The Fatal Flame Read Free Page B

due to hunger or cold, I mourn for them. Arresting them, though, all the many thousands of them, would be a bit of a wrench, since testimony from the gentlemen who’d bought their kindnesses would be required to convict them. That doesn’t mean, however, that
forced
prostitution is a form of commerce we’re willing to tolerate. We calculate there are enough slaves south of the Mason-Dixon without treating Manhattan women like the cheaper sort of broodmares.
    “We ordered a great bloomin’ lot o’ fresh dells, plump virgin dells fit to break yer hearts and raise yer flagpoles,” Kildare explained, smiling. “Dells with small knubbly titties, dells with great pillow titties, dells with perfect round peach titties to make ye praise the Maker fer—”
    “He’s to bring in six new girls for us special like.” Connell pulled out a small notebook. “To be viewed directly, at a quarter past twelve.”
    A thick stream of respectable dull greys and browns and maroons seeped from the boat as the second-class passengers, faces hopeful and wary, descended the gangway, their plain woolen traveling costumes thrice mended. Shabby young unmarried men who’d carefully brushed their hats, bespectacled women with the addresses of female boardinghouses clutched in spotless gloved hands. The one thing more disgraceful than being poor, I’ve found, is
looking
the part. A penniless but chastely dressed woman is graciously allowed to beg for a stale crust. A slovenly dressed one with a cache of gold in the flour jar from her midnight admirers is widely considered better off dead.
    McGlynn, still hopping a little in expectancy, stilled when the steerage passengers—no better than ambulatory cargo but treated less tenderly—began to stumble blinking from the bowels of the ship onto American soil. I was peering with grim intent at the older man when the flash of a blue hat and a sweep of black hair passed the corner of my eye.
    Before I knew my legs had made a decision, they’d taken two quick steps toward James Slip.
    “Mr. Wilde?” Piest questioned, instantly alert. I must have looked like a greyhound quivering at the starting gate, electric shimmers gliding along my skin.
    I forgot to answer him.
    And it was all nonsense, of course, because
that can’t have been her, the last of the second-class passengers. That can’t possibly have been Mercy Underhill.
    Mercy Underhill, an old friend and correspondent of mine who held my heart in her hands when she imagined she was merely embroidering with them, or doling out beef tea, or writing her darkly magical short stories, lived in London. Not New York. Not since she’d left it, in 1845, three years back.
    But it was just the way she held her head, exactly so, inky hair and papery skin.
Since I was a boy, I’ve been studying the way Mercy carried herself at the slightest of angles, as if reading a book held in one slender hand, as if she were always looking for someone who’d disappeared round the corner, just out of her reach.
    “Mr. Wilde?”
    I stepped back, embarrassed. “I fancied I saw someone I used to know.”
    Nothing remained of her. Only swarming Irish, emaciated to the point of weightlessness, some bloodlessly pale and others burned nut brown from outdoor labor, coming thick and fast as petals blown from fruit trees. That was sensible, though, because Mercy had breathed not a word of returning to the city that had treated her so poorly in her last correspondence to me. And anyway, I love her. I see echoes of her everywhere. I could probably find her face in tea leaves and collapsed puddings, as if she were my first and forever saint.
    “We had him pegged, all right,” Connell said, eyes fixed on our true prize.
    I shook my head in considerable self-disgust, though that didn’t go far toward clearing it.
    “Manufactory work for the healthy and willing!” McGlynn rang a small chiming bell, sign in hand. The lettering wasn’t meant for the emigrant Irish, since nary a