She thought at first “the workingman’s friend” was some sort of title or tiresome motto, but Annie informed her it was a place: a barroom on the upper west side frequented by socialists, unionists, populists, Marxists, libertine college students with wispy mustaches, unemployed men with beards, and every other species of malcontent.
“August’ll be there, stirring up trouble.” Annie shakes her head. “He was throwing bricks through bank windows before he could talk, his mother used to say.”
“And yet he refuses to meet with us.”
“He wishes us all the best, but says he has ‘serious matters’ to attend to—like drinking the town dry, I suppose. Well, you know how they are.” Agnes did.
But she also knew that Mr. August S. Lee was in possession of words and ways that she wanted very much, and that young men in dim barrooms were not known for their reticence, especially if there was an admiring young lady looking up at them through her lashes and saying, “Oh! How shocking!” at regular intervals. Agnes coiled her hair like a sleek black adder atop her head, allowing a few strands to wisp artfully around her face, and chose a half-cloak the precise color of her eyes, before going to find The Workingman’s Friend.
It proves to be less of a barroom and more of an unswept basement. She descends a narrow set of steps and finds the air blue with cigar smoke and fumes, the summer evening sun replaced by the yellow hum of electric lights.
There’s an easy rumble of talk in the room—the comfortable conversation of men with cheap beer and nowhere in particular to be—but it falls quiet as Agnes steps forward: a woman, alone and young, her cloak parted around a pregnant belly.
She approaches the bar and asks for a Mr. August Lee. The barman points to a high-backed booth with a slightly helpless expression, like a cornered spy betraying his comrade’s location.
Four men are seated at the table, blinking up at her with expressions ranging from mild terror to smeary delight. Agnes smiles sweetly at them. “Hello, boys. I’m here to speak with Mr. Lee.” They blink at her with varying degrees of inebriation and she adds, gently, “If your name is not Mr. Lee, shoo.”
Three of the men shoo. They leave behind a long, rangy man with summer-straw hair and a suspicious squint. His face is young but hard-edged, with a skipped-meal sharpness: arrowhead cheeks, knife-blade nose, scarred jaw. Agnes might have noticed that he was handsome, if she had any time for handsome men.
Mr. Lee looks up at her. She sees his eyes perform the usual up-anddown over her form, pausing only briefly on her swollen belly, before resting on her face.
He offers a grin that’s clearly supposed to be dashing, but the scar along his jaw pulls it crooked and wry. “Do I know you, miss?”
She offers another honeyed smile. “May I sit?” She wedges herself into the booth without waiting for a response. “My name is Miss Agnes Amaranth. I’m here to ask—”
A sudden suspicion crosses his face. “If you’re a teetotaler, you’re wasting your time. That Wiggin woman has already come around twice this month, and I’m not interested in salvation.”
“Oh! I’m not here to talk about your vices or faults, Mr. Lee.” Agnes imagines it would be quite a long conversation.
The dashing grin reappears. “Glad to hear it.”
“I’m here,” she says pleasantly, “to talk about witchcraft.” The smile freezes, hanging half-formed on his face. “I represent the Sisters of Avalon. You may have heard of us?”
It takes a beery two seconds before his eyes widen. “Oh hell. You’re that women’s club Annie’s been on about.”
“Oh, you have heard of us! How lovely. Well, I’m here because we’ve heard the most fascinating rumors about the Pullman Strike in Chicago.” His face stiffens when she says the word Chicago, and he rubs at the scar along his jaw. Agnes pretends not to notice, fluttering on with girlish innocence. “Some people said work was delayed by means that were . . . uncanny. Rusted machines, furnaces that never burned hot, timber that rotted overnight.” She leans forward conspiratorially, looking up at him through the long black of her lashes. “We were hoping you might be willing to tell us more about it. Share some of your ways and words.”
Mr. Lee watches her for a long, considering second before settling back in his seat, one arm flung along the back of the bench. He sips the foamed gold of his beer and asks neutrally, “Was that your girls, at the Square Shirtwaist Factory? And St. George’s Square?”
Agnes, who feels vaguely that it would be unwise to confess criminal activity to a near-stranger, merely smiles.
He lifts his beer in a mocking toast. “Quite impressive. Showy. I’ve seen your sign all over town.” Agnes has seen it, too: three circles drawn in soot on alley walls or scratched into the sides of trolleys; three flower wreaths hung together in a shop window, their edges overlapping; three loops embroidered into the tags of sweatshop shirts. The Sign of the Three had spread through New Salem like the underground roots of some great, unseen tree, tunneling beneath the cobblestones and surfacing in every mill-house and kitchen and laundry room.
Agnes tries to hide her too-sharp smile with an airy “Yes, it has gotten some attention, hasn’t it?”
“And there’s your problem, Miss Agnes Amaranth.” Mr. Lee’s tone is so perfectly condescending Agnes thinks he must have taken lessons. She pictures whole classrooms full of young, handsome men practicing their pitying smiles. He continues, “See, in Chicago we weren’t interested in attention. It wasn’t a damn stage-play. It was a war. Not a show.”
Agnes permits herself to imagine his expression if she were to grab his beer and toss it in his smug face. She bends her lips in another simpering smile. “Still, Mr. Lee. Surely it wouldn’t be too terribly taxing to spend an evening or two in consultation with us? We would be very grateful students, I promise.” Agnes thinks of Juniper, who might show her gratitude by permitting Mr. Lee to leave the premises on two feet rather than four, and fights back a laugh.
Mr. Lee is still sprawled against his bench, unmoved. He cocks his head at her. “Does all this”—he waves his beer at her, indicating everything from her eyelashes to her pinned-up hair—“generally work for you? Sweet looks and wiles?”
Agnes straightens very slowly, her simper flattening into cold appraisal. “Generally, yes.”
He shakes his head ruefully. “I’m sorry to disappoint you. Annie said you were a hell of a looker”—Agnes feels a sudden rush of warmth toward Annie—“and hard as a coffin nail”—the warmth subsides substantially—“which is frankly more interesting. I sympathize with your cause, truly I do. There were women standing on the train tracks in Chicago, too, and we were grateful. But it comes down to the laws of nature.”
“What laws, precisely?” There’s no honey in her voice at all, now.
Lee takes another drink, thumbs foam from his upper lip. “Women can’t work men’s magic.”
Agnes feels invisible thunderclouds rolling nearer. “No?”
“It’s no insult. It’s just the way we’re made. A man would make a mess of women’s witching, wouldn’t he? All those fiddly charms for housework and keeping your hair just so . . .”