She tried to gather her scattered thoughts. New Britain wasn’t some kind of nostalgic throwback to a gaslight age: it was dirty, smelly, polluted, and intermittently dangerous. Clothing was expensive and conservative because foreign sweatshops weren’t readily available: the cost of transporting their produce was too high even in peacetime—and with a war time blockade in force, things were even worse. Politics was dangerous, in ways she’d barely begun to understand: there was participatory democracy for a price, for a very limited franchise of rich land-owning men who thought themselves the guardians of the people and the rulers of the populace, shepherding the masses they did not consider to be responsible enough for self-determination.
It wasn’t only women’s rights that were a problem here—and that was bad enough, as she’d discovered: women here had fewer civil rights than they had in Iran, in her own world; at least in Iran women could vote—but here, anyone who wasn’t a member of the first thousand families was second-class, unable to move to a new city without a permit from the Polis, a subject rather than a citizen. “Fomenting democratic agitation” was an actual on-the-books felony that could get you sent to a labor camp in the far north. Outright chattel slavery might not be a problem—it seemed to have fizzled away in the late nineteenth century—but the level of casual racism she’d witnessed was jarring and unpleasant.
I just want to go home. If only I knew where home is!
The water was growing cold. Miriam finished her ablutions, then returned to the hotel room. It was close and humid in the summer heat, so she raised the sash window, dropping the gauze insect screen behind it. Erasmus can let himself in, she thought, crawling between the sheets. How late will he—she dozed off.
She awakened to daylight, and Erasmus’s voice, sounding heartlessly cheerful as he opened the shutters: “Rise and shine! And good morning to you, Miriam! I hope you slept well. You’ll be pleased to know that your letter made the final collection: it’ll have been delivered already. I’ll be about my business up the corridor while you make yourself decent. How about some breakfast before we travel?”
“Ow, you cruel, heartless man!” She struggled to sit up, covering her eyes. “What time is it?”
“It’s half-past six, and we need to be on the train at ten to eight.”
“Ouch. Okay, I’m awake already!” She squinted into the light. Burgeson was fully dressed, if a bit rumpled-looking. “The chaise was a bit cramped?”
“I’ve slept worse.” He picked up a leather toilet bag. “If you’ll excuse me? I’ll knock before I come in.”
He disappeared into the corridor, leaving Miriam feeling unaccountably disappointed. Damn it, it’s unnatural to be that cheerful in the morning! Still, she was thoroughly awake. Kicking the covers back, she sat up and stretched. Her clothing lay where she’d left it the evening before. By the time Erasmus knocked again she was prodding her hair back into shape in front of the dressing-table mirror. “Come in,” she called.
“Oh good.” Erasmus nodded approvingly. “I’ve changed my mind about breakfast: I think we ought to catch the morning express. How does that sound to you? I’m sure we can eat perfectly well in the dining car.”
She turned to stare at him. “I’d rather not hurry,” she began, then thought better of it. “Is there a problem?” Her pulse accelerated.
“Possibly.” He didn’t look unduly worried, but Miriam was not reassured. “I’d rather not stay around to find out.”
“In that case.” Miriam picked up the valise and began stuffing sundries into it. “Let’s get moving.” The skin in the small of her back itched. “Are we being watched?”
“Possibly. And then again, it might just be routine. Let me help you.” Erasmus passed her hat down from the coat rack, then gathered up her two shopping bags. “The sooner we’re out of town the better. There’s a train at ten to seven, and we can just catch it if we make haste.”
Downstairs, the hotel was already moving. “Room ninety-two,” Erasmus muttered to the clerk on the desk, sliding a banknote across: “I’m in a hurry.”
The clerk peered at the note then nodded. “That will be fine, sir.” Without waiting, Erasmus made for the front door, forcing Miriam to take quick steps to keep up with him. “Quickly,” he muttered from the side of his mouth. “Keep your eyes open.”
The sidewalk in front of the hotel was merely warm, this early in the morning. A newspaper boy loitered opposite, by the Post Office: early-morning commuters were about. Miriam glanced in the hotel windows as she followed Erasmus along the dusty pavement. A flicker of a newspaper caught her eye, and she looked ahead in time to see a man in a peak-brimmed hat crossing the road, looking back towards them. Shit. She’d seen this pattern before—a front and back tail, boxing in a surveillance subject. “Are we likely to be robbed in the street?” she asked Erasmus’s retreating back.
He stopped dead, and she nearly ran into him: “No, of course not.” He didn’t meet her eyes, looking past her. “I see what you see,” he added in a low, conversational tone. “So. Change of plan—again.” He offered her his arm. “Let’s take this nice and easy.”
Miriam took his arm, holding him close to her side. “What are we going to do?” she muttered.
“We’re going to deliberately get on the wrong train.” He steered her around a pillar box, then into the entrance to the station concourse, and simultaneously passed her a stubby cardboard ticket. “We want to be on the ten to seven for Boston, on platform six. But we’re going to get on the eight o’clock to Newport, on platform eight, opposite platform six, and we’re going to get on right at the front.”
Miriam nodded. “Then what?”
“It’s sixteen minutes to seven.” He smiled and waved his ticket at the uniformed fellow at the end of the platform: Miriam followed his example. “At twelve minutes to the hour, we cross over to the right train. If we’re stopped or if you miss it, remember your cover, we just got on the wrong train by mistake. All right? Let’s go…”
Miriam took a deep breath. This doesn’t sound good, she realized, her pulse pounding in her ears as an irrational fear made her guts clench. She resisted the urge to look over her shoulder, instead keeping hold of Burgeson’s arm until he steered her towards a railway carriage that seemed to consist of a row of small compartments, each with its own doors and a running-board to allow access to the platform. As she reached the train, she glanced sideways along the platform. The same two men she’d seen on the street were walking towards her: as she watched, one of them peeled off toward the carriage behind. It’s a box tail all right. She forced herself to unfreeze and climbed into the empty eight-seat compartment, and Erasmus’s arms.
“Hey!”
“This is the hard bit.” He steered her behind him, then pulled the door to and swiftly dropped the heavy leather shutters across the windows of the small compartment. Then he walked to the door on the other side of the carriage and opened it. “I’ll lower you.”