The Undertakers, page 4
A jingling bell hanging above the blacksmith’s door announced Hetty’s entrance.
“Back here. If it’s urgent I can—” Benjy looked up from the bench and his face folded into a scowl. “What do you want?”
“How do you know I’m not just here to talk?” Hetty came to a stop at the table, eyes on the items waiting their turn to be fixed.
Benjy waggled the hammer in his hand at her, irritation coming off of him in waves. “You don’t turn up here without asking for some sort of favor.”
“I do not!” Hetty pouted.
Benjy shut his eyes, grumbling like an old man. “I don’t have time for your nonsense today!”
Although he was merely the blacksmith’s apprentice, Benjy had the run of the shop overseeing all the fixes and creations that came out of the forge. The only problem was that no matter how good his work was, he didn’t look like the blacksmith people expected. Too young, too easily distracted, and too willing to give opinions on things no one cared about.
Mrs. Evans had said something about him having potential, whatever that meant. Hetty didn’t dare ask. The older woman had this funny notion in her head to play matchmaker. Which should have been annoying, but Mrs. Evans was all gentle about it, considering anyone else would have forced them to get married when they returned to Philadelphia after months of traveling together. Instead, Mrs. Evans only teased that Benjy might be sweet on her. But Hetty had her doubts about that, since nearly every time they talked he shooed her away like an annoying fly.
Hetty tapped the lantern sitting on the table as she tried to figure out the right words. She had only one chance to ask this right before he ripped her words apart. “It’s not a favor but a question—”
“Don’t touch that!”
Hetty made a show of moving her hands away and then turned them over. The Libra star sigil flashed and the lantern floated into the air next to her.
She looked at him pointedly, and he said nothing but gave her a look that could curdle milk.
“I need your help,” Hetty said as she placed the lantern back on the table. “There is a woman who needs passage north. It’s been arranged for her, but she won’t leave without her children. They are down in Tennessee. I need to get there and back here in ten days.”
“You want my help?” he scoffed, turning to a dented teakettle. He swung his hammer down on it hard enough that the clash rang in the air. “Take a train.” He went on to strike the poor teakettle a few more times, the resounding clangs taking the space of whatever angry words he had. Hetty sighed, uncertain if this was better than being fussed at.
Then he stopped mid-swing. “No, that won’t work. You need to move quickly and quietly. The children are blackmail.” He blinked. “Who is this woman that you would press on the heels of time for such a task?”
“Someone who needs help,” Hetty said. Seeing his skeptical expression, she added, “If I do this, I’ll get information about my sister.”
“That’s your objective with everything,” Benjy said. But he was no longer thinking about her as he spoke, having moved on to the problem at hand. “I think I might know a way to get there in less time. You won’t like it, though.”
“I doubt that.”
Instead of explaining further, he pointed upward.
Hetty tilted her head back. Above them was a basket the size of a wagon hanging from the ceiling. There was something metal next to it that looked like a lantern. But it was only when Hetty saw the fabric tied up next to it that she realized what it was.
“An air balloon!” Hetty exclaimed. “Did you steal this? No, I don’t care if you did! How fast does it travel?”
“Shouldn’t you be asking if it’s safe?” Benjy asked. “Or if it works?”
“If you put it together it has to work, and as for being safe, well, I trust you.”
He blinked, and for a moment Hetty thought she’d said the wrong thing.
It was occurring to her that in her eagerness to keep her promise to Sarah Jacobs and prove Darlene wrong, she forgot one small thing.
She hadn’t asked if he wanted to take part.
It was one thing to ask him for ideas. Quite another to ask for more help than that.
But she couldn’t operate this air balloon on her own. And if she was being honest, she couldn’t head back south on her own either. Nor did she want to.
It was easier to have someone with her to watch the road and guard her back, but she couldn’t ask. Not when he hadn’t been brought into the fold with the Vigilance Society. Not when they weren’t truly friends.
Then, to her surprise, something that never happened before occurred: he smiled.
“Safe isn’t quite the word I’d use, but it will fly,” Benjy said. “There is a small hole in the balloon envelope. If you sew it up, we can leave by nightfall.”
HERDSMAN
3
BENJY WAS QUIET WHEN they finally put the strange fires, secret tunnels, the Duvals, and everything else behind them.
Retreating to a broody silence, Benjy remained unresponsive to Hetty’s few attempts at pleasant conversation. In the end, she fell into her own silence, thinking not just of Sarah Jacobs, but the circumstances around the case. The incident was the first official work they’d had with the Vigilance Society. The one in which Hetty had been properly introduced to Darlene, though they would not become good friends until years later. Not to mention the work that cemented the partnership she had developed with Benjy. Which was an odd thing to say, since they had already traveled together along a dangerous and difficult road. But ferrying Sarah Jacobs and all that followed turned what had been a question into the beginning of their adventures together.
Benjy went to where they’d left their bicycles leaning against a pole. With a flick of his fingers, the spell making the bicycles an uninteresting sight went away. He wheeled them both as he walked back toward her, gently pushing hers ahead.
“Why didn’t he ask about his father?” Benjy asked abruptly. “Why bother asking for stories when there was a better use of his time?”
Used to these outbursts that were often interjected into unrelated conversation, Hetty merely shrugged. “Why would he ask us?”
“He knew who we were from the moment he saw us.”
“I doubt that,” Hetty began. “He said—”
“He said a lot of things. The most important bits were near the end, when he was looking for answers from us.”
Hetty placed her hands on her bicycle’s handlebars but did not mount. “You’re saying three different things at once. Tell me so I can follow.”
“Valentine Duval knows who we are and that we looked into his father’s death.”
“I don’t remember him coming to our door asking for help. Or even meeting him at his father’s funeral. How did you know about him?”
“I pay attention to such things,” Benjy said without malice, and he went back to his brooding.
Hetty let him be. There would be plenty of time to find out what exactly was on his mind, and answer his lingering questions.
Hetty swung up on her bicycle and led the way home.
The house on Juniper Street was a narrow building inlaid with beautiful dark red brick. The shutters around the windows were a dark blue, and the rooftop was flat enough that Hetty could set up her telescope on it. Their home shared its front steps with the house next door, and the postboxes acted as a dividing line. There were a few bushes out in front, with a sign for their funeral home poking out. As theirs was the end unit, access to the backyard was through the gate that opened both to the street and to the narrow alley that ran behind the line of row houses.
They’d owned this house for a couple months now, and spent quite a bit of time renovating it to their tastes, from the smallest nail in the floorboards to the cream-colored paint that now graced the main rooms. Still, whenever Hetty approached it and saw faces in the windows and heard conversation trickling to the streets, she felt like a guest coming for a visit.
“Why are there people in our house?” Hetty asked as she skidded to a stop in the middle of the street.
“Are we doing a play tonight?” Benjy asked.
About once a week they gathered with their friends to put on a play. What that play was varied in both scope and scale. Sometimes it was a full production with costumes and props, and other times they simply read favorite fragments of different plays. Either way, the plays were always performed with great enthusiasm. The gatherings were really about spending time together. Although Hetty wasn’t a fan at the start, she enjoyed the evenings they put on plays very much, even when she’d rather come home to peace and quiet.
“We never picked one last time,” Hetty reminded him. “Oliver wanted us to do the play he wrote, and George was against it on principle, and—”
“Everyone argued all night. I remember that part. Not sure that explains why they’re here so early. They usually come around after sunset.”
“Because they have keys,” Hetty grumbled.
“That was your excellent idea,” Benjy said with some glee. “You argued strongly for it when I disagreed. But if you want me to, I can get rid of them.”
“It won’t be easy.”
“Doesn’t hurt to try. I’ll put the bicycles up—”
“No.” Hetty grabbed his handlebars, nearly toppling off her own bicycle as she did so. “I’ll do it!” she said. Before he could reply, she added, “I’d rather do this than deal with them. And you’ve always been better at shooing people out without magic.”
“It’s a gift.” Benjy shrugged, easily taken in by the compliment.
As Benjy headed for the front door, Hetty slipped through the gate, leading the bicycles into the back. After sliding the bicycles into their spot behind the house, she went to the far corner of the yard and poked at the shed hidden under a thick veil of her magic to see if the spells had been disturbed or not. Assured they hadn’t, she turned to the house and spotted the curtains in the kitchen shifting aside. Within moments, the back door opened and Penelope skipped out.
Penelope’s hair was twisted and held in place with a butterfly hairpin. She wore a plain white blouse and a dark skirt, both of which had a dusting of dirt and smelled of wildflowers. She also wore a belt that had a few dangling pouches tied to it, which meant she had come right from the herbal shop she worked at. Penelope liked fancy clothes, and liked even more dressing to show off her fuller figure, which she couldn’t do when wearing an apron.
“About time you showed up,” Hetty’s best friend declared with a grin. “We were all getting dreadfully bored waiting for you. We even talked about bullying Thomas into fixing us dinner as the afternoon came to an end.”
“I wish him the greatest luck with that, since there isn’t much. But if it was that boring waiting for us, maybe you should rethink showing up when we aren’t here?”
Penelope placed a hand against her chest in feigned offense. “I was in the garden most of the afternoon! Everyone else just showed up on a mere whim.”
While both bits were unsurprising, Penelope often came after work to tend to the garden. The backyard was in theory Hetty’s to design to her liking, but she’d just handed the whole thing over to Penelope to manage. Half the yard had been tamed under Penelope’s gentle hand into a tidy garden—although her friend refused to say if any poisons would bloom there. Questions on the subject received a wry smile but no firm denials. The other half was enough space for them to actually use the yard for entertaining and other amusements. There was even a metal bench where Hetty often sat feeding the birds. What lay in the far corner protected by her wards was a secret for now.
“Is Sy here?”
Penelope shook her head at the mention of her cousin. Penelope had several cousins living in Philadelphia. While Hetty had little love for a few of them, there were some she rather liked, and Sy was among that number. The young man had apprenticed under Benjy at the blacksmith’s shop. However, when Benjy lost that job earlier this year, Sy had quit in solidarity. Though, truly, it was for the best. Sy had many talents, but being a blacksmith was not one of them.
Though Sy wasn’t working for Benjy anymore, he often acted as their assistant even when they couldn’t pay him anything more than a good meal and a story.
“Sy’s coming around tomorrow. He’ll be bringing”—Penelope lowered her voice—“the boxes.”
“The boxes” was the term they agreed on using in case Benjy was around to eavesdrop.
When he was fired from his blacksmith job, Benjy had been running the place on his own, as the owner left all the work and responsibilities on Benjy’s capable shoulders. His work and talent were what brought customers in, and with Benjy no longer there, his old employer found very quickly just how loyal customers were. With outstanding debts to pay, the shop had quietly closed at the start of the month, with the owner selling off equipment. Hetty had waltzed right in, unbeknownst to Benjy, and bought everything that she could.
She couldn’t bring everything home, however. If she had, Benjy surely would have discovered it and spoiled the surprise before it was ready. That was where Sy came in. What Hetty couldn’t handle herself, he hid for her.
“He can’t come soon enough,” Hetty lamented. “Do you know how hard it is to keep a secret from my husband?”
“You kept secrets before.”
Hetty scoffed. “But he knew about the existence of the secrets and played along to amuse me. I want to take him by surprise, just once!”
“Well, you’re not going to if we stay out here any longer,” Penelope laughed.
Entering her kitchen, Hetty stopped short at the sight of three cauldrons merrily brewing away on her stove. The one on the left held familiar medicinal smells from Penelope’s signature healing salve. The other two set off plumes of purple and blue respectively. Those were also familiar, but were less welcome.
“Did I say you could brew up potions in here?” Hetty asked.
Penelope thought for a moment before she grinned. “You never said I couldn’t!”
Hetty tried to glare, but it was a futile effort. Hetty had had a sister once. Esther: an expert in herbs, a devoted healer, and the dearest person in Hetty’s life. They had lost each other when they escaped to find freedom. While Hetty would never reunite with her sister, Hetty had a fair idea of what Esther could have become in Penelope, as her friend had slipped right into the role with surprising ease.
Penelope was kind when Hetty was not, prone to excitement when Hetty was unimpressed, and more forgiving than Hetty would ever be. Hetty had other friends that were better listeners, but Penelope was the only person Hetty could speak to candidly and be completely unafraid of what would follow.
“I suppose it’ll be fine. We do use up a great deal of healing salve.” Hetty glanced at the table. Unsurprisingly, the basket held the elemental pistols Penelope had recently crafted. “Will you be leaving those here?”
“Of course.” Penelope picked up one of the pistols. Though it looked like a regular gun, instead of firing bullets, it fired magic. There was a glass orb on the back that held the potion that fueled it. The only one that worked was the ice pistol. The rest Penelope had varying success with, to which Hetty’s kitchen could bear witness.
Penelope shook the pistol gently so the purple liquid in the orb canister swirled around. “I made some modifications. The kickback when the wind element is activated isn’t as bad as it was before.”
“I’d like to try it. But not inside.” Hetty pointed to a small dent in the kitchen door.
Penelope pouted. “That was an accident.”
In the past few months a number of “accidents” resulted in something being set on fire in the cellar, the backyard, the kitchen, and once in the hallway—although that last incident was Benjy’s fault. Though Benjy was not an alchemist like Penelope, his interest in tinkering with magic, metal, and machines led him to be a willing partner in Penelope’s experiments. And as long as they didn’t burn down the house, Hetty wasn’t about to stop her two favorite people from spending time together.
Leaving the kitchen behind, Hetty nearly bumped into Darlene in the hallway.
A mixture of contradictions, Darlene was both practical and imaginative, stubborn and easily persuaded, mousy but with the courage of a lioness. On the outside she was a model example of the new ideal that was growing in their community—married, with a baby, and a husband who provided for the household. However, a closer look revealed that Darlene had adopted her daughter, that George took on an equal amount of time in childcare duties, and that Darlene was currently working outside the home as an artist’s assistant.
She never begged for dresses like Penelope, but slyly showed Hetty a dress design and presented a challenge to Hetty of turning it into reality. Such a dress was one Darlene wore at the moment, a pink so dark that it was the color of wine, with delicate lace along the collar and sleeves that had buttons so Darlene could easily slide them upward.
“Ah, I wondered where you were!” Darlene pushed up her round spectacles as she looked at Hetty. “Where have you and Benjy been?”
“He didn’t say?” Hetty asked.
Darlene shrugged. “He stepped in and got swallowed up into a conversation about tonight’s entertainments. Oliver is trying to get Benjy to box in tonight’s match.”
“Won’t say there’s betting involved,” Penelope added, “but there probably is.”
“Probably.” Hetty nodded. “Why are you here? It’s Tuesday, and we don’t usually have plays on Tuesdays.”
“I came looking for Penelope,” Darlene started, but then just as quick she stopped without saying a word more.
As this was never a good sign, Hetty prompted, “Looking for Penelope to . . .”
“Go see a medium,” Penelope cheerfully supplied.
“Just where will you find a medium?” Hetty asked.
