The House of Velvet and Glass (55 page)

Lannie laughed aloud. “I don’t see how I could possibly refuse. Thank you.”

They walked for another few moments in silence, but Lannie could tell Johnny was smiling.

“I’ve got a sister, too,” Lannie remarked. “She’s not beautiful, though. She’s thirteen, and a pest.”

“I’m sure by the time I make it to Boston, she’ll be beautiful.”

“Oh, you won’t find her in Boston,” Lannie said. “She’s a good Salem girl.”

“She’s a witch, then? A sorceress?” Johnny laughed.

“Johnny,” Lan said, stopping to show that he was serious. “We don’t discuss that.”

The young man looked confused and bowed his head in contrition. “I apologize. I didn’t know. Please forgive my mistake.”

Lannie paused, long enough for Johnny to feel his faux pas, and said, “S’awright. I’d expect as much, from a barbarian.”

The other boy laughed, and they shoved each other, playfully, before moving on.

The alley ended in a courtyard ringed by houses that had once been fine, but that had been subdivided into many smaller dwellings and allowed to slip into disrepair. Bony dogs poked in the dirt, and chickens roosted in a cluster of brambles at the center. One or two of the houses served as makeshift restaurants, with tables near their front doors. At one table lounged a band of rough-looking white men in sailors’ dress. Lannie kept a weather eye on them. They were singing a chanty, beating time on the table with merriment that suggested they were still going from the previous night.

Johnny frowned, unsure which way to go. A withered woman shuffled out of the restaurant, carrying a tray with cups of tea and some rice buns, and one of the sailors reached over and pinched her on the behind. The woman screeched, which the sailor met with hearty laughter. Uneasiness circulated in Lannie’s stomach.

“Johnny,” he started to say.

“Shhh,” the scholar shushed him. “I’m trying to figure out which way.” He scratched under his hat. “I hardly ever come through this quarter. Too dirty.”

“Hmmm,” Lannie said, thrusting his hands into his pockets and trying to be inconspicuous.

“Less ask ’em, then,” one of the sailors bellowed, standing up. “Hey, you there!”

Lannie pretended not to hear. Instead he looked at Johnny, willing him to hurry. Indifferent to the trouble brewing under the plum trees, Johnny thought, stroking his chin.

“I shed, you there!” the man shouted, his words slurring. Lannie kept his back to the group, deaf and invisible. Stumbling feet approached. “I’m talkina you!” Lannie was tapped, roughly, on the shoulder. Hot breath blasted the back of his neck.“We wanna know ’bout your sweetheart, there. His hair wants a cut, don’t it? Hey! You!”

Lannie’s stomach sank, and he turned to face the speaker.

His first impression was of the corrosive breath of rum and sour plum wine. Behind the putrid blast stood none other than Tom, black gap in his jaw leering with rot. On his shoulder, bizarrely, perched a bright blue bird, something Lannie had never seen before. Its intelligent eyes looked with curiosity at Lannie, and its iridescent tail swept down Tom’s back.

“Well, lookee here, boys!” Tom slurred. “Why, if it ain’t the little greenhorn his very own self ! Still with that yellow bastard, I see.”

Lan sensed Johnny move behind him, standing with his arms folded to make him look broader across the chest than he was.

“We were just looking for you fellows,” Lan said easily. “It’ll be time for us to get back aboard, won’t it? See you’ve got a new pet, there. You fellows must’ve had quite a night.”

Tom laughed. The cruel smile vanished from his face, and he said, “I have at that. Won ’im. Dice game.” He stood, swaying, his eyes narrowed. “You inshulted me, Greenie. You’n that Chinkee bastard. Be wise not to return to the ship’a tall.”

“Now, Tom,” Lannie started to say, mollifying.

“
Tom
,” the older sailor burst. “Just cause you’re from some fancy family don’t mean you’re any better’n I. Not here. You’ll call me Mister Morgan, til I tell you different.” He shoved Lannie in the chest with the tips of his fingers, hard as the end of a shovel.

A sickening sense of déjà vu took hold of Lannie. He froze. He saw Tom, speaking insults that he couldn’t hear behind the buzzing of his thoughts. He registered the circle of sailors closing in on them, drinking in the threat of violence. Himself, motionless at the center. And Johnny. It was subtly different. But unmistakable.

“Johnny,” Lan said, struggling to keep calm. “You’ve got to leave. Right now.”

The scholar was already rolling up the sleeve of his jacket, his eyes on the drunken sailor. “I think not, Yankee,” he said, face grave. “I think it’d be best if I stayed.”

“No.” Lannie took Johnny by the shoulders and stared him in the face. “Listen to me. You’ve got to go. You’ve got to go right now!” He shook him, digging his fingers into the scholar’s shoulders.

A titter rose from the group of sailors, and Tom emitted a brutal laugh. “That’s it,” he taunted. He rolled his shoulders, causing the blue parrot to take off with a squawk, alighting in one of the plum trees. “Send your handmaid away. Rather keep you to myself as it is.”

At Tom’s last word, Johnny cried out, “Duck!”

Without thinking Lannie did so, and the sailor’s fist whooshed through the air over his head. From his crouch Lannie looked up in time to see Johnny’s fist crunch into Tom’s nose. Tom staggered back, hands on his face, as the other sailors clapped and laughed. Wads of money changed hands. Lannie stood, with Johnny next to him flexing the fingers on his right hand, and said, “Now, that’s enough. Let’s call it a day and go back to the ship.”

A few yards away, Tom swayed, his back to them, a slick smear of blood spattering the dust at his feet. He leaned over, placing his hands on his knees, breathing heavily.

“All right?” Lannie called. “We’ll all just go back. No harm, no foul.” From Lannie’s vantage point it looked as though Tom were nodding, his head down. Lannie felt his pulse throb in his neck. Then, without warning, Tom spun with a guttural scream, barreling toward Lan and Johnny with a chair brandished over his head.

“Johnny, get down!” Lan yelled, ducking against the blow. But it didn’t come; instead Lan glanced under his arm and saw the chair in Tom’s hands crash into the side of Johnny’s skull. The scholar spun, his eyes rolled up to show their whites, and the boy collapsed in the dust, palms up, eyes open and glassy, jaw jutting at a strange angle. One leg twitched. An instant of silence seized the circle of sailors, who stepped backward in shock.

Lan scrambled on his hands and knees, blind with terror, over to Johnny. He pressed his fingers to the other boy’s throat, digging in the flesh under the jaw for a pulse. The jaw felt loose, shattered into pieces. A rivulet of blood leaked from one of his nostrils. He wasn’t breathing. Johnny’s body felt void, a vessel emptied. The other sailors were quiet. Lan heard no sound apart from Tom’s panting as he paced the courtyard, broken chair held at the ready.

A scream started somewhere deep inside Lan, rumbling in his breast until it exploded from his mouth, an anguished wail of horror. He got to his feet and rushed at the older sailor, unthinking, fists knotted at the ready. The other man pulled back the broken chair, as though winding up for a baseball pitch. He swung as Lannie came at him, whiffed within an inch of Lannie’s ear, and then Lannie’s shoulder collided into Tom’s chest, the momentum bringing them both to the ground in a cloud of dust. The chair leg glanced off Lannie’s skull, and then he was astride the older man, fists flying, pummeling Tom’s face again and again and again.

The man’s legs kicked in the dirt, beating their heels on the ground, and as he pummeled Tom’s face, Lannie sensed the circle of sailors creep nearer. He felt hands on his shoulders. He landed one last blow and saw that Tom’s hand had gone slack, the chair leg falling loose. His legs weren’t moving. Lannie gasped, panting, gulping air, looking around, confused.

The hands at his shoulders eased him backward, helping him off the sailor sprawled on the ground.

“Lannie,” said a voice. Lan looked around, eyes wild, coming to rest on the face of Richard Derby. His eyes looked worried. “Lannie,” he said again. He held Lannie tightly by the shoulders, shaking him, as if to bring the boy back to himself. “That’s enough.”

“Dick, I—” Lannie stood, appalled. He stared at Tom’s spread-eagled body, his face a blurry, barely human pulp. The gravity and reality of what he had done seized him, and Lannie’s stomach rebelled. He doubled over, vomiting out tea and bile. Richard rested a hand on Lannie’s back and glanced, on edge, at the rest of the crew.

“Come on,” Richard said, a current of urgency in his voice. “It’s time for us to go.”

Lannie moaned in horror. “It happened, Dick,” he gasped, eyes jumping between the two bodies lying motionless in the courtyard. “It happened. It was real.”

“Yes,” Richard said, keeping hold of the younger boy. “I’m afraid so. But now we’ve got to go.”

“No, you don’t understand,” Lannie said, balling his fists in Richard’s shirt and bringing his wild eyes close to his face. “I didn’t stop it. It was real, and I didn’t stop it.”

Richard pried Lannie’s grip from his clothes. “Listen,” he muttered, voice barely audible. “We all saw what happened, all right? It was an accident.” He raised his voice, addressing the rest of the group. “An accident, right? Couldn’t be helped. You did everything you could to avoid it, didn’t you, Lan? Didn’t he, fellows?”

Murmurs of assent bubbled from the crowd of onlookers. Lannie’s gaze darted from face to face, all tanned from weeks at sea, and he saw in the staring sailors’ eyes a wall of total silence. They knew the truth. They would always know the truth. And as long as Lannie was loyal to them, as long as he backed them as they were backing him, he would be safe.

Richard dropped his voice to a whisper and said, “He weren’t all that popular, Tom Morgan. I don’t think anyone’ll cause you trouble. In fact, you may have even made some friends. But, Lannie, we’ve got to
leave
. We’ve got to go right now, before the authorities start asking questions about the Chinese boy. All right?”

Richard held Lannie’s gaze to underscore his seriousness. “All right?” he repeated.

Lannie let go of Richard’s shirt and wailed, “I didn’t stop it. Why couldn’t I stop it?” His face cracked with despair, tears springing to his eyes. “Dick, I couldn’t stop it.” He covered his face with his hands, trembling.

“All right,” Richard Derby answered for him, wrapping his arm around Lannie’s shoulders. “Pay the woman and let’s get going. Come on! Move!”

He barked the order, and the sailors leaped to action, someone tossing a wad of bills onto the table under the plums. They clustered around Lan and hustled him away, toward one of the alleys leading out of the courtyard. Lan glanced back over his shoulder at the lifeless form of his friend on the ground, its eyes open and unseeing. Johnny, with his weakness for women and opium, with the beautiful sister and the judgmental father, who would never know what had happened to his son. Lannie realized that he didn’t even know Johnny’s real name.

He hung his head, a sob escaping from his throat at the sin staining his soul, worsened by the sickening, horrifying fact that he had seen it coming.

“Hurry,” Richard Derby hissed, and through his weeping Lannie managed to break into a trot.

Behind him was a squawking and a flurry of wings, and then sharp points, like talons, sank into the meat of Lannie’s shoulder. He leaped aside with a surprised shout, but the talons held fast.

“Guess he’s dead set on coming along,” Richard said drily, referring to the shimmering bird on Lan’s shoulder. “They’re awful smart, you know. Parrots. He’s like to have been on a ship to get here in the first place. From South America. Live for ages, too. He’s probably even older’n you.”

The sailors plunged into the maze of alleys in the International Settlement, rushing to make the ship in good time. Losing himself among them, Lan choked on his tears until they petered away. His jaw ached, his head throbbed, a crust of dried blood was stiffening in his hair, but he was surrounded by men in his confidence, men who would look death in the face for him. He set his mouth in a firm line, resolved to face down whatever punishments Providence would dole out to him. As he weighed the murder that would forever stain his soul, Lan felt himself being watched.

Out of the corner of his eye, sitting in an inscrutable ball on his shoulder, riding along as he trotted the back alleys of Shanghai, Lan spied the macaw. The animal returned his look with one black eye, shining with intelligence, a dispassionate observer to everything that Lan had done.

And everything that was to come.

Chapter Twenty-eight

The Back Bay
Boston, Massachusetts
October 17, 1917

Sibyl set her suitcase down on the stoop with a
thunk
and looked up into the welcoming face of the Beacon Street town house. It appeared much the same as always: a slumbering animal, covered in its fur of ivy. The season painted the ivy leaves bright crimson, and a passing autumn breeze ruffled them in soft, undulating waves. Sibyl sighed, pleased.