Mending Horses (18 page)

Liam paced the shanty aimlessly. It felt like a huge empty box, with what little remained reminding him that he was the only one left. One chair. One plate. One mug. Da's bed. One of everything, including himself. He closed his eyes and tried to summon up Jimmy and Mick's laughter, Nuala's singing. They were all with Mam now. He felt a sting of envy for their peace.

He buttoned his threadbare jacket, put on his cap, and went out into the muddy alley that passed for a street. Something stopped him before he'd gone three steps.

The last link is broken that bound me to thee
 . . .

In among the sounds of wailing babies, cackling chickens, and rooting pigs that usually filled the Patch, he heard somebody singing. “Nuala?” he whispered, turning his good ear in the direction of the song.

The words thou hast spoken have rendered me free
 . . .

Damned if that voice wasn't real, and the song one that Nuala herself had sung for him the day before she'd disappeared. He shook his head. Nuala's own song, but not her own voice. This singer's voice was pleasant, but thin and hesitant on the high notes. And she was no ghost.

He crossed the road and rapped on Augusta's door. She opened it, a pair of broadfalls in her hand. At the sight of the trousers, he reddened and almost turned away. Then he noticed
the pincushion fastened to Augusta's wrist and the patch half sewn on one knee of the trousers. His neck grew hot at the churlish conclusion he'd made about what sort of work she might be about.

“Liam? I thought you were going back to work today.”

“I did.” He twisted his cap in his hands.

“It didn't go well,” she guessed.

He shook his head. “I couldn't—” He opened his hand, exposing fresh blisters. “It was like I'd never done a day's work in me life before.”

Her hand closed over his, cool against his broken skin. “It's all right. You'll get your strength back. There'll be other jobs.”

“Aye. But not today.” Looking over her shoulder into the shanty, he saw a basket of clothes on the floor and garments spread across the table, from a laborer's coarse frock to a little girl's gown. “It's sorry I am for disturbing you at your work. I'll be on me way—”

She put a hand on his wrist. “Why don't you come in for a bit? Have a cup of tea and visit while I sew.”

“It's only—it's a bit empty—” He gestured toward his own shanty. “And I heard you singing one of Nuala's songs and I thought—”

She smiled and nodded as she set about making tea. “Nuala. Yes, the little girl with the big voice.”

“You—you knew her? I mean—not just to see on the street?”

“Everybody knew her. Where do you think she learned all her songs? Or how to cook and sew and knit?”

“I never—never really thought—”

Augusta laughed softly. “You men. You think women are born knowing how to keep house, don't you?”

“I—ah—well—”

Augusta set a cup of tea in front of him. “Your sister was a bold little thing. If she heard a song she liked or smelled some fine cooking or needed to learn a stitch, she'd just knock on doors until someone would teach her.”

“She did?” Liam felt dizzy, discovering that Nuala had a life
he'd been too selfish and stupid and work-weary to be curious about.

Augusta nodded. She sat and took up her mending again. It was fine work she was doing, for all that it was only patching a pair of trousers. She joined the pieces so precisely that the rend almost disappeared under her needle. Why would she need to do aught else to make her living? Another thought, even more unsettling than the first, flashed through his head. “She came here?”

“Now and again. Oh, don't look so shocked. I only taught her a few songs, a receipt or two. I imagine the other ladies here taught her more than I ever did.”

“I'm not meaning to be passing judgments, but she knew what you did, uh, do?”

“She knew about the sewing and laundry. The rest?” She shook her head. “It's not as if it ever came up when we talked. She is only a child.”

“Was,” Liam said, dropping the word between them like a stone.

“I'm sorry, Liam. I liked her. She was an odd little girl. Not afraid of anything. Not, well, not particularly girlish.”

“Aye. I remember this one time, I was maybe fourteen. I come home from work and Da'd found out I been keeping back some of me wages. The black mood was on him, and he had me by the hair, and certain I was that he'd flay the very skin off me. Nuala, she'd been making our dinner. It was a meat pie, and little enough meat we ever got. Quick as you please, she snatched the pie up from the bake kettle, wrapped it in her apron, and held it out the window. Somebody's pig was rooting around there behind the house; we could hear it grunting. She told Da if he didn't let me go, she'd toss the pie out to that pig. So he had to be letting me go to save his supper, didn't he, now? But quicker 'n you could sneeze, Nuala took herself and that pie both out the window and into the alley. Then while Da was trying to catch her, me and Jimmy and Mick took ourselves out the door. We all four of us hid and had that pie to ourselves.” It felt strange to be wearing
a smile, stranger still to hear his own laughter. “It was damn good pie, too,” he added, wiping his eyes.

Augusta's mouth curled uncertainly, as if she wasn't sure whether it was all right for her to smile, too.

He took a sip of tea, scalding and bitter. “You taught her that song, then?” he asked. “The one you were singing just now?”

She nodded, her head bowed once more over her sewing as she put in the last few stitches and snapped the end of the thread.

“That was what brought me over.” He fidgeted with his cup, stared at the murky clump of leaves at the bottom. “Christ, I must be mad.” He pushed the cup away and reached for his hat, but couldn't make himself put it on and get out of the chair, couldn't make himself go back to the empty shanty. “You'll think me mad, you will.”

“Whatever for?”

“I was wondering if maybe, just for a minute or two, if you'd mind if I sat here for a wee bit and just listened to you sing.”

Billy felt as though her eyes had been starving, and she'd never known it until today. The museum was like one of the feasts that a king might have in one of Mr. S.'s stories, with each new course more scrumptious than the one before it. First, there'd been the grand cavalcade parading through town: a dozen or more brightly painted wagons trimmed in gold, with the performers sitting on top, dressed as splendidly as lords and ladies. She and Daniel and Mr. S. had followed the cavalcade to a broad meadow just south of town. She'd gasped at the show pavilion, big and white as a meetinghouse, with smaller tents clustered around it. Spreading out from the tents was just about every sort of traveling crafter and hawker setting up wares and workbenches. There were minor showmen as well: a man with a genuine Egyptian mummy, another with a quartet of dancing dogs, and a third with a panorama of the Great Fire of London. Mr. S. said they were hangers-on hoping to ride the museum's coattails to profit.

“Pit or box?” the ticket seller asked at the entrance to the great pavilion. She was relieved when Mr. S. said, “Box,” for a pit sounded like a foul place to watch a show from. She was a trifle disappointed to enter the pavilion and see there was no real pit, but just a place marked off where folk who had bought the cheaper tickets had to stand to watch the show. The box seats weren't real boxes, either, but an eight-tiered structure with planks for seats and nowhere to rest your back but against the shins of the person behind you. The heads of those in the top tier brushed the pavilion's canvas roof.

Mr. S. hustled them into second-row seats. She was glad he
hadn't gotten tickets for the pit. The men and lads were crammed in so tight there, nobody short of a giant would see anything. Folk occupying the box seats looked more genteel, but they pushed and shoved just as hard as the men in the pit to get the best places. The air grew thick with the smells of sweat, tobacco, and livestock mingled with toilet water and hair oil. She'd never heard such a hubbub of talking and shouting and laughing. She'd have found the noise and the smells and the closeness of the packed pavilion unbearable, were it not for the tension of expectation that thrummed through the crowd.

A sharp hissing noise broke through the din. Folk shushed each other and focused their attention on the southern end of the pavilion. A trumpet blew a fanfare, and in came the grand cavalcade. Billy leaned forward, and Daniel did the same.

The museum was such a wonder that Billy could hardly say which act she liked best. The jugglers tossing knives and torches back and forth like they were no more than apples—they were the best until a man came out and wrestled and danced with an enormous bear. He was the best until the rope dancer who tiptoed across a line hung slack between two posts. After that, she twirled and leaped and danced in the air, with only a loop of rope for a swing. She was the best until the dancing ponies, all tricked out in gold-trimmed blankets and red-and-black plumes on their foreheads, their black hooves as shiny as one of Mr. S.'s japanned teapots. They lifted their feet high in elegant prancing steps, as if afraid to get their hooves dirty. They leaped and kicked and trotted in circles while Professor Romanov cracked his whip in time to the music. Then the Professor collected the ponies together, and they solemnly bowed down on their knees like they were praying. And last and best of all, they stood up on their back legs just like people.

She elbowed Daniel. “Aren't they ever so grand?” she whispered.

He scowled and muttered with Mr. S. over Billy's head. Jealous, no doubt, that his precious Ivy couldn't do none of them fine tricks.

After the applause faded and a funny little man had cleaned up after the ponies, a fat lady walked out. She wore a gown of iri-descent silk, with jewels glittering at her neck and ears and wrists, but she herself was a bit cow-faced. Like the dancing ponies, she had feathers in her hair, but the ponies were prettier. Billy squirmed with impatience. Then the lady began to sing.

Billy's body broke out all over in gooseflesh. The words were neither English nor Irish nor the Latin that Father Brady chanted at the Mass. The lady's voice wrapped around Billy and lifted her up like she was flying. She closed her eyes and concentrated so intently that her heartbeat matched the pulse of the song. When she opened her eyes, the music shone from the fat lady's face and sparkled all about her. She reminded Billy of a story Father Brady had told about the Holy Spirit coming down on the apostles in tongues of fire, giving them the power to speak languages they never could before. Surely naught but the Holy Spirit could make somebody sing so grand.

When the music stopped, the fat lady shimmered in the applause, bowed with surprising grace, and glided away into the shadows.

Billy tugged at Mr. S.'s sleeve. “Did you ever hear the like? Wasn't she lovely?”

Mr. S. nodded. “Heard something like her once in New York. She certainly is something.”

“Could you teach me to sing like that?” Billy asked.

“Whyever would you want to be spoiling your voice? It's fine just like it is,” Daniel said.

Billy had just summoned up a retort when she realized that Daniel had actually paid her a compliment. She cast a baffled glance at Mr. S., but he only adjusted his spectacles and shushed the both of them. The crowd quieted down again as a tall, thin man walked out.

He wore a long robe with wide, bell-like sleeves and swirls of rich colors shot through with golden thread. In between the colors were silver moons and stars, mysterious symbols, and tiny bits of glass sewn into his costume. Wrapped around his head was a
crimson turban with an enormous black jewel over his forehead. He was tall and gaunt, with deep hollows under his cheekbones and a long hooked nose over a black mustache that drooped down on either side of his mouth. His skin was almost as dark as a Negro's, making him look as though he'd been carved out of wood. Slowly he turned, peering out from under heavy black eyebrows as if memorizing each face in the audience. Everyone fell quiet. His eyes rested on Mr. S. One eyebrow angled up, then the other, and the ends of his mustache quivered ever so slightly.

Mr. S. met the tall, thin man's gaze full on. It was hard to tell, what with Mr. S.'s spectacles and all, but Billy was almost sure that he winked. Then she felt a shiver at the base of her skull, and she turned to see the man staring at her.

Her instinctive reaction was to drop her eyes as everyone else did, but she forced herself to stare back. After all, he was neither East Indian nor mystical, but only Fred Chamberlain, a play-actor from Baltimore. She clenched her jaw and stared back as hard as she could. It was worse than trying to stare down Mr. S. when he'd caught her out in a lie. The man's eyes were as black and shiny as the jewel in his turban. But she refused to blink or turn away.