“I did want to,” Wallace said miserably.“Too much so.I’m still stiff as a board.”
“Oh.”Solomon gave him a sympathetic look.“Want a hand with that?”
Wallace had been looking at his feet—blushing furiously, of course.Now his gaze flew up to meet Solomon’s.After a moment, he nodded.
They were on Crucifix Lane, near a dark, narrow alleyway with no overlooking windows.Solomon had made use of it on more than one occasion.
“This way.”
Wallace followed him down the alley.He was vibrating with nerves.He crowded up close to Solomon, fumbling with Solomon’s breeches.
Solomon put a hand to Wallace’s chest to hold him off.“Wait.Never follow someone up an alley without looking up and down it”—he looked deliberately left and right, even though he already knew the place well—“making sure there’s a way out at both ends.”
Wallace swallowed, his eyes wide.He nodded.
Solomon had had some thought of giving him a broad education in the many and pleasurable possibilities open to them, but in the event, it was all over after about thirty seconds of a quick frigging—which Wallace did, at least, appear to enjoy enormously.
Then he was stepping back to support himself against the wall, looking overwhelmed.Solomon turned away, making a show of adjusting his own breeches to give Wallace time to recover.
“Should I—?”Wallace said.“I mean, can I—”
Solomon grinned at him.“If you’d like to return the favour, friendly-like, I won’t say no.”
Afterwards, they strolled back to the Crown together.Wallace was silent at first, but after a few minutes he burst out, “Lord, I am glad I came up to London!”
After that, Solomon made it his business to introduce Wallace to other interesting places he knew up and down the south bank: alehouses with useful backrooms and a congenial patronage, and the wooded areas along the Rope Walks.
They each had only one night off a week, and not necessarily on the same day, so that as the months passed, Wallace often ventured out alone.The next time they were both in the little Bermondsey alehouse together, Solomon was pleased to see that Wallace had entirely lost his initial nerves.
At that time, Solomon’s life consisted of working long, irregular hours and then throwing himself into the pleasures that London had to offer.If he ever stopped to think about the people among whom he had grown up, it was only to delight in how furious they’d be if they could see him now.Besides that, he never gave them a moment’s thought.Or, at least, that was the lie he told himself.
Winter came and went.Easter arrived, and then Whitsun and Bow Fair.The Crown overflowed with traders, hawkers and bagmen in town for the fair.Every Londoner who could contrive it had the day off work.Not the ostlers, though—this was one of the busiest weeks of the year at the Crown.
Solomon didn’t mind; he looked forward to the day at the end of the week when he could visit the tail-end of the fair, pocket full of tips he’d picked up during the week.
He and Wallace walked out to Bow and wandered over the fair green, where trampled mud and flattened grass marked the places where tents and stalls had stood.A few stragglers remained, clustered along the road from London.Solomon and Wallace bought nuts and oranges, then wandered towards Bow Church, where they had arranged to meet some other ostlers of their acquaintance.They sat on the grass to wait.
“When I was a child, Epping Fair seemed like the largest fair in the world,” Wallace said in a tone of reminiscence.
“Grow up in that town, did you?”
“No, in a little village on the edge of Epping Forest.”He dug his nails into the skin of an orange.“I never thought I’d leave.But the Squire died and his house was shut up, his horses all sold.So I decided to walk into London and see what I could find.It’s not that far—five or six hours’ walk.”
“There was nothing to keep you there?”
“I’ve no family.But there was—” Here he blushed.With his fair skin, it was something he could never hide, poor fellow.“There was one of the Squire’s housemaids I was very taken with.But she married the head groom.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.She must have had prodigiously poor taste.”
“It was entirely my own fault.I’d never dared so much as speak to her.”He smiled ruefully and held out half an orange to Solomon.“What about you?”
“If you’re asking about my marriage prospects, I can’t say I ever met a woman as caught my eye.I’m not like you in that respect.”
“No, I mean, how did you end up here?You en’t a Londoner, are you?”
“Oh.No.But, like you, I thought it would be a good place to come when I left home.”He’d wandered for several months, working at odd jobs.But after being taken up by the warden of two different parishes and whipped for vagrancy, he’d decided there must be less chance of that up in London.“Look, there’s Henshaw.”
Henshaw was one of the men they were waiting for.He was accompanied by two other ostlers from the same inn, along with their wives.
