It felt better than playing for pirates.
Sometime later, he had several farthings-quarter pennies-and a few pence in his case, enough to buy half a loaf of bread. He kept on playing. A woman in a wine red velvet dress, unusual for spring, paused on the path to listen. Gavin knew from experience that if he met her gaze for long, she would feel awkward and move on, so he avoided looking directly at her, though he studied her out of the corner of his eye. She was tall for a woman, slender, and old enough to be his mother. Her hair was piled under a red hat, and the buttons on her gloves and shoes were actually tiny gold cogs. She carried a walking stick, also unusual. Behind her came an automaton, a stocky brass mechanical man with a boiler chest and pistonlike arms and legs. It carried a large shopping basket. The woman practically screamed wealth, and Gavin swept into “O’Carolan’s Argument with the Landlady,” a particularly difficult tune with complicated scales and turns. The woman stared at Gavin as if she were a lion and he a gazelle. Gavin felt uncomfortable, and he looked elsewhere so he wouldn’t make a mistake. The song rippled from his fiddle, and when it ended, applause fluttered about the park. A small audience had gathered. Gavin smiled and bowed. Several people tossed farthings into his case and went on their way. The woman in red velvet was nowhere to be seen. Gavin scooped the coins out of his case to avoid tempting thieves, and among them he found a shilling. He stared at it. This was enough to feed him for two days. Had it come from the Red Velvet Lady? It seemed likely-she had been the only one in the crowd who looked wealthy enough to throw that much money into a busker’s case. He went back to his fiddle. Maybe he could do this. He could earn enough money for a ticket back to Boston, where he could plead his case to BSMC in a country where he knew the people and where-he hoped-they wouldn’t have heard about Gavin punching a clerk in the face.
The rest of the day Gavin earned very little, though he played until his fingers burned and his feet ached from standing in one place. When darkness threatened and the automatic lamplighters clanked from lamp to lamp, he bought a day-old roll from a vendor who was on her way out of the park and searched the area until he found a hiding place between a bush and a boulder. Safe from night marauders and patrolling bobbies, he wrapped his ashen coat around himself and curled up to sleep.
Gavin jerked awake with a yelp of pain. His body was so stiff he could barely move. His back howled with pain when he sat up, and he hobbled about with old-man steps in the damp morning air, breathing sharply and heavily, until his body relented. In the interest of saving money, he skipped breakfast. At least the sun drove the plague zombies into hiding and he didn’t have to worry about them for the moment.
Hyde Park was largely deserted in the morning-no point in playing-so Gavin spent the time looking for a better place to spend his nights. Public buildings such as train stations were bad because the bobbies would make him move on, possibly with a crack on the head first. He considered looking for a job, then discarded the idea. The factories were almost all automated and hired few human workers. His reading and writing were decent for everyday use but not up to scratch for an office. And the thought of manual labor that required him to strain his half-healed back made him shake. The main trouble was, he had no real skills except music and flying.
He was wandering aimlessly around side streets, fiddle case on his back, and eventually found himself taking a dogleg through an alley. Brick walls broken by windows and ragged doors rose up to a narrow strip of sky, though the alley itself was quite clean-trash attracted plague zombies, and people rarely left it out. Still, human refuse might show up at any moment. Gavin hurried his steps, then paused. A trick of the light brought his attention to a ground-level window. It was supposed to be boarded over, but he could just see that the wood was coming loose. Gavin glanced around to ensure he went unobserved, then pushed the boards aside, crawled through the opening, and risked a drop into darkness.
A damp, echoing room of stone lay beyond. The only light crept in through the window he had just violated. Rats scattered as Gavin came to his feet, groaning with reawakened pain. Then he cut the sound off. What if this place was used by plague zombies as a daytime hiding place? He froze, listening, until his eyes adjusted to the gloom. The cellar room was small, maybe ten feet across. A pile of crates jumbled up in one corner, and a door loomed opposite them. No zombies. Gavin heaved a relieved sigh and examined the door, which had no knob and had been nailed shut from the other side. A real piece of luck at last-no one would enter from the main building. It wouldn’t be safe to leave anything valuable in here, but it would be a place to sleep.
He piled the crates under the window as a makeshift staircase and crawled cautiously back into the alley. His stomach growled, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten at all that day. Furtively, Gavin moved the loose boards back into place and hobbled away. He deserved lunch, at least.
Gavin spent the next two weeks playing Hyde Park for farthings in the afternoons and evenings. After nightfall, he spent a precious penny to ride an omnibus to the West End, where he played for people entering and exiting the music halls and theaters. He arrived in his cellar long after dark, feeling his fearful way down the alley away from the gaslights and toward potential plague zombies. Fortunately, he didn’t encounter any. Unfortunately, even this frugal lifestyle didn’t allow him to save much. Some days he didn’t earn the two pennies it cost him to get to the theater district and back. Some days it rained, preventing him from playing at all. The dampness in the cellar finally forced him to buy a blanket, which ate up several days’ money. He had to buy food, of course. And sleeping in the cellar seemed to stop his back from healing completely. Every afternoon he jerked awake, stiff and sore, every muscle on fire. He never woke slowly or peacefully anymore, not since his encounter with Madoc Blue and the first mate’s lash. One day he spent nine pence at an apothecary’s, and the medicine helped with the pain, but only for a time, and then he was right back where he started. Gavin was beginning to feel desperate. Eventually, spring and summer would end, bringing the chill winds of winter. He would be in deep trouble then.
One soft afternoon in Hyde Park, he had managed to wash up a bit in one of the ponds and was feeling a little better. Gavin’s skin itched terribly under his clothes-he hadn’t even rinsed them since the Juniper. Maybe today he would catch sight of the Red Velvet Lady. She had shown up twice more with her automaton to listen to him, and both times he had found a shilling in his case, though she never said a word. If she came today, maybe he’d use the money to visit a bathhouse and have his clothes laundered to boot.
A fog rolled in from the Thames and mixed with the ever-present coal smoke from the chimneys and streetlamps, creating a thick yellow mist that covered the park in a sulfurous cloak. Gavin sighed as he walked. So much for optimism. Fewer people would be out in weather like this-the chill kept people indoors and lack of sunlight let the plague zombies roam. The damp also worsened his back. Clip-clop hooves and quiet voices mingled with the mist, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere. Men in coats and women in wide dresses ghosted in and out of view. The itching under Gavin’s coat was growing worse, and he pulled his jacket off to scratch vigorously once he arrived at his usual corner.