Steadfast

by Mercedes Lackey

  She managed to get down the ladder so quietly he didn’t even snort in his sleep, and started cooking. She made Dick’s usual breakfast of bacon, sausages, eggs, and fried bread instead of toast, but this time she brought it all on a single huge metal serving plate she’d found in the bottom of the pantry last night. It had been stored with some dubious pots and pans that looked as if they had been put away with burned food still encrusted on them. The platter, at least, was clean, and was probably meant for serving up a whole roast chicken, or something of the sort, but it was big enough to load down with all the food Dick considered necessary in the morning.

  He was sitting up waiting for his breakfast when she turned and brought it, along with a tea mug full of gin. One eyebrow went up at the sight of the huge platter, but he smiled a little. “There’s a proper brekkie!” he said with approval, and dug in, while she made all the usual preparations to tide him over while she was gone. If he continued to eat like this, without doing anything but lying around in bed all day, would he get fat? She wondered if it would be possible to just keep feeding him until he got so rotund she could outrun him, like the Fat Man in the circus sideshow. It was an amusing thought. He could set himself up in a Boardwalk stall then. He could live in the stall, never leave, and hire a child to take care of him and feed him on fish and chips.

  Thinking of the Boardwalk triggered another thought, one that could have more potential than turning Dick into a sideshow freak. “Have you been down on the Boardwalk or the beach?” she asked quietly as she cut bread and sliced meat.

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw his head come up, and he looked at her suspiciously. “No,” he replied shortly, his dark brows knitting together in the start of a frown.

  “You’d have such a laugh if you did,” she said. “It’s like the longest sideshow you could ever imagine. There’s heaps of people setting out with acts down there. Some have stalls, some just have a rug, and there isn’t one strongman that is half as good as you.” There. Let that put a bee in his bonnet.

  She didn’t need to add anything to that, for although he was lazy, he was also frugal in a way. She knew he hated having to pay for women, drink, and food if he could get them free, as he had with the circus. He had relied on his circus turn and his personal powers to attract people and his pub tricks to bring them close enough to haul in and get them to pay for things for him. Then he would do a few tricks outside the pub and flex his muscles to get the women. He was a lazy man, but his tricks weren’t difficult, and at this point even he had to be getting bored with sleeping the day away and eating. He wasn’t going to amuse himself with going to the halls—he’d never see the sense in paying for the sort entertainment he was used to being in. He would absolutely never consider doing a regular act in one of the halls himself, not when he had her money to laze about on. But going down to the Boardwalk when he felt like it, putting out a scrap of rug, and picking up the odd bit of money and attracting women he wouldn’t have to pay for? Now that was something he’d enjoy.

  He’d also enjoy showing up some of those other strongmen with his tricks. He loved to lord it over other people. That would make him very happy indeed, and the happier he was, the better off she would be.

  “There’s lots of acts,” she continued, meditatively, starting the washing-up. “All up and down, and some on the beach.” As one of those acts himself, she didn’t have to tell him that he could see bits of them for free just by strolling up when the barker was extolling them. “Fireworks after sunset, and electric illuminations. If you get tired of sleeping, you can just take the ’bus for a penny each way.”

  “Huh.” His brows had unknitted and now he just looked thoughtful instead of suspicious. “Is there foights?”

  She knew what he meant; not random fighting, but bare-knuckled brawling matches where men fought for prize money or against all comers, with money for the man who could stay five minutes in the ring. Just before she’d run, he’d started looking for those, and collecting on them too. No one expected a man who looked like Dick to move swiftly, or to fight with any level of calculation, but he was fast, and he had certainly learned the best places to hit by practicing on her and other people he had beaten up.

  “I don’t know,” she said truthfully. “I’m in the hall all day but dark day, and I never looked for any. But Brighton is big. It stands to reason there are matches somewhere.”

  “Huh.” He was clearly thinking hard about all this. “Lotta toffs ’ere?”

  Now, “toff” no longer meant the same to her as it did to Dick. To Dick, a toff was a man who had more money than he could reasonably spend, and who liked to toss it around to show off. That was how a Traveler thought, too.

  But she had come to think of a “toff” the same way Lionel did; toffs had money, all right, but they generally had titles too. When they tossed money around—which many of them did—it wasn’t to show off, it was because it literally meant very little to them. There always had been money, there always would be money, so why not spend it to have some fun? They paid very little attention to how much they actually spent.

  Dick’s sort of toff wanted the biggest impression he could buy, but he wanted it at a bargain rate, which was why they spent their money on cheap beer in cheap places. They knew they would never be able to penetrate the circles of noble rank and extravagant wealth, and many of them didn’t try, preferring to go after lower-hanging fruit.

  Lionel’s sort didn’t care what sort of impression they made as long as they and their friends were amused out of their boredom for a bit. If the people around them were offended by their attitude, they would neither notice nor believe it—the lower classes were not expected to have any sort of “finer feelings” to be offended. The lower classes were expected to be flattered by having any attention from a gentleman at all. And, of course, the lower classes were expected to wish to do anything for money.

  That was the sort every chorus girl dreamed of meeting, for that sort was the kind who might bestow generous presents on them, or even “set them up.” It almost never happened of course, and on the rare occasions that it did, the “chorus girl” in question was generally a famous beauty in her own right. But the cheap novels they read were full of such promises, and the girls believed them.

  Dick’s sort of toff was the kind that would buy an entire pub several rounds, bet extravagantly, and spend most of his money on showy trappings for himself—like a pretty little mistress he could take around to the sort of places he wouldn’t take his respectable wife. This was actually the sort of fellow who would buy a common chorus girl presents—trinkets of silver and jet, for instance, not gold and diamonds. He might “set her up” for a time, but within six months he would tire of her and another would take her place. More than six months together, and she might start to get “ideas” and make demands. He couldn’t have that. So she had to go before she got to that point.

  Since the showy trappings that wouldn’t make demands on him might include patronizing a prizefighter, that was the sort Dick was interested in, anyway.

  Mind, the ones with the titles were inclined to patronize a fighter too—but they were far more easily offended by someone who was very much their social inferior being too familiar than the self-made “toffs” were. In fact, Dick’s sort, sometimes having come up from rough beginnings themselves, often prided themselves on “not forgetting their roots” and encouraged a certain amount of familiarity—provided it didn’t come with demands of any sort.

  That was the sort of toff that came to Brighton to holiday, sometimes alone, having left the respectable wife and children at home, sometimes with the respectable wife and children in tow. It was easy enough to slip off while the wife was supervising the children at the beach, or taking them to some of the less-dubious attractions such as steam-gondolas, roundabouts, and Ferris wheels. Titled ones went home to their country estates where it was at least marginally coo
ler and a great deal less odorous than in the city.

  So she knew how to answer Dick’s question. “Lots,” she said. “They don’t come to our hall often, but I know they’re here. You can see them in carriages everywhere, they do like to go to the really big halls, and there’s some other posh places they like. I’ve never been down on the Pier late at night; they might go there as well.”

  Since the Pier was where the racy kootch shows were, it was very likely some of the same people Dick was looking for were there.

  That was what Dick wanted to hear, clearly. “Mebbe Oi’ll do some scoutin’ about,” he said briefly. But his eyes were narrowed in speculation and she knew he was thinking hard. Or . . . perhaps scheming. Thinking things through was not something he did well; he had relied on Andy Ball for that. Scheming, however, came naturally to him.

  “I need to go or I will be late,” she told him, and got her eight pence, snatched up her bag, and left. She had to run to catch the bus, but she was pretty satisfied with the seeds she had planted.

  Jack just wished her a common good-morning as she hurried past him. Lionel was nowhere to be seen, but it was early for him. Last night’s dismal, overheated attempts at sleep in the loft made her glad to lock the dressing room door and start with a cool sponging down before she got into her rehearsal clothing. Whether it was Charlie who had arranged the water and the basin, or Lionel, she was deeply grateful.

  The rehearsal went as yesterday’s had gone; only when she was in the basket did Lionel whisper to her.

  “I don’t want you giving up, Kate,” he said, fiercely. “We aren’t. We’re going to find a way to get you free of this blackguard.”

  “Be careful,” she hissed back. “He looks slow and stupid, but he’s awfully cunning. And somehow he makes friends that help him all the time. I don’t know how, but he does. Women fall for him, and men want to be his friend, at least for as long as it takes them to buy him drinks. It’s like some kind of magic—what do they say? Magnetism? Mesmerism?”

  “Both, and it might actually be a kind of magic,” Lionel replied, sounding a little startled. “I’ll look into that. If it is, there could be something Jack and I can do to keep him from making any more ‘friends’ to help him here in Brighton.”

  That was all they had time for, but the exchange of words left her feeling encouraged.

  After rehearsal, she didn’t pause to change out of her rehearsal clothing; instead she snatched up two boxes of chocolates that had arrived last night that she hadn’t had the heart to open, and ran down to the chorus girls’ dressing room with them before they all scattered off for luncheon. They met her bounty with happy cries.

  “Well, these are better than the notes someone’s been leaving on me mirror,” she said, making a disgusted little face. “It has to be someone who works here, ’cause whoever it is ain’t leaving a name. I’d like t’know who it is so I can at least tell Charlie.”

  Three of the girls exchanged a look that gladdened her heart. “Don’t get ’im in trouble with Charlie, and we’ll tell,” said Bessie Taylor, looking at her plaintively. “’E’s new. ’E’s a bit greasy, an’ a bit uv a suck-up, but ’e’s the only one willin’ t’let us sneak a fag backstage, an’ ’e’s got a son. ’E keeps askin’ ’bout you, I think ’e’s got a pash on you.”

  Aha. “Well, I won’t tell Charlie then,” she said crossly. “I’ll just give ’im his notes back and a piece of me mind. Who is it?”

  “Oscar Nathan,” said Bessie. “Don’t get ’im sacked, Katie!”

  She didn’t know the name, but she knew the description; a short, balding, greasy-haired fellow that groveled and sniveled a great deal, who’d been hired more to clean up the front of the house than as a stagehand. He really had no business being back-of-house at all, really, but Charlie never made much fuss about where someone was as long as the job he was supposed to be doing got done. He was just the sort that would idolize Dick and be tremendously flattered that Dick confided in him. He’d also be just the sneaky, ratty sort that would think himself tremendously important because Dick asked him to spy on Katie. “I won’t get ’im sacked,” she replied, with a sniff. “But when I tell ’im I’m gonna hand the next lot of notes over to his missus, I bet he’ll reckon that’d be worse than bein’ sacked!”

  The girls all giggled, and agreed. She went back to her dressing room for another sponge-off and the luncheon Charlie’d had left for her. The sort of heavy, greasy food that Dick thought grand fare was enough to make her ill in this heat. Mrs. Charlie must have ingrained in Charlie’s head that “ladies” subsisted on cucumber sandwiches, which at the moment suited Katie right down to the bone. Well, at least she knew there was a way she could pay Charlie back—by giving such good performances that the house would be packed every day.

  Now that she knew exactly who to watch for, her anxiety was considerably relieved. She didn’t feel as if she had to have eyes in the back of her head anymore, and when she came off her statue dance at the matinee, she had no fears about popping into Lionel’s dressing room instead of her own. The greasy little spy would be far too busy cleaning the stalls and sweeping up all the rubbish left on the floor right now to have any time to try and see what Katie was up to. Music halls, unlike theaters, were places you came to eat and drink along with getting your entertainment, and as a consequence there was a lot of mess after each show. People lingered, too, wanting to finish their last drinks in a leisurely fashion, which made cleaning even more difficult. It amused her, thinking of the little sneak getting evil looks and curses as he tried to clean around patrons who didn’t particularly wish to leave.

  “Oscar Nathan,” she said as soon as she was inside. “Hired to sweep and clean the front. I don’t know much about him, but once I knew who it was, it was easy to spot him keeping an eye on me when he could sneak backstage. Wish I knew what Dick has told him, because I didn’t much like the way he was glaring at me—like it’s me that’s the bad person.”

  “It might be nothing,” Lionel pointed out. “It might be he was told that you’re a wayward wife and Dick wants a sharp eye kept on you, and he thinks he’s helping out. It might be almost anything, if Dick is as good at persuading people as you say. It doesn’t matter; now we know who it is, we know who to avoid. That’s the important part.”

  That was all they really had time to say. She slipped back into her dressing room, wishing she dared call her Elementals to spy on the man herself. If she dared call them, they could keep her apprised of where he was every moment she was here at the hall. She’d never need to worry that he was spying on her. She could even control exactly what he saw.

  But she didn’t dare. She could feel them, even if she couldn’t see them, and she knew that the moment they knew what Dick was doing to her . . . they would react badly. She was having so much trouble controlling herself, as last night’s breakdown showed, that she knew she would never be able to exert any sort of control over them. If they had experienced her despair . . . well, she didn’t want to inflict that on any other living creature, human or otherwise. And if they had reacted to it by trying to reduce Dick to a pile of ashes, she wasn’t sure she’d have had the will to stop them. And that was where everything would go horribly wrong for everyone, not just for her.

  • • •

  Lionel waited until Jack was ready to lock up, rather than going off to his own place as soon as he was changed and the stage makeup removed. He came up behind Jack in the alley, and steered him toward the street. “Until we get Katie free,” Lionel said firmly as he took Jack by the elbow with one hand and hailed a taxi with the other. “You are staying with me.”

  “What?” Jack gaped at him, but as the cab stopped for them, he shut his mouth and nodded. “Of course. I know what you are thinking, and it’s a good idea. If that bastard bully doesn’t know about me, and it appears that he doesn’t, I can act as a sort of bodyguard for
you. And if he finds out about me, having both of us in the same place is safer for both of us.”

  Actually that wasn’t what Lionel had been thinking at all, but if that was enough to keep Jack there at Lionel’s house, then it was a good enough reason for him.

  What he was thinking was a great deal simpler. The two of them could take a single cab to and from the hall, saving Jack a lot of pain and effort. Jack would not have to walk to his little flat from Lionel’s after a late night session of trying to plan a way to free Katie—when he was already exhausted. Not that Jack wasn’t strong—he was probably physically stronger than Lionel—but Lionel and Katie needed him to save that strength, not waste it on overtaxing himself.

  They didn’t make much conversation in the cab, but the drive wasn’t that long, either. The cabbie set them right down at Lionel’s door; the lamp was already lit, and the door unlatched. “Give Mrs. Buckthorn your key; she’ll send the girl over for your things,” Lionel said as he opened the door, making it something of an order.

  “I’d rather not have the child running about the dark streets with a heavy portmanteau,” Jack objected. And before Lionel could say anything, he turned and detained the cabbie before he could drive off again.

  Lionel just shrugged, and went into the house. He could see Jack’s point. While it wasn’t far to Jack’s flat, and their neighborhood was relatively safe, a girl with a big bag could be seen as easy prey for theft if nothing else. Mrs. Buckthorn was waiting just inside the front door, as she always did when she heard him coming home. “Jack will be staying here for the next little while,” he told the housekeeper. “Have we a room ready?”

  Mrs. Buckthorn looked at him over the top of her reading glasses and tsk’d. “I always have a room ready, Master Lionel,” she said, in a voice ever so slightly chiding. “That’s why ye keep me as your housekeeper. I’d be a poor manager if I could not take care of a guest for you at no notice at all.”