“I’ll see you at the train station in two days, my love.”
She waved her handkerchief at him as he crept out of the alley, and she tucked the fat envelope of cash into her reticule. The poor little overripe peach of a boy—she marvelled at the way he walked, with the confidence of someone who’s never been hungry or cold or heartbroken before in his life. When he was out of sight, she examined his pocket watch. A fine piece—it would fetch a fine price. Just fine.
She straightened her wide-brimmed straw hat and left the alley, gathering her skirts around her. She turned down a side street, away from the crowd, and walked to a broad old dirt road. A dog ran between two of the pecan trees ahead of her. Other than him, she was alone, and she walked down the middle of the road, parasol dangling from her wrist, holding her skirts up with one fist and her hat down with the other.
As she walked through the pecan trees to the marsh dock, the hidden pockets in her overskirt thumped against her leg.
As she scanned the water for Rosa’s white ears, Archie whistled—a tune she’d heard from a busker in the marketplace. She couldn’t remember the words—something about a hopper and a debutante—but the melody was catchy.
A stream of bubbles moved across the surface of the water. Aha.
“Rooo-saaa,” Archie sang in her lilting alto. “I seeee-youuu!”
A white blur erupted halfway out of the water and rushed the dock. Archie swept her hat off, spread her arms and set her legs in a wide stance as the three-thousand-pound albino hippo splashed toward her at full speed.
“Bonjour, ma belle fille!” Archie cried. “Mon petit oeuf douce, ’ave you been having fun while maman was at the market?”
Rosa skidded to a stop a few inches in front of the dock. Archie tapped a long finger against the hippo’s broad white nose.
“You, ma cherie, need to get sneakier. You’re too easy to spot!”
Rosa shoved her snout against Archie’s drooping skirts. “Yes, fine, ’ere—” Archie unclasped her skirts and pulled them off, revealing close-fitting red pinstriped riding breeches underneath. “—I got you a pastry, cherie. I know that cruel veterinarian says you shouldn’t, but we don’t ’ave to tell ’im about this, do we?”
Archie pulled a slightly squashed turnover from the pocket of her skirt and held it out to Rosa’s nose. The hippo’s pink eyes remained unfocused, but she turned unhesitatingly toward the smell of the tart. Her mouth swung open, and Archie dropped the turnover onto her tongue.
“Aren’t you scared she’ll bite you?”
Archie whipped around, startling the sallow, bone-thin boy behind her so much he nearly fell off the dock. She grabbed his arm and hauled him away from the edge of the planks.
“Of course I’m not scared,” she said, still gripping the boy’s arm. “I’ve ’ad Rosa since she was just a petit ’op. She would no sooner bite me than she would join the Paris Opera. Sneaky little urchins who follow me, on the other ’and—” She smiled and brought her face close to the boy’s face, close enough that she could have bitten the brim of his cap. “She eats them up without a thought.”
The boy swallowed hard but was not foolish enough to wriggle out of her grip. “Please, ma’am, you are Miss Regina Archambault, aren’t you? They told me to look for the, uh, the—”
“The fat Frenchwoman with the albino ’ippopotamus?” Archie deadpanned.
“Uh, yes, miss. I—I have a letter for you. Please don’t feed me to your hippo, ma’am, I didn’t mean to sneak—”
He raised a trembling hand with an envelope in it. Her name was written on the outside in familiar, spiky lettering. Archie released his arm.
“Well, then, that is something else altogether.” She grabbed the letter. “Would you like to pet a ’ippo, boy?” He looked nervously at Rosa’s tusks. “She will not eat you. Not unless I tell ’er to. Just make a lot of noise as you walk up, so you don’t startle ’er—’er eyes, they are not so good.”
The boy glanced between Archie and the pink-eyed hippo. “I’ve never heard of a blind white hippo before.”
“Well,” Archie said, “the ’opper that bred ’er was going to kill ’er when ’e saw. ‘What use is a blind ’ippo?’ ’e said. But I knew better—she is the finest ’ippo in all the world.”
The boy stared at Rosa, awe plain on his face. “Her name’s Rosa?”
Archie ran her thumb under the seal on the envelope. “Oui. Let ’er smell your ’and, then you can scratch behind ’er ears.”
As the boy approached the beast, tentatively placing a small hand against her snout, Archie read through the letter.
“Well, well,” she whispered to herself. “Winslow, you old connard,” she said, not looking up from the letter. She murmured to herself as she read it through again. “Ferals . . . eight thousand . . . a full year? Non, that can’t be—oh, oui, I see now . . .” She turned to the boy, who was staring at Rosa’s tusks with rapt fascination as he rubbed her nose. She looked him over, taking in his dull, patchy hair and his anemic complexion. She wondered if he slept in the streets, or if he hadn’t escaped the orphanage yet.
“Miss Archa-Archim—”
“Call me Archie.”
“Miss Archie? You said you had her since she was just a hop, right?”
“Oui,” Archie replied. The boy was looking up at her with shining eyes, one hand resting on Rosa’s nose. Archie lowered her voice conspiratorially, just to watch his face light up. “Hoppers, you see, we apprentice for years—then we choose a hop, when the time comes. We sleep beside them, we feed them, we sing to them. We’re with them every moment of their lives, from the time the cord is cut to the moment they’re fitted with a harness.”
The boy’s eyes were wide. “So that’s why you’re not scared of her?”
Archie laughed so heartily that the boy began to look sheepish. “I’m sorry, boy, it’s just—I couldn’t imagine being less frightened of sweet Rosa.” Rosa, hearing her name, yawned wide, showing off her teeth. The boy stared into Rosa’s massive mouth, his face aglow with awe.
“How do you get her teeth so white?”
Archie smiled. “I brush them. Would you like to see?”
The boy nodded, reaching out a now-fearless finger to touch one of Rosa’s gleaming tusks.
“I’ll show you, if you run a little errand for me. I need a telegram sent to a Mr. Winslow Houndstooth. Can you remember that?” She told him the message she wanted sent to Houndstooth, and she gave him a coin to get her a map of the Mississippi River.
“Be back here in two hours, and I will show you ’ow I brush her teeth. Hell, I’ll even let you ’elp me pack up ’er saddlebags.”
The boy put a hand on top of his cap, as though afraid it would fly off in the wake of his excitement. “Oh, boy, Miss Archie, I’ll be back faster’n you can spit!”