The sound of their boot heels echoed off the black flagstones of the church, carrying all the way to the high ceilings, where forbidding-looking saints looked down on them. They walked quickly, side by side down the center aisle. In front of them, the altar was covered in a white cloth, decorated with a long runner of bright green silk.
“Are you sure this is the right place?” Lars whispered.
Justy nodded. “Remember I told you that story about when Kerry was born? After her mother died? O’Toole brought her down here and left her on the steps of the sacristy. The priest asked my father to look after her while the Bull went after O’Toole to calm him down.”
Lars looked around. “A good place to meet.”
St. Peter’s was set a block back from the Broad Way, close to Federal Hall and a long way from either the waterfront or Cherry Street. Neither the Bull nor Colley would look for Kerry there.
The church was empty, but as they reached the altar, the door to the sacristy opened, and a small man in a white surplice appeared.
“Well, well. Justice Flanagan.” His voice was surprisingly deep.
“Father.” Justy stepped forward and shook the priest’s hand. “It’s been a long time.”
The priest had thinning black hair that he had cropped close to his skull. His face was wrinkled and sunburned, and his eyes were a startling blue. He looked solemn. “I think the last time was when we buried your father.”
Justy nodded. “This is Lars Hokkanssen. He’s a friend of mine. Lars, Father Michael.”
The priest shook Lars’ hand. “Norwegian?”
“On my father’s side. My mother was from Wexford.”
“Beautiful country.”
He led them towards the back of the church and down a dark hallway. A door opened into a plain room. The paint on the walls was peeling, and there were holes in the plaster. Against one wall was a table, littered with the remnants of a meal for two: a half loaf of bread, cheese rinds and a small bowl of wizened apples.
Kerry was leaning back in a plain wooden chair, her hands in the pockets of her breeches, her legs thrown out carelessly. But Justy could see the tension in her face, and her eyes were quick and restless.
She gave a half smile. “You remembered then.”
“Hard to forget. It was one of my father’s favorite stories, coming down here and being presented with you. Wrapped in a piece of green silk, wasn’t it, Father?”
“The very same that’s there today.” Father Michael smiled. “You should have heard her squeal. I thought she’d bring the place down on our heads.”
Justy rubbed the tiny cut under his ear. “You’d never have thought she’d turn into such a quiet wee thing, would you?”
They all worked a little to laugh. The priest cleared his throat. “I’ll leave you alone, then. I’ll be in the church if you need me.”
The door closed. Lars leaned against it and folded his arms. Justy sat down and stared at Kerry for a moment. “What are we doing here, Kerry?”
She shrugged, avoiding his eyes. “You said you wanted to meet.”
“You didn’t seem to want to meet earlier.”
“It wasn’t safe.”
“Safe from whom?”
“Who do you think?”
The cuts in his head burned. “Colley.”
She nodded slowly, her eyes on the ground between them.
He reached out and took an apple from the bowl. It had been picked too early and left too long. It would taste bitter. “What do you know about Colley, Kerry?”
“I know he’s dangerous. I know he’s killed people. I know he’ll kill you if you don’t do what he wants.”
“And how is it you know all this?”
She folded her arms. “I just know.”
The room was quiet. Justy turned and looked at Lars. The big man shrugged.
“What else do you know? Do you know about the house on Bedlow Street?”
“Aye. It’s a bawdy house. So what?”
“You know Colley owns it? Him and the Bull and some others?”
“Aye.”
He felt the anger flare in him again. “You know it’s not just a brothel, right? You know he keeps slaves there. Slaves, Kerry. Young Negro girls. Girls like you.”
She hugged herself tight and kept her eyes on the floor.
Justy sighed. “You said he’d kill me, but it’s not me he threatened.”
Her eyes were suddenly sharp. “What do you mean?”
“He wants me to join his scheme. He said if I don’t commit to him tonight, he’ll kill you. That’s why I needed to meet you. To get you out of the city.”
“I don’t need your help.”
He threw the apple, hard. Her right hand plucked it out of the air. She used her thumbnail to slice through the skin and sniffed it. She wrinkled her nose. “How long before you have to give him an answer?”
“Six o’clock.”
“Not long, then.”
“No.”
Her eyes were hard. “You should run.”
“Didn’t you hear what I said?”
“He won’t kill me.”
“You said yourself. He’s killed men before. Or had them killed, by those hounds of his. He’s a slaver, Kerry. And a cock-bawd pimp. You’re nothing to him. He wouldn’t think twice.”
She shook her head. He looked at the apple in her hand. She had driven her thumb up to the hilt into the fruit.
“Kerry.”
She looked up. She looked suddenly tired, as though she had resigned herself to something inevitable. He restrained the urge to touch her.
“Why won’t he kill you, Kerry?”
She blinked and her eyes were shining with tears.
His voice was soft. “How do you know what you know?”
She gritted her teeth, tears rolling down her cheeks. She wedged her other thumb into the same hole in the apple. “Remember I said I’d made some big mistakes?”
He thought about the weight of her head on his chest, the trembling as she cried.
She sighed, and he could hear the break in her voice. “It was two years ago. I’d been tooling for a half year or so. I was coming home, down Dover Street, and all I see is a drunk gent in a black coat wandering up the hill. Easy pickings. I bumped him, and lifted his mackerel, and then he had me.”
She rubbed her wrist. “It was Colley. He’d been at the Bull’s house, for a meeting. He pushed me agin the wall and put a blade up by my eye. He said he’d cut both my glimms out, and that’s when my hat fell off and he twigged me. He said he’d seen me at the Bull’s house once, with O’Toole. He let me go, but he said if I didn’t come to see him at his house on Cherry Street the next day, he’d tell the both of them what I was up to.”
There was a dull crack. She looked down at the two halves of the apple in her hands, the pale flesh of the fruit and the black pips.
“I did like he said. I went up to Cherry Street. I was scared, you know. If O’Toole found out what I was up to, I’d be sunk. But Colley was nice. He sits me down, asks me if I want something to drink. I’m canny, so I ask for yarum. I figure I’ll taste it if he puts rum or anything in it. But it tastes just like regular warm milk, so I drink it down. And at first I’m fine.…”
She stopped and squeezed her eyes shut. Her cheeks were wet. Justy leaned forward and took the pieces of apple from her hands.
She hugged herself and took a deep, shuddering breath. “I woke up in his bed.” Her voice was a wail. “He was on top of me. He was … inside me. I could feel the pain, and the blood. But I couldn’t move. It was like I wasn’t there and I was there at the same time.”
Justy felt like ice, as though he had frozen from the inside. And yet his head was burning, an intense pressure stoking inside his skull. He thought his temples might burst. It was an effort to reach forward, but she shook her head and shrank back, hugging herself even more tightly.
“When it was over, he told me I was his now.” Her voice was soft. “He said I had to keep coming back or he’d tell O’Toole and the Bull and then I’d be meat for the street.”
“He said that? Meat for the street?”
“Aye.”
Justy could hear the sound of his own breath, loud in his ears. “So you went back?”
“What choice did I have?” Her voice was sharp.
He held up his hands. “I’m not saying anything. I’m just asking.”
She stared at him. Her eyes were hard. “Aye. I went back. It was either be his whore or everyone else’s.”
“Why didn’t you run?”
She laughed. “Run? Easy for you to say. You’ve got white skin and a cock, so you can go anywhere and do anything. But if you’ve got dark skin and a madge, you can only go one place and you can only do one thing, if you’re to survive.”
Justy felt the shame burning his face. He knew she was right. He looked at the floor and felt the shame curdle into anger. He remembered how carefree she had been. How easily she had laughed. And now Colley had used her up.
“So run with me now,” he said. “You’re right. On your own, you’d have no chance. But together we can get away. We’ll go west, to Ohio, or even further. We can start again.”
She smiled faintly. “Will we get married then, Justy?”
He felt the warmth wash over him. “Why not?”
She examined her thumb. There was apple flesh under the nail, and she put her thumb in her mouth to clean it. She made a face. “Father Mike gets them from a fella at the market. But he only gives him the ones he can’t sell, so they’re never ripe. Or they’re rotten. But when you’re a beggar you don’t have no choice, do you?”
“You have a choice now.”
She shook her head. “No. I don’t. I can’t go with you. Even if I thought you’d do right by me. I can’t run.”
“Why not?”
There was a long pause. Justy could hear Lars breathing behind him, slow and steady. Kerry had a faraway look in her eyes.
“Colley made me go back every day. I hated it at first, but then I got used to it. He let me do what I wanted otherwise. I felt almost free. And he was nice, you know, except for … that. He would tell me things. About his business. And then one day I woke up sick as a dog. I knew straight off I was up the duff, and I didn’t know what he’d say if he knew. Probably send me to some back-alley finger smith to have the child broke out of me. I’ve seen what happens to morts when that goes wrong.”
She fell silent. Justy waited, light-headed, holding his breath. She went on, her voice toneless now. “Seven months I kept it a secret. He liked me to keep my duds on when we did it, so even when I got big I could hide it. But he clocked me soon enough. It was too late to do anything by then, so he had me spin a story to my cousin and to O’Toole about going to stay with a friend in Greenwich, and then he set me up in Bedlow Street with a midwife. The kinchin came in August of last year. The fifteenth.”
Justy leaned back in his chair. He felt sweat under his arms and on his upper lip. “Where’s the child now?”
She looked at him, her eyes black. “Cherry Street.”
Justy said nothing.
“He took him away, and gave him to a wet nurse. I’m allowed to see him once a week.” Her voice wavered.
Justy reached out again, but she stood up abruptly. “That’s why I can’t run. He’ll kill him if I do.”
“Surely not. The child’s not even a year old—”
Kerry slapped her hand down onto the table. “You don’t know Colley. There’s a reason they call him Black Jack. If you fall on the wrong side of him, you’re lucky if he only kills you. He’s carved women into ribbons for talking back to customers. He’s had those dogs Campbell and Fraser beat people to death for spilling a drink. He wouldn’t think twice about killing Daniel.”
She spun away and faced the wall. Justy watched her as she hugged herself, a trembling curtain of dark hair falling halfway down her back.
Trinity Church was only a few hundred yards away, but the thick walls of the church muffled the sound of the bells as they struck six.
Justy turned in his chair and looked at Lars. “Time’s up.”
Lars said nothing. His eyes were like flint.
Justy reached over the table for the half-eaten loaf. He tore off the end and tossed the rest to Lars.
Kerry sat back down, wiping her face. Lars offered her the bread. “You need to eat. We’ve a long night ahead of us.”
She shook her head. “Jack’s men will be all over looking for you. And forget going to your ship. You’ll never make it on board. You can’t get away.”
“Who said anything about getting away?”
She frowned, and Lars grinned. “First rule. Never do what the bastards expect you to do. Your man’ll be looking for us, sure enough. But we’ll be where he least expects us.”
“Where’s that?”
Lars looked at Justy. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”
Justy nodded. “Cherry Street.”