Jess stayed behind a moment after I’d left the pawnshop, and she caught up to me as I entered the park. I took the long way home because my brain worked more effectively when I was in motion, and perhaps unbeknownst to her, Mrs. Dorne had given me some things to think about.
“She’s afraid ye want somethin’ from me,” Jess said, with no preamble. I’d been listening for her this time, so she didn’t startle me.
“Maybe I do.”
She snorted in derision. “Ye’re not the type.”
I scoffed in return. “The predatory type? You and I have both spent enough time on the street to know they’re just as likely to be gentlemen as dock workers – possibly more likely, given all the rules and strictures by which gentlemen have to pretend to live.”
She laughed. “Ye’re foolin’ yerself if ye think the – what’d ye call ‘em? Predatory?” She pondered the word a moment, and nodded as though deciding it fit. “Ye’re mad if ye think the predators are in it for the rule-breakin’ bit.”
I found myself intrigued as to her theories, and concerned about how she arrived at them. “Enlighten me then.”
She shrugged. “We look out for the blokes that are afraid, like a dog that’s been kicked too many times and then learns to bite the ‘and before it can cuff ‘im. We learn to smell the fear before it can get close enough to ‘urt, and we stay away from the ones who feel big only when everyone else around them is made small. It’s mostly blokes, maybe because everyone expects ‘em to be so strong, but sometimes it’s ladies too. They’re even more dangerous because a person never even sees the knife before they’re pullin’ it out of their back. At least with blokes it’s physical – they can ‘urt yer body, but they can’t get yer mind if ye don’t let ‘em.”
I studied the girl who walked beside me as I marveled at her insightfulness. I began to wonder in earnest about where and who she came from. She was small-boned, with musculature that made her slender rather than skinny. Due to her bath the night before, her black hair was clean, if still raggedly cut, and in the new delivery boy suit she looked very nearly respectable. She was most likely the child of a lascar from Bengal or Bombay, as her coffee coloring and fine features suggested, which meant she had probably never known her father. Lascars were still paid only five percent of the wages a British sailor made, and they lived in near slave conditions aboard the ships that hired them for three-year stints. I had read that there were an estimated fifty thousand lascars in Britain, and as long as the captains kept hiring them as strong, hardy, cheap labor, the numbers would continue to grow.
Her parentage, her age, and her status as a workhouse-living, Ragged-School-going street rat gave her exactly the vantage point needed to acquire the understanding of predatory behavior that allowed her to survive this long. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so surprised at the philosophical bend to her thoughts. One could live through broken bones much less painfully than a broken spirit, though it was often surprisingly difficult to have the one without the other.
“Maybe that’s the sort of thing I want from you, Jess – that kind of wisdom.”
She scoffed again, with an eye-roll for emphasis. “That’s just daft. It takes no more than livin’ with yer eyes open to see what’s in front of yer face.”
It was the wisest thing I’d heard all week.
Charlie had spent her day with the other irregulars, teaching them how to do whatever task she had to do, from weeding the garden to putting up the tomatoes she seemed to be able to grow just by smiling at them. One whole wall was planted with them, and her skill at making things flourish seemed to find its voice with the tomatoes and the children.
Little Oliver still had tomato sauce from supper in his hair, even after Huff had done him the great service of licking his head, and Jess and Reesy took charge of getting the younger two clean and ready for bed. I sat on the floor of the library with Gryf’s head in my lap and watched the lamplight flicker on the spines of the books as I recounted the day with Charlie.
“Of all the things that happened today, the one I feel best about was buying the debt of the seamstress so she could have her sewing machine back,” I said. Jess and I had regaled Charlie with the tale of our adventure at the Langham Hotel, and I had spent the last fifteen minutes describing the inside of Mrs. Dorne’s pawnshop.
“The whole time I was looking at that treadle machine I was thinking how easy it would be to add a motor to it. The alternating current, three-phase rotating magnetic field motor has already been invented by Tesla and put in use by Galileo Ferraris – it wouldn’t take much to build a version of it small enough to power a sewing machine.”
Charlie raised an eyebrow. “The power station Ferraris built only serves the street lights. Even Parliament still uses gas lamps.”
“Well, I’ve been thinking …”
Charlie’s smile lit her eyes like flickering flames. “Yes?”
I looked around our library, the walls heavy with books, the walls covered in dark green damask velvet to mask the soot stains from the gas flames in the wall sconces. I’d been at war with myself over whether to choose the room for the library with the most windows, ergo, the most natural light, or the fewest, so as not to damage the books with sun-fading.
“What if I powered our house with electricity?”
The raised eyebrow was back. “You know how to wire a house?”
I grinned. “Theoretically. How hard could it be?”
She laughed and leaned down to kiss me. “I would be very cross with you if you electrocuted yourself or burned down the house.”
“Well, first I think I’d have to try it someplace else, and since London only has a few coal-burning steam turbine power plants and no proper grid yet …”
She giggled, and I pretended not to notice that I sounded slightly ridiculous. “I was thinking maybe we could rent a commercial building, and then wire it for electricity. Then perhaps I could fit some sewing machines with small motors for a few of Mrs. Dorne’s more industriously inclined clients?”
Charlie had stopped giggling, and I peeked at her face with trepidation.
She was staring at me, and I couldn’t tell if it was shock or horror that made her eyes look like pools of the deepest blue on her face.
She stood up and began pacing the room as she spoke. “The women would be working for themselves. We would just provide the working capital, and perhaps a small loan to get started, in exchange for … what? What would make sense?” Animation lit every part of her from within when she returned her gaze to me.
I was making this up as I went along, but it felt right. “There is something I read about in the twenty-first century called a micro-loan. It’s a short-term loan with a low interest rate designed to help a small business get on its feet. If, for example, a seamstress were able to work so efficiently that she could make ready-to-wear clothing, or book bags, or backpacks, and if those items were to be sold through, say, the pawnshop? A percentage of the proceeds could pay Mrs. Dorne for the use of her space, a percentage could come back to us to repay the loan, and the rest could go to feed the seamstress’s family.”
The light in Charlie’s eyes had extended to her smile. “And if the seamstress’s children were well-fed, they’d be much less likely to pick pockets or need workhouse handouts, and much more likely to be in school to learn a trade.”
For the first time since returning to the nineteenth century I felt that I had a reason for being here, a reason to come out of hiding. “We could do this, Charlie. We could actually make a difference.”
She bent down and took my face in her hands. “Have I told you lately how extraordinary you are?” She kissed me and then sank down on the floor beside me.
I held her to me as I murmured into her lips. “No, but I definitely think you should.”