Chapter One
Thefirst really cruel night of winter: a skin-stinging bitterness ofsnow.
LaurenceFitzroy, nineteen years old, heir to a baronetcy and who knew howmany acres of Suffolk countryside, stopped on the steps of theLyceum, oblivious to the exiting crowd he was forcing to partaround him.He fastened his pale silk scarf over the open neck ofhis shirt, wondering vaguely what had happened to the bow tie he’dimpatiently ripped off during the performance.Laurie liked operawell enough, but first-night shows where his father’s onlymotivation for being there was the need to be seen in the best boxin the house… He drew a deep breath of the lung-catching air,feeling himself wake up, become alive once more to the lights, theblistering cold, the living river of human souls parting toaccommodate him.He was bored, restless, lonely.
Taxiswere pulling up by the pavement, two abreast, almost blocking thethoroughfare.No sign of the limo.Charlie must have had onecigarette too many with Mrs.Gibson down in the kitchen beforesetting off.Laurie sighed.That wouldn’t please the old man onebit.He glanced up the Strand as if he might turn and walk in thatdirection instead, into the night.
Sir William Fitzroy stood on the pavement in the crowd,Laurie’s mother clasped to his side like a decorative, blank-faceddoll.As Laurie watched, his great red face swung around anddarkened still further with angry blood upon spotting his sonhanging about on the opera house steps, looking as usual completelydisoriented.He raised one meaty hand and made an unmistakablegesture.Here, boy.Now.
Lauriewas not in the habit of rebellion, and now would be a stupid timeto start.As for walking off into the night, wealthy or not, inreal terms he had on him the price of a bus fare and one night in aB and B.Then, without further cash injections from the huge,grim-faced man waiting on the far side of the road, he was…well, hewas that shape in the blankets over there, that fragile-lookingpiece of human flotsam huddled in the doorway to Lindley’s.Except,knowing him, he’d have let someone else steal his blankets.Lauriesighed and began to make his way across the road.His mother, fraillittle sparkling figure in the circle of Sir William’s arm, waslooking for him anxiously too.What the hell was the hurry?Therewas still no sign of the sleek Daimler in which Sir William likedto be seen going home from events like this.Lesser mortals, Lauriecouldn’t help but notice, had piled into their taxis and even theirbuses and underground train stations and made their escape bynow.
The boyhuddled in the blankets outside Lindley’s was asleep, his headtipped back against the concrete pillar of the doorway.He hadclose-cropped black hair and skin Laurie thought would be olive indaylight, though now he was painted by the lights of passing cars,the shifting spectrum of the window display.His face, passive andgrave, had a sculpted foreign beauty Laurie had never seenbefore.
He wasterribly still.Laurie noted how his own body heat had leached awayin just the time it had taken him to cross the road, how he waspulling at his thin tuxedo jacket and starting to shiver.How longwould he survive without shelter on the streets of Londontonight?
Hedidn’t know if it was curiosity or fear that drew him closer.Thisboy was his own age, not dissimilar to him in looks and build.Whatwere the real differences?What force dictated that Laurie would gohome in a limo tonight and sleep between warm sheets, while thisimage in the transforming mirror remained here, abandoned in thebitter night to live or…
God, washe breathing?Slowly, barely aware of what he was doing, Lauriestruggled through the last currents of the crowd, entered thedoorway, and crouched beside him.
He wasnot more philanthropic or caring than the ordinary run of teenageboys.Up till now, his horizon had been so crowded with his ownjoys and pains that he’d spent little time looking past them.Andthis was far from the first down-and-out he had seen on thepavements outside theatres and opera halls while all around himdenizens of another world—his world—glittered and burst anddisappeared like bubbles from a glass of champagne.Those othershad not touched him.Laurie had not yet been sufficiently humanhimself to accept properly that they were too.Something in theline of this boy’s smooth, exposed throat, the abandonment of onehand, which had fallen palm up out of the blankets and lay withininches of passing women’s spiked heels… “Hello,” Laurie said,uncertainly.“Are you all right?”
Browneyes flicked wide.The open hand snapped shut like a clam, plungedinside the parka for a knife it either did not find or chose not todeploy, and emerged a second later, thrust out toward Laurie in agesture of desperate warding off.“Please.I don’t haveanything.”
“I…I know.I’m not going to hurt you.”Laurie sat back on hisheels.He was trying to place the accent—not Hungarian, though notfar off.Something Eastern European, rich and softly modulated.“Iwas just afraid you were dead.”
The boygazed up at him.Then to Laurie’s surprise, the fear drained fromhis fine features, and they lit up with a wide, compelling grin.“Perhaps I am.I have never seen a city sky so full of stars.Perhaps you’re the angel of death.”
“That should bother you more than it seems to,” Laurie said,helplessly smiling back.But the boy’s attention was no longer onhim.He was looking up over Laurie’s shoulder, up beyond therooftops of the Strand.Instinctively Laurie glanced that waytoo.
Thesounds of the midnight street faded around him.No, he had neverseen a sky like this, either.Even on his family’s estate down inSuffolk, light pollution from nearby houses and farms had spun aweb across the night.And in London—well, it never happened.Youwere lucky to catch a moonrise.Yet suddenly the tops of thebuildings were bearing between them a river of light, athousand-hued pinprick blaze that stole the breath from his lungs.“Beautiful,” he said, then recalled himself to reality.“That meansit’s going to be bloody cold, doesn’t it?”
The boyreturned his gaze to him.It was serene now, looking for somereason at Laurie as if he was the one in need of help, the one lostin the night.Laurie felt it like a kindly brush to his skin.Theboy said quietly, “‘Oh, God, make small the old star-eaten blanketof the sky…’”
Laurieran the words through his mind.He did know them, though hecouldn’t be sure where from.“‘That I may fold it round me and incomfort lie.’Where did you learn that?”
Reaching into the pack wedged behind him in the doorway, theboy produced a dog-eared paperback book.Twentieth Century Poetry, Laurie readin the passing headlights, remembering now with embarrassment thathe’d learned the lines for himself while stuck for an hour in abroken-down Tube train.Part of London Underground’s campaign tobring literature to the masses, a few well-loved verses on thetrains’ walls between the ads for flights and cosmetic surgery,seemingly the only way to get it through his thick head.
“Look,” he said awkwardly after a moment.“I can’t make the skyinto a blanket for you, but…” He reached into his pocket, pulledout the twenty-pound note his mother had given him for drinks andice creams tonight, as if he had been ten years old.“Will that getyou into a shelter tonight?I think you’ll freeze to death if youstay out here.”
The boystudied him, shadowed eyes fathomless.“What’s yourname?”
“Laurie.”
“Some advice for you.Don’t start seeing us, Laurie.Once youdo, you won’t be able to stop, and it will take you years to teachyourself to pretend again that you don’t.”
Laurieopened his mouth to reply.Before he could, a large hand descendedfrom out of the night and grabbed him by the collar of hisexpensive tux.He scrambled upright, trying to make the effort looklike his own, not wholly the result of his father’s grip on hisscruff.On his way, he managed to drop the twenty into his newacquaintance’s lap.He did not see if the boy took it, was tooinvolved in the effort of tearing away from Sir William’s ironclutch, turning his shove into a voluntary walk toward the limo nowwaiting by the pavement.It was the only way of dealing with theold man: to do what he told you and make it look like your ownwork.Laurie shot a glance back toward the boy, smiling inunquenched mischief.“Yours?”
“Sasha,” the boy returned quickly, like a secret thrown betweenthem, so soft the word was almost lost in the whisper oftraffic.
Laurieshook off his father’s grip just in time to avoid being tossed intothe backseat like a sack of flour.His father slammed in after him,so forcefully the pressure change made Laurie’s earspop.
The argument began straightaway and was very predictable.Slouched in the limo’s backseat—noticing in some way for the firsttime how delicious and unlikely its warmth was, how embracing itsleather upholstery, how complete its protection against thenight—Laurie folded his arms and let it happen.No argument at all,really—just a trick of endurance, while his father thundered outall the rage inside him, against a world that contained idlechauffeurs, scrounging tinker tramps, and children of his who feltthe need to rub shoulders with them, handing them cash earned bydecent British citizens to go and buy drugs with.Laurie seldomtried to reply.If he did, all he gained was the terror of watchinghis mother’s beautiful, poised, aristocratic little mask begin tocrumble into tears.Besides, there was almost an interest to be hadin listening to Sir William, to learn, apart from anything else,how many epithets he could find to apply to the subspecies ofhumanity who inconvenienced him by huddling in the doorways of hiscity at night.Beggar, scrounger, tinker,gyppo.“Mangy little pikey,” Laurie heard,staring out into the darkness beyond the glass, watching his ownpale reflection.He’d never even heard that last one.He’d have tolook it up.
“Here!Are you damn well listening to me?”
Laurieblinked.He’d started to fade out.“Yes, sir,” he saidautomatically.He looked at his mother, sitting across from himbeside her irate husband.She, too, was taking an intense interestin the streets outside.For once, irritation stirred in Laurie.Shehad chosen the old sod, hadn’t she?Whereas her children weremerely stuck.The old man had drawn breath for another salvo.Laurie, to his own surprise, sat up a little, leaned forward, andmet his eyes.“Wait a bit.Do you honestly think that anybody wouldchoose to be out there tonight?That anyone would be freezing tothe pavement if it wasn’t their last bloody option?”
A badidea, of course.Now Laurie had to sit through a familiar rant onthe subject of thankless little bastards who never lifted a fingerto earn a penny of their own but had the cheek to sit in SirWilliam’s car, in the clothes Sir William had put on their back,and give him their lip.It wasn’t a logical argument, but it was aneffective one.The worst of it was that Laurie was in partialagreement.
