“I don’t want to see you around here,” Madame Defleur was telling him, “until you’re cleaned up and ready to work.”
He briefly considered seducing her. He had done so before, and it would be a warm room, a bath, and a bed for the night. But he felt too bleak and too distant to be able to play the lover, which—unlike his preferred clients—she would want. Stripped of her bawd’s splendour, she wore her years heavily, and Micha would see his future in the flesh he strove to satisfy. After, she would want to talk of lost things. Youth and faith, love and happiness, and the daughter who had fled her.
So he bade her farewell and slipped out of the back door into the cold, mist-sodden night.
His circumstances were troubling, but they were far better than when he had first found himself homeless and penniless on the streets of London. This time, he had no pride or hope to lose, and he had long since abandoned any qualms he might have entertained about his profession. As a young man of some beauty and limited education, with no connections, no references, and no other talents, it was quite simply all he was good for. An understanding he had learned, somewhat painfully, to accept without judgement or self-censure. When he had been in a position to make choices, this was where they had brought him. And he had found ways—one way, specifically—to make existing bearable. Unfortunately, withoutmoney, there was little likelihood of that either. Johnny Wu had stopped allowing him to punt on tick a long time ago.
As he stepped out of the dingy alley that oozed between Madame Defleur’s and the slop-shop next door, Micha caught sight of one of the establishment’s regulars coming down the street the other way. He knew very little about him, only that he was employed as a graver down at the docks and that he usually visited Philip—a pale-faced, yellow-haired waif of a Mary-Anne—although his eyes had occasionally strayed speculatively to Micha. Madame Defleur’s patrons were encouraged to sample the varieties of the house, but poaching each other’s customers directly was discouraged, as it was bad for business.
Micha plunged his hands into his pockets and walked briskly towards the client, keeping his head down as though he was protecting himself from the chill bite of the prevailing wind. His shoulder brushed against the other man’s as they passed each other.
“Oh, I’m terribly sorry.” Micha managed a fair semblance of being startled. He was sober enough that his voice shone like glass amongst the crawling alleys of Whitechapel.
“Nae worries, man.” Philip had mentioned this particular client came from one of the Northern cities. He had no family in London, and few friends. It would be a lonely life, even had he not been a sodomite.
Neither loneliness nor sodomy troubled Micha anymore. He did not speak, but he leaned a little closer, letting the heat of his body mingle with that of the stranger’s. His finely chiselled lips curled into a hint of a smile, his dark eyes shimmering with promise.
“Y’off then?” The client had a strange, almost musical lilt, roughened by burgeoning lust.
“I could be persuaded to stay,” Micha murmured. He turned his head so that his breath grazed the client’s cheek. “For a little while.”
And there it was.
Silver, pressed into his hand, like pieces of the moon.
659
Open your mouth, he says. And I do. His thick fingers taste of tar and sweat and skin. He tells me I’m beautiful. At least I think that’s what he means. Bonny, he says. A bonny lad.
I moan suggestively around his fingers. He fucks my mouth until I gag. My cock stands on reflex alone. But he likes it, paws at me and, somehow, I’m responding.
I shove myself to my knees, a blank dark pain as the bones crack sharply against the flagstones.
Alreet, he says. I’ve no idea what it means but he sounds worried.
I suck him off. He mumbles about my pretty mouth and my posh voice.
He’s rough but not cruel. I only realise my lip has split open again when I see there’s blood in the drool and semen I wipe from my mouth.
Micha walked briskly towards Bluegate Fields with the surety of a ship following its star. Money gave him his destination and something that was almost pleasurable—anticipation. The rain persisted, coming slantwise through the yellow fog and speckling his face with its chill, bright needles. A heavy weight, damp as the weather, had gathered in the centre of his chest, and no amount of coughing would ease it.
He moved fearlessly and as quickly as his laboured breathing would allow through the dank and tangled alleyways that led him towards High Street, Shadwell. The air was as stagnant as an open sewer, heavy with the stench of poverty and human filth. The painted tigresses, from which Tiger Bay derived its name, lolled in doorways or leaned from open windows, gin-soaked fantasies in rotting finery. Pickpockets, cutthroats, and cash carriers lurked sullenly in the wretched courtyards formed by the close-packed tenements. But nobody troubled Micha. Some even called out his name in greeting. Familiarity had rendered the squalid horrors of the slum aneveryday banality. He stepped carefully over a slumped, tattered body that lay—dead or insensible—in the street, and thought nothing of it.
“Ahwight, Micha?”
A boy stepped from the shadows between two bawdy houses and fell into step beside him. He was bird-thin and bone-pale, his age impossible to guess. Fifteen? Thirteen? Younger yet?
Micha was not in the mood for conversation. He felt cold and ill. His mouth stung and tasted sour, the realities of the world and his life crashing too hard against him. But still. He slowed his pace. Just a little.
“Good evening, Alfie.” A mockery of courtesy coloured his voice, but it was not entirely without warmth.
The youth grinned up at him. “’Ow’s tricks wiv you, then?”
“Well enough, thank you.”
Alfie nodded. In the uncertain light, his eyes were the same colour as the rain. “Going to see ol’ Johnny?”
Micha nodded.
