Chapter 20: ILL MET BY GASLIGHT

After a morning spent reading the instructions for the Military Advisor to the Grand Duchy of Tuscany I went out for a stroll, and in fact dropped into Boodles. I needed some company and coffee, and thought I might later walk past Madame Whipcrack’s establishment in St James’s Square, just round the corner from Boodles.
I had no intention of taking General Fitzwarren’s advice, but as I was in the neighbourhood a saunter past the house was warranted. As it happened I fell in with some old cronies from the Sixty Ninth and never made it to St James’s Square.
On arrival back at Rob’s I did my usual heavy-footed warning of approach. The two lovebirds were on the Chesterfield, obviously having just broken away from a heavy embrace at my entrance. I bid them a good afternoon, and went straight into my room to continue reading the briefing papers.

There was a great deal of verbiage concerned with the administration of the training team, and of the military skills the Greeks were to learn. The latter was extremely detailed, encompassing such arcane information as the minimum and maximum times permitted for a fully trained man to load a musket, to the optimum length of a soldier’s hair, and many other equally insignificant and largely irrelevant minutiae.
It was dark when I finished reading the many sheets of paper, and as Rob and Bridey were still entwined in the withdrawing room I decided to go for a walk and clear my head. I announced my intention to the loving pair, who had pulled away from each other, hastily rearranging their clothing, when I entered the room.

“But it’s pitch black outside, “Bridey said. “ You don’t have to leave on our account. Rob will be escorting me back to the Slades in a half hour, and you will then have the place to yourself.”

“I have been staring at dull paperwork for the past several hours, and need to clear my head. I shall take a stroll along Pall Mall – the gas lamps will give plenty of illumination.”

Bridey was horrified. “The place is the haunt of harlots, who linger beneath the lamps advertising their wares. You should not be going down there only a year after your wife...” She stopped in confusion. “Forgive me, Colonel. I have no right to tell you what you may and may not do.”

I went and kissed her cheek. “I know what you said was for my benefit, Bridey, and I thank you for it. But I do indeed require some fresh air, and swear I will not be tempted down the road to damnation – and as you are to marry my good friend Rob I suggest you now address me as ‘Jack’, as he does.” I paused before walking to the door. “In any event having sexual congress on a cold winter’s night outdoors is not something I would have contemplated, even when Caroline was alive.”

“Some of the whores in Pall Mall hire hackney carriages, and ‘entertain’ their customers as the carriage makes the circuit of Green Park,” Bridey informed me.

“Is that what your cab driving colleagues do of an evening when customers are few, Rob?”

“Unfortunately, Jack, some cab drivers are also pimps, and the women who use the cabs to conduct their business are in their employ, sometimes willingly but more often under duress, which can be physical, mental, or economic. When I left the army and first set up as a cabby, I was approached to join a firm which made a good living from the exploitation of young females who had been seduced, impregnated, then thrown out of their homes or employment, and have to go on the streets to survive.”

“More often than not the girls were in domestic employment,” Bridey chimed in. “They would have been seduced by the master of the house, and if falling pregnant turned out of the very house where the poor girl had been defiled, and deflowered. ‘Tis a crying shame, so it is, how women always suffer from the lust of men.”

This was not the first time I had heard that lament, and I thanked G – no, not that figment of people’s imagination – fate, I had been born a male.

As I walked toward Pall Mall I convinced myself I was really just clearing my head, and not looking for a sexual adventure. John Thomas had reawakened at the Rothsteins a week ago, and I had kissed Judith Rothstein with a passion and longing not experienced since the death of Caroline.
If General Fitzwarren’s advice was added to my growing awareness of the pleasures of the flesh, then Bridey may have seen through my flimsy excuse for this walk on the wild side.
I well knew of the reputation of Pall Mall and Green Park at night, and told myself I was walking purely for the exercise, not for any sexual encounter.

I was not the only male taking the night air, and marvelling at the gas illuminations, or at least this is what we would answer if asked why we were walking along Pall Mall at this hour.
There were several young women loitering under the flaring lamps, and although not advertising their wares by lifting their skirts to reveal what they had to offer, as did the whores around Covent Garden, it was plain they were for hire.
One particular female caught my eye. She was not dressed in revealing garments, as were most of the other harlots, but her expensive and well-tailored clothing showed her shapely form to full advantage. However, it was her air of a shy, reserved, almost virginal, young girl – akin to that of Susannah Proctor, the rector’s wife in Wiltshire, who had been a veritable Messalina under her prim and proper exterior – which took my attention.

The girl spoke as I came up to her.

“Good evening, Colonel. Would you care to take a trip around the park for a guinea, or perhaps a trip around the world for two?”

Several things struck me. The first: her modulated and well-bred voice. The second: she had correctly recognised my rank. Most whores addressed all military men as ‘general’ and all sailors as ‘admiral’. The third: the exorbitant price charged for a gallop with this maiden of the night.
I judged the girl to be no more than twenty years of age, possibly younger, as she still had the bloom of youth about her, indicating she had not long been on the game. The gilt soon rubs off the gingerbread when walking the streets.
It was the first time I had been offered anything other than ‘a good time’ by a whore, and I stopped, not to take her up on her invitation but to find out what a trip around the park and one around the world, entailed, and why they should cost so much.

She smiled at my questions. “I provide my guests, who I refer to as explorers – for they will be venturing into unknown, almost virgin, territory – a more satisfying experience than frantic frenzied fumblings up against a tree, or a quick conjunction on the grass.” She indicated a brougham carriage parked at the bottom of Pall Mall in Cleveland Street. “My carriage will circumnavigate Green Park, while the explorer and I fornicate in upholstered comfort.” She actually blushed as she uttered the ‘f’ word.

“And a trip around the world?”

Again I noted the scarlet flush of embarrassment on her cheek when she replied.
“A circumnavigation of the park in the cab, with the added enhancement of the explorer being permitted to visit all ports of call – my three portals of pleasure – during his voyage of discovery.”

I shook my head. “The cost is rather more than I would expect to pay, my dear, even for one as comely as you.”

Her look was measured and confident. “Although the cost is certainly well above the going rate I can assure you the experience is well worth the asking price. If all you want is a quick, cheap, tumble there are ‘lift my skirt for a shilling’ whores a plenty in Covent Garden.”

The cab driver, who had been sitting on the driver’s bench of the brougham, had got down and now swaggered over to us.

“Come on, Lill, time is money, and you owe too much to be gabbing to this cove.” He gave her a vicious slap. “Get him in the cab and into your mutton jildi, else you’ll have my fist in your clacking gob.”
He glowered at me. “You’ve already had a shilling worth of talk, so give me the rest, or you’ll get the same as this lazy bitch.”
He brandished a fist, but my blade was out from my boot top and had sliced off his ear before he, or I, knew it.
At times like these I let my demon take over my brain and body, and the demon caused me to kick the bullyboy in his testicles, and then in his belly, as he rolled on the ground screaming and bleeding.
He stopped screaming when I stamped on his head.

“Is he dead?” The girl – Lill – held a hand to her face where the man had hit her.
Blood poured from where his ear had once been.

“I think not.”

“What a shame. He is a bully and a sadist, and I bear the bruises to prove it.” She kneeled down alongside him and searched through the pockets of his jacket, withdrawing a document, which she held in the light from the gas lamp to read.
“This is what I want. I am now free of the brute.”
As I helped her to her feet she said. “I shall take much pleasure in cutting the swine’s throat; will you lend me your knife?”
To say I was shocked at her request is putting it mildly.

“You would be hanged for murder – is his death worth yours?”

“Ridding the world of scum like Barton Seagrave should have me rewarded, not punished. He has raped me, dishonoured me, debauched me, and deprived me of my freedom. Justice demands I kill him. Would you deny me justice, Colonel?”
I glanced around me. The altercation with the cab driver seemed to have gone unnoticed; screams were not unknown, and largely ignored, in this area of London. In any case the harlots and their eager customers were too engrossed with bargaining and bartering to pay heed to what else was going on under the flickering gas lamps.

“Very well, but first we must rob him to make it appear footpads had done the murder – for that is what it will be, Lill.”

“My name is Lillian, only that pig called me Lill. Murder it may be, but I deserve revenge for the sordid violations he inflicted on my body, and those he allowed others to carry out.”