I had to leave the room to find his desk, nestled in the side of his extensive library. While I had had to struggle with a quill and a bottle of ink, Byrne had the latest invention — a fountain pen, they called it, which soaked up the ink as if by magic and deposited it on the paper. It didn’t even stain his fingers.
I paused at a shelf of books. Before Byrne had fallen ill, I hadn’t thought much of what else he enjoyed. He liked his dinner parties and the theatre, and even dragged me along with him, when it suited him. I hadn’t thought he had enjoyed reading, but he must have, even when he had the fortitude for other activities. Why would he have such an extensive collection? He hadn’t inherited it. Not a self-made man like Byrne.
Although he might have told his acquaintances that. Nothing burned in the mouth of a nobleman like the thought of trade.
I had many more months before me. In the weeks since I had started reading for him instead of bending over, I thought I had read his entire library. Now I knew it was only one shelf.
Would we be able to finish them all before…?
I turned away. The gentry were something else. They thought nothing of spending so much money on books, just to sit on their shelves, unread.
I returned to Byrne’s bedroom and handed him the pen. He quickly jotted something down, enough to fill the page after my entry, blew on the wet ink, and handed me the book.
“Ask him those,” Byrne said.
I looked at the page. Byrne had much neater handwriting, the letters long but exact. I could learn to write like that, just from examining his. “’What is love?’” I read. I looked at him, the corner of my mouth baring my teeth.
“That one should probably be last,” Byrne said.
“’Do you have any family?’” I continued to read. “Why should I care? Am I supposed to feel rotten that he’s breaking his marriage vows?”
“No. The state of one’s family can explain a lot about a person,” Byrne said.
“Like if he’s breaking marriage vows,” I said.
“Damon, keep an open mind,” Byrne said. “You may learn something.”
This would be a useless exercise. Why did Byrne persist? He cared less about the state of the others’ finer feelings than I did. Usually. Apparently, a death pronouncement could change a man. I breathed in, sighed, and said, “Fine. I’ll try to find him.”
“Good boy,” Byrne said.
Chapter Four
I waited at the back of the parlour for Price to return, ignoring the other men who came through the front door. When Benjamin finally gave me a fierce look, promising that we would ‘talk’, I allowed myself to be taken upstairs for a quick frig. Price did not return.
He wouldn’t, not for days at least. Laying on my stomach next to a rush torch in the wee hours of the morning, I tapped my index finger onto the page that Byrne had filled out, on the sentence that read, What is love?
It would just figure that I had found the only gentleman in Town who actually believed in that poetic nonsense. No one else believed in love. The noblemen and gentry, who could afford it, married to further their ambitions. The working folk married to obey God, or they ended up working the streets, either as patron or green girl, or they ended up both.
“Ben’s going to clean your clock,” Rogers said. He pulled his blankets within the circle of light the rush torch gave out.
Not all of the mollies who worked for Mother Dover actually lived within the house. I heard that some, like Edmund Long, actually worked at a few different molly houses, along with their own side jobs. The rest of us crammed into empty rooms as soon as we were done for the night. That night, it happened to be the first floor hall. It wasn’t a very good perk at Mother Dover’s, but meant that I hadn’t needed to spend good coin on an even more desperate roof.
“He’ll clean yours first for calling him Ben,” I said. When Benjamin had been born, Mother Dover had esteemed she had a wit about her. He hated his name. To us, he was always supposed to be Benjamin, nothing else. “I frigged one, did I not?”
“Ain’t it strange hearing the word ‘frig’ come out of your mouth, with that accent,” Rogers said. “What do the Pinks call it?”
“Frig,” I repeated. As if we scum of the streets invented bed sport.
“Really? They don’t have no fanciful word for it?” Rogers shook his head. “Kendall, get over here.”
I glanced into the dark. Kendall froze, the rush light reflecting off his eyes as if he were possessed. I sighed and shuffled my blankets over so Kendall could serve as a buffer between us.
“Cut that torch out before Ben gets up here,” Rogers said. Kendall slid into the open spot.
“So you can have the chance to abuse me?” I asked. I reached for the snuffer anyway. “Where’s the ruin?”
“What ruin?” Rogers tried to say.
I paused in snuffing the torch. “The ruin you promised yesterday.”
“That was yesterday, mate,” Rogers said.
“I was trapped upstairs,” I said. “Fetch it now, I’m awfully parched.”
Rogers gave me a sour look, but he was all too happy to pull out the half bottle. He held it out to me, but I took care of the rush torch first. I didn’t particularly enjoy anyone seeing this weakness of mine. At least not by full light.
I took my fair share. The first gulp burned my tongue all the way down my throat. Yet I still enjoyed it more than a cock, at least because I knew what would come. The edges of my consciousness would grow hazy. My fingers would begin to tingle, and I settled into something that might be confused for contentment.
Or I could break down sobbing at any moment. I wouldn’t care then, not with gin blazing through me, and in the morning, when we woke with blazing headaches, no one would mention it, even if they did remember.
It was utterly pathetic that this was what I enjoyed most in my life.
I swallowed my mouthful, and handed the bottle to Kendall, who no doubt already had some the night before. I felt generous with other people’s gin.
“What are you matriculating now?” Rogers asked.
I raised my eyebrows, but he couldn’t see in the dark. I rolled onto my side to face them. “Matriculating?”
“Ain’t that the word?” Rogers asked.
“To enroll in a university?” I asked. “Last time I checked, Cambridge had so many sods, you could barely give yourself away never mind sell.”
“At Cambridge? Really?” Rogers asked. “I thought that’s why they came here. To slum.”
“We’re unlikely to meet them in unfortunate circumstances,” I said. “That’s our value.”
“That wasn't why they come,” a voice sounding eerily like Byrne said. I shook my head. Byrne had deluded himself, just like half the men who came through Mother Dover’s front door. Only Byrne had actually convinced me to play into his fantasy. At least he hadn’t gone so far as to order me to say foolish things to him, like love.
“Help me settle a debate,” I said. “Do you believe in love?”
Rogers burst out laughing, but smothered his mouth as another molly chucked something at him. They exchanged oaths, but at least Rogers had calmed down. “That’s a strange thing to ask.”
“I know,” I said. “But it’s what I’ve been told to ‘matriculate’, as you put it.”
“Serves me right for trying to use a big word,” Rogers said. “You have to teach me one. A real one, that I can use to impress someone.”
“Snow already gave one to you,” Kendall said. I couldn’t see him in the dark, but from the sound of his voice, he was probably staring into his pillow to avoid us. “It’s a word that frightens everyone. It’s a big word, a heavy word, a word that once said changes empires.”
“Is it Napoleon?” Rogers asked.
“No…”
“Ooh, I know, guillotine!” Rogers said. “That’s how they killed all them people, ain’t it? Ain’t it? Ain’t it?”
“It’s ‘love,’” Kendall interrupted.
R
ogers went quiet for a moment, and I understood that feeling. “Love?” Rogers asked. “That ain’t a big word, mate.”
“It’s a complicated one,” Kendall said.
“No it isn’t,” I said. “It doesn’t even exist. You might as well say unicorn, or Bloody Bones.”
“Bloody Bones is real,” Kendall insisted.
“Of course he is,” Rogers said. “Me mum used to tell me and me little brother that if we kept throwing stones at her, Bloody Bones would snatch us and gobble us right up. My little brother didn’t believe her, even though I knew that me mum had never fibbed a day in her life. So he threw stones at her when she was putting up the washing and she chased him into the woods. We waited for him to return home, but then night fell. Mum asked the neighbours to go into the woods to find him, but they never did. And we never saw him again.”
“Don’t mock me,” Kendall said.
“I ain’t mocking nobody,” Rogers said. “It’s true. It happened.”
All right, I admitted, Bloody Bones might have been a bad example. I should know better than most what could lurk in the night. After all, I was one of the phantasmagorias lurking in the shadows. “Never mind Bloody Bones,” I said. “Love is a lie.”
“It — it isn’t,” Kendall said.
“And who ever told you that they loved you?” I asked him.
Kendall didn’t respond.
“Exactly,” I said.
“Calm yourself, Damon,” Rogers said. “I tell flats all the time that I love them.”
“Exactly,” I repeated.
“How can you do that?” Kendall asked.
“Easily,” Rogers said. “And Damon here probably does the same. Haven’t you ever told a flat that?”
Kendall sputtered.
“I do not,” I said.
“Truly?” Rogers asked. “I would think you would. I bet it would sound glorious coming out of that poet’s mouth of yours. Come on, Damon, tell me you love me. Make me night.”
“I refuse,” I said. Rogers reached over Kendall and grabbed my head, bringing our heads close. Kendall didn’t have the decency to squirm to break us apart.
“Oh, come on. I know deep down you’re in it for me,” Rogers said. Was he trying to kiss me?
I cracked my head against his. Rogers hissed in pain, and a few other mollies who had been eavesdropping chuckled at him. I slid back, getting back out of reach and jerked the bottle out of Kendall’s hand.
“Oi, I need that,” Rogers said as I took a deep gulp. “You cracked me skull.”
“Yes, and now I have your vowel,” I said. I took another gulp, letting the burning liquid take me to a good place.
I tossed it back to Rogers, who fumbled for it in the dark. I heard him shake it, the last drop pinging on the glass. Rogers grunted.
“As a matter of fact,” I told him, “poets don’t actually write of love. They speak of loss and loneliness and all the things they think they’re alone with, that somehow they’re especially in pain, all in pantomimic rhythm. Of course, if only they’d wander out from Mayfair, they’d discover they weren’t alone and that every single man in Town is suffering in exactly the same way, which is why they never wander over.”
“I preferred it when you said ‘frig’,” Rogers said. “That at least was amusing.”
“I preferred it when I drank the last of your gin,” I said. “Yet alas, it is all gone…”
“You should have thought of that before you drained it then,” Rogers said.
I almost asked Kendall if he could somehow convince me that love actually did exist and life wasn’t great plains of emptiness, but that would have been cruel. Instead, I asked, “What do you know about Price?”
“P-Price?” Kendall stuttered. “Err, why do you ask?”
“He seemed to distress you,” I said. “I can see why. He was brutal.”
“John isn’t brutal!”
I blinked. Rogers didn’t jest, so he must have been as surprised as I was.
“Oh,” I said. “I must have imagined it when he held me still to frig my mouth.”
“Now, that’s not nearly so amusing,” Rogers said.
“I…” Kendall said.
“Or perhaps it’s just I,” I said. “Then again, you seemed awfully afraid of him. You nearly jumped out of your skin to say ‘no’, though you knew what Benjamin would do.”
“Ben isn’t that bad a bloke,” Rogers said.
I shrugged, though he couldn’t see me. It didn’t matter to me. All men were the same when pressed. They turned to violence, they turned to lust. All the better for me, I supposed. I could feed from it then.
“He doesn’t… he doesn’t actually want me,” Kendall explained. “I mean, he’s polite — he’s a gentleman, after all, but… he doesn’t want me.”
Price seemed to, though. Benjamin hadn’t exactly stuck a pistol to his forehead to make him choose Kendall. But fancies came and fancies left. A favourite molly today was yesterday’s gossip the next day. We all knew it. The ones who didn’t were the ones who never survived.
“How often does he come in?” I asked.
“Are you sweet on him?” Rogers asked. “Someone call the Church. We have a genuine miracle.”
As if the Church wanted anything to do with me. “He stiffed me afterward,” I said.
“I could have helped with that,” Rogers said.
“It wasn’t that sort,” I said. “The next round, I would like to be properly compensated. So Kendall? When is he next due in?”
“He — he only comes once… once every fortnight,” Kendall said.
Damnation. “What else do you know about him? Where does he live?”
“You can’t sneak him,” Rogers said.
“I wouldn’t,” I said. “I just…” Blast, what was I supposed to tell them? That I actually didn’t have a care for the spare pence, but I had to learn about him so I could tell my dying flat? “I just want to understand him.”
Now, didn’t that just make me want to jump down a well.
“Do you have a fever?” Rogers asked.
“I’m perfectly fine,” I said. “Kendall, where does he live?”
“You can’t go to Tottenham, Benjamin—”
“Tottenham?” I interrupted. Yes, yes, I knew that it would be a serious faux pas. “Tottenham Street?”
Kendall made a sound as if he were choking. It must be true then. But why would Kendall care to keep me away from Price? What I was after had nothing to do with Kendall. He wouldn’t be in any trouble. I might even save him a fair bit.
“My thanks,” I said.
Kendall refused to say anything else for the rest of the night.
Chapter Five
I told Mother Dover that I was leaving for the night, no ifs, ands or buts. She reluctantly agreed she had more than enough mollies in her house that night to have need of me. Instead of waiting in the parlour for my next paramour, I froze my fingers and toes standing on Tottenham Street, waiting for Price to return.
I hugged my great coat around me. At least, I hoped he would return, and wasn’t already snug in his own home, sipping on brandy in front of his fire. That’s what I imagined the gentry did when they weren’t out gallivanting or visiting a bawdy house, which I also didn’t imagine happened very often, the bawdy houses taking up so much time.
Still a better fate than to have my throat slashed, I supposed, which was why I huddled against a building where no one could approach without me seeing them first.
A hansom drove past me, its large iron wheels doing its very best to soak me in muddy water. I tried to jump back, but there was nowhere to jump back, so it soaked my great coat through. Could incubi curse the living? I’d settle for cursing the wheels.
I doubted it, anyway. The only person an incubus seemed to curse was itself.
The driver brought the hansom to a stop in front of a dark house. Not even the hearth warmed its windows. I had thought it was abandoned between sales, for it never took long to se
ll a house in this part of Town, but it seemed as if I was mistaken.
Black riding boots emerged from the far side of the hansom. I couldn’t see who the boots were attached to. Smart, though, for he landed in a puddle. Alone too, for no one else emerged. The hansom drove off, revealing the figure looking to and fro as if he were sneaking into his own home.
Price.
I started across the street, only to pull back as another carriage drove on through, the driver swearing an oath at me. I glared back at him. During the distraction, Price had disappeared, but it didn’t matter. I knew which house.
When I could finally make my way clear across the street, I knocked on the door. I tapped my foot as I waited, then knocked again. The door opened. Price appeared still in his wet clothes holding a candelabrum to light his way. Oh, so he could afford wax candles, but not to leave an extra coin on the table?
“Good evening,” I said, as Price gaped at me. “May I come in?”
His lip quivered, and he glanced down either way on the street. I hid my grimace. His neighbours would notice something was morally questionable now, with the way he was acting. Price must know he had only two choices – invite me in or slam the door in my face and hope I didn't speak to any neighbours.
After a long moment, Price bobbed his head once, stood another moment frozen in the doorframe, and allowed me inside after I raised my eyebrows.
“How did you… Why are you...?” Price trailed off. “I mean, this is quite the shock.”
“I do venture past Covent Square once in a blue moon,” I said. Price opened his mouth to sputter some more, so I added, “I thought I'd pay you a social call.”
“A – a social call,” Price repeated.
“I know it's not a terribly fashionable hour,” I said. “You will have to excuse me.”
Since he didn’t seem to have a man at hand, I shrugged out of my own coat and folded it over my arm.
He stared at my folded coat. I lifted that arm and he seemed to snap out of his paralysis. He shook his head and took my coat. “My apologies. I don’t often have visitors.”
Damon Snow and the Nocturnal Lessons Page 4