Loving Julia Read online

  “Not too likely, Willy,” Jewel responded. Her tone held the respect an apprentice owes a master, and the old man grinned at her before moving on. She didn’t like the idea that word would soon be out on the streets that Jewel Combs had turned whore, but there was nothing she could do about it.

  “ ’ist, ya bleedin’ wantwit, keep yer mind about ya! ’Ere comes a ripe ’un.”

  Jem’s near shout of a whisper came from a recessed doorway some few feet behind Jewel. Jewel looked up quickly to see a young man, a toff by the evidence of his fancy wine coat and tan breeches. He was staggering down the street and she was amazed that she had not noticed him some ten minutes earlier. He was singing “God Save the Queen” at the top of his lungs; the sound echoed off the narrow buildings to provide its own ringing chorus. From his singing, to say nothing of the way he stopped to lean a hand against a storefront for support from time to time, it was clear that he was extremely well to live. Jewel’s eyes gleamed as he passed beneath a streetlight, and she saw that he was very young, not yet twenty, she guessed. An easy pigeon to pluck, she thought with relief. Mick should have no excuse to rough him up at all.

  The old whore in the faded dress perked up and started toward the yodeling newcomer. A furious mutter from behind her reminded Jewel that she had better make a move fast. As drunk as this young toff was, he was unlikely to be discriminating in his appraisal of female flesh.

  “Sorry, ducks, but this gent be mine,” Jewel said as she overtook the old whore. Sidling up to the gentleman, she slid a hand caressingly up his velvet sleeve, giving the other woman an ungentle shove with her hips at the same time.

  “I saw ’im first!” the whore screeched as she recovered from her sideways totter, glaring at Jewel, who glared back. Both were prepared to fight for their prize like hungry mongrels, if need be.

  “This is-is most flattering, ladies, but b-believe me, there is no need,” the gentleman interrupted, his eyes blinking as he focused on first one then the other of them. Jewel was ready to swear that he could not differentiate between them. He was really magnificently dog-bitten; the odor of rum hung about him like the old whore’s cheap perfume.

  Jewel glared at the other woman, who was trying to edge back into contention, then smiled at the young gentleman with exaggerated sweetness, thrusting her chest forward provocatively. He was not to know that her ripe looking curves had been greatly enhanced by the old rags she had thrust down into the too full bosom of her dress to fill it out and force her own small breasts upward. From above, all a gentleman could see was creamy, ripe looking flesh.

  “Listen, you bitch, that’s my fella!” The old whore, enraged by Jewel’s success in fixing the gentleman’s attention at last, gave the younger girl a hearty shove. Jewel staggered, keeping herself upright by her hold on the gentleman’s coat—he staggered with her—then swung on the other woman, her lips parted in a vicious snarl.

  “Get on away from ’ere, ya scraggy ol’ witch, afore I knock yer block off! Ya ’ear me, now?”

  “I tell ya, ’e’s mine!”

  The battle was about to begin in earnest when the gentleman stepped between them, shaking his head with regret. Under the gaslight Jewel noticed with the tiny part of her mind that was not focused on her rival that his hair was very blond….

  “Ladies, I beg you, do not fight over me. I find you both very, very fetching, but, uh, well, to be quite frank, tonight I fear I am not quite … quite myself. To be perfectly plain with you, I do not … do not think I am … capable of the feat you require. So sorry, ladies.”

  With a lopsided grin he bowed in the general direction of the lamppost and started to lurch away. Desperate, Jewel grabbed at his arm. She could not let him get away now.

  “Wait! I, uh, seein’ as yer so ’andsome an’ all, I’ll give it ter ya real cheap. Yer sure ter my taste, guvnor.” She smiled at him and rolled her eyes in the way that she had seen the whores do. He smiled back at her, and for a moment she thought she had him. Then he shook his head.

  “You’re a pretty wench, I think. I can’t quite see properly at the moment. Are you hard up for cash? If so, I’ll be glad to make you a little … a little loan….” With that he reached into his pocket and pulled out a purse that bulged at the seams. Jewel’s eyes bulged nearly as much as he opened it, and peeled off a couple of notes from the pile to tuck into her bodice. Hardly feeling his fingers brushing her flesh, she could not tear her eyes from the thick roll of notes remaining in the purse. It must contain hundreds of pounds—a fat pigeon indeed, and she was losing him!

  “I’m ’ard up too, sir,” whined the whore, and if looks could kill the older woman would have been stretched out dead at Jewel’s feet. She was sure she could get him to at least walk with her a little way—far enough to where Jem and Mick could drag him into an alley—if only the old bitch would go away!

  The toff tucked some notes into the crack between the other woman’s fat breasts, smiled seraphically at the pair of them, and again started to lurch away. Down the street a ways, a ramshackle tavern belched forth a quartet of shabby revelers; joining arms, they staggered off in the opposite direction. The toff followed happily in their wake, and Jewel ground her teeth. Then, with a single seething glance at her rival, she would have gone after the toff, but the older woman stopped her with a hand on her arm.

  “We need to ’ave us a little chat, lovey,” she purred menacingly, her grime encrusted nails digging into the soft flesh of Jewel’s upper arm. Jewel turned, feeling the roots of her hair tighten with temper. Hissing like an enraged cat, she started to give the woman the roundhouse punch she had been asking for. But the sound of the toff’s voice, high pitched with drunken indignation, jolted her attention back to him.

  “You. Just what do you think you’re doing?” The young gentleman was protesting in vain at being force-marched down the street between Jem and Mick. The three were nearly of a height, but their burliness and rough clothes overwhelmed his slender, fashionably dressed person.

  “I say now, this isn’t quite-quite cricket!” He was struggling, but the effort was wasted. Jewel watched in consternation as Mick wrapped his burly arms around the toff in a bone crushing hug, lifted him from his feet, and bore him back into the sheltering darkness of a narrow alley.

  “Let me go, ya ol’ windbag,” Jewel hissed at the whore, who was gaping at the now empty alley entrance. When the woman was slow to obey, Jewel shoved her so hard that she stumbled backward and, tripping over a loose cobblestone, sat down hard in the gutter that was running over with filth.

  The woman howled as she struggled to her feet, but Jewel scarcely spared her a glance. She picked up her voluminous skirt in both hands and sped down the street. Even before she reached the alley, she heard the sickening thud of blows and the groans of someone in pain. By the time she rounded the corner into the narrow, shadow filled darkness, the toff was lying on his back behind a heap of garbage while Jem wrestled his purse away from him. Despite, or perhaps because of, his drunken state, the young man was determined to hang onto his purse. He and Jem engaged in a fruitless tug of war until Mick settled the matter by aiming a vicious kick to the toff’s ribs. The gentleman cried out, doubling up as Jem quickly stuffed the purse into the capacious pockets of his coat. Then Jem ran his hands over the still groaning, writhing victim, quickly extracting his watch, fobs and other gewgaws and storing them in his pockets alongside the purse.

  “C’mon, c’mon, the two of ya!” He gestured to them to follow him, then scuttled furtively away without waiting for either one of them. Jewel, watching Mick gloat over the moaning, curled up man on the ground, seeing the blood that was the same color as her dress drip from the toff’s battered face to speckle the cobblestones, felt her stomach heave. There had been no need for such brutality; as drunk as he was, they should have been able to take this pigeon’s purse with no trouble at all.

  “Bloody thieving bastards!” the toff groaned.

  To Jewel’s horror he came up off the p
avement, lunging upward with his clenched fist leading the way. He caught Mick square on the nose; Mick groaned and jumped back, while the toff’s momentum sent him staggering off balance against the brick wall of the alley. Blood spurting from his nose, Mick jumped toward the toff, who was trying to get away on unsteady legs. Jewel saw the glint of a knife in Mick’s hand as it plunged toward the other man’s back.

  “Stop!” Jewel screamed, running toward the fused pair. But even as she reached them Mick stepped back. The knife in his fist was red to the hilt with blood. Dark crimson welled from a slit

  in the gentleman’s claret coat; his hands clawed against the smoke darkened brick as he sank down slowly, so slowly, to lie on his side on the cobblestones.

  “You’ve done for ’im, ya bloody idiot!” Jewel screeched as she knelt beside the man, staring at his inert body with horror.

  Mick glared at her for a moment, then bent down to wipe the bloody knife on the tail of his victim’s coat. He straightened, sliding the knife inside his coat before turning those hard black eyes on Jewel.

  “You’d best keep yer tongue between yer teeth about this if ya know wot’s good fer ya.”

  Jewel nodded jerkily, knowing that Mick wouldn’t hesitate to use his knife on her if he even suspected she might peach on him.

  Mick grunted, apparently satisfied with her response. “C’mon then, let’s get the ’ell away from ’ere. The watch’ll be along soon.”

  Before she could even get to her feet, he was walking rapidly away. As Jewel stared after him, he began to run.

  She was just about to follow him when the man at her feet groaned. Looking down, she saw that he was moving his arm. So he was not dead—yet. But if he did die, what Mick had done would be murder. And she and Jem were involved up to their necks. Damn Mick anyway! He’d be the death of them all!

  Jewel blanched as she recalled the exact penalty for murder. Oh, God, she didn’t want to die after watching her intestines being burned before her eyes! Would she be considered responsible for the toff’s death, though she had not wielded the knife? She thought of their lay, and her mouth went dry. Sure she would. She had lured the pigeon … Then the toff groaned again.

  She couldn’t just leave him. Cursing, uttering every foul word she had ever heard under her breath, she dropped to her knees beside him. His eyes opened for a second.

  “Call the watch,” he muttered before his eyes closed again.

  Jewel shuddered. The watch might come along at any moment. They might even have heard the fight. If she saw them coming, she could run, knowing that he would not be left to die on the street alone. But all hell would break loose if the toff was found bloody and dying on the street. If he died, it would be murder. If he didn’t, he could identify them all.

  Jewel’s blood ran cold. She had to do something fast. Wetting her dry lips, she caught the collar of the toff’s fancy coat in both hands, and heaved. He was senseless as she began to drag him away, scant inches at a time, his passage marked by a trail of blood. For all his slender build, he was heavy, and again Jewel considered leaving him and running away like Mick and Jem. But surely it was better, whether he should die or live, to have him do so off the street and out of sight.

  II

  Two days later Jewel stood at the foot of a rusty iron bedstead, chewing on her lower lip as she watched Father Simon, the old priest who roamed the back slums of Whitechapel in search of souls to save, administer the last rites to the fair haired boy who lay as one already dead. Pale as a wax figure, dark rings circling sunken eyes, breath rattling stertorously through colorless lips, he no longer looked like a toff. He looked about sixteen, and Jewel’s eyes burned as she watched the ritual movements of the priest.

  Death was nothing new to her; she had seen it before, from the time she held the cold and still corpse of her mother, dead of the wasting disease and too much drink, in her seven-year-old arms, to her present day frequent encounters with old winos curled in the gutters in death as they were in life. But this—this healthy young man for whose dying she had to shoulder some share of blame—was different. Though she had schooled herself to care nothing about him, she found that despite everything her heart was not yet that callous.

  The flat they were in belonged to Willy Tilden. She had brought the toff to it because it was close, and because she had thought Willy might dare to go against Jem and help her. If Willy hadn’t agreed to shelter her, she didn’t know what she would have done. She was grateful he had, although she had no doubt that Willy would eventually expect to be paid. He had been eyeing her sort of funny for the last two days, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out what was in his mind. To Willy, it probably seemed like the most natural thing in the world for her to pay for putting him out of his bed by putting herself in it. That was a problem she would have to deal with once the toff was gone.

  At first she had thought that she herself could return to the warehouse as soon as the toff passed over. But in the hours and days since she had dragged him off the street, she had come to realize that returning to Jem’s fold after this might not be the wisest thing she had ever done: She was a witness to what would be murder when the young man died, and Mick wouldn’t like knowing that there was someone who could testify against him if he was ever brought before Old Bailey. Mick was bound to be sweating now, wondering what had become of her and the toff. He was probably lying low, keeping off the streets in case the Bow Street runners were already searching for him, as they would have been if Jewel had been taken by the watch and had peached. Knowing Mick, she could not be sure that he was not thinking of another murder—hers. And maybe Jem was, too. You never knew about Jem. But she did know that she was a threat to their safety, and they didn’t like any kind of threat. And the knowledge scared her.

  So she had stayed in Willy Tilden’s one room flat, stuck with a dying toff who had succeeded in almost making her cry for the first time in years. Father Simon, who had had some experience with wounds as a young corpsman at Waterloo some twenty-seven years before, said it wouldn’t be long now. Probably in less than a day the young man would be dead. And Jewel would be left with no money, no home to go back to, no friends she could trust. She would have to disappear—only she hadn’t quite figured out where she was going to go. The City was a bleak, unwelcoming place when one had no money and no friends.

  The toff groaned, which he had been doing intermittently since she had wrested him out of his coat and boots, bandaged him up and put him to bed. His eyes opened, and he peered blindly around the room. Both of his eyes were swollen almost shut from Mick’s blows, and a deep bruise purpled the right side of his jaw. Except for the blood stained makeshift bandage she had contrived for him from one of Willy’s shirts, he was naked to the waist. His skin, except for a faint sprinkling of fair hairs, was nearly as white and soft as her own. Clearly he had been pampered and indulged all his life.

  As Jewel watched him now, he kicked fretfully at the thin, grimy blanket covering him, muttered something, and closed his eyes again. He had been out of his mind ever since he had lost consciousness right after the stabbing. But Father Simon didn’t know that the toff had been rambling deliriously off and on for two days, so he leaned over the boy, saying, “Yes, my son?” There was no response from the toff, as Jewel had foreseen. She shook her head, and moved to the side of the bed to touch the priest on his black-clad arm.

  “ ’e can’t ’ear ya, Father.”

  “No.” The priest sighed, turning to look at her out of red-rimmed eyes. The bottle was Father Simon’s vice, and the effects of it showed in the old man’s florid complexion and bloodshot eyes. But his hands as they administered the sacraments were steady, and when he was not blathering on about hellfire and damnation he could be kind.

  “Who is he? Has he a family to be notified?”

  “I—I don’ know,” Jewel answered nervously, looking down at the patient as he tossed upon the bed. “Like I tole ya, I, uh, I foun’ ’im like this, jest lyin’ in the str
eet. I-I couldn’ jest leave ’im. But ’e ain’t got no purse … uh, not that I was lookin’ for it, mind, ’cept for somethin’ to identify him with.”

  Father Simon snorted. “Robbed, no doubt. Well, someone will come looking for him most likely. He’s one of the nobs, or I miss my guess.” His eyes narrowed on Jewel thoughtfully. “Mighty Christian of you, to take care of him like this.”

  Jewel shrugged, taking care not to meet the priest’s eyes. “I tole ya, I jest couldn’ leave ’im lay.”

  “Hmmm.” Jewel wasn’t sure what that meant, and she thought it safer not to ask. But Father Simon continued. “Word’s out that you’ve left Jemmy. Word’s out he’s looking for you.”

  “Is ’e?” Jewel looked at the priest now, wide-eyed. What she saw there made her relax a little. He seemed to be concerned for her, and she remembered that he had always seemed to like her. But she remembered, too, that things ain’t always what they seem. She wasn’t sure just what his lay was, but she was sure that she wasn’t going to go all soft and weepy and pour out her troubles to him. If he knew, he could go to the Bow Street runners—or even Jem or Mick—and give her up. And then where would she be? But before she could frame a reasonable reply, the toff groaned again, and the priest turned back to him.

  “Who the devil are you?” The toff spoke in a barely audible whisper, staring straight at the priest as he did so. His pale blue eyes looked awake and aware despite the pain that filled them. Father Simon, to whom the words were addressed, replied softly with the information that he was a priest.