Page 3 of The Girl from Greenwich Street

I saw the corpse of the deceased twice. I had but a superficial view, however, of it, as it lay in the coffin, exposed to the view of thousands; I examined such parts as were come-at-able—Such as her head, neck and breast.

—From the testimony of Dr. Richard Skinner at the trial of Levi Weeks

New York City

January 6, 1800

“You can see what he did to her—Weeks.”

Richard Croucher’s exaggerated British drawl carried over the slurred consonants of the local Dutch accent.

There were too many people crammed into the frame house on Greenwich Street; Catherine Ring felt as though it were about to split open, like an overfilled barrel. People lined the streets outside, peering through the windows. Caty could hear the cries of vendors hawking oysters and roasted chestnuts, gingerbread and cider, handbills and gossip. People breezed into the house with crumbs and rumor on their lips.

A new wave of visitors shoved past Caty as if she weren’t there, as if this weren’t her house, her sitting room, her cousin. They ogled the bruises on Elma’s throat and breast, trailing their fingers over the dark marks on her neck, lifting her limp hands, pursing their lips in noises of sympathy and horror and glee. Some pretended to expertise, calling themselves doctors, spouting learned words in Latin while they peeled apart Elma’s bodice. Others didn’t bother to pretend any professional interest. They just stared and speculated, fondling her hair, her dress, making ribald remarks as if it didn’t matter, as if her family weren’t listening, as if there weren’t children there.

Caty wanted to take her broom and sweep them all out of her house. Out, out, out.

Let them see what he did to her, Elias had said, the same words, over and over, battering Caty’s ears. What he did to her . . . what he did to her . . .

What Caty had allowed him to do to her. Elias hadn’t said it, not outright, but Caty could hear it; she could feel it in the way Elias wouldn’t quite look at her, wouldn’t meet her eyes, slouched away when he saw her coming.

He couldn’t blame her more than she blamed herself.

On that endless Sunday, there had been so many moments when she might have taken Elma by the hand and said, “Thee needn’t be married in this hole-and-corner way. Be married from thy own house, with honor. If he persuades thee to run from thy family he wants nothing good of thee.”

Elma would have laughed if she’d said such a thing, Caty knew that. And yet . . . Come back, she imagined herself calling.

Instead, Caty had tied on Elma’s gloves for her.

Caty elbowed through the crowd in the front room; she had to find Elias and make him stop this. Not just because they were letting goodness only knew who into the house, tracking in the refuse of the streets, and she had dinner to make and children to tend—the living still mattered too—but for Elma’s sake also. It wasn’t decent; it wasn’t seemly.

“I saw them—making the beast with two backs.”

Mr. Croucher’s dark head, the hair pulled back neatly into a queue, bobbed up and down. “Shameless, utterly shameless.”

Caty wanted to grab him by that tidy queue and yank. Why couldn’t he be quiet? Why did he have to keep shouting their shame?

Never there when the rent was due; stickling over every penny; only a lodger, not a boarder; oh no, Caty’s plain cooking wasn’t good enough for Richard Croucher—but since Elma had gone and their house had turned into a traveling fair he was all over like mold on cheese, whispering in Elias’s ear, shaking his head over Levi’s perfidy, sharing scandalous stories of what had gone on while Elma was left alone without female supervision during the yellow fever. . . .

Scandal spurred the sales of silk stockings, Caty thought bitterly. Their tragedy was Mr. Croucher’s business opportunity. Share a delicious secret; sell a bunch of garters.

They were all looking at Caty, of course. Caty, who had let this happen in her house. Caty, who had left Elma. Unchaperoned. In a house of men.

During the fever!

Caty had taken the children away while yellow fever raged through the city that autumn; she’d had no choice. She couldn’t leave them to sicken. And her sister Hope—Caty needed the help with the children. It made sense at the time to leave Elma in the city in charge of the boardinghouse. She was a woman grown, Elma, twenty-two years old. By the time Caty was her age, she’d been several years married and had two children.

Elma would never marry now.

Caty pressed her lips hard together. If Mr. Croucher had really seen Elma in bed with Levi, he ought to have said something then, not stored it up to gloat over later. And why hadn’t Mr. Croucher told Caty then? Or Elias?

Caty’s husband stood behind Elma’s coffin, his tall form hunched, giving him a scarecrow aspect, as though he’d folded in on himself. Ever since Elma had disappeared, they’d none of them been themselves, that was fair to say, but Elias had been so strange, so furtive, huddling in corners with Croucher, hurrying out of rooms as soon as Caty entered them, prone to sudden outbursts and brooding silences.

A love fit, that was what Elias had said when two days, then three, then four had passed and Elma still hadn’t come home. She must have flung herself in the river in a love fit.

Elias had gone to Captain Rutgers and had him drag the waters around Rhinelander’s battery, never knowing, never imagining that Elma’s battered body was at that very time at the other end of the city, submerged in a well in Lispenard’s Meadow. It was the muff that had led them to her, Beth Osborn’s muff, floating on the surface, fished out by a boy and brought home to his mother.

Thou will remember to return it? The muff?

Caty’s head ached. The noise. The smells. The press of people. The effort to hold back tears, to be calm, serene, strong. Hide the tumult she was feeling.

It was the Saturday before Christmas that Hope had come to her, all indignation, to tell her that Elma had told Hope, in strictest confidence, that she was to be wed, in secret, the following night.

To Levi? Catherine had asked.

Who else? Hope had snapped back.

Heaven help her, Caty’s only feeling had been relief. Elma—out of her house. Elma married, safely. Levi was a good boy, a good match. He wasn’t a Friend, but then, neither was Elma, who had refused, persistently, to countenance coming to meeting.

Yes, Hope was disappointed to see Levi’s attentions go elsewhere, but Caty had never liked the idea of seeing Hope married out of their meeting. She’d pretended not to notice as Hope had experimented with you instead of thee, trying on the language of the godless as Elma might preen in a borrowed kerchief. Levi married to Elma? It was the answer to a prayer.

It must have been the devil whispering in Caty’s ear, making her close her eyes and her heart. Why in secret? she ought to have asked. She ought to have told Elias, urged him to remonstrate with Elma. She ought to have spoken to Levi, demanded to know his intentions.

But it had never occurred to her to wonder, or to worry.

Even when Elma had failed to appear that night, when Levi had returned to the boardinghouse without her, pretending ignorance, Caty still half thought it was only one of Elma’s tricks, that she’d appear, laughing at them, a ring on her finger. Wasn’t it a good joke? Elma would say, her arm around Levi’s waist. Didn’t I make you wonder?

But Caty hadn’t. She hadn’t wondered until it was too late. She hadn’t wanted to wonder.

She’d just wanted Elma safely married. Was that so wrong? Elma decently married, out of Caty’s house. Caty had been five when Elma had been born—the result of Aunt Lizzy’s lapse of conscience with a soldier from the Continental Army—and nothing had been the same since. Elma poisoned everything she touched—and Elma touched everything.

Pity her, Caty’s mother had advised her. Pray for her. The child cannot help that she was born into sin.

“—with child,”

someone was saying loudly. “He killed her because she was with child.”

Next they’d be calling Caty’s respectable boardinghouse a bawdy house.

“The doctors examined her,”

Caty snapped. They’d cut Elma open and peered at her insides. It made Caty sick to think of it. “There was no child.”

The woman gave Caty a nasty look, then turned away and muttered something to her companion. Now they were both staring at her, whispering about her, mocking her in her own house. Caty could feel her cheeks heating beneath her white cap.

Respectable, she’d always been respectable—it was all Elma’s fault, always Elma’s fault. Couldn’t she have just stayed gone?

A sharp cry brought Caty to herself. Her youngest, Eliza, had fallen and someone had stepped on her hand. Eliza’s little face was red with inexpressible misery. Caty shoved her way to her and swept her up, bouncing her in her arms, pressing her cheek to Eliza’s, murmuring nonsense words. Thank goodness, she seemed more alarmed than hurt; Caty couldn’t feel anything broken. Beneath the baby’s dress, Caty could feel her clout sagging. The baby reeked of the sour scent of old urine.

Guilt stabbed Caty, her child wet, hurt, while she stood here gawking. “Where is thy aunt Hope? She was meant to be minding thee!”

Elma might be dead, but that didn’t mean there weren’t still children to tend and boarders to feed. This had gone on long enough. Caty hitched baby Eliza higher on her hip and shoved her way through the waiting throng, ignoring complaints that she was jumping the queue.

Elias stood sentry by Elma’s coffin, ignoring his children, his family, his responsibilities to the living. What did he think he could do by this, bring Elma back to life? She was gone, and this did nothing but track refuse across the floor Caty sanded by hand twice a day.

“It is enough,”

she said sharply, and when he still didn’t look at her, she raised her voice to be heard over the throng. “Must we welcome the world into our home, husband?”

Elias muttered something that sounded like “bear witness.”

“They sent doctors to prod at her. Wasn’t that witness enough? It’s not seemly.”

“What happened to her isn’t seemly.”

Mr. Croucher was at Elias’s side; he was always at Elias’s side. Caty would have hated him if she’d had the energy left for it. “Don’t you want the world to know what that man did to her? The man needs to be brought to justice.”

“Yes, of course, but . . .”

Couldn’t they just bury her quietly? Bury her quietly and let that be the end of it. The end of Elma. Make her disappear as though she’d never been. In her heart of hearts, Caty wished they’d never found her. If it hadn’t been for the muff, floating to the surface . . .

Why had she made Elma borrow that muff?

Caty pushed the horrible thoughts aside, focusing on Elias, trying to catch his eye, to make him look at her, to see her. “To have so many, coming to stare at her . . . to see her shame . . . Why not just display her in the street?”

“Yes.”

Elias’s eyes met hers. There was something about his expression that made Caty’s stomach lurch with alarm. “Yes. Let the whole city see what he did.”

“I didn’t mean— Elias!”

Caty clutched Eliza too tightly; the girl squirmed to be let down. “Surely, thee . . .”

Elias had already turned his back to her. “Let them see what he did and make him pay.”

“Justice,”

murmured Mr. Croucher sagely.

Caty ignored him, holding the struggling Eliza as she made a futile attempt to grab her husband. “Elias—”

But he was already spreading the word about, conscripting strangers as pallbearers. They seized Elma’s plain pine coffin. One hand flopped, limp, over the side, the nails cracked and broken.

“Gently!”

Caty cried. Too late, too late. Always too late.

“Caty!”

Her sister Hope pushed past, her cheeks wind-bitten, as though she’d been outside. “What are they doing?”

“Putting thy cousin on the street for all to gawk at,”

said Caty bitterly. “And where were thee? Eliza was nearly trampled! And she wants fixing.”

“Hush, my little one.”

Hope neatly plucked the baby from her sister’s arms, making silly faces at her. Eliza wrapped her chubby arms around Hope’s neck. Hope looked out at Catherine around Eliza’s head. “They’ve put her on the street?”

“For the world to see. As if enough haven’t seen already.”

Couldn’t they just bury her and have done with it?

“We were sorely deceived in that man.”

Caty’s baby sister was a woman grown, twenty years old and taller than Caty, but in her indignation Hope looked ten again.

“But to show her shame on the public street . . .”

“His shame.”

Hope’s chin jutted out in a stubborn way that Caty recognized well; it was like their father when he announced that the call had come upon him to go preaching abroad, never mind what he was leaving behind at home. “He was the one who lured her from her home.”

Hope’s voice cracked. Hope had gone to the charity sermon with Weeks, and to his brother’s house; before the fever, before they’d left the city, they’d all thought it was Hope he was courting, not Elma. If courting one could call it.

“When she told thee he meant to marry her . . .”

“Who knows what lies came from his lips?”

Hope’s face twisted with anger. “He asked me to sign a paper saying he had paid no more attention to Elma than to any woman in this house. He knew that was positive lies! Why should he think I’d lie for him?”

“Hope . . .”

Hope wrenched her head away, and made a show of sniffing at Eliza. “Eliza’s soiled her clout. I’ll tend to it.”

Hope ought to have tended it before. Where had she been? Not in the house.

It had been Elma who used to disappear, sometimes for whole nights, claiming she’d been at the neighbor’s, when she hadn’t. But not Hope. Hope was Caty’s darling, her little sister, as near a child to her as her own children.

But Hope wasn’t a child anymore. She was a woman grown. The idea that Hope might have secrets—it was too much for Caty’s mind to compass.

The noise from the street had risen to an alarming pitch as Elma’s body was brought outside to the delight of all viewers, but the sitting room had emptied along with Elma, leaving behind trails of muck and slush and a long gouge on the wooden floor where someone had dragged the wooden settle out of their way.

Two weeks ago, Levi Weeks had sat on that settle and Caty had watched him, waiting for some sign to pass between him and Elma.

“I should have stopped it.”

Caty’s voice was low. “I should have done better by her.”

Hope bristled. “How were thee to know? How were we any of us to know? He pretended to such virtue.”

Outside, the crowd was chanting, shouting for Levi’s blood.

Hope lifted her chin. “If Levi Weeks doesn’t hang, there’s no justice in heaven.”