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W hen Ezra returned from Newcastle Sunday afternoon it was a surprisingly fine day, with winds pushing the sooty air off toward the Channel, allowing the sun to shine. He stopped at his home to drop his case, expecting Rebecca to be out at one of her charity events, but she was in the sitting room composing a letter.

She was a fine-looking woman, he thought, her dark hair and eyes a contrast to her pale skin. It was a shame that he didn’t love her, and even more of a shame that she tolerated it.

“Good afternoon,” he said, and she looked up from her writing.

“How was Newcastle?”

“The Hammering Hebrew was a success. I won all three bouts.”

“That’s good. Were you hurt at all?”

He twisted his right wrist. “A few aches and pains. Nothing serious.”

She sat back in her chair. “Have you considered what you will do when you can no longer box?”

“It would be tempting fate to do so. And besides, the Torah says ‘The righteous cry, and theLordhears and delivers them out of all their troubles.’ If I can no longer box, the Lord will provide.”

“You are a fool,” she said, but she did so with a smile.

He came over and sat across from her. “And how goes your life?”

She shrugged. “Though the Lord urges us to commit acts of charity, wringing money out of some members of our community is like chipping away at a stone. Very tedious, with little progress. And yet there are many who need help. You should see the line that forms on Friday afternoon at our soup kitchen. There are so many who would go without a Shabbat meal if not for my efforts.”

“And I am sure they are appreciated,” Ezra said. “In the next world, if not in this one.” He leaned over and kissed her cheek, nearly the only physical contact they ever had, and then stood up. “I am going out again. I may not return this evening.”

“You have your life,” she said, and returned to her letter.

He carried his bag upstairs, transferred a few items to a smaller one, then hailed a carriage to Silas’s rooms, hoping to find him in. He was, reading some kind of journal, but he was so happy to see Ezra that he nearly jumped into his arms. Ezra kissed him, with much more interest than he had shown his wife.

“It is a rare lovely day,” he said, when they had pulled back. “Too nice outside to stay in. We should walk around the city together. I should like to spend some time getting to know your personality, aside from what I have learned of your body.”

“As you wish,” Silas said with a smile. “I’m very glad you have returned.”

From Silas’s rooms they strolled toward Regents Park. “Tell me something about your childhood,” Ezra said, as they walked.

“I was a good student, when I could go to school,” Silas said. “I was quick to learn my letters and my mother helped me practice my handwriting. In school we had to recite our times tables repeatedly until we memorized them, and I was one of the first to finish.” He smiled proudly. “My mother had aspirations for me. She wanted me to be a shop clerk, to wear proper clothes every day and not work in the fields or the mines.”

“What did your parents do?”

“My mother took in washing, and my father was an ostler at an inn nearby us. Always came home smelling of horse dung. My mother used him as an example. To grow up to be better than him.”

“And you have, working as a law clerk.”

“No thanks to either of them,” Silas said. “It was all down to the father of my friend, the one who had his way with me. He got me apprenticed to a barrister, and it was my hard work that brought me this far.”

He turned to Ezra. “What did your father do, back in Tours?”

“He began as a peddler,” Ezra said. “Boats would come up the Loire from the port at Nantes, carrying cargo for men like my father to purchase and then resell from carts. He was hard-working and cut good deals, and eventually he was able to open his own store selling linens and silks. His cousin owned a similar operation in Paris, so when I was in my teens he sold the store in Tours and became a partner with his cousin.”

“And you have done well for yourself,” Silas said.

Ezra shook his head. “Not in my father’s eyes. He does not consider boxing an honest living, because it involves gambling, which people do for the love of money. And it has ruined many a man. And not only that, but I work with my fists rather than my brains. I was never a scholar like you. I can only read and write because my teachers beat the skills into me. I am a great disappointment to him.”

“But you are so successful!” Silas said. “Everyone at the arena talks of you and your talent.”

Ezra laughed. “My father has never seen me box, and never will.”

They followed one of the serpentine paths through the park and suddenly Silas noticed a puppet show ahead of them. He tugged on Ezra’s arm. “Let’s go watch!”

They arrived at the edge of the crowd, and Ezra made sure to stand a foot apart from Silas so no one would think they were together. Children sat in clusters before the stage, while adults of all ages stood beside them. Instead of Punch and Judy, though, there were four puppets on the stage, talking to each other and moving about.

“See, the large woman all in black is Queen Victoria,” Silas whispered, leaning toward him. “I bet the court jester by her side, with the juggling balls, is meant to represent Disraeli. His right leg is lifted to show how he dances to her tune.”

“Who is the man in the toga?” Ezra asked. “Those are the colors of the French flag.”

Silas studied the puppets as they moved around the stage, and the men who were manipulating them spoke. “I believe that the man in the fez who looks like an organ grinder’s monkey is supposed to be the ruler of Egypt. And see, the waves below them? That must be the Suez canal. So the man in the toga represents the president of France.”

“Such a spectacle would not be allowed in Paris,” Ezra said. “They are poking fun at the governments of three countries, are they not?”

“They are. It is a cornerstone of Britain that we are allowed to argue about our government and its policies. Here they must be fighting over the transfer of ownership of part of the canal from Egypt to England.”

“I thought France owned the whole thing. We built it, after all.”

“But the Egyptians owned the land surrounding it,” Silas said. “Now hush, let’s listen.”

He crowded next to Ezra and leaned forward, absorbed in the story. Ezra enjoyed the feeling of Silas’s body next to his, and the promise it held of their own kind of recreation later. But he was still wary of being too open with so many strangers around them.

Eventually the story ended, with the puppet Disraeli showering the pasha with a rain of paper coins, in exchange for a piece of paper that deeded the Egyptian ownership of the canal to Britain. The crowd cheered and a ragged man passed a hat, collecting coins. Ezra threw in two bronze halfpennies.

“You are a generous man,” Silas said, as they walked away.

“I pay for what I enjoy,” Ezra said. “Be it food or drink or clothing or entertainment.”

“And shall I entertain you later back at my rooms?” Silas asked with a smile.

“You may. But I will pay for your dinner in advance of the entertainment.”

They left the park and were passing along Cleveland Street when a man in ragged clothes approached them and handed them a flyer, then hurried off. “What is this?” Ezra said.

“My word,” Silas said. “An all-male brothel. And here on Cleveland Street!”

Ezra stopped in his tracks. “Why would someone give something like that to us?”

Silas shrugged. “Maybe he saw something in the way we walked together. But it is nothing, Ezra. We will toss the paper away and no one is the wiser.”

Ezra shook his head. “You don’t understand, Silas. I must be very careful. If word ever got back to Rebecca that I was ... doing the sort of things we do together, it would be the end of our marriage.”

“But you have said that you don’t bed her.”

“No, I don’t. But that is our secret, and ours alone. If it were to come out in the community that I am the kind of man I am, we would both be shunned. Rebecca would lose what she has built among the gentry, and her positions in charitable organizations. The shame would drive us both away. We might have to return to Paris. Or worse, Tours.”

He stopped. “There was something about that man, the one who gave us the flyer. I think I recognized him.”

“You couldn’t,” Silas said. “One man, on a London street?”

“No, once you read the flyer, it came to me. His name is Israel Kupersmit. There was a terrible scandal about him as Rebecca and I moved to London.”

Ezra began moving quickly. “I must be sure it is him.”

Then he stopped. “No, I cannot risk that he recognized me.”

“Ezra, you are confusing me. Who is this man?”

“He was a promising young scholar at the Aldgate synagogue, a pupil of the great Rabbi Adler, theChief Rabbiof theBritish Empire. Until he was revealed to be a sodomite, and sent from the rabbi’s side. He was shunned by the community, struggling to live by begging for change. I have not seen him for several months, but I am sure that was him.”

He shook his head. “He must work in that brothel now.” He looked at Silas. “What if he recognized me, Silas? Suppose he returns to the shul and tries to use his knowledge about me to better his state? I cannot risk that.”

“What can you do?” Silas asked.

“I cannot see you again, not for a while. Not until I know if there are rumors about me.”