scrumptious thing she’d ever tasted. She slowed her chewing to make the taste of it last longer.

  The stranger eyed the tatters of her clothing—the frayed hems, the stockings with the holes, the shreds of ribbon tying back her smudged blond hair.

  “Do you live near here?”

  She nodded in the direction from which she’d run. “Up fere,” she answered, mouth full of sweet apple.

  He squinted over his pipe. “You wouldn’t happen to know a Samuel Oliver, would you?”

  “Oliver? I know a Samuel Branson. He owns a bakery.” She spit out a seed. “And a Samuel Grant.”

  The man smiled. Not the way Natalie had smiled, with something sinister behind it, but a true smile. His lips twitched and there was a beguiling sparkle to his eye. “Little one, can you ask around for me? Sometimes people tell nice little girls things they won’t tell strangers. Can you do that? Can you ask people if they know Samuel Oliver? He used to serve in the Royal Navy. Medium of build, I’m told. Sandy hair. Chipped front tooth.”

  She finished the apple and smacked her lips. “And what will you give me if I do this for you?” He looked wealthy enough for her to ask with confidence.

  His smile widened. “More apples.”

  That was what she hoped he would say. He barely finished the sentence before Elizabeth was nodding eagerly.

  “You look like a resourceful little girl, like you know your way around London, who to ask. Otherwise you wouldn’t be wandering around in the dark this late at night. How old are you?”

  “Ten.” She lifted her chin so he could see how mature she was.

  “And your name?”

  “Elizabeth.”

  “Well, Elizabeth. How about we meet back here tomorrow night and you can tell me what you found out about my friend, Mr. Oliver?”

  She considered whether Father would allow her out of the alley after her running away tonight, but she nodded anyway, just in case. She liked the stranger. She didn’t want to disappoint him.

  “And will you promise me one other thing, Elizabeth?”

  “Maybe. What is it?”

  He laughed. “You are such a smart girl. You must be so good in school.”

  “I don’t go to school.”

  “Oh. Well, that’s unfortunate.” He paused and seemed to be thinking in that scattered way of adults. “Will you promise to keep our conversation a secret? When you inquire after Mr. Oliver, I need you to not reveal that it is I who look for him.”

  “How can I? I don’t even know your name.”

  The stranger pursed his lips and looked amused. “I think it’s best you don’t know my name at this point. But perhaps I may tell it to you later.”

  She started back up the street, then stopped. “You’re not going to hurt Mr. Oliver, are you? I don’t like it when people get hurt.”

  “Oh, no, no, no.” The stranger finished with his pipe and tucked it safely back in its place. He pulled out a pair of gloves from his pocket and tugged them on, pressing the fabric firmly between his fingers. “Mr. Oliver merely has something of mine. I’d like to get it back. I will see you tomorrow evening, my lady.”

  And then he was gone, his cane tapping evenly on the cobblestones, his tall hat pointing straight to the sky, leaving her in a cloud of joy.

  He called me “my lady.”

  #

  The next evening Elizabeth and Stumpy huddled together in the only dry corner of the alley. Stumpy smoothed her hair, careful not to touch the raw skin near her left eye where Father had struck her after she’d returned from meeting the handsome stranger. The bruise crept down her cheek.

  Father was behind the ratty blanket strung across the alley. He had Natalie with him and Elizabeth could hear his grunting and growling. Even though she didn’t like Natalie anymore for trying to sell her to that stablehand, she hoped Father wasn’t hurting her. With a shout, Father’s grunting died and Natalie left. Father threw back the blanket. He didn
’t look so mean anymore. A flicker of peace crossed his face, a tease of the old Father, the way he used to look at Mother before she left.

  “You want something to eat?” Father asked.

  Stumpy nodded vigorously. He was always hungry. That was why he was so round.

  “Yes, sir,” Elizabeth replied.

  “Stay here, then. Or I’ll give you an eye to match the other.”

  As his lumbering shadow disappeared into the street, all she could think about was the stranger, standing alone in his nice coat and hat on the corner, waiting for her. The inside of her cheeks tingled again in memory of the apple. She wished she had another to share with Stumpy. Even if she could meet the handsome stranger, would he give her the apples if she had no information to give him?

  She’d asked everyone she knew on both sides of Whitechapel—almost half a mile in both directions. She needed more time.

  But tonight she’d obey Father and then sneak away tomorrow to ask in the shops on other lanes. She’d stop everyone on the street. She wouldn’t skip a single person. She’d make up for not meeting her stranger tonight. She would find this Mr. Oliver and go back to that corner tomorrow.

  Yes, that was what she would do.

  #

  The following evening Father left the alley, saying he was going to break some of the window panes at the hat shop over on Old Montague Street to see if he could get anything of value. Like he’d taught his children to do so well. He’d be gone for a while. She had time to meet her handsome stranger.

  And she had such wonderful news for him, too.

  Stumpy cried and clung to her when she told him she was leaving the alley. She pried his pudgy little fingers from her arms and then slapped him lightly.

  “Be quiet, Stumpy. You need to stop whining so much. When I come back, I’ll bring you apples.”

  “Don’t leave me, Lizzie.”

  “You’re six years old. You don’t need me to take care of you. Go steal something if you’re scared. Father would like that, if he came back and you had something for him to sell.”

  She ran to the corner of Plumbers Row and Coke Street.

  He was standing there, under the same gas lamp as two nights earlier, the faint glow of his pipe acting as a beacon. Her heart fluttered at the sight of his upright shadow. Though she couldn’t see those brown eyes in the night, she knew he watched her approach. Would he be angry? He would have to understand.

  “I…am…so…sorry,” she panted as she stopped right in front of him.

  “What happened?”

  She could not read his face. “I got caught trying to leave last night. Father doesn’t like me leaving without his permission. Please forgive me.”

  He reached out a gloved hand and cupped her chin, tilting her head in the flickering lamplight to expose the black-and-blue side of her face. He frowned. “Forgiven.”

  For a moment, she was indignant. Shouldn’t he be more upset over her beating? Shouldn’t he be angry at a man for treating his child as such?

  “Do you have any news for me?” he asked.

  “Do you have any apples for me?”

  He smiled that gorgeous, wide smile. “Yes.”

  “I checked everywhere, up and down the East End. Yesterday, I didn’t find anything. Even if I’d come last night, I couldn’t have told you anything. But today I stopped a woman on the street near the river. I told her I was looking for my uncle, my mother’s brother. I told her I came in from the country to find him because my mother’s gravely ill and my father’s dead. When I said my uncle was Samuel Oliver, she said she didn’t know a Samuel, but she knew a Hugh Oliver, a tanner. So I went to see Mr. Hugh Oliver.”

  “And?” The stranger’s eyes twinkled so brightly they looked like lamps themselves. He forgot about his pipe, letting the tobacco burn down into uselessness.

  Elizabeth clapped her hands and did a little jump. “And Hugh is Samuel’s brother! I told Hugh I was the daughter of a tailor who’d made something for Samuel and he’d never picked it up. Everyone goes to the tailor, I supposed.”

  The stranger laughed. “I knew you were a resourceful girl. What did Hugh say?”

  “That Samuel left London a year ago. He’s in Oxford now.”

  The stranger took a long puff of his pipe, his face ducking under the shadow of his hat. “Resourceful, indeed.” His voice was very soft, very thoughtful.

  She visually searched his pockets for the telltale bulge of fruit. He didn’t disappoint her and produced the shiny red apple as promised. As she ate, she was aware of him studying her, yet she never felt uncomfortable.

  She imagined him falling in love with her, and decided—right then and there—that she would do anything to make that happen, apples or no.

  “I have another request of you.” He spoke so formally, so educated. Maybe he would take her away and send her to school where she could learn to speak like him.

  “What is it?”

  He tapped the ash from his pipe onto the street and stuffed the curved bone into his coat.

  “It’s quite a lot to ask, I must admit.”

  “What is it?”

  “I could use your help in finding Mr. Oliver in Oxford. You did a much better job of finding him in London than I did. I’ve wandered for weeks, enduring suspicious looks and elusive answers. But you, my dear, are precious and wonderfully sneaky. You could help me find what I need to get from Mr. Oliver.”

  “But he’s in Oxford.”

  The stranger placed his hand on her cheek, over the bruise. And she knew he would never hit her like Father. “What is here for you, my dear? More of these? I’d like you to come with me. Will you?”

  She swallowed a chunk of apple before chewing it properly, and it lodged painfully in her throat. She had to cough it down. “But—”

  “But what?” he snapped. “You’d return to a father who beats you? To living in the streets? I can give you more than that.” He knelt in front of her, taking her arms in his strong hands. He knelt in the street, there on the dirty cobblestones with his fine trousers and the hem of his clean coat brushing around his knees. “Come with me and after you’ve helped me, I’ll reward you with something far greater than apples.”

  Elizabeth gaped. “Oranges?”

  He grinned wide. “Better.”

  “Hot steak and potatoes and sausages?”

  He stared into her eyes and she sighed, enamored. “I will give you a prize greater than any meal you could ever imagine. But that is all I will say about it now.”

  What could possibly be better than steak and sausages? A new dress, maybe? A job for Father? Their old house back, with her warm room and the bed tucked in next to the fire?

  “All I have to do is go with you to Oxford and help you find Samuel Oliver?”

  “And help me get from him what he owes me.”

  Acceptance rested on the tip of Elizabeth’s tongue. She leaned into him, into his clean scent, then thought of Stumpy, shaking and sniffling in that dank alley.

  “What is it, my dear? Don’t tell me you think of your father.”

  “No. My little brother. He needs me. If I left him with Father, I don’t know what would happen to him. I just couldn’t leave him.”

  The stranger shut his eyes and drew several long, deep breaths in through his nose. “Do you love your brother that much? Do you really?”

  “I think he’s weak and a crybaby.”

  “Then you shouldn’t mind leaving him.”

  “Can I share my prize with him? After I do what you ask, I mean.”

  The man cocked his head, looking regretful. “I’m afraid not. But if you help me find Mr. Oliver and his…artifact, you will get your reward and I will take this boy you call Stumpy away from your father.”

  She gasped, joyous. “You would do that? For me?”

  He held up a single finger. “Do you believe I would? Truly?”

  She looked so deep into his eyes she thought she could see his beautiful soul. “Yes,” she breat
hed.

  “Belief is a strong thing,” he said, “the strongest force in the world. It can make things happen—things the like of which you’ve never dreamed.”

  “I believe,” she whispered. “I believe in you.”

  The man’s eyes flashed. The smile he gave her was so brilliant her heart nearly burst. He stood and extended to her a gloved hand. Happily, she slid her fingers into his. Even through the fine cloth she felt his warmth. It seeped into her palm, her arm, her heart.

  “Come then, Elizabeth.” He started down Plumbers Row, in the opposite direction of Whitechapel Road. “Let us begin a new stage of our lives together.”

  It was a funny comment, but one she only pondered for a moment.

  “If we’re indeed going to Oxford together, don’t you think I should finally know your name?”

  Suddenly he turned very serious. “My name is Mr. Moore.”

  She scrunched up her face. “Is that your whole name?”

  He laughed, like she’d wanted him to. “If I tell you my given name, you must promise to never, ever use it.”

  Her stomach fluttered in anticipation. “Of course! I’ll always do what you ask.”

  He smiled down at her, and it was the most beautiful sight she’d ever seen.

  “Others,” he said, “know me as Seth.”

  CHAPTER 15

  All that Sera longed to tell William but couldn’t due to circumstance weighed heavily on her shoulders, dragging her footsteps along the dirt.

  The death that lived inside her.

  The time travel.

  William had to know these things. But with Jem sticking so close to his side, she hadn’t been able to get William alone. They’d stayed hidden to avoid being seen by travelers in daylight, but now that the sun had started to set, they were making their way across the wild, heading toward the river that would bring them back to Sydney.

  It had been too close last night when she and William had been whispering and Jem had awakened. They had to be very, very careful what they said in front of him. The way the younger man eyed her made her uneasy, but it was the simple fact that he was always around that threw a huge wrench into everything.