Dread Nation (Dread Nation #1)(53)
“Ma’am,” I say, bobbing a curtsy. “I reckon you might be the Duchess?”
She puts down the book she holds, Gulliver’s Travels, and fans herself with a ragged peacock feather fan. Up close, it’s easy to see the layers of face paint she wears. “I am. And who might you be?”
“My name is Jane McKeene. I’m begging your pardon for disturbing your afternoon repose, ma’am, but I was directed to see you about lodgings, a bath, and the possibility of some sustenance.” The last two are my own additions. I ain’t sure what the standard protocol is, if there is one, but I might as well ask for the sun, moon, and stars while I’m at it.
The woman laughs, showing a gap in the back of her mouth where she’s lost a few of her teeth. “Look at you, with those pretty manners. Wherever did they find you?”
“At the junction of hard luck and bad times,” I answer. It’s something that my momma says.
Used to say?
Best to just not think about it.
The Duchess’s expression softens, and she hauls herself to her feet. “I reckon I’ve passed through there a few times myself. Well, follow me, I’ll show you where you can draw your bath and where you can sleep. As for food, you’ve got a couple of hours until we eat, but you’re welcome to join me and my girls if you’d like. Everyone on this side of town eats down at the meeting hall. Only the respectable folks get the luxury of preparing their own food.” There is a tone to her voice, and I wonder what it is that I’m missing.
She leads the way up a narrow set of stairs and past a room with curtains hung as partitions. The sounds of someone visiting with one of the girls filters out of the room, and I’m very careful to keep my eyes forward lest I see something I ain’t expecting.
The Duchess stops at a door at the end of the hall. The room beyond is small, with a shelf along one wall. About half the spaces are taken up with extra sets of clothing, and the Duchess points to the shelves.
“You girls stow your stuff there. You got anything worth a damn, you’re going to want to keep it with you. There’s a bunch of thieving bastards in this place.” She eyes the gown I wear greedily, and I get the sense that she’s including herself in that group. Makes no matter to me, she can have the dress. The only things I want are my lucky penny and the packet of letters secured in my pocket.
And Tom Sawyer, of course. I’ve taken a liking to the little urchin, and I’d like to see where he ends up. It seems the boy is always running afoul of a pack of shamblers in the midst of his Missouri adventures, and the boy’s derring-do reminds me of my own exploits.
I put my extra set of clothing on one of the far shelves, then follow the Duchess down a back staircase. “These are the stairs you’ll use. Don’t come down those front stairs, those are strictly for my girls and their clients. Negroes ain’t allowed to drink in the saloon, anyway—or anywhere in Summerland, strictly speaking.” She leans back and whispers, “You want whiskey, you’ll get your spirits from the kitchen entrance. Woman named Maybelle. Don’t let anyone catch you, though. They’re free with the strap around here. The preacher sees to that.”
“The preacher?” I ask. She can’t possibly mean the old man I saw just a few moments ago. He was too frail to wield anything.
The Duchess nods. “Don’t let that old man fool you, he’s got a vicious streak. The sheriff is his son, and nothing in this town happens without one of them saying so. The preacher thinks it up, but the sheriff makes it happen. Watch yourself around the two of them.”
“Good to know. Anything else of note regarding the sheriff and the preacher?”
The Duchess purses her lips for a moment before telling me in a low voice, “Sheriff lost his wife to the plague going on three years ago, right before the wall was completed. She was a pretty blond thing, as sweet as he is sour. Went out to gather berries by a nearby creek and got surprised, turned right in front of his eyes. Anyway, you want to make your life easy? Don’t question his authority when it comes to the dead. He’s never reasonable when the question of the undead plague is involved.”
I nod and file the information away for later.
The stairs are impossibly narrow and cramped, and we have to walk single file. They empty out into a laundry room, with a glorious copper tub in the middle.
“This is where you’ll wash your clothes. Some of my girls take in laundry, so if you want them to wash your things you can ask. That tub is yours to rent for a nickel, but I’ll let you use it today for free since you . . . just been through an ordeal. You want hot water you have to pump it into the big cistern in the corner, then light that stove right next to it. After that, turn this fancy spigot here. After you’re done, pull that plug in the bottom, and the water will run right out back to the trough I keep for the garden. Understood?”
I nod, and walk over to the contraption. I look at the copper pipes, the hand pump that brings water up out of the ground, the water heater that looks to be pressurized. “You got a way of handling the silt?” I ask, gesturing to the hand pump.
The Duchess shrugs one pale shoulder. “I don’t rightly know. You’d have to ask the professor, he’s the one that rigged up the contraption.”
“The professor?”
“The tinkerer. Gideon. Most of the fancy gadgets you see around town are his creation.” She pulls a pocket watch out of her skirt and sighs. “Dinner is in an hour or so, I need to get the girls fed before fellas start arriving.”