O’Malley went on in that vein, waxing bitter on the topic of the navy, but remaining more or less ambulatory until they reached a dank pub oozing weak light and the mingled scents of ale and old sweat.
“Home, sweet ’ome,” O’Malley said, casting his arms wide and nearly backhanding Ingram. “Meggy, I’m home. Kill the fatted keg and rejoice in your prodigal papa’s return.”
Michael helped him over the threshold, caught the gimlet eye of the young-old woman tending bar, and deposited O’Malley on an unoccupied chair. A few of the denizens nodded at him. Squinty MacGuire lifted his mug a few inches in greeting and passed a mildly inquisitive glance over Ingram.
A warning glance, for all that it had been polite enough.
Michael touched the brim of his hat, took a goggling Ingram by the arm, and returned to the chilly, though not quite as aromatic, night air.
“This is what you do all night?” Ingram asked as Michael set off again.
“That is part of what I do. Once the pubs close, we’ll have to get any sleeping drunks we find to St. Osmond’s. It’s not the drunks who worry me.”
“They worry me. If that fellow wasn’t a walking foul miasma… And you are his bosom bow, Delancey. Does Helmsley know you’ve raised befriending the downtrodden into a high and dangerous art?”
“I don’t care if Helmsley does know about that part, though he’d probably tell me that the poor will always be with us, and charity that interferes with the just deserts of the slacker and the whore has no place in his theology.”
A stray dog trotted by, stopped, and sniffed at Michael’s boots.
“I don’t care for dogs,” Ingram said. “Especially not skinny mongrels.”
Michael tossed the dog a square of shortbread nicked from Dorcas’s sideboard—or left out on the sideboard for precisely this purpose.
“That cur doesn’t care for starvation,” Michael said, moving on. “O’Malley was a purser on a ship of the line, and he was wrongly accused of theft from the officer’s stores. Some marquess’s brat took to stealing the key to the wine cellar when O’Malley slept, and O’Malley got the worst of it. He’s lucky to be alive, though he’d take issue with my opinion on the matter.”
Ingram had no reply, though when Michael roused the next drunk—a woman he didn’t recognize—Ingram was more helpful.
“Can you get yourself to Meg’s?” Michael asked as the woman stood shivering in the street.
“Aye, ’appen I can.”
“That way,” Michael said, pointing the direction they’d come. “Two streets and turn left at the pump.”
She wrapped her thin cloak more closely about her. “I know t’ pump.”
“Be off with you. The weather will kill you if you don’t seek shelter.”
“We’re all going t’ die. You be Preacher?”
“I be cold, madam, and with a long road to travel before dawn. Away with you, and no more napping on the walkway.”
She gave him a ghost of a smile and shuffled off, her gait uneven.
“I could see her feet through the holes in her boots,” Ingram said. “She sounded as if she hailed from Yorkshire.”
Michael resumed walking, in part to keep warm and in part because they did have more ground to cover.
“Half the countryside has come to London, turned off the enclosed properties, unable to make exhausted ground produce, hoping for better wages than they can earn on the rural estates that are letting staff go left and right.”
“But nobody warns them—nobody warned me,” Ingram said, “that London is too expensive by half. Yes, you earn more—if you can find a post—but there’s nowhere decent to live, and a pair of boots will cost the earth.”
“I dream of new boots,” Michael said. “These people no longer dream, and in the crown jewel of the greatest empire since Rome fell, that offends me.”
Ingram was silent for a time as they made their way to streets where a few of the mandatory porch lights were actually lit, and no more dogs roamed at large.
“What does your papa think of these nocturnal forays into the slums, Delancey?”
“The topic hasn’t come up. If he suspects, he hasn’t chided me for it.” Michael took some comfort from that thought. Perhaps Papa attributed Michael’s midnight walks to a guilty conscience, or youthful zeal, though these journeys had little to do with either.
“This is not quite a slum,” Ingram said, slowing his pace. “My sister would disdain to live in these surrounds, but they look respectable.”
“Precisely, respectable, but on the border of the hinterlands. The church is this way.”
“Church? At this hour? No church in this neighborhood will be unlocked, Delancey, and I am not at the moment disposed toward contemplative prayer. My feet have no sensation, my nose is shortly to follow, and I—”
“Hush.” Michael had spoken harshly, and Ingram fell silent.
“What was that?” Ingram asked a moment later. “Sounded like a fox. Do we have foxes in London?”
“We do,” Michael said, “but that was not a fox.” He took off at a jog, and the steps of St. Cedd’s came into view shortly, barely illuminated by a guttering streetlight.
“There,” Michael said as Ingram trotted beside him. “In the shadows, out of the wind.”
“I’m not going to like this,” Ingram muttered, slowing. “I’m fairly certain I will abhor what you find on those steps.”
Michael scooped up the bundle—perilously light—and the wailing stopped. “Got you,” he said, gently pushing aside the cloth wrapped about the infant. “Got you, you little blighter, and you are for St. Osmond’s.”
He rearranged his cloak to shield the infant, ignored Ingram’s expression of fascination blended with horror, and set a more sedate pace down an east-west street.
“This is what you meant about the season,” Ingram said, catching up to Michael. “Prostitutes who did a good business in the spring will have their babies now, when everything is cold, miserable, and impossible.”
“Not impossible, desperate. Because the ladies are shrewd, they will leave their infants on the steps of more prosperous churches than the slums afford, and because the congregations gather on Sunday mornings, the babies are abandoned on Saturday nights.”
“This is awful,” Ingram said. “This is… I have no words for what you’re dealing with here, Delancey. Why St. Osmond’s?”
“Because St. Osmond’s has the duty this week. The pastors in these parts consider the babies a seasonal sorrow, but nobody knew what to do about them.”
“Some would say—I do not, but some would—the babies aren’t meant to thrive.”
Michael stopped, the child a slight weight in his arms, a live weight. “Some of the babies don’t, or we don’t get to them in time, but is a God who decrees that babies should starve and freeze a God worthy of your devotion?”
Ingram resumed walking. “You will not credit this, Delancey, but right now I am fresh out of theology. Not a proverb or a citation to be had. Will the infant live?”