“Abattoir,” Doug choked from behind his hand. “Guess we might’ve thought this through a little better, huh?”
“That’s it,” Phoebe muttered. “I am now a vegetarian.”
“Me too,” I agreed.
“There’s the door to the street,” Collum snapped. “Move it, aye?”
Since no one in their right mind would spend one second more than was absolutely necessary amid this disgusting display, we hurried after him.
Sweating men in gore-encrusted aprons eyed us as we passed. Young boys no older than seven or eight rushed by toting buckets of something I knew I didn’t want to see. I tried to keep my gaze locked on the back of Mac’s tweed coat, but when a cloud of noxious steam rolled over me, I cut my eyes away just in time to see a heavyset man hoist a net full of boiled cow skulls from an enormous iron vat.
Behind me, I heard Phoebe gag.
Don’t do it, I begged silently on behalf of my lurching gut.
On a platform high above the abattoir floor, four men in rough suits tracked our movements as we wove our way toward the door. They conferred for a moment before three of them cut away and began to descend the steps, clearly intent on cutting us off.
“Hurry,” Mac mumbled over his shoulder. “This could be difficult to explain, aye?”
I nodded and picked up the pace. He didn’t have to tell me twice.
We almost made it. Only feet away, pedestrians strolled by an open doorway to what looked like an ordinary street, though I noticed each person who passed held a handkerchief pressed to his or her face.
“Help ya?”
“Why no, my good man,” Mac told the sweating, stocky fellow who stepped into our path. “Bit lost, is all. We’ll just be on our way.”
With two smaller men flanking him, the speaker frowned. Heavy jowls drooped as if the bushy red sideburns were trying to shove them off his face. The three spread out in a bid to block our exit as he looked us over.
“And just where in blazes did ye come from?”
For a split second, no one spoke. Then Mac gave a hearty chuckle and clapped the man on the shoulder.
“Och, ye wouldna believe me if I told ye, man.” Mac deepened his already thick Scot’s brogue to match the supervisor’s. “Scoundrel of a steamboat captain went and got himself in his cups. Dumped milady and the rest o’ us off at the wrong landing. Can ye believe it? What a numpty! Nearly got ourselves killed when the cattle ran, we did.”
The man’s squinty eyes narrowed, suspicious. Mac was quicker, though.
He held out a hand. “Mac MacPherson, newly from Edinburgh,” he said, laying the burr on thick. “And from yer speech, ye’re a Glasgow man, or my name’s Tom Thumb.”
The man reluctantly took Mac’s proffered hand. “Aye,” he said. “Come over these twelve years past, but—”
“I’m a barrister, ye see,” Mac interrupted. “Sent by milord the Earl of Airth to escort this good lady to our lovely isle where she is to wed his son, the Viscount Allardice.”
“I don’t give a rat’s furry arse what no bleeding rich bastard—”
“Well, that’s the thing.” Mac cut the man off, slick as egg white as he turned his back on the rest of us to lean in and whisper conspiratorially. “See, I’m with you. Bunch of no-good fancy boys with their fox hunts and their silver-plated ballocks. Got no idea how life is for us hard-working blokes, do they now?
“I’ll tell ye a secret,” he went on, gesturing for the three leaders to come closer. Mac’s expression was mild, though he eyed the largest man up and down as if assessing the quality of his suit. “I’m of a mind to hold that captain . . . and anyone else with a stake in those cattle . . . responsible for our lost luggage.” Still gripping the man’s hand, he pulled him close. “O’ course if I get the lady and her servants out o’ here quick-like, with no trouble, my mind might change on that score.”
The man’s piggish eyes roved from me, in a ruined though clearly expensive dress, to Phoebe, in her dusty maid’s garb. He darted a quick glance at Doug and Collum, braced on either side of us, then nodded.
“Guess ye’d best be on yer way then.”
He jerked his hand from Mac’s. I noticed him massaging the blood back into his whitened fingers as he edged out of our way.
“For your trouble.” Mac flicked a silver coin into the air and motioned us out the door.
Chapter 17
NEW YORK IN THE LATE EIGHTEEN HUNDREDS WAS A CITY IN FLUX. The old-world charm rapidly being overtaken by industry and the birth of commerce. Greasy black smoke belched from a hundred smokestacks, coating the city with a layer of smeary grime. Though we passed a few odd, ramshackle wooden buildings, most had been ripped out to make way for the dense, brick high-rises of six and seven stories that had begun to crowd the sky.
Once out of that horrifying blood-house, we hadn’t waited long for the boys to hail a halfway decent carriage to take us to our first destination, the famed Waldorf Hotel, current residence of one Nikola Tesla. From there, we’d clean up and split into teams. One team would keep an eye out for the physicist—or, we hoped, his good friend Jonathan Carlyle. The other would reconnoiter Tesla’s Fifth Avenue lab for the same purpose. Our backup plan was to find a way to attend the March 13 Vanderbilt soiree, where firm photographic evidence had placed Tesla.
Even though the sun had not yet risen enough to banish the previous night’s shadows, as our carriage squelched between the tenements of the immigrant district, people were already mobbing the streets.
It was astonishingly . . . painfully . . . loud.
“What?” I shouted to Phoebe over the rumble of carts; the jangle of miles of leather harness; the combined cries of vendors, patrons, and newsboys; and the shouts of irritated wagon drivers in a variety of languages.
“I said,” Phoebe practically yelled, cupping her hands around her mouth, “think I prefer the stink of medieval London to this cacophony.”
My eyebrows shot up. “Nice word choice.”
“Aye, been waiting to use that one.”
I snorted. Phoebe returned my smile, but it didn’t reach her eyes.
“Hey,” I said, “how long is this gonna go on?”
“Not sure. How far away are we from the—?”
“That’s not what I mean and you know it.”
She turned toward the window, where we could see the edge of Doug’s fingertips trailing down from his seat next to the carriage driver. “I don’t know.”
I touched the back of her hand. As quietly as was possible over the roar outside I said, “How many times have you told me how it hurts you to watch Doug get left behind time and again?”
One slim shoulder lifted. A hand swiped at her freckled cheek. “Aye,” she said. “But he lied to me, Hope. He—he’s never done that before, you know? And if something happens to him, I can’t. I just can’t.” She turned. Looked me in the eyes. Hers were full. There was hurt there, yes, and anger. But mostly what I saw . . . was fear.
“I get it,” I told her. “I really do. I—” I snipped off that thread, because this wasn’t about Bran and me, or my worries for him. Or how I can’t stop thinking about him and that impossibly elegant cousin of his. But I understood that sick, helpless feeling so well. How you wanted to protect them. Keep them safe. And the powerlessness that ate at you when you couldn’t.
“But don’t you see?” I said. “Doug is here. There’s nothing you can do about that. And can you imagine seeing his face light up when he meets Tesla for the first time? You’ve been dying to share this with him for so long.” I squeezed her hand. “And you’re missing it, Pheebs. Because of stubbornness.”
She pulled her hand away and dropped her gaze to the dingy carriage floor. She didn’t speak, but I thought I saw the tension in her shoulders lessen. Beneath my skirts, I crossed my fingers that they’d work this out soon.
Doug’s dream of traveling with the rest of us had finally come true. They loved each other so much, and I was eager for Phoebe to share in his joy.
>
Seated across from us in the carriage, Mac tilted his head toward Phoebe and gave me a quick wink that said we’d set this to rights. I grinned back as I realized that we’d made it. Another trip through the Dim. We were alive and no one was hurt. We’d lost most of our belongings, sure. But those were only things.
On my first voyage, I’d been sick with fear. Fear that we’d never find my lost mother. Fear that even if we did, we’d be too late to save her.
Today, as we passed through each dingy yet colorful neighborhood, I began to relax. Soon I was hanging half out the window in my excitement as I tried to take it all in. Smaller, older structures of graying wood huddled between their larger brick cousins—the tenements that were sprouting up everywhere, replacing single-family homes. Though here, even these new constructions were beginning to appear fatigued. Faces in every skin tone peeked out of grimy windows, making me grin as the historian in me fizzed to life.
Whoa, I thought. This. This is the true birth of our nation.
My brain whirred into action, offering up facts and figures on the immigrants who had just begun to turn the country into the melting pot it would one day become. The terrible injustice of slavery was only thirty years abolished. But as we passed through a largely African-American neighborhood, I watched men kiss their wives as they headed off to work. Women gathered around wagons to peruse the vendors’ morning wares. Two little girls in braids and spotless white dresses held hands as they skipped down the sidewalk. Pride gleamed from their mother’s face as she watched her little ones at play. I felt an upsurge of joy, knowing that horrific era was finally over. It would be a long road, but I knew that we were, at least, witnessing the infancy of a new age of freedom.
A mélange of scents wafted through the carriage window, changing at each cross street. Frying onions and garlic. Stewed cabbage. Exotic, unidentifiable spices that battled the overall stench of rotting garbage and crowded humanity.
With each block, however, the evidence of indescribable poverty grew more and more heartbreaking. Workers trudged by, heads bowed, lunch pails clasped tightly as they headed off to work in factories or mills. Packs of ragged children roamed sidewalks or huddled over metal grates in the ground to take advantage of the warm steam that billowed up.
During a brief traffic snarl, I watched a rouged woman haggle with three sailors. After counting and stuffing the bills into her low-cut bodice, she sighed and turned to follow the swaggering trio into the shadowed alley behind her. Her gaze snagged with mine. When I saw cheeks still rounded with baby fat, I realized the “woman” was a girl. A girl even younger than I was.
“God, she’s just a kid,” I whispered.
“What?” Phoebe leaned in, but I only shook my head as the girl tossed me an obscene gesture and disappeared into the alley.
When I looked out again, I realized we’d passed most of the worst of the destitution. The sidewalks here were choked with kerchiefed women in colorful skirts. I waved at a black-eyed baby propped on his mother’s hip as she gossiped with her neighbor in melodic Italian. When the baby graced me with a beaming, toothless grin, I laughed out loud.
“What?” Phoebe asked. “What’s funny?”
“I—it’s just so incredible,” I said. “Look at them out there.”
Open carts piled with root vegetables or stacked with crates of squawking chickens took up half the street. A myriad of dialects twined into the air beneath a steady plink, plunk that bounced off the carriage roof.
Is that rain?
Sticking my head out, I peered up. Then jerked back just in time, as a piece of cloth came unmoored from the vast spider web of laundry lines strung between buildings and plopped wetly onto the road.
Before I could blink, two old women began scrabbling and shoving over the sad scrap.
We’d traveled only a few more blocks, when a cry came. “Hold!”
Mac, Phoebe, and I jolted as the carriage shuddered to a stop. Out the window, buildings crowded in. A worn-looking mother sat on a nearby stoop, nursing a fretful baby.
From the door behind her, a girl with the big teeth, braids, and gawky build of preadolescence emerged and dashed down the steps. She stooped to kiss the woman’s cheek and tickle the baby under its chin. She straightened as a large group of kids trekked down the street toward them.
“Witaj, Anika.” One of the older girls hurried forward, speaking in the consonant-heavy accent of Poland. “Are you ready? We must not be late, or Mister Johansen will dock us.”
As the girl, Anika, went to meet her friend, the older girl called up to Anika’s mother, “Is the baby feeling better today, Pani Wadisavka?”
I examined the thin, pale faces. None looked older than twelve or so. The boys in baggy overalls, flat caps shoved down over protruding ears. The girls in braids, work boots, and faded calico. All trudged past without once looking up from the cracked sidewalk. The group was eerily hushed, with little of the jollity that normally surrounds school-age kids.
As Anika joined her friend, an older woman wearing a babushka bustled out the front door toting a tin, cloth-covered pail.
The grandmother hobbled down the steps to pass Anika the lunch bucket. She paused for a moment to straighten the girl’s collar and fuss with her braids. Anika murmured something in Polish, then reached up to quickly buss her grandmother on her withered cheek before darting off.
When they’d disappeared around the corner, the old woman’s rounded shoulders slumped. She limped back toward the stairs.
“Wonder how far they have to walk to get to school?” Phoebe asked.
“I don’t think they’re going to school.”
Mac nodded. “In this age, children like those have to work to help support their families,” he said. “Mostly in the factories or sewing mills. They start young. Often as young as five or six.”
My excitement dimmed once more at the image of the cheery-faced Anika trapped inside a dank space with dozens of others just like her, laboring over the foot pedals of a sewing machine.
“But that’s awful,” Phoebe said.
“Aye,” Mac said. “Life here is hard for new immigrants, though it’s likely better than what they left. ’Tis especially difficult for the young ones. But they have to eat. Their fathers make little to nothing and their mums are usually nursing all the new babes that keep coming. So it’s left to the older children to bring in extra.”
“That’s just . . .” Phoebe trailed off, shaking her head. “The poor, wee things.”
“What’s the holdup, Douglas?” Mac called to where Doug was perched beside the driver.
The carriage began to inch forward. Half a block down, Doug yelled out to Collum. The springs bounced as Collum hopped down off the rear brace and tugged the newsboy cap over his eyes.
“Dead horse in the road,” he called with a grimace. “Looks like it’s been there a while. Still tied to the ice wagon. They’re moving it now.”
Phoebe gagged and turned pale as skim milk when the scent wafted in. The pervasive odor of death reminded me of Roadkill Alley, the stretch of curving two-lane highway near our house where possums and raccoons—making a bid for freedom to one side or the other—littered the surface of the county road.
When I was seven years old, after witnessing an injured raccoon drag itself off the blacktop, I decided to start a Save the Hurt Animals club. Who knew how many of those poor creatures might need my help, I reasoned. I’d gather them all up, take them to the vet, and once they were healed they’d become my pets.
Half a mile and two mangled corpses later, I realized that when starting a club, it really helped if you had more than one member.
Gravel crunched behind me when Dad pulled up on the side of the road and emerged from the car, carrying a shovel and a garbage bag. When he knelt next to me on the grassy verge and wiped my wet cheeks with the back of his sleeve, the clean scent of washing detergent muffled the other, awful odors.
His smile was warm as the sun emerging from a cl
oudbank. “Got room for one more member?”
Later, after sending me off for a long bath, he’d made us each one of his famous grilled cheese sandwiches and gently explained how maybe it wasn’t the best idea for me to go scraping animal guts off the highway.
Wiping my nose with the handkerchief Moira always thoughtfully tucked into our sleeves, I wondered if Dad was standing in our kitchen right now, wearing one of those same goofy aprons.
Or . . . I guess it’s Dad and Stella’s kitchen now.
The thought stung. I tried to tuck it back, but the truth was that the dissolution of my parents’ marriage had left me shaky, as if the ground beneath my feet had suddenly turned to thin glass.
If the obstacles between my mom and dad were insurmountable, what kind of chance did Bran and I have with all that stood in our way?
The carriage rocked as Doug hopped down to help Collum and several other men unhook the dead bony horse from its flat, hay-covered wagon. With grunts and a squeak of ropes, the road cleared enough for us to pull forward.
Blocks of ice melted in the warming air as we creaked past. Water flowed down the street in rivulets as the men heaved the animal’s corpse up onto the sidewalk. The boys reboarded, and with a snap of our driver’s whip, the carriage jolted forward. I turned away and swiped at my eyes, determined to look only forward. To survive whatever lay ahead and stop mourning for those things that were behind me now.
Chapter 18
A FEW BLOCKS LATER WE EMERGED ONTO THE WIDE, flat surface of Fifth Avenue, and the nineteenth-century New York City of my imagination spread out before us.
My fists loosened as the street opened up and the sky once again appeared. Despite the cold, small, scattered parks sprouted with the first hints of spring. The air, though hazy with smoke and other forms of pollution, became breathable. As poverty gave way to affluence, the mud and rough cobbles morphed into a smooth, concrete-like roadway.
“That there is macadam,” Mac said proudly, pointing out the window to the flat surface. “Invented by a Scotsman, you know.”
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