Chapter One
As her cab approached Small Heath, the first thing Anna Gray thought was, This cannot be the place I was born. The town was sooty, grey, and black, its people dreary and its streets dirtier than any she'd walked in Melbourne. She looked down at her sparkling gold t-strap heels and wished she had thought to wear something more sensible. But for that to have happened, Anna Gray would have had to own something sensible.
Ah well, she thought. Nothing that a quick shopping trip won't fix.
In Anna's experience, there were few things that a stuffed wallet couldn't take care of. After all, it was money that had bought the information she'd wanted, money that had brought her here. Money had sustained her all those years alone in Melbourne. Well, beauty didn't hurt either, but the older she got the more she realized that money could buy that, too.
They were approaching the church, a humble cathedral beside a brick building whose sign read "The Grace Shelby Foundation." It looked homey, with lots of windows and ivy crawling up the sides of the building. She wondered if this was where she had stayed when the parish had taken her. She remembered so little of Birmingham. She remembered so little of her mother. Sometimes she came to her in dreams, a dark haired woman with shining brown eyes, a tender hand pushing the hair away from Anna's forehead, the smell of clove cigarettes. She was always gone before the morning came, her memory replaced with the ones of cold houses, men with wandering hands that insisted she call them "father", bruises on her arms from overbearing women who signed papers to adopt her but used her for labor.
According to the file the parish had taken Anna and her brother away because her mother was beating them, because she drank and she used opium. She didn't remember enough to know if that was true. But if it was, then why had Anna tried so hard to get back? Why had her most compelling instinct been to run, to run home? It drove her so powerfully that they had banished her, to Australia, to a prison surrounded by ocean where no matter how far she ran, she would never make it home. So they had thought.
As soon as the boat reached land, she ran. Twelve years old, tired of being passed along from family to family like an unwanted pet, she struck out on her own, invented a new name and started looking for a job. Sparks had been the last name of one of the families she'd lived with in London, one of the kinder ones. She took their last name and the first name of a family cat who'd once curled up next to her in front of the fire: Ellie. Ellie Sparks sounded like the name of a fine, well-dressed lady, Anna thought, and it would put anyone looking for her off her trail. It took her too long to realize that no one was looking.
It was at this point in her life that Anna learned that the best way to get what one wanted in life was to be as unthreatening as possible. With her porcelain skin, rosy lips, and orb-like brown eyes, people fell quickly for the Little Orphan Ellie act. She was almost immediately hired by a grocery shop owner on the outskirts of Melbourne and put to work stocking shelves. It was easy, safe work, and Ellie did it efficiently with her nimble fingers and boundless energy for over a year. The shop owners had a daughter who'd recently married, and they let Anna sleep in her room, and fed her three modest meals a day in place of pay.
At thirteen, the shop owners introduced Anna to a boarding house mistress named Agatha. Agatha was in her mid-thirties and unmarried, and when she was nervous she spoke with a slight stutter. She told Anna that she would allow her to move into her boarding house provided that she help with the cooking and cleaning. Bored of the work in the grocery shop, Anna agreed enthusiastically and bade the generous shop owners goodbye.
She spent the next two years helping Agatha, who tended to keep to herself. Anna made beds, cooked breakfast, and dusted all the surfaces in the boarding house, which had been given to Agatha for a future family that never came. The house had a rotating cast of interesting characters: artists passing through, businessmen who came in late at night and left early in the morning, and the occasional traveler intent on viewing the wild land of Australia. Anna had heard rumours about the country, about the strange animals and curious-looking natives. All this was as mythical to her as any fairytale - her world existed in one small block of Melbourne, from the house to the shop and back.
Then, one balmy summer day in December, a tall platinum-blonde woman came to stay at the boarding house. She was the most beautiful, glamorous woman that Anna had ever seen, with sparkling new clothes and ever-present red lipstick. The train of boyfriends that came to see her at the house seemed to be infinite, each of them showering her with flowers, jewelry, and new dresses.
At dinner one evening, the woman noticed Anna, who was putting bowls of soup in front of each tenant. "You've a wonderful figure," she said, scanning Anna with slightly narrowed eyes. "Graceful. Have you ever thought about dancing?"
"Dancing?" Anna asked, her voice creaky with timidity.
"It's a very lucrative business these days," the woman said, puffing elegantly on a cigarette in a long ebony holder. "What's your name?"
"Ellie Sparks," Anna said. The name rolled off her tongue with ease now, after three years of claiming it as her own.
"Why don't you tag along with me tonight, Ellie? I'll show you the ropes."
The woman, named Sophie, introduced Anna to the world of burlesque: a whirlwind lifestyle fueled by cocaine, champagne, and endless shopping. Anna picked up the dancing quickly; it wasn't particularly difficult. For the first time in her life she realized that men were almost embarrassingly easy to please. A flash of shoulder and they were hooting, hollering, and throwing money in Anna's direction. A shimmy of her hips and they were ready to buy her diamond earrings. It was the most powerful Anna had ever felt.
However, the most appealing part of burlesque was that it was like being invited into a sisterhood. For the most part, women managed their own careers, made their own money, and spent it the way they wanted to. Almost all the dancers were unmarried. They lived together in houses with many rooms; they did each other's hair and makeup, and they took care of each other. Sophie and Anna moved into one of these houses, Sophie watching over Anna like a big sister, and for the first time, Anna felt she was part of a family.
As her dancing career progressed, suddenly Anna was the one with the string of suitors. Sophie taught her how to politely accept gifts with a coy flutter of eyelashes before disappearing without having to give the man so much as a kiss. She attended parties with much-older people who fawned over her youthful skin and her perfect figure, who never let her hand go bereft of a glass of champagne. It wasn't long at all before Ellie Sparks had become one of the most sought-after performers in Melbourne. Her boyish figure, doll-like features, and pin-straight hair were the height of fashion. For the first time, Anna felt that she was in the right place at the right time.
Life should have been perfect. By eighteen, Anna had more money than she needed, more friends than she had time for, and a never-ending supply of alcohol and drugs to banish the nightmares that sometimes still followed her. But somehow, it still wasn't enough.
In spite of her vigorous efforts to drown it, the desire for home always resurfaced, gasping and surviving, treading water. If you think you're drowning me, I'm taking you with me, it seemed to say. And so, she decided to buy a ticket. Night after night she'd danced, until her feet blistered and bled, until she didn't think she could stand one more lecherous business man trying to grab a feel during her routine. All of it, the impossibly long journey by boat, the dancing, the drinking, the cocaine, the heartbreak, the abuse by the hands of those who were supposed to care for her, had led to this moment, pulling up to the very parish office where someone had signed the papers to send her away and take her family from her.
She quietly paid the cab driver and stepped out, carefully avoiding a puddle as she approached the office. It was chilly and damp, and she pulled her mink coat closer to herself as she walked. As she reached for the door, she watched her hand for any signs of nervousness and found none, as usual. Anna's best quality, she believed, was that she never showed any external signs of nervousness. She was as graceful and composed as stone, always.
A bell tinkled prettily as she opened the door to the office, and a priest turned to look at her. He had been going over some kind of paperwork with the nun who sat at the desk, and the nun, a plump older woman, looked up as well.
Anna considered herself a thoroughly modern woman, but the priest's appearance shocked her. He was black, his face a leathery topography of age and hardship, and his hair fell below his shoulders in rope-like dreadlocks. He looked more like a rugged railway man than a priest except for the way he was dressed, but as he stepped forward to greet her she noticed that he had kind eyes and a ready smile, and she relaxed ever so slightly.
"Hello, my dear," he said in a musical, island-accented voice. "What brings you to us today? I don't believe I recognize your face."
She set her face as a blank slate as she responded. "No, you wouldn't; you see, I've just arrived," she said. Her tongue was suddenly thick as she prepared to say the words she had been practicing. "I'm looking for someone."
"Who might that be?" the priest prompted gently, asking for her confession with more compassion than she expected. Somehow she had expected the place to be ominously lit and reeking of brimstone. Instead, she could smell the fresh roses on the nun's desk, natural light flooded through the windows and this man was looking at her so kindly that it made her feel small and weak, like a child again.
"My - my mother," she said, her voice the opposite of the forceful demand she'd rehearsed over and over again in the cab.
The priest's eyebrows furrowed with concern. "Why don't we discuss this in my office, Miss…"
"Gray. Anna Gray," she said, extending her hand. The words felt foreign on her tongue.
The priest did not reciprocate the gesture, nor did he move to show her to his office. His eyes widened, and behind him, the nun's head shot up suddenly. "Anna Gray," he repeated. "And what's your mother's name, child?"
She was shrinking before his gaze. No one had called her child in years. She hadn't thought of herself as a child in more. "Elizabeth Gray," Anna whispered, her voice distant and echoing. "Do you know her?"
The man was still staring at her, as though she were a ghost, an angry spirit here to demand justice for her poor treatment. "They told her you were dead." His voice was hollow, as though he were reciting rather than speaking to Anna. "Spring fever."
"So she… she's tried to look for me?" Anna asked, suddenly raspy. There were so many things Anna had prepared herself for: that her mother might be dead, that her mother might want nothing to do with her, that her mother had been glad she'd been taken away. She wanted answers, at whatever cost. But what this priest had just said filled her simultaneously with rage and hope and sadness. Her mother had believed she was dead. Of course she hadn't been able to find her. The bastards that had sent her to Australia hadn't even bothered to look for her after she ran in Melbourne - they called her dead and filed her away.
The priest stepped forward and took both her hands in his own; they were warm and textured. "She's prayed for you every day since you were taken away," he breathed.
Anna was caught in the beam of his gaze for a moment, and she felt hope rising in her chest like the swelling of a bellows. She forced the bellows to uninflate. She pulled her hands away, turning to reach into her bad. "I have papers," she said. "I bought them from the parish in London, the one that sent me to Australia." She thrust the thick red folder toward him, but he held up his hand.
"You have her spirit," he smiled. "That's all I need to know."
Anna looked away and cleared her throat. "Could you tell me where she lives now? Is she still here, in Small Heath?" Her tone was clipped and brisk. She was afraid to hope.
"She's moved to Warwickshire; not far. I'll take you," he said, immediately heading to the coat rack. The nun was still gaping at the two of them, unsure of what had happened.
"You don't think we ought to… call first?" Anna asked, hesitating. Not even in her loftiest dreams had she imagined it would be this easy to find Elizabeth Gray. She'd expected to have to fight, to have to claw and scratch her way to her.
The priest grinned, his eyes sparkling with mirth. "A man doesn't get many opportunities to deliver news like this," he said. "I plan to enjoy it."
Finally, the nun spoke. "You're Polly Gray's daughter?" she asked.
Something about the nun's voice made the delicate hairs on the back of Anna's neck stand up, making her want to hiss like a feral cat. She looked at the woman, measuring her, locating weakness. Her blue eyes were watery and pale, her hands trembling. "Yes," Anna replied, though the name Polly meant little to her. Her brain was stumbling through stilted thoughts. Yes, Polly. A common name for Elizabeth. My mother.
"I saw you when you were just a tiny thing," the nun said, though it was not with any kind of fond nostalgia. "I saw you when they took you away."
"Sister Dawkins," the priest said with a note of warning in his voice.
Anna narrowed her eyes, looking from the woman to the priest. "I suppose you were here, too?" she asked him, regretting the warmness his manner had made her feel.
"No," he answered, meeting her eyes. It was then that she saw the fire that was roaring within him, the very thing that made him so warm. "I had nothing to do with it."
"I can't believe you'd think of going back to her," the nun spat.
Anna whirled around to look at the woman again, her veins filling with ice. The nun stood and stepped toward her, an angry aura pushing toward Anna and making her feel suffocated.
"You being taken from her was the best thing that ever happened to you."
"Sister Dawkins," the priest repeated, louder this time. He kept his eyes fixed on Anna, who was clenching her fists, her nails digging into her palms.
Anna took a breath to unleash her fury, but the priest was quicker, and calmer.
"You ought not to speak of things you don't understand," he said to the nun. "You know Mrs. Gray is a very respected person in this parish."
To Anna's shock, the nun spit on the floor, right at the priest's feet. Anna gawked at the older woman.
"Just because they have money doesn't make them respectable," she said. "Thomas Shelby doesn't own this city. No matter who he pays and who he puts in the parish."
"Sister, I assure you -" the priest began, but the woman stepped forward menacingly, though she only stood up to his chest.
"No," she said. "I'm finished with this farce. I became a sister to serve the Lord, not the Shelbys. And especially not to work under some... some…" she was sputtering under the force of her hate and anger, and the priest's mouth drew into a frown, hard lines lining his mouth and eyes.
"Watch what you're going to say next, Sister Dawkins," he rumbled, evoking the voice of God himself. "The Lord is always listening."
The woman's face grew pallid and gray, like ash settling after the burning of a candle. She appeared to be biting her tongue to hold back the stream of anger building within her. Finally, she spoke. "I'm leaving. I've had enough."
"I'll not try to stop you," the priest answered, backing away, his posture unthreatening.
The woman turned back to Anna. "You've made a mistake coming back here," she said, wagging her gnarled finger in Anna's direction. "There's nothing but sin and corruption in this place."
"Then perhaps this is my place after all," Anna murmured as the woman bustled through the door, disappearing into the mist.
Anna and the priest stood in stunned silence for a moment, and then Anna turned to him. "So," she said, eyes boring into him keenly. "Who are the Shelbys?"
He smiled, and though his eyes sparkled with amusement, Anna also sensed some darkness behind them. It was the smile of a tired man, of one who had been kept from sleep on many nights. "Your cousins," he replied. "Welcome to Birmingham royalty, princess."