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 his 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 papers—I 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 rain—we all had—but 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 run—but 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 38 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 clothes—filthy 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 their 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 kindness—oh, 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, lo—nothing. 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.
XV
A RESURRECTION
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. I 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 Sunder-land 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.
“Three shillings for sitting in your alligator hands not thirty seconds?” the landlord roars, but ultimately pays her price, because, as Mag knew, he wouldn’t have hung about if he didn’t seriously want it.
Despite his blustering, Whilky leaves more or less satisfied with his deal. Having cashed in the 6 s. linen gown, he technically got the dress for eight, and eight shillings is a small price to pay for expanding one’s empire. It’s a dangerous time to be entrepreneurial, this he knows, but the Quarantine can’t last forever; he’s already heard rumblings that that sot Londonderry is insisting it be lifted. He’ll take the Eye off blue duty and place her on white, and the hell with Gustine, ungrateful little chit that she is. Out of the kindness of his heart, when he found out her brat had died and she’d lost her job at the pottery, he let her crawl back into the dress, but has she earned any money for him? No, she’s done nothing but mope over that tiny coffin, making the whole house miserable and maudlin. At least it’s finally in the ground and they can all move on with their lives.
BY ORDER OF THE BOARD OF HEALTH
Loose BOWELS are the
First Sign of
THE CHOLERA MORBUS
Call Immediately for a Doctor
All Sickroom Bedding and Clothing
must be BURNED
All Cholera DEAD must be
BURIED
TWELVE HOURS
after Death
BY ORDER OF LAW
Out front of Mag’s the actors have paused directly in front of a bulletin, to confer and divvy up their money. Talk of timetables and stagecoaches engage the three men, but the lady, prim and pert of manner, looks up and down the Low Quay with unconcealed disgust. Her eyes widen at the sight of Whilky shoving into his satchel her Phebe dress, made by an old Italian widow who finally went blind stitching on the last rows of glass beads. Miss Watson had sobbed uncontrollably when ordered to part with it, for it was her favorite gown, and though exceedingly pastoral, could be made to double in a pinch as a wedding dress. But with the complete failure of the troupe’s “Cholera Morbus; or Love and Fright,” they were utterly destitute, and the only thing worse than surrendering the dress would have been staying in this godforsaken town. Now they have enough money to move on to London and remount the wretched production there—where it will be appreciated, in the words of the injured Mr. Eliot, playwright, who has still not forgiven Sunderland’s refusal to riot.
“You’ve bought my dress, I see,” Miss Watson calls to Whilky Robinson. “I hope you will take care of it.”
“It’s being put to a very special use,” smirks Whilky. “Employment with a high profile, I assure you.”
“Good,” replies Miss Watson haughtily, suspicious of being mocked. “I’ve been married in it many times.”
“Where’re ye off to?” asks Whilky, sniffing out a stagecoach schedule in the scrawny actor’s hand.
“London.”
“To tread the boards?”
“Just so,” replies Mr. Eliot, thinking, What a wonderfully cretinous character to punish Miss Watson with! Can I write him into my next production?
“I’m a bit of a performer myself,” smiles Whilky broadly. “I pretend to give a bloody shit about my lodgers and their gittish little problems.”
“Brilliant!” exclaims Mr. Eliot, slapping the landlord’s back, while a thoroughly disgusted Miss Watson fights the urge to snatch her poor Phebe from this vulgarian’s hands.
“M’little friend here is even more of a star,” continues Whilky, reaching into his frock coat and extracting the weasel, who’d sought warmth in his armpit. “Meet Mike, who today is fighting Fat Tom’s upstart collie for Crown Prince of Ratters. Ye look like betting men to me. Care to join us for a beer and a match?”
Miss Watson sniffs indignantly, but Mr. Eliot eagerly agrees. They’ve missed the morning coach and the next one won’t be along until eleven this evening. Mr. Mortimer and Mr. Webster both look dubious, but Eliot’s always going off after material for his sketches. At least they can kill time inside, out of the cold.
“Aw, do come along, miss.” Whilky bows winningly. “There’s many a dainty sundry for a woman of your refinement at my brother’s place.”
What else is she to do? Wait by herself on the streets of Sunderland? With a shudder she takes the arm presented her, already imagining the adulterated wine and rancid leek tarts in store. “Just one last thing,” says the landlord, reaching behind her lovely brown head and ripping the Board of Health sign from the wall. He takes from his bag one of his
many DEATH ACCUSING THE RICH, and tacks it in its place. “Must do our part for the Health of the Nation,” he smiles.
At stake tonight: the sovereign title, Crown Prince of Ratters. Last year’s champion: Mike, Whilky Robinson’s ferret. This year’s challenger: Fat Tom Brown’s mangy, half-mad Border collie, Banquo. The contest: A teeming cage of one hundred sewer rats, fifty each to be let loose in two five-minute intervals, during which time the contestants, one at a time, are to set upon them, following which the lifeless bodies shall be counted by an impartial judge and the regalia awarded to that ratter (dog or ferret) judged most mortiferous. Mike is the odds-on favorite, but Banquo, being larger and more erratically ferocious, is a true dark horse.
“Where are the rats then?” asks a curly-headed brunet gentleman of the labourer who has been explaining the event. “I see no cage of one hundred rats.”
“Not here yet,” replies his knowledgeable companion. “Comes at the last minute to avoid accidents.”
So the brunet gentleman must sketch from imagination a cageful of ferocious, furious rodents, pushing their heads through the bars, hissing gruesomely at the spellbound audience. The reality is quite different. The capacity crowd laughs and jokes, ignoring the hastily constructed center pit, which is filled with sand and ringed with an elbow-high wall to keep the terrified rats inside. Here to lay wagers on the contest are butchers who’ve scrubbed their hands but missed their bloody forearms, splintery glassworkers from the Wear Flint Bottle Works, a prim teacher of sewing and arithmetic at Donnison’s Charity School for Girls, whose father was a rat catcher and in whose heart the blood sport holds a sentimental place. Then there are the keelmen, the recently laid-off pottery workers, and of course those men whose job it is to do nothing all day but complain about the Quarantine that keeps them doing nothing all day, forming, as usual, the main constituency of John Robinson’s clientele. In the middle of this rabble sits the brunet gentleman, his burnt-sausage-coloured locks falling into his eyes as he hastily scribbles notes on his companions: Woman to my left: fat, flatulent, bovine specimen. Breasts as big as my head. Wet nurse? Man beside her: scrawny and consumptive-looking. Former R.C. postulant, now fills his evenings with gin and rat baiting? He has sketched in a charcoal gray wash of humanity, a good deal more pockmarked and boil-ridden than perhaps Nature has drawn, but after all, he is trying to get the Flavor of the event, to show what amusements the Poor must pursue, denied the education to enjoy a good book. Next to him, nursing his fifth beer, sits our old friend Robert Cooley. An amazing personage, really, thinks the sketch artist, for did you know he’d single-handedly fought off six doctors coming after his carcass with saws and knives?