Chapter 13
CHAPTER 13
“ I ’m sorry.” Crow sounded weary. They were propped up in bed, dawn sneaking in through the window.
“You don’t do it on purpose, do you?”
“No. And you’re not doing that time-shifty thing on purpose. Jesus, wouldn’t it be nice if someone handed us a guide to our superpowers so we knew what to expect and how to control them?”
Simeon leaned over and kissed his cheek. “That would take all the mystery out of things.” He got out of bed, stretched, and wandered to the window. Cloudy skies but no rain at the moment. Also several crows perched on a nearby roof, looking his way. He couldn’t tell if they were ordinary birds or a message or portent of some kind. He found himself wanting to fly out and join them.
“What if I could control my… what did you call it? Time-shifty thing?” He didn’t turn around to see Crow’s response, but he could catch a hint of his reflection in the glass.
“Control how?”
“Choose when I do it. And when I see. ”
Crow was silent a few moments. “Did you have something specific in mind?”
“I reckon I do.”
There was a discussion about whether they should check out of the Langham. On the one hand, it would be nice to store their worldly belongings there and not have to carry them everywhere. Once they left, there was no guarantee where they’d end up. On the other hand, it would be bloody expensive—and hard to give up the lovely bed, not to mention the private WC. In the end, they breakfasted in the hotel dining room, packed their bags, and ventured outside.
“We can always come back tonight,” Simeon pointed out.
Crow, staring out the cab window, didn’t say much as they rattled along. Simeon could almost hear the gears turning in Crow’s brain and wasn’t surprised when he finally turned to look at him with a furrowed brow. “What’s your ideal?”
“My ideal what?”
“Let’s say we solve all your mysteries and everything’s good. Neither one of us is causing any apocalypses or anything. What then? How would you want to spend the rest of your life?”
Simeon didn’t even have to think about it. “With you.”
“Good.” Crow gave Simeon’s hand a quick squeeze. “But where? Doing what?”
Prior to joining the carnival, Simeon hadn’t given much thought to the future, beyond how he’d eat that day and where he’d sleep. While he’d been good at noticing his temporary joys, thinking about so much as the coming week had seemed speculative. When he’d started coughing up blood and shuddering with chills and fevers, he’d been almost relieved. He’d always known that death would leap on him soon enough, and at least then he knew how and when.
In the carnival and during his previous adventures with Crow, he’d again focused on the now rather than the later. It was safer and more familiar.
But… what if he and Crow did have a string of tomorrows ahead of them? It was a lovely notion, but Simeon wasn’t sure what to do with it. “Perhaps….” He pursed his lips and concentrated. “The countryside.” Yes, that felt right.
Crow nodded. “Somewhere you could fly safely. Where maybe nobody would notice two men together.”
“Is that what you want, love?”
“A comfortable little house. Some land to farm. Yeah, I’d like that.”
It was a pretty picture. Simeon could imagine himself helping Crow plant and tend and harvest. They might keep some chickens; perhaps they’d have a small orchard. The air would be clean, their cottage cozy, the neighbors friendly. If Simeon had those things, it wouldn’t matter to him in which country they lived or in which century. Yet he couldn’t bring himself to believe that this vision could come true. It was not a prophecy, merely a feckless dream.
Simeon paid the cabbie, and they walked the last few blocks to the old foundling home. It didn’t look any more welcoming or promising in today’s sunshine.
“Crow? When I do this, keep a hand on my shoulder, yeah?” Because if it worked, he wanted to remain grounded as much as possible. And he didn’t want to risk losing contact with Crow.
They positioned themselves near the main door, in front of a small opening that had been boarded up: the foundling wheel. A person could open the hatch at any time of day and deposit an unwanted baby inside. The wheel was discontinued in the mid-1860s when new legislation made it a crime to abandon an infant. Not that the law stopped abandonments from happening since it did nothing to alleviate the poverty and desperation sometimes faced by new mothers. But Simeon himself had been left in the foundling wheel without a stitch of clothing or a note or any token that might indicate parental care or connection to a family. He was told later that he’d been squalling loud enough to wake the dead.
Now he gave the rough brick a light pat and faced toward the road, his legs slightly spread as if he were expecting a blow. As promised, Crow stood just behind him with a palm on Simeon’s right shoulder. There were a few passersby, but they were too busy or too miserable to care about what Simeon was up to.
“Right, then,” Simeon muttered. Then he concentrated.
As Crow had pointed out, there were no guides for this sort of thing, and Simeon had to be creative. He was good with his hands—honed by years of picking pockets and other thievery—so he decided to play on that. He pictured himself having spectral fingers that reached into the invisible slipstream of time that the Frugises had described. He remembered the cross-country bus trip he’d taken with Crow in the United States, and how, while gazing at the other vehicles on the highway, he’d seen a young girl in the backseat of a car. The girl’s window was rolled down, and she held her hand palm-down just outside, allowing it to dip and rise in the rushing wind. It was very much like the way air moved over and under his wings. But now, instead of air, he was reaching into time.
He felt it, sleek like oiled steel and almost hot enough to burn. He willed his invisible fingers to skate back, and then back some more, feeling for a particular pattern in the currents. And there it was—a late November evening in 1857, when the residents of this neighborhood shivered in their rags and a pall of smoke and soot made breathing a painful act. There were few gas lamps here, and most windows were dark because people were too poor to waste candles. It wasn’t raining, but walls were damp and the street was nothing but sucking mud. Somewhere nearby a man was shouting, but his voice and words were muffled.
Crow’s hand tightened almost painfully on Simeon’s shoulder, but they both remained silent.
Two figures appeared out of the gloom, their shapes indistinct until they were quite close. The taller one wore long skirts; a heavy shawl covered much of her head and body. She held something in one arm, and the other clutched the hand of a small figure. The woman moved quickly and tugged at the child, who seemed reluctant to follow.
Although she came very close, Simeon couldn’t make out the details of her face beneath the overhanging fabric. She didn’t glance at him or Crow, just opened the gate of the foundling wheel—no longer boarded up—unwrapped the bundle in her arms, and placed the contents inside with some degree of gentleness. Although a bell tinkled faintly inside as she closed the gate, the nurses were unlikely to hear it over the baby’s loud wails, which must have certainly alerted them. Simeon was thankful that the shadows had prevented him from seeing the baby.
The woman bent her head, as if she might be reciting a brief prayer. The child who held her hand tried to reopen the gate, but she scooped him up and scurried away.
Simeon shot a desperate look at Crow, who nodded, and they both followed her. She walked with confidence, taking a few twists and turns before coming out at Bethnal Green Road, where there were more people as well as gas lamps and pavement. The child in her arms squirmed and she set him down, but when he made as if to run away, she grabbed his wrist and tugged him along so quickly that several times he stumbled.
Someone shouted and Crow yanked Simeon backward, just seconds before a two-horse carriage rattled past. It was daytime again, and the woman and child were gone.
“Crow,” rasped Simeon, his knees weak.
Crow grasped his arm and dragged him back, resting him against a low brick building. Simeon bent over, hands on his knees, struggling against being sick.
“Sim?” Crow stood close and blocked Simeon from the view of curious passersby. “Are you okay?”
Simeon spoke quietly, not looking up. “That was the moment I stopped being Lewis Frugis—bloody awful name, by the way—and became… nobody.”
“No. You became Simeon Bell, who’s the opposite of nobody.”
That was a good reminder. And it had also been a comfort to see that the woman had taken some care with him. He hadn’t simply been discarded like rubbish.
“My brother,” said Simeon, who couldn’t quite manage a coherent thought.
He began to reach into time again, but Crow stopped him with a gentle shake. “When you do your thing, we might be seeing the past, but our bodies are here in the present. That’s dangerous if we start moving around.” He gestured toward the flow of traffic.
“Right.” Simeon didn’t much fancy being run over by an omnibus. But his brother had been right there , almost close enough to touch.
“Do you have any idea where she was taking him?”
Simeon shook his head. It was a big city. Could be anywhere.
But Crow was clearly deep in thought. “How come she didn’t leave him at the foundling home too? ”
That was an excellent question. The home didn’t take in older children, but Bran Frugis had been hardly more than a baby himself. Simeon felt a flash of anger at the woman for separating them; had she chosen otherwise, Simeon could have known his brother all along. Would have had family. Yet she hadn’t seemed cruel. She’d genuinely seemed to have some concern about his wellbeing.
“She was protecting me,” Simeon said slowly as comprehension dawned.
“How so?”
“He was old enough to speak. Old enough to know our names. But everyone was meant to believe that we were both dead.”
Crow nodded. “She wanted to make sure that nobody knew who you were so they wouldn’t come after you.”
“Fuck,” said Simeon, meaning it with every fiber of his being.
“So I’m assuming she wanted to keep his identity secret too. Where could she take him where nobody would notice if he mentioned his name?”
“She could have dropped him in the Thames,” Simeon muttered darkly, even though he didn’t believe that to be true. When he’d looked at that little boy, he’d felt a sort of… thrum. Like a railroad track when a train was approaching. It was a connection, he thought, between the Bran of the past and himself.
Simeon leaned back against the wall and crossed his arms. “A child could be left at a workhouse, and they wouldn’t likely care what he was called. But a child that young—he’d never have survived long. Much worse than the foundling home.” He shuddered. “Same goes with the baby farms. Margaret Waters and all.”
“Who?”
“She took in babies for money, yeah? When the mothers couldn’t care for them. But then she simply murdered the tykes. She was hanged for it, not long after I’d left the foundling home and was out on my own.” He remembered feeling lucky that he hadn’t suffered the same fate.
“Jesus. Okay, let’s assume no workhouses or baby farms. Wasn’t there any good place for orphans? Adoption agencies, maybe?”
Crow was probably thinking of his own mother and aunt, both of whom had been given up as infants—for very different reasons—and placed with loving parents by an agency. But that was far in the future. There was nothing like that in London now.
But wait. Simeon felt a tingle of excitement. Bran hadn’t been left now , had he? It had been over a quarter century ago. And in 1857 there had been… the Castle.
“The castle,” Crow repeated doubtfully. They were in a cab, making slow progress along the route to Soho. “You mean where the Queen lives?”
“No, that would be Windsor Castle. Or Buckingham Palace. Or… well, she has several homes, I expect. Which isn’t bloody fair, considering how many Londoners have none.”
“Then—”
“This is Mallory’s Castle. And it’s not truly a castle—that’s just what it’s called. Or was called, more like. It doesn’t exist anymore.”
Crow poked him impatiently. “Explain.”
Simeon settled back more comfortably in the seat. It was a long ride to Soho and would have been miserable for a desperate woman with a small child. Yet he carried a deep, if unfounded, conviction that they were on the right track.
“Right. Mallory was a bloke—I don’t really know much about him, yeah? Just that he was a toff who decided that the reason poor children committed crimes was because their parents were too drunk, too stupid, or too evil to teach them better.”
“But that’s not?—”
Simeon stopped him with a raised hand. “I know, love. But loads of people even now would agree with Mallory, wouldn’t they? His solution was to grab these children away from their parents and raise them up to be God-fearing, law-abiding factory workers and servants. It was better than sending them off to die in workhouses, I expect. I met a few boys who’d lived in Mallory’s Castle for a time, and they said it wasn’t bad. Strict rules, but warm beds and decent food, and they were taught their letters and numbers.”
As a child, Simeon wasn’t certain whether he’d have fancied the Castle. It would have been lovely to be well-fed and well-clothed and not have to sleep in brickyards or under bridges. But he wouldn’t have liked the preaching and the control over his behavior. In fact, he’d run away from the foundling home because he felt trapped; the Castle wouldn’t have been any better in that regard, most likely.
Crow watched him closely. “How come the Castle doesn’t exist anymore?”
“It was shut down in… dunno. Around the time I first met the Frugises, I reckon. Eighteen seventy or so. Scandals. Mallory was sued for kidnapping. And there were rumors about him and some of the girls at the Castle. Might not have been true, but if he made the wrong people angry, that would have been enough.”
Perhaps there had been other factors as well. All he knew was that the Castle had abruptly closed, and while some of the young residents had been able to secure positions somewhere and others had returned to their families, many had been cast out onto the streets. It must have been a hard landing.
Crow didn’t ask why Simeon was so certain that Bran had ended up at the Castle. He generally seemed to have confidence in Simeon’s judgment, sometimes even when Simeon himself did not.
By the time they reached Soho, Crow was asleep and slumped against Simeon’s shoulder. He woke with a jerk as the cab came to a halt, and when they dismounted near Golden Square, he stretched and looked around curiously. “Not a great neighborhood, huh?”
“It was, long ago. But the nobs started moving elsewhere, and then there was a cholera epidemic in the fifties that chased the remainder away.” Mansions had been converted to tenements and music halls, and while there were many shops in the neighborhood—most of them run by immigrants—there were also prostitutes, thieves, and the usual contingent of ragged children.
Simeon steered them along several blocks to Rupert Street, where pushcarts and wagons crowded the brick pavement and conversations eddied in several languages. He was about say something to Crow when his vision shifted. The building across the street was decorated with large photos of scantily clad women and a sign proclaiming “Adult Store.” When he looked to his right, he saw another shop, this one with photos of men in tiny, colorful underwear. There were rainbow-colored flags flanking the front door.
“Simeon!” Crow said sharply, and in the blink of an eye Simeon was staring at a bleak-looking brick building.
“Didn’t mean to do that,” he muttered.
“I’m pretty sure that wasn’t the past.”
“But the street looked interesting, yeah?” Simeon briefly wondered how he’d look, dressed like the men in those advertisements, but then managed to focus on the matter at hand. He and Crow huddled against a wall, Crow set a hand on his shoulder, and Simeon pushed his spectral hand into the stream.
It was easier now that he knew how to do it. He felt for a precise moment on a precise day, and when he opened his eyes, it was nighttime and cold and the crowds were gone. The bulky brick structure ahead of him, which had no doubt been someone’s mansion at one time, now had an institutional feel although it looked to be in good repair.
The woman they’d followed from the foundling home stood under the shallow archway of the front door, the little boy—Bran—held tightly by one hand. As Simeon watched, the left half of the double door swung open. He couldn’t see who had responded or hear the conversation that ensued, but a few moments later the woman pushed Bran inside. And then she fled. As Bran was being drawn inside, he tried to turn to watch her.
And his gaze caught Simeon’s.