—From The Black Prince and the Golden Falcon
Alf strutted down a street in St Giles an hour later.
When she was a little girl, running with a gang of boys and hiding her sex from all but Ned, he used to instruct her on how to act like a boy. Walk with your legs wide and with a long stride, he’d tell her. Pretend you own the street. Look strangers in the eye like a little tough. They might cuff you for your cheek, but they won’t think you a girl, and that’s the important thing. That’s the thing that’ll keep you safe.
Now it was second nature, like a skin she drew on in the morning: the disguise of Alf the boy. He was younger than her real age—only fifteen or sixteen—and even though she’d lived all her life in St Giles, no one seemed to notice that Alf the boy hadn’t aged in the last half-dozen years or so. Alf smirked to herself. But then one more cocky boy making his way in the world alone in St Giles wasn’t something of note.
She turned onto Maiden Lane, shivering a bit. She’d stuffed her coat with rags and wore a pair of fingerless gloves, but her ears were cold despite her hat. Up ahead the Home for Unfortunate Infants and Foundling Children stood out from the surrounding buildings, simply by being clean, straight, and new. She ducked down a narrow alley and around the back to the kitchen door, where she mounted the steps and knocked.
A pretty blond woman in a mobcap opened the door.
Nell Jones, the home’s head maidservant, eyed her and pursed her lips. “Morning, Alf. I’d ask you in, but I know it’s no use.”
Alf shrugged. She disliked taking charity, and if she stepped in the home’s kitchens she’d be offered breakfast. No point in getting too close to people, Ned had endlessly repeated. They always wanted something from you sooner or later. Best to do things for yourself rather than rely on another and be disappointed. “Can I see ’er?”
“Of course.”
Even before Nell finished speaking, Alf could hear Hannah’s running footsteps.
“Is it Alf?” The little redheaded girl peered around Nell’s skirts and Alf couldn’t help the curl of her lips at the sight.
Hannah was six now, freckle-faced and plump, but when Alf had first met her, almost two years before, the little girl had been thin, frightened, and unsmiling. Hannah had been taken by the lassie snatchers—a gang that put little girls to work in slave shops, laboring over the making of stockings. Alf had rescued her with the help of the then Ghost of St Giles and had brought Hannah to live at the only safe place for children in St Giles—the Home.
Ever since, Alf had tried to visit the girl several times a week. “And ’ow are you, ’Annah?”
“Go on,” Nell said to the little girl. “Better step out to talk to him and not let the cold in.”
Hannah came out on the step, accompanied by a smaller girl. This one had dark hair and a thumb stuck in her mouth. Both girls were wrapped in shawls against the cold.
“’Oo’s this?” Alf asked, crouching down to the smaller girl’s level.
“Mary Hope,” Hannah said. “She follows me everywhere and she hardly says anything at all. Sometimes I have to speak for her.”
Mary Hope glanced up at Hannah and grinned around her thumb.
“Ah,” Alf said, trying not to smile. “’Ow old are you, then, Mary ’Ope?”
Mary held up five fingers.
“No you’re not,” Hannah scolded. “Your birthday’s not for another fortnight, Nell says. You’re only four now.”
The correction didn’t seem to bother Mary, though. She simply nodded and leaned against Hannah.
The bigger girl gave a great put-upon sigh and wrapped her arm around Mary. “Mr. Makepeace is teaching us to read. Well, he’s teaching me and the big boys and girls. Mary and the little ones just play, mostly.”
“What’re you reading?” Alf asked, amused.
“The Bible,” Hannah said, sounding a little glum. “But Nell sometimes reads the broadsheets to us, and she said that when we’re good at reading we can read them ourselves—though,” Hannah amended conscientiously, “she says as how some bits aren’t for little girls’ eyes.”
“Aye, well, keep at your reading,” Alf said sternly. “You’ll need it to get any sort of good position, understand?”
Hannah nodded solemnly. “Yes, Alf.”
“Good girl.” She fished in her pocket and brought out a shiny shilling. “That’s for studying ’ard.”
Hannah’s face lit up in a grin. “Thank you!”
“And one for you, Mary, as well.” She placed another shilling in Mary Hope’s grubby little fist. “Mind you don’t lose it. Put it somewheres safe.”
“We will,” Hannah said, and uninhibitedly threw her arms around Alf’s neck.
Alf closed her eyes. This was such a lovely thing, this sweet girl’s touch, so fleeting, so momentary. For a second she was no longer a boy but a woman longing with all her heart and soul for the feel of pudgy arms about her neck. What she wouldn’t give to have this always. She felt the whisper of a damp kiss, and then Hannah stepped back, already bouncing with excitement over her shilling.
Mary leaned forward and pressed her warm, damp cheek against Alf’s.
Then the little girls giggled as the door behind them opened.
Nell shooed them inside as Hannah yelled her good-byes for the both of them.
The door closed, and Alf was alone again in the cold.
She sighed and stood slowly, wiped her face with one gloved hand. Sometimes she thought about what it might be like if she didn’t have to say good-bye to Hannah each time she saw the girl. If they could spend more than just a few hurried minutes together.
But that wasn’t possible. Not here. Not now.
Not with the life she led.
Alf shook herself, straightened her shoulders, and set off back the way she’d come, striding briskly.
St Giles was waking up by the time she stepped back out onto Maiden Lane. Porters and peddlers were making their way to the better parts of town. Those who begged and cajoled and sang for a living shuffled along, an outgoing tide as timeless as the Thames’s. The money was in other parts of London, not here. St Giles was where the poor lived and fucked, bred and died, but it wasn’t where they made their pennies.
She nodded to Jim the ragpicker, jerked her chin at Tommy Ginger-Pate, the leader of a gang of street sweeper boys, and stopped to help old Mad Mag, who’d dropped her basket of whisks and brooms. Mad Mag either cursed her or thanked her when the basket was picked up. It was hard to tell because Mag had most of her teeth gone and talked in a strange country accent no one hereabouts could understand.
Alf smiled in any case and went on her way, whistling through her teeth. She turned on Hogshead Lane, jumped the reeking, half-frozen puddle standing just round the corner, and came to the One Horned Goat. Up over her head swung the wooden sign showing a mean-looking goat, no horns on its head but a big ugly prick between its legs.
She pushed open the door to the tavern.
Inside, the place was quiet. Most were either already awake and gone about their business for the day or sleeping off last night’s drink, depending.
Archer, the tavern keep, didn’t bother glancing up as Alf entered. He poured a tankard of small beer, skewered a sizzling sausage from the fry-pan on the hearth, and slapped it on a slice of bread. Alf sat just as the tavern keep set the lot down on a table in front of her.
“Ta,” Alf said, shoving five pennies at the keep. She took a gulp of the beer. The One Horned Goat’s beer was warm, sour, and well watered, and there wasn’t a better wake-me-up in St Giles.
Archer grunted and tilted his greasy head, his bulging eyes rolling to the corner of the room. “Lad as says ’e ’as a message for ’e.”
Alf took a bite of the tasty sausage and stale bread and chewed, glancing at the corner. A boy sat there, his legs spread wide, his face defiant and a little scared. He looked about thirteen, maybe fourteen. She’d never seen him before. He might be new to London. He was definitely new to St Gi
les.
She got up, still chewing, her tankard in one hand, the bread and sausage in the other, and walked over.
The boy’s eyes widened as she neared.
Alf smirked at him. She hooked a foot around a chair and sat across from him, then took a swig of her beer and eyed him as she swallowed.
“Alf.”
The boy just stared at her. He had big blue eyes and curling brown hair he’d tried to slick back into a tail, although it hadn’t quite worked. Pretty wisps of hair curled at his temples and at his nape and ears. One glance and she could tell that he hated his curls. He needn’t have worried, though. Right now his ears and nose and chin were all too big. They matched his hands and elbows and, for all she knew, his feet as well—he was at that age when he was growing all out of control. But in a couple of years, when he had reached his full height? Then, then he’d have to worry.
Because then he’d be handsome.
And in the dark woods of St Giles handsome made you either the monster or the little boy who’d lost his way.
Right now, though, he was only a gangly lad still staring at her.
She stared right back and took a big bite of her bread and sausage and chewed slowly.
With her mouth open.
He frowned.
She swallowed and sighed. “Got a moniker?”
Spots of bright pink bloomed on his face. “Bell.”
She nodded. “’Eard you gots a message for me.”
Bell leaned across the table as if he had the King’s secrets to impart. “My master ’as a job for you.”
“’Oo?”
“The Duke of Kyle,” he said, sounding proud.
“Yeah?”
She took another bite, thinking and making damned sure her face didn’t show anything. A duke. She’d not known Kyle was a duke. But more importantly, why was he calling for her so soon after last night? Had he somehow recognized her under her Ghost mask?
She could feel a jittering under her skin as she asked, “What kind of job?”
Bell frowned again. “Didn’t say. You got to come and ’Is Grace’ll tell you.”
“Oh, ’Is Grace, is it?” Alf grinned.
Bell sounded awed at the title.
She’d met both the Duke of Wakefield and the Duke of Montgomery. The first was like a stone statue of a soldier, all pride and stiff bearing, as if his blood ran as cold as rain in December. The second was mad and dangerous, and as like to thrust a dagger in your gut as hand you a guinea. And despite all that they were but men. They ate and they shit and they could be killed like any other man.
Dukes and night soil men both pissed standing up, as far as she could see. The only difference was where their piss landed.
But if this duke had found her out—had realized that the Ghost was not only a woman but was also Alf—he might very well get her killed. She ought to send this boy on his way. Get out of the One Horned Goat and disappear into St Giles. Lie low for a bit until she was absolutely sure the danger was past.
If there was danger.
Because that was the problem, wasn’t it—she couldn’t be sure. He might only be sending for her for information. For a job.
He had been attacked in St Giles last night, after all.
And damn it, she was curious.
Alf drained her ale in three gulps, slammed down her tankard, and stood with the remains of her breakfast in her fist. “Let’s go, then.”
She waved her bread at Archer in farewell as Bell scrambled after her.
Outside the sun still wasn’t out, and Alf pulled her coat tighter around herself, shoving the rest of her bread and sausage in her mouth. “Which way?”
Bell put on a tricorne and headed west without a word.
Alf shrugged and stuffed her fists under her arms, keeping stride with the boy.
He wore a brown coat—nice cloth, hardly worn—and his shoes were newly polished, too.
“Been working for the duke long, have you?” Alf asked.
The boy ducked his head and glanced sideways at her. He was her height, but spindly like a stork. “Fortnight.”
“Yeah?” They jumped over a half-frozen dead rat in the channel running down the middle of the lane. “How’d you get the work?”
He frowned. “You ask a lot of questions.”
She grinned at him. “It’s my job, innit?”
“My pa was under ’is command,” Bell muttered. “In the army.”
“Was.”
Bell looked down and hunched his shoulders as they passed two butchers’ apprentices arguing. “Pa died of the fever last autumn. Lost ’is leg in India two years ago, ’e did, and was poorly ever since. My ma died when I was but ten, and I hadn’t family to take me in. My pa said the duke would take care of me if ’e couldn’t, so I wrote to the duke and ’Is Grace said as I could come to London and work for ’im. So I did.”
“Ah.” A man who took care of his people, then, was Kyle. “Where’re you from?”
“Sussex.”
“And do you like working for ’im?”
Bell looked at her blankly. “I guess?”
Alf laughed at that. “You’d know if you didn’t.”
They trotted for a bit more as the streets became wider and cleaner, the houses straighter and nicer, and the people better dressed.
At last Bell jerked his chin at one of the tall white buildings, all polished windows and heavy stones. So clean you could eat right off the sparkling front steps if you had a mind to.
Of course they didn’t go up those steps.
No, they went down into the well where the servants’ entrance was and knocked.
A footman answered, a tall fellow in sky-blue-and-purple livery, looking quite smart. If she didn’t know better, she might’ve mistaken him for the duke himself.
But she did know better.
Alf cocked her hip and grinned up at him. “Come to see the duke, I ’ave, good sir. ’E’s expecting me.”
The footman’s broad brow wrinkled in confusion. He’d probably been hired for his looks and his height, not his intelligence.
“Who is it, Gibbons?”
A giant of a butler loomed behind the footman. He had a white wig, a slab of a nose, and a carbuncle face, all pitted and red. He looked down his nose at them and raised one bushy black eyebrow.
Bell seemed to shrink a little.
“’Ow do,” Alf said to the butler. “Was just telling Gibbons ’ere that ’Is Grace is expecting me.”
The butler’s mouth pursed as if he’d accidentally drunk vinegar instead of wine, but he nodded. “This way.”
He turned inside.
Alf winked at Bell and followed the butler, and they all tromped through the house. Belowstairs the walls were painted green and the floor was bare wood, which was normal enough. But then they went through a door and entered where the masters lived and everything changed. The walls were the blue of the sky when the sun came out in summer. There were carved bits on top of the blue that were painted white and sometimes gold. The first time Alf had seen such a thing it’d been in the Duke of Montgomery’s house, and she’d been altogether perplexed. Why put gold on the wall? It had seemed to her like a terrible waste. She’d even tried prying a piece off, just to see if she could. That was when she’d found out that the gold was very thin, almost like paper. Which meant aristocrats took gold and made it into paper and then glued it to their walls.
Madness.
The floor was wood here, too, but there the similarities ended. Here the wood was many-colored and fitted cleverly into an intricate pattern and polished. Alf had the childish urge to linger and study the floor—except she knew the snooty butler wouldn’t bother to stop and wait for her. They passed pretty carved tables, just sitting against the hallway walls for no reason at all. There were paintings of horses and trees and dogs, and even a statue of a man with the legs of a sheep. He had little horns on his head, and she wanted to turn and stare, but the butler had halted before a door.
Alf straightened.
Kyle must be behind that door. He’d sent for her. After she’d kissed him last night. Did he know? Had he recognized her, even in the mask and in the dark?
Her heart seemed to be thumping hard against the bindings covering her breasts.
The butler threw open the door. “Begging your pardon, Your Grace, but Bell is here and he’s brought a… visitor.”
Alf made sure to smile sweetly to the butler as she passed him.
It was a big room with books in cases from ceiling to floor on three walls. At the side of the room nearest the door they’d entered was a hearth with a fire and a chair. Only one chair, though. Maybe Kyle didn’t like company.
He’d been sitting there, in his red leather chair, but he stood and turned to face them as they entered.
Kyle looked nothing like a duke or even a proper aristocrat. He was tall, with big, bulky shoulders, like an Irish prizefighter—the ones who fought bare-chested and bare-knuckled, sweating before shouting crowds. He wore a white linen shirt and neckcloth and a blue coat and gray waistcoat, but she wondered what he looked like under all that nice clean pressed cloth.
What his chest might look like naked and wet with sweat.
Last night his head had been bare, shorn black hair half-covered in blood. This morning he wore a white wig, curled and powdered, but the wig didn’t cover the cut on his forehead. Black stitches like spider legs disappeared under the hairline, with specks of dried blood at the edges, reminding her again of a common brawler.
He was a duke.
She knew that now. Bell had told her, and she’d seen the gold on the walls and the paintings of horses and the ridiculously snooty butler. But his eyes were black, framed by curling lashes, and he hadn’t shaved and he looked like a highwayman with cynically twisted thick lips. He looked like one of those rogues the molls in St Giles loved to sing romantic ballads about in the taverns. A man born to hang.
A man born to break a woman’s heart.
She met his black eyes and cocked her head, waiting.
“Alf,” he said, his voice rasping and deep, making her quim clench under her boys’ smallclothes. “I was attacked last night in St Giles by hired ruffians. I want you to find out who they were and, more importantly, who hired them.”