Oliver is alone when he wakes again, the bell of the Saints Anne and Agnes this time the loudest one to mark the hour of seven. He rattles carefully into the chamber pot, then washes and dries himself at the bowl the best that he can to remove the sticky traces of oil, and would have been cautious and made use of some cologne, but there is none to be found. When he dresses, he finds that Jack has left a note in his coat pocket, and one that brings such heat to his face that he wonders if it might not be best to tear it to shreds or burn it before any other eyes are cast over the lines. I will of course see you later, Jack closes. Self-conscious at leaving the room in which it would be clear to anyone who had seen him arrive that he had spent the night, Oliver is not a little relieved to find the comings and goings up and down the stairs already so regular, and the bar room so busy with beer and breakfast, that he can hardly move, let alone see a familiar face for the customers.
The astonishing night, faded so recently, has raised a maelstrom in him that sends his thoughts tumbling. The shocking intimacy of their naked bodies and then the way that each had seemed to melt into the other; Jack's fierce want for all that he has to give; the mind-numbing pleasure with its uncontrollable climaxes; the certainty that, having known Jack as a lover, he will never again be satisfied with anything less - not a wink; nor an ironic tip of the other man's hat; nor a casual exchange of words as Oliver passes him, loitering innocuously on some street. He has watched Jack grow through these fleeting encounters; tiny moments captured like the carved portraits of a cameo. And just as closely has Jack, it would seem, been watching him. Oliver feels the first stirrings of new arousal now to imagine the heat that has been slowly building behind that curious, impudent gaze. Simply knowing that Jack desires him with the strength that he does had rendered him powerless to do anything but respond; to willingly commit with him that which the law deems the grossest of unnatural offences. He has never experienced this depth of feeling with a woman; never experienced it with anyone. Always having believed himself perceptive, Oliver is almost aghast now. How could he have been so wilfully blind for such a time as to have not understood what the exact nature of the emotions and urges were that drew him to Jack?
The morning fog feels extraordinarily fitting, cloaking men on the street as it does in mystery and turning them merely into passing ships. All manner of secrets might be hidden in a fog, from the smugglers that bring their boats up every branch of the confused river, to the respectable gentleman who steps up to speak to women on the street whom he would not dare acknowledge in brighter light, but Oliver imagines, perhaps self-centredly, that few are as powerful or as private as his own.
Holborn is already pressed: long lines of clerks directing their steps towards Chancery Lane and the Inns of Court in one direction, and to Threadneedle Street and the City in the other; the coffee-stall keepers carrying their cans of coffee from yokes; carts laden with goods - a fishmonger's light chaise, a brewer's dray, the fruit and vegetable barrows of the costermongers. Pitches successfully claimed with a few flying fists, the newsboys cry shrilly.
Paper, paper, to-day's paper! Daily News, Morning Post, Times! Lord Stratford landed in Const'inople - all the news, news, news!
Oliver might readily have stopped amongst the working men at a stall, but a change of clothing is as necessary as a meal is becoming, prosaic as both seem after his voyage of discovery. Forever practical by nature, he continues across the steep plunges of Holborn Hill through the Fleet Valley, where extra horses are stabled to help drag the omnibuses up the inclines and men posted to dash into the road to skid the wheels for the descent, quickening his pace as he nears home. Thick and clinging one moment, wispy and near transparent the next, the fog hangs about him as he walks. Jack had once told him that the pickings were good in a fog.
Behind his own door, he asks Sarah and Hester to fill a bath for him before he eats, explaining that he had quit his uncle at dawn for a patient and not wished to inconvenience his household at that early hour. As steaming jugs travel from the copper to his dressing room and back again, Oliver lays out fresh clothes and linens for himself. He had seen no need when engaging his staff to take on a manservant for such tasks at which he considers himself more than able to manage. Alone at last, he undresses and immerses himself in the water. The healthy action of the pores is stimulated by warmth, and he recommends an immediate hot bath as the first course of action to patients who fear having been exposed to a contagious malady to urge it to make its way out of them by the same route, but the sensuality of it cannot be ignored. The slight roughness of the sponge as he moves it in steady circles is exciting to his skin, bringing his nipples to tight stiffness as he slowly retraces the paths of Jack's fingers and tongue. His own body seems new again, as it had after his very first completion of the sexual act; as though it doesn't entirely belong to him. The complicated human skin needs to be kept free and open, so that the body may free itself through it of internal impurities, but if that which is moving within Oliver is impure, it's also too much a part of him to ever be purged.
He fucked a man the night before. In a few short hours' time, he intends to act as an accomplice for the same man while he steals.
Not since he was a parish boy has the blood ever thrummed so hard in his veins, nor has he felt so terrifyingly alive.
He makes his appointed calls that afternoon, none too far from his own parish, and, therefore by default, from his quarry's. Several times he whistles for a hansom, but wherever possible, he dismounts and takes the journey on foot, testing his fortune, hoping that Jack might suddenly appear, elf-like, to fall into step with him earlier than planned. Whatever the skill is of being able to consistently find Oliver among two million souls, whether it's simply the enjoyment of a network of pals and informers, or some kind of sixth sense where he is concerned, Jack has it in spades. But today Oliver, Jack, or both are out of luck. Pickpockets, dragsmen and dandies there are aplenty, but not a one with a rakish twist to his mouth and soft hazel eyes.
From Grays Inn Road, Oliver makes his way to the house opposite a little park planted with ash and London planes. A quiet, old-fashioned place, it's inclined to make Oliver feel as though he assaults it with his masculine presence, so like a cote of cooing birds are his lady client, Emma Jerningham, and her plump housekeeper and clutch of maidservants. Miss Jerningham - she has never married - is as gentle as her home, and sufficiently favoured by inheritance to have spent her entire sixty years being protected and cossetted first by parents and then a string of staff who plainly adore her. Much given to lack of appetite and an exhaustion that Oliver is certain is merely nervous but too kind to openly declare so, she often takes to her bedchamber for long periods at a time. The room to which the lady's maid escorts him resembles with its fringed draperies and bed-hangings and fancy covers nothing so much as an infant's cradle; a nest within which the occupant is shielded from the worries of life.
Her chest has been troubling her: "It flutters so," she says, in concern. Oliver listens, with the maid as a chaperone in the corner, and takes a pulse, and finds it to all appearances strong. He ponders the dilemma, unwilling to simply make an exit on the heels of the phrase there is nothing wrong with you when the patient is of a delicate emotional nature. As a student, he was taught that a great deal of practicing medicine is comforting and relaxing the patient whilst nature takes its course, and he still feels there to be a certain amount of truth in the declaration. At length, he writes a prescription for laudanum, a few drops only to be taken in hot tea late in the evening to promote a quiet night, and takes a small pill box from his own bag.
"One to be taken three times daily," he says, holding it between finger and thumb, "or when you notice symptoms - whichever's the most frequent."
She begins to reach for it, then falters. "Is it... a medicine for the heart?"
"Ma'am," Oliver replies, very firmly, "with plenty of rest, and some light reading to occupy the mind, you ought to be feeling a good deal better within a few days. I make you a promise, as your physician." Placing the little box in her hand, he carefully and pointedly closes her fingers over it.
They are bread pills.
Miss Jerningham looks down at the box, turning it over and about. For the first time since his arrival, the shadow of a smile crosses her face. "Do you read yourself, Doctor Brownlow?" she asks, after a few moments.
"Little other than medical texts, I'm afraid. I find my work rewarding, but some would say that it makes me rather staid."
"Staidness is not such a character flaw. I think that I should be more content in the end with a staid husband than an exciting one."
Oliver shakes his head. "I am unmarried, Miss Jerningham."
"You are still a young man. You have years ahead of you. Not forever, though - as I once thought."
"Once?"
"There was a man who adored me. He would have wed me in a moment, but my family were proud, and I was a timid girl who obeyed my parents. They thought that I should refuse him, as I might do better." Miss Jerningham's hand tightens almost imperceptibly on the pill box. "I never did."
"Sometimes the plans that life has set out for us are not what we expected them to be," Oliver says, softly, "but, in the end, we still choose what to make of them."
"Doctor Brownlow, if you should find yourself with a choice to make -"
"Yes, ma'am?"
Miss Jerningham lifts her shoulders a little and lets them drop. Her smile changes, growing wistful. "Please do choose happiness."
She seldom feels strong enough for callers. Oliver sits with her for a while longer, and, for once, she is the one who spends the quieter afternoon and the one less consumed by thoughts.
-oOo-
On the corner of a street very near Russell Square, Oliver stops to draw his watch from his pocket. His timing is crucial. He means to negate the discourtesy of calling with no appointment with the professional concern of a physician: passing, he had wished to check the progress of his patient. His hope is that not even Manns can - openly, at least - condemn the intentions behind it, however inappropriate his calling without invitation nor appointment. He opens the watch and glances at the dial. Is it late enough? Slowly but steadily, Oliver begins to walk again, homing in on his quarry. It will take him a few minutes to reach the house and make his arrival known. That should give his chief accomplice time to move into position.
Little over an hour later, he is seated opposite his patient in the dining room with its arabesque paper and Turkey carpet, and Manns has the fish knife and fork in hand and is lifting filets from the bone of a fine trout, his mouth pursed, his eyebrows slightly lifted.
"It appears as if your theory may have held water, Doctor Brownlow. It has been a full month since I was last forced to suffer with my affliction. I should have expected to be weathering the symptoms of a relapse by now. To my surprise, this has not occurred."
"I'm very pleased to hear it, sir."
"And, no doubt, gratified. I hope that I have at least proven an interesting experiment for you."
"Despite my belief in scientific exploration, Mr Manns," Oliver replies, "the health of my patients is of the most interest to me." It will be of benefit to all of them for him to continue with a masquerade of civility. He has no desire to be asked to leave the house sooner than is absolutely necessary, as long as his presence provides some degree of distraction from what's happening elsewhere. If he's intending to stay long, he can do without inviting more open animosity from Manns than he already has. With the new knowledge that he now possesses, keeping both his tone and his expression calm borders on a physical effort.
As the footman moves between them with a silver sauce-boat, Oliver finds himself observing his host, with not only care but fascination. So accustomed is he to gritting his teeth and deferring politely to Manns as one gentleman to another, that the notion that the other man is no gentleman at all is something that his mind hardly dares to accept. For the first time beneath this roof, Oliver feels as though he wields power, and in other circumstances, he would have been ashamed at how he relishes it. He feels certain that he could have seen Manns arrested by now had he alerted the authorities. It would have been Jack's revenge upon him.
Lust for revenge Oliver might have satisfied, but not his own lust for excitement.
"And do you see medicine as a science, or as an art?" Manns is saying.
"As both. As an art which is based upon applied science."
"The art of being a physician. Would you agree that an art consists of a skill acquired by experience?"
"Yes, and that applied science is the application of basic scientific truths to a problem. But truth is short-lived in science, and what we learn to be true today may have been proven wrong by tomorrow."
"'Always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.' First Timothy, chapter three, verse seven. And what would be your solution, Doctor?"
"That we never cease to learn, Mr Manns. That man never ceases to be inquisitive."
From another room comes the tinny noise of a bell. Oliver lets his gaze drift idly to his plate, but not a hair of him is anything less than alert and watchful.
"The bell-hanger, once again," Manns says, as though answering Oliver's unspoken question. He looks irritated by the slight interruption. "I have already advised him to remain well clear of me today. I found his manner peculiarly insolent during his last visit here, and it has not improved to any discernable degree."
"I find that men respond for the most part in the way that they are treated," Oliver says, blandly.
Manns has little interest in Oliver's opinion. The footman is now taking up the clean plates from the sideboard, and the maid removing the potatoes and brussels sprouts on the table from warming, releasing a gentle puff of steam from the dishes of water beneath. The ham that accompanies them would admittedly, at any other time, have been delicious, but Oliver barely tastes what he eats. He can fancy his ears pricking, like those of a horse, acutely aware of all that goes on around him, and of nothing so much as what must by now be going on little more than a staircase away. The not knowing is what's hardest to tolerate; the uncertainty. Having been the one to first suggest this to Jack - although Jack would doubtlessly have come around to the notion very quickly of his own accord - he now feels responsible for him: a fierce protectiveness. He had expected to be incredibly unsettled by this point in time, but he's astonished at how focused he is, almost coldly so. Should a man planning to commit a crime feel this way?
Jack asked for a minimum of an hour and a half to work. Oliver will give him every minute that he can.
He takes a sip from his wine glass. "What are your politics, Mr Manns?" he asks.
Manns lifts an eyebrow. "My politics, Doctor?"
"With regards to the Eastern Question. If the Sultan should accept the Russian treaty -"
"Then Russia would undoubtedly use its guardianship over Ottoman Christendom as a means for expansion, therefore posing a challenge in the Mediterranean."
"But if he were to choose Napoleon," Oliver says, "Nicholas would hardly be likely to stand idly by. We may be destined for war regardless."
"If Britain wishes to preserve her interests."
"They say that all wars are ultimately fought for money, sir. And that there are always those who profit from them."
Manns shrugs, lightly. "Perhaps so. It is the way of things. God awards the spoils to the righteous; those that he deems worthy of them."
"And men die because both of their commanders thought themselves righteous."
"You speak out of concern for your fellow man, Doctor Brownlow - as I might expect from your profession. But to achieve a goal, one is often forced to make a sacrifice."
Oliver forces himself to harden his heart. He has too much to think about at this point in time, and there is too much at stake. Every footfall draws his attention, every sound becoming, to his ear, a creak on the stair. Inwardly, he reprimands himself. He's in severe danger of letting his imagination run away with him. But no picture is more pervasive in his mind than that of Jack, squatting before the steel hulk of the safe, working magic with his tools and fingers, eyes sparkling like those of the covetous bird that he shares a name with; stealing - as Mr Gay has Matt of the Mint tell it - what he was never made to enjoy.
"My uncle thinks that Mr Gladstone would offset the costs of a war by raising taxes," he says.
"No war can be waged without cost, Doctor. And, as always, those deemed wealthy will bear the cost for the idle masses."
Salad and cheese are carried around at the appropriate moment, and for sweet, candied fruit and peel, and the little round French pastries, macaroons. They seem a peculiarly airy and insubstantial thing, ill-suited to Oliver's thoughts. In the dining room of the same house that Jack is robbing, he sits munching upon confectionery. It cannot be for very long that he continues to eat; perhaps fifteen minutes. And then comes a hullabaloo like nothing that he's ever heard.
The first sound is that of the servants' bell being rung again, this time closer by. Four times it jangles, long and loud, as if someone were swinging from the pull. Instantly, Oliver's veins flood with ice, the nauseating chill of panic. His muscles flex, his entire body urging to move, but he might have been tied to his chair for all that he's able to. All he can do is sit, helplessly. He flicks his eyes to Manns, who is frowning, lowering his knife and fork.
"What is that now -" his host begins, but a high scream suddenly slices a rude interruption through his demand. More noise follows: running footsteps, a thud upon the stairs, a sharp whistle. And then, soaring above it, a woman's cry of, "Thieves! Police! Thieves!"
As though they had been runners under starter's orders, everyone begins to move at the same time: Manns first, throwing down his napkin and leaping from his chair to stride forth, Oliver at his heels, the slower servants following. Manns has barely flung open the door and taken more than a few paces outside it when he's knocked squarely back again by Jack as he vaults over the banister and cannons into him. Halfway up the stairs, the screeching shape of the stout woman who is the housekeeper pants in his wake, clutching her heavy bosom as she continues to make her observations about thieves and murder. The footman runs forward, attempting to throw himself bodily in the intruder's way, but too late; Jack has righted himself with great sprightliness, and if he had not needed to turn to pick up the carpet bag dropped heavily down to the hall ahead of him, he might even now have sprinted for the back stairs, from there to the kitchens, and been clean away. It costs him only a moment, but that moment is enough for Manns, cursing the footman, to push the man far enough aside to allow him to deliver a heavy boot to Jack's seat that sends him sprawling. Jack's sideways roll is fast, sufficient to take him out of range of a second and similar kick. Manns's hand grasps for his coat. Then he himself is suddenly and unexpectedly restrained by a grip upon his shoulder like iron.
"I don't think that that's a good idea, Mr Manns," Oliver says.
"Let me assure you, Doctor, I am capable of taking care of this, with or without the intervention of the police! And I shall be neither as soft nor as lenient as they!"
"No, sir. You grossly misunderstand me."
"Then you will put it into words that I do understand, if you'd be so kind!"
Oliver has the sensation of standing on the edge of a precipice, to which there will be no climbing back up when he leaps. "Take your hands off him, Mr Manns," he says. "Leave him alone."
He observes the effect of his words on his host. As though they were both actors, going through their paces upon a stage, Manns turns to look at Jack once more, then at the carpet bag at his side, and then, once again, across his shoulder at Oliver behind him. For a moment, he seems incapable of speech. But then he recovers himself, and, in a voice that drips with ice, says only, "You."
Oliver has never known anything happen so quickly. In a flash, Manns's hand is at his own collar. "Police," his host says to the footman, through gritted teeth, "this minute. Shout, damn you," but the stunned servant, his back to Jack, has failed to notice the latter rising to his feet, sliding his hand into a pocket as he moves. The soft snick of the knife is audible as it unfolds, but the footman's reflexes are not fast enough. Jack has it pressed between Manns's shoulders, digging into the cloth of his coat.
"I wouldn't think about it, mate," Jack says. "Be a shame if it was your man there what made me have to spoil them nice togs of yours. Lovely bit of material, but it'll slice as easy as what you will. Touch him again, and I'll gut you like that fish what I can smell."
The servants stand posed in a tableau, the footman and the maid frozen, the housekeeper grasping the banister. For a few moments, no-one speaks. Then, very, very slowly, Manns's hand unclenches, but he remains staring into Oliver's face, his nostrils quivering slightly in the impotence of his anger. "This is an outrage," he says, in a barely controlled voice. "You are a madman. You will not take thirty paces along the street before the hand of the law is upon you. 'He who is a partner with a thief hates his own life; He hears the oath but tells nothing.' Proverbs, chapter twenty-nine, verse twenty-four."
"Better than the Bishop of London, ain't he?" Jack suggests.
Manns grits his teeth against the subtle but unrelenting poke of the knife. "You have betrayed your profession and your name, sir," he says to Oliver. "You may be of your uncle's blood, but poison had entered it before he ever took you under his roof and into his affections. You may treat cancers, but you have not treated the one grown daily larger inside yourself. The bastard of a whorish female and the scum of society you were born, and the same is what you will always be. I know, Doctor Brownlow, precisely what you are."
There had been a day, many years ago, when Oliver had knocked down Noah Claypole at Mr Sowerberry's undertaker's shop, for speaking very similar words. It had boiled over in him, spilling out with flying feet and fists that had sent the charity boy to the floor. Now his voice is colder and calmer than he can ever recall hearing it. "Yes, Mr Manns," he replies, "you know what I am. And because I know what you are, I should like to be quite sure that I address you by the correct name from this day on. May I use it?"
"What in damnation are you saying to me now! What name?"
"Why, Mr James, of course."
Every ounce of colour drains from Manns's face. For a moment, Oliver thinks that he might drop where he stands. Then he says, "I'm quite certain that I have not the slightest idea what it is that you mean."
"It would be no trouble at all to provide clarification. And I should be quite happy to do so in front of your household. It may be of great interest to your servants. I've always known the working people to be extremely astute."
"You are a liar, sir! How dare you stand in my home and make insinuations about my character!"
"I dare, sir, because if I am a liar, we appear to be two of a kind."
Manns hesitates, as though deliberating whether or not to call Oliver's bluff. Finally, he wrenches his eye from him and lets it fall upon the footman. "Get out," he says, and then, louder and more vehemently, looking wildly about him, "All of you! Get out! Leave this room, and close the doors! Any of you that I find eavesdropping, I shall thrash, God help you!"
Confused and uneasy, the servants withdraw. Manns watches them go, waiting until the last has disappeared before turning once again to Oliver. His voice trembles just barely discernibly as he says, "You will explain yourself to me, Doctor, before I take it upon myself to call for the police."
"I think," Oliver answers, "that the police would be very appropriate visitors. You see, Mr Manns, your thief happens also to be my friend, whom I was not about to see walk to his hanging. Therefore I set out to warn him, and to offer him my help. You may imagine my surprise when, during the course of gathering information, I discovered that my friend was the innocent party in comparison to his victim."
"I am waiting to hear what draws you to this defamatory conclusion."
"I believe you to be living under a false name, Mr Manns. I believe you to be Thomas James, an East India Company soldier who deserted his post more than twenty-five years ago during the second siege of the Raja's fortress at Bhurtpore in India. That is where you first caught the malarial fever that stayed with you until I purged it with the right medicine. You were responsible for the death of your commanding officer. You are a wanted man, sir, and your fortune was begun with stolen money."
"You are a madman, and the voice of a madman makes very little sound. The shouting of lunatics, Doctor, is lunatics' shouting."
Oliver holds his gaze. "I need only one more thing to prove my claim, sir. At least to a sufficient degree for the police and the India House to show an interest."
Manns gives a short imitation of a laugh, without opening his mouth; a laugh that comes from his nose, and that in no way alters his expression. "Then name it, do!"
Over his shoulder, Jack's eyes meet Oliver's, and understanding sparks in them. Slowly, his mouth pulls into something near to a smirk. "Tell me where, Oliver," he says.
"Left arm," Oliver answers. Instantly, Manns is shoved forward by Jack to fetch up against the wall, his coat wrenched from his shoulder, and Oliver has hard hands on his back to hold him there and cow his struggles. Manns is heavier set, but Oliver is younger, and has not only youth on his side, but a strength borne of both hatred for one man and love for another. Jack takes the shirt in his fist, punching and twisting the knife into its material to start a tear. He hooks his fingers into the hole and pulls; holds the knife between his teeth and gives both hands over to it, and the cloth bursts open. Beneath it, he tears another zig-zag into the undershirt, jerking and tugging. Seams rip, leaving the sleeves of the garments hanging. Oliver could have gasped as he catches the first glimpse of the mark; the blackened capital 'D', inscribed on the skin that he's never been permitted to view.
He was right. If there could ever be such a thing as a crime with something good and right about it, this must be the nearest thing to one.
"See," Jack says, behind Manns's ear, a lot less tenderly than he had spoken into Oliver's the night before, "you ain't hanged for housebreaking any more. The magistrates is too busy these days with all them coves what needs hanging for murder. Shocking, the amount of 'em running around, it is. If my good friend Doctor Brownlow and me was to get hauled off by the peelers for the sakes of a few coins of the realm, we might just recommend they extend the invitation to you, and all. And I'd like to make a wager that you'd come out of this sorry business a lot worse than what we would."
Oliver clears his throat, pointedly. "Do you think of yourself as a lucky man, sir?" he says.
Manns's struggles cease, and he becomes briefly very still. Then he seems to sag a little beneath his own weight, all the fight going out of him, as though it's finally become clear just how very much is stacked against him and how poor are his odds. "What I was driven to -" he says, falteringly. "I was left with no choice." His voice grows louder, more ragged. "Do you hear me? I was left with no choice!"
"But, Mr Manns," Oliver replies, "there is always a choice."
From the corner of his eye, he grows aware that Davy has some moments ago slid around the drawing room door to join them, and has been watching silently. Now the pawnbroker ambles across the hall and hoists aloft the carpet bag. He taps Jack on the shoulder. "'Scuse me," he says, with a glint in his eye, when the other man glances down. "Believe this might belong to you."
The knife still in one hand, Jack releases his hold on Manns's clothing to free the other. He begins to reach out, but abruptly stops halfway, his grasping fingers closing upon thin air before retracting. Turning towards Oliver, he looks him over, carefully and thoughtfully. "I reckon," he says, "it belongs to him."
Davy obediently proffers the loot again, accompanied by a little mock-polite touch of his cap. "Oliver," he says, boldly enough that matters would have been clear to even a blind man. The look of astonishment on Manns's face is one of the most satisfying things that Oliver recalls ever having seen. He could almost have laughed, as cruelly and foolishly as a boy. Instead, he clears his throat and accepts the bag.
"Thank you," he says, and then, on a sudden impulse, places it on the floor and kneels beside to open it.
Despite familial wealth, Oliver realizes that he has never actually looked upon an amount like this in coins before. It stuns him, mesmerizes him. Slowly, he scoops up some of the gold and lets it trickle through his fingers, watching it wink and gleam beneath the gaslight as it sings its siren song of alluring dreams. He finds himself wondering whether Jack is purely a mercenary, or a romantic. Does he only see the monetary value in his booty, or does he perhaps like to hold his pilferings in his hands as well, if only for a short while?
"I've been forced to raise my professional fees recently, Mr Manns," he says. "For a complete cure in a case such as this, I estimate that my bill will come to between five hundred and one thousand pounds. I would recommend that you seek medical advice further afield in the future. Perhaps far away from London. If I were to be compelled to spend time in your company, the cost of engaging me might ultimately prove to be too high for you."
Jack gives the other man a prod. "Putting it simply, mate, you're in the market for a new doctor."
Manns's jaw is tight. "You will not get away with this. You will never - you would not dare -"
Oliver closes the carpet bag with a snap. "But I would dare. And I believe that I have got away with it. Just as you did. Of the two of us, I'm certain that I'll be the one to sleep far more easily at night. You see, sir, I've never stolen before, because I'd never steal from a man who hadn't earned it. And my two friends here would hesitate to steal from one who would miss it. They see the world a little differently than I, but leaving a man to die is very far from being a habit of theirs."
"You have no idea what happened," Manns says. His voice shakes. "No idea at all."
"Then perhaps you would like to tell your story to the magistrate, sir."
When Oliver lifts his head, he half-expects to see flags and victory banners being hoisted aloft. This past month has been his war; his deeply personal war with his own nature, and now he has the conviction that he has in some strange way won, or at least arrived for now at a temporary cease-fire. He looks to Jack, and then to Davy. Both of them have amused, satisfied looks on their faces that seem to be directed more at him than at Richard Manns.
"Shall we leave, gentlemen?" he asks.
The lamplighter is making his way along the street outside, setting his ladder beside each in turn and climbing it to turn the cock. The fog-smoke makes yellowish coronas around the light, the shape of the man appearing within them as he holds his own lamp to the mantle, then withdrawing again as he returns to street level. They descend the steps into it, and it swallows them up like a vast ocean, the house fading rapidly behind them as they put as much distance as possible between it and themselves until it seems no more than a mere phantom in the growing dusk.
"Well," Davy observes, "you did it."
Oliver blinks. "Shouldn't you be saying that we did it, if anything?"
"He had it right the first time," Jack says. "This was your idea, you know. Beginning to end. What do you suppose he'll say to them servants of his about what just happened?"
"I'm sure that he's quite capable of coming up with a plausible tale for them. He's had a great deal of practice. And for my uncle, about why I was disengaged as his physician."
"You sorry about it?"
Oliver considers it for a moment. "No," he answers, at length, "not at all." He isn't sorry for anything, he thinks; not for helping Jack to thieve, nor for all that he and Jack did together on the bed. He feels vindicated, liberated.
Jack eyes him, keenly. "Oliver," he says, with a surprising depth of conviction, "you're a better man than what you take yourself for." Then the play about his mouth stretches into a smile that seems to fit him better, and he places a hand upon Oliver's shoulder. "And one who I'm guessing could use a drink round about now, that right?"
"How about we drink the night away," Davy says, "once you've got the money safe. You got something to celebrate, ain't you?"
Oliver looks at Jack, still smiling at him, with that hot, private glimmer in his eyes that speaks to Oliver alone. He feels grateful for the air that cools his face a little. "Yes," he says, and nods. "Something to celebrate."