by Viola Carr
“Then pass on out again, like the turd you are.” My dragon hisses, and I yank him open a foot and jam the blade two-handed under the Dodger’s jowly chin. “Get out of my castle before I have your guts for sausages, you weasel-dick cocksucker.”
Dodger just grins like a shark, rubbing his sweaty bulk against me. “Don’t play hard to get,” he purrs, and fuck me if that ain’t a hard-on pokin’ my thigh. “If it’s cock-sucking you crave, why not just say so? I’ll gladly oblige.”
Charley nearly dies laughing. “A-hee-hee! Why don’t she just say so, Artful? A-hee-hee!”
My rage explodes, and I shove the blade in tighter. Just another man who looks at a woman and sees trash, to be tossed away once he’s had his fun. “You stinky vomit-bucket—”
“Kill me, you rot-crotch slut?” Dodger’s stinking spit flecks my cheek. “You wouldn’t dare—”
“Peace, Lizzie.” It’s Johnny, long fey fingers gripping my arm, his lean shadow falling on Dodger’s face. “Don’t want no oceans of whale blood drowning us.”
Hell for timing, Johnny.
I slam my blade away, cheeks afire. Easy mark, Lizzie Hyde. Shame on you.
“Mr. Dodger was just leaving. Wasn’t you, Artful?” Johnny’s mismatched eyes glint like cold jet, firelight crackling in his velvety black hair. He’s always had a name, my fancy man, but he’s flaunted new confidence of late, and though Johnny’s sporting a coat the color of mustard and a green necktie like a lurid six-foot leprechaun, Dodger takes an involuntary step back.
But he hides his mistake with a sloppy smile. “A simple misunderstanding, John. I present myself for palaver with the sinister, singular, and spectacular Mr. Hyde. Take me to him.”
“Like Eddie wants to talk to you,” mutters I, still smarting. “He shopped you once. Don’t imagine he’ll blink for twice, you chicken-arse shitstain.”
“You can palaver with me.” Johnny draws up to his full lean height—nigh as the Dodger is wide, then—and folds his arms. In the shadows, I spy Eddie’s people, a loose collection of thieves and fakers. Handsome Tom o’ Nine Lives and his suave offsider Jimmy, Three-Tot Polly with her buxom scowl, the cove with the flippers called Fishy Dolittle.
Dodger’s wobbling face falls. “ ’Twon’t do, m’dear. Can’t deal with the help. ’Twon’t do at all.” He sighs like a melodrama heroine. “Suppose we’ll have to linger ’til Eddie comes back. Won’t we, lads?”
Jeers and curses from his gang. “A-hee-hee! Suppose we will, Artful. A-hee-hee-hee!”
And Dodger waddles over, hitches up his straining trousers, and plonks his flabby fundament on Eddie’s throne.
And that’s it. I charge at him, sword drawn. “Get off my father’s chair, you greedy bumwipe.”
But already his lads are shouting insults and dragging me off him, and Johnny’s men pile into the fight. Oof! A fist across the temple. I stagger, stars floating, my limbs weak. My dragon’s lost. Around me, punches and kicks and curses fly.
“Topsy tart.” Charley Tee-Hee guffaws at his own poetry and hurls me to the floor. “Topsy friggin’ tart. A-hee-hee!”
Umph! A boot slams my ribs. I grit my teeth, and fling myself at Charley. Crunch! “Ha! Ain’t laughing now, dicksqueeze.”
He howls, blood streaming down his face. “You broke by dose, you topsy tart!”
My own laughter splits my aching ribs, and it feels good. “That the best you’ve got? Ha ha! You ain’t half the man Eddie is, Jack Dawkins. Won’t never be king, not in a thousand years.”
I laugh more, tears flowing, and brace for a slating. Worth it to see the look on the ugly turd’s face. But Johnny’s dragging me up, warding off the Dodger’s boys with my sword. He whistles, tooo-whit! and his lads fall back, melting into shadow. “Another day, Artful,” snarls Johnny over his shoulder. “Count on it.”
He and I stumble away with as much grace as we can muster. I shake my head to clear it. Johnny slants me the greasy eyeball—and then he laughs, too, cuffing my shoulder. “Jesus, Lizzie.”
I shove him back, ribs still smarting. “Someone had to try ’im.”
“Aye.” He hands me my swordstick, and I grab it with a grin. He’s a sight, my Johnny, all luminous skin and crushed-velvet hair. I want to sink my hands into it, pull his mouth to mine. Get gloriously drunk, lose us both in gin and sorrow and honest desire.
But hot confusion makes my head throb. A crowd of would-be revelers engulfs us, gaunt faces and lank corpse hair. They’re sick, skin peeling, drool frothing from slackened lips. The room swirls, the carousel’s animals dancing around me in mocking circles. Ring-a-ring o’ roses, a pocket full o’ posies . . .
I stumble against Johnny’s shoulder, my guts roiling. Fuck, did I just spit up a little on his coat? He’s so wonderfully strong and warm, his flowery scent suddenly all I’ve got to hold on to in this awful field of death. The sneezes from the rhyme grate my eardrums, a rough strep in my throat. Atishoo! Atishoo! We all fall DOWN . . .
The Rats’ Castle is poisoned. Dying. Rotting from the inside. And only Eddie can save it.
The carousel whirls on, singing its mournful dirge. I eye the spinning animals suspiciously. Spy on me, will you, poxy traitors?
But they ain’t listening no more. No magic left in ’em. Just plaster corpses with glassy eyes.
I pull Johnny into a hidden corner, where mirrors lurk and giggle. Inside that iron cage, Sunshine sighs and stretches, his chain rattling. His skin makes a crackling sound, like a centipede crawling through parched leaves. I find I’m clawing my hair, searching for pins, and I yank my hands away.
“Johnny, where’s Eddie? How long’s this been going on?” He and Eddie’s thick as thieves (ha!) since Johnny’s flash house burned down in an Enforcers’ raid and Eddie decided he needed a new henchman, the kind of sharp and shifty cove who can patter flash and put up a lay double-time and don’t ask the wrong questions.
“Few weeks.”
“Why didn’t you tell me, you glocky sot?” But my soul burns with acid guilt.
Because you’re never around, Lizzie. Because you spend half your time swanning about in an Eliza-suit, toffing it up in Russell Square and the Bow Street crushers’ shop, sniffing around murdered folks and trying on six hundred god-rotted wedding dresses, for fuck’s sake.
Because you’re never here, with me, where you belong.
What I’ll do when Johnny finds out ain’t an idea I cherish. My charming fey dolly-boy might be many things unsavory—pickpocket, fence, bent innkeeper, and upon-occasion thuggish brute—but thick-witted he certainly ain’t. Surely, he wonders where I vanish to, pop!, like a ghost, only to return days later, bright and breezy as if nothing’s amiss.
Or maybe he simply don’t care. Johnny’s never been a man to seek out reasons why sommat can’t be done. Thinking things through is not his strong point.
“Eddie’s never here no more,” says he. “The longer he stays away . . .” He waves at what’s around us. The dusty, faded carnival, its dimming light and stink of mold, the decaying wood and rotting clothes.
My swallow hurts my throat, and I don’t voice the darkest fear in my heart. That Eddie’s not sick, but mad. Lost it. Gone . . . and the Rats’ is gone, too. Without Eddie, none of this can be. And without the Rats’, where will all the fey folk go? What’s to keep ’em from destitution and murder and the Royal’s dank dungeons?
Johnny folds his fingers between mine. Fine fingers for thieving, lithe and quick with a few more knuckles than they’ve any right to, and curse it if his touch don’t feel safe.
Har-de-har, and get on with you, Lizzie Hyde. If I’ve learned one thing about being half a person, it’s that there ain’t no such thing as safe.
“So take me to him,” says I, gripping his hand. “I’ll talk some sense. Where is he?”
“Soho, most like. Mrs. Fletcher’s—”
Leathery fingers latch onto my ankle and yank sideways.
My knee buckles, pain bolting up my leg. My hand rips free
. Doingg! My head hits the carousel, dizzying me. “Argh! What the shit—”
Ping-whizzz!! Metal ricochets, directly above my head.
A bullet. Right where my dumb skull would’ve been.
Heart pounding, I scan the crowd for the assassin, but there’s only a sea of sick faces, receding into stinking gloom. And then I spy a brassy glint, a puff of smoke, and the gleam of dirty red ringlets disappearing into the dark. “Flash Toby,” accuses I, scrambling up. “Fucking Dodger.”
A blackened hand in a filthy linen sleeve creaks back into shadow. “We all fall down,” Sunshine whispers, and laughs. Save my life, will you? Ain’t irony a killer?
Was Toby aiming for me, or Johnny? It don’t matter. “We need to un-fuck this, John, and fast. Take me to Eddie.”
Johnny’s crooked fairy gaze darts into the darkness, where the creature’s sing-song still floats like dry leaves. “That’s one we could bring with us, y’know.”
I shudder. Sunshine, Eddie calls him. Blood and roses, cognac and absinthe, the sting of steel and a hot crimson splash . . .
“No!” My voice lurches, too loud. Suddenly, I don’t want to stay in this rotting tomb one misbegotten moment more.
“Eddie likes ’im,” offers Johnny. “He could help. S’worth a look—”
“No,” I says again, calm-like, “he stays where he is,” and I grab Johnny and pull him towards the light.
CHIEF OF SINNERS
AN HOUR LATER, WE’RE AT MRS. FLETCHER’S, A higher class of whorehouse in a gaslit Soho street teeming with swells and lushes and sly-eyed girls on the game. The wooden porch is freshly painted, blue picked out in expensive fools’ gold. Prospective customers eye the place off. I push past a richly dressed gent with his hair in a rain-spattered blond pigtail, who lounges against the porch and glances at his jewel-chained watch, casual-like, as if it ain’t clear as balls on a greyhound what he came for.
I guffaws. “Jump in and get your rocks off, sir. Looks like you can afford the best.”
The cove just ignores me, his face oddly blank. Hmph. Hoity folks got no sense of humor.
Letitia Fletcher herself greets us in the hall. She’s wearing a showy green off-the-shoulder gown, her elaborate ringlets dyed black to hide the fact she’s on the desperate side of forty. Tawny skin, swan-like neck, almond-shaped eyes lengthened with kohl like a harem girl’s. A striking beauty in her day. The most sought-after courtesan at Whitehall, some say, while others mutter about whips and spikes and the Hellfire Club. Me, I’ll have a quid each way. Making lily-arsed lords squeal with a silken cat o’ nine seems just the sort of playtime this frost-hearted madam would enjoy.
Still, you can rely on her love of cold hard cash. Many’s the time Eddie’s caroused here, drowning in drink and girls and sweet-smelling smoke. Shattered windows, holes punched in plaster, bruises and tears and nightmares. Such is the cost of Eddie’s recreation—but he always pays for the damage in full, or madam penny-pincher here wouldn’t have hide nor hair of him.
Ho-ho! Hyde nor hair, by God. Miss Lizzie should’ve been on the stage.
“How can I serve you this evening? Something for couples?” Fletcher favors me and Johnny with a glacial glare. We ain’t good for business, partly because we don’t need no help to get our rocks off, thanks very much, but mostly because we care what Eddie gets up to and don’t want him friggin’ his life away on whores and rotgut gin.
“His Majesty in?” Johnny kisses her hand, flipping her a grin that’d charm any warm-blooded woman’s corset off no trouble. It hits Lady Frostheart and bounces right off. She scowls, but lets us pass.
We trot up the stairs. The usual zoo—yelling, moaning, the smack of joining flesh—rattles along the velvet-draped corridor. On the landing, twin blue-eyed girls in skimpy silks recline, puffing on long-stemmed pipes. A client smokes with ’em, a baby-faced youngster with sweat in his ragged mud-brown locks and a hungry glaze over his eyes. The right-hand twin flips his trousers open, licking her lips. With a leery wink in my direction, Baby-Face pulls her head down, staring at me as she goes to.
I hurry by, wrinkling my nose at his queer animal stink. Rather your mouth than mine, darlin’. Wouldn’t be a whore for quids, and that’s quids more than this sorry sister will get for her trouble.
We head for the first door in a long line. Naught but the finest for King Eddie.
The place is a riot. Broken furniture, flowers strewn amidst smashed porcelain vases. Drapes torn from the window, broken glass like jewels on the firelit carpet. Greenish smoke drifts from a glowing brazier. Someone’s kicked a hole in one wall. The curtained bed is unmade, torn and twisted sheets showing signs of harsh use.
And here’s my father, slouched in a wing-backed chair. Trousers still on, thank Christ. His shirt’s open, stained with wine. A blond-pigtailed girl wearing white silk stockings and not much else straddles his lap, trickling a bottle of gin over plump pink nipples.
It’s Rose, his favorite for the now. I met her some weeks back when I were investigating one of Eliza’s murder cases. A nice enough lass, if mercenary. A professional . . . but real affection glistens in her gaze, that expert red pout softened with tenderness.
I shiver. Poor Rose, besotted with the devil himself.
Eddie’s singing at the top of his lungs. “Maggie, Maggie Mayyy . . . they’ve taken you awayyy . . . ’n’ you’ll never walk down Lime Street anymore . . . Ha! Taken you away, by God. To the crows with you, my fine thieving wench, and rot your skinny arse on a gibbet!” He slurps gin from Rose’s breasts. “Ha ha! A fine medicinal distillation, my duchess. Bleeding Christ, your tits are spectacular.”
“Sir?” I approach, careful-like, in case he springs into a rage.
“Lizzie, m’darling, how the hell are you?” He stumbles up, setting Rose carefully aside in the manner of a practiced drunk, and wraps me in a crooked hug.
I kiss his stubbled cheek, smooth his grizzled hair. He smells of gin and alchemy, that dark-spiced perfume that makes me long for years gone by. Young Eliza in the study at midnight, awaiting her rough-mannered guardian, that tipsy-gallant stranger what never shows her his face. Just a hunchbacked shadow on the wall, his husky voice liquor-rich, that same edgy scent of not-quite-gentleman.
Innocent Eliza, fascinated and repelled and a little bit in love. How the world warps beneath us while we’re gazing at the stars.
“Let me look at you.” My father holds me at arm’s length. His shoulders are lopsided, and he waddles like a nut-drunk squirrel, but for all that, he’s possessed of oddwise elegance fit for any society ballroom. His face—Henry’s-that-was—is a thing of beauty warped, his smile a kinked leer. Disgusting, in his way—but then that screw-it-all glint ignites in his storm-gray eyes, and you’re thinking wild and wicked thoughts and wondering if the devil put ’em there. Kicked aside many a broken heart, has Edward Hyde. “You’re a beauty, Lizzie mine.”
His praise glows on my skin like sunlight, and for one glittering instant, I hate him with all the ferocity of hell.
Ain’t because I love him despite all his faults. Ain’t even that he loves Eliza better, though the knowledge flays me raw.
It’s that I’ll forgive him. I always do. He’s my father, for fuck’s sake.
I work up a smile. “What’s the story, Papa? We’ve just been to the Rats’ and Jack bloody Dawkins is there. The Dodger, Eddie. In your friggin’ chair.”
“Eh? Don’t bother me with trifles. This is a party!” He laughs, spreading his arms wide, and my blood chills. When Eddie laughs, stars fall. But not tonight. His mirth bounces hollowly from the walls, an empty clang of desperation. That stain on his shirt ain’t wine. It’s something crusted and thick.
He claps Johnny’s shoulder, sending him sprawling. “Avast, lovebirds, let’s play cards. Eddie Hyde feels lucky tonight! Where’s my Rose? Rose!” he bawls, before he realizes she’s still there, and grabs her waist, dancing a few steps of a half-remembered gavotte. “Ring-a-ring o’ Rose, eh? My Rose is specia
l. Just you wait and see.”
Rose kisses him fondly, smack!—aye, see what I mean?—and dances on.
Johnny twists his velvety hair. “Eddie, let’s have serious palaver, aye? Spare your skirt for shagging.”
Rose simpers. “Blow me, Wild, ya lousy twist.”
Swift as a serpent, my father drops the girl and grabs Johnny’s throat. “Belay your cheek, son,” he snarls into his face, “or you’ll find your fairy arse ain’t so pretty that I won’t flay your skin to bake me a Johnny pie.” He flings him away. “Rose is my duchess,” he announces drunkenly to the world. “Not a word against her, men. I’ve been busy, s’all. Occupied, by God! Vital imperative busy-ness, ha ha!”
Johnny fingers his throat, where Eddie’s dirty nails have dug red crescents.
I grip Eddie’s arm. “C’mon, I’ll shout you a tot at the Ten Bells. I need some air.”
Eddie bares white teeth. “Air? This is the land of mud and shit, my girl, where they quaff misery like ale and bake starvation into cakes. But now you mention it, I’ve a thing to show you, Rose. Such a pretty thing. Let’s be off, we’ve a date to keep.”
And he jams on his hat and crooks his arm, as if he’s forgotten he’s half-dressed with blood splashed down his shirt like a nosebleed.
But Rose—a kind heart for all her dirty job—shoots me a glance, jerking her chin towards the door. “Can’t we stay, sir?” she purrs. “I’ve an idea for a game.” She nuzzles his ear, hands busy, and then they’re kissing and in a minute or two, he’s forgotten all about Johnny’s fairy arse and cakes and his pretty thing. He’s panting, sweating, glazed eyes fixed on her mouth. As if he’s a hungry wolf, and she’s food.
“Come, duchessa.” A growl, beastly undercurrents of need. “You’ll earn your crown tonight.”
This is Eddie the lover, and no one’s idea of Prince Charming.
I toss a few sovereigns on the dresser, clang-clang! She’ll keep my father out of trouble ’til morning, and deserves an extra quid or two. Brave girl. But impotent rage stirs a wasp’s nest in my chest. Naught I can do but watch, as Eddie and Rose fall onto the bed, and he starts doing what he does. Sheets rip, limbs stretch, muscles glisten and ache, the sound of edgy sighs and sensation.