by Naomi Finley
Copyright @ 2019 Huntson Press Inc.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
ISBN: 978-1-989165-09-6
Cover designer: Victoria Cooper Art
Website: www.facebook.com/VictoriaCooperArt
Editor: Scripta Word Services
Website: scripta-word-services.com
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Other Books
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Epilogue
Coming Soon
About the Author
A Slave of the Shadows: Book One
A Guardian of Slaves: Book Two
NOVELLA SERIES
The Black Knight’s Tune: Ruby’s Story
The Master of Ships: Charles’s Story (coming May 2019)
New York, 1853
I DREAMED OF HIM…THE black knight and the keeper of the tune.
Since Willow Hendricks walked into the restaurant two years ago, the recurring dream had plagued me…
In the darkness of the belly of a ship, a child sits with her knees drawn snuggly to her chest, her face buried in the fabric of her white nightgown. Soft sobs rack her young body.
“Don’t weep, little one; I’m here.” His voice strums like music notes. The touch of his gentle fingers on her arm—my arm—sends a shudder through me.
I dab my tears with the lace cuff of my nightgown. “I’m scared!” I say, my voice resembling that of a small child.
“Everything be all right.” He caresses my cheek with his knuckles and begins to sing the same nostalgic tune.
I sniffle, grasping for the comfort his presence often brings. I rub my eyes with the backs of my hands to part the mist clouding his features.
Then a portal in the floor above opens and I lift an arm to shield my eyes from the blinding light enveloping us. I squint up at the swirling layers of green taffeta in the woman’s gown as she floats toward us. Her long chestnut tresses whip around her like ropes. It’s her, the regal woman with the mysterious green eyes. I watch, spellbound.
She reaches out her slender hand and curls her finger, summoning the black knight. Her smile is alluring and pure as she looks at him.
He glances back at me, his face drawn and weary. Does she haunt him as she does me? He stretches out his dark hand and her ivory fingers lace through his. Together they ascend like angels and the heavens scoop them up.
Again, the ship’s cargo hold goes dark. Cold. Frightening.
“A handkerchief for the lady?” A wee voice shattered my recollection of the dream.
I looked down into the pleading dark eyes of a little girl, only four or five years of age. They were sunk like two black pebbles in her gaunt face. The sting of the cold January morning reddened the fingers holding out the beige cloth. I smiled and bent to be on eye level with her. Removing my glove, I slid my fingers into the hidden pocket in the folds of my russet calico gown. My fingers touched the chilled blade concealed along with the few coins I brought for the child beggars, who often approached me when I visited the Five Points. One could never be too careful when venturing into a place like the slums in lower Manhattan.
I placed the coin in her dirty upturned palm. “You keep the handkerchief for your next customer.”
Instinctively, her fingers curled tightly around the coin, concealing it from prying eyes. “Thank you, miss.” She grinned and darted off, as quickly as she’d appeared.
Replacing my glove, I adjusted the basket on the crook of my arm and continued. I turned down Orange Street toward Mary Kelly’s tenement. The Irish lady had come to America after the potato famine in the ’40s with her husband. His involvement in the riot at the Aster Place in ’49 left her a widow with half a dozen children ranging from five years to eleven.
On the corner of Cross and Orange Streets, the sweet voices of the trios of child musicians filtered through the traffic and murmurs of morning activity. Children of all ages roamed the streets to earn whatever coin they could to help feed their families, a sight all too familiar in the Points.
A hansom cab passed me. Inside the carriage the black curtains were pulled back, and a small girl dressed in the finest fashions pressed her nose against the window. She and her gentrified family were one group of the many tourists who increasingly visited the slums. Instead of aiding the people and helping them to apply change to better themselves, people from far and wide thrived on the corruption and destruction and other unfathomable ordeals that took place. Newspapers glorified the area, and people reveled in the stories. The hardworking Irish, freed slaves, Italians, and other immigrants living in the slums became invisible to onlookers.
Misery, sickness, and disease paved the alleyways and streets, and despite the countless times I’d walked them, I’d never allowed myself to become complacent to the pain and suffering.
I turned into a narrow alley, my boots crunching on the snow-covered ground. My heart sped up with the usual fear I felt when I left the main streets. On several occasions, I’d witnessed what happened in the shadowed alleyways in the Points.
On the back stoop of a bordello, a drunken white man lay facedown in a frozen puddle of his vomit. Beside him, a man of color sat with his back against the brothel wall and his legs sprawled out before him, a jug of whiskey teetering on his lap. He turned his head at the sound of my approach. His eyes looked through me as he raised the jug in greeting. “Morning,” he said with an intoxicated grin. The jug appeared too heavy for him as he attempted to toss back another drink; it bypassed his lips altogether and he dropped the jug back into his lap.
Pulling my gray woolen coat snuggly around me, I clutched the basket on my arm and hurried past. The frigid wind rustled my dress and crept beneath the layers of fabric to bite at the flesh through my wool stockings.
The two-story tenement at the end of the alley housed hundreds of tenants, but was suitable for scarcely that amount. I pushed on the heavy planked door dangling from the doorjamb on its one hinge and climbed the dark stairway to the third floor, testing my footing on each step to make sure it wouldn’t give way and plunge me to the main level.
“That you, Ruby?” Mary called out when I rapped on her door minutes later.
“Yes.”
I heard the troubling cough of her seven-year-old daughter through the thin walls. The girl had come down with a temperature four days ago. I’d been by to check on her and brought broth for the girl and dried provisions for the family.
Mary was a seamstress who sewed shirts for men at a base wage. Due to her daughter’s illness she’
d fallen behind on her quota, which meant the family would not have the money to make rent. The gnawing pain of hunger was no stranger to them.
My parents and I didn’t move in prestigious circles, but to them, life hadn’t been about climbing an invisible ladder to be accepted by the aristocracy of New York. They taught me to appreciate and give to the ones in need—with the belief that one never knows when their fortune in life could change. My family had never gone without the necessities of life, but with my parents’ dedication to the abolitionist movement we’d never acquired wealth, and I continued to be grateful for the simple life we led.
“Well…are you coming?” Mary stood staring at me from the open doorway. Tiny red ribbons traced across her eyes from lack of sleep and shed tears. Her light brown hair hung in a long braid over her reedy shoulder. She pulled her knitted shawl tighter over her patched and threadbare blue dress as the wind seeped in from the broken window in the dim hallway.
Another fit of coughs came from within.
“She isn’t any better than she was yesterday?” I entered the one-room apartment and regarded the small figure lying under a flimsy gray blanket. The room’s small window, like the window in the hall, was broken and Mary’s oldest child, a son, had boarded it up with wood to keep out the cold.
“Fever won’t break.” Worry hauled at her voice. She closed the door before coming to stand beside me, scratching mindlessly at the rash that’d recently spread up her arms.
“You mustn’t dig, or you will get an infection.” I set my basket on the makeshift table made of an old door and two crates that stood against the wall to my left and removed my velvet bonnet. Lifting the cloth covering the basket, I removed the jar of my mother’s broth, a recipe I’d sipped on many sick days in my life. At the hearthstone, I removed the iron pot hanging on a hook fixed to the wooden plank wall and filled it with some broth. The fire had died; only a few red coals remained.
“We must get this fire going.” I set the pot in the coals, hoping to at least take the chill off the liquid.
“My boy’s out scavenging for bits of wood. If the sickness doesn’t take her, the cold will.” Mary moved to the bottom berth of the three-high bunk beds. “If my fool man hadn’t gone and gotten himself killed, I wouldn’t be left to be the sole moneymaker, and I’d be able to care for Colleen properly.” She lifted the limp hand of the frail girl sunken into the straw-tick mattress. She resembled a child half her age.
Gathering my basket, I joined her and lowered myself down onto the edge of the bed. Removing a jar of water and a clean cloth, I dampened the fabric and glided it over the child’s forehead and the hot flesh of her face and throat. “What did the doctor Mr. Reed sent by say?”
“He suggested bloodletting her to drain the pneumonia from her body. And I sent him on his way soon after,” she said firmly, pressing her lips together. “I wasn’t about to let him practice his barbaric ways on my girl.” She pressed her daughter’s fingers to her lips, worry creasing her pale face. Her own fingers were marred and pricked from her needlework, and deep cracks riddled her knuckles.
After her son returned with a few pieces of wood he’d conjured up, the chill in the room soon subsided.
I filled a wooden bowl with broth and brought it to Mary, who sat with her daughter’s head cradled to her breast. “Bless you.” She reached for the bowl.
“I need to get going. Mr. Reed will be expecting me at the office.”
“Tell the man I thank him for his generosity.”
“I will. Stay strong. The children need you.”
Her lips quivered, and she beseeched me with hollow eyes. “Please come back.”
“I will.” I walked to the makeshift table. “My mother sent some wool socks for you and the children, among other things.” From inside the basket I took out the socks, a bottle of preserved peaches, a loaf of bread, some salted pork and apples, and ointment for her rash.
Tears tattered her voice. “I can’t thank you enough for what you’ve done for us.”
Replacing my bonnet, I smiled at her. “Thank me by taking care of yourself as well.”
Succumbing to a flood of tears, she bobbed her head up and down in agreement.
Outside in the alley, I made my way to the front street. Each time I walked the streets, I recalled the short time I’d lived in the Five Points with the Irish boy, Will. Together as children, we’d hidden among the cargo of the ship on our journey to New York. Time had blurred my memories, but the vividness of his ginger hair and the safety I’d felt when he’d been around remained.
The day the men had tried to apprehend us in our shelter, he’d fought them and told me to run. And run I had. Leaving him to fend for himself and filling me with a lifetime of guilt. For years I searched each red-haired boy for the face of my friend, and every time a little piece of me died.
I had received my one miracle in life, and that was the day I ran into Amy Stewart, my adoptive mother, in the market, days before a cholera outbreak ripped through the Five Points and New York.
A RIPPLING OF WARMTH GREETED me when I opened the door to the Manhattan Observer office and stepped inside. A gust of wintry air swept across the room, fluttering papers on desks and causing a shiver to surge through the staff. For a brief few seconds, the chatter in the main office paused as workers glanced up from their work at my arrival. I swiftly closed the door, and the buzzing of worker bees occupied the room once more.
“Ahh, Ruby, good morning,” Kipling said, handing a young boy and his little sister a bundle of that day’s newspaper. The children—news hawkers—belonged to Mrs. Kelly; after my pleading with Kipling, he’d given them the job.
I waved a greeting and hung my coat and bonnet on the peg by the window that ran the length of one wall.
Kipling had gone back to giving the children instructions. From my position at the door, I studied the way he gently gripped the russet-haired boy’s puny shoulder as he spoke, and the encouraging smile planted on his mouth. The boy’s twig-like, dark-haired sister peered up at Kipling with large innocent eyes.
The Manhattan Observer was a penny newspaper with a strong focus on its motto: Freedom for All. The pricing of the paper ensured that Kipling’s readers were middle- and working-class. Now employing thirty, in the beginning the staff had consisted of Kipling and me. He’d hired me for a wage equivalent to that of a man. His willingness to consider me a man’s equal—in smarts alone—had opened my eyes to the quality of the man I called my boss and eventually my friend.
“How’s the girl today?” Kipling asked as I joined him and the children, whom he gave a gentle nudge toward the front door.
They hurried their steps and exited the building. I watched them through the large front window—stamped with the name of the newspaper in bright yellow script—until they disappeared into the crowd of New Yorkers hustling up and down the forever humming streets.
“She’s the same. Fever hasn’t broken.” I strode to my desk and sat down.
Saul, the editor in chief, exited his office with a stack of newsprint in hand. His warm amber eyes brushed over my face as he held out the papers. “Run your sharp eyes over these,” he said, his voice deep, rich, and most pleasing to the ear. When he spoke, I often imagined him as a singer in a grand opera house, selling out seats night after night—if such a thing was permitted for a person of color.
He made it no secret that he fancied me, and I’d done my best to avoid encouraging his feelings. He’d proven himself to be intelligent beyond any white man I’d ever known. My parents had tried to persuade me, to no avail, to at least consider him as a husband. A husband and a family had been something I’d dreamed of since I was a little girl. At my age, most women were married. Though I didn’t know my actual age, nor my birthdate, my parents guessed me to be five or so when they found me. And we’d celebrated the day I collided with my mother at the market as my official birthdate, which would make me twenty-five years old, or so.
“By the end of tomorrow,
I’ll have them back to you,” I said, my skin heating under the tender gaze he bestowed on me.
“Good. They’re for Friday’s edition.” He smiled and returned to his office.
“Saul would be a fine husband.” Kipling perched on the corner of my desk, his mischievous dark eyes on mine.
My brow narrowed with an intentional warning. I glanced around for eavesdroppers before busying my hands with flipping through the papers. “Don’t you pry into my affairs,” I whispered. “You know I keep work professional, and Saul is a work colleague.”
“There’s no harm in falling in love with someone you work with.” Kipling clasped his hand over his wrist and rested it on his thigh.
Isn’t there? Annoyance surged in me, entirely aimed at yours truly. If I’d reined in the romanticized thoughts I’d allowed to flourish for Kipling Reed from the day he interviewed me for the position as his assistant, I wouldn’t be distracted by something that could never be between us.
“You’re one to speak on love. I’ve yet to see you court a woman.” I pulled back my chair to put an extra few inches between us.
His lips parted in an easy smile. “I’m waiting for the right one.”
The one you can’t have.
The beautiful Willow Hendricks was a worthy candidate for the love of an honorable man like him. He was a gentleman who put the needs of others first and fought for the rights of the Negroes, poor, and immigrants alike. He possessed all the laudable traits I’d consider in a husband. A deliberation I’d had with my parents, and they’d promptly reminded me that Saul, too, possessed such remarkable characteristics.
Too many times, my mind had carried me away into a fantasy world of what it’d be like to be loved by Kipling. The endless hours we’d spent on the streets and in coffee houses gathering stories had only nourished the feelings of affection I held for him. We’d come back to the press and stay until darkness fell. Admittedly, it was improper for a woman to spend so much time alone with a gentleman.