Saturday, September 2
“Where is he?”
I came awake instantly. Vaguely I realized that I was stiff, stuffed as I was into the small space between the rows of barrels on the barge. But that didn’t matter. What mattered was the voice. I knew that voice.
“Don’t deny it, Jake. That weaselly little urchin ain’t dead,” Fisheye Bill Tyler was saying. “My guess is he’s been out here mudlarkin’. And that means you seen him.”
“Now, Bill, I can’t say yes and I can’t say no,” Jake answered. “All these boys look about the same to me.”
“Don’t give me that. You know Eel—the scrawny one with eyes like a Tower raven,” growled Fisheye. “This is a serious business, Jake. That boy’s got something that belongs to me. Somethin’ I have a right to. I have a right to him too, if it comes to it.”
“I dunno nothin’ ’bout it,” squeaked Jake. I didn’t dare lift up my head. But I could almost see Fisheye squeezing his arm.
“Don’t expect me to believe that,” Fisheye Bill scoffed. I could imagine his cold glare. Men like Jake didn’t fare well under Fisheye’s gaze. He went on. “Now, my friend, are you gonna tell me where he’s at, or do I have to break off your other thumb?”
“Like I told you before, Bill, I ain’t seen Eel for months,” came Jake’s complaining whine. “I thought the lad was dead.” So Jake hadn’t been the one to rat on me. At least, not yet.
“Besides, ain’t Eel a big lad now? Too old for what you want ’im for?” Jake went on. “That lad’s too growed up to slip through windows like a little snakesman so you can break into houses.”
“You never mind that,” I heard Fisheye Bill say. “That’s my business.”
“Well, Bill, I got business to attend to meself. So leave me to it, won’t you?” Jake said. “Turn your nose up at me if you will, but at least a scavenger’s life is honest.”
I grinned. Jake was holding his own with Fisheye Bill. His voice faded, and I figured he must be wading through the sludgy water toward Tower Bridge. I crouched lower in my hiding place, fighting the urge to poke my head up and lay my eyes on Fisheye Bill Tyler just to prove this wasn’t a nightmare.
“Come on, Jake. What say you and me take a break from this stinking place and head over to a pub?” Fisheye said. “You can rest your legs. I’ll even buy you some breakfast and a beer to go with it.”
There was a pause. “Or maybe a gin, if you’d rather.”
I froze. Jake might not have said anything about me before now. But if Fisheye lured him to his side with the promise of gin, who knew what might happen? Jake could end up telling him how he’d gotten me a nice situation at the Lion Brewery over on Broad Street.
I strained my ears to catch Jake’s answer. I might not be at the Lion anymore, but I didn’t want Fisheye poking around anywhere near Broad Street. I could only hope that if Jake did talk, that yellow-flag warning of the cholera would keep Fisheye Bill away.
“Another time, Bill. Another time,” came Jake’s voice at last. I let my breath out. I was still safe.
When I got back to Broad Street that morning, the first person I saw was Rev. Whitehead. He looked as if he hadn’t slept.
“Are things worse, sir?” I asked.
“I’m afraid so,” he said, wiping his brow with a handkerchief. “I spent most of the night visiting families. Yet there isn’t much I can do.”
He rubbed a hand over his eyes, and I could see dark circles under them. “It strikes so viciously—so quickly,” he went on. “Mrs. Griggs herself is near death and—”
His words sent a jolt through me. “That can’t be! She was fine yesterday.”
Rev. Whitehead laid a hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry, Eel. I forgot you didn’t know. She became ill last evening. Bernie too.”
“Bernie! But …” I could hardly believe what I was hearing. “But if Mrs. Griggs is sick, who is helping them? Betsy is too small. She can’t—”
He raised a hand. “Calm yourself, lad. Florrie Baker is there, and as capable a nurse as I’ve ever seen.”
“Florrie! But … will she get it by being so close to sick people?”
“I fear everyone may be in danger from the filthy air and ill-ventilated rooms of this neighborhood,” he replied. “The atmosphere in these crowded streets is unwholesome indeed. Miasma is the cause of this pestilence.”
Poor Mrs. Griggs, I thought. She had just watched her husband die. She knew what would almost certainly happen to her. Mrs. Griggs was devoted to her children. It would break her heart to be so sick she couldn’t care for Bernie.
Just then I caught sight of Dr. Rogers, about to turn onto Poland Street. He waved at Rev. Whitehead without smiling and shook his head. Annie’s mum, Mrs. Lewis, had mentioned that he was the doctor her family relied on. Probably many other families did too. One look at his face told me he was powerless to help against this terrible disease.
No, Dr. Rogers couldn’t help. But what about Dr. Snow?
It might be a foolish plan. After all, Dr. Snow treated the queen herself. Would he care about the poor people on the other side of Regent Street?
It was worth a try. I’d given up on asking Dr. Snow to help me get my situation back. That was a small thing—just one mudlark who wanted to keep his job.
But this—this was about a whole neighborhood suffering.
And it was about Bernie.
Fifteen minutes later, I’d snaked my way through the crowds on Regent Street and was banging on Dr. Snow’s back door. Mrs. Weatherburn opened it, adjusting her cap and looking at me with a keen, stern expression. “Yes, boy? What is it you want now? As you will recollect, I paid you last night.”
“Yes, ma’am. Thank you. It’s just that I need to see Dr. Snow, please. It’s urgent.”
She arched her eyebrows in surprise. “Well, that may be, but I’m afraid Dr. Snow left early to attend a surgeon in Kensington.”
I felt panic rising inside. “But … we need him. The people on Broad Street need him.”
She frowned. “For what?”
“He hasn’t heard, then?” I asked. “The cholera has hit. Broad Street and Berwick Street, Poland Street and Little Windmill Street—the whole neighborhood near the Golden Square.”
Mrs. Weatherburn stepped back, as if she might catch it just from being near me. I wondered if Dr. Snow would be too frightened to come to Broad Street; even doctors could get deadly diseases. Maybe he would think the air in our neighborhood was too dangerous.
“I don’t believe he has heard about the outbreak,” she said. “He’s been so busy I’ve barely seen him myself.”
“I’d like to at least tell him about it. Will he be back soon?”
“Not until after dark.”
I stared up at her for a minute, then turned and walked away. I kicked a stone on the path, swallowing hard, feeling tears sting my eyes. Mr. Griggs had barely lasted a day. How long could Bernie fight the blue death?
“Have you given the cages a thorough cleaning lately, boy?” Mrs. Weatherburn called after me. “I’ve noticed quite a pungent smell the last day or two. It’s not enough just to feed them, you know. It’s probably time to change all the bedding.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I replied. You couldn’t put anything over on Mrs. Weatherburn.
All I could think of as I cleaned the cages was how much Betsy and Bernie had liked petting the bunnies. I wanted everything to go back to the way it had been two days ago.
“It ain’t fair,” I said. “It just ain’t fair.”
Since Dr. Snow wouldn’t be home for hours, I headed back to Broad Street. Even though most families had escaped, I might still have a chance to make some money. And I did—though not at all in the way I expected.
The first person I ran into was the cheerful-looking driver with the bright orange hair. “Hey there. Aren’t you the lad I saw yesterday?” he called out. “My mate’s taken off. Weak stomach. Want to earn a few pence?”
“Yes, sir.” I couldn’t forget Henry. “What … what do you want me to do?”
“Whaddya think? Just help me load bodies into coffins, and coffins into the cart,” he explained, wiping his sweaty face with a ragged handkerchief. He glanced at me. “Don’t worry, son. I’ll wrap them in a clean cloth first.”
I swallowed hard. Lift a coffin? Touch a dead body, even through a sheet?
The man leaned forward and put a large, rough hand on my shoulder. As if reading my mind, he said, “You can do it, laddie. These are your neighbors, ain’t they?”
Still, I hesitated.
“I’ll give you two shillings if you work till sunset,” he offered.
“All right,” I agreed. “But … I might have a weak stomach too.”
“Just don’t fall down flat in a faint,” the man said, pleasant as ever.
I did feel sick to my stomach at first. And then I didn’t. It wasn’t that I got used to it, nothing like that. It was more that, sometime in the first hour of walking into those hot, shadowy rooms where death had been, I found a way to change my thinking around.
Instead of looking with my eyes, I decided to see with my heart. I tried to remember that the corpses were just people. People like Mr. Griggs, or neighbors I might greet on the street.
And so, rather than thinking about my own queasy feelings, I thought about them. I started to believe there was something important and noble about what we were doing. It made me want to be different from the men who’d come to get my own pa. And this coffin man, whose name was Charlie, seemed to feel the same way.
“I don’t hold with jokin’ around corpses or not bein’ respectful to them that’s left behind,” Charlie had told me early on as we carried a plain wooden coffin into a house. “We’ll all be going into the ground one of these days. And it might be sooner than we know.”
That coffin was a small one. I swallowed hard. I didn’t meet the gaze of the child’s mother, who kept hold of her little son’s hand, not able to let go.
“You ever lost someone close to you, lad?” Charlie said softly as we loaded the small, plain box into the cart.
“My parents. First my pa. When I was nine.” I didn’t know why I was telling this to a stranger. “I didn’t even know he was sick at first. But he kept coughing and coughing till he got so weak.…”
“The consumption.” Charlie nodded knowingly. “I had a cousin went that way. How ’bout your mum, then? She gone too?”
“Less than three years after my father. Last September. Just about a year ago now.”
“Broken heart, was it?”
I didn’t answer. Though that wasn’t a bad guess. Not a bad guess at all.
Charlie and I loaded coffins onto the cart all that long, hot day. Once the cart was full, we headed over to the undertaker’s to unload and to pick up more empty coffins. Charlie was careful to mark each coffin with the name of the dead person.
“Don’t want to get ’em mixed up, though some would say it don’t matter,” he remarked. “But I don’t hold with that. If I go to visit a grave, I want to know that I’m talking to the right person.”
The sweat ran down my face. I’m not ashamed to say that it got mixed with tears more than once. The cholera had struck Broad Street hardest of all. But we also went into houses on Poland Street, Hopkins Street, Peter Street, and Berwick Street, where Florrie and her family lived.
It was dusk by the time we stopped. I felt worn out and sick at heart. I barely had strength to move. Charlie gave me two shillings for my work, and said he guessed he had a cousin who’d be able to help him the next day.
I looked at the shillings greedily. I’d already spent the pennies I’d gotten yesterday on a roll and a bit of cheese. I hadn’t felt much like eating all day. But now, suddenly, I was ravenous. I imagined biting into a hot meat pie or a piece of bread spread thick with butter.
No, I told myself. I should save these shillings to give to Mrs. Miggle.
“You done good,” Charlie was saying. “You’re such a thin, shadowy lad I feared you might scare the little orphans. But when you smile, you light up, like moonlight. And the kiddies took to you, they did, after all.”
He brought out a small basket that had been sitting at his feet in the cart. He opened it and held out a bottle of ginger beer and a large meat pie.
“I can’t eat till the end of the day in this job, but then I gets so hungry I can’t make it home without a nibble,” Charlie admitted with a grin. “My wife packed more than enough. So here—you’ve earned it, lad.”
I’m sure my eyes were as round as saucers by that point. And when I took my first bite of that flaky crust, I didn’t think a meal had ever tasted so good.
After Charlie left, I tiptoed up the stairs at 40 Broad Street. As I was about to knock, I looked over at the door to the room Annie Ribbons shared with her parents and baby sister, Fanny. I hadn’t seen Annie since yesterday. I wondered if the Lewises had decided to leave, as so many other families had. At least Charlie and I hadn’t had to go in there.
Florrie opened the door and stuffed her little sketchbook back into her apron pocket. She stuck her pencil into the top of one braid. “Where have you been? I thought you’d come by earlier.”
“I’ve been helping the coffin man,” I said. Then I closed my mouth. That was all I would say. I could never tell Florrie, or Henry, or anyone, what I had seen and heard and done.
Dilly pushed past Florrie and flopped at my feet, grinning the way dogs do. Her tail thumped wildly on the worn wooden floorboards with a loud swishing noise. “Quiet, girl,” I said, scratching her ears.
“How … how are they?” I whispered.
“I don’t know. It’s awful scary, Eel. They’re sleeping now, even Betsy,” Florrie said. “I never seen the cholera before.”
“How about your family?”
“For now, everyone’s fine. Nancy’s out helping neighbors, same as me. Pa’s working. Danny brought over some meat pies Mum made.” Florrie paused to take a sip of water from a jug. “My mother ain’t so good with sickness herself. Just faints away and is no help to anyone.”
Mrs. Griggs stirred and moaned.
“I’ve made up my mind, Florrie. I’ve decided to ask Dr. Snow to come see Bernie and Mrs. Griggs. He’s been out on doctor business all day. But I’m going there tonight,” I promised. “And I’ll sleep in the shed if he’s not there. I won’t let him leave in the morning until he hears me out. He’ll help them, I know he will.”
“Will you still ask him to help you with Mr. Huggins?”
“It’s too late,” I said, shaking my head. “Mr. Huggins won’t believe anything I say now. I can’t go back. Besides, this is more important.”
“Everything is different now, ain’t it?” said Florrie softly. “It’s like the whole world changed.”
Florrie glanced over at Betsy, who lay curled up a bit apart from her mother and brother. Betsy’s cheeks were flushed from the heat. At least she still looked healthy and pink, not blue and pale. Maybe Betsy would be lucky.
Florrie patted the sketchbook in her pocket. “I’m not sure if it was the proper thing to do, but I made some drawings of Bernie and Mrs. Griggs today. If the worst does happen, Betsy will have something to remind her of the way they looked.”
“The worst won’t happen,” I said fiercely. “It can’t.”
The stillness was suddenly broken by an odd sound. I realized it was coming from me. The meat pie had been so delicious it had made me hungry for more.
“That’s your stomach,” said Florrie, stifling a smile.
She went to a basket by the wall and took out a slice of bread, spread thick with butter. “Danny brought this too. I can’t eat it,” she said. “You take it.”
Dilly stared up at me with soft, begging eyes. I broke off a piece, and she snapped it out of the air. Florrie grinned. “No wonder they call you Eel. You’re as thin as one.”
She gestured to a bucket in the corner. “Want some water?”
I shook my head. “No, thanks. The coffin man just gave me a ginger beer.”
“Lucky you. Ginger beer is my favorite,” said Florrie. “You could’ve saved me some.”
“Next time,” I promised.
I sat with Florrie for a while, then bid her good night and set out. It was dark now. I was extra careful on Regent Street to watch for pickpockets. When I got to Sackville Street, I gave the creatures in Dr. Snow’s menagerie more water. The rabbits’ eyes glowed in the silvery moonlight.
The lights in Dr. Snow’s house were out. It was too late to knock on the door. I’d have to try in the morning. I should go to the river to sleep, I thought. But I couldn’t move another step. I felt tired from the inside out. I curled up in a corner of the shed and used my cap for a pillow.
The animals rustled and moved restlessly. They weren’t used to me being there except to feed them. I tossed and turned too. I squeezed my eyes shut against the pictures that filled my mind, but it didn’t help. In the end, I’m not ashamed to say, I cried myself to sleep.