One by one, as their pockets emptied, the customers staggered out into the cold, until there was only one man left, the snoring seaman at the corner table.
Fanny crossed to the door, barred it shut, and turned to look at Jack.
“How much did you give him?” he asked.
“Enough to drown a horse.”
The seaman gave a great rattling snore.
“He’s still plenty alive,” Jack said.
“Well, I can’t very well pour it down his throat.”
They stared down at the sleeping man, watching drool spill from his lips in a long, slimy strand. Above the frayed coat collar, his neck was grimy with coal dust. A fat louse, swollen with blood, crawled through a tangled net of blond hair.
Jack gave the shoulder a nudge; the man snored on, unaware.
Fanny snorted. “You can’t expect them all to keel over nice and easy.”
“He’s a young one. Healthy looking.” Too healthy.
“I just poured him a fortune’s worth of free liquor. I’ll never get it back.”
Jack gave a harder shove. Slowly, the man tumbled out of the chair and thumped onto the floor. Jack stared at him for a moment, then bent down and rolled him onto his back. Damn it all. He was still breathing.
“I want my rum money out of this,” insisted Fanny.
“Then you do it.”
“I’m not strong enough.”
Jack looked at her arms, thick and muscular from hefting trays and barrels. Oh, she was strong enough to strangle a man, all right. She just didn’t want the responsibility.
“Go ahead, then,” she insisted.
“I can’t leave any marks on his neck. It’ll raise questions.”
“All they want’s a body. They don’t care where it comes from.”
“But a man who’s obviously been murdered—”
“Coward.”
“I’m just telling you, it has to look natural.”
“Then we’ll make it look natural.” Fanny stared down at the man for a moment, her eyes narrowed. Oh, you never wanted a woman like Fanny to look at you that way. Jack wasn’t afraid of many things, but he knew Fanny well enough to know that when she set her mind against you, you were doomed. “Wait here,” she said.
As if he was going anywhere.
He listened to her footsteps thumping up the stairs to their bedroom. A moment later she returned, carrying a threadbare cushion and a filthy rag. He understood at once what she had in mind, but even when she handed him the benign-looking instruments of death, he didn’t move. He had dug up corpses with flesh falling off their bones. He had fished them out of the river, pried them out of coffins, shoved them into pickling barrels. But actually making a corpse was always a different matter. A hanging matter.
Still. Twenty dollars was twenty dollars, and who would miss this man?
He lowered himself onto creaking knees beside the drunken seaman and balled up the rag. The jaw had fallen slack, the tongue lolling to one side. He shoved the rag into the gaping mouth, and the man jerked his head and sucked in through his nostrils a whimpering breath. Jack lowered the cushion and pressed it over the mouth and nose. All at once the man came awake and clawed at the pillow, trying to tear it away, to breathe.
“Hold his arms! Hold his arms!” yelled Jack.
“I’m trying, damn it!”
The man bucked and twisted, boots pounding against the floor.
“I’m losing my grip! He won’t lie still!”
“Then sit on him.”
“You sit on him!”
Fanny pulled up her skirts and planted her hefty bottom on the squirming man’s hips. As he bucked and twisted, she rode him like a whore, her face red and sweating.
“He’s still fighting,” said Jack.
“Don’t let up the pillow. Press harder!”
Sheer terror had given the victim supernatural strength, and he clawed at Jack’s arms, leaving bloody tracks with his nails. How long did it take a man to die, for pity’s sake? Why couldn’t he just surrender and save them all the trouble? A fingernail scraped across Jack’s hand. With a roar of pain, Jack pressed down with all his weight, yet still the man fought him. Damn you, die!
Jack scrambled on top of the chest and sat on the ribs. Now they were both riding him, Fanny and Jack, she planted on his hips, Jack on his chest. Both of them were heavy, and their combined weight at last immobilized him. Only his feet were moving now, the heels of his boots battering the floor in a panicked tattoo. He was still clawing at Jack, but more feebly as the strength drained from his arms. Now the feet slowed their tempo, the boots flopping against the floor. Jack felt the chest give one last shudder beneath him, and then the arms went slack and slid away.
It was another moment before Jack dared to lift the pillow. He stared down at the mottled face, the skin imprinted by the pressure of coarse fabric. He pulled the rag, now soaked with saliva, from the man’s mouth and tossed it aside. It landed with a wet thump.
“Well, that’s done,” said Fanny. She rose, panting, her hair in disarray.
“We need to strip him.”
They worked together, peeling away the coat and shirt, the boots and trousers, all of it too worn and filthy to keep. No sense running the risk of being caught with a dead man’s possessions. Still, Fanny searched the pockets and gave a grunt of outrage when she came up with a handful of coins.
“Look! He had money after all! Took all my free drinks and didn’t say a word!” She turned and flung the man’s clothes into the fireplace. “If he wasn’t already dead, I’d—”
There was a knock on the door, and they both froze. Looked at each other.
“Don’t answer it,” whispered Jack.
Another knock, louder and more insistent. “I want a drink!” a slurred voice called out. “Open up!”
Fanny yelled through the door: “We’re closed for the night!”
“How can you be closed?”
“I’m tellin’ you we are. Go someplace else!”
They heard the man give the door one last angry thump of his fist, and then his curses faded away as he headed up the street, no doubt toward the Mermaid.
“Let’s get ’im in the wagon,” said Jack. He grabbed the naked man under the arms, startled by the unfamiliar heat of a newly dead corpse. The cold night would remedy that quick enough. Already, the lice were abandoning their host, swarming from the scalp and weaving their way through tangled hair. As he and Fanny hauled the body through the back room, Jack saw ravenous black dots leaping onto his arms, and he resisted the impulse to drop the corpse right then and there and slap away the insects.
Outside, in the stable yard, they swung the body into the dray and left it there, uncovered in the cold, as Jack harnessed the horse. Wouldn’t do to deliver too warm a corpse. Though it probably wouldn’t make a difference, as Dr. Sewall had never been one to ask questions.
Nor did he ask them this time. After Jack dropped the body onto Sewall’s table, he stood by nervously as the anatomist peeled back the tarp. For a moment Sewall said nothing, though he must have registered the extraordinary freshness of this specimen. Holding a lamp close, he inspected the skin, tested the joints, peered into the mouth. No bruises, Jack thought. No wounds. Just some poor unfortunate sot he’d found collapsed dead on the street. That was the story. Then he noticed, with a flash of alarm, the louse crawling across the chest. Lice did not cling long to the dead, yet this body was still infested with them. Does he see it? Does he know?
Dr. Sewall set down the lamp and left the room. It seemed to Jack that he was gone a long time—far too long. Then Sewall returned, holding a bag of coins.
“Thirty dollars,” he said. “Can you bring me more like this?”
Thirty? This was better than Jack had expected. He took the bag with a smile.
“As many as you can find,” said Sewall. “I’ve got buyers.”
“Then I’ll find more.”
“What happened to your hands?” Sewall was l
ooking at the angry claw marks the dead man had left on Jack’s flesh. At once Jack pulled his hands back, into the folds of his coat. “Drowned a cat. He didn’t much appreciate it.”
The bag of coins made a pleasant jingle in Jack’s pocket as he steered the now empty dray over the cobblestones. What was a few scratches on the hand when you could walk away with thirty dollars? It was more than any other specimen had brought him. Visions of sacks bulging with coins shimmered in his head all the way home. The only problem was the clientele of the Black Spar; there simply weren’t enough of them, and if he kept this up, there’d soon be none at all. It was that damn Fanny’s fault, driving them away with her foul temper and stingy drinks. That had to be remedied at once. They’d start by showing a bit more generosity. No more watering down the rum, and maybe a bit of free food.
No, the food was a bad idea. It would only take longer to get them drunk. Better just to let the rum flow. What he had to do now was convince Fanny, which was no easy feat. But wave this sack of coins in front of her greedy face, and she’d see the light.
He rounded the corner into the narrow alley that led to his stable yard gate. Suddenly he yanked on the reins, drawing the horse to a stop.
A black-caped figure stood before him, silhouetted against the ice-slick gleam of cobblestones.
Jack squinted to make out a face. The features were shadowed by the hood, and as the figure approached, all he could see was the pale gleam of teeth.
“You’ve been busy tonight, Mr. Burke.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“The fresher they are, the more they fetch.”
Jack felt the blood freeze in his veins. We were watched. He sat still, heart thumping, his hands clutching the reins. It only takes this one witness, and I’ll swing from the gallows.
“Your wife has let it be known that you seek easier ways to make a living.”
Fanny? What the hell had she gotten him into now? Jack could almost imagine he saw the creature smile, and he shuddered. “What do you want?”
“A small service, Mr. Burke. I want you to find someone.”
“Who?”
“A girl. Her name is Rose Connolly.”
Twenty
IN THE LODGING HOUSE on Fishery Alley, the nights were never silent.
A new lodger had joined them in that tightly packed room, an older woman recently widowed who could no longer afford her room on Summer Street, a private room with a real bed. Fishery Alley was where you landed when your luck crumbled beneath your feet, when your husband died or the factory closed or you were too old and ugly to turn a trick. This new lodger was doubly cursed, both widowed and sick as well, her body racked by wet coughs. Along with the consumptive man dying in the corner, theirs was a duet of coughs, accompanied by the nightly snores and sniffles and rustles. So many people were crammed together in the room that to empty your bladder meant tiptoeing across bodies to the pee bucket, and if by accident you trod on a stray arm or smashed someone’s finger beneath your foot, your reward would be a howl and an angry slap on the ankle. And the next night, there’d be no sleep for you, because your own fingers would likely pay the penalty.
Rose lay awake, listening to the crackling of straw beneath restless bodies. She badly needed to urinate, but she was cozy beneath her blanket, and did not want to leave it. She tried to sleep, hoping that perhaps the urge would go away, but Billy suddenly whimpered and his limbs jerked out, as though to catch himself as he fell. She allowed his nightmare to play out; to wake him now would only burn its imprint into his memory. Somewhere in the darkness, she heard whispers and then the rustle of clothes and muffled panting as two bodies rocked together. We’re no better than animals in a barnyard, she thought, reduced to scratching and farting and copulating in public. Even the new lodger, who had walked in with her head held high, was inexorably surrendering her pride, every day shedding another layer of dignity, until she, too, was peeing in the bucket like everyone else, hefting up her skirts in plain view to squat in the corner. Was she an image of Rose’s future? Cold and sick and sleeping on filthy straw? Oh, but Rose was still young and sturdy, with hands eager to work. She could not see herself in that old woman, coughing in the dark.
Yet already Rose was just like her, sleeping shoulder-to-shoulder with strangers.
Billy gave another whimper and rolled toward her, his breath hot and foul on her face. She turned away to escape it and bumped up against old Polly, who gave her an irritated kick. Rose rolled resignedly onto her back and tried to ignore her ever-fuller bladder. She thought hungrily of baby Meggie. Thank God you are not sleeping here in this filthy room, breathing in this foul air. I’ll see you grow up healthy, girl, even if my eyes go blind from threading needles, even if my fingers fall off from stitching day and night, sewing gowns for ladies who never need to worry about where their babies will get their milk. She thought of the gown she had completed yesterday, made of white gauze over an underslip of pale pink satin. By now it would have been delivered to the young lady who had ordered it. Miss Lydia Russell, the daughter of the distinguished Dr. Russell. Rose had worked feverishly to complete it on time, since she’d been told that Miss Lydia needed it for the medical college reception tomorrow night, at the home of the dean, Dr. Aldous Grenville. Billy had seen the house, and had described to Rose how grand it was. He’d heard that the butcher had delivered haunches of pork and a large basket of freshly slaughtered geese, and that all day tomorrow Dr. Grenville’s ovens would be roasting, baking. Rose imagined the reception table, with its platters of tender meats and cakes and succulent oysters. She imagined the laughter and the candlelight, the doctors in their fine topcoats. She imagined the ribbon-bedecked ladies taking their turns at the piano, each vying to display her skills to the young men assembled there. Would Miss Lydia Russell sit at the piano? Would the skirt that Rose had sewn for her drape nicely across the bench? Would it flatter its wearer’s figure and catch the eye of a certain favored gentleman?
Would Norris Marshall be there?
She felt a sudden twinge of jealousy that he might admire the young lady who wore the gown Rose had labored over. She remembered his visit to this lodging house, and how his face had registered dismay as he’d gazed at the louse-infested straw, at the dirty bundles of clothes. She knew that he was a man of only modest means, but he was beyond her reach. Even a farmer’s son, if he carried a medical bag, could one day be welcomed into the best parlors in Boston.
The only way Rose would ever set foot in those parlors was with a mop in her hand.
She was jealous of the lady who would one day wed him. She wanted to be the one to comfort him, the one he smiled at every morning. But I never will be, she thought. When he looks at me, he sees only a seamstress or a kitchen girl. Never a wife.
Once again Billy turned over, this time bumping right up against her. She tried to push him away, but it was like trying to roll a limp sack of flour. Resigned, she sat up. Her full bladder could no longer be ignored. The piss bucket was on the far end of the room, and she dreaded stumbling her way through the dark, across all those sleeping bodies. Better to take the stairs, which were much closer, and go outside to pee.
She pulled on her shoes and cloak, crawled across Billy’s sleeping body, and made her way down the stairs. Outside, the slap of cold wind made her suck in a startled breath. She wasted no time taking care of her needs. Glancing up and down Fishery Alley, she saw no one, and squatted right there on the cobblestones. With a sigh of relief, she stepped back into the lodging house and was about to climb the stairs when she heard the landlord call out:
“Who’s there? Who’s come in?”
Peeking through his doorway, she caught sight of Mr. Porteous, sitting with his feet propped up on a stool. He was half blind and always short of breath, and it was only with the help of his slovenly daughter that he managed to keep up the establishment. Not that there was much to do except collect the rent, dole out fresh straw once a month, and in the morning serve a bit
of porridge, more often than not infested with mealworms. Otherwise, Porteous ignored the lodgers, and they ignored him.
“It’s me,” said Rose.
“Come in here, girl.”
“I’m on my way upstairs.”
Porteous’s daughter appeared in the doorway. “There’s a gentleman here to see you. Says he knows you.”
Norris Marshall has come back was her first reaction. But when she stepped into the room and saw the visitor standing by the fireplace, bitter disappointment silenced any greeting from her lips.
“Hello, Rose,” said Eben. “I’ve had a hard time tracking you down.”
She owed her brother-in-law no pleasantries. Bluntly she asked, “What are you doing here?”
“I’ve come to make amends.”
“The person you should make amends to is no longer here to forgive you.”
“You have every right to reject my apologies. I’m ashamed of how I behaved, and every night I lie awake thinking of all the ways I could have been a better husband to your sister. I did not deserve her.”
“No, you did not.”
He came toward her, arms outstretched, but she did not trust his eyes; she never had. “This is the only way I know how to make it up to Aurnia,” he said. “By being a good brother to you, a good father to my daughter. By taking care of you both. Go, fetch the baby, Rose. Let’s go home.”
Old Porteous and his daughter both watched with rapt expressions. They spent most of their lives confined to this gloomy front room, and this was probably the best entertainment they’d been treated to in weeks.
“Your old bed is waiting for you,” said Eben. “And a crib, for the baby.”
“I’m paid up here for the month,” said Rose.
“Here?” Eben gave a laugh. “You can’t possibly prefer this place!”