Chapter Seven
Benjamin stood in the middle of the bustling little street that led to the heart of the Seven Dials.
Mangy stray dogs chased each other around, fighting for scraps of rubbish that had accumulated in the gutters.
Mangy stray children did much the same, weaving in and out between carts and washing women, startling caged chickens, and angering the few shop owners who tried to shoo the ruffians away from their goods—knowing full well the threat of the light fingers of the small, ill-clad, underfed urchins.
He had been one of these urchins—years ago now—but it never seemed long enough.
The stench of the street was more familiar to him than his own skin.
It was part of him. He wore it like a film—never able to scrub hard enough to rid himself of the grit and grime of the memories of his years alone.
After Delia had died, he had tried to hold on to odd jobs.
But the longer he lived on the street, the further he fell.
He had spent years scraping himself back up from scrounging through these gutters.
He had done things he was not proud of—anything to survive. And now he had.
Hell, some might even say he had thrived. But no amount of time, money, power, or distance he put between himself and those days could help him escape.
And now, here he was again. Back in the Dials. The last place he wanted to be.
It had not been hard to find out who Charlotte’s Mr. Keiler was.
The head of the Times’ editorial columns.
It had surprised him to discover that the man was a professional.
A journalist. He had expected a fine lady of the ton, like Charlotte Aston, would be writing to a decorator or some haberdasher or other.
Though perhaps not considering her family’s financial state.
But he would never have guessed she was in contact with the papers.
Even more surprising was why. He had sifted through the columns under Keiler’s purview and found different pieces ranging from the latest in European horse racing to the political foibles of the Commons and Lords.
It had been a weekly column about the state of London’s working class that had caught his eye.
Rather radical for the publication, but the times were changing.
It was more than just the ton who paid for the news.
There was certainly a market for the self-made merchants and businessmen of England.
But even they would likely have no interest in the trials and tribulations of those on whose backs they made their money.
The column had drawn him in. The stories were first-hand accounts of the women and men he had struggled beside.
Their lives on the streets. The horrors of the workhouses they toiled in.
The brutality of the sicknesses that stole through their cramped quarters and took their loved ones and babes.
He had no way of knowing these stories had any connection to Charlotte.
The writer was listed as Anonymous. Not surprising considering the subversive nature of the contents.
But something about the compassionate way the writer opened their writing to share someone else’s voice had grabbed him.
He would have followed up even if he were not hunting out Charlotte Aston’s secrets.
He had done this long enough to know that this feeling in his gut, this drive, could not be ignored and would lead to something valuable.
He was never in a position to turn his nose up at something as valuable as a secret.
Now, however, standing in the roiling chaos of the mid-morning Towers Street, he was not so sure he wanted to follow this lead. He could turn around. He could go home.
But they had seen him. The grubby urchins had started swarming, whispering his name amongst themselves.
He rarely went out to deal with issues on the streets anymore.
He had enforcers for that now. Hired thugs who could wield physical might, so he could wield his knowledge.
Blackmail was far more elegant than bloodying his knuckles.
But that did not mean that in his leaner days, when he had been living hand to mouth, trying to build something, he had not carved out a substantial reputation.
A reputation that seemed to have grown and taken on a life of its own, as legends in the back streets of London were wont to do.
The beleaguered children stared up at him in awe, and as he made his way down the tight street, he felt gazes from stoops and shop windows follow him.
By the time he reached Annie’s washhouse, his presence had preceded him.
“Thought I heard talk of some Master Toff lurking around here!” The rough Belfast brogue cut through the steam that filled the cramped courtyard.
Young women—some only girls—hunched over cauldrons of boiling water, stirring the murky contents with long wooden poles before pulling the washing out with their red hands, completely impervious to the scalding heat.
A short, round woman hobbled out from the back shop, pulling a laundry line taut above her head before slowly making her way over to Benjamin.
Annie Dolan was a termagant and always had been.
There were no two ways about it. To some, she may have seemed an ordinary washing woman.
As the proprietress of a relatively successful laundry service nestled deep in the wilds of St. Giles that served a low-earning, but wide class of clientele, she had far more influence than one might give her credit for.
As a boy, Benjamin had stuck to Annie’s corner of the Dials, knowing that though she refused to take in orphans, she ruled her district with an iron fist and would not tolerate the outright abuse that many street youths endured.
As with anything in life, the protection did not come for free.
Anything that was filched on Annie’s turf was to be deposited through the back slot of her shop.
Her daughter-cum-secretary-cum-right-hand kept careful note of each deposit, and if you could get something good enough, there was a hot meal in it for you and a night sleeping in the safety of her gated courtyard.
Benjamin had only managed it a few times, but he still remembered the relief of a night stretched on the cobbles beside the glowing embers of a wash fire.
The knowledge that no footpad would knife him while he slept behind the locked gates.
“Annie.” He could not help the smile that tugged his cheeks as the rough woman gave him an assessing look. “Glad to see you again.”
“Hope you’ve not come to sleep on my floor again. Heard tell of you running all the games in London. You’ve not fallen from grace again, have ye?”
The jab at his uncommon origins still hit home.
He had arrived in London and landed on the streets within a year.
Though he was just as down and out as the other boys running the streets, he had been different, and they had known.
His diction and accent alone had signalled him as an outsider—one with less experience than they.
Any difference, any weakness, was leapt upon and gouged out.
He learned the hard way that if he wanted to make it—wanted to survive—he had best forget his lofty beginnings and keep his head down. It had been a lesson well learned.
He flexed his shoulders, conscious of the stares he was getting. “I have come to ask you a question. About a writer.”
“A writer, ye say?” Her lilting voice was mocking, and she leaned against one of the poles that supported the intricate net of washing lines above her. “Not much use for a writer down here, have we?”
A chorus of faceless agreement came from behind the steam.
“A writer you may have spoken to.”
He held up the old newsprint one of his scouts had procured.
It was dated almost two years ago. But the story had sounded familiar.
The columnist did not include any names in their stories.
Like the author, the subjects remained anonymous.
Somehow, this made their tales all the more intriguing.
The reader could imagine themselves in their place.
A woman who worked at the looms in a factory.
A young hawker who slept behind the bakery in hopes of being able to steal a fistful of flour from the evening delivery to bring home to his hungry family.
A night soil man. A fishmonger. And in this case, a laundress who had moved to London hoping for a better life and instead had been cheated by her husband and prospered anyway, running her own shop and employing girls and women on the street.
Annie eyed the paper and gave a nod. He knew she could not read. But he saw on her face that his hunch had been correct. “You spoke to this writer?”
“Aye.” She nodded again and pressed her lips together. He would get nothing for free.
Benjamin fished a coin from his inside pocket, one that three different light-fingered thieves had already tried to slit. Pressing the coin into the woman’s swollen red hand, she smiled at him.
“There’s a good lad. Now, what do you want to know about this writer?”
“What can you tell me?” He knew better than to lead with questions. The best titbits were revealed when a person spoke, not knowing what he was looking for.
“Well, I suppose the most pertinent point was that she was a she.”
Annie waited a moment, watching for a reaction to that news. But he did not let his expression change. Even as that alone confirmed his suspicions.