Fortunately, the newspapers also said that the weavers would soon have opportunities they hadn’t had for decades: the Combination Acts were also careening toward repeal. Workers would be legally permitted to band together for better conditions and higher wages. These combinations would once again be able to put pressure on the factories to be less of a nightmare for those who labored there. They’d even be able to strike, if it came to that.
But to survive a strike, the Weavers’ Library would need funds. A good amount of money to feed and clothe and house protesting workers until a consensus with the owners could be reached. In times past they’d have had a fund stored up from long-standing member dues and donations—but they couldn’t collect that legally now, even if it would be legal in a very little while. They quite simply couldn’t afford to wait.
Hence: crime. It was really the only practical solution.
Maddie worked until she was so tired her eyes couldn’t tell one pin from another. She swallowed the last of her beer and let loose her hair, braiding it gently down her back instead of keeping it pinned tightly back and out of her eyes.
From around her neck she pulled the one piece of jewelry she owned: a slender silver chain from which hung a two-penny piece, drilled through. One side was Britannia showing off her titties and her trident—the other had been carefully sanded flat and then etched with tiny figures: a woman leaning on a coffin, an anchor linking two hearts, and a ship vanishing into the distance. Thick funereal letters around the edge spelled out a promise:I Love Till Death Shall Stop My Breath.
Inside the hearts, in letters so tiny they were almost invisible, were written two names. One:MargueriteArtus, who would later marry and become Marguerite Crewe.
The second name:Jenny Hull.
After the trial Marguerite had had two of these coins carved, one to keep with her, and one to send across the sea with her condemned beloved. She hadn’t told her daughter the same Jenny Hull stories the other parents did: hers were stories of long evenings by the river, or summer rambles through the forest outside of town. She told stories of tricks played on cruel parish officers, of thefts that kept families from starving, of respectable villains and lying heroes and the kind of justice that happened in spite of the law.
Marguerite Crewe had died trying to create a more just world. Her daughter was determined to follow suit—and then Jenny Hull had returned under a new name, with a new fortune, and one old token of a dead woman’s love, to match the one Maddie wore like a saint’s medal over her heart.
Grief had recognized grief, and two lost souls found a shared purpose in plans for revenge.
The edged letters sparked in the candlelight as Maddie hung the love token from the nail in the wall. She blew out the candle, pulled the blankets tight around her, and was asleep before the thin trail of smoke stopped rising from the wick.
Chapter Four
Sophie’s father had indeed found a secondhand piano to purchase from the late Dr. Abernathy’s estate. It was a beautiful instrument.
Or, more accurately, it had once been beautiful. Sophie could see it in the curving lines of the case, clean and sleek and true, and the lovingly burnished letters that proclaimedDewhurst andFfolkesas the makers. Short of Roseingrave, Dewhurst and Ffolkes were the names she most liked to see on a piano for sensitivity and richness of tone.
Unlike Mrs. Muchelney’s demilune instrument, designed to hide its true nature, this grand piano had been built to flaunt exactly what it was. The cover, when opened, hovered at an angle that seemed to beckon the viewer to move closer and peer inside at the strings that spread out tense and quivering as a wing in flight.
Now all Sophie and her father had to do was put new felt on the hammer pads, replace the rusted bass strings, fit new hinges on the lid, see if the pin block was still solid enough to hold the tuning pins in place, put new tops on the white keys, refinish the mahogany case, and install a newer, smoother action that didn’t rattle like a skeleton in a charnel house. And then, of course, to tune it.
Sophie struck one key and thought about hands, as the off-tone wailed and wavered in the air.
You could tell a lot about a person by watching their hands. How they moved, how they held still, what they fidgeted with and what they reached out to grab for themselves.
Mr. Giles’s hands had been fluid and graceful, sure and confident—but they’d snatched and tugged; they’d spun Sophie around and twisted expensive ribbon into knots. They’d moved like Mr. Verrinder’s hands, gesturing toward what he wanted everyone to see. Hiding what he didn’t. When Mr. Giles had seized her wrist, his grip had banded tight as iron.
She ought to have paid more attention to Mr. Verrinder’s hands, all those months ago. He’d claimed to be an inventor, but his hands hadn’t shown any workmen’s marks or calluses. They’d been the deft, deceptive hands of a card sharp, or a pickpocket, or a forger of other men’s signatures on letters of credit and counterfeit banknotes. Sophie had been dazzled by their confidence and grace, the teasing way his fingertips brushed the back of her hand when he watched her practicing at the keyboard. The way they seemed to stroke an unspoken apology for the coldness of the iron contraption he insisted would make all of their fortunes in the future.
He’d sold that future several times over, while Sophie was ensorcelled by his flattery, and Mr. Roseingrave distracted by construction of half a dozen pianos that went unpaid for. His hands had coaxed away everything valuable and left only debts and empty promises behind.
Sophie hadn’t gotten a good look at Miss Crewe’s hands. She’d been too far away in the draper’s shop—and then, outside the church, the woman had been wearing those mittens. Even so, when Sophie had mentioned that blue silk, for whatever reason: her grip had noticeably tightened.
Even through her thick mittens, Miss Crewe’s hands had given her away. They were the most honest things about her.
Sophie spread her own hand out over the keyboard and played—well, not precisely a chord. There were a few too many jangly notes, snarling out when they ought to have been blending, soft as velvet. She itched to reach for the tuning hammer.
It was only as the jangle died away that she realized she’d played without feeling her fingers were imprisoned.
Of course, as soon as she realized, the iron came back. She tried shaking it off, but hadn’t managed it by the time her mother came out to the front of the shop.
Mrs. Roseingrave was soft and round and a little shorter than Sophie, but had the same brown hair and eyes, the same old-parchment shade of skin. “Sophie, dear,” she asked, tilting her head so her good ear was slightly forward, “are you terribly busy with that piano?”
Sophie clenched her cold fingers hopelessly, and sighed. “No,” she said, with a shake of her head to make sure the message got through. Tilting her face toward the light, so her lips could be clearly seen, she faced her mother and asked, “How can I help?”
Mrs. Roseingrave smiled, her eyes fixed on the movements of Sophie’s mouth, compensating for her troubled hearing. “The twins have grown again,” she said, “so I’ve made a bundle of some of their old things. Our neighbors have told me Mrs. Narayan’s shop is the best for secondhand clothes—will you take them there for me? And find a few things to bring back with you?”
“Of course,” Sophie said, nodding, and her mother hummed a little in relief.
