Priya in her trousers and braces seemed to have forgotten she wasn’t supposed to look me in the eye. She stared right at me, and I didn’t want to be the sort who would inflict what Miss Bethel would call The Agony of Expectation on anybody, much less somebody as brave and bright and wonderful as Priya. But I weren’t thinking too fast, somehow. And I was talking even slower. And Priya’s fierce expression and the weight of her looking at me weren’t making it any easy to twist my mind around to words.
Finally I found my tongue. “Where would I be if you hadn’t decided I could stay, Madame? Licking radium brushes in the clock factory until my jaw rotted off? Of course I want her here.”
Madame didn’t look up from her knees, but I caught the wrinkle of her smile.
Madame heaved a big breath and said, “Well. I guess that settles it. Priya, Karen here will take you down to meet Miss Francina. She’ll find you a room, and if you like you can start work tomorrow. I take thirty percent for the house and thirty percent pays for board. The other forty percent is yours to keep or spend as you see fit, though I fucking recommend you save some of it. The constables get served on the dead, I’m afraid, but we draw up a roster of who waits on ’em by turns and if they want to choose outside of it, they pay. The other ladies will help you find clothes until you can buy some of your own.” She did look up, then, and weighed Priya with a glance that like swept over her. “Beatrice’s dresses will be a little short, but that’s no burden to a tart, and they’ll fit until you start to fill out a little—”
“I won’t whore,” said Priya, as if every word had hooks on it. “And I won’t wear skirts.”
Madame stopped. She said, “Everyone in this house works. There ain’t nothing wrong with honest whoring, child.”
“I don’t like it.”
There wasn’t much either of us could say to that. I liked it better than going blind in a factory sewing shirtwaists or whatnot. But we ain’t all put together the same, and I suppose God made us different for a reason.
Merry, who had been watching with that fuzzed-over expression people get when they’re full up on laudanum, roused herself to say, “We’ll find you work, Priyadarshini, if you want work.”
Priya smiled sideways at her, then took a big breath and said to Madame, “I can do other things. I can cook, and tend hens, and make a bed. I can’t sew fancy, but I can mend. I can garden. I’m a good weaver and can do sums. And I speak Sanskrit, Hindi, Tamil, and Chinese. Northern and Southern.”
Madame cocked her head to one side and said, “Cao ni laomu de lanbi!” I could tell whatever she said, it weren’t no nice thing.
Priya’s lips twitched. In a completely decorous tone, she answered, “Ni ma shi guisunzi, ni ba dai lü maozi!”
Madame stared at Priya for a long moment, then grinned. She rocked back and forth to start heaving to her feet. I itched to give her my hands, but I knowed she wanted to do it on her own, so I grabbed my wrist behind my back and stood tiptoe, looking at Priya as the safer option. Safer than what?
Well, it was where my eyes wanted to rest anyway.
Standing at last, Madame said, “You’ll ruin your hands scouring pots, girl.”
Priya shrugged. “No more than I would if I were married.”
Madame made a little moue with her lips and nodded kind of sidewise, conceding. “We’ll see. There’s certainly enough cleaning to do, and I imagine Connie needs the help. You’ll get wages as a domestic, though. You understand that.”
“Room and board, too?” Merry asked, eyes bright.
“And room and board,” Madame agreed, a wry smile twisting her mouth.
Priya nodded. She crossed the room to me in quick, small steps, then stopped. She turned back toward Madame and wrung her hands in the knit of her giant cardigan. “Madame—”
Her voice broke in a way I didn’t understand. Hadn’t Madame just given her permission to stay? Even if she didn’t want to take in alterations? Me, I’d rather whore than scrub floors; it’s easier work and the money’s better. But I could see how after Bantle you might not want any man’s rooster making up to your birdie, so to speak. What more could she be wanting?
“Speak up, child,” Madame said. Not cruelly, she continued, “I can’t fucking abide fucking mealymouthed women.”
Priya’s back straightened. I laid a hand on her elbow, realizing too late that I should of asked her first, but she seemed to stand up straighter at the touch, so that was all right, probably. Her throat rippled with a swallow. Nobody was ever braver than Priya.
“I have a sister,” she said. “I don’t know if she’s still with Bantle, or if he sold her on. She’s two years younger. Her name is Aashini.”
That wrinkle of a smile on Madame turned into the furrow of a frown. She said, “I’m sorry.”
“I want to get her out.”
“I’m sure you do,” said Madame. She glanced at Merry. “But there’s not much I can do about it, child. None of those cribhouse pimps would sell her to me, not with the way things now stand between us. And it’s one thing to shelter an escaped whore. It’s another to go steal one.” She paused, brows beetling. “Do you even know if she’s alive?”
Priya looked at her feet.
Madame nodded. It wasn’t a kind nod, but it weren’t cruel nor satisfied, neither. It was a tired, just-what-you’d-expect-then nod. Her eyes didn’t look as bright as I was used to. “Well then,” she said. “I’ll take on Peter Bantle if he comes to my house, never fear. But going after him in his den might stretch my resources, young lady. And without more to go on … Still. Maybe we can find out something about young … Aashini. But I wouldn’t hold my breath about it, and doing more may take money.”
Money Priya wasn’t going to earn as a domestic. That much went without saying.
“I understand,” Priya said.
I knowed from the set of Madame’s jaw that she was considering ordering Priya not to go looking on her own, neither — and realizing that it would be useless. My da would of said that a good master keeps his authority in part by not asking for the impossible except when he really has to. If he does that, then his horse won’t realize it’s impossible when he asks for it.
“Go on then,” Madame said. “Get on with you.”
Priya gave a glance to Merry Lee. Merry Lee nodded wearily. “Go rest,” she said in a cracked voice. “I think you’ll know where to find me.”
It’s God’s truth that she didn’t look like she was getting far, anyway.
I led Priya out the door, shutting it carefully, and showed her where the back stair was. What would of been the servants’ stair in most houses, but we used it for getting around without the tricks getting in our way, when the house was working. We rattled down. I should of been eager to get to the parlor before the other girls got all the sober men, and the ones with good breath — there’s nothing duller than trying to charm up a snake that won’t rise due to whiskey. I like to do my work and get it over with. But Priya seemed to move in a warm glow of comfort, like a good fire on a cold day, and walking along beside her made my heart lift.
We hadn’t made the second landing when I thought of something. And as I tend to, I said what I thought before I thought about it enough. If you know what I mean. “A lot of men come in here,” I said with a rush. “Most of ’em won’t be the same ones that go to the cribs. At least not regular. But one of ’em might … know your sister. Or at least have heard of her.”