 
## **Contents**

Title and Copyright Page

Part 1-The Village

Chapter 1-The Shoemaker's Apprentice

Chapter 2-The Graveyard

Chapter 3-A Tavern Bed

First Interlude

Part 2-The City

Chapter 4-Poverty

Chapter 5-Mr. Lamppost

Chapter 6-The Apothecary

Chapter 7-Mysteries

Chapter 8-Clara's Story

Chapter 9-The Picnic

Chapter 10-The Ring

Chapter 11-The Graveyard

Also by the Author
OF LOVE AND VAMPIRES

by

Avis Black

Volume 1 of The Wound of the Rose Trilogy

Copyright 2015 by Avis Black

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Cover Design © 2015 by The Slash Press

PART 1

THE VILLAGE

CHAPTER 1

The Shoemaker's Apprentice

My name is Seth Keane, and I write these pages to tell you my story. It is very hard for me to begin, and I must pause here to brush a hand off my shoulder. Someone is trying to distract me. The hair on the back of my head is being leafed by a fingertip. I sense a smile behind me. I should be vexed, for it took months to decide whether to record this narrative. But I cannot be angry. My tormentor is the one who persuaded me to begin this hideous task, and he will be curious to peruse the results.

I finally uncap the glistening silver inkwell--a gift from my lover, whom you will meet in these pages, God help me--and I scold myself as I dip my pen. Begin, Seth, begin. Make some sense of this insane mystery, of your life and your lover.

Let us go to a village just outside of London in the latter half of Queen Victoria's reign. I will not tell you the exact year or the name of the village, for my stepfather's name is recorded in the tax lists next to his profession as 'shoemaker,' and if you know his surname, then you know my village as well.

At the time my story begins, my mother was dead, and I was at war with my stepfather. I was nineteen and awash with madness. I dwelt in what I called the Black Pit.

"You will return, worthless boy," my stepfather snarled at me from the doorway of my small bedroom. I was dressing by the light of my paraffin lamp, my fingers buttoning a waistcoat over my linen shirt. His eyes narrowed in suspicion when he saw me donning my Sunday best, instead of the black wool waumase preferred by workmen of our class.

I made no reply. This seemed to anger him further. He entered the room, a short, broad-faced fleshy man in a stained leather work apron, his face choleric beneath his balding pate. "And do not make any of your smart remarks. Do you understand?"

I was knotting a black silk tie around my collar. In those days, collars wrapped high around the neck, and the only thing to ease the discomfort was the pleasant softness of the linen. My chin sported an ugly bruise. Yesterday, my stepfather had sent me to obtain the measurements of the four sons of Lord Corbett.

I'd found the young beasts standing in a sullen row, their bodies corkscrewed with boredom while their mother talked shoes. As I knelt to trace the foot of the eldest boy with pencil and paper, the monster struck me in the chin with his knee.

"Sorry, it was an accident."

He was laughing while his brothers howled and snorted.

"Richard!" exclaimed her ladyship. But her look encouraged as well as chided.

I'd seized my work bag and stormed out of their house without a word.

Now I was donning my frock coat, tugging angrily at the material. "If you are displeased with me, Father, do it yourself." He was not my real father, but he would have slapped my face for referring to him as 'stepfather.'

In a flash, he had me by my bruised chin. "I said, none of your smart remarks. We cannot afford to anger his lordship. They are the wealthiest family in the village. You will go back and apologize for your disgusting temper and bad manners and complete the work. You will not disobey me further." He let go of my chin with a contemptuous flick.

Madness overcame me. I could have killed him in that instant. A hawkbill knife lay on my trunk, and I snatched it up. His eyes went to the sharp point, then back to my face.

I was taller than my stepfather, which irritated him. My mother had been short, and my height kept reminding my stepfather that I was another man's son. A taller man's son.

He straightened and plucked a peg hammer from his apron pocket. His bulky fist clenched it so hard his sinews bulged like a web. "If you try to use that, I'll break your hands. See if you can find work, then."

I replied with a crazy smile. "Then I'll give us what we both desire. I'll break them for you—by beating you to death with them. So what if the police arrest me for killing my own father?"

My stepfather was taken aback. Then he recovered himself and shoved the hammer back inside his apron with a sneer of contempt.

"Nonsense," he snorted. "Go back to Lord Corbett's. And visit the barber after your work is finished. Your hair is so long you look like an orangutan."

I felt the heat traveling through my flushed face and knew my expression must be completely wild. My stepfather's eyes traveled to mine, and I could sense him on the verge of another vicious remark. But unexpectedly, he turned and left. I followed him into the main room of our shoe shop, a cramped place of low work benches strewn with worn hand tools, shoe pegs, and coils of sticky waxed thread. The air was filled with the feral animal stink of cured leather, a scent I loathed, and leather trimmings lay scattered about like dried worms. I kicked aside a stray shoe tree.

"Go measure Lord Corbett's louselings yourself! The orangutan is leaving." His eyes followed me as I strode from the cottage.

My thoughts were boiling as I hurried along the hard-packed dirt lane, passing unsightly cottages of mottled fieldstone. Do not imagine my village was a pleasant sight. It might have been that way many decades ago, but we lived too close to the belching cornucopia of London's smoky chimneys. The window panes around me were etched with grime, and even the few flowers in the gardens looked dingy and shriveled. My breath was acrid and stinging in my throat, and the poisonous yellow air turned the setting sun into the color of amber bottle-glass.

A thousand insults agitated inside me, stabbing over and over. If I studied hard at school, he would say it was never enough to cure such a dullard. When I worked long hours in the shop, he scorned my efforts, calling me lazy. When I talked to customers, he corrected me sharply, saying my manners were provincial and crude. Even my appearance came in for much criticism, as you can tell from his words above. I had grown up thinking my looks possessed little value, for they had always brought nothing but abuse from him, and when you live in a place where everyone has known you all your life even beauty does not bring compliments, for the villagers have known it too long.

All relations between us as father and son had ceased long ago. But they had always been a syrupy deception he practiced before my mother's eyes while she still lived. My stepfather did not understand the extent of our break and still thought he could make me obedient, but he was wrong.

I often wondered how it was that I, a young man of peaceful disposition, spent so much time in altercations with my stepfather. What our relations would have been had he been a kindly man, I do not know. I could not even imagine such.

Ahead lay the dirty yellow glow from our public house's lamp. There was nowhere else for a bitter young man to go, other than wandering through the fields.

Our local hell-den was sunk below street level, directly under some cheap rooms for let, where, it was rumored, a man could fit himself into the slot of a woman's body for an hour's grinding. I ducked beneath the low lintel and entered a timbered chasm. The stone steps led to a sooty abyss of crude bellowing, drunken lurches, and pungent clouds of tobacco smoke that almost hid the occupants in the grim light of the paraffin lamps.

I hovered in the doorway, listening to the muted roar and clack of billiard balls while I tried to compose my features into an indifferent mask. A long row of workmen were taking their evening pint along the countertop. Many wore leather aprons over their work shirts or the thick waumase I knew too well. They looked like a race of degenerate trolls, and I could barely stand the thought of their company. I was sick of petty-minded men like my stepfather.

"Gin," I demanded, resting my hands on the pitted mahogany countertop. Jenkins, the publican, turned towards me. Without any sign of warning on his lean, hard face, he snatched the knife from my hand. "Pawn for your drink," Jenkins replied, tossing the knife backwards into his change box. For a moment, I was too confused to protest. I'd forgotten I'd been holding it.

"He doesn't want you stabbing someone after a few pints," called a voice.

I turned angrily, but failed to locate the speaker. A stranger stood at the billiard table. He wore a suit of midnight black and a blue silk ascot, the latter set with a pin of jet. He was leaning over as he lined up for a shot, swaying slightly. A glass rested on the edge of the billiard table, and he was obviously in the first stages of becoming drunk himself. He was playing alone.

I turned back to the counter. The publican passed me a glass of gin, and as I tasted the warm bite of it on my tongue, an ancient memory came to me.

Maurice Fitzpons.

I was a boy of ten, playing in a hollow behind my house, out of sight (hopefully) of my stepfather, in a dress of rose silk with a lace train. It was my mother's wedding dress, appropriated by me to play Joan of Arc. Ladies were shorter back then, and I was tall for my age, so the fit was fairly good. The train was wrapped around my left arm to keep it out of the dirt and my right arm was in the air to punctuate my exhortations to the French troops.

It was then I saw Maurice. I'd thought I was alone, but there he was, a boy gazing at me from the limbs of a tree with a look of delicious surprise on his face. My throat locked shut at the sight of him. He made kissy-lips at me, his eyes bright with flirtation. I could have punched him, I could have died, but somehow I didn't. Instead, I felt a thrill in my stomach. I felt sick. Everything was frozen around him.

The only thing to do was run away or brazen it out, and I'd run away. Later, I would be better at brazening things out, but I had little of the skill back then, and my mortification was too great. I knew Maurice would tattle and make my life hell, and I dreaded the next meeting with the other children of the village. But I could not stay hidden inside the shop forever. Every day I walked to school in misery, expecting an explosion of jeers. But none of the other boys ever said anything to me about the dress. It seemed Maurice never told them.

That was the last I saw of Maurice for several years. He had been orphaned as a child and placed in the care of his uncle, a wealthy lawyer, and I'd heard he'd gone off to school at St. Molesworth's, afterwards spending a year at Cambridge before being sent down. Gossip said Maurice had grown into a dissolute young man--part of the reason he'd been tossed out of Cambridge--and his uncle, frustrated with his wayward charge, had purchased a commission for his nephew in the army.

I remembered all this because the man clicking billiard balls was Maurice Fitzpons. I was curious why young Lieutenant Fitzpons was here, out of uniform, staring at his target with the glazed, hypnotic eyes of a man struggling to concentrate. He had come into his full manhood, strong-shouldered and strong-featured, with ice blond hair framing a handsome, if cold face set with grey eyes. He looked out of place among this company. But if he'd slid down his billiard cue and collapsed to the floor, every man in the pub would have leapt to attention if he'd slurred out a word of command from his semiconscious heap. He had the mien of a natural leader.

"What's he doing here?" I asked Jenkins in a low voice.

Our subject had overheard.

"I killed a man," Maurice proclaimed.

The light tap of his cue struck a ball with a loud crack. The pub fell silent. Everyone caught the remark.

One of the patrons cleared his throat. "Of course you did. You're an army man. Was it at Ali Masjid?"

"I killed my captain and was given a dishonorable discharge."

There came another long silence, broken only by the gurgle of the ale tap. The publican, at least, appeared undismayed. I lifted my face out of my gin. As a poker and prodder of feet, I'd learned my clients had a tendency to announce, unprovoked, shocking and sordid things about themselves while I worked. Occasionally, they made even more sordid requests, offering me money to fulfill them. Thus I had acquired the skill of keeping up a stream of light professional chatter while at my duties to prevent my clients from talking. Maurice's remark sounded like one of those unwelcome revelations, though my patrons did not, to their credit, usually confess to murder. In a saner mood I would have avoided him.

But I was not sane.

Slowly, I turned around. He was still watching the balls on the table, unaware he had the attention of the entire pub. I approached with a touch of showmanship, drinking with my index finger in the air, a fist resting on my hip, my manner brazen. "Tell me the story. I'll buy you a pint."

Maurice stole the glass from my hand. "Swill," he pronounced, drinking it down. "Jenkins! Bring wine for myself and my friend."

Wine? I did not usually drink the stuff. I could not afford it. So that was how this evening was to go. Idly, as the publican went about his orders, I wondered whether I would live out the night. I was in a mood so foul I yearned to immolate myself.

"Do you play pocket billiards?" Maurice asked. "Our host has purchased a set of balls for it."

His unsteady eyes met mine, and something of the crocodile was in them as he regarded me, merciless and sinister. His fingers trembled slightly on the cue stick, but it seemed to be from excitement instead of drink.

My good sense told me to leave. Instead, I chose a cue from the rack and chalked the tip. "I've not played this version of the game before, though I'm willing to try it."

While Maurice fished balls out of the net pockets, Jenkins came over with a tray and unloaded it, keeping a wary eye on us.

"Drink both glasses," said Maurice. "It's only fair you start this match on the same footing as myself."

I should have ignored this. Instead, I downed the wine quickly. It was rather good, to my surprise.

"Jenkins? Four more." Maurice flopped the balls into the rack with clumsy motions. When the publican arrived again, he lined the drinks up along the edge of the billiard table. "It's sixpence for every broken glass," Jenkins warned, "and don't spill 'em on the broadcloth."

Maurice waved him aside. "Drink them all," he said to me.

"What?!" I exclaimed.

"I've already had six." Maurice smiled in his crocodile manner. "You still need to catch up."

I lifted a glass and considered throwing it into his face. Normally, I was not much of a drinker. As I sipped the wine, I replied, "This is too good to gulp, Mr. Fitzpons."

"Very well. Let's begin our match."

His eyes half-shut as he bent over the table. His aim was poor and he missed most of his shots. We circled the table slowly, like leopards stalking prey. I was not yet drunk, but it was only a matter of time before my game fell apart. I gradually worked my way through all the waiting glasses while he took his strokes. Nonetheless, I was still sober enough I won.

Maurice made a brief, pained grimace at his loss. "Are you a betting man?" he asked.

"I have no money."

"If you win the next game, I'll tell you my story."

I perched on the edge of the billiard table. He was close enough I could look right into his grey eyes. "I have nothing to bet."

"What do you own?" He shooed me off the table to rack the balls again. His hands still had that fevered, palsied tremor.

"Nothing."

"You own yourself. Are you willing to bet that?" He glanced aside at me.

I could not breathe. My reckless mood lingered, though my raging anger at my stepfather had become distant. "Why not? If betting myself means what I think it does."

"Good."

The corners of the room were growing dark, though I could still see the table. His entire manner changed. He bent over and--to my surprise--aimed at the cue ball with the butt end of his stick. Nonetheless, his stroke neatly pocketed the object ball. He took his second stroke with the normal end of the stick, but he used a screw-like motion which sent the cue ball angling backwards towards himself where it popped his object ball in the side and sank it. Next he struck the cue ball hard enough to jump it over another, and again, it sank his object ball. Then he lined up at an almost impossible angle, but only murmured, "If I weren't so drunk I'd have more sense than to try this," and pocketed his ball anyway. He lined up for more bizarre angles off the india-rubber cushions, and he sank every shot.

Every. Single. Shot.

He was far less drunk and much more skilled than I'd thought. I'd been tricked. Sharply, I told him what I thought of this.

"It's skill, not trickery," he retorted. "I had nothing to do but play billiards in the army."

The alcohol was seeping into my veins, and I lost my balance. I dropped to my knees on the floor, my nose level with the table, my disbelieving eyes glued to the deft motions of his cue stick. When he cleared the table, my own neglected cue fell clattering from my hand.

Maurice took my arm to help me up, but I only dragged him down beside me, and we both went sprawling.

"Can't hold your liquor, eh?" Maurice laughed. He was clinging to the side of the billiard table as if it were a lifeboat. With a flail, I joined him.

"Shut up. This is preposterous. You can't get up, either." Indeed, he couldn't.

"What was your story?" He didn't owe it to me, but I hoped Maurice was drunk enough he'd forgotten that.

We were almost nose to nose, resting our temples against the side of the billiard table. "It involved a whip and my bare, pliant back. I was not willing," said Maurice in clipped tones, "so he drew a pistol to force my compliance. I shot him with it."

Inebriated as I was, this nearly sobered me.

"Once I explained the circumstances to the court-martial, they decided to give me a dishonorable discharge instead of the noose."

I couldn't think of what to say. His calm features belied the seriousness of his words.

"But how did you convince them?" I blurted.

"The only way I could. I let my blood run. Then I killed him."

He reached up and took my chin with his chalky fingers. "What's this? Have you been in a fight?"

The sensation of his hand almost made me forget the bruise.

"'Twas Master Corbett's fucking knee," I replied, vaguely aware I was slurring my words.

The publican loomed. "Out!" Jenkins cried. "You'll not be sick here." He seized each of us by an arm and dragged us over to the stone stairs.

Maurice and I clutched each other for desperate balance as we stumbled upwards, and I slipped an arm around his shoulders and he around mine. It was inky black outside save for the moon.

"Let's go to my uncle's," said Maurice.

I will not record all the details of our journey. It was too embarrassing. We swayed a few dozen yards along the lane before I lost my hold and we crashed to the ground. The surface was uneven and our powers of locomotion too feeble. I hauled Maurice up, cursing, and we made it a few dozen yards before we toppled over again.

"Ah," murmured my companion, "listen to that polished veneer of fine manners crack across and out tumble the gutter-mouthed peasant." He brushed his fingers against my lips to punctuate his remark.

We dragged ourselves a fair distance, me cursing, before we had another collapse next to a ditch. I was green with effort by this time and nauseous from the wine. The ditch beckoned, and I used it thoroughly. There is something about the sound of someone being sick that has a siren-like quality if your own stomach is in the same condition, and a moment later Maurice crawled over and joined me in adding to the ditch's contents.

Then I began to laugh. I rolled over on my back and laughed at the absurdity of it, and Maurice laughed too, when he could get his throat clear.

Thus do men become friends.

We managed to deliver ourselves to Uncle Fitzpons' at some undefined hour, thudding like sacks of potatoes against the lawyer's front door. With our last strength, we lurched into Maurice's bedroom, doing what we could to tug off shoes and remove coats, and I lost all awareness after that point.

CHAPTER 2

The Graveyard

When we woke the next morning, Maurice gazed at my unshaven face and bloodshot eyes and said with a grin, "I've never seen anyone look so debauched before, not even myself in a mirror, and I'm stalwart competition for that award. I suppose this is how you would appear after a night with a whore." He smiled fondly at me.

I became aware of an iron bedstead and stiff horsehair mattress, and of a room decorated with riding gear and hunting rifles, plus a few stray books from Maurice's college days.

His comment was not the sort I cared to hear in my delicate condition. "I feel like a corpse," I replied numbly, "if they have headaches." My stomach was still queasy. The walls were hung with a masculine red tartan, bright and blaring to my tender, blinking eyes.

We crept around each other painfully, our bare feet whispering on the wooden floor, washing our faces and hands in the basin and bumping into each other and groaning. I had to borrow a hairbrush and straight razor from Maurice. While I was shaving, I said, "Do you remember if we had sex last night?"

Maurice was changing his shirt for something less slept-in, and he wrinkled his brow. "With whom?" he asked.

My razor paused against my soapy throat, just under the chin. For an instant, I was tempted to use it for another purpose. "With," I hesitated, "each other."

Maurice frowned. "Did I ask you?"

This was awkward. Awkward beyond awkward. He didn't remember? I was glad I was hungover. It helped dull the emotional blow. "I was under the impression you had. I lost a bet with you at pocket billiards."

"Oh. I don't recall that we did anything." Maurice worked his buttons. "Of course, the only evidence I have is the fact that we woke up with our clothes on." He came over, and after taking the razor from my hand, he wiped the soap from my face with a rag and regarded me for a moment. "Now I remember. You glided into that roomful of vultures like a swan. Finish your shave, Mr. Keane. Care to have breakfast sent up?"

"No, thank you." To hide my face, I redaubed my patiently worked froth with the shaving brush, feeling a horrible embarrassment. "My stomach won't consider it." My nausea increased as my mood sank.

We said little else to each other, not being in the mood for speech, but Maurice kept glancing at me while I shaved, his gaze making my skin burn with self-consciousness . . . yet filling me with hope.

He took me by the shoulders when I finished and kissed me on the mouth. It wasn't at all a sexual kiss, but an affectionate one. When he broke the kiss, he asked, "Will you?" and placed a hand against the front of my trousers, gently, so there would be no mistake in his meaning. The look in his eyes was so vulnerable. I could feel the warmth of his fingers through the cloth. My flesh roused suddenly, eager for the touch of that hand without the barrier.

"Yes," I replied. Maurice smiled, and for a moment his hand closed on me in a maddening way, a hint of what was to come. "But not here." I told him the place.

Maurice was startled. "The graveyard?" he asked, releasing me. "Your Grandfather Beamish? Why?"

I gave an evil grin. "Because he used to tell my stepfather he should enlist me in the army to teach me proper respect for my elders and stop my surliness." Losing my virginity to a man on top of my Grandfather Beamish's grave appealed to me very much. The only thing better would have been losing it on top of my stepfather's grave, but you can't have everything.

Maurice eyed me solemnly a moment, and we embraced. I was already beginning to be amazed at how much better he was at these affectionate gestures than myself. My only excuse is that I'd had no one to practice on except for my mother.

When I walked the road home I could see him watching me from the windows.

But after I reached the shoe shop, I realized our meeting was in peril. My stepfather was furious with me for being out all night. As punishment, after the day's work was completed, he demanded I accompany him on a trip to London to make the rounds of the leather merchants who supplied us, and at this I became desperate.

Yet Maurice saved me, though he was unaware of it at the time. He sent a servant from the Fitzpons estate to the shop with a bottle of wine, compliments of Mr. Maurice Fitzpons for Mr. Seth Keane.

My stepfather's eyes lit up with greed. "I am sure Mister Fitzpons meant such a gift for the family," he said as he took the bottle from the servant's hands. The servant looked bewildered, but I thanked him, tipped him, and eased him out the door before he could argue. I knew how hard my stepfather could drink when inclined.

He finished the bottle before dinner, grudgingly offering me a glass, and was pleased by my unexpected and deferring refusal. Soon I was saying with concern, "Father, you look pale. I think some brandy would help." His eyelids were sagging low by this time, but he drunkenly agreed. After two glasses of brandy, his hands were flopping the cutlery about. "Here, Father," I said soothingly, "a man needs rest to let a good dinner settle. Let me help you to bed."

He muttered drunken curses at me and shook me off, but he was still able to sway his way into his bedroom, flop onto the counterpane, and pass out.

The sun was already sinking. I snatched up my topcoat and ran to the graveyard.

On the way there, I questioned my motives. For myself, our coupling would only be a satisfying blasphemy, a reckless gesture with which to insult my family. For Maurice, it would be a temporary amusement. This would be the only time, I decided. I did not want to risk falling in love with him as a man does a woman. Maurice and I would go back to being friends afterwards. Yet despite my savage mood, I felt dread for the act that must come, since I had never been with a man before.

Maurice was waiting for me at the gate. The graveyard was situated next to our village church, and when I greeted Maurice, he hushed me, pointing towards the vicarage nearby. Its windows were open and snoring could be heard. The vicar must have imitated my stepfather in having too good a dinner.

"Are you sure you wouldn't prefer a bed?" Maurice whispered in my ear. "We could rent a room above the pub." I shook my head no. That was a place of men and women, of sex bought for pay, and I wanted no taint of that right now.

I could see Maurice's teeth in the moonlight as he smiled. We climbed the wrought-iron fence in the far corner with the aid of a tree limb and dropped down, and I led us to Grandfather Beamish. There, Maurice and I took off our coats. To disguise my nervousness, I threw mine across Grandfather's headstone as if it were a butler's outstretched arm. The insouciant slap of cloth on stone made Maurice look up. To my surprise, he retrieved my coat and folded it, placing it on top of his own along the ground. The care with which he handled it made me stare. Then I realized he was doing it because the coat belonged to me.

"To keep it from being stained. Your stepfather might notice."

Finally, we were faced with nothing but each other. I reached for his trouser buttons in a manner which I hoped would disguise my hesitation. I was not at all certain what two men could do with each other sexually, and my few experiences with girls had been limited, awkward, and unsatisfying. I supposed we would simply unbutton a little and begin exploring.

Maurice caught my wrist with a smile. "No."

"What?"

He leaned forward and whispered, "Not that way. If you want this to be a supreme insult to your Grandfather, an act of the grossest violation, then let me--"

He breathed the rest of the sentence in my ear, and I nearly went into shock at the obscenity of it. Later, I would learn to laugh at my own prudishness.

"As long as you don't injure me," I replied, trying to hide the anxiety in my voice.

He tongued my ear canal, and I nearly sprang into the air. My heart began to pound. I felt half-sick with a churning fear, yet was still painfully curious.

"I'll be careful," he said.

I hesitated again, then nodded agreement before he could detect my unease. Get it over with, I thought, and take satisfaction in knowing you have committed the sin, although no monk could have sinned with less pleasure than myself. So little did I understand my feelings at the time.

I faced Grandfather's headstone and kicked off my shoes in a cavalier manner, then undid the front of my trousers. I was nervously aware of the brightening in Maurice's watching eyes as I slid off the trousers along with my underclothes and socks. Naked from the waist down, I bent over the limestone marker and rested my forearms on it as if about to pray, or contemplate the slowly emerging stars. Grandfather was proving himself to be of far more use to me in death than he ever was in life.

"The shirt, too," said Maurice. His eyes were gleaming.

"You're going to pay for every insect bite," I muttered. Twilight had fallen, leaving everything faintly illuminated as if drawn with silver ink. I threw my shirt aside and was now fully naked. He was still dressed. Unfair, I thought as I leaned on the headstone again. From behind me, Maurice traced my flanks with his fingers, and I drew in my breath. I wasn't used to being the object of this sort of sensuous, tactile admiration. He went lower, parting my thighs and going between my legs, and a fingertip glided lightly along the sac behind. I shivered.

He stopped, and I could feel him watching me. "Go on," I said. "You just startled me, that's all." I was beginning to feel dizzy, but with another emotion besides fear.

"Such lucky insects," said Maurice yearningly, "to have your naked flesh to pierce." He fetched something from his pocket and opened the front of his trousers.

Ah, were you expecting sweet and tender romance? Read on.

"Christ," I said, looking over my shoulder. "What are you doing with that?"

Maurice had opened up a vial. It was too dark to see well, but I saw his fingers were smoothing something that glistened over the tip of a considerable amount of stiffening masculinity. I would have been engrossed by this interesting sight at another time, but upon realizing where it was intended to go, I became alarmed. "Wait a minute. I'm not sure this is possible."

"It will be if you relax."

With no warning, he touched me between the buttocks with a wet finger, causing me to shrink away. I hissed. "You could at least have warmed it up."

"Give me a moment to get the friction going, and I'll set your arse on fire." Maurice grinned. "There, how does that feel?"

"Like seeing a doctor. What's it supposed to feel like?"

Maurice sighed. "Now, how about that?" The force of the pressure increased.

I yelped. "What are you doing? Not that yet! It hurts."

His other hand curved around my waist and seized my flesh. His fingers were warm and slick, and while he pressed himself against me, waiting, both his hands began to tease me, and I felt myself respond with a craving that made me drop my forehead to the stone and gasp. Yet the other pressure caused my stomach to clench with dread. Maurice was poised on the brink, but he had not yet made the first thrust. He was patient and did nothing until his playful fingers made the pace of my breathing quicken. Then he began to enter.

I gave a cry.

"Quiet," Maurice said, his mouth pressed against my back, "or the vicar will hear."

"Dammit, I didn't know it would hurt so much. Stop pushing for a moment!"

I tried to gather myself together, my fingers gripping the headstone hard, my breath shaky. "Go on," I ordered, sweat beginning to drip off my face.

"It can't hurt you that much. Just relax and think of Grandfather Beamish."

"That only makes it worse. If Grandfather could reach out of this grave and drag me down to Hell, he would do so. Finish with me."

"All right. Time to make you burn." He pushed harder.

Despite the pain, I laughed. Then I froze at the shock of the penetration and at the feeling of his thighs coming forward and pressing firmly against mine. I let out a gasp of raw fear. He could kill me like this if he didn't use me carefully. He was so dangerously far inside I was on the verge of panic.

"Knife," Maurice whispered against my back, and his voice became ecstatic. "Hilt. Deep. Oh, God."

He began to lunge. His breathing turned throaty and violent as he heaved himself in and out of me.

I was on fire from the bursting pain, biting my lip against the outrage of my body, telling myself to endure it. I shut my eyes, trying to force myself towards the peak of pleasure I craved, but . . . could not achieve.

Grandfather was fortunate he had been able to afford such a sturdy headstone, for Maurice nearly knocked it over with his thrusts, shoving my shoulders and arms against it.

"Maurice--"

He understood. He released my hips and grabbed me with both hands, feeling everything, testicles and organ, but his touch was very different this time. These were angry motions of raw strength, of hard rotations and abrasive pulls, and he made me moan despite the pain burning inside me and biting all over my genitals. His crude, vicious handling made me see stars, and his feral motions were a shattering surprise. Shattering mostly, because I enjoyed the ferocity of being used like this.

This is vile. This is sick, I whimpered to myself. An unwelcome vision of my stepfather's snarling face came to me.

You've endured his brutality far too long, and now it's part of your soul--

\--trained to it--

\--aroused by it--

I felt Maurice convulse and then a wetness inside me. He pulled out and I dropped to the grass. Then he caught my leg and pushed me around so he could attack my genitals with his teeth. I ran his beautiful silky hair between my fingers, which I had been longing to stroke, while he dented my flesh and sucked hard.

Was this what I had been dreading? I must have been mad. I was on fire with hunger. For a moment, I went as taut as an archer's bow, poised with the release, the thrumming spasm, and the kill.

I collapsed with a harsh cry and saw Maurice watching me with gloating satisfaction. Then, with a peculiar expression on his face, he leaned over and spat a slow stream down the front of Grandfather's headstone. I watched my juices trickle over the name 'Franklin Beamish.'

"There," said Maurice, wiping his mouth on his sleeve, "is that sufficiently blasphemous for you?" He glanced at me sidelong and shook his head with a wry smile. "The lengths some people will go to so they can annoy their relatives."

Strangely, Grandfather didn't seem at all important anymore.

"I'm going to need a bottle of wine," Maurice added, "for the taste." He made a comical face.

I chuckled. "I'll treat you, since you have been so accommodating." Then I frowned. "Maurice--"

"What?"

With hesitation, I told him my fear about how my stepfather had affected me, but Maurice only dismissed this talk with a twitch of his lip. "No. Men just like it rough. Though sometimes not. It's all whim." He gave me a measuring glance. "Yet you like it rougher than most. Am I right?"

I felt myself reddening.

"You do," Maurice breathed. "Look at that handsome blush." His voice held a note of triumph. "I find that very alluring. You're reckless, aren't you? You have a taste for savagery mingled with sex, as long as it inflames your desires. What a piece of luck! You're perfectly formed to suit my tastes."

I regarded him warily. What now? Would it be, 'That was pleasant, thanks old fellow, coats back on shoulders, and good day?'

He reached across to the grave of my Aunt Muriel and pulled a rose off a bush my mother had planted there. This he handed to me. "Would you do that again?" he asked.

Yet despite his promises of violence, his expression was mild. I doubted he was dangerous at all.

"Perhaps," I said, inspecting my rose lazily.
CHAPTER 3

A Tavern Bed

Thus began my affair with Maurice. However, we soon discovered a difficulty. You don't know how hard it is to have a secret affair in a small village unless you've lived in one. The village folk spend all their time sticking their noses into each others' business and gossiping. It was soon known everywhere that Maurice and I had become friends. I knew Uncle Fitzpons disapproved, though my stepfather was delighted. He could see the advantage of a rich friend.

But the unfortunate effect of all this was that whenever Maurice and I stopped off for a drink at the pub, or Maurice visited the shoe shop, or even if we walked down the street together, my stepfather always seemed to intrude.

One rare afternoon I had off from the shop, I met Maurice at the pub in an upstairs room he had rented for our assignation. I was sitting on the bed next to Maurice, both of us removing our shoes, when my stepfather walked in without warning. The door's lock, alas, had failed under his heavy hand.

I flew backwards off the bed, falling down behind it.

"There you are, Seth--," my stepfather started to say, "what--what are you doing?" (We had not, thank God, gotten any further than doffing our footwear).

"Must you startle a man like that? Maurice wanted to have a look at the make of my shoes," I replied with outward composure. I rose from the floor with dignity despite having my hair all over my face. I shook it aside and continued. "He was thinking about commissioning a pair like them for himself." I picked up one of my shoes and handed it to Maurice. When you lived with a man like my stepfather, you learned to keep a ready store of these emergency excuses.

Maurice could barely keep from laughing. He held the shoe up theatrically, holding it close as if to give it a careful inspection.

"If you're interested, Mister Fitzpons," said my stepfather, "I would be happy to make the shoes at a reasonable price." My stepfather gave me a wink and a hand sign, which meant, 'keep selling.'

"Was there anything else you needed, Father?" I asked desperately, my voice nearly cracking.

"No, not at the moment. I will speak to you later." My stepfather gave me another wink and a signal, bowed to Maurice, and toadied his way out of the room.

After the door shut, Maurice burst into laughter. He tossed my shoe at me and laughed so hard he fell off the bed and went sprawling onto the carpet.

"I will kill him, I will kill him," I ranted, ignoring my lover.

Maurice rose, shaking his head. "I've never felt a heart beating so fast before," he said in wonder, his palm flat against my chest. "You leapt like a shot deer."

"I will rip his throat out!" I vowed, squeezing the air with my fists.

"Your stepfather is like an obsequious waiter who is constantly interrupting to ask if I'm enjoying the meal. Ah, Mister Fitzpons!" he said, imitating my stepfather's voice. "How do you like my beautiful stepson? Is he not well-dressed and witty, his manners so finely polished?" Maurice stepped behind me and wrapped his arms around my chest. "I hope so, for I worked very hard to whip him into shape!" Maurice's lips brushed my earlobe, and his fingers sank into the waistband of my trousers to tug the buttons open.

"I can't stand him any longer. You don't know what it's like to live with him, to be spied on every moment of the day. Now that I have you, this is unendurable!" I moaned. Maurice has great dexterity.

"I'm almost tempted to tell him what our real relationship is," said Maurice as he eased me back onto the bed.

"First, he'd beat me. Then he'd start charging you for my services."

"I doubt that," Maurice laughed. "Though it's true he acts as if he's your pimp. Maybe there's something we can do about him. As for now, on your face, my love."

We did not have much time to spend with each other, during those months in the village. I had to work all day, and if we were burdened with more orders than usual, most of the evenings. Maurice soon grew annoyed that he had an implacable rival for my time in the person of my stepfather. Often, Maurice and I could only see each other late at the pub. I would dine with my stepfather, finish up the tasks, and bid my stepfather goodnight. Then I would go to bed in my clothes, listening for the sound of my stepfather's snoring. Once this started, I'd quietly open my window and slip out to meet Maurice. Because we did not want the publican mentioning our late night meetings to anyone, we worked out an arrangement. Maurice would rent a private room on the ground floor and leave a window open for me. When I arrived, I'd inspect the street for anyone who might be watching, then hoist myself inside.

Our meetings on the small bed would be frenzied, silent as possible, and too short. I could not risk my stepfather catching me gone, nor chance falling asleep here; the latter a serious problem after I had worked a long day and was drowsy from our love-making. More than once we'd forget to keep quiet, and the pounding noise of a springless bed on a timber floor would send the publican knocking in a puzzled fashion. Soon we became aware that Jenkins was suspicious, and it was no longer safe for us there. It was then Maurice began to consider a move to London.

He did not speak of it at first. Since we did not dare make love in his uncle's house, we abandoned the pub for the fields. Not even Maurice could afford to rent a private room every evening, as he was living on an allowance given to him by his uncle. But the fields possessed their own problems. If a farmer spotted us walking along, he would invite himself into our presence to give us a long-winded talk about the state of the crops, myself gazing into the sky and Maurice scowling at the ground, never suspecting these politely bored young men were yearning to hit him over the head so they could fuck each other bloody on his bucolic loam.

And as for the nights--the dogs. Every farmer had a dog or two, and they never failed to scent us and bark like mad, and of course the farmer would run out of his cottage with a lantern to investigate the canine uproar, often doing so armed. Maurice and I made more than one wild, half-naked escape, and once, we even had to dodge gunshots. I almost grew to hate dogs back then.

Being shot at convinced us we had better return to the graveyard. There, we could usually have an hour or so unobserved if the church warden or grave digger did not happen to be about. But we still had to endure the biting insects and rough ground that stamped and stabbed our flesh as we rolled our thrashing bodies across it. When winter came, it would be too cold for even this sanctuary.

Maurice finally informed his uncle that he intended to look for work in the city, and the elder Fitzpons offered to provide financial support until Maurice found a position. When my lover suggested London to me, I agreed without a pause. Yet I found myself dreading the move. It was not the escape that bothered me, but the unknown world ahead.

FIRST INTERLUDE

One night, I packed my valise. I'd spent nine years here in this pathetic bedroom, a time in which my sadness deepened the more I understood my imprisonment. My stepfather was my jailer, his profession my sentence. Here I endured a thousand brutalities from the monster who guarded the door of my cell. Every day he gnawed off another piece of my soul. Much of what I was, was formed in reaction to this man.

As a boy, I'd had my share of happiness. I'd played to my heart's content in the countryside, my only plague a boy's loathing for his day school; a minor thing, in retrospect. My real father had been a gardener of Irish extraction, a man of gentle charm. I'd loved him dearly. A fever killed him when I was ten. My mother's shocking remarriage followed a month later. Even at that age, I understood that poverty dictates a young widow must remarry if she wishes to survive, but to choose such an obvious beast as my stepfather must have meant confusion and despair of a high order. My mother's spirits were crushed by her bad luck, leaving her prey to a hard, devious man capable of the most cunning flattery, and his proposals must have sounded like good sense coming from his deceitful mouth. She had been a very beautiful woman, to her peril.

Village gossip said that at my father's death, my stepfather treated his mates at our local pub to a round on himself, flabbergasting all who knew of his tight fist, and he even gave them the dubious treat of a song brayed from his thick, loutish throat.

As for me, I was simply stunned by her new match. I would soon learn my stepfather loved to assert his dominance over those he considered his property.

From that day on, the outdoors became my refuge. My mother did act somewhat as a shield--she did not betray me completely--but she was too weak a woman to rule him, and I spent the next four years trying to dodge my foul turnkey, until my mother was no longer of this earth. I was scarcely fourteen when she died, and on that day the Black Pit devoured my soul. My only hope was the thought that once my apprenticeship was served, I could escape him.

Now it was time to flee. But what lay ahead?

Life with my stepfather had made me bitter and despondent. In my darkest moments, I worried Maurice would recoil from my sharp, biting edge and leave me. I'd had to teach myself the ways in which one man could show affection for another, the nuances, the glances. It was a foreign language I did not understand. Hell, it was a foreign language I did not understand for any living human being. Though I tried with all my might, I was very bad at learning how to be a lover, and I was afraid Maurice sensed it. I knew him a little better day by day, but he was still somewhat alien to me. A small part of myself did not quite trust him. Life, and my stepfather's brutality, had taught me to be suspicious, and it was an emotion I could not completely suppress.

Though Maurice had given me many proofs of his attachment, I still had doubts. Maybe he would tire of me and discard me. I was just a shoemaker's apprentice, uncultivated, poorly educated, with nothing to offer save my own person, and it seemed so little.

I picked up my valise and opened the window. I felt like a man who has dived into the vastness of an ocean, resolved to swim across.

Anxiously, I slipped out.

PART 2

THE CITY

CHAPTER 4

Poverty

I was gawking, turning in a circle, our valises in my hands. The mail coach had let us out in Bethnal Green. Brick tenements lined the streets like the walls of a prison, their coal-stained monotony broken only by the occasional window and door. The street in front of us was so narrow that three steps out your front door would have put you on the stoop of your neighbor's. I shut my eyes. The smell from the bad drains and sewer-grates was thick and foul.

"What's the matter?" Maurice asked. He was perusing a newspaper for rooms to let.

"I can't look. The upper stories are bending over as if about to fall in on us."

"You have claustrophobia?"

"I didn't before. I do now."

"Good," said Maurice briskly. "I don't care for this place either. Let's search somewhere else."

Despite our efforts, we kept arriving at streets little more than dim, ghoulish alleyways. I found them appalling.

It had begun to rain a little, and the cold water on my hair and face helped wash away my claustrophobia. London was too crowded, too noisy, too pressing-in, but we finally came to a street I thought I could bear.

As we stood on a corner, the doors of a nearby factory began to flap open and shut, discharging a horde of wood-turners. All around us flowed a confusion of men wearing waist-length coatees and flat caps, and women in faded print skirts and dresses, their hair done up in buns. They called to one another in voices as harsh and noisy as a flock of parakeets.

It was a neighborhood of sleeves rolled up past the elbow, a neighborhood of spindly chimneys and factory stalks that belched black smoke like forges.

We were being watched. A boy in knee breeches and the ubiquitous flat cap was lounging against a wall, eyeing me. The rush of workers almost hid him from sight.

I must have looked like a country bumpkin with my valises. Maurice was scanning his newspaper impatiently while tapping the point of his umbrella on the ground.

"Any luck?"

"Not yet. I'd prefer something with a minimum of dead cats and diseased urchins. Unfortunately, my funds are limited."

The boy appeared beside me, and to my surprise, Maurice shoved him away with the point of the umbrella. "Stay back, lad. I know what you're up to."

"Pardon, your honor," sneered the boy. He glowered at us and walked on.

"Pickpocket," Maurice explained with a world-weary air.

"He couldn't have stolen my wallet, anyway. It's inside my breast pocket. What about you?"

Maurice felt inside his coat pocket. Then his face went curiously blank, and he felt some more.

"Oh no," I said.

"Dammit!" Maurice fumed. "I thought I'd been clever. That blasted boy was only the distraction! There." Maurice was staring at a tall man in a topcoat and derby, perfectly respectable, innocuous. "That's the thief, the smug bastard. Come on." Maurice dropped his newspaper and hurried after the man.

I followed more slowly, weighed down by the valises. "But he looks like a gentleman! Are you sure?"

"Positive. He strolled past me the same moment the boy did."

"Maurice," I said warningly, "If you're wrong--"

"Bump him."

"What?"

"Bump him on the left." Maurice's eyes had narrowed.

"Why do I have the impression you know how to pick pockets?" I said with foreboding.

"Don't be so rude. I was a theology student at Cambridge. Wait, no--don't try it. I've decided on another tactic. I think it will be more effective."

After a quick glance for anyone who might notice, Maurice reached out with his cane and hooked the curved handle around the man's neck, and he propelled Mr. Derby into an alley with a hard yank. By instinct, I blocked the entrance, and was about to speak when Maurice delivered three fast, brutal blows to the man's face. Blood flowed from the victim's nose at the first punch, and I think Mr. Derby was as shocked as I was. Maurice swung the man around by the neck, unhooked him, and kicked him violently into a dustbin with a crash. While the man lay groaning, Maurice rifled his pockets, and I recognized Maurice's wallet as it emerged. My lover held it up with a smile of grim triumph. At the sight of it, I had to restrain myself from kicking Mr. Derby as well.

Maurice jerked his head at me, a signal to leave the alley, and we hurried away from the bleeding mess.

In a low voice, Maurice asked, "Any sign of the boy?"

"None."

"He's run off, then. I expect our thief to howl when he realizes he's been counter-robbed. Now, where were we?"

"Newspaper. Advertisements," I said, dazed. Maurice snatched up his fallen newspaper as we sped along. Rapidly, we left the neighborhood behind.

"Where did you learn to fight like that?"

"Mr. Keane will recall that I was in the army. They did train us to fight, you know." Maurice sounded a little hurt. "It wasn't all polo and gin. I became responsible for teaching the men of my company hand-to-hand combat when my sergeant-major, who normally would have seen to that task, fell ill. Some of the men were eager for an excuse to knock an officer about, so I ended up polishing my skills in that area more than I might have. Here." He waved the newspaper at me. "This flat's twelve shillings a month, which is reasonable." He was tapping his umbrella handle against his chin in a thoughtful way.

"You're mad," I said.

"Quite."

"Do you actually know how to pick pockets?"

Maurice made a face. "I'm rusty, which is why I was so slow to detect that fellow. I used to practice at Cambridge on my fellow students as a joke, but always returned what I found. Got into trouble when I decided to abstract the contents of a friend's pocket while he was speaking to his father. Before my friend could stop me, I found myself waving some rubber goods about. The old man was a vicar, too, and it was a contest for who was the most mortified, me, my friend, or the vicar. Lost much of my taste for the sport after that. Unfortunately, the vicar complained to the authorities about my behavior, and I was sent down."

Maurice's skills, both at billiards and lifting wallets, seemed to be those of a bored young man trying to entertain himself. He looked nothing like someone who had just beaten up one of his fellow citizens. No excitement, no carrying on. Mr. Derby had been dismissed from his mind.

Uneasily, I wondered what else I still needed to learn about Maurice.

We finally located the flat, and Maurice paid a month's rent to Mr. Flanagan, the leasing agent. Flanagan introduced us to Mrs. Carter, our charwoman, and she showed us the features of the room while I set down the heavy valises and unwound my scarf. We were surrounded by peeling floral wallpaper and dark wainscoting, and we stood on a worn carpet which might once have been a maroon color. A bed, a table, a wardrobe, a washstand, two chairs, a coal scuttle, and a fire grate made up the total furnishings of the two rooms. I went around testing the gas jets while Mrs. Carter explained she could clean our rooms for an extra shilling a week, and she warned us not to cook over the fire grate, a prohibition we promptly ignored.

While Maurice went out to purchase crockery and a toasting fork, I fetched cheese sandwiches and a flask of tea from an eatery on the corner. When we returned, we coaxed a fire into life with scraps from the newspaper and toasted the sandwiches over the grate once Maurice had the coals burning.

"Did you take anything else from the pickpocket?" I asked around my mouthful of cheddar.

He drew out a few crumpled banknotes. "Eight pounds. Appears to be his day's catch. Anyway, we need the money more than he does."

Still feeling a rush of nervous energy, I gazed through the draughty, ill-fitting sash windows. We were on the second story, and I half-expected to see the thief and his boy hanging about plotting revenge.

After wiping our fingers on the remains of the newspaper, we explored our block of flats and discovered each tenement had a fenced-in yard behind, though most of these were filled with refuse.

The bricks and cobblestones served to magnify all the noise of the street, and our windows rattled whenever an omnibus or a carriage rolled past. Fortunately, this was not often, as most residents of Bethnal Green lacked the wealth to keep a carriage. The windowpanes were tinted a yellowish-black, and whenever you touched them a slimy coating came off on your fingers. When it rained, black rivulets flowed out the drainpipes, and there was an ever-present ugly smell of sulfur from all the coal smoke.

We discovered the eatery on the corner specialized in boiled meat, boiled potatoes, boiled tea, hard-boiled eggs, boiled vegetables, or any other article of food that could be set a-bubble in water. Their tea was the most tannic brew I'd ever tasted, and it was strong enough to leave one's teeth and tongue sour for half a day. Maurice didn't think the brewer ever bothered to remove the old leaves from his pot, saying he was an expert in such matters since he'd drunk it that way at Cambridge. The eatery's bread was good, probably because it was delivered by a baker, and we ate that for our morning breakfast. We soon began to make hashes out of the remains of our noon meal and reheated it for dinner on the fire-shovel over the grate.

Maurice insisted we explore the neighborhood, though for some odd reason he spent much of his time with his head in the air, studying the upper stories. He also noted names and types of shops and inspected their doors. At the time, I was too busy looking about to think this behavior strange.

I knew the money from the pickpocket would not last long. Though Maurice still had funds from his uncle, I had to find work and dreaded the prospect. I could offer no skills save that of a shoemaker and a good writing hand. Shop owners were inclined to be brutal and the hours long, but I was balked in my search before I even began.

The next morning, Maurice went out to fetch a newspaper while I bought sausage rolls and tea from the eatery. When I returned home, I noticed Maurice's expression was tense.

He was reading in a preoccupied manner as he sat in one of our decrepit chairs. I held out my hand, intending to look over the advertisements for situations.

He flicked the paper shut and folded it. "You're not looking for work right now."

"Why not?" Nettled, I tried to take the newspaper from him. "Maurice, we need the income."

"We can make do on my allowance while it lasts. Your stepfather has placed a notice for you in the newspaper."

I stared. "What the hell do you mean? It's not legal anymore to advertise for escaped apprentices like runaway slaves."

Maurice looked me in the eyes. "He claims you stole some tools from him."

"The filth!" I shouted. I snatched the paper from Maurice's armpit and paged through it in a fury until I found the notice.

Wanted for Theft. Ten pounds reward offered for information leading to the subject's whereabouts or arrest.

Name: Seth Keane, nineteen. Shoemaker's apprentice. Stands five feet ten inches, medium build. Eyes and hair black, the latter very curly, worn long. Light complexion, straight nose. No mustache or beard. Somewhat prominent cheekbones and chin. Has calloused hands and several noticeable scars on fingers. No visible scars on face. Has square shoulders and a haughty carriage and demeanor. The subject has stolen work tools from his master and is thought to be in London. Any information should be given to Scotland Yard.

"Unbelievable," I snarled. "No. I believe it. It's exactly like him. The moment I escape his prison, he tries to throw me inside another. Damn him!" I jabbed my finger at my lover. "You've seen the contents of my valise! I took nothing from him!"

"I think he means you stole yourself. You were one of his tools. I must admit, I never thought he would be so petty."

"Damn him! I have to be able to leave this room to find work! We need the income!"

"I'll pay you wages."

"For what?"

Maurice smiled evilly.

And so I began to draw a salary--if you consider being kept a job. The realization struck me with the bluntness of a sack of flour bursting over my head. I was living an old story. A man of means lures a gullible young peasant away from home for his own uses and purposes. Though I do not think Maurice intended it, it was soon clear we were not equals in this relationship. Because he had the money, he expected to make the decisions, and before long I was resentful and angry.

You need a certain temperament to be successful at being kept. This temperament, in my present choice of profession, consisted of a pronounced degree of self-regard, laziness, and complacency. I had none of these traits. I had been raised by my stepfather to doubt myself, had been worked by him like a dog all my life, and was frantically nervous at not having a source of income other than what Maurice chose to give me.

For all the pleasure I took in being alone with Maurice in our rented rooms, you would never have known it from my mental state. There is an anxiety that comes to anyone who leaves home for the first time without a clear way ahead. Some voice inside me, planted there by my stepfather, kept insisting my life with Maurice would soon shatter into pieces. At times, I'd find myself sinking into the Black Pit. You do not know the terror of the Black Pit unless you have been there. After I'd made the jailbreak from my stepfather, I'd thought I'd left it behind. I was in love with Maurice and he with me. The Black Pit should have gone away.

But it hadn't.

If Maurice grew tired of me, or became angry if I argued too much, or fell in love with someone else, it would mean my destruction. I soon grew frightened one of these things would happen the more I discovered what Maurice was like. All these thoughts, my lack of work, my fear and hatred of my stepfather, my fear of losing Maurice, would go round and round in ever-growing spirals inside my mind. At times, I was so paralyzed by the Black Pit that I would sit and stare into space for hours, if Maurice happened to be gone. This sounds crazy, I know.

I suppose if I had lived long enough with Maurice, I might have learned to ignore that voice, but in those days I could not shut it out. Maurice would wonder at me if I behaved strangely, so I tried to hide my bleak moments from him. I had trained for years at hiding my feelings from my stepfather, so I was well-practiced at it.

Our daily life soon developed its share of friction. In the beginning, I didn't argue with Maurice very much, but take two energetic young men with little to occupy themselves with save idleness and bedsport, and what do they do? They quarrel. I was too young, too filled with anger at my stepfather to be tolerant whenever Maurice became overbearing. Nor could I resist tweaking Maurice's tail when he seemed to need it, and at first these quarrels were not very serious.

Our arguments often ended with him yelling, "Who's supporting you?" and I would have to back down, white hot with humiliation. He must have thought me more agreeable than I really was, for I always had to surrender first. This pleased him, and he often wanted sex after a fight while I was still angry. I did not know that my resistance, followed by my capitulation, roused him powerfully.

I loved Maurice, but he could drive me crazy.

With so little to do, I spent much time gazing down at the goings-on in the street. Local residents soon became familiar by their gaits and habits. The man who opened the door of his shop at nine in the morning, the gold scrollwork of his plate glass windows labeled, J. Phillips, Apothecary. The bulldog-wattled news seller at his corner stall, where Maurice always bought our morning paper. The eatery with its peeling doors askew on rusty hinges, populated by an ever-present cloud of flies. The occasional thundering clatter of a four-horse omnibus, overstuffed with passengers. The steady trickle of ragged peddlers wheeling along their barrows of cheap gimcracks and forlorn, wilting produce.

At the other end of the street dwelt a seller of spirituous liquors and cheap tobacco, and he always had a shambling huddle of rough, mouldering tramps out front, their caps askew, each with the shriveled countenance and stubbled face of the hardened alcoholic. Passersby had to be wary of them, for sometimes the tramps would shove up against you and demand money in coarse voices burnt to charcoal by the passage of so much heating gin and tobacco-smoke. At other times, one's wallet might be seized, and the crowd of drunks would close ranks to hide the thief, who according to their code, might stand them drinks for their assistance in the theft.

A police wagon loaded up this surly refuse every few days and hauled it off for a short stay in prison, but its sly-faced members would gradually reappear at the gin shop, foul as ever, greeting the arrival of each newly released friend with the jubilant shrieks of crows. Maurice carried a piece of iron bar wrapped up in a rag inside his coat, and if he had to pass through the mob, he brought it out and let it express his opinions for him in a frank and open manner. The mob learned to shift aside when he approached, and be silent.

I soon began to understand that when a man walked down our street with a steady purpose, he was nearly always heading for the gin shop. We had a constant stream of these persons, and the better class of patron usually returned with a bottle wrapped in newspaper. The poorer ones drank from their bottles in the street, and after tipping back every drop, would thoughtfully bestow the empty container upon a nearby stoop, usually in about fifty pieces. The morning ritual of our neighborhood was the sweeping-up of these jagged messes, a task the women of our community performed with a face full of ire and a mouth flinging curses at everyone from the postman to the cat.

The utterly destitute took their drinks by the dram inside the gin shop, and the begging crowd out front was usually made up of these persons. This class of drunk often did not make it home, and preferred to sleep in any convenient doorway or alley, after leaving a trail of vomit spatters along the pavement like bird droppings on a statue. Our local policeman, Constable McIntyre, would track these markings to the hidden inebriate, jab the miscreant awake with his billy club and consign the sot to a police wagon. Maurice occasionally found a drunk lying across the foot of our stairs, and he would roll the body out onto the pavement where the constable could find him.

One particular man visited the gin shop daily, his eyes always having the dulled, dead-fish look of drunkenness, and he rarely made it more than a dozen steps from the shop before he had to sleep it off. Constable McIntyre gave much attention to this patron, and I became used to seeing him hauled away. But one day, after prodding the man with his stick, McIntyre broke into a brief, disturbing caper. Never having seen an officer of the law dance for joy before, I pointed him out to Maurice, and my lover left our rooms to investigate. Returning, Maurice said, "Copper's arrested the fellow forty-three times, and he's thrilled to see an end to it. The drunk has expired."

I shook my head in pity, but Maurice was inclined to agree with McIntyre.

Most of the shops along our street had flats above, though I rarely heard our neighbors except for the occasional angry, muffled screeching.

"Wait until we open our windows," said Maurice with a morbid relish. "We'll have the full drama, then. You'll be yelling for the constable every night to shut them up."

Sometimes a violent thud shook the entire building, making me jump. When I remarked to Maurice about the peculiar clumsiness of our neighbors, he only snorted. "It's not clumsiness. It's someone throwing the crockery or lashing out so hard the victim bounces off a wall."

Nearly every day, Constable McIntyre was called to quell domestic squabbles in our building or in the ones across the street. My observations soon discovered a strange habit of his. He normally moved with considerable speed when summoned, but when a domestic dispute broke out in one of the flats, he walked slowly to the fight. Upon my prodding, Maurice questioned the constable. "He was reluctant to say, but finally revealed he couldn't arrest anybody until after a crime had been committed, and he wanted to wait until it was good and committed."

"What?!" I exclaimed.

Maurice pulled a face. "He told me, 'It's always the same couples, again and again. But if one's dead and the other's hung for it, they'll both be out of my hair for good.' I had to admire the constable's reasoning, if not his morals."

"That's the most cynical thing I've ever heard in my life!" My troubles with my stepfather were a constant weight on my mind, and I paced up and down in front of my lover, furious. "I can't believe a decent man would act in such a manner!"

"McIntyre told me, 'There's only one cure for the problem. Beat the criminal to a gibbering pulp. It's good for curbing violent brutes who fear neither God nor man. But,' added our faithful constable, 'use of this method is hindered by the bothersome fact of it being illegal, so the brutes are allowed to continue in their ways due to the excessive soft-heartedness of the law.'"

I shook my head in wonder. "My situation must seem trivial to him, if he deals with such crises every day." I felt a little better, yet the penalties for theft were severe. "What the hell am I to do if he catches me?"

"Think. The burden of proof is on your stepfather, not you. You have no tools in your possession, so you're in the clear. Stop brooding."

I tried to take his advice, but failed.

CHAPTER 5

Mr. Lamppost

Meanwhile, I'd begun to wonder about Maurice. He often went out, and I rarely knew where. I envied him for the freedom. In our village, I used to escape into the countryside to clear my head and calm myself, enjoying many a ramble along a quiet country lane. But in London, our flat seemed to be the most bucolic place inside a violent jungle.

As I gazed out the windows, I began to notice a particular young man. This character spent much of the day lounging against a lamppost some yards down from the corner newsstand. He wore no hat, so his longish red hair made him stand out. His skin stayed relentlessly pale, despite his ever-present location in the sun. He wore a short green jacket of padded silk covered with dark vines, with green velvet trousers to match. The nap on the latter had been dulled by time and weather. In the manner of the truly poor, I never saw him in a change of clothes, and he seemed determined to wear his present ones until they fell off his body.

He did not have--or at least did not appear to need--any employment, and only broke his routine when carriages halted nearby. When they did, the young man would speak to the passenger a moment and climb inside. The carriage would then drive away and return a while later, leaving the young man out on the corner to recommence his loitering.

Once, venturing out, I crossed the street to fetch some breakfast tea from the eatery, carefully glancing around for the constable. But I halted as I passed the young man. I had not planned this encounter, yet found myself turning towards him. His features were clear-cut and regular, and even in his worn finery he was a remarkable, if almost too-vivid sight. His eyes caught my attention immediately. When he glanced my way in his half-bored fashion, I saw they were yellow, feral, and as unblinking as an animal's.

"Excuse my interest, but may I ask you a question?"

"It's five shillings," he replied. He did not look at me.

"Pardon? I just wanted to ask what you're doing here all the time."

"You're Seth Keane. You live with Maurice Fitzpons. He pays your expenses."

"Er," I faltered. Maurice must have been chatting with him.

He looked me up and down. "One pound for you. Stupidity's extra."

"I don't quite--"

"Push off." He spoke without emotion.

I took a breath to control myself, nodded politely to him, and crossed the street.

"I like to let them dine, first," said a voice behind my back. "It's not as nice when they're on an empty stomach."

Mad, I decided. Completely mad.

"I can't understand it," I said to Maurice over dinner that evening. When I described the young man's odd behavior to my lover, Maurice threw down his fork and began to shake with helpless laughter, his fist beating the table.

"All right," I said sourly. "Explain."

Maurice was wiping tears from his eyes. "No. I want to preserve your innocence. My love, you are the Eighth Wonder of the World."

"He's a receiver of stolen goods." I thought it a clever guess.

"Wrong." Maurice chuckled. "I'll give you a hint. His line of work is the same as yours."

"You're calling me a lazy idler," I said, nettled.

"No. Think of how you earn your keep. Your job. Don't you understand?"

My mouth fell open. I dropped my napkin on the table and went over to the window to look out. The young man was there, as usual.

"All of them!?" I exclaimed.

Now Maurice positively roared. "Don't tell me you've never heard of a male whore."

"No!" I stammered. "I mean to say, I'm familiar with the female kind, but I've never heard of a man doing such a thing, my own case excepted, and anyway I'm not fucking you as a profession." I looked at Maurice skeptically. "Are you certain? I can't imagine going from man to man a dozen times a day. I find you trying enough as it is. But him? With half the population of London?"

Maurice struck his forehead with his fist. "Unbelievable."

"I'm from a small village," I protested.

"I'm from the same place, yet I'm not that ignorant."

"My stepfather never talked to me about prostitutes. Besides, I doubt he'd ever heard of male whores."

Maurice smiled. "Speaking of which, I'm interested in a trial of skills. Come over here."

I ignored my lover. "He's entering another carriage." My face was pressed against the glass. I was spying with the eagerness of a child, and I felt the heat of my own foggy breath. "Think of the danger, going from random man to man like that!" I imagined him kneeling inside the carriage, easing himself with soothing, servile words between the spread knees of some nervous patron. The client would grasp his walking stick with trembling fingers as he was being serviced, becoming apoplectic as that cool-eyed face slowly sucked and mouthed on his genitals.

"Seth."

I ignored the urgent tone. I slid my hand along the front of my trousers, half-wishing the strange young man could see my gesture. For one mad moment, I wanted him here for vicious, anonymous sex instead of Maurice. I turned around with the heat of shame and betrayal flooding my face.

"Yes," my lover breathed, looking at my crotch, then at my eyes. "Come here. I can read your mind. The thought of him excites you, doesn't he?" His voice became cold and insulting. "You want to pay him, move inside him, let his body spoil you for me. Is that it? Come here, my black swan. I know I must buy you with hard money. Come here and earn your keep." Maurice removed a shilling from his pocket, laying it on the table. "Show me your famed dexterity. Open my trouser buttons with your teeth, and I'll reward you. You're worth a shilling, I suppose. Can you do it?"

I snorted. "Cover the Queen's face. No reason why Her Majesty should be subject to such a debased transaction."

Angrily, I fell at his knees and began, as aroused as an animal.

One evening, we finally had too dangerous a quarrel.

Maurice had been drinking, and he could be unreasonable in this condition. The subject, alas, was a sketch I'd been working on. I'd been considering ways to earn money without leaving our room, and it occurred to me I might be able to submit some humorous sketches to a magazine.

My stepfather often said I had an immense capacity for irrelevant labor, and I'd been totally consumed by the sketches for the last several days, and Maurice was showing impatience as he sat watching me with his wine bottle. I had spent hours that day, bending over my pen, and--ignoring Maurice. When Maurice is ignored, he behaves like a small child. Teasing at first, but when he loses patience at your lack of response, he becomes desperate. So he insulted my drawing.

"Are you going to spend all day on that dung heap?"

I exploded. After enduring years of scorn from my stepfather, I was raw from the flailing. I went wild. "What do you mean by calling my sketch a dung heap! You stinking aristocrat. Why don't you go out and shoot people? That's all you're good for!"

Maurice reacted to this jab with fury. "And all you're good for, Mr. Keane," he sneered, "is for a quick fuck, and living like a leech off my money. You're nothing but a parasite."

For a moment, I went still. Then I picked up the ink bottle and threw it at him. In my rage, my aim was poor, and the bottle glanced off the edge of the table as it flew towards Maurice, exploding in a shower of glass and ink. Maurice was spattered with both, as were the carpet, the chair, and the wallpaper.

At first, he did not react except for a start of surprise. I watched a trickle of ink drip off his cheek. Then his expression changed to a wounded, defenseless hurt. A little blood was on his chin from a piece of flying glass. It could easily have gone into one of his eyes and blinded him.

I ran out of the room, down the stairs, and out into the street.

I am not a man who tolerates the feeling of guilt. My stepfather had tried hard to inculcate it into me to make me obedient, and I had reacted by developing the sort of pride that insists I am never wrong. Consequently, this makes guilt so much more scorching when I know I deserve it. For all my anger at Maurice's insults, I should never have lost control of myself in that manner.

I could not return to him with things as they were between us. Eventually, I slowed to a fast walk, my face stiff to keep the agony out of my expression. I debated never going back to the flat at all. And then, as you sometimes do after a quarrel, I began to wonder if Maurice had only spoken the truth about me.

Remorse can become an avalanche of pain if you allow it into your soul. My eyes turned hot with unshed tears. I walked far, unheeding, and when I came to myself saw I had arrived at the Thames. Along the bank stood a fisherman smoking a pipe. The early evening was gloomy and dark.

I stood on the edge of the embankment and listened to the wet lapping of the cold water against the concrete. As I contemplated its murky depths, I thought to myself that all I had to do was let it cover me completely, and I would be just one more pitiful, unknown corpse to be fished out and reported to the authorities.

Just one single breath of water. It would not be difficult. No cruising police boat was in sight. Most river craft were finished with their daily work and in dock for the evening, and only a few steamboats still chugged along, spouting trails of white smoke behind them like boiling kettles.

"Young man?"

It was the fisherman. He was a lean person of about late middle age with greying hair and mustache. He was wearing a rubber mac over a bow tie and a white shirt. Shrewd eyes studied me through spectacles, and he lifted his line out of the water.

"Pardon me for interrupting," he continued, removing his meerschaum from his mouth, "but you seem very interested in the river."

I almost laughed at these words. Interested.

"I am."

"Is it a girl?"

I was surprised by his question and avoided looking at him.

"Yes." I had to say something.

"Has she left you?"

I could not reply for a moment. "She might. We quarreled."

The man grunted dismissively and gestured with his pipe. "A quarrel? That is nothing. All lovers quarrel. You will make up tomorrow." The man cast his line into the water again. "No reply?" he commented. "Was it serious?"

"Yes. Our worst."

"But what of your family? Will they not be overcome by grief?"

"No," I replied shortly. "I have none."

The man glanced at me a moment, then went back to studying his line.

If anything, my stepfather would be pleased to hear of my suicide and say, 'I knew Seth would come to nothing; he was never good for anything.'

Pleased.

And not for the first time, my pride began to succor me. If it would please my stepfather to hear of my downfall and destruction, then of course I could not kill myself. I had to defy him. Damn Maurice and everything else.

"Young man?"

I startled. I had forgotten the fisherman.

"If I may be so bold, what was this quarrel about, the one that was so serious?"

I gave a short, bitter laugh. "I need work."

The man grunted and fanned his pipe in an arc. "There are situations all over. You only need to begin looking. What can you do?"

"I have done the work of a shoemaker, and I write with a good hand."

"A shoemaker?" The fisherman looked thoughtful. "You must be nimble. Can you handle things carefully? Measure ingredients without dropping or spilling anything? Are you quick at learning odd names and the properties of things?"

My hair seemed to stand on end at these words. "Yes," I said.

The fisherman smiled a little. "Then I will hire you. I'm an apothecary and could use a clerk in my shop. My name, by the way, is Joseph Phillips."

I returned to Maurice's rooms later that evening. Yes, Maurice's rooms; I was only a guest there, nothing else, I finally admitted. A guest who had overstayed his welcome.

I climbed the stairs uneasily, not knowing how he would react. I'd pack my things and leave. I could sleep on the streets for a few nights if I had to.

When I entered, our charwoman was on a ladder sponging the wallpaper. But the stains had sunk in too deeply to be removed, and I think the carpet was beyond cleansing. The broken glass had been swept up. Maurice was nowhere in sight, and I wondered what to say about the carpet and the wallpaper.

"Mrs. Carter, where is Mr. Fitzpons?"

My drawings still lay on the table. Thank God Maurice hadn't burnt them in revenge. It did seem rational to think this at the time.

"He went out a short while ago," said Mrs. Carter. "I've spent an hour trying to remove these marks! Why on earth were you playing such a silly game, throwing the bottle into the air and trying to catch it, over and over?"

Is this what Maurice had told her? "I was being foolish. I won't do it again." Quickly, I backed away and went into our bedroom. I opened our wardrobe and started removing my clothes after pulling my valise out from under the bed.

Hinges squeaked in the next room.

"These stains are impossible," the charwoman said to someone. "The paper will have to be covered by more sheets from the same pattern. As for the carpet, it's hopeless!"

Maurice's voice said, "Don't worry, Mrs. Carter. I'll pay for the damage. Give Mr. Flanagan an estimate and I'll settle up with him."

My throat tightened, and I froze. I could not avoid Maurice.

"Mr. Fitzpons," continued the charwoman, "I hope you will speak sharply to your friend in the next room."

"I--I will." Maurice's voice faltered. "Mrs. Carter, you've done all you can. Don't trouble yourself about the wallpaper and miss your dinner."

I considered jumping out the window, but it looked like I was going to have to face Maurice.

Our eyes met when he entered the bedroom. He glanced at the open valise lying on the bed, and whatever he intended to say dried up inside his mouth. I could see a blotch of blood on his chin. He had changed his clothes, though his blond hair still bore a few black stains.

In his hands was a silver inkwell. For a second, I had the mad thought that he was going to throw it at me in retaliation.

"I bought you this," Maurice said hesitantly, "so you could finish your drawing."

All the fear, the distant echoing rage, the dread went out of me at these words. Maurice's eyes made a nervous flit to the valise again.

I threw myself at him, my arms going around him.

Maurice gave start, and then a laugh of relief. "Just a moment, my passionate young man," he said to me, easing his way out of my embrace. He removed my clothes from the valise and called, "Mrs. Carter, before you go, I'd like to offer you this old valise, if you care to have it. It's no longer needed."

CHAPTER 6

The Apothecary

I soon became suspicious that Mr. Phillips hired me not just for my dexterity, but my expendability. On the first day, I stood in my clean shirt, polished shoes, and starched white apron while Mr. Phillips and his daughter Clara, my fellow worker at the sales counter, taught me my duties as an apothecary's clerk, for which I would receive two pounds a week. Clara was a thin, tiny girl with brown hair and eyes. The former was worn pulled back, and she was dressed in a businesslike white muslin and nurse's apron. Her expression was guarded as she watched me--or at least at first. I'm not sensitive to female beauty, but I could tell her pixie-like looks were the sort some men find attractive.

She was eyeing me warily, so I gave her a quick smile--here one instant, gone the next. She drew back when she saw the expression and stared hard at me, trying to locate the fleeting visitor again. I hid my amusement behind a solemn mask. Foolishly, I didn't bother to guess what she might be thinking.

The shop's walls were lined with wooden shelves that ran up to the ceiling, and each was jammed with glass bottles labeled in a mysterious Latin. A ladder was needed to reach the highest levels. Bottle-fetching immediately became my job, as Mr. Phillips was reluctant to let his daughter do it. Oddly, the flooring behind the U-shaped counter had been lain with cork. I speculated Mr. Phillips had ordered it done to cushion our feet (at the end of the first day, I was tired from those long hours of standing).

"Oh, no," said Clara, "it's to keep a dropped bottle from smashing on the floor."

"Can't have dangerous chemicals flying all over the shop," added Mr. Phillips. "The cleanup would be appalling."

They taught me how to ease out tight glass stoppers and use a tiny glass spatula, spoon, or chemical syringe to decant the contents.

"Never, ever, smell, taste, or touch any chemical, or nudge a bottle hard enough to send its contents flying into the air where it might be inhaled. You must use the steadiest hand imaginable," said Mr. Phillips. "Chemists sometimes taste or smell the contents of an unlabeled bottle to identify it and end up poisoning themselves. Fools, really."

He possessed two sets of brass scales, one for bulkier items, and the other for fine measurements in drachms, scruples, and grains. For the latter I would use a pair of tweezers to load one side with tiny ingots, each marked as to its exact weight, and then lay a sheet of greaseproof paper on the other side, or use a small glass bottle, and decant my chemicals after compensating for the weight of the package. I was taught the proper way to do up packets to keep them from leaking, and wrap bottles in a padding of newspaper and string. I was urged to stopper every bottle tight, and how I must immediately write the weight, dose, and contents in my best handwriting on the side of each packet or on the label of each bottle.

"Never let anything leave the shop unlabeled," Mr. Phillips stressed. "It's important if the customer forgets what the item is, or has bought multiple items. Never fill out more than one order at a time and always finish it completely, right down to the label, no matter how impatient the customer is or how many of them are queued inside the shop. This will prevent mix-ups."

At first, the names of the chemicals and the medical Latin bewildered me, though they gradually grew familiar with time. Mr. Phillips always handled the doctors' compounds himself, letting me dispense only the household chemicals. Even so, he insisted that either he or Clara oversee my writing on every label, and they taught me to copy precisely off the original bottle.

All the spatulas and syringes had to be cleaned out after each use, and Mr. Phillips, I was surprised to see, had a large and scientific sink for that duty in the workroom. He took his job quite seriously. Clara too, was conscientious and patient with customers, no matter how annoying or peculiar they were, and we seemed to draw plenty of both kinds.

"Remember to keep a professional countenance when you hear their requests," Mr. Phillips warned me. "Do not protest or exclaim."

"Or faint or cry out for the police," Clara added with a slight smile.

"Clara," her father chided.

"I'm just warning him." She gave me a pert look.

I soon discovered why they had cautioned me. My first customer was a cheerful, red-haired girl in a plaid frock, and I donned a welcoming expression as she entered.

"Powdered arsenic," she said.

It took some effort to control my features. Clara was watching me with a sly grin. She nudged me with an elbow as I wrapped the bottle. "Smile," my colleague whispered archly.

I managed a strained grimace as I sold the deadly substance to the damsel. "There you are, young lady. Do be cautious in the use of it."

Surely things would improve with our next patron.

"Arsenic," said the second arrival, a pudgy young lady. She was also a redhead.

"You're new here, aren't you?" said the young woman. She looked me over. "You'll be seeing much o' me." She winked in my direction. "I always buy me arsenic 'ere."

"Miss Phillips!" I cried after the customer left.

Clara was doubled over with laughter at the other end of the counter.

"What is going on?" I demanded.

We were interrupted by another customer. A small child had entered, and her hair was the color of carrots.

"Oh, my God," I muttered under my breath.

"Pennyworth of liquorice drops," said the child.

Thank heaven, I thought.

"Miss Phillips, why--," I said after the child left.

"Call me Clara."

"Clara, why have I just sold enough poison to turn all London choking and blue? Does Bethnal Green have a monstrous plague of rats?"

"The girls are mixing it with cold cream so they can rid themselves of freckles." Clara's face was pained. "We aren't always killing people, though I'm certain we've been an accessory to most of the deaths in this part of the city, both intentional and otherwise."

"Um-hm," I replied, nonplussed.

We also sold sweets in large glass jars, in the hopes that children like the one above would persuade their parents to enter the shop, and Clara always handled our smallest customers. It amazed me to see her smile and adopt her sweetest, most welcoming tone with them. When I first heard her speaking to a young customer, it rattled me, and I realized it was because I hadn't heard a kindly female voice speak since the death of my mother. I found myself hoping Clara would one day meet a worthy man and have her own children to make her happy.

Thus my dismay when Mr. Taillemache entered the shop.

One afternoon, I heard the clopping of hoofs outside and glanced through the gold letters of Mr. Phillips' name. Most of our customers entered on foot, not being of the class of persons able to keep a carriage, and at first I assumed it was for Mr. Lamppost. Then I noticed Maurice across the way. He'd been walking along and being a connoisseur of vehicles, he'd stepped into the street to look it over.

A man climbed out and headed for our door. Just before he opened it, I saw him give a jerk as if someone had pulled on the back of his coat. He glanced at Mr. Lamppost, reached for the door handle, gave another bewildered look back at our resident peculiarity, then proceeded inside. I grinned, wondering what Mr. Lamppost had said to him. Maurice was behind the carriage now, looking it up and down with great interest.

The newcomer removed his top hat and gave me a look of slight fuddlement. I immediately erased my smile at his discomfiture. He seemed to be in his mid-twenties, and he resembled a young Prince Albert, including the side whiskers, mustache, and receding hairline. From his mohair coat, checked vest, gold watch, and ruby tie stud, he seemed to be a bit of a dandy. I wondered what this specimen from another world was doing in our shop.

"Clara," the man cooed. His smile almost glittered.

The use of her Christian name made me bristle. Our other customers called her Miss Phillips.

Clara's face lit up. "Thaddeus! It's so good to see you. I wasn't sure you would have time for a visit these days."

"I decided to flee my blasted carrel, my dear lady."

"Father," Clara called into the workroom behind us, "Thaddeus is here."

Mr. Phillips came out and stepped in front of the counter to greet the newcomer, something I hadn't seen the apothecary do with any of our other customers. "You mustn't neglect the exams, Taillemache, or you'll only have to sit them again next year."

A customer entered just then, and I was too busy with him to be able to hear more than small snatches of the other conversation.

"--ask for a dose of your blood strengthener."

"How is your uncle?" said Mr. Phillips.

"No worse. I wish I could state I'm getting closer to identifying his ailment--"

After doing up my customer's order, I was able to listen more closely.

Clara was saying, "But you still feel confident about your exams, don't you?"

"Not so much, anymore." Taillemache cleared his throat. "I regret to tell you, but I must cancel our picnic this Saturday."

Clara's eyes dropped. "I understand," she said slowly. Despite her words, I could tell she was disappointed.

"I'm sorry," the man replied. "Nothing would give me more pleasure than an evening out with you in some lovely green park, but it can't be helped."

Something about Taillemache's manner came across as 'off' to me, though I couldn't say exactly how.

"By the way, this is our new clerk, Mr. Seth Keane," said Mr. Phillips.

"Ah, I was wondering if you'd hired another employee." Taillemache came over to shake my hand and I reciprocated, coming out from behind the counter. The visitor looked me over with a close but steady eye. A peculiar, stinging smell wafted from him, and it was strong enough I had to keep from wrinkling my nose.

"Mr. Taillemache's uncle is Professor Huel Ravenshaw, the archaeologist," Mr. Phillips explained to me. "He's done much digging around Algiers, and is an expert on the Roman ruins of the city, though his present illness has forced him into retirement. His nephew here, Mr. Taillemache, is a medical student."

"I hope you will give us much custom when you obtain your degree," I said politely.

"If anything, it would be the other way around," replied Taillemache with a knowing grin. "I'm studying to be a coroner."

I smiled uncertainly, and Mr. Phillips laughed. "That's why he smells of formaldehyde. Taillemache's been marinating himself in the stuff for the last few months."

"An unfortunate side effect of so much work with preserved specimens," sighed Taillemache. "I'd love to stay longer, but I must return to my dissections. I've three donations from the workhouse to practice on before I face the demonstration cadavers at the exams next week."

My stomach shrank a little, and my nostrils begged my fingers to clamp them shut.

Clara's dainty face was all smiling approval, undaunted by Taillemache's remarks. Her nose and sensibilities must have been hardened by all the years spent working for her father.

"Why a coroner?" I asked.

"It's interesting work," Taillemache replied. "Each death is a mystery, and I've always liked puzzles. A doctor is never completely certain why his patient died until I discover the cause. And then there are those who die by violence, and in their case, justice must be served. A coroner is the last teller of everyone's tale."

"But why not a doctor?" I persisted. I ignored the chiding glance Mr. Phillips gave me and Clara's frown of disapproval.

"Ah," Taillemache sighed. "I don't care to be distracted while I'm working, and live patients always insist on talking to you. Nor do I enjoy their constant complaints and coughs in the face. Besides, it is some relief to me that if I have to bury a subject afterwards, it won't be because I blundered. Although one of my tutors has some amusing anecdotes about dead persons coming back to life on him. Very good stories, too, but I'm afraid I can't take the time to relate one now. I'll tell you some of them later, if you're interested. Clara, I swear I will reschedule our picnic after the exams. I can't bear to miss it. Pleased to have met you, Mr. Keane."

I made a polite assent while the other two bade him goodbye. He kissed Clara's hand and replaced his hat on his head. As the visitor left the shop, Mr. Phillips said in a low, approving voice to me, "He's Clara's fiance. His uncle Ravenshaw is an old friend of mine. Too bad about his health."

"What are the professor's symptoms?" I said. Working in the shop had made me more medical-minded than I'd anticipated. I sympathized with Taillemache's remarks about not wanting to hear complaints all day, for our customers insisted on telling me every little thing that was wrong with them from swollen kneecap to throat-rattle, though I was not a doctor. "Is the blood strengthener for him?"

"Oh, no. Taillemache takes it for his own health from time to time. He studies too much and forgets to eat. As for the professor, it's unethical for an apothecary to gossip about a patient's afflictions. Well, Clara, back to work." He returned to his laboratory in the other room.

"Seth, could you mind the counter?" Clara said to me. "I need to refill our citric acid bottle from the supply in the cellar."

From her dejected manner and downcast eyes, Taillemache's cancellation of their picnic must have been a deep blow, and I sensed she wanted privacy.

After she left, the shop door opened, and Maurice entered. "Why'd the toff come in here?" he asked. "Holy God," he exclaimed, distracted by one of the large jars sitting on the end of the counter. "You sell yellowman sweet? Dipped in chocolate? I used to eat it at the fair when I was a boy, though I've never seen it paired with chocolate."

"Maurice, get out of there! That's for the children."

"Was," Maurice corrected.

Grumbling, I tossed tuppence into the change box. "Don't you eat up my wages. The toff is Thaddeus Taillemache, Clara's fiance, and he's studying to be a coroner." After watching Maurice pillage, I added three extra pennies to the apothecary's daily gross. "Are you just going to stand there and eat us out of the shop?"

Maurice ignored this last remark. "Fiance?" He leaned on the counter and lowered his voice. "Are you certain?"

"Yes. Her father just told me. Why?"

Maurice clucked his tongue in disapproval. "Because he just drove off with Mr. Lamppost."

I blinked and looked out the window. Mr. Lamppost was gone.

"Cad," pronounced Maurice.

"Yes," I replied, suddenly angry with Taillemache. Clara was a nice girl, and Taillemache had no right to deceive her like that.

"By the way, I've come to inform you I've found a job. I'll see you later." Maurice smiled at me, crunching through the thick pieces.

"A job? A real job? What--"

He waved a chunk of yellowman at me and left, heading off in the direction of the eatery.

About an hour later, Taillemache's carriage drove up again, and I kept a sharp eye on it. The carriage's weight shifted as someone exited through the door on the opposite side, and I saw shadowy feet moving on the cobblestones beneath the vehicle. Then the carriage drove off, and Mr. Lamppost was back again.

For the rest of the afternoon, I kept glancing at Clara, wondering what to say. I ought to warn her. But after such a long friendship with Taillemache, I knew she would be furious if I interfered, and might not even believe what I said. Besides, it was likely she had no knowledge of men who lust after other men.

A strange, distant noise interrupted my brooding. Before I could sort out what it was, Mr. Lamppost distracted me. Something was bothering our neighborhood denizen. He was twitching the way a horse does when being harassed by a cloud of flies. After many jerks, he left his station and came striding purposefully towards our door. Clara too, watched with apprehension as Mr. Lamppost entered our shop.

He walked straight up to me and said with menace, "Do something about your ridiculous friend, or I will kill him."

Then he spun around and left.

"What was that for?" said Clara, staring after him.

"I don't know. Could you mind the counter a moment?"

I began to understand--well, not really--but I began to grasp the problem after I exited the shop. An appalling sound was coming from the corner by the eatery. With a theatrical gesture, Mr. Lamppost slid his fingers in his ears. Our news seller was holding a magazine in front of his face as if unable to bear the sight of another's shame.

Tin cup in hand, Maurice was standing on the street corner, blowing into a harmonica.

Wincing, I made my way up to him, and he broke off. "Maurice," I asked as delicately as possible. "Are you tone-deaf?"

"Yes," he admitted. "But it doesn't matter. Harmonicas are pre-tuned. You can't go wrong with one."

"I'm afraid you're managing it."

"I am? Do you think I need to try something else?"

"Yes," I replied emphatically.

Maurice pocketed the harmonica with irritation. The grateful news seller applauded, along with some of the patrons seated inside the eatery.

Stung, Maurice replied, "All right. I'll take it back to the pawnshop. But I do possess talents, and I'll show you some of them later."

CHAPTER 7

Mysteries

By this time, my fears of arrest had begun to dissipate. I had accidentally crossed paths with Constable McIntyre in the street, and to my great relief, his only reaction had been a casual nod. With the burden of anxiety lightened, I was able to give more attention to work.

I soon fell into the routine of my duties, and the peculiarities of the job became mundane. Mornings were spent sweeping the pavement in front of the shop (I was soon cursing the drunks and their bottle-tossing habits myself), cranking the awnings into position, lighting the shop's lamps, and wiping down the plate-glass windows, which was a daily necessity because of London's dirty air. Then I'd go downstairs to the cellar, cover myself with a huge rubber mac kept there for the purpose, and carefully shovel powdery coal ash from the heater into a bin and refill it with fresh Scotch coal. Mr. Phillips thought Newcastle coal hard on the lungs, with too high a sulfur content, and he blamed London's foul air on the almost universal employment of the latter. Even with the mac, it was a struggle to keep my white clothes clean.

Afterwards, I'd go upstairs to the rear of the shop and pry nails out of the crates that our drayman had delivered on his long, low wagon. Unpacking the bottles and boxes of chemicals from their padding of straw was a delicate chore, and I'd treat them like the finest china as I shelved them out front.

At the end of the day, I polished the brasswork--mainly the handles on the multitude of small cupboards all over the shop (I would have polished the scales, but Mr. Phillips said that would unbalance them permanently, and they needed to be treated with great care to keep them true)--and wiped off counters, made inventories, and when the shop closed at five, I took the trash into the alley, often having to shoo away some disreputable person picking through our bins. Few things roused the ire of our employer more than these thieves, for some of what we discarded was poisonous. Whenever I reported someone robbing our bins, the apothecary would fly outside to scold the miscreant.

Mr. Phillips' business made him a modest living. He refused to issue credit, insisting he'd never be paid if he did, but to compensate, he charged lower prices than other chemists. And to my surprise, he was nearly always paid. "My customers work for wages," Mr. Phillips said. "The truly poor are in the workhouse. My clients make enough to live on, but not enough for high living, and my chief problem is getting paid before it's all been spent on gin and tobacco. Their money is usually gone the day after the pay packet is issued."

As for Clara herself, I thought she was prim and serious, and too grown-up for her years, being scarcely one-and-twenty, but I soon realized that much of her manner was the result of the demanding nature of an apothecary's work. She had to be perfect at her tasks, and always calm and authoritative in front of our customers, many of whom were in a state of distress from some ailment, and who needed wise council and careful handling.

When I asked her how she had ended up behind the counter, she explained, "Father was too poor to hire help in the early days, and he couldn't afford to send me to a finishing school, so he trained me exactly as he would have trained an apprentice. I certainly didn't have a normal childhood, I must admit. I've worked in the shop since the age of thirteen."

"So young?"

"All apprentices start young," she protested.

I was scowling. Mr. Phillips' method seemed too harsh for me. I had not forgotten my own stepfather's cold exploitation of my labor and his ill-usage.

She noticed my face. "He didn't allow me to do anything dangerous in the early days. I mostly cleaned and learnt Latin. Besides, I would rather be here instead of improving my deportment with a book on my head or practicing scales on a piano."

Yet something in the way she spoke sounded regretful. I longed to ask her if her engagement to Taillemache was meant to be an escape from the shop. I couldn't imagine any other reason why she would agree to his proposal.

Had my own hiring been in anticipation of her marriage? She would undoubtedly leave the shop when she became Taillemache's wife. Upon reflection, I found the thought bothered me. I'd miss her company behind the counter, for she was my chief adviser and stalwart support.

But soon another reason for my hiring became clear to me. Many of our patrons were men seeking pills for 'male conditions,' some of them no doubt caused by Mr. Lamppost outside, and the afflicted did not care to speak to Clara about their difficulties. As for Mr. Phillips, he was usually too busy to mind the counter, being in the workshop making up pills or draughts for customers who had left off orders.

Unexpectedly, Clara dropped another hint regarding my employment. "You're supposed to charm the ladies." Her expression was odd, not quite approval or disapproval, but something impossible to fathom.

"I am?" I blurted. Charm them? I was horrified.

"It's good for business," she replied with a wry expression. "Just give them a little talk, a smile and how are you today, Mrs. Smith?" Clara rolled her eyes. "Father hired you partially for your looks. You're Irish, aren't you? You should have the touch."

I gulped. The last time I'd been sweet and charming was when I'd been nine years old.

Mr. Phillips happened to appear at that moment with a corked bottle, and he requested I wrap and label it. "Write down 'Blood Strengthener.' It's for Taillemache. He said he'd be by today to fetch it."

As I penned and pasted the label, idly wondering what 'Blood Strengthener' was, I noticed Clara giving the bottle a melancholy stare. This made me wonder about the student coroner and his uncle.

"I hope Professor Ravenshaw's problem isn't serious."

"Oh, no," Clara replied. "His illness isn't fatal, but it's debilitating. He's been in poor health ever since he returned from Algiers. Thaddeus accompanied his uncle and now has an odd relapsing fever of his own, though he swears Father's tonic is excellent for him. I pray it strengthens him to the point where the fever disappears for good. Father usually only makes the tonic for ladies, and it's vile stuff. It tastes like you've drunk from a rusty old tap."

"Have you seen Professor Ravenshaw recently?"

Clara hesitated. "Not since his last trip to Algiers."

"Do you have any idea what's wrong with him?"

She kept her eyes on the counter. "No. I want to visit, but the professor refuses to see anyone. He won't risk another person catching his disease, and he only allows Thaddeus and a servant to attend him."

"Clara!" Mr. Phillips called from the back. There was a warning note in his voice. "Come here, I need you for a moment."

He must have overheard. Clara gave a sigh and a shake of her head, but dutifully left for what I suspected was a parental lecture.

I was puzzled. Though I understood the need for professional discretion, I did not see why Mr. Phillips was so reluctant to discuss his friend. If it was an unknown disease, speculation might help solve its mystery and discover its cure. Was it possible Ravenshaw's complaint was simply another 'male disease?' Or was he mad? Either could explain Mr. Phillips' reticence, and why he had prevented his daughter from speaking to me.

I was sent off just before noon that day with money and instructions to purchase a meat pie for our lunch. After some inquiries, I located an appealing specimen at a bakeshop and carried my prize out into the street, carefully balancing it on a sheet of greaseproof paper. Here I paused to take a sniff of its rich, steamy goodness.

Something hit me in the ribs, and I barely managed to keep my footing. A large cur was hunched nearby, drooling with an eager froth. His knowing, satanic gaze was fixed on the pie. I swore and kicked at him and raised the pie over my head, but the filthy beast lunged for it again. He was skinny as a greyhound and black as the devil. Two other dogs joined in, their eager tongues lolling out of their bony jaws.

Flustered, I ran off, knocking aside Fenris Wolf and his minions whenever they dove for me. One of the dogs kept trying to throw itself at my legs as if to trip me, while the lead cur sprang repeatedly for my shoulder as if to knock me down. From the comments of passersby, I was giving much lively sport, and they bawled encouragement to the dogs. I'm certain they would have done the same if I'd been disappearing down the curs' throats.

Nevertheless, I was soon flying past our gawking news seller. With a few kicks to wet, eager snouts to keep the curs away, I escaped inside the shop and slammed the door in their faces, pausing to lean against the plate glass to recover my breath (the curs were clawing at the glass, and I waved the pie tauntingly in front of their noses). When I entered the back room, I had the conceited air of a fox who has outsmarted the hounds.

"Here you are," I called proudly to my co-workers. We'd cleared off our stained worktable and set it with plates and forks. Clara was pouring tea in our cups. "Eel-and-mash pie fresh from the bakeshop, all swimming in juice inside its lardy crust."

"Good lord!" said Clara. She made a face. "Do people actually eat such things?"

"Excuse me, Miss Clara," I protested. "Some of us fancy eels." Maurice and I often relied on such sturdy workmen's fare to fill us up, and I quite understood the outraged feelings of the curs upon losing such a prize.

"I suppose we can make do," Mr. Phillips said.

"Too bad you missed Thaddeus," said Clara. "I invited him to dine with us, but he said he wasn't feeling well."

"Isn't that his bottle of tonic sitting out front? Did he forget it?"

"Oh, no," said Mr. Phillips. "Here, his carriage has just left. Chase after him, will you? If you can't catch him, take the bottle over to his rooms." The apothecary inked Taillemache's address on a stray label, and I took both it and the tonic, annoyed at the student coroner for making me miss my eel pie.

Too late, I remembered the curs. The filthy beasts were still loitering, and they took the wrapped bottle for yet another gustatory delight. I swung the bottle at their heads with desperate vigor, reflecting that at least its contents would be well mixed by the time the tonic reached its patient.

When I saw Taillemache's carriage, I did not hesitate. I launched myself for dear life at the vehicle's door handle and swung myself inside. But I had not anticipated the carriage's horses taking fright at the baying and leaping of the curs, and the horses reared. The coachman shouted in consternation, and the carriage left the ground with a jolt that pitched me right into Taillemache's lap. My face was mashed against his gaping mouth and hairy mustache. Revolted, I heaved myself backwards with an apology, falling into the opposite seat.

The carriage began to tear along at a raging gallop. We jolted and bounced as if driving along a corduroy road, and I was afraid the carriage might be shaken to pieces. Taillemache was wobbling as if made of jelly, his head lolling and his eyes shut.

The dogs were herding us along with joyous barks, so I grabbed Taillemache's walking-stick and began to ply it with determination out the carriage window. If I didn't force the dogs away, they'd cause us to overturn or have a smash. Satisfying cracks came as the stick hit bone, and the curs fell back, yelping.

We soon arrived in the neighborhood of St. Barts, Smithfield, (I was reading off my slip of paper, trying to look as though being inside a runaway carriage were a perfectly normal occurrence and none of it was my fault), in record time.

"Mr. Taillemache?" The carriage was still throwing the both of us around, and I returned the cane to its owner's limp hand. "Pardon me for borrowing your stick. I can't imagine why those silly dogs were chasing us. By the way, I brought your tonic. You left it behind at the shop."

He did not reply.

"Mr. Taillemache?" For a man in such a predicament, and jerking with such violent motions, I thought he was unusually quiet and forbearing. Then a thought came to me. "Mr. Taillemache?" I shook his shoulder, alarmed. Was he dead? Fainted? Injured?

To my relief, the coachman managed to stop the horses. "Hi!" I called out the window to the coachman. "Something's wrong with Mr. Taillemache."

The disgusted driver climbed down, and wearing a look that resembled the lead cur's, he scolded me for starting up the dogs, breaking into carriages, and killing his employer. I sputtered in denial and we began to cross words. We were going at it with great intensity, yelling and pointing, when Taillemache woke up.

"Home already?" asked the student coroner with an idle stretch. "Oh, good," he yawned. "Quincy, you may go home. I won't be needing you any further today."

I added 'drunk' to my list of possible diagnoses. I was quite fed up by this time, and all I wanted was to go home to my pie and sulk.

"Could you assist me to my rooms?" said Taillemache to me. "I'm not well."

"Go on. Give him a hand, you," Quincy sneered.

Though annoyed, I felt it was my duty as a man to lend assistance. Taillemache's rooms were up a narrow staircase next to a teashop, and I swear all the ladies gave me the evil eye as I took Taillemache's arm and assisted the swaying man up the stairs. We must have looked as if we'd been out carousing.

Lying across one of the risers was a large Persian cat. It gave us a whiff and fled up the stairs.

"Fluffy's never liked me," said Taillemache.

"And why should it?" was my irritable reply. "You've got a scent on you that would make the hands of a clock clutch its nose." I knew when I took my first forkful of eel pie, it would be quite spoilt by the memory of his stench. Taillemache's face was pale and his eyelids drooping, and his grip on the cane was tremulous.

"What on earth is wrong with you?" I asked in a graceless manner. I was still angry at his cavalier treatment of Clara. "Did you catch something from your friend?"

"My friend?" Taillemache's complexion was so grey that I couldn't tell if my words had dismayed him.

"The fellow who leans on the lamppost," I said sharply. "I saw you drive off with him the other day."

"Oh, that. I needed to question him about a corpse."

"A corpse?"

"Yes." Taillemache's voice was momentarily firm. "Because of his profession--you seem to be aware he is a male prostitute--he often comes across peculiar things in alleyways. He told me he'd discovered a dead man. I made him show me the body's location so the police could send out a wagon for it."

I blushed. "I must apologize for my suspicions, then. I was taking Miss Clara's part."

"I am not offended."

"Had one of your spells, Mr. Taillemache?" said a new voice.

Surprised, both of us looked up and tried to appear as if we hadn't been discussing corpses or male prostitutes. An old woman stood watching us from the landing. She was dressed in a black frock, and her grey hair was pulled back behind her head in a bun. Though her face bore a too-generous nose and a masculine chin, her look was penetrating and intelligent. She regarded me with a note of suspicion. "I thought you might be that Mr. Barstow, but I see not."

"It's just exhaustion, Mrs. Sinclair. I stayed up all night with my books instead of sleeping."

"Do you need some tea?"

"No thanks, Madam. I'm longing for my pillow. Mrs. Sinclair, this is Seth Keane. He's a clerk for my old friend Phillips, the apothecary. Mrs. Sinclair is my landlady," he added to me. Taillemache unlocked the door of his flat, and I handed him his tonic.

When the door shut behind him, Mrs. Sinclair and I were left facing each other. I felt awkward under her scrutiny. "What about you?" she asked abruptly. "Do you care for some tea?"

I agreed, curious to see if she would gossip about Taillemache. I wanted to hear more about this man Clara liked so much.

It wasn't long before I was perched on an overstuffed horsehair sofa, bracing my feet against the rug to keep from sliding off. This type of sloping seat was designed to keep a hoop skirt from sticking upwards and showing off a lady's underthings before company, but for a man, it was a nuisance. The abundance of chintz and lace made me nervous, as I was not accustomed to soft, feminine tastes. While I took a few mouthfuls of hot oolong and dry oatmeal biscuit of the wholesome sort my mother used to make (with scarcely a currant to relieve its monotony), Mrs. Sinclair and I discussed the weather and studied one another.

"Very good tea, ma'am," I said, trying not to cough out bits of hard biscuit.

"You may dunk," she replied briskly.

"Oh." I was disconcerted. I wasn't used to such relaxed manners in an older lady. I inched my biscuit towards my cup in case she changed her mind. "If I may be so bold, who is this Mr. Barstow you mentioned?"

"He's Lord Meath's coachman. Appalling person. He comes around here now and then to deliver messages to Mr. Taillemache from his lordship. My tenant, I'm afraid, knows far too many dubious persons. Quincy, who drove you here, is another of the same ilk. He's a drunkard whom Mr. Taillemache claims he's rescued from the streets, though Quincy's quite unreformed. You'll need to summon a hansom to take you back. Quincy will be in his cups by then." She looked at me closely. "You seem to be one of the few respectable men of his acquaintance. He says you work for Mr. Phillips?"

"I do."

"Ah. I've met his daughter, Clara. Mr. Taillemache has often brought her by to visit. I must admit she brings out the motherly instincts in one. Do you like her?"

"Me?" Intuition raised a warning exactly as if I'd been sighted down a rifle. I pretended to cough on my biscuit. "Why, yes. She's a nice girl." It was honestly meant, though Clara was not for me.

"You appear to be the sort of young man Clara would like," Mrs. Sinclair hinted.

My stomach gave a nervous roll, and the biscuit snapped between my fingers, though I managed to catch the crumbs in my rattling saucer before they rained all over the carpet. "But she's engaged to Mr. Taillemache," I said hastily, "and appears to be quite happy with him."

Mrs. Sinclair steepled her fingers. "I find it peculiar she would be attracted to such a man as he."

"Maybe he was," I hesitated, "more pleasing when younger?"

"He's changed." Mrs. Sinclair pondered the low tea-table between us. "Ever since he came back from North Africa, he's been so altered."

I helped myself to a slice of buttered rye, wishing for some raw onion to go with it. Maurice always complained whenever I indulged in this dainty at home. "How so?"

"He's suffered on and off from illness ever since he's returned, and I think he's even had a breakdown. He was seeing a nerve doctor for a while. When I first met him, he had a playful, boyish streak. Now he's more harsh and curt and goes about as if he's watching over his shoulder."

"I understand his uncle Ravenshaw also caught some mysterious illness abroad."

"So it seems. Some very strange gossip has filtered back to me from my son Herbert, who is doing mission work in Algiers." Mrs. Sinclair gave a perplexed jerk of her head. "A letter of his contained a bizarre story he'd picked up from the Bedouins, namely that Professor Ravenshaw had been bitten by a rabid bat, and was shot and killed by one of the workmen to prevent him from suffering. The day after, the professor's sponsor, Lord Meath, was also supposedly shot and killed by my very own Mr. Taillemache."

"What!?" I said.

"My thoughts were exactly the same. When I received Herbert's letter, Mr. Taillemache had already returned from Algiers and taken to his bed, and I didn't know what to think. I must admit I entertained thoughts about wealthy old men and greedy, murderous heirs, though I could not imagine why he would have killed Lord Meath. Yet my tenant's wretched state seemed to prove something awful had happened on the other side of the Mediterranean, and it was preying on his mind and health. I decided I must go to the police and make inquiries. But that same evening, Mr. Taillemache roused himself and left for a meeting of the Royal Society, only to return in a state of nervous collapse scarcely an hour later. Quincy had to assist him up the stairs and into bed. Then the most absurd thing happened. Another coach drove up, and who do you think it was?"

"I couldn't imagine," I replied politely.

"Lord Meath. His lordship told me he wished to visit the invalid, but Mr. Taillemache sent down a message that he was too weak to receive visitors, and I had to turn his lordship away. Lord Meath is a large, blustering fellow, very full of himself."

The landlady gave a slight, ironic twist to her lips. "Just after his lordship drove away, another bizarre incident occurred. What do you think happened?"

"Professor Ravenshaw drove up?" I hazarded.

"Precisely. The professor did not leave his coach, giving me his own excuse of illness, but I spoke through the carriage window and saw it was indeed him. I'd met him on previous visits. You can imagine how silly I felt. So I told him Herbert's stories."

Mrs. Sinclair gave me a rueful smile. "The professor only chuckled and told me the true tale. He had indeed been bitten by a bat. Mr. Taillemache had tried to shoot it down so they could determine whether it was rabid or not, but the shot missed and almost struck one of the Bedouin workmen instead. The Bedouin were all in an uproar about the incident, and the story became garbled.

"Though it wasn't rabid, the professor admitted he'd caught some other unnamed disease from the bat, and I recommended quinine to him before he left.

"I must say I felt quite ridiculous to have believed Herbert's gossip, and I scolded my son in my reply, saying he must not give me such a turn again. I'd nearly gone to the police and made a fool of myself."

"I'm glad you didn't." Then Ravenshaw wasn't mad?

Before I took my leave of Mrs. Sinclair, the old lady mentioned another letter from her son, though with some hesitation. "Herbert wrote that all the Bedouin workmen who'd been at the diggings have died. Every single one." She faltered. "Maybe the mysterious fever--"

Back at the apothecary shop, I ate eel pie in a distracted state. At first, I'd been disturbed by Mrs. Sinclair's stories, then I realized she might be one of those ladies who enjoy making men's flesh creep with her tales--hence her friendliness--and I was simply her gullible victim. A full stomach allowed me to shake off the rest of my unease, and I dismissed Herbert's gossip from my mind. If Ravenshaw wasn't mad, then Clara might be willing to satisfy my curiosity, if I could get her alone for a few minutes. I decided to ask her about the professor the next day.

That evening, Maurice wanted to hear more about Taillemache, and after I explained, he said, "When you first met him, he spoke to you longer than he did to his own fiancee?"

"It seemed so, though I wasn't counting the minutes. Good God. Are you jealous?"

Maurice was frowning. "I know his type. He's trying to feel you out. He's a schemer, always trying to seduce pretty young men. I know, because I'm that sort myself."

I cleared my throat in a threatening manner.

"Or at least I used to be." Maurice smiled, which only made me more suspicious. "Avoid him, or he'll give you every disease Garrett possesses."

"Who's Garrett?"

"Your propper-up of ironwork. I learnt his name from the news seller."

"But Taillemache said it was all about a corpse, not an assignation."

"My love, you're much too naive." Restlessly, Maurice strode around the room. "I can't believe Garrett charges five shillings. Good lord, that's expensive. But since he's getting the carriage trade, I suppose they can afford it. Five shillings! What does he offer that's worth so much?" Maurice shook his head. "Back to Taillemache. What's the address of this duplicitous hobbledehoy? Where does his uncle live?"

I scowled further. "Maurice--"

"I'm not going to do anything. I'm just curious. What does he look like? I was so interested in the carriage I didn't catch a proper glimpse of him."

"Prince Albert before the puddings."

Maurice sprang up. "Prince Albert! You think he looks like Prince Albert?!"

I put my head in my hands. "We're not going to quarrel about this."

"But you can't think he looks like Prince Albert! The prince was a handsome man in his youth."

Maurice's air was that of a man quarreling for the fun of it, but I was tired from my long day at the shop. Abruptly, I stood and unbuttoned my shirt and threw it on the floor. I then added the rest of my clothes to the pile, except for one last item.

Maurice stared.

"You're wearing knee-length step-ins," he said in a dazed fashion.

"Bought them with my most recent wages." I shifted my weight to one foot, much like Greek statues do.

"With a leather front," continued Maurice, "that laces up."

"Yes, it's inconvenient, but what can I say?" I was gazing out the window with a Greek statue's indifference.

Maurice stared as if mesmerized. "The fit is perfect. They mould your leg muscles and hips like kid gloves."

"I wasn't able to try them on in the shop, but the size seems correct. You must have the eye of a professional couturier to notice such minor details." I gave a casual laugh. "Maurice? Hel--lo. Maurice?"

"What? Was I saying something?"

"Yes. You were talking about our bed."

"That? It's too far away."

He fell like a chopped tree and took me down with him.

CHAPTER 8

Clara's Story

I discovered Maurice's latest choice of profession the next day in a roundabout manner. I was gazing through the front windows in boredom when I noticed some pedestrians stopping to speak to someone just out of range of my vision. As we had no customers at the moment, I went to the front door to inspect the goings-on.

Maurice was holding a tin cup as he stood on the pavement. But this time there was no harmonica.

The awful truth dawned. I stepped out of the shop, crossed my arms, and sauntered over in a casual manner, pretending I didn't know him. "What are you doing?" I hissed from the side of my mouth.

"I thought I'd try panhandling. So far, the ladies are being generous. Good day, Madam. Penny for a starving man?"

Maurice had to be the most physically fit specimen on the entire street. Despite this absurdity, the elderly lady dropped sixpence into his cup.

"Thank you, my dear lady. God's blessings be on you and your loved ones."

A pair of young schoolgirls came by, and he accosted them with his oily words. Agog, they donated a pair of pennies. My lover was grinning, thoroughly enjoying the attentions of his audience in a way that was simply deplorable in a man of breeding, and he winked at me.

"Maurice," I remonstrated in a pained manner.

"What's the problem? This is a lucrative business. I've been here only an hour and I've already earned a crown." He scooped out everything except the two pennies and pocketed the remainder.

"'Earned' implies honest labor," I said dryly.

"Don't be ridiculous. Flattery and deceit are hard work."

"Maurice, my love, why don't you want a regular job?"

"Because they're boring."

"Look out," I warned. Constable McIntyre was striding towards us with a determined expression. I eased away.

"What's all this?" McIntyre rapped Maurice's cup with his billy club. "You're a gentleman. Put that away and move on."

"You're not an insurrectionist, are you? If you believe it's right and proper for the better classes to live off the sweat of the working man, then what's wrong with what I'm doing? I'm only being more direct about it."

"Good God, man." The officer glared. "You are not a beggar. Where is your self-respect?"

"From the money I'm making, not only am I a beggar, I'm more successful at it than most."

"Splendid. Then you'll be able to pay the fine. Come on, let's go see the magistrate." He seized Maurice by the collar.

"Maurice!" I exclaimed as McIntyre hauled him off.

My lover only waved. "It's all right. Keep dinner warm on the shovel for me."

Glumly, I returned to the shop.

"What happened?" Clara asked me.

I told her the story, admitting I was friends--indeed, flatmates--with the beggar. She giggled in a way quite injurious to a proud man's feelings. In fact, I told her so.

"You're being unfair," I protested. "I can't help it if my friends have no sense of shame."

"Speaking of embarrassment." Clara was looking through the front windows with an expression of comical dismay.

For one heart-stopping moment, I thought Maurice must have escaped the constable. Then I saw what Clara was staring at. A missionary was handing a tract to Garrett. "Waste of effort," I commented.

"I suppose you're right." Clara laughed. "Oh, look! He's taking it."

"He must be bored."

"And he's put his arm around the poor fellow." Garrett had encircled the missionary with this surprisingly warm gesture, and a moment later, he was walking down the street with the other man. I went over to the window and noticed they had disappeared into an alley.

"I can't believe it," said Clara. "Garrett actually wants to hear the fellow talk?"

I had to bite my tongue. "I doubt it."

Clara gave me a narrow look. "Why do you have such a strange expression on your face? Wait, do you think he'll rob the poor man?" She reached for her coat and stepped towards the door.

"Er, Clara. Clara? I don't think you should interfere. Religion is such a delicate matter, and missionary societies do not send raw innocents out into such rough places as this. He can take care of himself."

"Are you certain?" Clara's arm was halfway into her coat sleeve.

"Quite."

Mr. Phillips interrupted, calling me into the back room to ply a mortar and pestle, and when I returned, I was appalled to see Clara had disappeared. Urgently, I pressed my face against the plate glass. Clara, in peach mohair, was heading down the street towards the alley.

I flew out the door as fast as any man who has ever moved, and when I caught up with her, I fairly swung her around in my arms. "Clara," I said with a nervous laugh. "This is not wise."

"Seth?" she replied, giving my impetuous grip a surprised look.

"Let me handle this," I said firmly.

I let go, and when she tried to follow me, I waved her back with an impatient gesture. Inside the alley was a sight no missionary board ever ought to be exposed to. Garrett was nibbling at the neck of the man of God, and the missionary's pants were around his knees, his erection poking through his shirttail. I gave a brisk nod as if everything were all right (a gesture I knew Clara could see), and with my face as unreadable as I could make it, I turned around and walked back to my colleague, taking her hand to lead her away. "Just a discussion of religion, my dear lady."

"Oh?" Clara held up our clasped hands and gave them a bemused look.

"Pardon me." I let her go. "We should be back inside the shop. Your father will wonder where we've gone."

Her head was tilted to one side as she watched me, and a slight smile was on her face.

For some reason, this made me blush. Was it possible she had some notion of what might be occurring in that alley?

"I don't quite trust him." She glanced over her shoulder. "I can't believe he once managed to exert himself enough to accompany Professor Ravenshaw to Algiers."

"What?" I exclaimed. "Mr. Lamppost?"

"Is that what you call him?" Clara smiled. "Yes. He used to be one of Lord Meath's servants. I can't imagine what he did in Algiers except lie around like a snake on a rock, annoying everyone with his laziness. Heaven knows how Garrett supports himself these days."

I kept my features blank. "How did he enter Lord Meath's household?"

"His lordship has an altruistic streak. He was the main financial backer of Professor Ravenshaw's archaeological work, along with the Royal Society, and I think he made an attempt to rehabilitate that young man. The latter's obviously failed, although the diggings in Algiers have been more productive, at least until the last expedition." She fell silent.

I had my suspicions about Meath's relationship with Garrett. "Have you met his lordship? What's your impression of him?"

"Yes. He's rather intimidating, and it's not just his title. His vitality and self-assurance can be overbearing. Nonetheless, he's always been perfectly pleasant to Father and myself. Even under duress, he can be well-mannered, though it's always somewhat of a surprise when he is. You don't expect it of him."

We had almost reached the shop, and I slowed my pace to keep her talking. "How so?"

"For example, I was always under the impression that Thaddeus and Lord Meath were not on good terms, but his lordship nonetheless helped Father carry Thaddeus out of a meeting of the Royal Society. It was the one where Thaddeus was supposed to present his uncle's findings. Poor Thaddeus was still unwell, and he collapsed right before the lecture. Father and I were talking to Lord Meath before the presentation, mingling with the other members on the floor, when Thaddeus entered the room and fainted dead away when he saw us. Father had to tell his coachman to take Thaddeus home.

"Lord Meath expressed his regrets to me about Thaddeus and Professor Ravenshaw, saying he would never have financed the Algerian expedition if he could have foreseen the outcome. Father ended up having to read the paper in Thaddeus' place. We were all very anxious at the time, although Thaddeus is doing better now. But to our sorrow, Professor Ravenshaw has never recovered the way his nephew has."

Her hand reached for the shop's doorknob. Hastily, I asked, "What do you know about their illnesses?"

Clara sighed. "Oh, Thaddeus just contracted one of those squalid Algerian fevers. The entire northern coast of Africa is sickly. He still has occasional bouts of it, and I know it comes back when he pushes himself too hard."

Her voice was troubled. "His personality has become so changeable. At times, he's his old self, at others, so grim and serious that I can't believe it. As for the professor, I know little," she added with reluctance. "He's been suffering poor health for three years now. I remember him well from his visits to my father when I was a girl. He was always stiff and formal, though patient with me. I must have annoyed him with my childish nonsense, though he never showed any sign of it. He was full of interesting bits of information and would always answer any question I asked."

I opened the door for her. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Garrett had taken up his station again. There was no sign of the missionary.

After Mr. Phillips locked the shop that evening, I summoned a hansom to take Clara and her father home. They did not live above their establishment as so many shopkeepers did. When the cab arrived, I handed Clara into it and bade the Phillipses goodbye.

While I did so, I noticed Mr. Lamppost watching us and was tempted to say something scolding to him about being a corrupting influence, though I was hardly one to talk.

"So. Do you stumble across corpses often in your line of work?" I said as I strolled past.

"Stumble? No. I always lay them carefully out of the way."

This was a bit off-putting. "Er, acquainted with Taillemache, then?"

"Intimately." Mr. Lamppost licked his lips.

Had Taillemache lied? "You do know Taillemache's engaged to a girl?"

Mr. Lamppost gave a snort. "Don't be so high and mighty. You'll be sleeping with her yourself."

I stopped in mid-stride. "You're not omniscient, you know," I said with a touch of triumph. He'd gotten that wrong.

"You'll sleep with her and you'll sleep with me."

I swayed on one foot. "Not interested at the moment, thank you."

I glanced back at him as I headed for my building. Was it possible to be mad, yet sound rational?

Something flew by and brushed my hair, a living thing that flapped and squeaked. With a yelp, I sprinted for my door while swatting wildly above my head, stories of rabid bats filling my thoughts as I dashed up the stairs.

CHAPTER 9

The Picnic

The next day, I was emerging from the back room with an armful of bottles when a finger slipped into my hair. "If I had your corkscrew curls and pretty brown eyes, I wouldn't need to work here," said Clara.

I put my bottles down on the counter. "Considering I do possess the hair and eyes and still have to earn my keep, I'd say you're wrong," was my light-hearted reply. Clara and I had reached the stage where we often bantered with each other, so I was not initially alerted by her tone.

"Do you dwell inside a cave with your friend?" she asked archly.

"It's not exactly a cave. You can come and see the flat, if you wish."

"Do you invite guests over for dinner?"

I had already dined once with Mr. Phillips at his house and knew Clara was hinting at reciprocity. "Maurice and I would be happy to play the host for you and your father. Name a convenient time." Sensing this was the moment for a grand gesture, I took her hand and kissed the back of it. My stepfather never warned me you are not supposed to kiss the lady's skin, but the air over the back of the hand. Kissing the actual flesh is much too forward a gesture. "I must advise you the flat is in somewhat swinish condition. We could have a picnic elsewhere, if you like."

"That's a very good suggestion," she said when I released her, "although my father does not care for picnics. Too many flies and ants for his taste. We could go without him."

"I promise to tie up Maurice if he misbehaves. I think he can be tamed for an evening."

She made a face. "Actually, I would prefer it if your friend could arrange an evening's absence. Not that I dislike him, but our picnic would be better without distractions."

"Your request shall be honored, Miss Clara," I replied. "How about this Saturday? I'll arrange a hansom to any place of your choosing and supply bottles of the fizziest ginger-beer."

A conspiratorial smile crossed her face. "I could bring a basket of ham sandwiches. There's a pleasant spot close to where Professor Ravenshaw lives at Lichburg Manor. He has a nice little park on his property, though it's near a graveyard."

"I worry not about graveyards." I couldn't tell her I associated them with sweaty sex, not death.

"Very well. Is eleven o'clock too early?"

"Not at all, my dear lady."

I can hear my readers saying, What? Is Seth trying to get himself alone with a willing girl?!

No, Seth was not trying to get himself alone with a willing girl. Seth was too much of an innocent regarding ladies to even consider such an idea. He really thought she wanted a friendly, wholesome picnic away from her father. It did not occur to him that she was growing tired of an inattentive fiance and was slowly transferring her affections to another.

Our talk was interrupted by a glare. Has someone ever glared at you so hard you can feel the back of your neck burning? Clara looked past me and gasped. I turned. It was Mr. Phillips. There was no mistaking his expression. He'd seen me kiss Clara's hand.

"Clara, I would like to speak to you," said her father sternly. With a nervous glance at me, she went into the back of the shop. The apothecary fixed me with his eye. "Mr. Keane, my daughter is engaged to Mr. Taillemache. I do not wish you to be misled by my daughter's friendliness, but she is not available. Do you understand?"

"I do." I wanted to protest with all my vehemence, but the apothecary's cold expression daunted me. He followed Clara with a lingering look that said, you keep away from her.

Irritated, I returned to my duties. Then I felt another burning sensation on the back of my neck. Maurice was watching me through the plate glass.

"What the hell are you doing?!" he hissed as he entered the shop.

"What do you mean? Keep your voice down. Phillips is in the back."

"Letting that girl fondle your hair and you kissing her hand! I saw her do it through the window."

I was speechless. Smoke seemed to be erupting from Maurice's nostrils.

"Why, does that bother you? We do that all the time," I replied flippantly.

"But I have permission to, dammit," Maurice retorted, thrusting his face into mine. "What the hell were you up to with that girl?"

At this, I laughed. "Inviting her over for a picnic and sex. What else?" Then I lost my temper. "Maurice, you idiot, haven't you noticed I have no interest in women?"

Maurice only continued to glower. "You could start!"

"Oh, for God's sake," I replied in disgust.

"But why did you invite her out?" Maurice demanded.

I could stay serious no longer. "Because she's Taillemache's fiancee. Being in somewhat the same position, I wanted to make comparisons, gossip a little. I wanted to ask her if Taillemache likes to go up the back passage as much as Maurice does, and so forth." I was careful not to smile.

"What?!" Maurice squawked. He sputtered a moment, then said, "I don't do it as much as all that."

"Yes you do," I riposted.

"And I let you try it. Along with other things," he added weakly. "Besides," he said, his voice suddenly stronger, "what makes you think you're kept? You're earning your own money."

"You keep telling me I'm dependent on you every time we quarrel."

"You're not anymore," said Maurice grudgingly.

Our argument would have continued, but we were interrupted by a somber-faced Clara, who, like myself, appeared to have endured a scolding.

Maurice left the shop. I was angry for a few hours and stayed late at the eatery after work. There was nothing wrong with a picnic, for God's sake. The bleakness of Bethnal Green made me long for the countryside again, and Maurice was not going to ruin this holiday of mine with his absurd jealousy.

I passed Mr. Lamppost's line of sight on my way home from work that evening. His presence was becoming a nuisance. Every day, from the second I emerged from the tenement, he would be gazing at me, thoughtful.

"Out so late?" I asked, unable to hide a touch of sarcasm.

"She's his mistress."

I stopped. "I see." I had no idea why I should take the word of Mr. Lamppost, but he had been there longer than me. For some unexplained reason, I found myself avoiding his gaze. His stare was too intense, I decided.

"It seems a little strange, considering he likes you as well." I spoke with the air of a man scoring a hit.

Garrett only snorted. "He's not picky. He even enjoys the favors of a luscious corpse now and then."

I gave a twitch at this, and Garrett laughed at me, the lamplight glinting off his yellow irises.

"You're joking."

Garrett did not reply, only tilting his head with an amused expression. Deciding he must be baiting me, I moved away.

"Do you know what your friend Fitzpons is up to?"

I stopped.

"I see him at night as he glides about. He plays with windows and door handles, and he explores every rooftop and alleyway. He walks silently across the floors of strange rooms, watching others as they sleep, standing over them. He's fascinated by darkness and danger, entranced by the love of violent dreams. His fingers are everywhere, touching, probing, exploring. He wants all treasures to belong to him from a child's farthing to his handsome Irish pleasure-boy."

"Watch your tongue," I shot back.

"You have no idea what he is, or what he really wants. Shall I make him show his true self to you?"

Though blisteringly angry, I managed to avoid another reply. I'd been suspicious of Maurice's activities all along, and I knew Garrett spoke the truth.

My lover was a thief.

But how to stop him?

Troubled, I went home. When I arrived there, I found Maurice gone. He often disappeared while I was at work. I made dinner and paced the floor, thinking of what to say to him.

He returned later that night via one of the windows, dangling from the roof by a rope. Softly, carefully, he eased the window upwards. I was reading a book and did not notice, since my back was turned to him. Quietly, Maurice shifted his weight to the sill and stepped down into the room, then untied the rope.

He was watching me with a smile. The sight of me reading one of the books he bought for me always pleased him. He knew I liked to read and could never afford to buy books in the village. I had been vaguely aware of him entering, but was much too engrossed in my tale to look up. It had not registered on me how he had entered.

His affectionate voice made me jump. "I feel as proud as a missionary who's brought Christianity to a Hottentot."

"I knew how to read before I met you," I riposted.

Maurice only smiled. I finally looked up and saw the open window and the rope. "Maurice! Will you stop doing that?!" I slammed the book down on the table and rose. "I don't know whether you're doing it to amuse yourself or to improve our finances, but damn it all! Breaking and entering is not a game!"

Maurice grinned. "It's not? Why, I do it with you all the time."

"Stop joking. You can be hanged for theft! Listen, with my income, we won't starve if your uncle cuts you off."

"I'm not hurting anyone. I don't steal." (Not true, I would find out later.) He began stroking upwards between my thighs, as he tended to do when he thought I needed distracting. It usually worked. But this time I shoved his hand away. If Maurice would not listen to reason, I would try sarcasm and threats.

"Of course you aren't worried about yourself. You'll have plenty of company for your bed in jail, most of it diseased and raddled with age, but who am I going to sleep with while you're locked up? Hm?"

"You'll stay celibate until I get out," Maurice shot back.

I ignored his remark. "I couldn't endure being alone. I'll just have to find someone else to warm my bed." I wandered over to the window. "Garrett's good-looking. In fact, he's almost as handsome as you are. He would do."

I was snatched backwards by the shoulders. When I turned around, I received a good view of Maurice's flaring nostrils and angry eyes.

I smiled. "Of course, if I always had you, my love, there would be no need for anyone else." I kissed him. The violet color began to leave Maurice's face.

"All right," he said. "I'll quit. I promise you."

Then he mentioned Lichburg, Ravenshaw's manor. "Looked it up in the tax records. It's near a graveyard, hence the name. Maybe Taillemache is a resurrectionist." He described the place, shrubbery and vines growing all over it like a leafy mask, a manor that appeared to be abandoned behind its locked gate . . . .

"No! You're not breaking into it! Are you mad? If you're caught, it will destroy everything we have! Do you want that to happen?" It was frightening that I could not reason with him in this.

"All right, I'll leave the place alone."

Of course, he had no intention of keeping his promise.

CHAPTER 10

The Ring

Maurice came back after dark the next evening. He looked flushed and heated, as if he had been exercising hard.

"Maurice, what have you been up to?"

"Nothing."

"Don't say that," I replied, exasperated. "Promise me you won't get into trouble."

"Or?" he asked challengingly. I could see he was irritated by my complaints.

"Or your bed will be cold tonight."

Maurice laughed. In fact, he laughed so hard he doubled over. "You? Deny yourself sex? You're a nineteen-year-old male. Impossible."

"Nonsense," I retorted with heat. Well, maybe it would be difficult, but I was determined.

Maurice wore a smug, broad grin. "I'll make you break that vow. In just ten minutes, mind you."

"Go ahead and try," I riposted.

He watched me for a moment, still smiling, and looked about the flat as if searching for ideas. "Ten minutes," he repeated. He removed his pocket watch and set it on our dining table. "It's 7:34 pm."

I crossed my arms and turned away to avoid his eyes. My ears caught the rumble of a window opening. I peeked and saw him leaning his elbows on the sill.

"Do you want to know what's happening in the street?"

Suspicious, I replied, "What?"

"Garrett's entered a carriage."

"Oh?" I asked in a bored manner.

"And he's not bothered to close the carriage's window curtains. I don't think any passerby could see in, but from this angle the street lamp gives you a view of Garrett's shoulder and the trousers of his client."

"You're making this up."

"No, I'm not. Come look. You know how Garrett earns a living."

I sensed the danger to my willpower and refused to move.

"Garrett's taking a moment to stroke the mark's hair. My, my, he looks familiar."

"Who?" I asked, unable to suppress my curiosity.

"The client appears to be a certain member of Parliament."

"Ridiculous. You're not tricking me into looking out that window."

"Strange. Garrett's unknotting the client's tie and sliding it slowly off his collar, hand over hand. The mark is staring stupidly. Garrett's pushing the man's arm upwards, and the mark's reached up to undo his own collar buttons in something like hypnotized obedience. Now Garrett's blinding the mark's eyes with the tie." Maurice snapped his fingers. "There's a thought."

"You're not luring me over there," I repeated sternly.

"He's holding the mark's neck in his hands, stroking the throat with his thumbs. Out comes the mark's shirt from his waist, and, oh blast, Garrett's head is going under. Must he hide? I'm going to be disappointed if I don't see anything. What is he doing? Are the trousers being pulled down? Oh, he's turning, the mark's got his face in the cushions. What?! Garrett's arm is out the window, signaling to the coachman, for--the whip?!"

"I don't believe you!"

"Come and look," Maurice insisted.

"I'm not moving, and I still don't believe you."

"All right. I lied."

Complacently, Maurice watched from the window. He stayed silent.

Irritated, I asked, "What's happening?"

"As for inside, I'm not telling you. But the coach is rocking like a ship in a storm, and the horses are tossing their heads and snorting. That poor fellow on the box is going up and down as if his head's about to snap off."

"You're lying!" I cried indignantly.

"No! Not this time," Maurice laughed. "Come over and see. People are gawking at the carriage like it's about to wreck on the shoals."

I almost gave in to temptation, but managed to hold my ground.

"Oh," said Maurice in a long drawn-out voice. He whistled. "Look at that."

The luscious sound of his baritone went right through my body. Despite myself, I turned towards the window. Maurice was leaning out even more. "Did he just--?"

I gave in and joined Maurice. There was no rocking carriage, so that must have been a lie, too. But I saw a man's lap facing upwards, his genitals wet, and--

\--blood dripping onto them from approximately where Garrett's mouth was. The mark's hands were spasming. I saw a glint of a silver watch as Garrett unclipped it from the mark's shirt front and pocketed it.

"Not very nice," I said.

"Probably a souvenir."

A man's voice came sobbing from a distance, and it was shocking to hear. Grown men don't usually cry like that.

Garrett stepped out of the carriage. Suddenly, Maurice leaned farther. "Is that what I think it is?" he asked in amazement.

"What?"

Garrett seemed to be holding some small bloody object in his hand. He raised it to his mouth and appeared to be sucking on it the way one does a lemon. Before I could inspect this strangeness further, Maurice seized my shoulder and pulled me back inside.

"That's enough for today," he said. He took one more glance out the window, and I saw a peculiar expression cross his face, half-fascinated and half-disturbed.

"What did you see?"

He shook his head, then studied me. "Well?"

"Well, what?"

He placed the back of his hand between my legs and brushed his knuckles against the swelling there. "Eight minutes, thirty-two seconds."

I made no reply, though my lips parted. It's better to say nothing when one has lost such a quarrel.

"Wait," he murmured. He drew away and turned off the gas jet, leaving us in darkness. The cool evening air was blowing in from the open window. He locked the door and took his time about it.

When he returned, we grabbed each other, sliding our bodies together with the muffled, dry rasp of clothing. I undid his shirt buttons with impatient jerks of my wrist. Neither of us spoke. We shifted, and I pushed him against the wall by the window. Maurice has a beautiful chest, so many undulations of muscle over the firm ribs; the nipples, the line of fine blonde hairs from his navel to his groin. I nuzzled his skin down to his heavy leather belt and felt his steady heartbeat under my lips. After undoing the belt, I tossed it to the floor and slid his trousers and underclothes down his legs. He was erect. I placed a single touch of my tongue against his ready tip and rotated his torso until he was facing the wall.

"No," he whispered, a soft sigh of hunger and complaint.

"Yes," I said. "This way."

He made no reply, other than to step out of his trousers and underclothes. Then he moved his knee aside and rested his forehand against the wall. He had given in and was waiting for me.

I pulled his hips to mine, having already lowered my own trousers. He sucked in his breath. Maurice likes this occasionally. He never complains about the pain of it, moist or dry.

I could feel his subtle dread and relished it. My hand stroked his back under his dangling shirt.

"Ready?" I said.

"No."

"Good."

He snorted. "Greedy, slavering peasant. Must you?"

"Yes," I whispered against his hair.

Just then, I glanced out the window and saw Garrett staring straight into my eyes.

Something happened, and I don't remember--

I shoved in hard, taking Maurice roughly.

He hit the wall. I slammed him against it over and over, great lurching blows, shaking his entire body. I could see the window-frame quiver under the pummeling, and one of the glass panes cracked when Maurice's shoulder struck it. All the world was lusciously tight around one single part of myself, which screamed the demands of a madman.

I felt dizzy, the blood flowing into my eyeballs. Then I opened my eyes, unaware I'd had them closed, and vaguely saw Garrett's face through the window again.

His lips were bloody.

\--what was I--

Through a fog, I became aware that my jerking silhouette was cast on the far wall by the street lamp, my body pumping crudely into its prey. I tried to shut the window, then found I didn't care. My sweat had broken out--how long had I been doing this? I'd lost all track of myself--and rivulets were trickling down the sides of my nose, wetting my lashes, going into my eyes with an angry burn. I wanted to bite, over and over, tearing into Maurice's back, gnawing--

With one last effort of will, I locked my jaws shut, refusing to hurt my lover that way.

A shame. You've failed the test. Your turn now, Garrett mouthed up at me.

I pushed out of Maurice and tried to shove him down on the bed, but he used a wrestler's trick and tossed me, so that I landed on my hands and knees. Two thumbs dug into the skin just above my thighs, opened a path, and I had only enough time to cry out before he was completely inside. He was keyed up beyond all sanity, in the mood for revenge from my hard usage. I gave a howl of pain, but Maurice ignored this and began to thrust hard, and his thrusts hurt.

He bit deeply into my back, cutting the skin next to the point of my left shoulder blade. I cried out again, but he didn't stop. His hands grabbed my hips to hold me in place and he began to bite me repeatedly, moving from spot to spot. I could feel him breaking the skin and the ooze of blood.

"Maurice!" I cried out warningly. This would usually bring him to a halt, but not this time. "Stop," I pleaded. He ignored me. He pulled out and turned me over, and his teeth went for my throat, moving to my jaw, ears, and nipples. He ignored my wounded cries as he shed my blood.

\--I don't know what happened next, but Maurice--I began to hurt even more . . . .

I seemed to emerge from a haze. Our clothes were scattered all over the room, and our sheets were torn to shredded strips, knotted and ripped. The mattress was sliding off the bed with our thrusting bodies riding it to the floor, my heels digging into his back. We were bruised, cut, and battered. The mattress was spotted with blood. I was sick, completely crazed with a tide of animal lust. We'd had rough sex before, but never like this.

I was burning with so much pain from his bites that I felt like I'd been whipped, and my skin was sticky with bloody splotches. Maurice's fist was closed tightly around his leather belt, and its silver buckle was spattered crimson.

The sight of his eyes froze me. There was no sanity in them, just a mindless stare of a hungry beast, a stare that looked into nothing.

"Drop it," I said urgently, nudging the hand with the belt.

Beg me, a voice seemed to whisper in my mind.

"Maurice! Let it go."

"Beg me," Maurice said aloud. He was staring into space, squeezing the belt so tightly it shook with his suppressed eagerness. Slowly, he raised the belt to his lips and mouthed the silver buckle, tasting the metallic flavor of my blood. He shut his eyes and gave a low, fevered moan, and swallowed hard.

"Maurice, what the hell are you doing?!" I said in my most sarcastic voice.

Something like normal consciousness began to trickle back into his face. His hand opened and the belt fell to the floor. He slid out of me and there was blood on him. He paid no attention to it. The trance-like look faded from his eyes, and he noticed my soggy bites and lacerations with wonder.

"I did this," he said with dulled amazement, stroking one of my wounds with a trembling finger. "God help me, Seth. I want to hurt you again." He glanced aside at the belt with horrified fascination and shuddered. Then he thrust his tongue deeply into my mouth, kissing me hard.

I pushed him away and grabbed his face in my hands, forcing him to look at me.

"Maurice, the next time you become violent without my permission, I'll punch you so hard you'll bounce off the ceiling. Do you understand?" Angrily, I turned over on my side. I could feel him watching me in the dark. He rested his chin against my shoulder, studying the silent motions of my lips as I mouthed curses at myself. His face formed a question, and then he felt between my legs. "Aha," he said, and I could hear the grin in his voice, "the mystery is solved."

Every gland I possessed was swollen to its most rabid fulsomeness, ready to burst from denial.

"You liked it," he said into my hair.

"No!"

"Yes, you did. Get on your knees."

"No, dammit."

"Don't you want to know what I'll do next?" His voice sounded strange, as if someone else were speaking.

"Maurice, I'm warning you."

"Do you?" he repeated.

I hesitated.

"Yes!"

He pulled me into position.

I let out an animal noise of fear and lust as his teeth dug into me, followed by the painful spread of his cock.

The next morning, I walked to Mr. Phillips' shop with slow, painful steps. I ached as if I'd been in a brawl.

Someone laughed.

"Did you have a pleasant night?"

I ignored the comment and started to crank the awnings in front of the shop in preparation for opening. Garrett's eyes were half-lidded, lazy and unwholesome as they studied me. My shoulders crept up as if I had attracted the attention of a hungry panther.

"Or was it a little different from what you're used to?"

An odd suspicion crossed my mind. No. That's irrational, I thought.

"How do you like him now?"

"Shut up," I snapped. "We are none of your business."

His eyes narrowed in annoyance. "You will be making yourself my business through your own idiocy. Savor these last hours with your lover. They'll be ending soon."

I stopped cranking.

Clara and I finished making our plans. We would not be able to travel out together, but she would arrange for a hansom to let her off at the graveyard, since it was a place both our cabmen could find, and from there she would lead us to Ravenshaw's park. I agreed, wondering in an idle way why graveyards always seemed to be the places chosen for my assignations.

Maurice and I spent much of that night engaged in illegal congress, as the law calls it, but this time we were more tender, our bodies apologizing to each other for the violence of last night with dreamy slowness and feathery touches. Eventually, our blood cooled and the madness left us, and we lay chest to chest in our sweat, resting.

I was on top of Maurice. His hands tickled up my backbone and slid around my flanks, then held me for a long moment as we gazed at one another, our eyes meeting with drowsy contentment.

He reached over the side of the bed to lift the topcoat he had been wearing earlier and felt inside a pocket. Because of our position, he had to do this awkwardly behind my back. One of the coat sleeves fell against my face, and I noticed the cloth smelled musty, as if Maurice had been somewhere old and damp.

He let the coat drop to the floor. His arms were still around me, hiding something behind my back.

"What do you have?" I asked in a sleepy voice.

"Something."

Maurice can be a perfect arse sometimes. In more ways than one.

"Something what?"

"Something I was wondering if you would accept."

"Let's see it."

Maurice tucked the object into my hand, and I lifted to see it better. It's amazing how a teasing breath blown along a sweaty chest can give you a chill. I lay back down.

A ring of amber lay in my palm. It was smooth as glass and had obviously been polished with great care.

"Look closely."

I did. The ring held several tiny brown specks, ancient flies that had died in the amber. The maker of the ring had gone to much trouble to preserve them in their eternal flight. I could see why the ring appealed to Maurice. Indeed, it sort of appealed to me.

"Where did you get this?"

"I found it."

I lifted my chin so I could look at him. Found?

"Where?"

"In an abandoned manor."

"Maurice! You didn't! Ravenshaw's place? You promised me you wouldn't break into houses anymore." I sat up.

"Stop fretting. I don't think he even lives there. The manor's falling into ruins, and I didn't see a single person. Sheets cover most of the furniture and what isn't covered is thick with dust. I found this ring inside a chest filled with coins and jewelry and other sorts of precious items, though this was the only thing I took."

Nonsense. A treasure chest straight from a child's fable? No, Maurice was joking. He had purchased the ring in a shop somewhere.

"Will you accept it?" he asked.

"All right. I think I like it." The symbolism of the flies trapped in amber had not escaped me, but I admired morbid things. I slid the band on the index finger of my right hand. It fit perfectly.

Maurice and I exchanged looks. Neither of us said the words 'wedding ring' aloud, but I knew the thought was in both our minds. Murmuring affectionate nonsense--I know not what--I fed his mouth airy, tonguing kisses, then lay back down to enjoy the cool breeze of the night stroking up our tangled legs. We'd left the window open so our hot skin could soak up the refreshing chill.

"You've finally learned how to be affectionate," he commented. "I thought it would take forever."

"Hm?"

"Nevermind. I'm just happy I've been able to ride the wild stallion of your moods."

"You're being ridiculous."

"So I am."

On the edge of sleep, I heard a soft noise outside and rose to see what it was. The sill of the window frame came to just above my knees, and for a moment, I forgot that my nudity would be on full display to anyone in the street.

Something flapped outside. I supposed it to be a pigeon and started to close the window, but was interrupted by a voice.

"Had your fill?" a voice called, faint and distant. Garrett was staring in my direction. He tilted his head back against his lamppost and smiled up at me. Then he licked his lips, and his hungry eyes sent an icy pulse through my stomach.

At the sight of him, I felt an odd, almost virginal fear. Hurriedly, I covered my genitals with a hand. Red blotches were still visible all over my body from the previous night.

Garrett's eyes roamed with an eager, unwholesome interest. A blush flooded into my face, and I felt ashamed of my barbaric markings. I stepped away from the window and shut it, then drew the curtain across.

"Showing yourself off to Garrett?" said Maurice as I reached the bed.

"No."

"Yes, you were," he said flatly. "You're excited by him and by the thought of what he does. You know what he did to that bloke in the carriage the other day?"

He snatched at my genitals and kneaded them with a savage urgency. "He bit around the man's foreskin and tore it away in his teeth."

I made a scoffing noise, then a broken gasp. I climbed on so I was straddling Maurice, kneeling over his torso. "You're making it up. By the way, you're attracted to him, too, Mr. Fitzpons," I snapped as I began to thrust into his hands.

"We are discussing yourself, Mr. Keane. You want to betray me, and I must forestall that as long as possible." His eyes stared up at me in accusation. This time, he sounded grim.

My face dropped to his. "I will not!" I cried. For a moment, I wanted to weep, because I could still see Garrett's lustful face. "By this ring, I swear."

"But what if I'm dead?"

Barbaric sounds left my throat as my body pistoned into his hands. "Nonsense. You--won't--die."

CHAPTER 11

The Graveyard

"Picnic," said Maurice with disapproval.

"Yes."

He opened his pocket watch. "If you're not back by twelve-thirty, I'm coming to get you."

"Oh, for God's sake."

"Maybe she'll stand you up," said Maurice hopefully.

I was wrapping bottles of ginger-beer in old newspapers and loading them into a bag. "This is perfectly innocent. Besides, no one seduces a girl with ginger-beer."

"You could," said Maurice.

I donned a frock coat and a wool scarf and kissed his skeptical lips. "I'll see you some time this afternoon, my love."

London felt like a coffin, weighing me down with dirty stone and deep, cavernous shadows. Now the lid was raised, my eyes blinking in the sunlight.

I asked my hansom driver to let me out at the edge of the city so I could walk the rest of the way. Once London fell behind, my heart became as buoyant as a child's. I was strolling through a landscape of lush green. I heard the crackle of flying insects and saw sunlight shining through semi-translucent leaves with a brilliant, passing glitter like stained glass in the wind, so different from the somber colors of London.

It was a season to rouse the senses, and I felt a flow of sexual longing to match the raw vitality of my surroundings.

Maurice should have come with me.

I tried to ignore the craving. Everywhere I looked, I could see a fine bed for lovers. . . .

This suppression of natural desires was obviously not working. Admitting defeat, I took off my coat and slung it over my arm, maneuvering it in front of my trousers.

This road saw most of its cartage at night, a fact which may surprise many of my readers. London was a hungry city, and it needed an entire army to feed it. Long lines of farmers and barrowmen started their journey to the city's markets in the middle of the night, heading slowly along beneath dim lanterns and drifting like bobbing ghosts. The former must be at their stalls before the wholesale buyers arrived at four in the morning, and the trek of the barrowmen, painful and slow, needed to be started early from sheer necessity. Soon they would be followed by a stream of coaches and horsemen heading into the city for office and shop-work. Even in those days many a man thought London a poor place to raise his family, and he preferred to dwell in a country village, though the latter were now disappearing into London's tentacles.

I finally located the graveyard about a half mile off the road. It was nearly hidden by vines and bushes, though someone had kept the entrance to the front gate clear. I didn't see a church, so I guessed this must be a private cemetery for Ravenshaw's family.

A few mounds of freshly-turned earth lay beyond the fence. None of the new graves had headstones, and I wondered at this. Couldn't the local villagers afford them? Did the owner lease the land to the city as a potter's field?

To the left of the graveyard stood a huge stone wall, and behind this loomed a pair of turrets styled like those of a medieval castle. This must be Lichburg. The road to the manor was little more than a pair of wheel ruts through the grass. I looked behind to see if Clara would be able to spot me if I wandered off and decided she could.

Cradling my satchel of ginger-beer, I strode in the direction of the manor. The high walls were topped with iron spikes, and I continued until I reached a heavy, wrought-iron gate. It was held shut by a thick chain that snaked through the bars, and its padlock was one of the largest I had ever seen. Balancing my satchel, I hefted the padlock and marveled at its weight. It was fully the size of my hand, and I ran my thumb over red stains of dull rust that coated it like ancient lichen. The bars, crowned with iron finials, were too close together to squeeze through.

The manor's front garden had been left to grow wild, and it had become a thicket of grasses that reached my hips, intermingled with thistles and patches of briar taller than my head. The ruddy gravel drive sprouted a healthy abundance of dandelions and other weeds.

The lower windows of the manor were covered by overgrown yew bushes, and nearly all the rest was shrouded in ivy. Only the two front turrets of this neo-gothic folly had escaped the cascade of green. From its bizarre appearance, I decided Lichburg's builder must have been an eccentric.

Pigeons fluttered in and out of a broken window on the third floor, and I wondered why Taillemache had not spoken to his uncle about having it repaired. Rainwater would soon rot both wall and floor and cause a structural collapse.

The wind blew, and the lush, tall grasses of the lawn rippled slowly, moving like deep green ocean waves. I watched distant pigeons playing along the window ledges and felt a powerful longing to climb the fence and explore. It seemed so peaceful; a hidden, if bedraggled Arcadia. The sight of Lichburg had a hypnotic effect on me. Obviously, I'd spent too long in a London slum if I thought Lichburg attractive.

No one appeared to be about. I turned away and headed back. Maybe Clara knew a way in.

There was still no sign of her when I reached the graveyard. Bored, I leaned against the iron gate and stole looks through the bars. After so many sessions with a lascivious Maurice among the dead, my body had been trained to respond in an exquisitely sexual fashion at the sight of headstones, a bizarre reaction I was much too embarrassed to admit to anyone, even Maurice. What can I say? I'd spent the most blissful moments of my life in such places, wallowing in delightful carnality.

I shut my eyes. My mind lingered over those sweaty memories, and I experienced a bodily sensation too strong to control. I pushed away from the fence and tried to bore myself with the sight of something else. This was not the mood in which a proper young man should be meeting a playful young lady. Or rather--

Oh, never mind.

I tried to distract myself with revolting thoughts and began with Taillemache's stench.

But I soon realized this was a failure. At the age of nineteen, my body was overloaded with youthful vitality, and in our flat I often brooded over sex with an obsession much aggravated by the chronically eager assistance of Maurice.

I walked off into a copse of alders that hid me from the road and dropped to my knees like a man about to pray in church. Setting my frock coat aside, I undid my trouser buttons and tried to make short work of myself, struggling to wring the demon of possession out of my body before Clara arrived. I tried to be silent as I grappled with this hungry madness, my head bowed over this straining, crude creation of some sardonic God.

I could not suppress my gasps and choked noises, and though I experimented with holding my breath, this only caused more frantic, explosive breathing when I released it. The whole operation seemed to take forever, part of me anxious and wary of yielding to any sort of erotic sensation in this strange place.

I undid the buttons of my shirt to feel the wind flowing up the path to my throat, and a gust blew my hair into my eyes, making a mess. My knees were digging into the earth from my forceful motions. I stroked and pulled, but the demon kept eluding me. In a fury, I doubled my strength, finally trying to strangle my lust to death with violent hands.

It didn't work. Angry because I was getting nowhere, my shaking hand reached for my wool scarf and wrapped and knotted it around the shaft. If I couldn't finish this, then maybe I could suppress it. The rough material felt like a thousand pinpricks, and it hurt the way a twisting rope burn does, fraying, abrading, a pain so harsh it blinded me as it seared tight around my mobile skin. The shock of it caused the blood to leave my eyes for a moment, but then, to my amazement, I reached the heights, airless, my eyes weeping tears from the effort.

Dizzy and light-headed, I sprayed a sticky libation around the copse. My sore flesh was livid from my over-rough handling, and I removed the scarf and stroked the stinging skin tenderly with my fingertips while my breathing slowed. I finished with a look of rueful disgust and a handful of grass, using the latter to wipe myself off. Then, as I finished buttoning my trousers, I heard a noise.

It sounded like a footfall.

I turned my head. A man's trouser leg was half-hidden behind a tree, scarcely two yards away. I wanted to pound my head with my fists. Whoever it was must have seen me.

I lifted my eyes higher and saw his face. He was staring at me from the other side of the tree, standing with legs akimbo. His features were heavy-lidded and fleshy, and the lower part of his face was covered with a close-trimmed beard and mustache. He wore his coarse dark hair slicked back. His clothes were of black wool, tailored like those of a gentleman's, but a workman's muscular limbs bulged inside them.

But what I noticed most was the intensity of his gaze. His lampblack eyes looked straight into mine with a sense of drooping, heavy lust. At the sight of my startled face, the corner of his mouth quirked up in a half-smile. I knew he'd seen everything, and he had been watching me quietly the entire time.

"Beautiful," he said, in a deep voice.

I felt the base notes of his utterance travel all the way down my throat and into my groin. The shock of his cool admiration was too much, and despite myself, I felt my body respond. I stood up quickly, fumbling with my shirt buttons, my scarf, my coat and satchel of ginger-beer, confused and ashamed not only because of his voyeurism, but because of myself. What was he going to do?

Worse, I wondered what I would do, if left alone with him too long. What madness would possess me, what indulgence would my body grant him?

I looked away in embarrassment as I finished with my shirt buttons. When I glanced back again, he was gone. I was relieved. But also--disappointed?

I summoned my nerve and stepped out of the copse to face him, determined to give him a refusal. Then I wondered if he would accept it. His physique was such I doubt I could have won a fight.

No one stood in view. I paced completely around the copse of trees. Absolutely no one could be seen in any direction. Had he run off? But surely I would have heard the footfalls?

I left the tree hurriedly, my coat lying across my arm, intending to tell Clara we must dine well away from here. I was annoyed at my own idiocy and with the nuisance of the man. Then I wondered what I had seen.

I do not hallucinate. I had positively, absolutely seen a man back there and heard him speak. My head was a-swivel, my eyes studying every twitch of grass or shrub with suspicion. Could he be at the manor? I decided to follow the lane back to Lichburg to see if anyone was wandering its grounds.

My pleasant, innocent day with Clara was ruined. No matter how I joked with her or lay at ease beside her on the grass, I wouldn't be able to stop thinking about this man, wondering who he was, what passions drove him, and why he found the sight of my ecstasy so arousing.

Maurice.

I thought hard about my lover. "Maurice," I said aloud, speaking the word like a talisman. I thought of my lover's mouth, his lips and eager hands at my crotch.

It was like the breaking of a spell. The strange man vanished from my thoughts, and a melting warmth went through me at the thought of Maurice, lingering there in my post-coital sensations.

My feet slowed and I became sleepy. If I came across him again, he'd surely be dismayed by the sight of Clara and think he'd misjudged me.

"Stop."

Though I'd only heard him say one word before, I knew it was my mysterious watcher. I did not turn around. "I'm sorry, but I have an engagement," I replied, moving on.

"There will be no picnic with Clara Phillips if you continue. Ever."

I halted, nonplussed. He knew about my meeting? How?

"Are you Professor Ravenshaw?"

"No."

I sensed a danger to myself if I met his eye. He was too . . . interesting. But if he were a threat, I had better watch his every move.

I turned. No one was there.

"Your manner reminds me of someone by the name of Garrett."

The voice laughed, briefly. "Didn't you notice the new graves? Haven't you wondered about them?"

I saw the cemetery in my mind's eye. What was the stranger hinting at?

"You head towards death. Choose another path. Come with me."

"Why?"

"I have aesthetic tastes, and you're a handsome young man. I would cherish such a gift as yourself. My name is Lord Meath, and you need my protection. You do not understand that when you enter those gates, your doom is sealed."

Meath? This was the mysterious lord who was Ravenshaw's friend and sponsor?

"And you think your bargain is a good one," I replied dryly.

"Come find out. The grass is soft and warm. Strip off your clothes and lie naked upon it, and let me look at you."

I froze. His deep, challenging tone sent a teasing thrill through me. A tempting vision entered my mind. Of thick, heavy muscles as if painted by Michelangelo. A massive body with a fully erect organ protruding from a lush growth of black curls. My face against the loam with my legs apart, of a heavy weight upon me and a sharp, hard penetration and the sinuous stirrings of his body, and of his mad eyes watching my half-turned face with a predatory glitter while he listened to my ecstatic whimpers, my fist pressed to my mouth to smother them.

"You would be a delight," he added. "Your body would fit mine like a glove. Let me have you right now."

I swear I felt his breath against the back of my neck.

Madness, I told myself.

The only thing stopping me from saying yes was the thought of Clara stumbling across us as we coupled, of the hideous embarrassment. As for Maurice, he was far away and forgotten.

Then my nervous thumb touched the amber ring I was wearing, and I remembered my lover. "'at's nice to know. Good afternoon, your 'onor," I replied with a cheeky Cockney accent.

He spoke no more.

I opened my eyes. I felt weary and distraught as if I'd been stuck inside a dream, fighting to awaken. What had happened? The dream had been so vivid, so real in its sexual allurements, that I'd almost given way.

I turned, but heard and saw nothing more of him. Oddly, I felt downcast, as if I knew he was gone for good, and part of me mourned the passing of this chance.

Madness, I repeated. I'm becoming as barmy as Garrett.

Then I scolded myself. I should not even consider betraying Maurice. Maurice was my friend as well as my lover, and he would be crushed, hurt beyond belief by my actions.

Yet I knew some of this was Maurice's fault. By teaching me the delight of loving a man's body, he'd left me vulnerable to the enticements of other men. I would have to guard against temptation for the rest of my life, but the temptation, at least that presented by Meath, seemed so good.

I moved on, troubled.

When I reached the gate of the manor, I saw to my surprise it was standing wide open. I glanced back at the road. A hansom cab was coming to a stop at the edge of the graveyard, and Clara was stepping down from it.

But curiosity demanded a quick gawk inside the grounds before I left to meet her. Three steps beyond the entrance--and I should have expected this, since someone must have opened the gate--a man stepped out from behind a bush.

I startled backwards, embarrassed. His hair was long and grey, his face lined with age. His clothes were good, but his pale suit looked as though it had been tailored in a previous generation.

He appeared to be in his sixties or so, and his skin was papery white. His face reminded me of a carving made out of an elephant's tusk. There was something hard about the surface of his skin, yet it was smooth in a way that made you want to reach out and stroke him to see if his flesh really did feel like aged ivory.

For a second, I seemed to lose my moorings (which were rather loose by this time anyway) and I had to stop myself from touching him.

The grey eyes regarding me were flat, the sort of flatness of a cold, dangerous mind--or an insane one.

Nervously, I spoke. "Good afternoon. Are you Professor Ravenshaw? I'm Seth Keane, apprentice to Mr. Joseph Phillips. My friend Clara Phillips has decided to hold a picnic at a nearby park. Perhaps you may know her?"

"I do," he replied. "She is my godchild."

His eyes went up and down my figure, and his face bore a hint of contempt. I recognized that air of slight scorn. It was usually on the face of a man during his first meeting with his daughter's suitor.

Flustered, I realized I was in danger of rousing Ravenshaw's ire in his nephew's cause. "She's my friend, only that," I added quickly.

Having completed his sneering study of my person, Ravenshaw's eyes dropped to my gesturing hand and became fixed there.

What was he staring at? I glanced down at my fingers. Too late, I remembered Maurice's gift of the ring. Of tiny flies trapped in a band of amber.

A ring stolen from this very manor.

I looked up, my awkward tongue searching for an explanation.

I caught a glimpse of a fist swinging at my face, and I lost myself in a terrible explosion of pain.

Continued in Fever Nights,

Volume Two of the Wound of the Rose Trilogy

Other Titles by Avis Black:

His Ex-Boyfriend

Love's Ashes

Lantern Slides from Old Bohemia

Love, Interrupted

How Julian and Nigel Turned Each Other Gay (Inadvertently), or So They Both Claim

Saint Mark the Exorcist

The Wedding Night

Crossing Dreams

Undone by Beauty

His Birthday Wishes

The Wound of the Rose Trilogy:

Of Love and Vampires

Fever Nights

Death in Splendor

Story Collections:

Four Wayward Hearts

Tangled Trio

Writing as Monique Raimbaud:

Indian Captive

The Sea Devil
