His rheumy eyes took on what he probably thought was a cunning look, and Eliza wondered if he was thinking of robbing her. Let him try; she had a knife under her shawl, and in his state she was probably the stronger of the two. “You’re looking wondrous fine, Miss O’Malley,” he said, with a mockery of a bow. “Fine enough to be buying a dinner of whitebait, even. And a man can help much better on a full stomach, he can.”
How bad had things been for him lately, that he wanted food more than drink? Against Eliza’s better instincts, a touch of pity stirred her heart. Grudgingly, she said, “Not whitebait, or do you think silver sprouts up wherever I walk? But you’ll have oysters now, and a hot baked potato afterward, if you can keep your hands to yourself. Grab my paps like you did last time, and you’ll have a knee in the bollocks instead, understand?”
Whelan had fewer teeth, too, since the last time she saw them, and what remained were badly tobacco stained. But his smile looked sincere enough. “You always were a spirited lass. Oysters first, and then we’ll talk.”
It was true, she could have afforded more. For all the many things Eliza hated about working on Cromwell Road, her wages were not one of them; between the pace of her work and her own instinct to keep her head low, she’d scarcely spent a penny more than she had to. It might have been nice to go into one of the riverside taverns, get a table in a bay window, have a proper meal of fish and beer—like a normal woman.
But not in Dónall Whelan’s company. They ended up perched on two piles of rope on one of the sufferance wharves, licking oyster juice off their fingers while gulls circled in predatory hope. Eliza kept one eye on the birds and one on Whelan, not trusting him more than an inch. At the moment, though, he was fully involved with his food, bolting it as if he hadn’t eaten in days—and perhaps he hadn’t.
When he paused for breath, she said, “I need to know what to do about a changeling.”
She was glad she’d waited; her statement set Whelan to coughing, and she wouldn’t have wanted him to choke on an oyster. The coughing turned to laughter soon enough. “A changeling? And you with your harsh words before, swearing it would be a cold day in hell before you asked Dónall Whelan’s advice again, on fairies or any other thing.”
Eliza remembered those words very well. She’d gone to Whelan after Owen vanished, because Mary Kinsella said his father had been a fairy doctor in Ireland, with knowledge of how to treat the ailments they brought on mankind. Supposedly the father had passed that knowledge on to his son. If that was true, Whelan had forgotten half of it, and scrambled the other half. He wouldn’t even believe her about what she’d seen, swearing blind these English had no fairies, that they’d run them all out with their soulless Anglican church. But all Eliza knew of changelings was some half-remembered tales; she needed advice, and Whelan’s—bad as it might be—was the only advice she knew how to get.
“It won’t be your missing lad,” Whelan said, picking bits of oyster from between his teeth with one ragged fingernail. “You’d have more panic in you if it were, and more hope. So who’s been stolen this time?”
“’Tis none of your concern, who it might be.”
“I could say it was.” Whelan shifted to find a more comfortable perch on his rope. “Could tell you it matters, for disposing of a fairy. But the truth is I want to know, and I’m thinking you owe it to me—call it an apology. You hurt my feelings something dreadful, last time.”
Eliza scowled. “The devil with you and your hurt feelings. Answer me, or I’ll be off, and you’ll get nothing more than the oysters you’ve already had.”
But Whelan’s gap-toothed grin told her the bluff had failed, even before he spoke. “And you’ll be asking the next fairy doctor instead? If you knew one, you’d be asking him already. You’re desperate, Eliza O’Malley; it may not be your lad who’s gone changeling, but either you care about whoever it was, or you still think you can get him back. So tell me what I want to know, and we’ll go on from there.”
A fellow passed by them, pushing an empty wheelbarrow. Eliza’s skin drew tight, muscles tensing to readiness. She’d taken one of the workmen’s trains that morning, leaving Cromwell Road before five o’clock to pay her fare and join the throngs of laborers on their way to work. She’d reckoned the Underground a safe enough way to go; few people boarded the third-class carriages from South Kensington Station, especially at that hour, and none rode so far around the incomplete Inner Circle, a horseshoe journey north and east and south to the Tower of London. If anyone had followed her, she would have seen. But the peelers kept watch over the docks, and especially over the Irish there, to stop dynamite being brought in. She waited until the workman was gone, then said, “Not that it means anything to you, but Miss Georgiana Barlow.”
It was the first name that came to hand, a friend of Louisa Kittering’s, likewise making her debut in London. “Miss,” Whelan said, as if tasting the courtesy. “Some young nob, is it? And why do you care?”
“I don’t. But as you said, it might help Owen. Now you’ve got what you want; give me what I’m paying for.”
Whelan eyed her, sucking in his hollow cheeks, as if gauging whether he could squeeze anything more from her first. Eliza glared at him, not having to pretend a mounting fury, and he gave in. “Sure ’tis simple enough; I’ve done it a dozen times. Sometimes, with infants, you can give them back: put the changeling on the seashore, or where two rivers come together, or on the edge of a lake, and the fairies will reclaim their own, knowing ’tisn’t wanted. But more often, you have to make it go away on its own.”
She didn’t even know why it had come in the first place, except to disguise the theft of the real Miss Kittering. “How?”
“There’s medicines, but I don’t know how they’re made. Better to be straightforward: beat the changeling, or kick it, or starve it; forcing it underwater can work, or holding it over a fire—”
“I can’t do that!” Eliza exclaimed in horror, cutting off his rambling suggestions. For one fractured instant, her mind tried to imagine dragging the false Louisa down to the kitchen, flinging the pots and saucepans off the top of the range, forcing the screaming young woman into their place. I wouldn’t live long enough to be arrested.
Whelan shrugged. “If the fairy leaves, they have to give the stolen one back. But it isn’t easy to make them leave.”
“How do you know they have to give the human back? They took Owen, and didn’t leave anyone in his place.”
“True.” Was it her imagination, or did Whelan look troubled? He bent his attention to his fingernails, picking at the ragged edge of one until it broke off. “If you’re clever, then sometimes it works to use trickery instead.”
It said something very unpleasant about Whelan that he suggested drowning and roasting before trickery. “Tell me about that,” Eliza said, trying not to let her relief get the better of her. What followed next might not be any better.
But it was better—if not terribly convincing. “Some say if you can trick the changeling into admitting that ’tisn’t human, then it will be bound to leave.”
“How—by asking it questions that the person should know the answers to?”
He shook his head. “No, they often seem to know quite a lot.” And indeed, Eliza knew, that was true of the false Louisa. Whelan said, “I’ve only heard the one story of this, and I don’t remember it well. But there was a woman with a little child that had been stolen away, and she did something unnatural to confuse it. The thing said it had never seen that in all the centuries of its life, and so showed it was a changeling; and after that, it had to go away.”