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“Congratulations, sir,” Dingle told D’Arcy with the enthusiasm of an undertaker just denied a corpse. He scuttled over to a small Chinese cabinet in a corner and retrieved what appeared to be a dusty bottle of ancient sherry and several grimy glasses.
D’Arcy collapsed into a small armchair. It had been an exhausting month. The biography had been published a little over a week earlier and was already the scandal of London, Scotland, and the Continent, the coverage of which was only matched by the reportage of an unusually severe outbreak of cholera just streets away from D’Arcy’s own dwellings, ironically in Golden Square in Soho, the very square in which dwelled both Harry the chimney sweep and Prudence. Swept away by the demands of his literary success, D’Arcy hadn’t even had time to read about the outbreak, never mind actually visit his two new “friends.” Life had become a whirlwind of press appointments, interviews, several public lectures, invitations to numerous salons both literary and social, and a worrying demand to appear before a committee of the Royal Institute to explain his source material. There was even a rumor that Her Majesty herself had made a request for a covert delivery of the book. D’Arcy Hammer had become the enfant terrible of the literary world overnight, and London couldn’t have enough of him.
“Banned? But surely that would be the ruin of me, Crosby!”
“The ruin? It will be your making. Everyone lusts after the clandestine, my dear young author. Isn’t that right, Mr. Bingham?” Crosby asked the framed portrait of his esteemed but deceased partner. “After all, where would the Bible be without Mary Magdalene, Justine without the notoriety of the Marquis de Sade, Elisha without Jezebel?” he added obliquely. “Besides,” he said, turning back to D’Arcy, “they wouldn’t dare to actually ban you.” With a clatter, Dingle plonked down a tray with four glasses and the bottle of sherry onto a small table before the desk, then poured out four drinks. He placed one solemnly under the portrait of Mr. Bingham, the
n handed a glass each to D’Arcy and Crosby. The publisher raised his glass.
“Gentlemen, I propose a toast—to both Hermes and Dionysus. Long may they rain down good fortune upon this dear young author!” The three men had just clinked and then lifted their glasses to drink when a loud and persistent ring of the front doorbell interrupted them. It was a messenger from Horace Tuttle’s publisher and main rival of Bingham and Crosby, the notorious and ruthless Bill Scrunch. The messenger, a young man with sleek, oiled black hair reaching down below his ears and a well-cut suit, dusty at the trouser cuffs from running, silently held out a plain white envelope.
“A challenge, sir?” Crosby, whose hatred of Scrunch rivaled D’Arcy’s hatred of Tuttle, spat, then silently ordered Dingle to take the envelope from the messenger as if he did not wish to demean himself by touching it.
“It might be, then again it might not, but Mr. Scrunch told me to tell you you’ve got till this evening to respond,” the messenger informed him. Then, after a flick of his coattails and a short, mocking bow, he departed.
Once the door had slammed behind him, Mr. Crosby tore open the envelope and scanned the contents. He looked grimly across at D’Arcy.
“It is from Horace Tuttle. He claims your biography contains fictionalized material and he queries your sources. He has challenged you to a public debate, to be held in the Great Hall of the Royal Exhibition Building this Wednesday afternoon.”
“But that is only two days away! I refuse to lower myself to his pettiness!”
The publisher carefully placed the letter upright and open on the mantelpiece above the small grate. He considered D’Arcy thoughtfully until his uncharacteristic silence rattled the young writer. “D’Arcy, the material is authentic, is it not?” Crosby finally asked.
Startled by this new vein of skepticism, D’Arcy leapt to his feet. “I swear, Crosby, I would never have endangered both your reputation and mine!” Appalled, he stepped toward the door. The publisher patted his arm reassuringly, then led him back into the room. “In which case we will pick up the glove with relish. You must take up his challenge; you must attend the debate and defeat him with great wit! It will be a triumph of publicity. Why, Dingle, draw up the leaflet immediately! We shall emphasize youthful innovation over old prejudice. . . . Of course, naturally you will be required to produce the secret journal and verify your sources.”
“Naturally,” the young biographer replied, and if there was any doubt behind his veneer of brazen confidence he did not let it show.
The next morning, D’Arcy was woken by Henries clutching the morning papers—the headlines all screamed CHOLERA!. The newspapers warned local residents to stay clear of Golden Square and the infected borough of Soho. “Sir, I strongly suggest that you adjourn to your father’s estate or at least stay indoors for the duration of this pestilence. I am convinced this would be your father’s wish, young D’Arcy,” the butler counseled.
“I cannot. I am to attend a public debate tomorrow, Henries, and my reputation will be in ruins if I should miss it,” D’Arcy replied. In fact despite the cholera outbreak, he was determined to visit Golden Square himself in order to see Harry, the chimney sweep, to ask him if he would consider giving a verbal confirmation of his discovery of the secret journal at the very same debate. Fortunately for Henries, D’Arcy kept this decision to himself, and it was only after both the old butler and his wife had retired to their own quarters that the biographer ventured out onto the streets of the West End.
• • •
D’Arcy stood at the curb of Regent Street, now the great divide between the diseased and the unaffected, and looked down Beak Street. Behind him stretched the affluent, disease-free borough of Mayfair, where fashionably clad shoppers and pedestrians still thronged the pavement, whereas before him there was a distinct lack of humanity. He lifted a handkerchief that he had drenched in an herbal concoction he’d purchased that was meant to ward off the toxic miasma blamed for spreading the noxious disease. After a silent prayer to Thoth, Zeus, and any other deity he thought would be sympathetic, he hesitantly crossed Regent Street.
D’Arcy plunged into the narrow and dingy Beak Street. Normally a hive of colorful commerce and frenetic activity, this evening it was strangely desolate. Most of the businesses and shops were boarded up as many, fearing contamination, had fled to other parts of London or relatives in the countryside. The only business still open appeared to be the Lion’s brewery on Broad Street. An old woman scuttled past, her gaze held steadily downward, as if to look at him would be to invite the contagion. It was a disturbing and eerie sensation. Increasingly anxious, he made his way down to Golden Square.
A good half of the tall houses had their blinds pulled down, while many had black cloth displayed in their windows, an indication that there had been a death or deaths in that particular building. Fearing the worst, D’Arcy walked down to number ten, Harry the sweep’s lodgings.
He stood outside staring up, not daring to enter. Black cloth hung in the windows of the first two floors, but he couldn’t see the top window of Harry’s family’s lodgings. The small girl he’d encountered before on those very same steps months earlier, when he was a very different man, was still sitting there, seemingly impervious to the grim atmosphere, engrossed in a game of marbles. She looked up at him. “Who are you after?”
“Harry the sweep.”
She held out her hand, the nails broken and filthy. Pushing down a wave of nausea that swept through him, D’Arcy, careful not to touch her, dropped a penny into her palm.
“Harry the sweep, top floor?” she asked in a voice flat with lack of emotion.
D’Arcy nodded, his handkerchief pressed against his nose and mouth; he dared not breathe in.
“Gone. Sunday morning, carried off by the cholera. His mum and a sister followed. I got her hoop,” she finished with a certain pragmatic triumph.
Shocked, D’Arcy stumbled, then ran back to the safety of Mayfair.
• • •
Once returned to the sanctuary of his own study, D’Arcy stood nonplussed for a moment—it was hard to believe such youth and beauty could be wiped out so indiscriminately. Harry’s presence now lingered before him, imprinted on both his memory and body. He could still taste his sweat, could still cast his mind back to that night the young sweep possessed him with such audacity. They had been linked by sex and magic, but also by discovery. But most disastrously of all, now that his only witness was dead, what chance did D’Arcy have to prove the legitimacy of his research, other than by his own word? His dilemma was interrupted by a tentative knock at the door. It was Henries informing him that he had an unexpected visitor—a Mr. Horace Tuttle—who insisted that he see him immediately.
• • •
