The Tombs Read online

  Dedication

  For my wonderful daughters, Skylar Gina and Ryan

  Paige—I see the world anew through your eyes.

  And, of course, for my mom.

  Epigraph

  What is this dismal-fronted pile of bastard Egyptian, like an enchanter’s palace in a melodrama!—a famous prison, called The Tombs. Shall we go in?

  —Charles Dickens, American Notes

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter One: The Works

  Chapter Two: The Nightmare

  Chapter Three: Ink

  Chapter Four: A Coin for a Boy

  Chapter Five: Absinthe

  Chapter Six: The Ferry

  Chapter Seven: Bojangles

  Chapter Eight: The Good Doctor

  Chapter Nine: Still as Stone

  Chapter Ten: Secret Note

  Chapter Eleven: The Gypsies

  Chapter Twelve: The Mystic

  Chapter Thirteen: Kaleidoscope

  Chapter Fourteen: Lost Time

  Chapter Fifteen: Scorpions and Dragonflies

  Chapter Sixteen: Impalement Art

  Chapter Seventeen: Violence in the Streets

  Chapter Eighteen: Dead Crow

  Chapter Nineteen: Like Father, Like Son

  Chapter Twenty: The Perch

  Chapter Twenty-One: Bessie Baby

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Weld Rats

  Chapter Twenty-Three: The Guard

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Best Friend

  Chapter Twenty-Five: House of the Scarlet Ascot

  Chapter Twenty-Six: Sadie-Mae

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Halloween Masquerade

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: Delmonico’s Steak Knives

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: Inside the Tombs

  Chapter Thirty: Toxic Flowers

  Chapter Thirty-One: Pepper

  Chapter Thirty-Two: Rats

  Chapter Thirty-Three: The Painting

  Chapter Thirty-Four: The Eye

  Chapter Thirty-Five: Fresh Source

  Chapter Thirty-Six: Specimens

  Chapter Thirty-Seven: The Padded Cell

  Chapter Thirty-Eight: The Darkness Inside

  Chapter Thirty-Nine: The Gallows

  Chapter Forty: The Execution of Norman Bale

  Chapter Forty-One: Flight

  Chapter Forty-Two: The Crystal

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Books by Deborah Schaumberg

  Back Ad

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  NEW YORK ~ 1882

  Chapter One

  The Works

  This must be how madness begins. Traces of light or a shadowy haze around a person’s face, meaningless images in my head, and then the fear, the all-consuming fear that at any moment they will come for me. For a long time I convinced myself that madness was not hereditary. I may have been wrong. I haven’t told anyone, not even Father. To say it out loud would make it true, and I don’t want to be locked up with my mother.

  Through the slats on my window I scanned the street for crow-shaped faces, beaks of black. One day they’d come. My heart drummed against my ribs as I pictured them out there—as if I were thirteen again. I took a deep breath and yanked the laces of my corset until it squeezed my heart back into place. Tucking in loose strands, I hid my braid under a soft felt hat and threw on Father’s military coat.

  Sliding back the curtain separating my bedchamber from the shop, I was surprised to find my father splayed out on the floor. He usually made it to the sofa. Next to him was an empty bottle of gin, propped against the shiny metal of his mechanical leg, both of which seemed to blame the other for his fall. If Mother were here instead of in the Tombs, he wouldn’t be drinking and I’d be going to school instead of to work. I pushed away the pointless thoughts as I placed a pillow under his head. Shutting the door quietly, I left through the side entrance leading to the hallway.

  I turned the lock and spun around, bumping directly into a man in disheveled Union military clothing. “Oh!” I stepped back. “Pardon me.”

  He eyed me through long matted hair and, in a voice that sounded as if he had gravel in his throat, said, “Edgar in there, missy?”

  “Yes, sir. But he’s sleeping.”

  “I’ll wait. Got no place else to be.” I noticed that one sleeve of the man’s jacket was empty, pinned across his body in a hollow embrace. He’d come to see my father about his arm, no doubt. Although Father’s passion was clock making, and he used to be a machinist at the navy yard, he tinkered with mechanical devices of all sorts, including body parts.

  With his other hand, the man skillfully pinched a wad of tobacco from a snuff tin, dropped it back into his pocket, then pressed the leaves into his cheek. His fingers moved with the grace and dexterity of an illusionist doing a card trick. He leaned against the wall and closed his eyes.

  Delicate morning light drifted in through the glass door to the street, softening the fringe of peeling paint and exposed patches of wood lath on the walls. But despite its honeyed glow, it was still a hallway laden with despair.

  Survivors of the Civil War often had missing limbs. The war may have ended seventeen years ago, but it still hovered like a tattered shroud over the city, casting a bitter shadow. My father made sure I knew all the particulars. More than 625,000 men had died, many not much older than myself. He taught me about each and every battle, and all the Civil War insignia.

  I looked at the soldier’s threadbare forage cap. It had a red triangular badge next to a pin of crossed sabers. “Fourth Corps Cavalry, Division One?” I asked.

  He opened his eyes and gave me a long look. Then he lifted his chin. “At your service, ma’am.”

  I nodded. “Good day to you, sir.”

  I waited until I was halfway down the block before turning to glance up at the roof of our tenement building. My falcon, Seraphine, slept there in a protected roost Father and I had built for her. I whistled to let her know I was leaving.

  Trudging through the thin layer of gray slush that had appeared overnight, I pushed it forward with the steel toes of my boots. A first snow in October meant a long winter of coal to purchase, and as employment was harder and harder to come by, especially for a girl, losing my job was something Father and I simply could not afford. I dug my hands into the pockets of the boys’ wool britches I wore and picked up my pace. I still had time to go by the school.

  Maybe today I would have the courage to talk to Grace. We used to live next door to the Hammonds, but I hadn’t spoken to her since I’d moved to the slums. Back then I didn’t know there were tenements and factories only a few blocks over, or that one day I’d be relegated to their dingy halls.

  As I approached St. Ann’s, I ducked into the shadows to watch the flocks of girls flit by, chattering like little birds. Just as it did every day, my gut tightened at the sight of them. Why do I torture myself like this? But I knew why. I missed her. I had friends, but they were all boys. Girlfriends had a different bond, a special one. Then I saw her.

  She was arm in arm with another girl. Their skirts were clean and pressed, and they marched along in their lace-up boots, confident of their position in society. They were probably discussing boys they hoped to be courted by. I remember Grace laughing at me for saying I wanted to go to college when I grew up. “Oh, Avery,” she’d said, dismissing me with a wave of her hand. “You simply must marry, or you’ll end up like that old spinster down the street, the one with all the cats.” But even though we had different views on certain things, we’d shared all of our hopes and dreams with each other.

 
; I removed my felt hat and smoothed back my hair. My nerves tingled, but she was usually with a larger group and today it was just the two of them. It used to be her and me walking to school, arms linked like that.

  I peeled away from the protection of the shadows. “Hello, Grace.”

  The girls stopped and glanced at each other. Did she not recognize me? Of course—my work clothes.

  “It’s me. Avery.” I smiled. “Avery Kohl.”

  The other girl, with a pointed face and a shiny black widow’s peak, smirked. “My dear Grace, is this an acquaintance of yours? She looks like a river rat up from the pier.”

  Her laugh burned my cheeks, but I ignored the insult, sure that Grace would put this rude girl in her place. “Grace?” I pleaded.

  But Grace dropped her gaze. Pointy Face tightened her grip on Grace’s arm. “Let’s go, Grace. She might have the pox.”

  Grace allowed herself to be led away from me, but not before she glanced up and I saw myself through her eyes: boys’ clothes, dirt under my fingernails, drab hair from lack of brushing. It was no wonder she was embarrassed to admit she knew me.

  I’d held on to the belief that one day things could go back to normal, that if Father and I worked hard, we could get our old life back. Or at least that my best friend would always be there for me, even if I had no money. That other girl was right. I was the lowest of the low—a filthy working-class rat. Even worse, I walked a razor’s edge between that and living on the streets.

  Tears burned in my eyes, but Cross Street Ironworks waited impatiently six blocks away and I could not be late. Without glancing back, I ran—from Grace, the school, and the life I’d lost—until the pain in my lungs overtook the pain in my heart.

  I smelled the factory soon enough—smoldering iron and sulfur, the kind of smell that makes your lungs itch and your tongue taste like rust. The Works, as we called it, ate up four city blocks and seemed to be growing, breathing out its hot, metallic breath, belching black smoke, and seeping yellow clouds into the sky.

  A shadow raced along the cobblestones. I glanced up to see Seraphine circling gracefully, high above me. I whistled again. She responded with a long wailing scream. Then she tucked her wings and dove like a shooting star from the sky, faster and faster, until I lost sight of her between the buildings.

  When I reached the entrance to the enormous redbrick edifice, I slowed to catch my breath and wipe away traces of my tears. Two tall windows stared down at me, but their grimy glaze masked the interior of the factory. Across the top of the building, Cross Street Ironworks was painted in large, once-white letters. Beyond the roofline, one of the stacks was visible, engulfed in its corrosive cloud.

  Geeno came sprinting from the opposite direction, his thin coat damp in the places where he must have slept on it. I worried constantly about him living in a wooden shipping crate, especially when the temperature dropped. Once, I’d followed him to the box he called home. He was furious, and no matter how I’d pleaded, he would not take an offer to sleep on my sofa, so stupidly proud sometimes he reminded me of myself.

  “Whoa, there,” I said as he skidded into me. “You run the whole way?”

  “Avery, you here.” He took a deep breath, his shoulders relaxing. “I thought maybe you leave us, too, like Alexander.”

  I punched his skinny arm. “What? And miss the chance to boss you runts around? Never.”

  “Want to see a secret?” He looked up at me, his gap-toothed smile tugging at my heart.

  If I was to be a rat, at least I was not alone. We were weld rats, and at nine, Geeno was the youngest. But he could hold his own. Geeno apprenticed with my father every Sunday, in the hopes that he would one day have a worthy trade. He was a natural tinkerer, quickly learning how a clock’s hundreds of tiny parts worked together.

  “Please?” he begged.

  “Can it be quick?” I tapped my silver timepiece, a gift from my father on my sixteenth birthday and a constant reminder that his genius was wasting away like the sugar cube on his absinthe spoon.

  Geeno nodded and removed from his pocket a large corked glass vial containing something shiny and black.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  He held it up as I squinted closer. With a sharp tap, it flicked its tail on the glass.

  I jumped back. “Geeno! What on earth is that thing?”

  He laughed, enjoying my reaction. “It’s called a scorpion. My neighbor find it in his shipping crate. We checked; his crate is from overseas.”

  “It looks dangerous, Geeno. I don’t think you should keep it.”

  “She half dead anyway.” He slid it back into his pocket. “But I think I can fix her.”

  “Sure you can. Just do me a favor, don’t let it escape.”

  As he pulled his hand from his pocket, a thin metal plate fell to the ground. I picked it up. It was a black-and-white tintype photograph of Geeno standing with his parents at the rail of a steamship. They had emigrated from Italy to raise Geeno in “the land of opportunity,” only to die of consumption a week after touching foot on American soil. Geeno was left to fend for himself in the city.

  The picture blurred, and for a moment I thought I saw another image. I blinked and angled it back and forth, but it appeared normal. My mind was playing tricks on me again. I handed the plate back to Geeno. He looked at it with a faraway sadness. Placing my thumb on his chin, I tilted it up. “What happened to them was not your fault, Geeno. Do you understand?”

  His brows drew together as if he was making an important decision. Then he smiled up at me. “Thank you, Avery.”

  “Come on.” I tousled his hair and pushed open the heavy steel door, releasing a blast of heat. “Don’t want to walk in late and upset the boss, now, do we?”

  The boss’s name was Roland Malice, a Polish ex-boxer. Legend had it he’d died momentarily in his last professional bout, but I knew him to be undefeated at the illegal matches held late at night on the docks behind the factory. His fists and forearms rippled with muscle. His hulking form tapered at the top to form a bald head, and a thick mustache twirled into long points on either side of his face. Everyone was afraid of him, even the coal runners, and they were the biggest of the bunch.

  We stopped to grab our helmets from the row of pegs lined up on the wall above our crudely painted names. Mine just said “Avery.” After my mother was taken and we fled Brooklyn Heights, Father made me stop using my full name, so no one could track us down. As if moving into the crowded ghetto wasn’t enough to hide us.

  I sighed as Geeno jumped up to reach his helmet. I was going on two and a half years now at the Works, six days a week, twelve, sometimes fourteen hours a day. We were here more than in our own homes.

  Tony and Leo were already at their stations. Two helmets were left. One was Oscar’s, late again, and the other, Alexander’s, who wouldn’t need his anymore.

  Geeno wasn’t the only one who missed Alexander. He got out, landed a better job as a welder for the Brooklyn Bridge project. The crew looked to me, being next oldest, now that he was gone. The weight of that sat heavily on my shoulders, especially as I was not myself lately.

  I think it began midsummer, around my birthday. I’d come home from work to find Father crying. It unsettled me—his bowed head clutched in his dusty white hands. He’d tried to bake me a cake, but it was a lump of coal. His long, slender fingers that could work minuscule gears into intricate designs could not combine flour, milk, and eggs. “It’s all right, Pop. I don’t need a cake,” I’d said, trying to console him.

  “Yes, you do. And you need a mother.” He’d shaken his head, spreading flour further into his hair. “You’re sixteen now. I don’t know how to raise a young woman. What prospects will you have? Your mother had everything under control. I cannot do this alone anymore.”

  Control was an understatement. My mother had a master plan, a plan to see me wed into a good family, one that could secure my future within the upper middle class. She’d cringe if she knew I was workin
g, and in a factory, no less—a job for the coarse and uneducated.

  That night I’d dreamt of my mother, screaming my name, pounding her hands bloody on the walls of her hospital room. It was a nightmare I’d had time and again these past few years, but when I awoke, something seemed to have shifted inside me. It started in small ways—random shadows flitting at the edges of my vision, an image flashing through my mind. . . .

  Maybe I’m slipping into madness, just like her.

  The sounds of the factory came rushing back. I closed my eyes and told myself, as I did every morning, Just focus on your work. I confronted my day—one task at a time.

  Geeno and I logged our names into the time roll and headed toward our welding stations.

  My heart warmed as I passed each boy’s workbench—the brothers I never had. They made work bearable. Geeno was my little shadow. Tony, the oldest at fourteen, would stick his neck out for anyone. His brother, a newsboy over at South Ferry, got caught stealing, but Tony took the fall, so the court sentenced Tony to a year at the halfway house. Now he was escorted to work daily by the New York House of Refuge coach. Leo and Oscar were both twelve. Leo was a crackerjack-smart black boy, and Oscar, our lovable, mischievous Gypsy.

  Just as I feared, Oscar’s station was empty. The last time Oscar showed up late, Mr. Malice came down from the perch and bawled him out good. The perch hung like an oversize birdcage eighty feet above our heads. From there, Mr. Malice saw everything.

  Each block of welding stations formed a crew. The kids in the other crews didn’t talk to us because I ran ours and I was a girl. Besides, we had a black boy and a Gypsy. They shunned us all.

  When Mr. Malice first hired Leo, even my crew was hesitant to work with him. I knew how that felt. No one had accepted me until I’d proved myself. So I’d volunteered to show Leo the ropes, and on his very first day he came up with a better way of holding the filler rod to produce a tighter seam. With that, he won the boys over—anything to make us look better than the other crews.

  On one side of the plant, a giant belt moved pig iron to the new Siemens furnace. On the other side sat Bessie, the massive Bessemer converter. If Cross Street Ironworks was a living, breathing beast, then Bessie was her twenty-ton baby.