Paradise Alley (42 page)

Such a beautiful woman she still was.
All but untouched by age—those large, serious brown eyes the same color as her hair.

How troubled she had looked, too, for a change. The pride, the unbending confidence gone, for once, back in that camp by the central park. Realizing the mistake she had made, how her blind faith had gotten them both into this. Doubting herself for the first time since he had known her, but most of all looking sorry for him. Seeing that, he had felt his anger already beginning to crumble—

The tattoo sounded, but he ignored it. There was little discipline enforced in the hospital camp, so long as the men didn't get too drunk or take to fighting. He continued to stare at the daguerreotype, in the
light from his candle and the dog-tooth moon above. Her face seemed to flicker and move in his hand, as they did in such pictures. So serious and somber at first, now seeming to smile ruefully back at him. He sucked at the clay pipe, staring at her image in the wavering light, then licked the pencil and began to write a love letter to his wife.

My darlin girl

Dont worry Im all right—

He had seen her for the first time when she walked into the churchyard, bringing water to the men, the defenders of the faith. Her face was already as beautiful and grave as a saint's, and he knew right then and there that she could have anything she wanted of him.

“Look, it's ‘Mollie Maloney, the wicked colleen'!”

She was with the Sisters of Mercy, bringing succor to the motley army assembled in the walled yard of St. Patrick's. A long line of nuns, the sisters in their habits and wimples. The young women they had taught to be chambermaids and cooks and scrubwomen, trailing after them—heads bent, eyes cast down in the true spirit of Irish womanhood.
The handmaidens of Judah.
Deirdre walked among them, her back held straight, her eyes looking straight ahead. He never knew her to carry herself any other way.

“Oh, but will ye look at that one!”

“Jesus, but ain't that a proud thing!”

They had been sprawled out among the grey slate headstones of the yard, where Dagger John had summoned them. No more than a bunch of
b'hoys
and fire laddies. Carrying whatever they could find, a few old muskets and horse pistols, knives and pikes, but still spoiling for a fight. The Know-Nothing mobs and gangs had been in the streets for days, even pelting the bishop's rectory with rocks, and there were stories that they had burned down every Catholic church in the city of Philadelphia, and that the state militia had been called out.

But nothing had happened. The Protestants had never shown themselves, and they had sat all day by the tombs and the headstones, gossiping like fishwives, and ogling the girls who came to bring them food and water. The other chaste maids from the Sisters of Mercy giggling and smiling behind their hands. The Magdalenes, and the Penitents, and the poor orphaned girls of the Preservation Class—some
of them actual reformed whores, and others who had only been trying to get enough to eat. Just pleased to be out among so many brave men. The
b'hoys
joking and flirting, trying to get a rise out of them—

“Would there be any whiskey in there?”

“Is this already changed to wine, then?”

She
had stopped their blather with a look. Giving out the bread and dried haddock, pouring out the well water the sisters had brought. The men getting to their feet as she approached, standing about awkwardly with their weapons. Trying to act like the defenders of the faith they were supposed to be.

“Thank ye, missy.”

Bowing and nodding to her as if they were knights.

“Thank ye kindly.”

Her head up, eyes straight ahead, more rigid than any soldier on parade. They snickered at her, incredulous, once she was past.

“Oh, but there's a hard one!”

“All beauty has its thorns.”

“Don't be daft! A woman like that, she'll have ya singin' the Murphy hymn before the wedding breakfast is over.”

But Tom had followed her, moving away from the rest of the men lounging in the tall grass. Trying to get in front of her. Trying to get her to
see
him, though he knew how he must look—dirty and insignificant, in his gang boy's soaped locks, his greasy vest and striped pants. He was suddenly ashamed, just to think of himself.
Only another smirking Paddy.

He stepped out before her anyway. Determined to get her to look, at least.

“Accost me on consecrated ground, will you!” she spat out, radiant brown eyes spinning with indignation. “On this day!”

“Anything ya want, miss,” he whispered, trying to hush her but overawed by her beauty at the same time.

The perfect, smooth skin of her face, the long brown hair that matched her eyes. Her voice still filled with righteous rage.

“We are here at the Bishop's request—”

A hard woman, too. He had no doubt but that his friends were right.
His salvation.
He spoke to her again, more sincerely than he had ever said anything in his life.

“Anything at all. You just name it and I'll do it for ye.”

• • •

He had been working as a butcher's boy then, up at The Place of Blood in Houston Street. Wading through piles of entrails. Spending all day slitting the throats of pigs and cows.

Of course, he had had to work his way up to cutting throats. From sweeping the floor—the unbelievable gore there, the entrails to be kept aside from the manure, the bits of brain and eye, the hooves and long trails of spine. All of it had a use, to be separated for some purpose or another. It was a process as mysterious as the Trinity, though he did not doubt its reasons.

Once the thing was dead, the butchers and their apprentices could strip a bull's carcass in a matter of minutes, swarming around it like flies. Slicing off the best cuts for the table, the filets and ribs, and the flanks and rounds and shoulders. Cutting off the hooves and the tail for stews, and pulling out the tongue, and the brain for head cheese, and the heart and the liver. The blood was caught in a drain pan, and the intestines pulled out for the sausage stuffer's, and the hide for the hide curer's, and the bones for the rendering shop. Everything to its use, even the shit that was left behind, wheeled off to the vast manure pile that rose above The Place of Blood like a mountain. Until there was nothing but another fast-drying blotch, a stain upon the floor where the living animal had stood not twenty minutes before.

It wasn't enough for them. On Friday nights the other butcher boys would go up to Bunker Hill—the remnants of an old fort, abandoned since the Revolution, on a little rise above Grand Street. There a proprietor from the Fly Market had arranged hundreds of long benches in a circle, and planted an iron pole in the middle. He would chain a bull to it, and charge them all a penny to watch. All the butchers and skinners, and the butchers' boys and mechanics' apprentices, and all the other workies—still wearing their white paper caps, the leather aprons tied around their waists.

Tom would go with them, for the company. That was his failing, he recognized it. He confessed it each week at St. Patrick's, though the old priest behind the latticework barely understood.

It is natural for man to be with others. These are not impure thoughts, are they?

Bless me, Father, but I hate it.

He went along because he liked the company of men. Still dirty, and bloodstained and sweat-soaked from their twelve hours' work. He liked to be around them, to hear them cursing and guffawing, even to smell their rankness near him. He liked the company of men—but not what they liked.

The bull was always as fierce an animal as they could find. The rare kind they would get every once in a blue moon at The Place of Blood, that did not seem stunned or panicked into submission by the very sight of the slaughtering yards, or the smell of fear from so many of its fellow creatures, but only the more fearless and enraged for it.

Yet for all its bravery, its fate was always the same. The bull holding its own at first, huge and thick-chested, but Tom knew better. When they let the dogs into the ring, it wielded its head like a pair of swords, skewering them on its horns whenever they dared to lunge in too close. The butchers and the skinners and the apprentice boys jumping up and yelling in their excitement. The workies throwing down their bets, their few pennies on the bull.

But the dogs were half-starved, and canny, and the smell of the bull before them drove them to work together. Becoming a pack before their eyes. They darted in, one after the other. Tearing out the tendons in the bull's back legs until it stood immobilized and exhausted before them. Still chained to its pole, staring out at them with yellowed eyes, filling up with blood. When they had tired it enough, the dogs would run in and tear out its belly, and its throat. The butcher boys cheering louder than ever—as if they did not see enough of this, every day of their working lives.

That was what had convinced Tom to go and find her. What had convinced him that there must be something more than this, what he did and what he ate, and what he sat through for entertainment every Friday night.

He liked the company of men, but not what they did.

He had gone up to Gramercy Park, where he had heard she was working as a cook. Wearing the best coat that he could get hold of, borrowed from Feeley, at the firehouse. He had walked up from the Five Points on a Sunday, arriving there near the evening on a warm spring
day, while all the servants were still taking their long promenade around the park.

He only watched them at first—how slowly they walked, as if trying to extend their last few hours of freedom.
Wondering what it must be like, to belong so completely to another man.
Moving around and around the park itself, the rectangular patch of flowers and trees, and the pretty gravel paths, all locked off behind a high, iron fence.

There were women strolling in pairs, and courting couples. A few solitary men such as himself, walking with their heads down. Some of them still in their domestics' uniforms, their maids' hats and aprons, and carriage livery. Sniffing—with their hands carefully behind their backs—at the daffodils and magnolias, and the lilac bushes behind the fence. The last few moments of the evening air, before they had to go back inside—

Tom walked out onto the slate-blue slabs of the paving stones. Joining them, trying not to look too conspicuous. Sneaking glances at the house where he knew she worked, across from the west side of the park. On his third time around, he saw the servants' door open, under the long wooden porch—but only a pair of girls ran out, still in their maids' uniforms, giggling furiously.

The next time around, though, she was there. She had changed from her cook's apron and was wearing a simple, blue-grey dress, almost the color of the slate paving stones. The delicate brown hair pinned up, covered by a modest black shawl.

Even here, she looked the furthest thing from a servant.
Walking as she did with her back straight, and her head held high and proud, just as she had in the churchyard of St. Patrick's.

Like Mollie Maloney, the wicked colleen. Like Joan of Arc herself, walking like that—

The slow, steady stream of domestics divided at once to make way for her. She walked quickly past them, paying no mind to the men who half-bowed, or put their hands to their hats. Rushing on in her own course around the park. Tom hurried to catch up—memorizing her figure there before him, tall and unbending. He wanted to get in front of her, to show himself to her, but he couldn't find the gumption, not even in Feeley's good Sunday coat. Only able to follow her around and around the perfect, empty park, until it was nearly night.

She stepped back across the street, then. Turning back into her
master's yard, walking down to the servants' entrance on the side, under the veranda. Away from him for another week, at least. Perhaps forever—ensconced in the home of some Gramercy Park Yankee, impenetrable as if it were a castle.

Yet somehow, she had managed to leave the gate unlatched, he saw when he came up to it. Tom had crossed the street as casually as he could. Putting a hand on the iron gate, only meaning to close it. But then something had gotten hold of him. He took a quick look for the roundsman stationed on the corner, making sure he was looking the other way. Then he slipped inside the yard, clicking the gate quietly shut behind him.

He still had no good idea of what he was doing. Padding quietly on down a flagstone path to the side of the house, under the wooden porch with its lovely trellis full of roses. Hoping at most—if he had thought about it at all—of getting a quick glimpse of her, in her home, her kitchen.

Yet the side, servants' door was open, too. Tom stared at it for another long moment, wondering what it was she could have been brooding on so to have left it ajar. Not quite certain—yet—that he ever wanted that sort of concentration turned upon himself, but curious anyway.

He pushed the door open the rest of the way and stepped inside. Knowing that it could be a serious charge if he were caught here, even without having taken anything. A crime that could get him years in the Tombs—

He went in anyway. His every footstep seeming to echo down the hall of the servants' quarters. There were no other sounds from the house, everyone out, or at their duties somewhere else.

Except for her. He could hear the sound of her voice then, coming from a room just down the hall.
Talking to someone?
But no—there was only a familiar, quiet, whirring noise, and the sound of her singing.

“Was there ever a sweeter colleen in the dance than Eily Moore?

Or a prouder lad than Thady, as he boldly took the floor?”

Singing to the wheel.
Unable to help himself any longer, he looked around the door into her room, and the sight made him stop his
breath. She sat there at the spinning wheel, singing as she spun her yarn. Her voice soft and barely audible over its steady hum and click, but he recognized the air, from back in Tipperary, when his mother would sit and spin in their single room there. Yet Deirdre's voice was even softer than his mother's. Her hands moving expertly over the spinning cloth, as if she were playing a harp to accompany herself: