Monday morning, Angus woke to a light tap on the door of his room. Ma, he thought, struggling out of a dream full of large trees and green forest, you’re back.
“Breakfast, Angus,” Mrs. Mann shouted. “Hurry up now.”
Angus pulled on his trousers and shirt, splashed his face with cold water from the bowl on the dresser, and checked (as he did every morning) in the mirror for the first whiskers. Nothing yet. Despairing that the signs of manhood would ever come, he stumbled down the hall and outside to the privy.
Mrs. Mann was ladling lumpy porridge into his bowl as he came inside.
“Is my ma…mother up yet?”
“Haven’t heard her.”
“I’ll get her.” Angus left the kitchen and rapped on his mother’s door. There was no answer. He knocked again and called through the thin wood.
Mrs. Mann came into the hall, wiping her hands on her apron. “Mrs. MacGillivray, breakfast is ready.”
She looked at Angus’s face and raised her voice. “Mrs. MacGillivray, are you all right?”
Mr. Mann emerged from their bedroom, slipping his suspenders over his shoulders. His wife spoke to him in German, and he leaned up against the door.
Angus’s heart pounded and suddenly he felt fear. Cold fear, deep in his heart. Like when he was a baby and had a bad dream, and his mother would be at the nursery door, pushing the nanny aside to get to him, to make the demons go away and to make everything all right once again. When he had left home to go to boarding school, he knew she still watched over him. Hadn’t she arrived, full of sweeping silk, bobbing feathers, and sheer indignation the morning after he’d sprained his ankle climbing down (in the middle of the night, mind you, and on a dare at that), the vines outside the younger boys’ dorm? She had been so terribly beautiful and so commanding that the weak-kneed, trembling headmaster decided that the boy was obviously sleepwalking. No punishment would be required.
Fiona had tossed the headmaster a smile. She had taken her son by the arm, and they’d walked outside into the sundappled quadrangle. “I don’t want to come here again, dearest,” she said. “It was most inconvenient.”
“Mother…”
“No excuses.” She’d waved to her carriage. “Do what you must, but never let them catch you.” The carriage had pulled up; she kissed him on the cheek and accepted the driver’s hand to help her inside.
Angus’s thoughts returned to Dawson and the year 1898, as Mr. Mann exchanged another look with his wife, worry etched in their lined faces.
Mr. Mann called to the door. “Mrs. MacGillivray, me coming in. Yous tells me if not okay.”
He looked at his wife again; she nodded slightly, and he opened the door.
Angus ran into the room, hoping against hope to find his mother sitting up in bed, wild-eyed, clutching her nightgown to her chest and yelling at them for their impertinence.
But the bed was undisturbed, and the room was empty.
Angus stared at the neatly made bed. “Where’s my mother?”
Mrs. Mann wrapped her arms around Angus’s shoulders, although he was taller than she. “Let’s have a cup of tea, dear.”
“I go,” Mr. Mann said. “Fetch help.”
Angus pulled away from his landlady’s loving embrace. “I’ll come with you. They know me at the fort.”
“Make zee morning eats, Helga,” Mr. Mann said. “We be back soon. And be hungry.” He said something in German.
Angus looked at Mrs. Mann. “If…when…my mother gets back, you’ll come and tell us, right?”
“Of course, dear boy. Immediately.” Angus and Mr. Mann ran into the street. When they reached King Street, Angus continued on, Mr. Mann turned right.
They stopped, turning to face each other. “We have to get the police,” Angus said. “Constable Sterling, he’ll know what to do.”
“Yous go to police. I goes to wheres ze boats tied up. Boatmens, theys knows much.”
“Okay.”
“Thees Dawson, is ze good towns, Angus. Yours mama ze good woman. She be safe.”
Angus looked at the face of his mother’s landlord. His own employer. For the first time, Angus saw empathy there, the memory of pain long past, and hope for the future, reflected in the flat cheekbones and heavy mouth.
He managed a weak smile. “Sure, Mr. Mann. We’ll have Mother home before opening time at the Savoy. She loves Mrs. Mann’s biscuits. She won’t stay away for long.”
Angus stood in the road, watching Mr. Mann’s broad back heading down to the waterfront. Which way to go? Fort Herchmer for Constable Sterling, as had been his first thought? But would it be better to head into town for Ray Walker? Or even Paradise Alley, looking for Graham Donohue? Angus would go there if he had to. And knock on the door of every crib on the street.
Indecision was costing him precious seconds. If his mother was hurt somewhere, maybe lying in the dark, unconscious, unable to call for help….
The Savoy. She might have gone to the Savoy to do an urgent bit of business and fallen down those rickety stairs. He should have thought of that first.