She led the way upstairs and showed us into her accommodation for the night—a small room fitted with a narrow bed and a washstand with a cracked bowl. Eddy managed the stairs under Stoker’s ungentle coaxing and flopped onto the bed.
Elsie gave him a fond look. “He’s a pretty sort of lad, isn’t he? I imagine he has a mother what loves him dearly. Just look at those moustaches!” She shook her head. “But he cannot hold his drink and that’s God’s own truth.”
He burbled out a snore just then, and Elsie left to find us clothes while Stoker and I took turns washing with a pitcher of cold water, shivering but happy to be at least marginally cleaner than we were. I stripped off the robes of Boadicea at last as Stoker peeled away the shirt he had lent Eddy, the fine cotton stiff and crackling with dried blood.
Elsie appeared, her arms full of garments, and clucked over Stoker’s injured flesh. “I brought something for those bruises. Seen it often enough with the sailors who fall to brawling,” she added. She produced strips of bandages and a bottle of ferociously pungent liniment. “This will help.” Without waiting for permission, she bent to her task, pouring a palmful of liniment into her hand and slapping it onto his skin.
He howled in protest, but she would not let him squirm away, holding him firmly until the nasty stuff had penetrated his flesh. “Now, isn’t that just like a man?” she demanded. “Kicking up such a fuss over a little good horse liniment. I made less noise when I was in labor.”
“You have children?” I asked as I shook out the petticoats she had brought for me.
“Aye, miss. A pair of them. Molly is in service with a wine merchant and Jemmy is a deckhand on one of them great ships with Cunard,” she said with unmistakable pride.
“Do you see them often?” I stepped into the petticoats and tied them firmly about my waist.
“Heavens no, miss. That would never do,” she said with no trace of regret. “They’re my flesh and blood and I love them, but I’ll not have them living a life like mine. They need better, and if I catch them in this part of the city, I’d tan them properly.” I did not doubt it. Most mothers in her situation were content to let their children follow in their footsteps, their future bound by the limitations of poverty and lack of imagination. But Elsie had glimpsed a bigger world, and I marveled that she had managed to launch her children into it.
She bossed Stoker into a set of borrowed clothes, down to the boots. “Got those off Tom from the bar,” she said proudly. “He reckons he can sell them to you for three shillings.”
Stoker handed her Tiberius’ empty notecase, a fine affair of bottle green leather set in silver. “It hasn’t a tuppence in it, but I can promise Tom will get far more than three shillings in pawn for it.”
She hurried away to make the trade whilst Stoker wrestled Eddy into a moderately clean shirt of striped cotton, tying a jaunty scarf around his neck for warmth. He dropped the slumbering prince back onto the bed as Elsie returned several minutes later with word that Tom had accepted the barter, and just then another figure appeared, a young woman, blond, with her hair piled high in an attempt at glamour.
“This is my friend,” Elsie said, “Mary Jane.”
The girl thrust out her hand. “I prefer Marie Jeanette,” she said with a touch of reproof. Elsie gave her a light push.
“You’re Mary Jane Kelly, and don’t you go putting on airs, my love,” she said in an indulgent voice.
The girl thrust a dress at me. “Elsie said as you needed something to wear. It’s my second best,” she told me.
“That is very kind of you,” I began, but she waved me off.
“Any friend of Elsie’s. If it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t have my room,” she said proudly. The dress she had brought was rather too short and in a virulent green hue found only in the more lavish jungles. But it was a far sight better than anything I could call my own at the moment, and I thanked her again.
Mary Jane busied herself buttoning me up the back as Elsie plucked the violet-strewn hat from her own head and pinned it firmly into place. “There you are, miss. Proper dressed you are now, although I cannot like those boots with that dress. You ought to have had black kid.”
I peeped down at the audacious scarlet boots she had found for me. “Never mind. I am very grateful to you, Elsie. And you, Mary Jane. You must let us pay for the clothes.”
She waved me off. “Never you mind, miss. We were happy to do it, all of us.”
I was deeply touched. The people who made their living in Whitechapel had little enough, but they shared it willingly. It was the sort of place where tea leaves once brewed would be gladly handed to a friend for a second go. I knew better than to insult her by speaking again of money, but I gave Stoker a significant look and he nodded almost imperceptibly. He understood, as did I, that nothing makes a person feel so rich as the ability to give to another, and to rob Elsie of her generosity would be no kindness. In time, Stoker would ensure Elsie received some little sum more and she would share her bounty, we had no doubt. Clothes were a commodity in that quarter and might be sold or pawned for the price of a meal or a bed. To have been given such riches was a testament to how generous Elsie had been with her friends in their own times of need.
But the clothes were the least of what we were given that night. Elsie sent a boy to the cookshop in the next street and he brought back two covered plates, still steaming.
“I got none for your man Ed,” she said, nodding in satisfaction as she presented the plates, a delectable smell wafting from the thick gravy bubbling through vents in crusts of golden pastry. “He’ll not want food for a while, I’m thinking, but the pair of you should eat up now.”
Stoker stuck a fork into the pastry, sending a river of rich gravy spilling onto the plate.
“Eel pie,” he said happily, falling on the food with gusto.
I ate mine almost as swiftly—as much from hunger as from the fear that Stoker would help himself to it if I did not. We had a littlebowl for spitting out the bones, and as we ate, Elsie bustled about, neatly folding our own clothes into a basket.
“Mind you,” she fussed, “I would rather have had the chance to wash them properly, but I think that tunic of yours is fit for nothing but the rag basket,” she warned me.
“I cannot think of when I would possibly have need of it,” I assured her. “Keep them to sell to the ragpicker.” The items were hired and Tiberius had given surety for them, but they were little better than remnants at this point and the tiara was rolling around somewhere in the darkness of the Club de l’Étoile. At least I would be able to return the armillae, I reflected grimly.
Elsie clucked and fretted, as fastidious as a spinster as we mopped up the last of the eel gravy with the bread she had brought. The meal was filling and hot, and that was all that may be said in its favor. In spite of its delicious aroma, the eel pie was greasy and even the bread was unsavory, with a strange, gritty quality.
