“See here now—what are you doing, standing about like that?”
Biting down on a curse, Eliza turned, and saw a constable eyeing her suspiciously. All at once she became aware of her clothing: two ragged skirts, layered for warmth and because she had nowhere to keep the second but on her body. Men’s boots, their leather cracked and filthy. A shawl that hadn’t seen a good wash since the last time it rained. Her bonnet had once been some respectable lady’s castoff, but that was years ago; the ribbons she used to tie it did not match, and there was a hole in the brim big enough to poke her thumb through.
And she’d been standing there for several minutes, staring at a housefront as if wondering how to break in.
Out of the corner of her eye, Eliza glimpsed a bearded gentleman in a bowler hat knocking at the door of No. 9. “Would you like to buy some oysters, sir?” she asked the constable, her attention on the other side of the street. A maid opened the door, and let the gent in.
“No, I wouldn’t,” the bobby said, nose wrinkling at their old stench. “Get you gone. The sort of people who live here don’t need the likes of you around.”
The likes of her would never get into that house, either. Eliza ducked her head and mumbled an apology, pushing her barrow past the fellow, carefully not looking at the house as she went.
He followed her to the nearby High Street; she was able to lose him in the crowds there. Tongue stuck into the gap where her father had knocked out one of her teeth years ago, Eliza considered her options.
She didn’t have many. But she wasn’t willing to give up, either. If she couldn’t attend the meeting of the London Fairy Society, then at least she could try to see who did.
Making a halfhearted effort to cry her oysters, she turned left on the next street she found, hoping Islington’s tangle wouldn’t defeat her the way the City’s sometimes did. A few narrow courts gave her no luck, before she found an alley that went through, back to White Lion Street. She gave it a careful look before proceeding, but didn’t see the peeler anywhere.
Eliza hurried down the pavement, barrow rattling before her. Memory served her welclass="underline" the house across the street and down one door from No. 9 had shutters drawn and locked across its windows, and the lamp at the door was not lit. Uninhabited, or the residents had gone on a journey. Either way, no one was around to object if she hid in the area at the bottom of their basement steps.
She waited until no one was nearby, then hefted her barrow down, trying not to spill the remaining oysters everywhere, or trip in the darkness. Then she threw the more ragged of her two skirts over them to mute the smell, and peeped through the iron bars to see what happened on the other side of the street.
It seemed almost everyone had arrived already, for she only saw one additional person knock at the door. This was a young lady, she thought; it was hard to tell, for the woman made every attempt at secrecy, even tugging her hood forward and darting glances about the street. Eliza shrank back into the shadows, and when she looked out again, the door was closing behind the mysterious girl.
Then it was seven o’clock, and no one else came. Eliza sat on the cold steps to think some more. Should she go around the back? If there was a garden, she might be able to climb into it, and if the meeting was on the ground or first floor… common sense reasserted itself. More than likely she’d be caught, especially with that peeler around.
Better to wait for next month. There were a few people in Whitechapel who owed her favors, or were sympathetic to pleas for help; she might be able to get herself clean and respectable enough to knock on the door.
But that meant a whole month more without Owen. A month closer to possibly losing him forever.
Eliza dug in her pocket and drew out a battered piece of paper, its corners long since torn off by ill handling. She had to stop herself brushing her thumb across the faces, for fear she’d wear them even more indistinct.
Mrs. Darragh, her arms spread wide to embrace the children before her. Little Maggie. Eliza, her black hair unruly even after Mrs. Darragh’s efforts to tame it. And Owen, a knock-kneed boy of twelve. It was the only picture of him, taken in celebration of Maggie’s first communion.
She had to preserve it. Without the photo, Eliza feared she would forget what he looked like.
Shivering, she crossed her arms on her bent knees and laid her forehead against them. He’s dead, you stupid fool, Maggie had said. Eliza had proof to the contrary, of a sort, though she didn’t dare admit it.
The girl might have guessed, if she ever bothered to think about it. Eliza and Owen had never told Maggie about the faeries, but she knew perfectly well about the ghosts. She’d been there when Eliza saw her mother, a full year after the woman had died. And she knew Eliza had summoned others, or tried to—though not why.
It had been a foolish dream, for the likes of her. Most of the women earning fame, and sometimes money, as mediums or spiritualists were of the middling sort: bored solicitors’ wives, ladies too respectable to work for a living, but not rich enough to enjoy their idleness. Not Irish hoydens. And it would hardly have gone over well in Whitechapel, where speaking to ghosts was likely to brand her a witch. But if it had worked…
The ghost part worked well enough. But before she could try and make money at it, Owen had disappeared. The only ghost she’d tried to summon since then was his, every All Hallows’ Eve.
Five years she’d tried, calling for her lost friend, trying to manifest him in the air before her, or at least feel the comfort of his presence in her mind. Five years of failure, and then she’d given up, because she no longer wanted to know. If he came, she would know he was dead. If she didn’t try, she could tell herself he was still alive, and ignore the possibility that perhaps she just wasn’t strong enough to raise him.
It didn’t make sense, but there it was.
To her surprise, she heard the bell of a nearby church tolling eight. Lifting her head once more, Eliza felt the imprint of folded cloth on her forehead. She’d fallen asleep. Bloody lucky, you were, not to be caught by the peeler. Silently calling herself nine kinds of idiot, Eliza stood and looked through the bars again.
Lights still burned in the house across the street, and before long the front door opened. A maidservant emerged, trotting off toward High Street; shortly after she returned, a hansom cab arrived, followed by someone’s brougham. People began to depart—Eliza counted seven, ranging from the gentleman she’d seen before to a matronly woman in the gaudiest bonnet she’d ever laid eyes on. The only one missing was the furtive young woman, and just when Eliza was about to give up waiting, she appeared on the steps.
Followed almost immediately by another woman. “Miss Kittering!”
The first one paused, hands on the edge of her hood, ready to pull it up. The light above the steps of No. 9 showed her to be quite a wealthy young woman indeed; she had obviously taken care to choose plain clothing, but her pert little cap had some very expensive feathers in it. The hair beneath was a glossy yellow, twisted into an elegant knot. Eliza caught only the briefest glimpse of her face, though, before the young woman turned to see who had hailed her.
The other woman was remarkable in her very lack of remarkability. Medium-brown hair; medium-age features; medium-quality clothing that could have belonged to the wife of a middling professional man, perhaps a solicitor or a clergyman with a good living. As she hurried down the steps to join Miss Kittering, though, a strange intensity came into her manner, that gave the lie to her drab appearance. “Will you spare me a moment?”
Miss Kittering glanced behind her, to where one last carriage waited. “I must get back—”