Justy had felt the eyes on him as soon as he stepped off the ship. Not that he was surprised. Any new arrival in New York was fair game, even one dressed in rags and carrying no baggage.
There were three of them, all dressed in loose homespun breeches, wooden shoes and threadbare coats. Street bludgers, thieves who weren’t small enough to burgle, or deft enough to pick pockets, and who relied on violence and intimidation instead. He felt the crew hemming him in after he passed Wall Street, a touch of a shoulder in the crowd edging him gently to his right. One man in front, another behind.
The man ahead of him stopped suddenly on the other side of an alley. Justy was supposed to stumble into him, so that the man on his flank could crowd him down the alley. Instead, he deliberately stepped to his right and took four quick steps down the dank, stinking lane. The bludger on his left had committed to a shoulder charge, but there was no one there to receive it, and he came staggering down the alleyway, slipping in the mud and falling flat on his face in front of Justy.
His mates crowded in behind the man, who tried to struggle to his feet.
“Stay down,” Justy ordered.
One of the men sneered at him. He had lost his front teeth, and a stream of snot ran down from his nose and over his upper lip.
“There’s three of us, so,” he said, his accent a mangle of West Coast Irish and New York waterfront. “And there’s just the one of you. So let’s have what you’ve got hidden in your breeks there and we’ll let you go without a hammering.”
The man on the ground began pushing himself up.
“I told you, stay down,” Justy said.
“Or what?”
Justy had left New York to study law at the new Royal College of St. Patrick in Maynooth, just west of Dublin. But he had done much more in his four years away than page through books and take exams. The Monsignor of St. Patrick’s believed that travel was an enriching experience and had included a number of cathedral tours in the first year of the syllabus. Justy had attended every trip, more as a way to see other cities, rather than the churches themselves. On a visit to the cathedral of Saint Marie in Sheffield, Justy had grown bored by a lecture on stained glass and slipped out into the streets of the town. Sheffield was famous for its cutlers, and Justy went from shop to shop, comparing blades, learning about steel and shanks and hafts and curvature, so that by the time he crept back into the chapel for evening prayers he knew more about cutlery than he thought possible.
He also had possession of the unusual knife that he had left with Lars for safekeeping during the voyage.
Folding blades were common on the streets of every modern city, but what made this one different was the spring in the blade, and the release catch in the side under Justy’s thumb.
Which he now pressed.
With a tiny click, six inches of polished steel appeared magically in the air. It was dim in the alley, but the light caught the blade well enough. The eyes of the man on the ground flickered, the whites showing in the gloom, and he let himself slide back into the mud.
Justy felt his heart thump a little harder at the feeling of power over another man. “I’m not some culchie just in from the old country. I’m a New Yorker, same as you. And I don’t appreciate being welcomed home in this unfriendly way by you filthy scamps.”
The two men still standing were looking at him, wide-eyed. The leader ducked his head. “Sorry, mister. We thought yiz might be good for a lift, ye know?”
“No. I don’t know. Now pick up your boy and fuck off.”
The men looked at each other again and then lifted the third man to his feet. Without looking back, they hurried up the alley to the Broad Way.
Justy leaned on the wall of the alley. He felt sweat on his forehead and his pulse hard in his temples. And something else. Shame. The look in the man’s face, the fear in his eyes, had made Justy feel things he hadn’t felt in a while. And hoped he’d never feel again.
He folded his knife and tucked it back into his boot.
“Welcome home, a mhac,” he muttered to himself, and followed the men back up to the street.