With the plan in place for Davy to arrive close behind Oliver when he pays his next visit to Manns, all that's left to do is wait the week out. Oliver feels as though he moves through the days as an actor, who plays a role upon a stage knowing all the while that he has a second, private life hidden in the wings from his audience, yet the curious thing is that he seems not to fully belong to that life any more than he does the first. At one turn, he's a guileless, inexperienced toff attempting to find his way through Jack's world; at another, a wolf in sheep's clothing seated at his own table. He works harder than ever, opening the house for several more evening surgeries, while not being entirely certain whether he's trying to pass the time, or trying to compensate. And constantly, he struggles to come to terms with his new feelings for his childhood saviour, his foil, the imp on his shoulder, and one of the most unique men that he has ever known.
On the whole, he tries to distract himself. A year or so ago, Oliver and four medical colleagues and friends had formed themselves into a supper and debating club to discuss surgery, anatomy, the ethics of the same, and, in general, the rewards and complaints of their professions, without accusations of impropriety. After various more irreverent suggestions, they had decided to name their group loosely after Thessalus, son of Hippocrates and founder of the Greek dogmatic school of medicine with its passion for the exploration and workings of the body, and the more pleasing sounding Thessalonians had come into being. They meet on alternate Fridays at the Pelican tavern.
Their evenings invariably end with light-hearted arguments and some good drinking, and Oliver feels himself even more in need of both than usual. There had once been a brief incident caused when James Harrop, one of the surgeons, had brought along a certain preserved specimen in a glass jar and set it in the centre of the table, but for the most part they're always made very welcome on the premises. Each evening has a chosen quote or theme for discussion. Tonight's is, 'The physician as perennial student'. They've all soundly agreed that there's never any formal end to their training, only milestones along the road of a lifetime of accumulating knowledge. "Our memberships and qualifications are less than nothing," Oliver declares, "we began our careers as pupils, and we'll end them no differently, because the man won't be born for a thousand years yet who can call himself a master," and they dedicate another of many toasts to the sentiment. Martin Treacy, the other emboldened physician in the group, places his empty glass down with care, and folds his hands before him.
"Consider this," he says. "According to Plato, a doctor should never attempt to treat an incurable patient, but spend his time ministering to only the basically healthy. It would be best for the patient and the state if those diseased through and through were left to die. That should be his decision as a true -"
"Son of Asclepius?" Oliver finishes.
"Despite the fact that Asclepius raised from the dead," Harry Collett puts in, "and if that doesn't qualify as taking on a damned hopeless case, I don't know what would."
"Perfectly correct, sirs, in both cases."
"The question, though," Oliver says, tracing a finger slowly around the rim of his own cup, "is whether or not we can ever deem a case truly hopeless, when the next medicine that we would have administered, or the next surgical procedure that we would have attempted, would have brought about the cure? If we all learn continuously, how can we say what we might learn tomorrow that we didn't know today?" Noises of agreement. "Perhaps one day we might follow in Ascelpius's footsteps and rid the world of death."
James looks from one of them to the other, grinning. "Is the consensus that our founding father of philosophy was a bit premature, then, chaps?"
"Aye! Aye!" they all repeat, enthusiastically. Charles, James's younger brother and a surgical apprentice, drums upon the table with both hands. All are full of the as yet inoffensive egotism of their trade and their relative youth. Plato goes unneeded; each man has the public, if not private, conviction tonight that he is going to live forever.
"For what might be seen as wrong now, my friends," declares Martin, "may be found to be not wrong at all, when we learn more about ourselves."
"Yes," Oliver says, "I do believe this," and he helps himself to more punch.
The Pelican is not a large house, nor an overly disreputable one, squeezed between a haberdashers and a barber that advertises 'bear grease for hair', but promises whisky, brandy, gin, and rum, a hot supper, and a comic song to titillate. A pianoforte invariably plays, and a considerable press always develops as the evening wears on and more would-be revellers drift in from the street. The singer has already been regaling the room with a rendering of 'My Beautiful Muff', the tale of a young man who complains that he is 'stiff with the cold' and begs the lady owner of said red-lined muff for the use of it, but when this changes to an even more off-colour version of 'Advice to Young Gentlemen', various cries are taken up of, "You'd be lucky!" "Too early for all that!" and "Bad show!"
"Ladies present!" bellows James, in defence of the bar maids, who are popular girls. "This is not the Coal Hole!"
"Ladies? I can't see any ladies!" A few laughs, but a considerably larger number of complaints.
"And I can't see any gentlemen!" calls Oliver.
The singer draws himself up to his full, unimpressive height, thumbs in his waistcoat pockets. He has an imperial moustache which he's developed the ability to make quiver. "May you be stricken by the pox, sir, and all of your damned humourless companions along with you!"
"We're doctors and surgeons! We'll either cure it, or we'll cut it off!" And applause breaks out around the tables.
They're a merry band, but even as Oliver joins in the laughter, his ears unconsciously strain, as if fruitlessly and illogically attempting to detect a riper accent amongst it. He's been determined to focus his mind elsewhere tonight, but instead, he only aches more for what the usually cheerful atmosphere suddenly seems to be missing. He can run away from the Artful Dodger, he thinks, vexed, but he can't run away from himself.
-oOo-
If Oliver had not disliked Richard Manns so much, he might have found him a compelling case. Even as it is, it not only still remains that he took an oath to treat his patients to the best of his ability and judgement, but a conundrum has occurred that simply sparks cold professional curiosity. Fits of mild chills, fever and sweating, in that order, have arisen as though from nowhere, troubled the patient in cycles, then subsided, leaving a period of exhaustion and shortness of breath. Privately, Oliver's now reached the opinion that it resembles nothing less than a milder case of the ague, recently called malarial fever, but he's at something of a loss as to why Manns would develop such a thing, it being uncommon nowadays away from the damp, gaseous air of the marshy districts along the eastern coast. He has a test that will almost certainly prove his theory either correct, or not, but while this would usually be enough to focus his attention, his thoughts waver wildly today between his duties, and the second task in hand.
Many well brought-up men would have been shocked by the prospect ahead, but, as he waits for his appointment, Oliver finds his mind teeming like a busy bee-hive. He considers Jack's most pertinent pieces of advice: have confidence, and be an opportunist. Above all, he should be alert, always watching and waiting. These are things that come naturally to Jack, born of long habits, and Oliver can only hope that they do to him. He wonders at his old friend's innate trust in his own skills. Jack takes him unquestionably to be like himself.
He lets himself glance about. Familiar with the drawing room from his many visits, he sees it for the first time today in a different light: as a hunting ground, one that he should learn the geography of to place himself at greatest advantage. He takes note of the bell-pull, the vicinity of which Davy will undoubtedly be working in. It occurs to Oliver that, at some point, he'll need to get almost as close to his partner of today as he will to Manns, in order to both pass the key and take it back, and nor will he have any excuse to linger there. He'll have to move not only quickly, but with extreme subtlety. He observes which parts of the room are reflected in the mantel mirror, wincing a little. Although Jack had reassured him by approaching it as a joke, he can easily picture having been fool enough to make his mistake here had it not been pointed out, and it worries at him what else he might not have taken into consideration. Forewarning him about everything is simply impossible; a certain amount, in the end, must come down to his own wits. It's a second by second game that they're engaged in, and one still hours away from being won.
Manns is not inclined towards false pleasantries this afternoon. Oliver listens impassively to the news that his plan has not been a success and that the thief failed to appear as expected. Manns's mood due to this does nothing to put his nerves at rest, but it does serve indirectly to further set his resolve. As he watches his patient pace resolutely up and down, he grasps more than ever that the task of a pickpocket is not always the easiest.
"It's quite obvious to me, Doctor, that our friend was warned off. Most likely by one of the servants who had wind of the operation. Any householder knows from bitter experience that he may just as well post a notice for a footpad as for a footman, for the staff that he shelters beneath his roof are more likely than not to harbour the same tendencies."
"If you'll pardon my disagreeing with you, Mr Manns, I can't say that I've experienced the same trouble. Perhaps I've been fortunate."
"Fortunate, sir? 'Naive' I would wager is closer to the truth. I think you'll find that your servants have taken advantage of your nature on numerous occasions. Certainly my own generosity and kindness has gone unappreciated in this house on the whole, this being why I have been forced on occasions to resort to admonishment. You would do well, Doctor Brownlow, to place a little less blind trust in your staff, and keep both your eyes and your ears open for any early signs of resentment."
If any of Manns's servants have ever stolen from him, Oliver struggles to feel anything but empathy with them. He can think of a good many people more in need and deserving of the proceeds from said articles than their current owner, not least the ones that he's seen packed three, four and five to a bed in the slums of Clare Market and St Martin-in-the-Fields, where the filth from the cesspools leaches through the bricks and up into the cellars when it rains, and drinking water is drawn from the same ditches into which the privy waste drops. Theft seems to him less of an appalling and sinful affair than it should, in a city where a small fraction of society is rich and a far larger one heartrendingly poor. Perhaps that makes Oliver, raised among that smaller faction, a deviant, or perhaps it makes him unusually insightful. Perhaps it makes him more open to influence, when under the heady spell of love and want, than he'd ever imagined that he could be.
He feels his fingers beginning to itch. He wants to do this. He wants it as much as he wanted to give a kiss to Jack.
"I understand your frustration, sir," he says, "but I think that the thief has tired of his japes and moved on to fresh pastures."
"Become bored, you say?" Manns halts in mid-step and turns on his heel to face Oliver. His lips press into a line so thin that they almost disappear. "I wish that I were bored and had no care but to amuse myself so. It would be a luxury. Instead the Lord chooses to besiege me with assaults on my property by criminals, on my person by bodily complaints, and on my livelihood by the easterly winds. And when trade becomes favourable once again, matters will move to the dockside, where the quay-gangers struggle to source men with some strength and gumption to unload my cargoes."
"Many of them are starving," Oliver says.
"Men starve who will not work. For even when we were with you, we would give you this command: if anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat."
"Some of the men who come to the docks as a last resort sleep there, hoping to be engaged in the morning. If they're not selected, what choice have they whether they work, or go home to their families empty-handed again?"
"There is always a choice. There is never a last resort."
"For you and I, Mr Manns, who always sleep comfortably in our beds, and, what's more, are childless bachelors with little responsibility save to ourselves. Many of my patients have fewer options."
Manns lifts a steel-hued eyebrow. "Have a care, Doctor Brownlow, before comparing your own perceived lack of accountability with my own. After gathering more experience of life, you may think differently. Greater age brings obligations that youth is still able to sidestep, regardless of marital status."
"My apologies," Oliver replies, flatly.
"And now may I remind you that your current patient is not one of our absent dockyard workers, but myself?"
The doorknob rattles, and Davy enters so promptly and with such timing that it seems obvious that he's been eavesdropping on the state of play from the hallway outside. He carries a tool-bag; depositing this on the floor, he goes back out and returns a second later behind a step-ladder. Oliver catches his eye, and Davy returns such a fine, blank stare that for a very brief moment, he fancies that he must have dreamed the whole affair, and that he had never searched for Jack, they had never decided to carry out a robbery together, and that this young man is simply a tradesman like any other who has never set eyes on Oliver before and who has somehow become woven into his dream. Then Davy touches his cap politely, and in the instant during which his hand shields him from Manns's line of vision while still leaving his face wholly visible to Oliver, he flashes him a wink.
'Well,' his expression seems to say, 'the game's afoot.'
Manns catches Oliver's glance, though not Davy's response. "The bell-hanger," he clarifies. "My butler is on his half-day today, but apparently before departing this week, he reported several bells not sounding in the kitchen. Pay the man no mind. These are hardly dignified meetings, so his presence will make little difference to us here today."
"I try to make them as much so as I can, Mr Manns."
"Medicine is and always has been an art, Doctor. I am reminded more often now of an instruction handbook."
Oliver takes a pulse, the fingers of one hand on the wrist of his patient, his watch in the other, watching the sweep of the second hand. He finds it satisfactory, steady and even. It had been elevated during the hours before the fever would break. He'd wanted to ask for permission to come to measure body temperature at intervals, via the axillary blood-flow, having found it an informative way of tracking the progress of a feverish complaint before. The thermometer, though, must be held fast for almost half an hour to obtain a reading, and he hadn't anticipated any co-operation with this from a patient who refuses to expose any skin beyond the collar. The possibility has occurred to him that the man has scars from some disfiguring past illness.
His eyes flicker - unnoticed, he hopes - to the coat pocket. "Have you experienced any more chills or sweats?" he asks.
"Thankfully they appear to have passed as usual, but it is only in the past few days that I seem to have fully regained my energy."
"If your breathing is shallow, that may be the answer, in part."
"In part?"
"Yes. Would you remove your coat once again?"
Manns moves to start divesting himself of his outer clothes. "This is beginning to wear on me, Doctor Brownlow," he remarks, tightly.
"Please, Mr Manns," Oliver says, "indulge me. I have an idea, but I need to investigate a little further." As if it were the most natural offer in the world, he adds, "Shall I take the coat, sir?"
As he accepts the garment, he can't help imagining the tremendous stroke of luck that it would be if his prize were being calmly handed to him - a beginner's luck that's undoubtedly too much to ask for. He folds the coat carefully over a low chair. As he does so, he takes a step to his right so that his position obscures it for the most part from its owner, and in the same movement with which he lays it down, smooths a hand over each pocket. His pace is calm and careless; he does well, he thinks. The search, though, proves fruitless. Oliver presses his lips together in silent, worried frustration. What if, today of all days, there is no key? Having only barely managed to sum up the courage, he's unsure whether he could rise to the task mentally a second time.
He sets his sights on his patient again. "And if you would open your waistcoat. I'd like to palpate the area of the spleen. It should feel no more than slightly tender."
"And I should like to know how this relates to anything."
"Because, sir, I expect to find the spleen swollen. I believe that you have malarial fever - marsh fever, or ague. All of the other symptoms would fit. And when the fever rises, excess blood accumulates in the spleen and it becomes engorged and quite detectable. The phenomenon's widely known as an ague-cake."
Manns pauses. "Is this your diagnosis as my physician, Doctor Brownlow?"
"Yes, sir," Oliver answers, "if I find what I expect to find."
The two of them stand, practitioner and client, would-be thief and mark, regarding each other. Manns clears his throat.
"Let us suppose that this is what ails me," he says. "Can it be cured?"
"Yes. I can write a prescription today."
"Then, proceed."
Oliver's done this before. His hands know what to feel for, just beneath the patient's rib-cage, and how to manipulate the area carefully to avoid causing the distended spleen to bleed. He can detect a round and fibrous edge quite easily; the sclerosis of repeated bouts of fever. His professional mind is satisfied, but as he moves the breast of the waistcoat further aside, he touches a distinct metallic shape through the pocket lining that causes first a slight jump in his chest, and then an immediate sinking sensation. Jack might be deft enough to steal from waistcoat pockets that lay within full sight of their owner, but what are his own chances?
Resolutely, he gathers himself. He tries to remember his notion about looking to his brain rather than to the speed of his touch. He removes his hands.
"My prescription will be for Warburg's Tincture. You will be given a one-ounce bottle to take in two equal doses, three hours apart. The preparation purges many recurrent fevers, and especially the ague-fever, within a day - sometimes in as little as three hours."
"I shall place my confidence in you, Doctor. Let us hope that it's well founded."
"Mr Manns, have you visited the fen country? Or the Romney Marshes?"
"No, I have not."
"Then I can't identify a clear origin for this. The ague is found only occasionally outside of those districts these days. But I'm certain of it."
Davy stands back and looks up at where the bell wire emerges from the wall and runs around the room below the plasterwork. He scratches his chin in a very natural way, as if deliberating a minor setback in the work, yet Oliver's certain that he's not missing a single trick. He sets up the step-ladder and retrieves a quantity of wire from his tool-bag. The bag he leaves rather carelessly some way across the floor. Oliver instinctively begins to stoop towards it as he passes, intending to shift it to somewhere where it will pose less of a risk to tripping over.
And then he stops, as the word trip seems to echo over in his mind, and a memory tugs at him of something he was once shown, very briefly, a very long time ago.
He can't tread on his mark's foot, but if he were to employ just a little careful direction, he would have something to carry out the task for him.
Oliver tugs at his collar a little. He packs up his own bag, retaining only his prescription book and one of the small glass bottles that he carries, the latter of which he holds out to Manns. "If you would produce a standard sample, sir, before my next visit, I'll take it away with me then."
Taking the bottle, Manns sets it down upon a low table, and begins to button his waistcoat again. "This has been a more productive visit than usual, Doctor Brownlow. You have a number of - shall we call them - interesting ideas, but we shall see if this one, based on past experience rather than speculation, comes to fruition. That which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. Ecclesiastes chapter one, verse nine."
"Perhaps these things have been given to us to see what we may make of them, Mr Manns," Oliver replies.
Manns regards him fixedly for a few moments. Then, still arranging his wardrobe, he turns, and crosses to where a bookcase of handsomely-backed volumes stands beside a case housing a stuffed fox. The animal crouches upon a rock among dried grasses, tiny teeth bared and empty glass eyes staring into eternity. For what purpose? To make that which was a hunter in life finally a captive in death; to demonstrate one's power to become a gaoler? As a boy, Oliver had seen little point to such household ornaments.
Manns picks up a book and studies the spine. "How is your uncle?"
"Well, thank you."
"I'm pleased to hear it. Do give him my regards, won't you? I have purchased a number of new books of late that he may be interested in looking over. He and I are both enthusiastic readers, as you know. Do you spend time in the company of papers and literature that cultivate the mind, or do you prefer fantastical works? A novel-reader, perhaps?"
"The cases put forward for further public health acts are topics that I never tire of, as you might imagine."
"A social reformer as well as a physic. Very ambitious." Manns replaces the book and faces him once again. "Do you see this as necessary within the City alone?"
"No, sir, in every parish, because there are no parishes without their share of those who have no means to reform."
"So we come full circle, Doctor. I say that simple willingness to carry out a day's work is the solution to poverty, while you favour the charitable approach." Manns folds his own hands behind his back and resumes his steady stride about the carpet. "I wonder what your opinions are of Mr Chadwick's theory? That the only forms of relief should be made abhorrent, thus lowering the poor rate because only the truly destitute would still find it a comfortably feathered bed?"
Oliver's nails press into his palms. In his mind's eye, he sees the crescents dug into the flesh reddening and opening like tiny mouths. Slowly, he begins to follow, parallel to his quarry; a fox, stalking. Not yet does he move too deliberately. "Are we discussing the impotent poor, or the able-bodied poor?"
"There are no able-bodied poor, as we all know in truth, only idle poor."
Davy is squatting at floor level, preparing a new bell wire in a thorough fashion, but Oliver is sure that he senses a slight bristling about his person. The official standing, truly believed by no-one but adamantly adhered to by everyone, is that servants and tradesmen are deaf and dumb, and Oliver still finds himself on occasions wincing in either concern or embarrassment at what's seen fit to voice and air in front of them. His reaction now would be acute embarrassment, were the other man present not his partner in crime.
"Employment isn't always a simple thing to come by, Mr Manns. If a fellow is unskilled and without character reference because he cannot find work, how does he obtain the skills and references which would enable him to find it?"
"You are trying to present me with a paradox, Doctor Brownlow."
"I am, sir," Oliver replies. He draws subtly nearer. His aim is to shunt the other man in the direction that he wants him to go without laying a finger on him, and he succeeds by cutting ahead of him at the opportune moment, so closely that Manns not only halts, but takes the instinctive step backwards of someone who feels that their space has been uncomfortably invaded. Davy's bag lies a few more paces behind him, so near and yet so far. "A paradox without a simple solution."
"The solution is very simple indeed. Where an idle hand exists, there always exists a task that it may be set to, distasteful as that task may be." So briefly that a less sensitive listener would never have noticed, Manns pauses. "Have you heard whether or not the workhouses still mill satisfactory corn?"
Oliver moves. He doesn't hesitate, and for all his earlier decision, he doesn't think. Not, at least, for more than a fraction of a moment; the time that it takes to make the decision to scoop up Manns's coat for him. "Please allow me," he says, aloud, and turns, on his heel, straight back into his mark's path.
Manns steps backwards once again, and this time, he treads upon the corner of the tool-bag. Oliver's left hand darts out to grasp him as he stumbles. He pushes into him, clumsy and deliberate, and the coat looped over his arm drapes tent-like between them. Under the garment goes his right hand. He feels for the pocket, pushes until the top of the key protrudes, and slides his fingers up to hook it out in the same movement. Before the coat can fall away and expose him, the key is out of Manns's pocket and into Oliver's own. The entire thing has taken only seconds.
"Be careful, sir."
Oliver had wondered if guilt would instantly flood him, having actually carried out the act, but although he waits for it, it never comes. Instead there's a a faint, lightheaded feeling of disbelief at getting away with it; something akin to gratification. He straightens, handing over the coat.
Manns seizes it, throwing a quite murderous look towards Davy. "If this man does not be careful, sir, he will find my stick about his shoulders!" Then, as if swiftly remembering who and where he is, he composes himself, and completes his dressing. When Oliver looks to his prescription book and clears his throat, he waves him across to the bureau. "Your idealism might be admired by men of your own age, Doctor," he says, almost conversationally. "Perhaps when you are a little older, you may come to understand more of the ways of the world. And to accept them."
As Oliver passes out of his field of vision, he stoops just briefly to touch Davy's shoulder. His friend immediately lifts his smaller hand without even glancing up, and he slips the key into it. Barely having broken his stride, he continues to the bureau and pulls out the chair with the tapestry seat. "There are some wrongs in the world," he says, "that I shall never be able to accept."
"I shall only regret that."
Oliver lifts the lid of the inkwell and stirs the contents. "Yes, sir," he replies, taking up a pen and dipping it, "I'm sure that you will."
Davy returns the key to him unseen, having used it successfully to his own devices. Filled with his newfound confidence, Oliver feels that he might have slipped it into Manns's coat, but privately admits the unlikeliness of his mark not noticing that the item has changed pockets of its own accord. Worse still, he might not find it at all until later, think it stolen, and raise a premature alarm. He chooses to drop it as suggested. On the thick Chinese rug, the key makes barely a sound; a seemingly accidental scuff with his boot enables him to 'discover' the lost item for his patient with little trouble. Despite the excitement, he feels relieved for everything to be outside his control again for a time.
Returning back along Southampton Row, he begins to have the vague impression of being followed, or, at the least, watched. A hackney coach has stopped and is loading up its fare, observed with great interest by a small crowd of boys already drawing straws, the winner of which contest will be the one to chase it to its destination and carry the bags for a penny or two. Southampton Row being a fairly active thoroughfare, there's a good deal of to-ing and fro-ing, but as he passes the growler, Oliver immediately sees his co-conspirator's perky figure round the side of it. Davy falls prudently into step at Oliver's elbow. By their dress, the two of them might readily be taken for master and servant on the street, and it seems a sensible assumption to encourage, to enable them to remain freely in one another's company if their talk is quiet. There's a certain irony to the performance, when Davy and Jack have been the instructors today, and he only an apt pupil.
"Did you do it?" he asks, carefully.
Davy taps his pocket. "I had the easy bit to do. You should have been watching yourself, Oliver. You was as smooth as silk. A real fine-wirer."
Half of Oliver wants to refuse the compliment, and the other to accept it with a strange sort of pride. "I'm not sure that Jack would agree with you. I was very nervous. I nearly fumbled it."
"Jack told me you was one of Fagin's boys before you found out you had some family, is that right?"
"Partly." The story is too long to tell in full.
"Well, in them days pa had died, leaving us with the shop, but my ma was still living and I helped her about the place. But it was an honest set-up that she had then and we hardly got by. So the rest of the time I used to do some palming and area diving with a pal and I knew some of Fagin's gang; used to see 'em about - Nick Chaplet, and Charley Bates, and Toby Scatters - and they was the best at their game; all us kinchins knew it. If you was one of 'em, you must be a natural."
"Perhaps I am," Oliver answers. He feels as though there have been two of him inhabiting his body of late: one who craves the excitement like a starving man, and one who stands horrified by what he sees, yet the less scrupulous Oliver constantly succeeds in seducing his better by appealing to a deep private morality common to them both. It would be easier to accept his shadowy twin, he thinks, were he not enjoying him so much. He frowns, and Davy regards him, head tilted curiously.
"I heard everything what you heard today," he says, "and I might have heard some more in it, what you had too decent a heart to. If I was a feller what wanted to try his hand at thieving just once in his life, I couldn't find a cove what deserved any better to be thieved off. When you trusted me, it had to be 'cause you was decent, or 'cause you was stupid. And I never took you for stupid." A grin suddenly breaks over his face. "Except p'rhaps when you handed me a red clock and never asked for the receipt."
Oliver returns a crooked smile of his own. "I haven't kept my promise to you yet, though."
"What promise?"
Taking his wallet from his pocket, Oliver reaches inside and removes two gold sovereigns. He proffers them. "You said that you'd take my coin after I found Jack. I'd like to make it two."
"I'll take 'em, and gladly," Davy says. He jingles the money in his palm, his grin growing wider. "But I think I'd like to spend a bit of what I don't need right away. Will you come and have a bite to eat with me? Or have you got another visit what you have to make?"
"No, I haven't just yet, and, yes, I'd be happy to," and so they travel together along Holborn, with Lincoln's Inns of Court and its fields over the rooftops to the right; Gray's and its gardens to the left.