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“I’ve had me teeth in a few,” Nell said, leaning low over the old woman to hug her. “But I don’ remember ’em complainin’ much.”

“And, Elizabeth, don’t think you’ll be helping set the table when you could share news,” Mrs. Wilcox scolded, motioning Lizzie over to the fire. “You let Janey see to things and come tell an old woman what String has to say.”

Lizzie blushed and sat at Mrs. Wilcox’s feet, but her tongue soon loosened as she reiterated news from the asylum, confirming tales that Janey had brought home from work. Every now and then she’d fall silent and turn her head to consult String on a detail, but even Nell let it pass without comment as they relaxed to the sound of Janey setting the table behind them.

“All right then, girls, give Mother a hand and let’s eat a meal together like civilized women.”

And they did. Grace hadn’t had such good food since her family table, though the faces around this one were so different. There were no stilted conversations and awkward pauses, no guarded looks or hidden kicks to urge silence. Words flew back and forth, bandied about in the warmth from the fireplace as if they’d grown in the air. Grace could not speak, but she wallowed in the conversation, laughing at Nell’s frequent interruptions and Elizabeth’s constant attempts to get her under control. Janey didn’t object when her mother instructed her to pour some wine, though Grace covered her own glass with her hand.

“A teetotaler, are you?” Mrs. Wilcox asked. Grace shook her head but wouldn’t move her hand. The little drink she’d taken in Thornhollow’s office had gone to her head immediately. The company of her friends and the vivacity of the moment had her voice aching to speak already; a drink could easily throw the door open.

“Ye can feel free to pour me ’er bit,” Nell said, passing her already empty cup back to Janey.

“Don’t you get drunk now, Nell,” Elizabeth warned. “Janey wouldn’t hear the end of it if we came back to the asylum sheets to the wind.”

“It takes more than a dram of wine to get an Irish lassie lit, ye wee Englishwoman,” Nell said. “Even Charlie says ’e’s not seen the likes of me for putting away the drink, and ’e’s seen a few hardwood floors up close.”

“And who is Charlie?” Mrs. Wilcox asked.

“’E’s a poor drunkard up the hill,” Nell said. “’Is family put ’im away for loving the bottle.”

“He also did say he was drinking them because Jesus was trapped in the bottoms,” Janey put in.

“If I were Jaysus, that’s where I’d go,” Nell said, tipping her glass again.

“Is Charlie a special friend of yours, then?”

“Och, no. A girl like meself can only get so close to a lad, if ye take me meaning.” Her tongue slipped out of the side of her mouth to touch the sore there, and in the firelight, Grace could make out the shadow of another blooming under the skin next to it.

Janey patted Nell’s arm, and Elizabeth’s face grew grim as she tilted her head to the right. Nell refilled her own glass and looked around the table.

“I’ve never told ye girls how I got the pox, ’ave I?”

“I imagine you got it the same way anyone else does, and there’s no terrible shame in it,” Mrs. Wilcox said.

“Aye, there was no shame. Not on me own part, anyways. But the boy who got me with it, ye see, ’e was me mother’s boss’s son, and their name was gold back in Pennsylvania. And there weren’t no one who was going to speak up for the washerwoman’s daughter, least of all ’im.”

“Would no one help you?” Janey asked.

“I went to me ma, straigh’aways when I knew somethin’ was wrong. She was right sore wi’ me. Said she didna leave Ireland behind to raise a whore in America. I’m the last of ten bairns, and I think she was wore out with the rearin’ of us all. She tol’ me I made me own bed and I was to lie innit. Said the mercury treatments was so expensive they may as well be made on the moon.”

“Couldn’t the boy in question afford it?” Mrs. Wilcox asked.

“’E could afford it well enough, no doubt. But when I went to ’im ’e said I didna catch it from ’im but from a stable boy or vagrant—‘one of yer own kind’ was ’ow ’e put it. I knew well enough it was from ’im, as I’d not been with anyone else and ’e was my first. And ’e knew it too. I could see the fear in ’is eyes as to ’is own welfare and still ’e tossed me out o’ the ’ouse, landed on my rear in the back garden I did, gave me a jolt straight up to me skull.”

Grace was utterly still, as were the other women, lost in the lull of Nell’s voice as she spoke, her own eyes staring into nothing.

“’E was me only chance of savin’ meself, and I well knew it. Me mum and da ’ad turned me out, and there I was with scraped knees and the pox roarin’ in me blood. I knew ’twas all up, but damned if I was lettin’ the likes of James Cavendish get the better o’ me. I knew the fam’ly, knew all their ’ouses from years of ’elpin’ me mum cart their dirty sheets ’ome, never knowing I was to leave a blood spot on one someday meself.

“So I found me way into the bedrooms of all ’is menfolk. One by one they all ’ad me, each unbeknownst to the other and me makin’ noises like it’s me first toss each time. Them so proud of themselves, so ’appy to have a young, pretty thing moanin’ underneath ’em, the whole time I’m givin’ back to them what their own relation delivered unto me. From ’is cousins and uncles and grandfather, right down to the youngest brother, who only got but a minute or two of pleasure from it, I ’ad ’em all. And their pride will keep ’em from the doctor, and their sores will keep ’em from their wives, and their cocks will rot right off and they’ll be wiped from the face o’ the earth. And it’s Nell O’Kelly that’s done it to ’em.”

“Amen,” Mrs. Wilcox said, raising a glass.

“Amen,” Elizabeth confirmed, raising hers for her first drink of the night.

“Amen to that,” Janey said, tapping her glass alongside Grace’s, who raised her water and met Nell’s eyes, coldly nodding in agreement before tossing back what was left of her drink, warm now from the fire. It slid into her belly but barely touched her throat, parched with the need to comfort her friend.

TWENTY-SEVEN