The Technologists (57 page)

“I’m sorry he has left. He is not a man for Boston, perhaps, but I found he is strictly of the New England character.”

“Do you think so?”

“Yes. I never fully realized how much a New England birth in itself was worth, but I am happy that that was my lot. I have felt it so keenly these last few days. Dear old New England, with all her sternness and uncompromising opinions: the home of all that is good and noble. That is Mr. Mansfield, too.”

He sank his chin into his hands. “It’s a wonder anyone still remains in Boston. What shall I do without him?”

“I would like to go.”

“To the Decoration Day festival?”

“Yes.”

“You would?” he asked, brightening. “Would you allow me to escort you?”

“On the condition that you don’t call me Professor or Ellencyclopedia anymore.”

“No, no, it’s ‘Ellepedia.’ Anyway, ‘Miss Swallow’ sounds so formal and frightening.”

“I’d hoped to be treated equally at Tech,” she said wistfully. “If I am to call you ‘Robert,’ you must call me ‘Nellie.’ If there is nobody else around, of course. Otherwise, ‘Miss Swallow’ and ‘Mr. Richards’ will have to do.”

“Sold! Nellie, let us have our day at the festival, then. We both deserve a grand time, I’d say. We all do.”

“Sold.”

After Ellen continued on her way, Bob did not want to go back to his quiet room bereft of the company of Marcus. He ended up at a beer shop in the neighborhood known as Little Dublin, and stumbled home in the middle of the night, quite “plucked,” as the college boys said, and beyond noticing Marcus’s absence, or thinking about the faces of Boston’s dying and injured during the weeks of catastrophe, or about the fact there’d be no graduation next month for the Class of 1868. No
graduation ever at their Institute. How tired he was in his bones, yet he could not find a way to sleep. “I’ll do it, Mansfield,” he heard himself say, half conscious of what he meant. “I promise I will.”

Nor had Ellen really wanted to return to her room at Mrs. Blodgett’s after she continued on her way. She went to the public library instead, and drafted letters to private chemists, asking to be considered for any open positions. She then took the letters and deposited them around the city. She did not know if mentioning the Institute helped her or if her affiliation with it would be worn as her own scientific scarlet letter, but did it matter? She knew she would not be asked in for any of the positions when they saw the name of a woman at the bottom of the paper. She had given so much thought to her plan of life at the Institute, the result of cool, deliberate judgment, and she had been very satisfied with the fruits. How noble Robert Richards looked, keeping vigil on the steps of the Institute building, the guardian of lost causes.

By the time she began to make her way to her boardinghouse, darkness had fallen, the streets in the frightened city uncharacteristically deserted. As she was hurrying home, she thought she heard a lone footfall, and sensed a menace. She removed the pearl-handled revolver from the pocket of her coat and spun around, her hand trembling, remembering incongruously how she hadn’t told Bob of her revolver when he’d asked on the roof of her building, not wishing him to think her fearful of living in Boston. Walking backward, she cocked the revolver and shouted, “I will fire, sir, I will fire if I must!” But nobody was there.

At last she reached home, her lips quivering, and threw herself, sobbing, onto her bed. She was thankful her mother was not present to see her behaving like a silly schoolgirl, instead of a woman prepared to face the trials of life unwavering. Baby curled up behind Ellen’s head and wrapped his paws around her hair like a crown.

*   *   *

T
HE SMALL ROW OF ELM TREES
lent a somewhat less severe appearance to the grounds, but only somewhat. This was not really a cemetery, nothing like the fashioned gardens of Mount Auburn over the river in Cambridge; this was a burying yard, cold-blooded and forgetful. The
gates of granite and iron would make any visitor doubt whether his visit was any more welcomed by the dead than by their keepers, especially at such a late hour.

The reluctant caller held his lantern out and swept it over the unevenly shaped gravestones, which were mostly of flimsy sandstone or cracked marble. At least the ancient, haunting character of the place would keep away vagabonds—well, all but the one he sought, he hoped. He lost his step on the overgrown path and stumbled, almost falling flat onto a grave. Damn those beers, and blast the lack of sleep.

The noise he produced sent a shape scurrying past him through the dark. Regaining his balance, Bob shined the smoky light on the moss-covered tomb where the scurrying had come to a stop.

“Hold on there! Don’t be afraid!” Bob whispered.

The shape darted again, this time on all fours, behind a line of jagged graves that led back to the chapel. He ran after it, but the shape was small and quicker.

“I said wait! I’m a friend, damn it! Theophilus!”

The running stopped again at another tomb. A fearful young voice emerged. “Who are you? Did he send you for me?”

“No,” said Bob. “No one sent me.”

“How’d you find me, then?”

Bob couldn’t tell exactly which tomb was speaking to him. He kept his distance so he would not scare the boy into running again. “I’ve been looking for you all night. I’m not the only one: Some of the shops nearby say you’ve been stealing bits of meat and fruit the last few days.”

“Are you here to arrest me for it?” More rustling, preparations for another run.

“Goodness, no! But if you don’t want to be noticed, don’t steal, for heaven’s sake. One of the merchants had been asking around for you, and heard you had been seen sneaking around one of the burial yards. I climbed into the Copp’s Hill and Granary burial yards without finding any sign of you, so I thought I must be getting close here. I brought you something to eat.”

“No thanks!” The sound of sniffing. “You have meat?”

“Boiled pork, well browned, smothered in sauce. That’s right.”

Theo leaned his head out from behind the dilapidated charnel house,
a full ten feet from where Bob had been standing. Bob marveled at how deftly the boy had eluded him.

“How long have you been sleeping here?”

“Dunno. Weeks.”

“Weeks! For goodness sake,” said Bob. “Well, you’re going home tonight.”

“Not with the likes of you, I ain’t! Not if he sent you to bring me!”

“I already told you …” Bob began, growing impatient.

“Say, I remember you!”

“Good boy. That’s right—we had a fine conversation together on State Street.”

“You called me a scamp.”

“I hardly would think you would remember that, of all things.”

“The other fellow, with the mustache. He was awful kind. Where is he?”

Bob cringed at the question and just shook his head. “You’re safe now, Theophilus. Do you have somewhere to go?”

“ ’Pose not,” the boy mumbled, taking a tentative step closer.

In the halo of his lantern, Bob looked the refugee over. His skin was pale and dirty, his greasy head bare, and he was only partially covered by a ragged suit of clothes lined in filth. His hands were lodged deep inside his pockets. “Goodness! Don’t you have parents to care for you?”

“Aye, and four brothers and three sisters, and if I don’t come with any earnings from employment, my father will show me what is what with a rod. I was making believe this was my castle, and each of these stones, one of my knights defending me.”

“What are you hiding in your pockets? Go on. Let me see your hands.”

“No chance!”

“Why not? You can’t eat this if your hands are hidden away. Come on, both hands now.”

With a huff, he slowly withdrew his hands. The hand that had been injured in the catastrophe trembled.

“Just don’t try to get my hands, you hear?”

“Tell me, what happened to make you run off? Why make camp here, of all places, man?”

“He told me I had to! That if I didn’t, he’d …” Theo made a cutting motion with his hand.

“You mean the stockbroker, Joseph Cheshire?”

“Villain!” he replied with emotion. “He chased me into an alleyway and threatened to cut my fingers off my good hand! He would have, too, I vow it! But I must have fainted, and when I woke I was in the back of his carriage wrapped in a blanket. He said only cowardly boys fainted, and he needn’t waste his time with a coward, and told me to stay here in this burying yard until he said different, so I could look at the tombs and remember what would happen if I blabbed ever again! He said he’d bury me right here if I didn’t keep mum or tried to take wing.”

“This was the first burial yard established in all of Boston,” said Bob. “No one has been buried here for a long time. Imagine, Theophilus, my little friend, that one of the first things the settlers in Boston realized they needed to build was a burial yard. Well, that scoundrel won’t be bothering you ever again.”

“Really?” he asked timidly.

“That’s a promise.”

“It’s Thee-a-fil-is, by the by, not Theo-folis!”

Bob lowered himself down, perching on the edge of an ancient grave marker carved with a large skull. “You know, about our last conversation,” he said sullenly. “I know I owe you an apology. You had only been trying to help us and you were in great pain at the time, and I was thinking about myself, and not granting you the respect you earned. But blast it all, Mansfield, even at such an evil hour, there must be more to do!”

The boy stared at him with big, glassy eyes, his hands now resting on his hips.

“Say, Theo,” Bob said, fighting off the fresh wave of exhaustion and regret, “how fares the arm and hand? The injuries, I mean.”

Theo shrugged. “I guess it’ll never be better enough to be the man I could have been.”

“I’d wager my best scarf it will indeed. In fact … Watch out, man!”

He tossed the paper bag into the air. Theo took a few steps back and caught it to his chest, sticking half his face into the bag for his first bite of meat.

“There!” Bob cried out, laughing.

“Why, you’re cracked in the head, too!” Theo said, surplus pork flying out of his mouth as he spoke. “What’s the great joke, mister?”

“You caught that with your right hand, Theo!”

“Say!” the boy marveled when he realized it, his face coloring with pride. “Say, just a week ago, I couldn’t have done that!”

“Come, you’ll eat on the way. I owe you this, too.” He wrapped his scarf, which was thick and black with gold stripes, around Theo’s neck.

“Where will I go?”

“You’ll stay in my rooms tonight, and in the morning I’ll convince some uncle or cousin he needs a smart apprentice like you in his office.”

“You think you can, mister?” he asked, in awe of the idea.

“I am as sure as a gun.”

M
ARCUS WAITED
until Edwin could get away from his family again without attracting undue attention. He did not want to confront Hammie without an ally by his side. Who could guess Hammie’s reaction upon being accused? And even if he confessed, Marcus would need a witness. Not that he expected Hammie to make it easy.

They embarked on their grim mission, following the picturesque embankment from the hotel to the cottage. Suddenly Marcus stopped dead, halfway up the path.

Standing by the water was the unmistakable figure of Louis Agassiz, with his handsome dome-shaped head and broad frame. He appeared to have been waiting in the same spot for some time.

“Back up slowly, Edwin,” Marcus whispered. “We’ll go around the other way.”

“Marcus! Look.”

With a swift movement, the Harvard professor took one step into a pool between the rocks, bent down, and ran a small net through the water, lifting it up with a dainty fish inside. Even at a distance, they could see his face was beaming with joy.

“He does not know who we are, Marcus,” Edwin said. “Why, he probably wouldn’t remember me as being a former student were I pickled in one of his jars. Agassiz has had a cottage here for years, so that he could study the sea life and such. He comes with his family.”

Despite all that was going on, Marcus was struck by Agassiz’s joy at finding what he had been looking for in the fickle flow of nature. It seemed like an eternity since he had seen someone truly happy.

As they stood there watching the Harvard professor, something green
slithered over Marcus’s boot. “It’s one of Hammie’s pet snakes,” Marcus said with alarm, lifting it up from the ground. “Gawain and Bartleby, I think they are called.”

“So?”

“Hammie must have set them free, Edwin,” Marcus said. “He trained them, he named them. Who would do that and then set them free?”

He quickened his pace now, Edwin trying to keep up behind him.

“Say, you boys! What kind of snake is that you have there?” Agassiz called out. He made as if to follow them, shouting questions, but shortly turned back to his own pursuits.

“I hope you are certain about this. We
must
be before we act,” Edwin said to Marcus.

“Hammie will have his chance to tell his side of things and answer our questions. Do you have doubts?”