Christina nodded wearily, her anger at Gabriel exhausted. “I know why. Yes, I–I must go with them.”
To McKee, Trelawny barked, “You know the crossing sweeper who takes only a ha’penny?”
“Yes.”
“Pass through the eye of his needle.”
“Shoes?” said Gabriel, still holding his trousers and peering from the broken window to the empty glass on the carpet and back.
“Go back to bed,” said Trelawny. He turned the knob, and the door opened readily now.
CHAPTER TEN
And when your veins were void and dead,
What ghosts unclean
Swarmed round the straitened barren bed
That hid Faustine?
THE CAB TOOK Crawford, McKee, Johanna, and Christina almost all the way back to the church, but McKee had the driver let them out a couple of streets east and south of it, at the stone circle in the center of Seven Dials.
“I don’t believe I’ve ever been here,” said Christina breathlessly as Crawford led them, running and pausing, through the ever-shifting maze of horses pulling carriages and wagons.
“I should hope not,” said McKee, pulling Johanna up onto the Earl Street curb.
Crawford opened his umbrella and handed it to Johanna, who was yawning as if to pop her ears. “I can still feel his attention on me,” she said.
Christina was panting. “So can I.”
The overcast sky had a faintly brassy color from the haze of coal smoke, and the streets between the wedge-shaped buildings that ringed the circle were in deep shadow. Even in the rain the pavements were crowded — disreputable-looking young men in shapeless caps and old women in shawls slouched near at hand under the shop awnings, and men in overcoats hurried past under umbrellas. Johanna’s pink velveteen coat and McKee’s blue silk dress stood out in the drab crowd.
McKee stood up on her toes to look around among the bobbing hats and umbrellas all around them, and at last she said, “I see him,” and started forward, still holding Johanna’s hand.
Crawford followed behind Christina; she was taking short, scuffling steps, and he hoped their quest wouldn’t involve too much walking.
Traffic in the next radius street was simply stopped, the drivers shouting and shaking their fists, and McKee led her group through the mud between the halted horses to the far side of it.
A crossing sweeper was busily establishing a path between a high-piled furniture wagon and a couple of hansom cabs, waving his broom at the drivers as much as using it to sweep the puddles aside, and a couple of timid-looking men in bowler hats tottered behind him across the wet gravel. At the far curb the old sweeper looked back, and he nodded when McKee waved her hat at him. A moment later he came scampering back between the wheels and hooves so nimbly that Crawford was startled to get a better look at him.
Under a floppy hat, the man’s hair was sparse and white, and his face sagged in deep wrinkles — but his eyes were alert and merry.
He didn’t seem to be at all winded. “A ha’penny to cross,” he told McKee.
McKee tugged on Crawford’s sleeve. “Give him a shilling,” she said quietly, “and tell him you want it all back.”
This felt like some kind of ritual, so Crawford did as she said; and the old man gave them all a reappraising look but nodded cheerfully and handed Crawford two sixpences in exchange for the shilling, a transaction that made the old man no profit at all.
“Like that, is it?” he said, and then without waiting for an answer he scuttled to the doorway of a nearby druggist’s and left his old broom there and came back with another.
“A new broom sweeps clean,” he said, and paused as if for a reply.
“Er,” said Crawford, “but the old broom—”
“—Knows all the coroners,” finished McKee.
Crawford had handed his umbrella to Johanna, and in their haste he had left his hat at Gabriel Rossetti’s house; and now he wanted to spit out the coconut taste of macassar oil in the rainwater running down his face from his hair.
But before he could complain about the delay, McKee seized his hand and pushed Christina, and then they were all sprinting across the muddy gravel — glancing back to make sure Johanna was following, Crawford saw that the old man was right behind her, sweeping so furiously that muddy gravel as well as sprays of water flew to the sides. On the far side of the street McKee gathered the others up onto the curb.
“Till the rain stops, I reckon” the old man said, “and no more’n a hundred yards.” He was not even panting as he touched his hat brim; and then he was hurrying back through the river of vehicles to where he had left his ordinary broom.
“It’s about noon,” said McKee, “and our footprints have been erased. Are you still with us, Sister?”
Christina had been leaning against a post-box, but now she took a deep breath and stepped away from it and took a fresh grip on the handle of her umbrella.
“I used to walk for miles,” she said, “when I was a little girl.” She tilted her head, as if listening. “And I don’t feel his attention!”
Johanna held her hand out in the rain from under the gleaming umbrella. “I don’t either, right now.”
McKee nodded. “On to Dudley Street.”
“I’ve heard of Dudley Street,” Johanna said.
“It’s good enough in the daytime,” said McKee, starting forward, “though I’d have had us dress less grand.”
Their way led them down a narrow side street where children and goats huddled in the shelter of eaves far overhead, and open doorways let out gruff voices and the smells of beer and dubious cooked meats, and then McKee guided them down a cross street to the left.
The houses on this street were all of blackened brick with haphazard ironwork over the windows, and a lone hansom cab moving down it was having to proceed slowly because of the multitude of shirtless boys kicking a ball around in the rain; they had marked out some intricate pattern on the street in white stones and seemed to be trying to kick the ball in a particular zigzag course across it.
Crawford noticed the recessed squares in the pavement only when he saw McKee crouch beside one, her blue silk dress trailing in the puddles, and wiggle a short pole that stood up from it.
After a moment a square of brown canvas was pulled aside from below, and Crawford saw that it had blocked a hole, and a squinting bearded face was now peering up out of it.
“We need translator shoes,” McKee said, leaning forward to politely hold her umbrella over the hole. “The hide kind.”
Crawford thought most shoes were made of hide, but the man seemed to comprehend a distinction.
“Farther up the street, under the shrouded cross,” he said, jerking his head to the east, “for hiding shoes. And may God have mercy on you.”
The bearded head withdrew down the hole, and the canvas cover was fumbled back into place and secured again from below.
Christina glanced up and down the unsavory street. “Perhaps this isn’t a good idea after all,” she said timidly.
“We’re bringing your blood,” said McKee, straightening up, “not God’s. Come on.”
But two of the boys who had been playing ball stepped in front of McKee now, and Crawford saw that they were older than the others — their cheeks were lined, and their chins were dark with whiskers.
“You two,” said one of them, pointing at Christina and Johanna, “you got the smell of stony blood on you.”