She shakes her head, embarrassed that her tears are still so close to the surface. “No, it’s nothing,” she says. “The only comfort I have is that my child was spared having to work.”
“Oh, it was a child you buried?” asks the sailor, looking ready to cry himself. “Then I am doubly sorry, miss.” He tucks her arm a little tighter inside his and gives it an awkward pat.
“You’ve been a long time at sea?” Gustine changes the subject, unable to continue speaking of loss in this unfamiliar atmosphere of sympathy. She can feel the propulsion of the Eye following close behind, and knows what is expected of her. But not yet. Not yet.
“I suppose you saw me row in?” he asks, a little chagrined. “And hide my boat?”
“Yes.”
“Shall I turn myself in to the Quarantine patrol?”
“If everyone feels free to break the Quarantine, I don’t know why we’ve had to suffer it all these months,” Gustine responds matter-of-factly.
“Where I’ve been, I’ve seen the uselessness of Quarantine, miss. Something always sneaks through. I suppose I am proof of that.”
They walk a few blocks more in silence, but as if compelled to explain his lawlessness, the sailor soon continues.
“Cholera took our captain and first mate a month ago, and we’ve been trying to get home ever since. Imagine how it feels to be in sight of home but stuck just offshore, without fresh food, without communication, without medicine. Some of us couldn’t take it anymore.” He swallows almost all of that last and she has to lean in to hear him.
“And I’ve heard it doesn’t matter anywaythe cholera is already here in Sunderland,” the sailor says.
“So we’ve been told.”
“It devastated Riga, where we’ve just come from,” he tells her. “Some say the refugees from Moscow brought it. From what I could make out, they thought they were being poisoned and broke the military cordons, scattering across the continent.”
She doesn’t think he is going to continue, for they walk in silence past the dark Exchange building, the burning tar barrels of Queen and High Streets, as far as Playhouse Lane; but finally, as if he found his voice among the locked and shuttered theatres, her escort begins to speak.
“I remember the night our captain succumbed,” he says, looking not at her, but at his own big feet. “He was sitting on deck writing home to his family and I was sitting near him, like a dullard staring back at the smoky factories onshore, blaming him, blaming everyone for being stuck in that infernal port. We were flying our yellow Quarantine flags to show we complied with the law, but in our hearts we hated the Quarantine and would have broken through in a minute, just pulled up anchor after dark and risked the patrols. Only, our captain wouldn’t hear of it. He was not used to taking risks at sea and wanted nothing other than to get home to his family in one piece, even if we had to sit off the port of Riga for a year. He was a cautious man, our captainnot really a sailor, more of a businessman and he actually believed a country drew up laws to protect its citizens! I remember the first mate asking him exactly who it was this Quarantine was meant to protect: us from them or them from us? The Quarantine was a joke, miss, if you don’t mind me saying so. We bought food off the local merchants who sailed out to us every day. They took our money and rode back into town. It was a joke, plain and simple. Just like here.”
The couple passes Sans Street, where a young boy is taking an armload of bottles to be filled at the dispensary. Judging from the collection of glass he carries, every member of his family was sick.
“Our captain was writing bis family the night he succumbed,” the sailor continues. “It was a lying sort of letter, written to make ladies feel comfortable. Not a word about the men and women dropping dead on the piers in horrible convulsions, or of their husbands and wives flinging themselves off the cliffs in fits of grief. Just a letter full of light news and inquiries into how his daughter’s wedding plans were progressing. It had been hot and oppressive all day, but as the sun set, a cold east wind picked up, troubling his papersI ran and caught one that blew away. As I handed back his letter, a raindrop hit the page. Miss, I can’t describe what I felt when I saw that raindrop. I had been grumbling for rainwe all hadbut how earnestly we now wished it back up in the sky. The rain, miss, was yellow, yellow like sulfur, and when the captain, in his amazement, held his wet bit of paper over a candle, it burned blue and fetid like sulfur.
“There was no escape after that,” the sailor says quietly. “The Devil had come for us. Our captain died with that unfinished letter still clutched in his hand. Our first mate followed a day later. When they finally let us out of Quarantine, we had four dead men on our ship and another six dying. I came down with it too, miss. Oh God it was bad, but I guess the Devil didn’t want me, for a few days later I pulled through. I learned one thing, though: I’ll never sit still for Quarantine again. I’ll fight, I’ll runbut I won’t sit and wait for Death to come to me. I know it will come, miss, there’s no helping that. But it’s going to have to chase me down.”
They pass the corner of Nile and High Streets, the place where Gustine tried to outrun death for her child. She wishes she could share the sailor’s determination, but cholera has taught her something completely different. She has no more belief in her own abilities.
“I’m sorry,” he says, embarrassed. “I’ve been so busy talking, I haven’t even asked where we are going.”
Gustine has not thought that far either. “Oh, we are here,” she says, glancing up at the marker as they approach the next corner building. “Fawcett Street.”
“Then I was destined to be of service to you!” the sailor exclaims. “For I was headed that way. I must deliver this melancholy package to 3 8 Fawcett Street in the morning.”
Gustine had forgotten all about the bundle of clothes under his other arm. “Why do you call your package melancholy?” she asks.
“I don’t know what else to call a dead man’s jacket and trousers, his shirts, his unraveled socks. I think our captain’s fresh widow and fatherless daughter will find it so. We buried him at sea, but we thought they might appreciate his clothesfilthy and worn as they are. Women are fond that way.”
Gustine’s own sadness has made her generous. She feels for the poor mother and daughter, sitting in then-nice house on a nice street, blissfully unconscious of what is on its way to them. But didn’t Dr. Chiver say the clothes of cholera victims should be immediately burned? That they were vessels of pestilence and the bringers of death? Perhaps it would be better for the sailor to dispose of those clothes right away.
“Maybe you know Captain Place’s family, being a neighbor?” he interrupts her thoughts.
“Captain Place?” Gustine asks, startled by the name.
“I see you are familiar.”
“A friend of mine,” Gustine begins, and stops herself. “Captain Place’s daughter, I believe, is engaged to someone I know.”
“The doctor? Captain spoke of the upcoming marriage frequently,” the sailor confides. “It’s a shame the old gentleman won’t be here to attend.”
So the beautiful girl of the matching earrings and necklace has troubles of her own. Gustine wonders if Henry will be kinder in Miss Place’s hour of need than he was in hers. Certainly he will, for she is the thing he holds most precious in the world. He must feel as protective of her as Gustine felt about her beloved child.
“Go to them if you can, miss,” says the sailor, interrupting her thoughts. “Mrs. and Miss Place will be in desperate need of their friends.
“I will,” she lies. “This is my house.” She picks a darkened mansion set back from the road, and quickly slips inside its gate. “I can make it the rest of the way.”
“I am very happy to have had the privilege of walking you home.” The gawky sailor bows deeply. “I know young ladies are more independent these days, but if you must go again to Trinity, I hope you will have your husband or a servant accompany you.”
“Thank you,” Gustine says, wishing a young lady might take a stranger’s hand and press it. What kind of world is it, she wonders, where as a dress lodger she might have given that sailor her entire body, but as a young lady she is constrained from even extending her hand? Can the difference between herself and Audrey Place truly be so great, if one blue dress alone can erase it? Gustine is angry with herself. She cares nothing about the money or the things, but the kindnessoh, God, to ever feel entitled to such kindness.
Sadly, she watches the young sailor disappear down Fawcett and waits for him to be replaced by the inevitable Eye. She must get back to work. It is what her landlord expects, and it must be done if she is to earn the money to leave this place, which is now her only desire. Gustine has been granted about as long a respite as she could imagine.
But minutes pass, and the Eye does not appear. She was behind them the whole time; Gustine heard and understood her language, the familiar skitter of a rock kicked aside or the snap of an acorn meaning Let’s get on with it. Gustine waits fifteen minutes more before giving up and beginning her long walk home to Mill Street. She feels oddly unmoored and vertiginous without the Eye behind her; as if she might fly off into the shadows like some crazed blue Cauld Lad. She has grown too used to surveillance not to mistrust this freedom. Surely the Eye is lurking just around the corner or waiting like a buzzard to swoop upon her from the gutters overhead. Surely this is just a test, a cruel parody of independence lasting only until she comes home empty-handed, when Whilky might feel justified in tightening her leash. The Eye’s absence only makes Gustine feel her more. Everywhere she looks a gray carbuncle flashes from the lamppost or peeps up from a sewer. The wheels of carriages are watching her, and the three round balls of pawnshops. She walks with her head down, trying not to feel she’s replaced one watchdog with an entire town.
And where is the Eye? What could possibly induce the inveterate sentry away from her post? Perhaps the answer lies with the Quarantine dodger who kindly escorted Gustine home to the Bishopwearmouth. Not long after he left her, still floating on the young lady’s kind words and gentle looks, he was seized with the strangest sensation. Someone was watching him. He felt the hair on the back of his neck rise, was so certain, he even spun around and drew his knife. Yet no one was there. Crackbrained paranoia, he scolded himself, and continued on, but not long after, while he was checking the address of a friend’s family where he was to stay the night, he was sure he heard deep laboured breathing just over his shoulder. Once more, he spun around, ready to face the Quarantine patrol and fight for his freedom, but, lonothing. Only fog and shadows and darkly melting snow.
“May I help you, madam?” the lanky young sailor remembers asking when he finally turned back to find an old, one-eyed woman in front of him. Why does she observe him so strangely, he wondered, and why on earth does she reach out for the bundle of his captain’s clothes? But that is the last thing he remembers before the heavy blow knocked him to his knees and drove him face-first into the snow.
How much?” From his satchel, Whilky Robinson pulls a soiled linen christening gown and plops it on the counter for Mag Scurr’s appraisal. He had Pink scrub the damned garment twice in a vat of hot water and lye, but to no avail: it will always be brown about the back. The old pawnbroker squints hard at it, turns it inside out and checks the seams. Not shabby, thinks she, but of course, communicates just the opposite.
“Four shillings.” She screws up her face and hands it back. “It’s the best I can do.”
“For fine Irish linen?” Whilky squeaks. “It’s worth ten!”
“Six, and not a ha’penny more,” answers the old woman. “Who of our sort has the cash for such frivolities?”
Whilky scowls, thinking it over. A restless line has formed behind him, four thespians by the look of ‘em, laden down with pasteboard and tinseled costumes to pawn. / could use that linen for collars, he overhears the only female of their group whisper to an elderly gentleman. Lady Cromwell’s habit is getting tatty. Don’t be ridiculous, comes her answer. We haven’t the money to get to London as it is.
“I’ll take the six, you greedy old hag,” Whilky capitulates, then pointedly recounts the money she pushes across the counter. It’s a little unexpected something, though it doesn’t begin to make up for the money he’s lost on his dress lodger’s freaks.
Whilky fades back from the counter, watching the actors behind him and idly browsing Mag’s farrago of goods for sale. He’s not bought Mike a treat in what seems like an age (having already’forgotten this morning’s blackcurrant tart), and as today is his ferret’s big day in the ratting ring, he deserves a special tidbit. There is much here for a landlord to covet: sextants and little tin anchors, sailcloth jackets and His Majesty’s Royal Navy-issue caps. A couple dozen of the fleet are in pawn at Mag Scurr’s, from the look of it; high tide washed them in and straight into hock. Yes, there is much for a landlord to admire, but what might a ferret fancy? That mane of black hair, hung from a peg by the door? T’would make a fine nest, that is true, but Whilky prefers his pet to sleep with him. A grosgrain ribbon for his neck? Naw, thinks Whilky. M’boy’s no dandy.
“This sword, I assure you, madame, is not some common poker, but an exact reproduction of the very weapon worn by Richard Coeur de Lion during the Sieging of Acre.” The scrawny actor of the group has stepped forward to play negotiator, cutting figures around Mag’s head by way of demonstration, thrusting and jabbing like to take her mobcap off. “Imagine,” says he, “the heights of carnage a young boy might attain, wielding this indomitable piece of equipment.”
“Ten d.,” replies Mag.
“Ten for a singular metallurgic artifact, madame?” Steps the actor back in deep disgust. “You insult me.”
“Eight if you keep playing,” says Mag.
“We’ll take it,” interjects the older gentleman.
They haggle over a sorceress robe and a high three-fingered Touchstone foolscap; a pasteboard Cross of India medal comes out next, then Phebe’s white tissue shepherdess frock, bespangled with glass beads and shot with silver. It is stained beneath the armpits and a few seams have given way, but it is a fetching dress and would surely turn the heads of many a Sunderland gentleman. Now there’s a thought… . Whilky surprises himself with the idea. Should he? After all, Gustine’s blue gown came by way of an actress down on her luck; he picked it up at one of Mag’s competitors for 12 s. and change. This one he might get for even less, and it is as grand as Gustine’s costume, perhaps grander. He’s had his eye on another likely girl in the lodging house, flightier than Gustine, but more compliant, and wouldn’t that white fit her exactly? The actors sell it to Mag for eleven shillings and when he steps up to ask for it, she flips it to Whilky for fourteen.