Damon Snow and the Nocturnal Lessons (5 page)

I shrugged.

“Come now,” he said. “You mentioned you had friends. That’s the first time I ever heard them mentioned, in fact. You keep everything so tight to your chest.”

I had to, of course. Sodomite and incubus — if that didn’t need to be kept close to the chest, then there was nothing worth lying about in the entire world.

Not that any of my flats had ever cared. They just wanted a story. One that would titillate them, like I was a poor orphan they were rescuing from the cold and couldn’t dare disobey them, or that I was overcome with randiness, or some such rot.

“What do you ask yours?” I countered.

Byrne pressed his lips together. “This isn’t about me. When you met your friends, what did you talk about?”

The word ‘friend’ was a loose interpretation of what I had, but I supposed Byrne didn’t need to know that. He didn’t want to know. He wanted his vision of me.

“What did you speak about the last time you spoke?”

“How there was something wrong with me because I didn’t want him fondling me in the parlour,” I said. “Oh, this is about naughty stories, isn’t it?”

Byrne smacked his lips together, as if he didn’t know what to say next. I wandered over to his wash basin and poured him a glass of water. He held his hand out for it, but I took a gulp before I handed it to him.

“My throat’s still sore too, if you were wondering,” I said.

Byrne stared at the glass. I reached to take it back and retrieve him another, expecting him to be disgusted like there might be semen swimming around in it, but he took a sip.

Byrne handed the glass back to me. “You’ve never asked anyone about themselves in your life, have you.”

“I don’t expect so, no,” I said. I left the glass on his nightstand. “We all have secrets. I don’t pry.”

“You will have to, for this to work,” Byrne said. “You will also have to put away your caustic ways, at least for a moment. Fetch me my pen, if you will.”

I had to leave the room to find his desk, nestled in the side of his extensive library. While I had had to struggle with a quill and a bottle of ink, Byrne had the latest invention — a fountain pen, they called it, which soaked up the ink as if by magic and deposited it on the paper. It didn’t even stain his fingers.

I paused at a shelf of books. Before Byrne had fallen ill, I hadn’t thought much of what else he enjoyed. He liked his dinner parties and the theatre, and even dragged me along with him, when it suited him. I hadn’t thought he had enjoyed reading, but he must have, even when he had the fortitude for other activities. Why would he have such an extensive collection? He hadn’t inherited it. Not a self-made man like Byrne.

Although he might have told his acquaintances that. Nothing burned in the mouth of a nobleman like the thought of trade.

I had many more months before me. In the weeks since I had started reading for him instead of bending over, I thought I had read his entire library. Now I knew it was only one shelf.

Would we be able to finish them all before…?

I turned away. The gentry were something else. They thought nothing of spending so much money on books, just to sit on their shelves, unread.

I returned to Byrne’s bedroom and handed him the pen. He quickly jotted something down, enough to fill the page after my entry, blew on the wet ink, and handed me the book.

“Ask him those,” Byrne said.

I looked at the page. Byrne had much neater handwriting, the letters long but exact. I could learn to write like that, just from examining his. “’What is love?’” I read. I looked at him, the corner of my mouth baring my teeth.

“That one should probably be last,” Byrne said.

“’Do you have any family?’” I continued to read. “Why should I care? Am I supposed to feel rotten that he’s breaking his marriage vows?”

“No. The state of one’s family can explain a lot about a person,” Byrne said.

“Like if he’s breaking marriage vows,” I said.

“Damon, keep an open mind,” Byrne said. “You may learn something.”

This would be a useless exercise. Why did Byrne persist? He cared less about the state of the others’ finer feelings than I did. Usually. Apparently, a death pronouncement could change a man. I breathed in, sighed, and said, “Fine. I’ll try to find him.”

“Good boy,” Byrne said.

Chapter Four

I waited at the back of the parlour for Price to return, ignoring the other men who came through the front door. When Benjamin finally gave me a fierce look, promising that we would ‘talk’, I allowed myself to be taken upstairs for a quick frig. Price did not return.

He wouldn’t, not for days at least. Laying on my stomach next to a rush torch in the wee hours of the morning, I tapped my index finger onto the page that Byrne had filled out, on the sentence that read,
What is love?

It would just figure that I had found the only gentleman in Town who actually believed in that poetic nonsense. No one else believed in love. The noblemen and gentry, who could afford it, married to further their ambitions. The working folk married to obey God, or they ended up working the streets, either as patron or green girl, or they ended up both.

“Ben’s going to clean your clock,” Rogers said. He pulled his blankets within the circle of light the rush torch gave out.

Not all of the mollies who worked for Mother Dover actually lived within the house. I heard that some, like Edmund Long, actually worked at a few different molly houses, along with their own side jobs. The rest of us crammed into empty rooms as soon as we were done for the night. That night, it happened to be the first floor hall. It wasn’t a very good perk at Mother Dover’s, but meant that I hadn’t needed to spend good coin on an even more desperate roof.

“He’ll clean yours first for calling him Ben,” I said. When Benjamin had been born, Mother Dover had esteemed she had a wit about her. He hated his name. To us, he was always supposed to be Benjamin, nothing else. “I frigged one, did I not?”

“Ain’t it strange hearing the word ‘frig’ come out of your mouth, with that accent,” Rogers said. “What do the Pinks call it?”

“Frig,” I repeated. As if we scum of the streets invented bed sport.

“Really? They don’t have no fanciful word for it?” Rogers shook his head. “Kendall, get over here.”

I glanced into the dark. Kendall froze, the rush light reflecting off his eyes as if he were possessed. I sighed and shuffled my blankets over so Kendall could serve as a buffer between us.

“Cut that torch out before Ben gets up here,” Rogers said. Kendall slid into the open spot.

“So you can have the chance to abuse me?” I asked. I reached for the snuffer anyway. “Where’s the ruin?”

“What ruin?” Rogers tried to say.

I paused in snuffing the torch. “The ruin you promised yesterday.”

“That was yesterday, mate,” Rogers said.

“I was trapped upstairs,” I said. “Fetch it now, I’m awfully parched.”

Rogers gave me a sour look, but he was all too happy to pull out the half bottle. He held it out to me, but I took care of the rush torch first. I didn’t particularly enjoy anyone seeing this weakness of mine. At least not by full light.

I took my fair share. The first gulp burned my tongue all the way down my throat. Yet I still enjoyed it more than a cock, at least because I knew what would come. The edges of my consciousness would grow hazy. My fingers would begin to tingle, and I settled into something that might be confused for contentment.

Or I could break down sobbing at any moment. I wouldn’t care then, not with gin blazing through me, and in the morning, when we woke with blazing headaches, no one would mention it, even if they did remember.

It was utterly pathetic that this was what I enjoyed most in my life.

I swallowed my mouthful, and handed the bottle to Kendall, who no doubt already had some the night before. I felt generous with other people’s gin.

“What are you matriculating now?” Rogers asked.

I raised my eyebrows, but he couldn’t see in the dark. I rolled onto my side to face them. “Matriculating?”

“Ain’t that the word?” Rogers asked.

“To enroll in a university?” I asked. “Last time I checked, Cambridge had so many sods, you could barely give yourself away never mind sell.”

“At Cambridge? Really?” Rogers asked. “I thought that’s why they came here. To slum.”

“We’re unlikely to meet them in unfortunate circumstances,” I said. “That’s our value.”

“That wasn't why they come,”
a voice sounding eerily like Byrne said. I shook my head. Byrne had deluded himself, just like half the men who came through Mother Dover’s front door. Only Byrne had actually convinced me to play into his fantasy. At least he hadn’t gone so far as to order me to say foolish things to him, like love.

“Help me settle a debate,” I said. “Do you believe in love?”

Rogers burst out laughing, but smothered his mouth as another molly chucked something at him. They exchanged oaths, but at least Rogers had calmed down. “That’s a strange thing to ask.”

“I know,” I said. “But it’s what I’ve been told to ‘matriculate’, as you put it.”

“Serves me right for trying to use a big word,” Rogers said. “You have to teach me one. A real one, that I can use to impress someone.”

“Snow already gave one to you,” Kendall said. I couldn’t see him in the dark, but from the sound of his voice, he was probably staring into his pillow to avoid us. “It’s a word that frightens everyone. It’s a big word, a heavy word, a word that once said changes empires.”

“Is it Napoleon?” Rogers asked.

“No…”

“Ooh, I know, guillotine!” Rogers said. “That’s how they killed all them people, ain’t it? Ain’t it? Ain’t it?”

“It’s ‘love,’” Kendall interrupted.

Rogers went quiet for a moment, and I understood that feeling. “Love?” Rogers asked. “That ain’t a big word, mate.”

“It’s a complicated one,” Kendall said.

“No it isn’t,” I said. “It doesn’t even exist. You might as well say unicorn, or Bloody Bones.”

“Bloody Bones is real,” Kendall insisted.

“Of course he is,” Rogers said. “Me mum used to tell me and me little brother that if we kept throwing stones at her, Bloody Bones would snatch us and gobble us right up. My little brother didn’t believe her, even though I knew that me mum had never fibbed a day in her life. So he threw stones at her when she was putting up the washing and she chased him into the woods. We waited for him to return home, but then night fell. Mum asked the neighbours to go into the woods to find him, but they never did. And we never saw him again.”

“Don’t mock me,” Kendall said.

“I ain’t mocking nobody,” Rogers said. “It’s true. It happened.”

All right, I admitted, Bloody Bones might have been a bad example. I should know better than most what could lurk in the night. After all, I was one of the phantasmagorias lurking in the shadows. “Never mind Bloody Bones,” I said. “Love is a lie.”

“It — it isn’t,” Kendall said.

“And who ever told you that they loved you?” I asked him.

Kendall didn’t respond.

“Exactly,” I said.

“Calm yourself, Damon,” Rogers said. “I tell flats all the time that I love them.”

“Exactly,” I repeated.

“How can you do that?” Kendall asked.

“Easily,” Rogers said. “And Damon here probably does the same. Haven’t you ever told a flat that?”

Kendall sputtered.

“I do not,” I said.

“Truly?” Rogers asked. “I would think you would. I bet it would sound glorious coming out of that poet’s mouth of yours. Come on, Damon, tell me you love me. Make me night.”

“I refuse,” I said. Rogers reached over Kendall and grabbed my head, bringing our heads close. Kendall didn’t have the decency to squirm to break us apart.

“Oh, come on. I know deep down you’re in it for me,” Rogers said. Was he trying to kiss me?

I cracked my head against his. Rogers hissed in pain, and a few other mollies who had been eavesdropping chuckled at him. I slid back, getting back out of reach and jerked the bottle out of Kendall’s hand.

“Oi, I need that,” Rogers said as I took a deep gulp. “You cracked me skull.”

“Yes, and now I have your vowel,” I said. I took another gulp, letting the burning liquid take me to a good place.

I tossed it back to Rogers, who fumbled for it in the dark. I heard him shake it, the last drop pinging on the glass. Rogers grunted.

“As a matter of fact,” I told him, “poets don’t actually write of love. They speak of loss and loneliness and all the things they think they’re alone with, that somehow they’re especially in pain, all in pantomimic rhythm. Of course, if only they’d wander out from Mayfair, they’d discover they weren’t alone and that every single man in Town is suffering in exactly the same way, which is why they never wander over.”

“I preferred it when you said ‘frig’,” Rogers said. “That at least was amusing.”