Four

Thomas drove a trap on his father’s farm when he was able to visit, but the viscount’s was more stylish, quieter and didn’t smell of dung. It was pulled by one horse, a fact for which Thomas was grateful as he had not led a team for several years. It handled well, and he drove quickly at Mr Tripp’s insistence. The butler could not bring himself to ride in the back like a gentleman and so sat up-front with Thomas, a blanket over his knees and a scowl on his face, terrified he would be recognised. Thomas shared the blanket against Mr Tripp’s wishes but on Viscount Clearwater’s insistence. His Lordship had raised Tripp’s eyebrows to new and dizzying heights when he offered Thomas the use of his tailored overcoat and leather gloves. Thomas had accepted them after the required amount of protestation and found, as he was of a similar build to His Lordship, that they fitted him.

They set off from Clearwater House through the back gates with Tripp mumbling about how this modern approach to etiquette would bring the house into ill repute, and Thomas ignoring him as he wallowed in the joy of being allowed to drive.

‘Slower, boy,’ Tripp scolded as they took a corner.

‘You said you wanted to go fast.’

‘We are now safely distant from the neighbourhood, so, a more dignified speed, if you will.’

They were entering an area of the city Thomas had only visited on foot. He knew the way to the river where the grand houses around Clearwater fell away, taking their autumn-leafed avenues with them and gave way to the workmen’s cottages of the middle-class. Trotting through these, the two easily passed for a father and son making their way home from a day’s cabbing, and it wasn’t until they were taking the embankment road eastwards that Thomas’ nervousness manifested itself.

‘Where do you think we should start, Mr Tripp?’ he asked, passing Prince’s Bridge where the road narrowed.

‘How should I know?’ Tripp replied. His words were muffled through his upturned collar, but his annoyance rang out with clarity. ‘I can safely say I have never visited this part of the city.’

‘Never, Sir?’

‘What do you take me for, boy?’

‘Not meaning to cast nasturtiums, Mr Tripp,’ Thomas said, trying to lighten the mood. ‘Just looking for advice.’

‘My first piece of advice would be that you invest in a dictionary,’ Tripp huffed. ‘Aspersions. You were casting aspersions by suggesting I am a man who might know his way around the sewer which is the black void ahead.’

‘Thank you for that, Mr Tripp,’ he said. Humour was wasted on the man. ‘Everything you say has value.’

Tripp growled and pulled the blanket up to his nose either for fear of the smell or of being seen. Thomas was enjoying the rhythm of the horse and the swaying of the trap too much to worry about the cold that numbed his ears, and awkward though it was to be pressed close to his senior, he was grateful for his body heat.

‘His Lordship suggested Greychurch,’ Thomas said. The very word sent shudders through him. He had travelled through it on his way home when Clearwater House closed for the season, and he was not required at the viscount’s country house, but always in daylight.

‘Have you read about what goes on there?’ Tripp sounded more concerned than outraged.

‘I have, Mr Tripp. His Lordship lets me read his newspapers when he is done with them.’

‘What?’ That was definitely outrage.

‘I’m sure he would offer them to you first if you had a mind to ask him.’

‘You asked His Lordship for his newspapers?’ Tripp’s head was fully revealed by blanket and collar as he sat bolt upright and turned to Thomas in horror.

‘His new Lordship,’ Thomas clarified. ‘I would never have asked the late Lord Clearwater.’

‘You shouldn’t have been impertinent to ask the current one,’ Tripp admonished. ‘We will discuss this in my pantry on our return,’ he added, retreating under cover.

Thomas rolled his eyes to a passing church and said no more on the subject. He had left home at eight to go into service uneducated beyond farm work, but had taught himself to read and write a little during his precious free time. His determination had seen him progress rapidly from hall boy to second-footman, and from there to first. He had his heart set on a butlership, but had a long way to go, as Tripp had once again reminded him.

He consoled himself with his responsibility. Their destination was up to him, and he had read of the places the street-rats worked. As well as the shady backstreets and endless cramped courts around the slums which the newspaper called “the sodomites’ walkways”, the street-rats also gathered at what some still called molly houses, boy-brothels in plain speak. These would offer the safest access to men such as the one their master had sketched. Thomas had it folded in his inside pocket, but the image stayed in his memory.

That he should so clearly remember the features of a nameless young man after only a few viewings was something of a concern for the footman. His Lordship had drawn a good-looking face, and when they met after dinner to finalise details of the expedition and listen again to Tripp’s misgivings, Thomas had taken the time to study it. There were two reasons for this. Firstly, he didn’t want to produce it in public for fear of being thought an undercover policeman looking for a villain and therefore risk a beating. Secondly, he had been unable to stop looking at it. The youth, for he was without question younger than Thomas and looked more like a boy than a man, was to be in his late teens. His Lordship had been insistent that they find someone no older than Thomas, but not below the age of eighteen. He was to be honest of looks, and if they could discern it, of character. The face in the drawing was open, and there was a pleading look about it, which appeared to be a natural feature rather than a put-on one. The portrait’s hair was dark, his mouth soft and the slight smile drawn as impishly crooked. It was a likeness of a youth Thomas considered handsome, with an air of innocence that hid his true age and experience. All these facets caught his imagination, but the eyes of the drawing were the most compelling feature. The charcoal was more intense in the pupils than anywhere else, giving the youth a stare which pierced the viewer, captivating him and refusing to let go.

The subject was as unnerving as he was attractive, and it was that attraction which unnerved Thomas. He didn’t fear the imagined street-rat, and although he steered the trap with deepening trepidation as they entered Greychurch, he didn’t fear the task nor failing it. He wasn’t even concerned at His Lordship’s request, or his motivation.

What most concerned him was that he found the youth attractive and the sketch left within him a curiosity which he had never previously experienced.

‘God, this is a cesspit.’ Tripp was upright again and clutching the blanket tighter.

They clattered under a railway bridge, and the road became a lane with barely enough room for two carriages to pass. There were no pavements, and an oily river channelled down the centre, pooling where the undulations of the brick prevented its passing. Human waste and dead vegetables formed dams, leaving a viscous trickle of everything else unwanted to pass by for the horse to splash through.

They had left the river and turned north, entering Greychurch from the west.

Thomas mapped their route in his head so that he could remember his way out, and brought to mind the description of the alehouse he sought. The newspaper had described it as, “A place of outwardly respectable appearance, but inwardly, it seethes with the depravity of a Bacchanalian orgy to which only sodomites and their catamites have been invited.” He remembered the sentence, because he had needed to look up sodomite and catamite in Mrs Baker’s dictionary. Had she known what he was learning from her gift, she would have taken her own life in remorse. Thomas even knew the page numbers for the words, he had read them so many times, their meanings and what they suggested setting his curiosity to boil.

‘Is that it?’

Tripp’s gruff voice focused his thoughts, and he realised how far they had come while his mind had been drifting. Had it not been disloyal — though incredibly exciting — to think it, Thomas might have supposed that the horse knew its own way to The Ten Bells having made this journey with His Lordship on many occasions.

There was no mistaking their destination, they could smell the smoke and alcohol fumes. Warm light glowed through arched glass etched with patterns that disguised the shifting silhouettes on the other side. A hurdy-gurdy was being cranked in the street where prostitutes stood with one stockinged leg on the wall, their ruffled dresses falling between their legs like the ruched curtains of the Clearwater dining room, but cheap, mud-stained and more regularly lifted.

Tripp poked his head from hiding and scanned the street like a turtle coming up for air.

‘I am not sure if I should be reassured or panicked, but thank heavens,’ he said. ‘A Peeler.’

‘Two,’ Thomas rightly pointed out. ‘But young people call them bobbies now.’

Tripp sneered.

‘Perhaps you should let me do the talking,’ Thomas suggested.

‘I’m not talking to a policeman,’ Tripp objected. ‘I am just glad to know they are within calling distance.’

‘I meant inside the pub.’

‘Inside the…?’

Thomas waited for Tripp to explode in volcanic indignation, but the butler restrained himself. ‘Dear God,’ he said. ‘I didn’t imagine I would have to go inside.’

‘You can wait out here with the trap if you like,’ the footman said, enjoying the novelty of talking to Tripp as an equal.

‘Yes, good idea. I’ll do that. Be quick.’

‘But then those ladies might think you’re looking for game and approach, and under the watchful eye of two bobbies.’

Tripp was suddenly no equal. He was a trembling mass of cowardice while Thomas, now that he was here, approached the task as an opportunity. This wasn’t exactly his turf, but it definitely wasn’t Tripp’s, and of course, he could be sure it wasn’t His Lordship’s. Therefore, of the three of them thus far involved in this eccentric caper, Thomas was the clear leader.

If he could carry out his master’s wishes successfully while displaying an ability to lead, he would stand a better chance of gaining the promotion he longed for.

‘I hate to say it, Mr Tripp,’ he said, knotting the reins and putting aside the blanket. ‘But you’re coming with me.’

Silas was having a profitable time, but was unable to share the good news with Fecks. He had not seen his friend all evening and wanted to repay his earlier kindness by renting a bed for the night. The Russian pervert had brought him luck with his early business and Silas now had three shillings in his pocket and three glasses of gin in his belly along with a fair wedge of cheese, two bread rolls and a hunk of ham. It was gone midnight and nearing closing time, but the Bells never threw anyone out until the police came knocking, and Silas no longer needed the bench space he had booked and paid for. In fact, he had given it away to a girl he knew and met behind the pub two tricks ago. The transaction was done as they individually masturbated two sailors and although the seamen objected to their matter of fact conversation during the act, when it was done, each of the four people involved went away satisfied.

He had even been in the unique position of refusing the suggestions of an effeminate man wearing a lace collar, the first time he could remember turning down a trick. What had been even more unusual about the night was that he hadn’t had to drop his trousers. Everything had been one-way and quick. One of the men had even been attractive, and when he invited Silas to dine with him, Silas was tempted. He refused. Experience had taught him that trade in the open, no matter how dark and unsavoury, was safer than visiting a man’s lodgings where privacy might allow for more intimacy, but where it also hampered escape and calls for assistance should they be needed.

Not that the streets were any safer at that time. The talk among the whores and molly boys was of little other than the recent killings, the fourth at the knife of a murderer the papers were calling the East End Ripper. There were worse terrors than a quick death waiting for Silas and his colleagues on the streets. Venereal disease, gang rapes and starvation were some, but surprisingly, murders were few and far between. Either that, or there were so many the papers didn’t bother reporting them. Not until “The Ripper” was born in a Sunday edition of the Central Star. The name and the savagery of the killings caught imaginations and the retelling of events by those who had not actually witnessed them increased fear as gossip spread.

The girls had agreed among themselves to work in pairs, and some of the boys had done the same. The tougher lads, the stevedores by day and cross-dressing angels by night, made a show of not being afraid as if that made them any safer, but Silas still noticed them leaving in groups or pairs when only one had a punter.

It was while watching two such men leave, singing badly and holding each other for support after several too many ales, that Silas noticed the unlikely pair entering the public bar. He might have passed them off for lost tourists had he not seen them stop the two drunk street-rats to purposefully study their faces. They could have passed for disguised bobbies but for their uneasiness. As they made their way to the bar under the unwanted gaze of renters and whores, the older man turned his collar to hide his face. It was a move so obvious it brought a cackle of, ‘I won’t tell yer missus, Mister,’ from Lady Quickpurse, named after his ability to get a man off within thirty seconds by the things he did to his balls.

The younger man was of more interest to Silas, and it was he who approached the bar in a practised manner, leant across it and ordered drinks. While the older man remained still, hoping no-one had noticed him, the younger rested his back on the counter and, with the attitude of an experienced drinker, ambled his eyes around the room. He spent longer looking at the men than the women, and because he made a long, slow arc, Silas was awarded plenty of time to study his features.

He lounged not five feet away and stood out from everyone else because of his sobriety. His hair was the colour of a polished copper coin though most of it was confined to a peaked cap not dissimilar to the one Silas wore. His face was pale and his nose slightly freckled while either side, two thoughtful eyes moved gracefully from one boy to the next. Silas could not see their colour as they were shaded by dark brows beneath a smooth forehead, but the man’s lips were full and pink.

In any other life, Silas would have taken him to bed without payment, but in his current existence, he could only see the man as business. Even so, as the redhead’s eyes finally came to rest on Silas, a pang of longing shot through him and he repaid the stare with an involuntary smile.

It was returned immediately, and Silas’ heart leapt. Surely he couldn’t have been so lucky as to earn a feast, a bed and still have enough good fortune left over to catch such as attractive trick? He had rested long enough, and if this punter was as well off as his clothes suggested, he might pay enough for Silas to rent lodgings for a week.

He offered his most alluring wink, but his excitement turned to suspicion when the man conferred with his companion. Perhaps, after all, they were police. When the older one regarded Silas, whispered in the other’s ear and nodded, a more terrifying thought entered Silas’ fast-beating heart. What if the one was the Ripper and the other an accomplice? Was a man as handsome as the one now approaching him worth that risk?

He would decide after hearing what he had to say.

With that in mind, Silas maintained his smile as best he could and slid along the bench seat to offer a place, aware of the behaviour of the older man now hiding behind a glass of ginger beer.

‘Do you mind?’ The stranger asked, holding his bottle towards the vacated seat.

‘Whatever you want, Sir,’ Silas replied. ‘I am at your disposal.’ That phrase usually had the punters licking their lips, but this one was different. He coughed to clear his throat, said his thanks and slipped into the seat.

‘What’s your name?’ he asked, a standard opening line.

‘Whatever you want it to be.’ It received a standard reply.

‘I want it to be your name.’

‘Fair enough. Billy,’ Silas said. Again, standard. ‘Some call me Hawk, ’cos I got fingers that grip like claws and never let go ’til the job’s done if you get me.’

‘Oh.’ The man sounded surprised. ‘I assumed it would be on account of your large nose.’

‘I haven’t got a large nose,’ Silas protested. It was true, he hadn’t. If anything, it was small and snubbed.

‘I was quipping. Perhaps it has something to do with your yellow eyes?’

‘My eyes are blue, Sir, as you can see.’ Silas had encountered all kinds of punters, sober and drunk alike, probably as many mad as sane, but none had begun an encounter like this.

‘Indeed they are,’ the man said, staring into them as if he couldn’t believe what he saw. ‘The blue of lapis lazuli.’

‘Wherever that is.’ Silas laughed, noting as he did so, that the stranger’s own irises were the greenest he’d seen.

The man gave him a sympathetic smile before glancing around the bar. When he was satisfied that they were not being overheard, he said, ‘This is not what I usually do, so forgive me, but are you…?’ He faltered. ‘That is to say, would you be willing to…?’ He took a sharp breath, opened his mouth, thought better of it and sighed before trying again and failing to ask his question. He sipped his beer while he thought of another way of putting it.

The punter was so obviously new to this it was embarrassing for both, and Silas thought it best to come to the point. ‘Do you want to fuck me?’

The man spat beer across the table. He held his hand over his mouth while he sought a handkerchief to wipe it on, his jade eyes flicking to the bar where his companion looked on in horror.

It was strange, but amusing, and the man’s reaction stirred sympathy in Silas’ heart.

‘Didn’t mean to shock you, Sir,’ he said. ‘Keep easy. There’s nothing to worry about with young Billy.’

He squeezed the man’s thigh to reassure him.

If his suggestion of a fuck had caused concern, his touch caused outright panic, and the man shot to his feet. His companion’s nostrils flared as he glared from the bar and, strangely, the look calmed the potential punter.

‘Sorry about that too, Sir,’ Silas said. ‘Just tell me what you came over here for.’

It took the other man a moment to respond, but he sat, put his bottle on the table and half turned to face Silas.

‘Billy,’ he said. ‘I am going to be honest with you. I am not here looking for…’ Another glance at the older man, and he shifted his posture, putting his back to the bar. ‘I’m not looking for sex.’

‘That’s a shame.’

‘Sorry… What?’

‘What are you after, mate? ’Cos you’ve landed yourself right in the wrong place to make friends.’

‘And yet that is exactly what I hope to do, but not for me, you understand.’

‘Ah, I get it. For your dad?’ Silas nodded to the companion.

The youth’s large lips turned in on themselves as he growled in his throat, but the action released the tension in his face so that a grin as matey as any Silas had seen broke through.

‘Oh, mate,’ he said. ‘If he were me fader, I’d a left ’ome way afore the eight year I did.’

It was Silas’ turn to be surprised. What accent was that? And where had it come from? He asked the same, and as the man explained, Silas warmed to him further.

‘I come from a village south a the city,’ the redhead began. ‘I affect a voice fur me work ’cos I be in the employ of… a gentleman. Being in such a place as this, I reckon it be best if I be meself, and this is meself. Thomas Payne, son of a dairy farmer not the old wrinkle what’s shitting ’imself behind me like a parson in an ’ore ’ouse.’

Silas laughed but hurriedly covered it. Whoever this young man was, he didn’t want to betray him to the disapproving onlooker.

‘It be a bit of a story,’ Thomas said. ‘But I be ’ere on me master’s behalf. I be a footman, see? When I ain’t playing messenger and, a-be ’onest wi’ ye, it be such a relief a-be able a-speak as meself I’d ’appily take an ale more wi’ ye just fur the pleasure a-getting a-know your good self, but we ain’t got time fur that. That being said, I be wanting a-take a clicker a your time a-be asking…’

‘Er, yeah, hang on there, mate,’ Silas interrupted. ‘I think I like you, so I’m happy just to talk while I finish my drink, but if you’re going to tell me what it is you want, you’re going to have to do it in some language I understand, right?’

‘I do apologise.’ The tone of an educated young man from the city was back, and the footman returned. ‘Terribly sorry, Billy, but this whole adventure has churned me up in such an unexpected manner.’

‘And there’s no need to be posh, neither,’ Silas said. ‘Just get on with it.’

Another swig of beer, another check-in with the now confused older man, and Thomas was settled enough to make sense.

‘I can’t tell you who,’ he said, ‘but my master has asked us to come here in the hope we may find a boy... Excuse me, I can see you are more mature than a boy, and your age is one thing I must ask you momentarily, but it is the language of my master.’

Silas hurried him along by waving his nearly-finished gin in his face.

‘Quite. Billy…’

‘Hold your horses there again, Mister,’ Silas said. ‘Me name’s not Billy.’

‘Oh?’ Thomas was taken aback. ‘My instructions were to find an honest street-rat.’

‘Well then, mate, you’ve been lucky enough to find the only one this side of the river. My name’s Silas, and I’m pushing twenty. Yeah, I’m a street-rat, and no, you ain’t putting me in a carriage and taking me back to your master. I don’t do home visits, not since I got caught by an angry wife who threw knives more accurately than she threw insults. If you want me to go back to your master’s place, it ain’t going to be happening.’

Thomas was crestfallen. ‘But you look so much like the picture,’ he moaned. ‘I thought I’d done well.’

‘Picture?’

‘Oh dear.’ Thomas sighed and pulled out a sheet of paper. He opened it beneath the level of the table for a reason known only to him and showed it to Silas.

‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph!’ Silas swore. ‘That could be me.’

‘Indeed it could, and that means you are exactly what His Lordship wants.’

‘Oh, His Lordship now is it?’

Thomas clutched Silas’ arm in anguish. ‘Please don’t tell Tripp I said that.’

‘Tripp?’

‘Bugger, I’ve done it again.’

Silas couldn’t help but laugh, not at Thomas but with him and they laughed together.

‘You’re okay, mate,’ Silas said. ‘I’ll have forgotten all about you come morning. Sorry I can’t help.’

‘Oh, but you must.’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘My master is… He wants you.’

‘He don’t know me,’ Silas pointed out. ‘Unless he’s had me before. Did he draw that?’

‘Aye. I mean, yes, he did.’

‘I’m pretty sure I’ve never been with a lord,’ Silas thought aloud. ‘Then again, on a dark night, a dick’s a dick, and an arse is an arse, and unless you get a good look at their hands, a punter could be a docker or a judge. All the same, I don’t go to houses.’

‘It’s not for sex.’

‘Then I definitely don’t travel.’ Silas downed the rest of his gin. ‘Sorry Tommy, you’re a nice bloke, pretty sexy too, but you’re wasting your time with me. I’ve got a mate to meet.’ He began to rise, but Thomas was still holding his arm. It felt so natural that Silas hadn’t noticed.

‘Please,’ Thomas pleaded. ‘He only wants to help you.’

‘Heard it before.’

‘He wants to talk to you, that’s all.’

‘Heard that too. Talk leads to other stuff and when you say no… Sorry, mate. I’m off.’

Thomas stood, placing one knee on the bench so he could face Silas in the gap between the table. His grip tightened.

‘I’m not so dissimilar to you,’ he said, and Silas gave him an up and down with a sneer. ‘I know, it’s my master’s coat, and I have a safe job in a comfortable house, but there for the grace of God go I.’

‘If you want to talk about God, you’re definitely pissing on the wrong lamppost.’

‘I don’t, and neither does Lord…’ Another growl. ‘He only wants to talk to you about your life, so he can understand your troubles. He has a mind to help people like you and the money to match. You would do well out of it and, once again, he has not sent me here to procure you for sex.’

Silas considered the offer a full two minutes while Thomas waited hopefully, and the second man fidgeted with his collar. The renters were giving him more unwanted attention than he could cope with, and Silas thought, out of basic human compassion, that he should agree to Thomas if only to release the older man from his torment.

Thomas was sexy, but that was not a reason to go home with a stranger. He might not have been telling the truth. For all Silas knew, this could be how the Ripper operated. He was safer on the streets he knew, where those as unfortunate as himself would look out for him.

As if reading his mind, Thomas produced a paper and showed Silas a crest with a name embossed in gold. Silas read what he could. Thomas’ finger covered the address leaving only the borough visible. It was one Silas had never dreamed of visiting, four miles away and at least two social classes above.

‘Still say no,’ he said, adjusting his cap. ‘Nice to have met you, Tommy.’

‘Please. He’ll beat me if I return empty-handed.’

‘Then definitely no,’ Silas replied. ‘And if I were you, I’d find another job.’

‘I made that up,’ Thomas admitted. ‘Sorry. He’s a good man, but if I do this job right, he will see I am better than a footman and can be trusted. Not only that, I like him. He’s not like his father, who did beat his staff until my master intervened. And he wants to help boys like you. If that’s not enough, he is willing to pay you for your time and, knowing him, will feed you and probably buy you new clothes. I’m not lying. Why should I? Has anyone else ever asked such a thing of you?’

No, was the answer, but Silas kept it to himself. The more he looked on Thomas’ desperation, the more his copper hair and soft lips appealed. Perhaps a night in a warm house might be a fitting end to what had turned out to be a good day. That was if he could trust Thomas.

There was one way to find out.

‘Let me grope your dick,’ he said, inching closer.

‘Let you… Pardon?’

‘Grope your cock.’ Silas ran his tongue over each word. ‘If you’re telling me the truth, if I’m in no danger and you’re sincere, prove it.’

‘How will letting you… Oh, never mind.’ Thomas looked over his shoulder. His companion was tapping his pocket watch. He turned back to Silas. ‘Here?’

‘Yeah, no-one’ll notice nor care.’

‘Right here?’

‘Yes. Open your coat. I’ll do the rest.’

‘And that will convince you I am genuine?’ It was as if Thomas couldn’t believe it. Nor, to a certain extent did Silas, but it would be interesting.

‘It will,’ he said, now standing so close to Thomas he could smell his nervous sweat.

‘Very well.’ Thomas swallowed and looked away as if about to be examined by a doctor.

Encouraged at the speed at which the sexy redhead had given in, Silas reached out his hand and expertly weaved it between the buttons of the coat at crotch level. He found Thomas’ groin and ran his palm across it before carefully squeezing what he found.

‘Fuck me, you’ve got a big one,’ he whispered.

‘Thank you.’ Thomas replied in a polite but husky voice.

It wasn’t just big, it grew firmer at his touch.

Thomas brushed away the hand and looked Silas in the eye. ‘So, now will you come with me?’

Silas gave him the cheekiest of grins. ‘I’ll think about it,’ he said. ‘Meet me outside tomorrow night at six, and I’ll let you know.’

He resisted the temptation to grope Thomas again and, with his own cock stiffening, he left the footman confused and, hopefully, wanting more. He gave the other man a nod on his way past and had to stop himself saying ‘Good night, Tripp,’ because it might have caused Thomas trouble. He’d enjoyed teasing the man so much he was sorely tempted to agree and go with him right there and then if he promised to let him do more than grope that fine cock of his. Instead, he controlled himself and left the bawdy chatter of the Bells. He’d had enough entertainment for one night and, if he was going to spend the next evening in the company of a lord, he wanted a good night’s sleep.

He set off into the night wondering where Fecks might be found, keen to share his news as well as his earnings.