The Lion's Courtship: An Anna Kronberg Mystery Read online

  She squints, as though his angry Irish accent would slide down easier that way.

  ‘They’re one o’ the mad ones! Havin’ four or five houses here with people like tha’! The fella ya knocked out? What did he do to ya?’

  ‘He fucked the girl.’

  ‘Well, congratulations!’ He chucks her bag on the pavement, arms waving. ‘’E might ’ave, and all others migh’ ’ave, too! Ya didn’ hit ’em. Want ter go back and make up for it?’

  ‘Why did you follow me?’

  ‘Ya went into tha’ house, goddammit! Everyone ’ere knows they’re mad. It’s like an asylum for insane vermin. Only tha’ the bars are missing and ’em inmates seek each other out. There is nothing in their heads, didn’t ya see tha’? She wanted ya to sell her babe, knowing that ya get a better price for it and tha’ ya won’t keep the money for yerself!’

  Anna nods, steps forward, and picks up her bag. ‘Stop shouting at me. Stop throwing my medical instruments about, and most of all — stop believing I need your help,’ she snarls and walks away.

  After a few yards, she hears his footfalls yet again. ‘Fancy a tea?’ There’s an apologetic tint in his voice.

  She groans, her eyes search the tips of her boots for an appropriate answer. ‘Brandy.’

  He exhales in relief. ‘Sounds good. I know a place. It’s on me tonight,’ he says as though they regularly went for a drink. He takes the bag from her hand and walks by her side.

  ‘You know,’ she begins, ‘this is one of those nights I wish I lived in the countryside.’

  ‘You are naive.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘That life is tough. You get up before sunrise, work hard all day, go to bed late.’

  ‘I know,’ she says again, wondering how he could not know that this life is much harder.

  ‘I grew up on a farm, a small sheep farm. My father taught me everything about it. How to care for the lambing ewes. How to move a herd, handle the dogs. When I was this tall,’ Garret points to his knee, ‘I helped my mother score and comb the wool. She always had soft hands…’ he trails off.

  Anna flicks her gaze to his large hands and tries to imagine them much smaller, the size of a boy’s, helping a newborn lamb to reach its mother’s teats.

  ‘Here we are,’ he says a minute later, opening the door of a public house for her. She reads “The Rat’s Tail” scrawled in white paint over the door, then she’s hit in the face by noise and tobacco smoke so thick one could move it with a shovel.

  ‘Two brandies!’ Garret slams a coin on the greasy wood.

  He hands one glass to Anna. His eyes widen as she chucks it all down in one fluid move. ‘Another one?’

  ‘Hmm,’ she agrees, tension slowly peeling off her. ‘Do you have siblings?’

  He turns away; his mouth sags. The word, ‘Sister,’ is barely audible. Garret’s gaze sweeps the room. Suddenly, his bow crinkles and his eyes get stuck on something behind her back. She has no time to turn around. His fist flies past her face. A thud and a grunt behind her, then Garret shouts, ‘Blasted cockchafer!’ grabs her hand, and pushes past the clientele, parting the crowd like a large ship parts the ocean.

  ‘What was that about?’ she cries, once outside.

  ‘Tha’ fella... I know ’im. ‘E was ’bout ’ter…’ He looks down at her small hand in his large one. ‘Never mind.’

  She wiggles free and he’s surprised by the twinge of disappointment this small gesture brings. ‘Sorry for tha’… word.’

  ‘Which one do you mean?’ she barks. ‘The blasted or the cockchafer?’

  Garret’s face reddens considerably. ‘Never thought a woman like you would say that.’

  ‘I live in St Giles,’ she reminds him and walks ahead, tired and impatient with his brutishness.

  ‘You grew up in the countryside?’ he calls after her.

  A smile scampers across her lips. He had listened. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In Germany.’

  ‘Ha! And I thought you were Dutch.’ He laughs. ‘I knew a Dutch sailor once. Tattooed all over, that fella.’ He gestures at his chest, his large arms thrashing like windmill blades. ‘His ship got lost on its way down to India.’

  Anna thinks of the Atlantic ocean, the waves rolling the vessel this way and that, the sunsets, and the vastness of the sea. She hums to herself.

  ‘Have you seen the ocean?’ he says. ‘Oh, you must have!’ He slaps his forehead. ‘I meant the real ocean, not the channel.’

  ‘No. Never,’ she lies and turns away. ‘It’s late. I need to go home.’

  He nods, surprised his chest would answer her dismissal with a painful clench. ‘Oh!’ says Garret. ‘I don’t even know your name.’

  She laughs. ‘I’m sorry, I thought I’d introduced myself weeks ago. Anna Kronberg.’

  ‘Nice to meet you, Anna.’

  ‘I’m a widow,’ she lies.

  On their silent way back, Garret decides that he’ll keep an eye on this woman. Someone will take advantage of her someday, he is certain.

  As they reach the door to her house, he stops and speaks to his hands. ‘The fella in the pub was a pickpocket and a burglar. He tried to steal your money.’

  ‘I noticed. I was about to tell him that I had nothing.’

  ‘But we all know you’re a nurse. You must earn at least fifty pounds a year.’ He looks at her as though he is offended.

  ‘And we all know,’ she replies, ‘that the nurse will leave if she doesn’t feel safe here. And we all know that good pickpockets, burglars, or whores earn more than fifty pounds annually.’ With that she turns and leaves him standing on the slick cobblestones.

  Why, then, do you live here? Garret wonders. There is no reason for a non-criminal to seek refuge in a rookery.

  Whores

  As she turns into Clark’s Mews, she cannot help but imagine the odour of rancid globs of ejaculate. Of course, one cannot smell it down here — not yet, not so close to the gutters and far from the moist sheets.

  Girls and women between eleven and forty years of age litter the pavement. Their faces show anxiety, annoyance, or boredom. All customers were driven off by recent events. Income will be scarce for an hour or two, but once the winds have settled, men will return and quench their various appetites.

  The only two men in sight belong here like the stink of semen and urine. Butcher and Nate, both providing a well measured dose of male brutishness to protect the flow of money to Clark’s brothels — one known as “Mum’s,” the other as “Fat Annie’s.”

  Anna is waved into Fat Annie’s boarding house — decrepit, to say the least of it. The stairs yield under her weight as she climbs to the second floor; the wallpaper a pathetic joke with its leftovers slowly eaten by mould. Three tallow candles provide unsteady light. They must have been lit for her — an additional expense most of Fat Annie’s girls aren’t able to afford every day. But one of them was hurt tonight and now they act like a uniform mass of warrior ants against an intruder wasp.

  Fingers point towards a room. Weeping trickles through the open door. She sheds all softness and steps in.

  Blood on a wall. A thin sliver of dark red, arching from floor to ceiling. A blade must have been pulled through flesh with a violent swing.

  A naked woman squats in the centre of the small room, held by two others. Whimpering seeps from all three mouths.

  ‘What happened?’ Anna kneels down in front of them. The two women peel off the third like petals of an opening flower. The girl’s right cheek is parted by a hideous gash, mouth and wound are one. Rivulets crawl along her jawbone, drip from her chin down to breasts the size of small peaches. A scarlet band is parting around a pink nipple. The blood on her stomach is smudged by comforting hands; knees have cut through the congealing mess on the floor.

  Anna places a hand on the trembling girl’s arm. ‘I will give you morphia for the pain and stitch up the wound. You will look like new.’

  She shows no reaction.
Her eyes are wide, pupils small like pinpricks, her skin ashen.

  While the two women hold the third, Anna fastens the tourniquet and inserts a needle into the elbow bend. Eyelids flutter, taut muscles soften.

  All three carry her to the bed — a greasy thing that smells of sweat and sperm about to ferment. Armed with iodine solution, needle, and thread, Anna begins to work.

  ‘Do you know his name?’ she enquires softly. Yielding to the pressure of the curved needle, the girl’s skin breaks with a gentle pop, followed by the soft rasping of thread being pulled along.

  ‘No,’ one woman says. Palpable decisiveness in that lone word. ‘She dinna want ter suck ’is cock,’ she whispers, as though news of the neglect hadn’t spread already. Bad for the business if you don’t submit at first command.

  ‘He was her first one,’ explains the other.

  Anna is closing the girl’s wound with the most delicate stitches she can accomplish. Too disfigured, men will pay her too little or even avoid her altogether. She might starve to death. ‘She will need help to heal,’ she says.

  One of them nods. Anna wonders whether she’s the girl’s friend, whether she can afford paying twice the food and rent. The thought is a wisp of naivety against the bland backdrop of life. One beat of lashes and hope vaporises.

  She stands up and finds a woman leaning her massive backside against the door frame. ‘I’ll come back tomorrow night to examine the suture,’ Anna says and gets a shweeeet of air sucked through fat lips as a reply. ‘If she takes customers too early, this wound will never heal, and she’ll be of no use to you.’

  The madam tips her chin. Anna finds no pity in her face. A boy slips into the room, holding out a bowl with water. ‘Ma’am,’ he squeaks at Anna. She takes the offer and washes her hands. Brown lumps settle on the grey zinc bottom.

  When she walks towards Clark’s Mews’ exit, passing Mum’s boarding house, she hears laughter from within. A man steps out of the front door, burps, and tips his cloth cap at her.

  She steers towards home, and tiredness settles heavily on her shoulders. Onlookers have long closed their windows, but have taken a minute to empty their chamberpots one last time before retiring for the night. Urine is still trickling down the walls and a fresh wave of sewage begins to crawl along the street. Anna wishes for rain and that her feet wouldn’t feel so numb.

  She crosses Broad Street onto Endell, passing dark shop windows and a group of what she believes are young thieves getting ready for the night. They greet her with a grin and a nod, hands deep in their trouser pockets. Otherwise, the streets are empty. Vendors will come back tomorrow around five in the morning to begin a day like any other. Buzzing, buzzing, buzzing, while the whores and the thieves are sleeping.

  A few more steps, and Anna comes to a halt and sits down. Her ribcage is clenching, her eyes burning. She knows precisely why she’s doing this to herself, why she cannot rent a room in a nice house, one that has a housekeeper with manners instead of a gin problem, one that is clean and even warm in winter. One without death, disease, and violence surrounding her. ‘No use to ask yourself that same damned question again,’ she growls at herself.

  Two large boots come to a halt in front of her. Without looking up she says, ‘What do you want, Garret?’

  He clears his throat. ‘Saw you sitting here and thought you might be needing something.’

  ‘Do you have a cigarette?’

  ‘Hum…’ He grunts, one foot tapping indecisively. ‘In a minute, for sure.’ He dashes off and Anna considers running the other way. But she’s too tired, and she’d have to bump into him another day and possibly explain herself. Hoping he won’t start a brawl with someone who looks funny, she remains sitting.

  A few moments later, Garret returns. His chest is heaving from the run. He fumbles with tobacco and paper, then holds out a cigarette to her.

  The fine golden down on the back of his hand looks cleaner than the day he had stumbled into her room. He has looked cleaner ever since. She squints at him. Does he wash regularly?

  ‘Thank you,’ she says, moving to the side a little so he can sit if he likes to.

  The doorsteps are a little too narrow for both of them, but he squeezes in nonetheless.

  ‘You look tired,’ he says.

  She leans her chin onto her palm and watches the fog rise. ‘Look.’ She points, and Garret watches the everyday spectacle as though he has never seen it before. Tendrils waft into the street, covering puddles with delicate frosting, then grow thicker until a breeze pushes them back to where they came from.

  ‘You have shit on your shoes,’ he observes.

  ‘I have been at Clark’s Mews.’ She bends down and unlaces her boot, pulls it off, and whacks it against the wall. ‘Dammit,’ she mumbles.

  ‘Let me try.’

  She gives her shoe to Garret, and he whacks and whacks until the last bit dislodges. ‘Thank you,’ she says, putting her boot back on.

  Tobacco smoke mingles with rising fog and the stink of the Thames. Anna sees herself with the eyes of her colleagues — a cigarette touching her lips without a tip separating the unwomanly thing from her skin, her hands are gloveless, her hair short, her shoes stink of excrement. None of the good doctors would recognise her, should they ever dare place their lacquered boots in this part of London.

  ‘Want me to bring you home?’ he asks.

  ‘If you are in need of a woman, go this way.’ She points to where she has just come from. Her tone, devoid of emotion, cuts him deeper than fury.

  ‘That’s not what I meant!’ His orange hair sticks out in all directions as though indignation has shot lightning through his skull.

  ‘What do you mean, then? You want me to believe we accidentally run into each other every so often? I’d never seen your face until the day you fell into my rooms, bleeding all over the place. Now I see you almost every evening. Why is that?’

  ‘Only mean to protect you,’ he grumbles, rising to his feet. ‘You saved my life. You don’t belong here; you don’t need to be here, and everyone knows it. Some are just waiting to take advantage of you.’

  She sees his broad shoulders sag and feels an odd urge to apologise, or at least explain. ‘A girl’s mouth had been slit open because she didn’t want a cock in it. The man didn’t take the time to notice or even care that she is only a child.’

  Garret sits back down and, not knowing what might be the appropriate thing to say, takes her hand into his, sucks at a corner of his shirt, and uses the moist thing to rub a speck of blood off her wrist.

  ‘Why are whores wretched, I wonder. Seems like a rule: whores are wretched. Even the ones that do the gentlemen,’ he muses and inspects both her hands for more blood, but finds none. ‘Maybe men leave their wretchedness inside a whore. Cleanse themselves of it, in a way.’

  ‘Don’t tell me you’ve never had a prostitute.’ She extracts her hand from his grip.

  ‘I didn’t say that, did I now?’ He presses his lips to a thin line. ‘I never believed I owned them! Don’t want to be owned by anyone myself. Always trying to treat others the way I want to be treated.’ He clears his throat. ‘I’m lucky. No one would take me serious with that soft head of mine if it were set on a normal body.’

  ‘It works. You scared me,’ she confesses.

  ‘Didn’t mean to. I mean, scare you.’

  They watch a cat cross the street. Her ribs grind against the inside of her coat, shoulder blades pointing toward the night sky. The moonlight cuts her bony outlines onto the pavement. She steers towards them until a rodent sticks its nose too far out of a piece of banged-up piping. As the cat jumps, it is as though two black cats separate, one in the air, one street-bound. A moment later, they touch paws again.

  ‘Men hate whores because they show us what we are,’ says Garret.

  Anna opens her mouth and shuts it again.

  ‘They know we are a herd of horny monkeys with a variety of appetites,’ he adds.

  The crunch crunch of
cat teeth on rodent bones is barely audible over Garret’s low voice. Whatever kind of judgement was forming in Anna’s head topples into nonexistence with these two sentences of his.

  ‘Whores serve as a refuse heap,’ she begins. ‘A set of arms to weep in, a lover, sister, mother, child, punisher. Whatever a man needs, he can buy it for a few shillings, maybe a sovereign if it’s special. Thousands of whores live in this city. They are doomed to die early, be it from disease, from sloppy abortions, or from having been used so often that their souls bleed out their orifices.’

  ‘You don’t hold men in high esteem,’ Garret says.

  ‘I don’t hold pretence in high esteem.’

  ‘What do you… You don’t think I…’

  ‘No!’ She slams a fist against her forehead. ‘Simple calculation: there are about eighty thousand whores in London, all receiving between three and ten customers each day. That makes a lot of Londoners lying in the arms of someone they despise in public.’

  A flock of street urchins hurries past them. Their squeals of delight seem to be directed at a man who has just entered the street. There, where the lone lantern stands. The gleaming silver knob of his walking stick betrays his idiocy. The thing is whacked from his hand, his clothes are tugged off, and only seconds later, all he’s left with is his birthday suit.

  Anna rubs her brow. She is struck by an oddity. People here are saving their non-existent money by sharing rooms. They are honeycombing themselves and their meagre belongings into rooms the size of a cupboard. Yet, Garret has his one mattress, his one hook on the wall, his one creaky chair all for himself. When she asks him about it, he falls silent for a long moment, and she begins to think her question might have been too private.

  Then, he finally answers. ‘I don’t understand most people. And I like living alone.’

  Anna’s head turns, her eyes glued to a man she doesn’t know a bit.

  ‘Besides…’ He breaks off, his face heating with shame.

  ‘What?’

  He coughs and shakes his head. ‘It’s…embarrassing.’

  ‘Oh.’ She’d like to know what’s so embarrassing, but doesn’t want to press him. At least not directly. She puts her chin into her hand again and traps his gaze with hers. It takes a while, but shows effect.