by Viola Carr
That’s it. I go for my stiletto, but he just twists my arm harder. We collide, I’m back to the wall, he’s right in my face, and damn, for a weedy Fenian fuckball, he’s strong.
“Don’t imagine I won’t be the end o’ you,” he hisses. “Tell Marcellus that Moriarty Quick sends his salutations. Tell him I haven’t forgotten. Ask him if it might serve ye better to oblige me—”
Smash! Glass shatters, stinging my cheek. Quick slumps, and I’m free.
A SLAVE OF MY APPETITE
WILD JOHNNY—FOR IT’S HE, MY OLDEST FRIEND and the Cockatrice’s new landlord since he won the place in a game of loo a few weeks back, or so he tells it, and maybe it’s even true—Johnny drops his broken bottle and fetches good Professor Quick a long-legged kick in his scrawny ribs. Quick don’t twitch. Already out cold.
What did he mean, he hasn’t forgotten? Forgotten what? Then again, who gives a moldy flog? A pair of heavies drag Quick’s skinny carcass to the door and heave him into the street. Splash, thud, see you later. Humph. That’ll be the back o’ him. “And piss in his hat while you’re at it,” I yell out to the heavies.
Johnny makes a rakish bow, and ’pon my word, a prettier thing this side of Soho you ain’t likely to see. He’s built lean like a racing dog, with wild black hair and a tomcat’s grin. Firelight spices his lopsided black eyes. An odd, fey-struck sort of gent.
His glaring fuchsia frock coat stings my eyes, and I snort laughter. Where in hell does he find these rigs? “Brave Sir Lancelot, you rescued me! Hurry, flip me over the bolster and have your wicked way.”
“Lizzie, my princess,” announces Johnny drunkenly, “why d’you tease me so? End my lovesick misery and be my wedded wife.”
“Ha! Not while you’re wearing that fucking coat. You look like a fairy-arse strawberry.”
“Bloody handsome one, but.” Johnny grins, and hands me to the bar as if I’m some mincing duchess at a ball. No one’s giving me shite now, is they? He might act the drunken dimwit, but Johnny ain’t never so drunk—nor so dim—as he makes out. His name, like his self, is larger than life. Even the lushingtons edge out of his way.
Once, Johnny were a swell dipper—his spindly three-knuckled fingers are the best asset in Seven Dials, for more reasons than one—before the crushers learned his face. Then he started christening the loot at a fat profit. Now a venerable old cove of twenty-one, he’s turned publican, and everyone who’s anyone comes to Johnny’s Cockatrice to drink and screw and arrange their seedy to-dos. And if now and again, he sells one out to the coppers for a pile o’ cash? Cost of doing business, lads. So sorry. When your stretch in the Steel is done, come see me and I’ll put you right.
At least, that’s how a few jealous arsebrains claim. Don’t credit it, meself. Johnny’s many things the lazy side of genteel, but I’d swear with hand on heart he ain’t no crusher’s snout. Even a fairy-arse strawberry’s got his pride.
Johnny splashes gin into twin pewter cups. “Fresh liquor, my lovely. Special for you.”
“Don’t mind if I do.” We clink and sink. Hellfire explodes in my mouth, molten gold rolling down my throat. I gasp, heart pounding afresh. “Sweet Jesus. Where’d you steal this?”
Gaily, he pours us another. “I’ll have you know I came by this uppity distillation fair and square. Ain’t my fault it fell from some lackwit’s cart down at Saint Katherine’s dock.”
“Just as you was strutting by? I’m all a-bloody-stonishment.”
He winks, cock-eyed. “I play the cards life deals, sweet ruby Lizzie.”
“Aces up your sleeve, more like.” We drink again, and it slides down rich and smooth. Consider my cockles warmed, lads. Already my cares mooch off into the distance, not half so hurtful no more. I let out a happy burp. “Good to see you, Johnny.”
And I mean it. Now I’m here, I’ve missed him, in all my angry pursuit of something other. Those prodigious fingers, curling further around that cup than they’ve any right. That witchy glamourshine dancing about his eyes. Johnny’s got fairy ancestry, an elusive glimmer in his blood, and once you’ve seen him by the light of the Rats’ Castle, where the weird sparkles in giddy rainbows, you don’t never forget.
“Place is looking fine.” I salute the mayhem with my cup. By the gin barrels, one bloke decks another with a king hit. A skinny girl in a tall hat saws a tipsy Scottish jig from her fiddle, and Jacky Spring-Heels hoots and bounces on his skinny haunches in time. No sign of Moriarty Quick. Good friggin’ riddance.
“Finer with you in it.” Johnny don’t lower his voice, but that were just for me.
I laugh, torn between oh, hell and screw it, yes please. We’ve not exactly kept our distance, though he’s a lying snitch for my father and I’m a prick-teasing tart what can’t never be his, not while Eliza lurks in me. Still, it’s eggshells between us, since . . . well, since I made some shitty mistakes, on account of which I hit him for my hurt, when it weren’t his fault at all.
Still, Johnny’s my friend, not Eliza’s. Johnny sees me. And that’s better than some I could mention.
But no time for regrets now. I slap a handful of sovereigns onto the bar.
“On the house, my darlin’.”
“Not for the gin.”
He makes the coins disappear, a silvery flash of nothing-to-see. “Say on.”
“Someone lifted Razor Jack’s paintings from the crushers’ stash. Passing ’em off.”
A loose shrug. “Never seen the loot. Heard whispers. Out-of-town putter-up, on the hush. A hardened crew.”
Hmm. Seems Carmine could be worth a question or two. “Guess I’ll try Willy—”
“Weren’t Willy neither.” Johnny blinks, a cock-eyed smile that melts my heart, even as I wonder what he’ll tell Eddie Hyde about me later. “This is my house, my scrumptious cherry truffle, and Willy’s gear is my gear. Would I lie to you?”
“Hell, yes, if it were worth your while.”
He mimes blood spurting from his chest. “Cruel jade, your poisoned barbs pierce me to the heart.”
I laugh. The liquor’s lazy heat makes me reckless. Fondly, Johnny flicks a curl from my cheek. His crooked black gaze settles on mine, and my thoughts wander along irresponsible paths. His shredded-velvet hair, his sugar-sweet heat, that clever tongue curling behind his teeth . . .
Aye. I edge away, stretching those tempting inches between us into a respectable space. This be enemy territory, and here she slinks, a dusky thief with a shock of beaded braids and a jealous smile.
I salute her with my dripping cup. “Top o’ the midnight, Becky Pearce.”
Johnny’s new lady nods, civil for the now. A well-favored lass, sixteen years old and a clever pickpocket, too, making her living stealing purses and pocket watches long before Johnny happened to her. Daughter of an escaped slave, they say, though there’s free-born folk of every color and screw anyone who likes different. A better sort than Johnny’s previous squeeze, what for all her sad circumstances were a dim-witted dolly.
Beck kisses him, and I can’t help but watch. Her hips flare sweetly in tight trousers, and she wears stays and waistcoat over a man’s shirt, just to make you look while she fleeces you of everything you own. Right now she’s easing Johnny’s palm onto her breast and licking her tongue into his mouth while her other hand waltzes lightly towards his coat pocket.
But Johnny’s no mark. He grabs those naughty fingers, and smartly slaps her heart-shaped rear. “Enough, saucy witch.”
She grins, and whispers against his smile, Ain’t never enough.
I bite my lip. Younger, prettier, cleverer. Johnny ain’t my fancy man. Don’t mean he can have his own goddamn life.
“Drink with us?” I force a smile. Politeness costs naught but pride.
“Thanks, but I need to see a man about a nag.” Becky slides a purse onto the counter. Didn’t see no lump in her slinky rig. Hiding that up her arse?
Johnny makes it vanish. “Pleasure’s all mine.”
“There’ll be more. Come by la
ter?”
“You’d better.” He steals another kiss. He means it, I see that. How his thumb strokes her cheek, how his gaze follows her when she takes her leave. But Johnny means everything he says. If only at the moment he’s saying it.
“She’s a rum cove,” I offer, filling an awkward pause.
“The best.” Johnny tosses Becky’s gold watch in his palm. Shadows ripple, and it disappears. “Well, maybe second best.”
I snort. “Don’t fuck it up, then. She’s good for you.”
“That she is.” But his gaze shifts, and inside, the hungry shark of my envy grins.
I swig from the bottle. “Empty, by God. What sort of landlord you call yourself?”
He vaults the bar, a pink velvet swish, and sloshes me another tot. “My guest, madam.”
“Johnny, you dirty flirt. Ply me with booze, will you, to get my skirts up?”
A dangerously charming smile. “My darlin’, I’m practically a married man. The torments of hell await, should I stray one step from my righteous path.”
“Christ in a cathouse, where’d you learn that? Guess y’always did claim your old man to be clergy.” Which would make Johnny a gentleman, what he decidedly ain’t, for all his fancy talk.
“He were an arsehole,” agrees Johnny. “The two ain’t shit and sugar. But my point remains: I am immune to your charms, you bold Delilah.”
The challenge in his crooked eyes makes me purr. Careful, sweetheart. This game, I always win.
“Well, fuck it, then.” I drain my cup, thirsty for pleasure and liquor-soaked oblivion. “If there ain’t no harm to be done? Let’s misbehave.”
An hour later, in a shadowy corner, I’m astride Johnny’s lap in a pile of guilty red velvet, and our treacherous rat-fink mouths is stuck together like wet paper.
He’s drunk, o’ course, and tastes of gin and bitter loneliness. Damn, the lad kisses like an angel. My corset’s half loosened, and my flesh aches sweetly from the marks of his mouth. I wrap his hair around my fists, kiss him more, make him want me.
Hell, he were mine the moment I waltzed in. You’re a bad woman, Lizzie Hyde, or breaking this giddy boy’s heart wouldn’t feel so goddamned good.
Defeated, Johnny groans, and sucks on my tongue. “Lizzie, this is fucked. We’re fucked.”
Anyone could spy us. I don’t care. I’m red and angry inside, the memory of that look in Remy’s eyes like a bloody gut-punch, and the black-toothed creature what long ago ate my conscience is laughing like a loon.
I nuzzle Johnny’s throat, seeking that uncanny scent. I search beneath my skirts, and giggle. Mmm. Not so plastered as all that. “It don’t mean nothing,” I urge, undoing his trousers. “Becky ain’t thinking you’ll be faithful, is she? A man with your name?”
“Not precisely, but—Ah!” He bites my lip, gasping. “Jesus, woman. Ain’t convinced you count as harmless fun . . . Shit, don’t do that.”
Too late. I handle his naked skin and he drags my skirt up and touches me, such clever long fingers he has. Our teeth clash, the copper-penny tinge of blood. I want to get on my knees, take him in my mouth in front of everyone. But I want him inside me more. I want to carve my name into his soul and watch it bleed.
This is madness. Eliza will hate me. Becky will hate me. Johnny will hate me.
But Johnny sees me. And I’m sick to my guts of being ignored.
Fuck it. Quickly, now, before I recall that this iron-cruel heart of mine is exactly why Eliza truly is the better half.
I suck my salty slickness from his thumb. “Take me, Johnny.”
“Oh, hell,” is all he says. We’re fumbling clothing from between us, he feels hot and so smooth, I’m guiding him, he’s whispering sommat about I can’t and we shouldn’t but still he’s helping me, and holy God, this ain’t gunna take very long.
I move, sighing. “Ah, that’s good. Knew there were a reason I liked you.”
He grips my hips, eyes squeezed shut. “Lizzie, stop it.”
“You serious?”
“Yes. No. Shit.”
“Thought not. Kiss me.” I give him my tongue again, and he’s lost. He folds those uncanny fingers around my waist, and as I ride him he gasps the secrets of his heart into my mouth, so alone and helpless, so damn beautiful, Johnny . . .
“You poxy bangtail.” A body slams my shoulder. I somersault to the floor, an undignified flurry of skirts and damp thighs.
It’s Becky. Her braids spark with rage like the fur on a witch’s cat. But her eyes gape, empty. As if she don’t rightly get what she’s seeing.
He promised her. And she believed him.
And now it laughs, this cruel child I’ve birthed, and remorse claws my soul. So good, a moment ago, that sweet sigh of victory. Now I just want to spew.
I scramble away, bracing for a right slating at best. I’m strangely eager for the pain, the grunts, the crack of bone. I deserve it.
But it ain’t me Becky lays into.
Wham! Johnny’s teeth crunch. Becky curses to shame a master’s mate, and hits him again, a bristle of fists and wild hair. He don’t fight back. Just takes it. Christ, he’s practically begging her for more.
“Take it easy, Becky,” I rasp. “’Twere my fault. He never wanted to, but I made him.”
Becky just spits into my face, and stalks out.
Fumbling, I clip my corset, swipe my cheek dry. Johnny don’t speak. Just lets his head fall against the wall, eyes shut. Blood oozes on his lip. He don’t wipe it away.
He never wanted to. But I made him.
“I’m sorry.” My voice sounds a thousand miles away. “Don’t know what came over me . . . Oh, fuck this.” Determined, I stumble for the door.
I can’t let her walk out on him. I’m the devil here, that cunning serpent, flickering my forked tongue. Johnny ain’t a bad man. He’s just a man, lustful and easy to lead, and old habits die hard. I’ll make Becky see that. Fix what I’ve broken, before the pieces are lost for good.
If they ain’t already.
The pub’s still half full, but no one dares guffaw or catcall. These greasy old coves was likely watching us, fiddling their wrinkled members under the table. “God rot your pricks to mush,” I mutter, and run outside.
The hour’s late, that misshapen moon sunken behind chimneys and ramshackle roofs. The slanting shadows recall Remy, and I wonder where he is, what he’s about . . . then I recall what I’ve been about, and I feel sick and don’t think of him no more.
The crowd’s thinning, drifting into the dark. I spare a glance into the drain, half hoping to spy Moriarty Quick, tormented by a gang of lunatic sodomites clutching barbed wire. No such luck.
I’ve dropped my shawl, somewhere between the bar and Johnny’s lap. Daren’t go back. I rub goose-pimpled arms, looking left and right. Where’s Becky? Shit. My heart thumps, guilty. She’s gone . . .
Beaded braids flash, swinging around the corner in hazy lamplight.
“Becky, wait!” I grab damp skirts, and sprint after.
I stumble around the drunks and refuse clogging the Seven Dials—a seven-way crossroads, and who knows what unquiet spirits lurk?—and slip-slide into a muddy lane off Little Earl Street.
Darkness creeps after me, smothering all. I can barely see Becky, a lithe shadow slipping between blacker shadows ahead. Greenish fey-light sparkles in her wake. I can hear mud sloshing, a blistering curse or two. She’s weeping. Not watching where she’s headed.
A toothless ancient gapes from a doorway. I skip from his groping hands. Fuck. Should’ve brought a light. These streets are riddled with footpads, press gangs, drunken boors on the mooch for a wriggling bit of skirt they needn’t pay for.
Where the hell’s she headed? She’s a canny shadower, I’ll give her that. Now you see her, now you don’t. I scramble to keep up, shoving aside a starved three-legged cat, and hurdle a harmless-looking broken board lying in the mud. Step on that, you’ll be sorry—a deadfall trap, a stinking pit lined with scrap metal and shit. A slow, h
orrible end, with slobbering, cross-eyed folks a-waiting in the dark to butcher you for pork and pies. Don’t bother ’em if you ain’t quite dead neither. Pigs cost to feed, but fools is free.
In a casement, a dim tallow candle puffs fatty black smoke. A low lodging house, jammed with chickens and snarling dogs and folk piled in on the floor, tight as a slave ship. Somewhere, a pair of ’em at least are going at it, grunting in the dark. A few sleep against the wall, rope strung under their armpits to stop ’em falling. One snoring bloke hangs, doubled over two bits of rag strung from the ceiling. Ain’t luxury, but it’s cheap.
I toss a penny to a claw-fingered match girl, and grab a fistful. They strike poorly, but a weak golden halo bobs as I follow Becky around the corner.
A wooden-fenced courtyard, plastered with muck. Stinks like a cesspit, which is what it is. My light barely stains the rotting walls. Overhead, a wonky plank sags between two upstairs windows. Below, a forbidding tunnel yawns beneath a stone lintel. And here’s Becky, splashed with mud, braids knotted over her shoulder.
Huzzah. Sooner we do this, sooner I can wallow in guilty gin. I’m still hot and aching inside, and it sickens me. No, I ain’t finished abusing myself tonight. Maybe I’ll slink back to Soho, hunt out that Sheridan Lightwood, see how bad he meant it . . .
In the shadows, a man-shape moves.
I halt. Becky’s trading fierce whispers with it, displeased. I glimpse a tall hat, a swish of scarlet-lined cape like a melodrama villain . . . and then my light gutters and dies.
Seeing a man about a nag. Some flash putter-up, cutting Johnny out of the lay? So much for true love. Not on my watch, sister.
But as I fumble for more matches, my mind itches, dissatisfied. Why now, at this unflattering juncture? Arranged meeting or coincidence?
I don’t care. My business with Becky can’t wait. But rustles and rough breathing eke from the blackness. He’s got men lurking there. I grope for my stiletto, just to be safe . . .
Shit and fuck the nanny goat. Gone, ain’t she? Dropped at the Cockatrice. Never thought o’ that when Johnny were stuffing his face down my corset.
