“I had the carriage drop me off a few streets over,” Molly said, quickly lying. “I wasn’t sure my aunt would approve.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re here.” Ginny looked unexpectedly shy. “Wasn’t sure you’d come.”
“It’s hard to believe this is the same place,” Molly said. With Ursula’s carriage gone, the street was eerily quiet.
“Ah, wait until tomorrow. Sundays, they take a break to pray for forgiveness, but come Monday, you won’t be able to drive the sinners away with a pitchfork.” Ginny grinned. “Now get in here out of the cold! Tonight it’s just us devils, and we’ve got all of hell to ourselves.”
* * *
Inside, the cabaret was quiet, curtains pulled over windows so that only a pale, musty light leaked through.
Seeing the place empty was like looking like at an aged beauty without her makeup. Whereas before the carousel had seemed grand beyond imagining, now Molly noted chips in the animals’ paint. The glorious tiger was missing a paw, and the poor elephant had only one tusk. The surrounding mirrors were cracked and smudged with wear and dirt.
“It’s a bit glum without the crowds, but I like it just the same. Feels like me own place.”
“Do you own it?”
Ginny looked wistful. “One of these days, maybe. But the girls and I split the rent for upstairs ten ways, and ain’t nobody allowed up there without our permission.”
“That’s something.”
“Aye. Every woman needs a room of her own. That’s what the Duchess says, and I think it’s true.”
Molly wondered who the Duchess was. She remembered her aunt saying much the same thing and thought of the key Ava wore constantly around her neck so that no one might enter her bedroom without permission. Molly had still never been inside.
Ginny pulled her toward a small, crooked platform that could only be the stage. Now it looked like a child’s building block, forgotten on the floor.
“It seemed so much bigger before,” Molly said, marveling.
“It’s the lights. The crowd too. They work a sort of glamour on it, I think.” She elbowed Molly. “Speaking of, you was in rare form. The customers couldn’t stop talking after you left. Mistress Molly!”
She blushed. “I think I prefer just Molly.”
“Ah, we’ll see.” Ginny led her past the stage to the door beyond and up a worn staircase.
The ceilings were so short that Molly had to duck to keep from hitting her head. Leaks from the melting snow dripped onto the hall floor into carefully placed tins. But rather than feeling sad and cramped, the upstairs space was somehow cheerful. Each of the hallway’s dozen doors was painted a bright Easter egg color, no two the same.
“Every girl does her own,” Ginny said proudly. “Makes it easier for the customers to find us.”
On down the line they went, stopping at a pretty lavender door, second to the last, with a gold lion’s-head knocker on its outside. “This one’s mine,” Ginny said. “I’ve invited a few of the girls over to meet you.”
The door swung open.
“Happy birthday!” The yells so startled her that Molly took a step back into the hall.
Ginny grinned. “Surprised?”
“How did you know?” She had hardly bothered to remember the date herself. Had not wanted to remember. Kitty had been the only one to make a big deal of the day, finding her a present each fourth of March, no matter how grim their surroundings at the orphanage. One year she’d made Molly a necklace out of bird feathers, and last March she’d even managed a pie, the molasses and other ingredients carefully stolen from the houses where she worked.
“Heard you say it to the fortune-teller,” Ginny said. “Birthdays are big deals around here, and this lot will use any occasion to throw a party.” Smiling, she pushed Molly gently inside.
The room was laced with tobacco smoke, and gleeful voices chirped their welcome as she entered. Five figures sat around a long table, pipes clamped between their teeth and dresses hiked up high so that they could perch comfortably in the mismatched chairs.
“Is this her?” A large woman in a red petticoat rose, squinting at Molly. “Don’t look like much. Thought you said she was fierce.”
“She is!” Ginny said. “Molly Green robs graves for a living.”
The red-petticoated woman frowned. “No, she don’t.”
“Her aunt’s the Corpse Queen.”
The large woman studied Molly with disbelief. “I seen the Corpse Queen myself. She’s a real lady, she is. We ain’t supposed to know what she does, but people like to talk.”
“You know my aunt?” Molly said, taken aback.
“Just to look at.” The woman looked embarrassed. “Serves us at the soup kitchen now and again. Saw her today. Sundays they give ‘wayward women’ a meal if we listen to ’em spout a few Bible verses.” She revealed a toothy grin. “It’s good soup! And they got a free clinic next door, where I can get camphor for my gout.”
“We only go sometimes.” Ginny sounded embarrassed. “It’s easier to get a warm meal from somebody else now and again. And your aunt’s been very kind. What with girls like us disappearing and being killed, she said it’s not safe to be on the streets.”
The large woman scoffed. “I’d like to see the Knifeman come for me,” she said, falling back into her seat and banging a booted heel onto the table. “I’d give him a good kick in his britches first.”
But Molly noticed an edge of fear in her bravado.
A young woman with hair so black it looked blue raised her head. “There are those who enjoy violence.” She pulled up a sleeve of her silk robe and turned over her arm. Puckered skin climbed the flesh in an ugly burn, tracing the ulnar artery. “Some men can’t finish their business without a bit of hurting. Might be one of them took his bedroom play onto the streets.”
“One of my regulars, Billy, is a policeman,” Ginny said. “He told me whoever’s leaving bodies laid ’em out like he wanted ’em to be seen. Six girls so far, bloody as a butcher’s cutting board, and all of them with parts missing. Billy thinks there’s bound to be more.”
Molly’s mind raced to Kitty and the perfectly neat slash where her tail used to be. Her friend hadn’t been so grotesquely maimed as Ginny described, but someone had certainly stolen a piece of her. Molly’s mouth grew dry. “Do they have any suspects?”
Ginny shook her head. “Nah. But I’m making my girls be extra careful. They’re like family to me. Nobody takes a client outside the Red Carousel alone. One of them bodies they found was a girl who worked just two blocks over.”
The woman with the scar lit her pipe. “It ain’t the Knifeman we need to worry about. Women go missing all the time, and the police don’t say boo. They won’t even come to the neighborhood where I grew up, and if they do, you can bet it isn’t to help.”
“Where’s the goddamned dinner?” A girl who looked no older than twelve stood, arms akimbo, thin face raised. “I been waiting half the day for it, and I ain’t planning on waiting any longer, Knifeman be damned.”
“Hold your tongue, Kate,” Ginny said, but she was smiling. “We’ve got a guest.”
Kate glared at Molly. “What’s your specialty?” she demanded.
“Specialty?”
“Ginny said you had a whip or somethin’? You was gonna come work for us maybe.”
“Kate!” Ginny glared. “Hush your mouth.”
“Well, you did.” Kate’s small mouth turned into a snarl. “She did!” This last was addressed to Molly.
“Let’s all introduce ourselves,” Ginny said quickly. “Then I’ll feed the lot of ya. Molly, this foulmouthed spawn is Kate. Don’t let her fool you, though. She’s all sweetness and light underneath the filth.”
Kate stuck out her tongue.
“That’s Gertrude.” Ginny nodded toward the woman in the red petticoat. Gert
rude was so large that instead of a regular chair she sat in a love seat, her glorious girth spilling out in waves around her.
“Hiya, love.” She waggled her prettily polished fingers.
“That’s Sugar.” Ginny motioned to a girl with pre-maturely white hair, who nodded hello. “And Spice.” The woman with the scar. “And this last one”—Ginny pointed to a hulking figure by the fireplace, who was busily scooping something into bowls—“is Hans.”
Molly recognized the muscleman instantly. He’d been wearing a dress before, but today he had on pants and a shirt. Both his ears were pierced, and she could swear he was also wearing lipstick.
“Any friend of Ginny’s is one of mine,” he said. His voice was deep and gentle, and he pulled a blushing Ginny into a hug. She stood on tiptoes to kiss his cheek.
“Now,” said Ginny. “That’s everybody, ’ceptin’ the Duchess.”
Everyone grew quiet as a small, reedlike voice floated through the air.
“You may approach.”
The woman—seated in a large velvet chair by the fire—must have been near to eighty and was nothing more than skin and bones. Molly had mistaken her for a pile of blankets upon entering. The Duchess’s tiny head wobbled, birdlike, on a thin neck, and her face was heavily rouged. She wore a long silk gown of the kind Molly had seen on some of the performers, bodice cut low and pulled tight across her deflated breasts. A single ostrich feather poked gaily from a colorful red wig on her head. She might have passed for addled nobility if not for the hair sprouting from her chin. Whereas the wig’s fiery glow marked it as immediately false, this hair was a pure snowy white. The beard—for it could be called nothing less—was full and magnificent.
“Hello.” Molly curtsied. There seemed to be no other way to greet such an imposing creature.
“Go closer,” Ginny whispered in her ear. “She’s grown a little deaf.”
The Duchess lifted an arm from beneath the large moth-eaten fur thrown across her lap for warmth. Her face lit into a smile as she motioned Molly forward.
“Give me your hand,” the Duchess said.
Molly gave her the unscarred one, wondering at the request. The old woman’s skin was as soft as curling paper. A warmth flooded through Molly, the kind of buttery feeling she used to get as a girl on the first barefoot day of summer, running across the sun-soaked grass. Unlike the fortune-teller who’d amused Molly by guessing her loves, there was a sincerity to the Duchess.
“It’s just as I suspected,” she said after several seconds of holding Molly’s palm with her eyes closed. “You’re meant for the theater! I see great lights shining down on you.”
“I’m afraid not.” Molly gently removed her hand. “I want to be a doctor.”
The girls at the table threw back their heads in raucous laughter.
“You didn’t say she were crazy.” Gertrude slapped her ham-hock palm on the table with glee. “A doctor! And I’m the Queen of England.”
Molly’s face reddened. “It’s not so ridiculous.”
Ginny frowned. “I suppose we could get you some sort of medical costume. A doctor’s bag or something. But, really, I think you’d have better luck going with something a little more titillating.”
“Put her to work upstairs!” Kate catcalled.
Molly frowned. “It’s not a joke. I’m going to be a surgeon. A real one.”
But Ginny had already turned away and was busy pulling something from a trunk. She thrust it triumphantly at Molly. “Try this on.”
Molly took hold of what looked, at first, like a skirt. The fabric was a beautiful olive-green velvet. But when Ginny held it up, Molly saw it was not a skirt after all but a pair of flowing pants.
“Told you I’d make something that suited you.” Ginny said proudly. “Far better than that horror you’ve got on. Fellows won’t be able to get enough of you in this.”
Carefully, Molly slipped the pants on underneath her dress and petticoats. Then, encouraged by cheers, she pulled LaValle’s hideous dress off entirely so that she was left in only her white chemise. After tucking the undershirt’s ends into her new pants, she spun around, marveling. She’d never worn anything so comfortable. The pants flared out around her hips when she spun. They were looser at her waist and tighter at her ankles and moved perfectly with each step she took. Best of all were the deep pockets in their sides.
“Can fit a whole whip in there,” Ginny said with a wink.
“Thank you,” Molly said. “They’re amazing. Truly. But the other night was a mistake.”
“Nonsense.” Ginny took Molly’s hand and spun her around. “Didn’t the Duchess just say you were meant to be on the stage?”
The Duchess nodded happily in her corner. “I did. I did say that, and I ain’t never been wrong about one of my girls, have—”
Her words were cut off with a great hacking cough, and instantly the room stilled.
The Duchess pulled out a stained handkerchief and spit out a wad of blood. Kate started forward, concern on her face, but the Duchess shot her a freezing stare.
“I said, I ain’t never been wrong, have I?”
“No,” said Ginny, and with a warning look at the others, she plastered a large false smile on her face. “See, you’ve no choice, Mistress Molly. You have to join us!”
The rest of the girls laughed, hooting their enjoyment at Molly’s clear discomfort. “Mistress Molly! Whipmaster Molly!”
But it was the Duchess’s voice that cut through the merriment, thin and clear in its surety, all trace of the coughing fit gone.
“For God’s sake, everyone. The girl wants to be a doctor. Don’t give her a whip. Give her a knife!”
* * *
The rest of the dinner passed in a pleasant blur. The more glasses of wine Ginny filled for her, the freer Molly felt, until finally she let Hans lead her in a demonstration of throwing kitchen knives at the wall.
“We used to do it on the ship when there was nothing better to do,” he said, aiming a knife with deadly accuracy straight into the center of a flowered napkin. “Even the monkey learned it.” But when Molly tried, hers missed the mark entirely and landed with a dull thud on the floor.
“We’ll wait on the live targets.” Ginny laughed. “Besides, there’s always the private performances, and you don’t need no skill for those.”
“Speak for yourself!” Kate jumped on the table. With the ease of a toddler playing pat-a-cake, she bent herself completely backward, yanked up her dress, and stuck her head through her legs.
“Jaysus!” Gertrude yelled. “Hurts just watchin’, don’t it?”
Not to be outdone, Ginny climbed onto the table beside Kate. In a single glorious motion, she pulled down her gown, revealing a perfect Rubenesque torso.
Her skin, all that had been hidden by fabric—breasts, stomach, and ribs—was covered in a giant, magnificent tattoo, the picture of a snake wound around a red apple. Alive with light and color, the snake writhed across her stomach as Ginny sucked the scales in and out, wiggling, to make it dance. Molly gasped. She knew some men had tattoos, but she’d never heard of any on a woman, and certainly not one like Ginny’s. The other girls clapped in delight.
“Ah, I should charge you all for the pleasure.” Ginny grinned. “Twenty cents a head!”
Molly raised her hands to her mouth, then cheered along with the rest of them.
The bacchanalian night came to a close when Ginny produced a giant cherry cake, its top dressed with sparklers. “Happy birthday, Molly!”
She pulled it proudly from its hiding place in a cupboard and blushed as the other girls oohed and aahed. Rather than plate it, they ate it like wolves, digging spoons, forks, and hands into the mess. Only Ginny refrained.
“I ain’t as good with baking as I am with sewing, but I like making the sweets,” she said. “Don’t like eating them, though.”
Kate threw a dollop of frosting at Ginny’s head, grinning. “Nah, more spice, ain’t ya?”
Ginny threw it back, and then there was nothing to stop the mad food fight that ensued.
Gertrude pinned Molly beneath her and refused to let her up until she demonstrated her skills with a whip. “You’re as big of a freak as us now,” she crowed when Molly obliged. “A girl doctor in pants, who likes the leather!”
Hours later, exhausted and happy, Molly made her way home in the carriage Ginny insisted on calling.
Creeping carefully into the unlit house, she heaved herself upstairs and into bed, wiping away all traces of the party in her washbasin and carefully removing Ginny’s exquisite birthday gift in favor of her nightgown. It was, without a doubt, the best birthday she’d ever had.
But once in bed, her cheer quickly faded.
Kitty had crawled in beside her. Kitty, who refused, even in death, to miss her best friend’s birthday, her cold, fish-belly skin pressed against Molly’s body.
Come with me, Molly. Please.
Cursing, Molly pushed back the covers.
Tomorrow was to be another day at the lecture hall. She could not afford to be distracted. Lighting a candle, she pulled out her anatomy book and began to read.
29
The facts swam before her tired eyes.
A tonsil guillotine should be used in removing a tumor from the throat.
A peritoneal tap will drain large amounts of fluid from the abdomen.
An inguinal hernia can be repaired by suturing the walls of the hernial sac after the reduction of the viscera.
Algor mortis, rigor mortis, livor mortis. She knew the stages of decomposition more intricately than her own heart. But facts would not lift a knife. Her skills were getting better, but she needed much more practice to become good enough that Dr. LaValle and the others would not question her place in the classroom.
The Corpse Queen Page 21