Mending Horses (17 page)

“Well, strike me blind if it ain't Fred!” Mr. Stocking exclaimed.

Daniel and Billy exchanged glances. “Fred?” they asked simultaneously.

“Fred Chamberlain.” Mr. Stocking poked a stubby finger at the handbill tacked up on the tavern wall. “I haven't seen Fred in a dog's age and then some.”

Daniel peered over the peddler's shoulder. “
Prince Otoo Baswamati's Peripatetic Museum and Exhibition of Cultural Artistry and Athleticism
,” the bold letters proclaimed. Underneath, a sinister-looking figure in a turban and flowing robes was labeled “Prince Baswamati, The East Indian Mystic and Conjurer.” The museum promised a “splendid Attraction of Equestrian and Gymnastic Exercises with a beautiful collection of Living Wild Animals,” complete with camelopard; athletes; Madame Staccato, “the Italian Songbird”; Professor Romanov and his six dancing ponies; and Francesca de V., the “Fascinating
Danseuse
,” who would perform “wonderful Suspensions and Tourbillions on the
Corde Volante
.” All, according to the poster, would be “classic, chaste, morally entertaining, and of the highest order of art such as would command the admiration of the scholar, poet, painter, and sculptor.”

Daniel fancied it could take him half the evening to puzzle out all the grand words. Billy slowly sounded out the text, but couldn't get any further than
Peripatetic
.

“It's all just a fanciful name for a circus, isn't it?” Daniel asked.

“More or less,” Mr. Stocking said. “Only a museum's more, well, erudite. Morally uplifting,” the peddler elaborated when
Daniel raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Hence less likely to attract unwanted attention from the humorless, the sanctimonious, the hypocritical, the—”

“The preachers and constables, you mean?” Daniel said.

“Well, them, too,” Mr. Stocking said.

“You ever seen one of these camelwhatsises, Mr. S.?” Billy asked.

“Only seen pictures. It's like God took a goat and a camel and put 'em in a bag and shook it up, then covered it with a leopard skin. It looked so awful, He figured the only thing to do was hang it and try again. But instead of killing it, the hanging only stretched its neck 'til it was that tall.” Mr. Stocking pointed to the flagpole in front of the meetinghouse.

“What's this friend of yours do?” Daniel asked. “Muck out after the camelopard and the ponies? I'm not seeing his name in here anywhere.”

“He uses his professional name—his nom de plumage, as it were. Fred is none other than Prince Baswamati himself.”

“What's a conjurer?” Billy asked.

“Someone who takes your money to make a fool of you,” Daniel said.

“Son, I've seen Fred conjure birds out of thin air, make a horse disappear, turn—”

Daniel interrupted Mr. Stocking midsentence. “Turn your pockets empty, is what he's best at, I'm guessing.”

“A man's got to make a living somehow, don't he?” Mr. Stocking said. “But what Fred's best at ain't in the appearing and disappearing line. What he's best at is using The Sight: reading minds, telling fortunes, communicating with the spirit world.”

Daniel snorted. “Lies and tricks.” Still, a shiver trickled down his spine. He remembered Ma's little vial of holy water that she'd touch to ward off evil or to bring good luck. Daniel didn't believe in anything that he couldn't see and touch, though now and again he would involuntarily cross himself or find Ma's prayers springing to his mind when he was troubled or afraid, as if whatever had failed to protect Ma and Da would spare a thought for him.

Mr. Stocking shook his head. “Maybe so, if good observation is lies and tricks. You watch someone close enough, you get to know what he's thinking. And Fred's got a way of saying things so you'd think they was meant for you, even if he said the exact same things to the fella ahead of you.”

“Can we see the show? Can we, please?” Billy said.

“Show won't be in town 'til tomorrow. We'd have to stay another night,” Mr. Stocking said with apparent reluctance. He peered at Daniel, a mischievous glint in his turtle-like stare. “Got to think about business, not this fol-der-rol-ity.”

“Please, Mr. S.,” Billy begged, about to explode with eagerness.

“I s'pose you could be selling an awful lot of tin to them folk what's come to see the show,” Daniel suggested casually.

“That's right,” Billy said. “I'll sell more tin than you could imagine. I promise. I'll pay me own ticket and yours, too.”

“But it's
my
tin,
my
horse,
my
wagon,” Mr. Stocking said. “That means anything you sell is
my
money, don't it? I think you got to do more than sell a little tin to earn your way into a show.” He gestured toward the poster. “ 'Specially one as good as all that.”

Billy tugged at Mr. Stocking's coattail like a desperate five-year-old. “Please, Mr. S. I'll be ever so good, and I won't fight with Daniel even once.”

Daniel grinned. “That'd be worth staying for the show just to see.” He didn't care about seeing the show himself; it was naught but folk spending money to be fooled and lied to. Although it would be a curiosity to see if them ponies really could dance.

“Whyever are you so mad for washing up?” Billy asked. “I never seen a lad as particular for being clean as you.”

Daniel gave her one of his sharp looks. “It's 'cause I don't care for going hungry.”

“What's being clean got to do with being hungry?” She perched on the end of the bed and wrapped her arms around her legs.

He leaned closer to the mirror and rubbed a hand across his jaw. “Where I was bound out, you'd come to dinner clean or you'd
not get dinner at all. You'd maybe get a thrashing instead.” He apparently found a phantom whisker or two and began to lather his cheeks and chin.

“But nobody cares now,” Billy protested. Granted, today was special, with them going to Mr. Chamberlain's museum, but surely a quick rinse of hands and face would do. No, he had to scrub himself pink, an entire waste of soap, water, and time. No amount of washing would ever improve his looks. She eyed the bony ridge of his spine. He oughtn't to leave his braces hanging down while he shaved. He was so spindly that one tug on his broadfalls would send them down about his ankles. She measured the distance between bed and door, wondering how fast she'd be able to get out of his reach if she tried it.

“Well, maybe I'm the one caring now,” Daniel said. “Maybe I'm not liking folk thinking the way they do about us.” He must have read her mind, for he shrugged one strap of his braces over his scarred shoulder.

“Us?”

“Us Irish. They think we're all drunken thieves. I'm not having them thinking that of me.”

“You sound like Liam,” she said.

Daniel raised an eyebrow. “Liam?”

“Me brother. He's grown,” she said. “He shaves for real,” she added, as Daniel's razor reached the curve of his chin where he tended to cut himself. “He's got hair on his chest, too.”

Daniel squinted one eye sidelong at her and disappointed her by rounding his chin without drawing so much as a dot of blood. “That all you got?” he asked. “Just the one brother?”

“There's Jimmy and Mick, too. They're little.” She'd tried not to think much about them since Mr. S. had bought her. Now they seemed like people in one of Mr. S.'s books, far away, with naught to do with her.

“Liam, Jimmy, and Mick,” Daniel said. “William James Michael. So that's where you took your name from, eh?”

“I got to be calling meself something, don't I now?” she said.
“Liam was always after us about being decent, but I was hardly seeing the point. Me da
is
a drunk. And everyone's a thief.”

“Everyone?”

“Don't tell me you never stole nothing,” she said.

He gave a weary sigh. Pulling his upper lip stiff, he worked at it for much longer than even Mr. S. with his dark, heavy beard would have needed.

“That's what I thought,” she said.

“Aye, so I have,” he finally said. “But them days are over. Anyway, I'm hardly decent people, now, am I?”

“Decent people,” she repeated with a snort. “They steal worst of all, don't they?”

“Well, there are them as thinks they're decent and them as really are,” Daniel said. “What about Mr. Stocking?”

Mr. S. was far and away the decentest person she'd ever known, never mind what folk thought of peddlers. But to admit that would be to let Daniel be right. “What is it but thieving when you pay ten cents for a thing and turn about and sell it for twenty?” There, she had him. She could tell from the way his mouth did that little fishy gaping thing.

“Business,” he finally said, snapping his jaw shut.

“Businessmen is nothing but thieves, they are.”

“Fine. Have it your way.” He picked up the towel from the washstand and snapped it open to dry his face. Throwing the towel at her in disgust, he turned to snatch up his shirt. “Next you'll be saying that God and all His saints are a pack of thieves, won't you?”

She kicked the towel onto the floor and jumped from the bed. “God's the worst of 'em all. Didn't He steal me mam away? And yours, too?”

He crumpled the shirt between his fingers. “Aye,” he said softly. “And me da and brother as well.” Turning his back on her, he pulled on his shirt. He took a long time about tucking it in and pulling his braces over his shoulders. Then he stood by the window, looking out at nothing.

Sighing, he rubbed his face and turned around to finish dressing. She couldn't look at him for the longest time, but listened as he moved about the room, putting on his vest and searching for his cravat. The bed ropes creaked as he sat to put on his shoes and stockings. He nudged her elbow. “Put your shoes on, lass,” he said softly. “You can't be going to the show barefoot.”

For once, she didn't bristle when he called her
lass
. “I'd'a not minded so much had He taken me da and left me mam,” she said, picking up her shoes.

He moved over on the bed to make room for her.

“Do you never stop missing 'em?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Ask me again in twenty years.” He took her shoes and polished them up against his trousers. “You got your brothers, though. Don't it trouble you to have left 'em?”

“It never troubled them to leave me. Jimmy and Mick'd run about the streets playing all day while I was trapped inside. I could'a been a kettle or a stick of wood or a bucket, for all they'd'a noticed. As long as they can have their fun, they'll not miss me a bit.”

“Ah, sure they would.”

“Maybe at mealtimes or when their trousers need mending,” she said. She tried to push them back into the dark corner of her heart where she'd kept them all the spring and summer, but their laughing, grimy faces wouldn't be shut out. When Mr. S. had bought her, all she'd thought of was how grand it would be never to see Da again. She'd not thought about being apart from Jimmy and Mick forever. And Liam.

“Liam might miss me,” she said. Jimmy and Mick would make fun of her singing, but Liam seemed truly glad of it. At night, when he'd come home weary and filthy and blistered and barely able to stay awake through his meal, he'd ask her for a song to help him to sleep. She liked to believe that her music had helped ease Liam's spirit. For what did Liam have but the few minutes of singing she'd given him at the end of his weary day?

“Liam's maybe the only one I know who'd not be a thief,” she said. Liam had wanted so hard to be like decent folk. And where
did it get him? Jimmy and Mick were thieves and their lives were full of fun and laughter. Billy herself was a thief, stealing Liam's cast-off clothes and abandoning her chores to wander the streets, singing and picking pockets. On a good day, she might bring home as much in a few hours' singing and thievery as Liam did after fourteen hours' work with pick and shovel.

And all the while, when he'd sooner cut his own throat than steal from anybody, everybody stole from Liam. Da, who took Liam's wages when he could, and thrashed him when he couldn't. Jimmy and Mick, who left the kindling for Liam to chop and the water for him to fetch. The merchants who bought things for ten cents and sold them for twenty, and Liam with only nine cents in his pocket. And the men that Liam worked for worst of all, stealing away his time and strength and not paying him enough for his work. And now she'd gone and stolen the music away from his evenings.

“Aye,” she said. “Liam might miss me.”