by Viola Carr
Rose is making little squeals, oh! oh!—delight or terror?—and I walk out, leaving ’em to it. The Rats’ Castle is dying, rotting to ruin around us, and Eddie don’t give a damn. Contented as a pig in shit.
On the landing, the blue-eyed twins are gone, apparently used up. Baby-Face slurps his bee-stung lips at me. Coat off, necktie unraveled, dirty hair awry. “Care to play, madam? I do enjoy these games. That young lady swallowed everything. I wager you’d like that.” He tosses a moist arm around my shoulders. “Five sovereigns for a nice hard suck. I’m good for it. Ask anyone.”
His peculiar goaty-gin stink oils my tongue. The little squeezer seems familiar—gleaming eyes, tinny voice, affected little laugh—and I wring my brains, but nothing oozes out. Maybe one of Dodger’s slop-brained gang, for all his toffy West End tones. “Not for all your gold, dickbrain.” Disgusted, I shove him away and sweep down the stairs. Johnny scrambles to keep up.
Mrs. Fletcher’s waiting by the door, frosty glare full-force. “For Eddie’s recreation,” says I, tossing her my purse—God help us if he breaks a girl, too—and I storm out, slamming the door. Bang! The window rattles. It don’t make me feel better.
We jump down and head off into the muddy street. Colors glare, a cruel-bright rainbow. Voices and laughter spike my ears to throbbing, and I can’t scour out that image of Dodger at the Rats’, making like he owns the place. His pimply arse in Eddie’s chair, for God’s sake. And Eddie just slobbers gin and ruts with his duchess. If I were Eliza, telling him to scrape up his horseshit and listen, would he ignore me then?
Johnny shrugs listlessly, gaslight dancing in his hair. “He’s getting old, Lizzie. He’s tired of it all.”
“I don’t give a fuck if he’s five hundred on crutches, Johnny. What about the fey? Where they gonna go if the Rats’ Castle dies? Think Dodger will give a spit for them, once his flabby twat’s on that throne for real?”
I don’t even say the obvious, which is what about us? How long will Johnny and me last if Dodger gets his way? The sad, lonely creatures of London have a home at the Rats’, safe from witch-burnings and pitchfork-wielding pogroms and the Royal Society’s torture cells . . .
My spine tingles.
The Royal.
Did the Philosopher put Dodger up to this? Heaven knows, that greedy old skeleton would be cackling like a witch at the prospect of the Rats’ Castle reduced to a moldy hole and Eddie a rotting corpse at the bottom.
Eliza should know. She works for the rusty-hearted bastard, and ain’t she about to marry one of their own? Captain Lafayette might be one of us when the full moon comes, his furry wolf-creature a bristling bundle of wrong. But he still works for the god-rotted enemy, and she’ll marry him and ruin my life. Fuck me raw, why can’t she piss off and leave me be?
My fury erupts, and I punch the nearest thing, which is a fat iron lamppost. Crrunch! Pain spikes my knuckles and now I’m even angrier because part of me knows I’m just seething green. For Eliza and Remy, for Eddie and Rose and their thrice-damned happiness. For this whole benighted world and all those other people in it who always get their way.
“Fuck it,” announces I, for about the tenth time this evening, “let’s get drunk. Take me to the gin.”
“Happy to oblige, madam.” Johnny filches a bunch of pink dahlias from a flower-seller’s cart and presents them to me with a roguish grin, tilting his hat over one wonky eye. “For my ruby princess.”
The blooms smell of him, sweet and alive. I smile like a sloppy idiot—such a charmer, Johnny, damn your eyes—and tuck a flower into my hair, and we set off. Arc-lights flicker, shadows dancing over the crowd of drunkards and revelers. Food-sellers yell their wares, the scents of fish and roasting chestnuts floating. I sidestep a tiny pickpocket who’s fanning my skirts. “ ’Ere, watch it, squirt.”
Johnny smacks the child over his tousled sconce. “Clear off, ya clumsy shitweed,” he growls, but he’s smiling, too, and the little wrongful laughs as he darts away.
“The mouths of babes.” Grumbling, I check my pockets. Good thing I already gave Letitia my money. “Little sprat’s only just been born.”
“The class of these here miniature practitioners leaves much to be desired. I’d have had your garters at that age, and more besides.”
“More besides,” I agrees with a wink. He blushes, and it’s adorable, though like any good swell mobsman Johnny can blush on cue and it don’t mean dog shit.
He were eleven the night we met, half-starved and precocious, his big black eyes shining with bigger dreams. My first night of freedom, when Eddie first came to Eliza’s with a bottle of bitter-hot delight. What a night we’d had, little Johnny and newborn Lizzie Hyde. We’d thieved, fought, laughed ourselves silly, fled from angry crushers, and swallowed more gin than our tiny bodies could handle. At the end of it, he’d stolen a kiss—and a long history of rotten decisions, worse timing, and awkward oh-shit moments were born.
I wrap his lime-green coat tighter in the chill, my grumpy mood persisting like a lingering fart. “I tell you, Johnny, Eddie’s the king and that’s that. Who the fuck does Dawkins think he is?”
“He thinks he’s a name with a loyal gang o’ lads, and he’s right.” Johnny’s words slur a little, as if he’s wearing thin. In contrast to my sharpened senses, his dark eyes are dulled, his sparking hair snuffed out like a failing enchantment. When the hell did we get old, Johnny? “All the topside thugs who hate us will take his side. Eddie’s king because he acts like it, no other reason. If he don’t take charge . . .”
I pull my cane, revealing a foot of shining steel, and my dragon breathes fire. This is my magic, Artful, you cockless bastard, and it ain’t going nowhere. “Then let’s murder the Dodger and be done.”
“Ha! It’s been tried. You’ll never get close, not now you’ve flashed your hand like a dimwit sharper.”
“Piss on you,” mutters I, but he’s right. “Ambush, then.”
“Eddie’s people know me, but I ain’t the man himself. We can’t throw Dodger over alone. His muscle will tear us apart. Fifty of the bastards at least,” he adds grimly, before I can protest that I don’t give a fuck.
I shakes it off, irritated. “Well?”
“I can get the gang onside.” He shrugs. “It’ll take time, and coin.”
“How much?”
“More than you’ll make before closing time, sweet ruby Lizzie. I’d a few lays in waiting, but . . .” He shoves his hat back, a rueful flop of black velvet hair. “Ain’t easy making an honest living right now. With the brass-arse Royals stinging up the fey, and the crushers and the regiments a-Froggie-hunting, London’s coopered from Tothill Fields to Rotherhithe.”
“Is it, now?” An idea sparkles, a dark poisoned jewel. “Reckon I knows a crib. A deadlurk, too, rich pickings.”
“Plate or coin?”
“Coin. Your hand still in for a locked window, or is you too old and all?”
A deft ripple of knuckles, nary a shake. “Never.”
“Us two should manage it, then. Your usual cut, o’ course,” I adds, for Johnny has a name to protect and don’t so much as drag his fairy arse out o’ the pub without proper compensation for his valuable time. Anything free is shit, he likes to say. Just because we’re shacked up don’t mean he’ll work for nothing.
“Aye.” He don’t look convinced. “What’s the catch?”
“The catch, my comely twist, is that I knows where it is and you doesn’t.” I tweak his nose. “You’ll pay a fair price for the good oil, too.”
He grabs my rear and pulls me against him, unleashing that grin I were mentioning. “Princess, all I have is yours.”
Oi. A fair amount he’s got, too. He kisses me, gin and desire and glassy desperation. He’s a good man, my Johnny. A grand man, with the truest heart alive, for all his rascal’s games, and for a moment I let myself believe I can stay. Just him and me, and to hell with Eliza and her god-rotted better life.
“Jesus, keep that thing under control
.” I shove him away. I’m due back at Eliza’s by first light. That’s our agreement, for all it’s a tough break, and while she keeps her end, I must keep mine. Never say Miss Lizzie was first to break her word. “Let’s do it, then. Fine night for a ruckus, my good fellow.”
“ ’Tis indeed.”
Hours later, in the darkness before dawn, I fall back warm and dizzy in our firelit bed, catching my stolen breath. Beside me, Johnny stretches, satisfied, his body glistening, a lean shock of beauty.
Christ, he’s a sight, his black hair mussed and his crooked fey eyes a-smolder with our love. Pleased with himself, too, his cocky smile curling, and so he ought to be, for we’re fed and warm and rich and in love and what more can decent folk ask?
Our little room ain’t much, but it’s ours and that’s what matters. A small coal fire crackles in a real chimney. The roof don’t leak, and there’s even a glass window we’ve covered with a blanket to keep out the cold. These cushions are cozy, the quilt kicked aside for lack of need, and our clothes lie where we dropped ’em on the splinterwood floor.
Damn, but I don’t miss the way it was. All that lying and sneaking about, pretending we don’t care. Johnny and me’s done our share o’ cheating and slyfuckery over the years, and I’m right sorry for it. Hearts got broken. People died. And he and I missed out on this.
A finger of chilly disdain prods between my shoulder blades. Really, Lizzie. It’s not very clean. What’s that smell? At least get some furniture. And as for him . . . well, he’s handsome, I grant you, but surely even you can do better than a third-rate thief?
My mouth tightens. Don’t judge me, Eliza. You’ve no right. And Johnny’s thieving is fucking first-rate, thank you very much.
But the damage is done. I can’t help but see my life through her eyes, the dirt, the squalor, the lower-class stench. God rot it, why’s she got to be so much BETTER than me?
I shift onto my back, trying to forget her. Johnny trickles silver coins through his witchy fingers, and I giggle as they drop on my belly and roll away. Money ought to be cold, on such a raw night, but these coins is warm. The pillow-sack we fetched ’em in lies limp beside me, spilling its hoard like a pirate’s treasure chest.
A rich haul, more’n enough to pay off Johnny’s gang, and never you mind whence it came. Miss Lizzie knows carriage folk, so she does. An army captain with a wolfish reason not to involve the authorities, who I happen to know is out of town this week, raising revolutionary hell in gay Par-ee. Must have a word to Remy about his window locks, because in Johnny’s flash hands they ain’t worth a damn.
Sorry, Remy, but I know you can spare the cash. Likely wheedled it from some dirty enemy Froggies anyway. And we’re in genuine need.
Johnny drops open-mouthed kisses on my throat, my breasts. “That’s forty quid so far.” His hot tongue plays sultry games on my nipple. “Is my debt settled, my princess? Might be I can find . . . something else . . .”
I squirm, sighing as he moves lower. “At a tenner a go? Manage again, good sir, and my fortune is yours. Consider me compensated . . . wait. Oh. Changed me mind. I’ll take another . . . ah, sweet God, Johnny.” And in short order I’m all dizzy and breathless again and when I’m finished he’s kissing me and wrapping me in his arms and stroking my hair and God rot it, Eliza, how can you marry another man when this is happening?
For the longest time, I wanted what Eliza had. But no longer. I want what’s mine. My own future, right here. Lizzie’s already got her man, and she don’t want no other. Don’t need no poxy wedding to prove it.
“Shh, you’ll wake the baby,” whispers Johnny, winking towards the hearth, where Jacky Spring-Heels is curled up like a kitten in his dirty underwear, his wild white hair stuffed into his mouth.
Johnny takes care of him now, with the Cockatrice burned down and Jacky having nowhere else to go. I don’t mind. Jacky’s what you might call a cog short of the full clockwork. He likes to hide in the bushes at night and leap out at passers-by, hollering fit to split as he larrups off down the street in his knickers.
The lurid penny papers call him the TERROR OF LIMEHOUSE! but Jacky don’t mean no harm. He just thinks it’s funny as a ha’penny privy to watch ’em shit their britches. But if it weren’t for us, he’d only get his shrieking carcass arrested, and they’d bang him up in the Steel with dog-fuckers and kiddie-rapers and next day there’d be a pink smear in the exercise yard and a new dreadful on the book-seller’s cart entitled THE STICKY END OF JACKY SPRING-HEELS.
I blink sleepily. “That baby wouldn’t care if you rogered me up the arse with a cactus.” Though how the hell Jacky can sleep through the racket we’re making is beyond me.
Johnny giggles. “Try it and see?”
I whack him. “More’n your life, you fairy-arse twat.” I roll a sovereign’s ridged edge along Johnny’s collarbone. They say ’twas the Philosopher himself put that edge inscription on there, back in his day as the Mint’s hired help, to stop fakers and smashers clipping off the gold. Decus et tutamen, it says, which far as I can figure means It’s pretty, but don’t try kicking its arse. “This enough? To save Eddie, I mean.”
Johnny rolls onto his back in a flop of wild black hair. “Tom o’ Nine-Lives, Fishy Dolittle, Three-Tot Polly.” He counts off allies on long fingers. It’s mesmerizing, considering what they’ve recently been about. “Twenty quid for them and their lads. Add the Sultan’s gang—”
“The Sultan’s put in lavender,” I remind him. “No one knows where he is.”
“Newgate,” says Johnny loftily, “what luckily for us is burned. The Sultan ain’t in lavender no longer.”
“Ah.” I’m impressed. “The Sultan’s got a gang, so he has. What odds Tasty Mick at the dockside?”
“Already talked to Tasty Mick.” Johnny rests his head on one loose-jointed arm. “In all, fifty-five pound ten and ninepence, done and dusted and screw you very much. Ain’t you delighted your swell gent’s so clever?”
By the fire, Jacky mutters, scratching his buttoned backside. Discomfited, I rise and go to the window, lifting the blanket to peer into the unlit Soho street. Rain patters the glass. Still black as pitch, only a feeble yellowish crescent struggling through clogging clouds. The new elixir bubbles, restless and strong in my heart. Still my time. But for how much longer?
Out in the rain, folks is still abroad, for life nor limb don’t wait for sunlight. A fat cove waddles along wrapped in a horse blanket. A one-legged beggar in a moldy green coat hunches in a doorway, shovel hat jammed low, shivering fit to shatter. Remind me to drop him a few pennies, for he looks like he could use it.
A pair of gents hoofs it across the street towards this very tenement. The tall one’s holding his coat over his head to stay dry, but the little one’s dancing in puddles and laughing at the moon. Seems the Terror of Limehouse ain’t the only simpleton in these parts. Rain spatters his cheeks, drenching his long ragged hair like wet silver.
It’s Baby-Face. The oral enthusiast from Mrs. Fletcher’s. My neighbors, eh? Fancy that. Thought he looked familiar.
I’m still wearing my garters, and absently I flex one knee and stroke my stockings smooth. “Fifty-five quid? Friends don’t come cheap.”
Johnny watches me, enthralled. “Don’t come easy, neither, not averse the Artful Dodger. Lizzie, for the love of Christ, your legs will be the death of me.”
But uneasy needles squirm deeper into my flesh. “What if they betray us?”
“They won’t. Come back to my bed, princess.”
“Why won’t they? The Dodger’s got coin, too.”
“ ’Cause they’s fey and the Dodger ain’t, and ’cause the Dodger ain’t pulled a decent lay since he shot the lag, and ’cause they know what hurt and foul ignominy awaits ’em if they piss me off. Stand there unclothed much longer, sweet ruby Lizzie, and I can’t be held responsible for the tenner you’ll owe me.”
“And what then?” I pick moodily at a stitched patch on the blanket. “Say we manage to turn off t
he Dodger, along with Tee-Hee and Toby and all his hard men. What if . . . ?” I bite my trembling lip.
What if Eddie don’t never come right? What if he’s lost his marbles for good?
A world where Eddie can be king is a world where Lizzie can be free. Without him . . . that’s no world at all.
Cold resolve burns my heart. I’ll be rid of you, Dodger, mark my words. Eddie will be well, and the Castle will be bright and gay, and all will be as it were before.
My throat aches, and swiftly I turn away.
But Johnny comes to me, light on his feet as any fairy prince. He tilts up my chin, kisses a loose curl from my cheek.
Viciously I blink my eyes clear. “S’nothing,” I mutter. “Get on with you.”
He just smiles, and for a while we hold each other.
By inches, the dark window turns gray, the threat of approaching dawn.
I don’t move. He’s warm against my side, and my head about fits under his chin. When did he get tall, that cocky lad of eleven what stole a kiss in the rain? Tall, sleek, clever as a clockwork fox. When did we all grow up?
His heartbeat makes me feel safe. We’re warm and fed and in love. I should be happy, by God. Happy. Imagine that . . . but crackling hatred ignites in my belly, consuming me as surely as any carnal lust.
This is mine, Eliza. Mine, hear me? And you can fuck me in the arse with a cactus before you’ll take it from me.
Johnny shifts in my arms. “S’late.”
But I barely hear. I’m starting to shake. I’m burning up. My anger’s clean, pure as any hand in fire. I’m being violated. Ripped asunder, with no more care than a child tearing the wings from a fly.
I grab his lovely hair and kiss him, hard. Our teeth collide, a twinge of copper as my lip slices. I don’t care. Tonight, I feel everything more, want it more, and it ain’t only tonight that’s in danger, but the rest of my life. I push him against the window, fighting for his tongue, raking my hands over his body. My nails dig in, and he grunts in surprised desire. I drop to my knees, and he tastes of us, of sugar and heat and the exotic mixture of our sweat.