DESPITE HER ORIGINAL intention to vaccinate the Hoboken orphans the day after she had first examined them, Anna’s week had been so busy that she had had to postpone from Tuesday to Wednesday and again to Friday. Worse still, Sophie was called away to an emergency, and so Anna would have to deal with Sister Ignatia on her own.
The cab was drafty. Anna tucked her scarf more firmly into the neck of her cloak and counted herself lucky to be out of the weather. Mr. Lee’s prediction had proved correct: winter had returned and swept away every trace of spring. From her relatively dry and warm spot in the hired cab, Anna watched men walking into the wind hunched over, hands clapped tight on hats lest they be torn away. Sleet pooled in the gutters and streets and dripped off ledges, and every doorway was packed with bodies huddled together out of the wet, faces creased in some combination of discomfort and irritation and dull acceptance.
In the street, vendors and deliverymen vied with each other for right of way, all of them jumping out of the path of omnibuses and drays, oxen bellowing bass as if to harmonize with the screech of iron on iron. An omnibus shouldered through the intersection, the horses enveloped in the steam that rose from their broad backs. Urchins slipped through the crowds with clear purpose, alert and nimble despite the weather. They were making the best of the late storm; twice the usual number of pockets would be emptied of wallets and watches by the end of the day.
Going through Madison Square, she saw that the weather had not discouraged the beggars, who claimed spaces around the park that they defended with violence, when necessary. She saw three or four who were familiar to her but many others who weren’t. A woman with a disfigured child in her arms, both of them wrapped in a dripping blanket coat. A man on crutches who wore an old and much abused uniform he was too young to have worn in the last war.
Anna had a reputation among the poor who lived on the streets, the people the city government dismissed as the outdoor poor. Those who were truly destitute she would stop and talk to for as long as time permitted, but the others—the professional beggars who made a living by faking injuries or, worse, by sending lame or injured children out to beg—knew that she would see them arrested and testify, if necessary. The streets of Manhattan were overrun with the poor and the merciless both.
Less than a week ago she had been out on these streets in a gown that bared her shoulders, with only a shawl to keep her warm and on her way to a party that had cost a million dollars or more. There was nothing predictable in this life, and very little that was fair.
? ? ?
THE CAB PASSED St. Patrick’s Cathedral and turned onto Fifty-first, where the orphan asylum took up two entire city blocks, with a building for boys and one for girls. Between them was a convent, a fortress of stone hulking in the rain.
The cab stopped in front of the girls’ building and Anna dashed for the entrance. Once inside she took out her handkerchief to pat her face dry, and then looked around herself for the porter.
Instead she was intercepted by an ageless, humorless nun who introduced herself as Sister Peter Joseph. She reminded Anna of Sister Ignatia simply because she wore a black habit rather than a white one, in contrast to the younger Sister Mary Augustin.
Sister Peter Joseph’s spine had begun to curve with old age, but she moved as quickly as a girl, gesturing to a young woman in yet another habit, this one gray, who came to take Anna’s coat and scarf and hat to be whisked away to a cloakroom, she supposed, well out of sight.
Anna followed the old nun down hallways, her boots slipping a little as they rounded corners on the highly polished floors. They stopped in front of a door with two words printed across it: Mother Superior.
Anna said, “Is there some problem?”
Instead of answering, Sister Peter Joseph opened the door and gestured Anna inside, followed her, and then adjusted the skirts of her habit as she took the chair behind the desk. Anna was a little amused to realize she had assumed that Sister Ignatia was the head of the orphanage. She was glad to have been mistaken.
“I first want to thank you for the interest you took in the welfare of our charges,” Sister Peter Joseph began. “As you are aware, Sister Ignatia does not approve of vaccinations; she believes they are dangerous.”
“Yes, I gathered.”
“Nevertheless, it is our policy to vaccinate and I was surprised and displeased to learn that this had been neglected. I have had more than a few surprises this week. At any rate, the children—all of them—have been vaccinated against smallpox. This was done by staff from St. Vincent’s Hospital over the last two days.”
She took a folder out of a drawer and pushed it across the desk to Anna.
“The vaccination records, if you would like to examine them.”
Anna didn’t open the folder, and she didn’t try to hide her irritation. “If everyone has been vaccinated, you might have sent a message—”
“—and spared you the trip in such unpleasant weather. Yes, I might have. But I am hoping that now you are here, you would be willing to examine some of the sisters.”