T hat Same Night
Brick Lane - White Chapel
Fam shifted in the saddle and flipped the collar of his greatcoat up against the wind whistling down Brick Lane as he, Sullivan, and Llewellyn rode toward the former weavers' tenement they called home.
There had been a heavy rain sometime during his excursion to Missus Greene's.
Though the scent of the storm was faint now, the street glistened, and the normal aromas of horse dung, cooking food, and rotting rubbish had faded to an almost forgivable level.
Of course, his presence on this particular lane tended to keep some of the normal detritus of human misery at bay.
His men kept both tossed away refuse and tossed away people from in front of the building he'd bought and turned into a veritable fortress for himself and his gang.
Which was why the three of them pulled their horses up short when a cart turned the corner at the other end of Brick Lane and careened toward them.
Sullivan and Llewellyn moved their horses in front of Fam's at once.
In the dim light of the moon he could make out the pistols raised in their hands, poised and ready to fire.
They backed their horses into Fam's, forcing him to guide his long-legged mare, Black Bess, backward as well.
The cart kept coming and picked up speed.
As it passed the front door to Fam's building, a bundle of rags was tossed to the cobbles and rolled into the curbstone.
The cart turned up an alley so swiftly two wheels lifted off the cobbles and almost tipped the conveyance.
Fam urged Bess forward and nearly galloped in pursuit of the cart.
His attention was drawn to the bundle of rags, a sound, faint like the mew of a kitten pierced the din of horses' hooves and his men's shouts.
He hauled back on the reins sharply and leapt from the saddle as Bess reared to a stop.
On his knees in an instant, he rolled the bundle toward him.
"Fuck! Llewellyn," he shouted over his shoulder as he gathered a small boy into his arms. "Go after that cart.
Find him!" He stumbled to his feet and went to Sullivan who'd taken up Bess's reins.
"Take him." Llewellyn sat his dancing horse and looked back and forth between Fam and the alley down which the cart and driver had escaped.
"Jesus--." Sullivan pulled the child across his lap and tossed the mare's reins to Fam. "Is he alive?" Fam threw himself into the saddle and reached to take the lad from the big Irishman. He settled the negligible weight into his arms and turned Bess back up Brick Lane.
"Go, damn you!" Fam shouted at Llewellyn. "Find that bastard. Sullivan, you're with me." He glanced down at the child even as he urged Bess into a gallop. As if he had willed it, the little body shook, rose and fell with a gasping breath.
"Where are we going?" Sullivan asked once he caught up to him. "Rose Street is not this way."
"Carrington-Bowles won't be at the dispensary this time of night. We're for St. James Square. Move!"
Their horses began to tire after a few miles.
Fam guided Bess into a slow trot as they crossed into the far edges of Mayfair.
He continued to check on the child whose breaths had grown shallow and less frequent.
The smell of coal and the filthy face led him to believe this limp bag of bones and rags had been used as a climbing boy by some soon-to-be-dead chimney sweep.
His blood heated at the thought of what he'd do to the fiend who'd used this boy and dumped him like an old stray dog.
As they drew closer to St. James Square, Fam urged Bess into a faster pace.
Time crawled by as did the deserted streets of London's most fashionable neighborhoods.
Finally, they rode into the mews behind the townhouse the Rose Street physician shared with his aunt, the formidable Lady Camilla. Fam slid from Bess's back.
"Take care of the horses," he ordered, as he tossed the reins to Sullivan.
"And keep a sharp eye out." Sullivan nodded as he dismounted and led their horses to the stable at the back of Lady Camilla's gardens.
Fam reached the door into the kitchens and hefted the child up so he could hammer his fist against the heavy oak loudly enough to wake the dead.
A startled maid dressed in a mobcap and navy wool robe shrieked and stumbled back away from the door she'd opened.
"Don't open the door without knowing who's there, girl. Do you want to end up on the kitchen floor with your throat cut? Fetch your master. Now!"
She ran shrieking out the green baize door across the room.
Fam placed the child on the long work table in front of the large fireplace.
Though banked for the night, the fire was warm enough to take the chill out of the air.
He shed his greatcoat and spread the thick wool garment across the table.
His hands tremored slightly as he stripped the disgusting rags from the child's body and dropped them onto a chair.
The boy could not be more than five or six years old.
His body was covered in burn scars and fresh burn wounds.
His little knuckles were raw nearly to the bone.
Fam's chest seared at every labored breath that pushed the boy's bony chest up and down.
He fought and clawed down the memories that rose in his mind at the sight of the abused child.
"Take this, Dyer." Carrington Bowles, clad in a floor-length quilted black velvet robe, slapped a thick cotton sheet against Fam's chest. He lifted the child gently from the table. "Spread that out."
Fam blinked for a moment and then did as he was told.
The golden-haired physician lay the boy onto the sheet and immediately bent over him to listen to his chest. The kitchen was remarkably bright for the middle of the night.
He glanced up and noticed a wheel of globed oil lamps illuminated the table.
His eyes burned, and he slumped into a chair as a sudden wave of aching weariness washed over him.
He picked up the shredded clothes he'd stripped from the boy and prepared to toss them into the fire.
"Don't," Carrington-Bowles said. "I want to send those to Archer Colwyn."
"Why?" He studied the other man's face. Lionel Carrington-Bowles was one of the most handsome men Fam had ever seen.
It would be easy to dismiss him as another useless, wealthy dandy.
Fam had seen plenty of them taking advantage of the pretty young men who worked at Missus Greene's, but never Carrington-Bowles.
One had only to take in the barely leashed fury on his angelic face as he gently examined the boy to know how and why he'd chosen to open a dispensary in the most dangerous rookery in London.
"Do you really think Bow Street gives a damn about an abandoned climbing boy?" he asked the physician and dropped the clothes back onto the chair.
"This is the third child I've seen like this.
The other two were dead. Col had me examine the bodies.
Chimney boys. Abused. Starved. Strangled.
" He tilted the boy's head to one side which exposed dark marks very like the fingers of a hand in the combination of filth around the thin neck.
Carrington-Bowles wiped the dirt away to reveal angry red and purple marks.
"Jesus," Fam muttered. "This is the third?" The baize door behind him squeaked opened. He was on his feet, dagger in hand, in the blink of an eye.
"Put the fucking knife down, Mister Dyer.
This is a new robe." Nathaniel Charpentier, London's most popular chef, and the physician's lover, strode into the room with toweling in one hand and a large black satchel in the other.
Fam knew him from the dispensary where he sometimes helped Carrington-Bowles, but he'd also encountered him at Club Ambrosios where the man was responsible for some of the most delicious and erotic food Fam had ever eaten.
"You've the footsteps of a Seven Dials sneak thief, Charpentier." Fam settled back into the chair and slid his dagger into his boot.
"Misspent youth," the chef replied. Fam could believe that.
Charpentier spoke in the cultured tones of a gentleman born into the highest ranks of the ton .
He was always immaculately turned out, ever elegant with the manners of a duke.
Yet there was an edge to the man that Fam recognized all too well, a hardness and wariness that came from years of doing whatever he had to do to survive.
The chef was more akin to Fam and his brothers than he was to the aristocratic physician with whom he shared a bed, a home, and a life.
Charpentier went to the stove and filled a basin from the kettle whilst Carrington-Bowles dug through the satchel and pulled out jars of various aromatic substances.
The chef brought the basin to the table and dropped several flannels into the water.
The heat coming off the metal bowl was warm, but not steaming hot.
The physician put a long tube-like instrument to the boy's chest as Charpentier squeezed out one of the flannels and began to tenderly wash the grime and blood from the child's stick-like arms. Fam drew one of the flannels from the basin and set to work on the little bruised and burned legs and feet.
"Where did you find the other two?" he asked as he set aside the first now disgustingly dirty flannel and drew a second from the water.
"One was behind your brother Con's gaming hell. The other was found in one of Warrick's warehouses on the docks." The physician stopped to meet Fam's gaze.