Chapter Text
Mornings at Kent Square began at dawn, with a harsh knock upon Dean’s door and barked orders to help Hester lay the fires in the dining room and parlour. That accomplished, Hester usually set to making breakfast, while Dean heated water over the fire to carry upstairs to the bedrooms. He was not permitted to enter Mrs Novak’s bedroom, but still Hester insisted he must carry the water to her door, so that she herself need only carry it a little ways more to Mrs Novak’s dressing table.
As a general rule, Dean spoke little with Mrs Novak, who seemed content to keep her own counsel, work on her embroidery, and let Hester run the household as she pleased. She also seemed little interested in her own daughter, beyond the occasional lessons that followed no schedule but Mrs Novak’s own whims.
Claire was by far Dean’s preferred company in the house. On the occasions when he was set some task in Claire’s room and Claire was there, playing by herself with Patience the dolly or some other little trinket, she was filled with questions that showed a sharp, curious mind.
Had he grown up in London? Yes, in a boarding house close by the river. Did he have family still living? Yes, one brother, who had helped him secure the position. (And who had, to Dean’s poorly concealed disappointment, yet to return for a visit to see how Dean was getting along.) How had he come to be a servant?
“It’s as I said. My brother knew your father and—” Dean began, but Claire shook her head vehemently, her curls bouncing.
“That is not what I mean, Winchester. Why are you a servant? You aren’t nearly as dull as Hester.”
Dean bit his lip firmly to keep from smiling as he moved Claire’s books back onto the shelf he had just dusted. (Horrid-looking things all, full of religious instruction and grammar.) “That is a very rude thing to say, Claire,” he told her.
“I think the truth is often quite rude, but no less true for it,” she replied sagely. “And you haven’t answered my question.”
There wasn’t a doubt in Dean’s mind that he wasn’t meant to reveal his past as a convict to the daughter of the house. “Bad luck,” he said simply, because it was true enough. With better luck, perhaps he wouldn’t have been caught breaking into a house. Or with more skilled confederates than Garth Fitzgerald, who had made the noise that had attracted a passing peeler’s attention.
“That’s hardly an explanation,” Claire said haughtily.
“I’m afraid it’s the only one I’ll give today, young miss.”
For two days after this exchange, Claire would not speak to him at all, but on the third day, all was forgotten and they continued as usual.
During meals, Dean continued to serve at table, moving as little as possible in a futile effort to forget about the tight hold the frock coat kept on his back and arms. He felt half the time as though a hand was clasped around his shoulder, steering him down to the darks for some perceived infraction, but it could not be helped. At the rate the Novaks paid him, it would take him months to earn the cost of even the cheapest frock coat, and what little money Sam had given him to tide him over wasn’t near enough.
At least there was no shortage of tasks to fill his quiet hours. Something needed always to be cleaned or polished, or slops emptied out. Dean had grown up surrounded by human smells, but even so, he disliked the task of dealing with the chamber pots almost as much as Hester did.
In addition to domestic service, his main duties consisted in assisting Mr Novak. In the mornings, Dean would lay out his employer’s clothes for the day upon the bed, help him into his coat and assist with the more delicate fastenings. Mr Novak required help in tying his neckcloth into a bow as well, a task Dean found easy enough as he had been used to performing it for Alastair. Mr Novak, however, was accustomed to avert his face whenever Dean stepped close to perform the task, no doubt hoping that the action prevented Dean from seeing the colour in his cheeks. It did no such thing, but Dean was content to let it pass unremarked. He had a paid position and a roof over his head; he was little inclined to jeopardise it on the passing chance of a little fun with a married man.
In the laboratory, his own domain, Mr Novak seemed far more bold. On the way from stoking the fire to fetching some little thing from the cabinet, he would arrest Dean’s progress with a hand on his arm to remind him of something or make some small adjustment to what had been requested.
At such times, Dean almost feared that Mr Novak would work his way up to making a pass at him. He had no particular moral objection to this, but he’d escaped enough beatings to know the dangers of other men’s remorse.
Thus far, however, Mr Novak seemed too absorbed in his work to give the matter of Dean’s body any significant thought. More often than not, when Dean descended to the library after dinner, he found Mr Novak muttering to himself, crossing out lines he’d only just written, the ink of them still glistening in the light from the fire.
Many times, after Dean had fetched him some substance or other, Mr Novak added it to one of his many glass beakers and studied it, evidently waiting for some specific reaction with an almost fanatical gleam in his eyes. Inevitably, he was disappointed. Once or twice, the disappointment was such that he dashed the glass against the wall, obliging Dean to pick up the pieces.
Dean did not mind so much cleaning up after Mr Novak’s tantrums, but he despised those nights when Mr Novak asked him to consult one of the scientific tomes he kept upon a shelf beside the cabinet of chemicals. Dean thought that, given time, he might perhaps have understood some of the passages Mr Novak asked him to recite, but time was the one thing he could never rely on being granted. Every time Dean stumbled over an unfamiliar word, Mr Novak would huff impatiently. After very little time, without fail, he would snatch the volume from Dean’s hands and read the passage in question himself.
It stung, not merely because Dean felt the humiliation of these moments keenly, but also because reading had been one of his chief pleasures (at times, his only pleasure) for much of his life. He missed it sorely, and though he should have saved all his earnings for the purchase of a properly fitted coat that the Novaks would approve for table service, he found himself desperately eager to dart out and spend what few funds he had on reading matter instead.
When he’d first begun in service with the Novaks, he’d thought his best chance to slip away would be on Sundays, when the Novaks expected Dean and Hester to accompany them to service at St. Mary’s. But he soon learned that they were expected to rise early, then walk with the family to church and back, keeping always a respectful few paces behind. (Once, Claire had asked if she could be permitted to walk with him instead of her parents. Mr Novak, overhearing this, had spent the walk home lecturing her on why people must remain in the places ordained for them by God.)
As soon as they all returned from church, Dean and Hester were expected to begin preparing lunch. In truth, the half-day’s holiday Dean had been promised was no more than a few hours spent at a location other than the house in Kent Square.
His chance for time away did not arrive until three weeks into his sojourn with the Novaks. That night, Mr Novak had seemed weary, and more than usually talkative.
“Did I ever tell you, Winchester,” he said as Dean lingered in the corner by the fire, awaiting instruction, “that my parents named me James Castiel?”
“Indeed, sir?” Dean said, unsure of what other response might be expected of him.
“Indeed.” Mr Novak settled himself into a chair beside the table where his chemical beakers performed their mysterious work. He gazed upon one that shone an unearthly colour far more blue in appearance than even the brightest summer sky. “They gave me an angel’s name. I never make use of it unless I must for some official purpose, because who could ever be worthy of such a name? Not I, a humble servant of the Lord who is steeped in sinful thought and deed.”
To this, Dean made no response at all, for what could he possibly say? That he did not think his employer sinful? Certainly he had met far worse people in the tumbledown streets that clung to the banks of the river. And yet, Mr Novak would not thank him for making such a comparison, even if done in his favour.
As luck would have it, Mr Novak seemed not to require a response. He sighed deeply, tapping the cover of his notebook, which lay closed upon the table. “I feel I’m very, very close to a discovery, Winchester. There is but one problem whose solution still eludes me. If I can only see my way past that, my long, weary search will be at an end.”
“That is… joyful news, sir,” Dean said carefully. So often, in conversations with Mr Novak, he felt he was balancing atop a wooden plank above a pit of hungry lions. One misstep might cost him what little security he had managed to achieve for himself.
“It is,” Mr Novak agreed, though he did not sound as if he truly believed it. “What I require, I think, is some time alone with my thoughts. You are dismissed for the night, Winchester. Rest well.”
Dean could hardly believe his luck. He had spent less than an hour in Mr Novak’s company thus far. Hester would not expect him back in the kitchen, given how late their employer usually kept him.
For the first time since his release from Millbank, Dean had free time at his disposal, and enough money in his pocket to make use of it.
He thanked Mr Novak and retreated, as slowly as his impatience would permit. Once he’d left the library behind, he tread as carefully as he could on the way back to his quarters. If Hester heard him, she would no doubt find some lengthy, tedious work for him to do.
His luck held, and he breathed a sigh of profound relief as he shucked the confining waistcoat and slipped instead into his father’s old sack coat. Though large on him, it felt like an old friend, familiar in the way it settled on his shoulders. The first time Sam had seen him wear it, he’d asked how Dean could stand to have such a reminder of their father always with him.
Dean had answered him with the old adage that “beggars can’t be choosers,” though in truth, he did not think that he could have worn the coat if Father had died in it. Not out of any superstitious horror of death or hauntings, but because the manner of his father’s death made him furious every time he was reminded of it. Even Millbank had not cured him of that particular brand of rage.
His coat and hat in place, Dean dashed quietly back through the house, pressing his back to the wall and peering around corners; using the skills of the trade that had sent him to prison. Still, he could find no fault in himself for wanting just a few hours outside, in the company of his own people.
The moment he stepped outside the front door, a great weight seemed to lift from his shoulders. His instinct was to hurry down the steps and make for the river at a fast clip, but experience warned him to take it slow. It wouldn’t do to be arrested by a night patrol for moving down a well-to-do street such as this one in a suspicious manner. People like the Novaks might be able to trust in the law’s fair treatment, but Dean knew better. If not for the so-called strong arm of the law, he wouldn’t have grown up fatherless; he might never have seen the inside of a workhouse either.
Tonight, the fog wasn’t as oppressive as it had been on the night of his arrival in Marylebone, but still a vague, thin mist seemed to pervade the air, softening every corner and making indistinct smudges of the gaslights along the sidewalk.
Opposite the Novaks’ house, in the centre of Kent Square, was a small fenced park where the local residents were fond of strolling in the daytime, but its gates were closed now, so Dean passed it by and followed instead a slightly narrower side street that beckoned him with thoughts of smaller houses, unpaved roads and the sorts of establishments whose drink would split your head and twist your guts until you hardly knew yourself.
In the end, it was the scent of decay that showed him the way to the river. Even from miles away, it was hard to mistake: that putrid mixture of dead things, slops, and something harshly metallic that was likely more dangerous than either.
The sounds, too, grew more familiar as he went: the drunken shouts drifting through open doors and out of blind alleys, the creak of cart wheels struggling their weary way through the mud, the calls of friends to each other and canny salesmen advertising their wares to the crowd.
One call in particular stopped him in his tracks: “‘orrible murder! Murderess Talbot confesses all in her Newgate cell! Read all about it!”
Dean paid the patterer a ha’penny for his broadside, receiving in thanks a smile that showed no more than three teeth, all rotten enough that they’d soon be joining their fellows in the afterlife. As he went on his way, Dean ran his tongue along the row of his own teeth. He’d managed to retain them all, even in prison, thanks to the habits Alastair had taught him. The more discerning gentlemen of London cared that the boy whose arse they’d paid for could smile at them with a pretty set of teeth.
Shaking off the thought, Dean steered his steps to the nearest drinking establishment.
Inside the public house, the air was thick with smoke and the odour of too many bodies in too small a space. The ceiling was low and stained from long ill-use, the tables shaky and scratched from too many fights. Dean fetched himself a measure of gin from the weary-looking barmaid before retreating to a quiet corner with his reading.
Confessions and Lamentations of the Murderess Bela Talbot
This was followed by an illustration of a pretty young woman in a fancy bonnet. Dean would have laid good odds it wasn’t anything like the real Ms Talbot. The publishers of broadsides more often than not would use the first image they had to hand, whether or not it had any relation to the case.
Hear me, kind reader,
For I am quite eager,
To tell you all what I have done.
As I must hang
I feel a slight pang
For my unfortunate mistress is gone
The verse continued in a similar fashion for quite some time. Ms Talbot confessed to mixing arsenic with her mistress’s brandy, expressing by turns regret and gleeful joy, for her mistress had ill-treated her, and now Ms Talbot in turn was being ill-treated by the law.
This last, Dean was more inclined to believe than any confessions of remorse reported in a broadside. He had been still quite young when his father had been killed, but in the few years that had remained to his mother before the blue plague took her, she had spoken of little else but their mistreatment at the hands of the law during the trial that followed.
“It was a sham,” she used to tell Dean. “The witnesses who said that your father fought against his arrest, they were all in the constables’ pocket.”
Dean had never had a reason to disbelieve her. His father’s reputation in the neighbourhood had been that of a largely useless drunkard who was sometimes given to fights. But on the night in question, Dean had always been told, his father had been much too far in his cups to offer resistance to the runners who’d arrested him for public drunkenness and beaten him badly enough that he hadn’t survived the night.
Whatever the truth might be, they’d never seen a single penny’s worth of compensation. Even prior to Father’s death, they’d barely scraped by, mudlarking to add to the pittance Father had earned at the docks. After, there had been no other choice for them but the workhouse. Their mother had been hopeful that they would be fed and housed well enough there, and that for both Dean and Sam, there would be at least a chance of an education.
The reality had looked quite different, of course.
He drained the last of his gin, cursing himself for yet again giving way to dark thoughts about things that could not be changed. He’d picked a poor night to read about a real case of murder, especially one where the mistress’s ill-treatment of Ms Talbot might have justified her actions to some degree.
A bit of fiction would suit him better, perhaps. He’d go in search of penny-blood sales. He might be lucky enough to find one that had only just begun its run and would be easy to follow along with.
Leaving the broadside behind, he pushed through the crowd back to the exit and out into the street. He turned right and followed the stink to the banks of the river. Once or twice, a ladybird grinned at him and offered him a good time, but Dean shook his head at all of them. He had no disdain for anyone trying to make their living by selling what they had, but being with a woman had never held much interest for him. It was a fact he’d hidden carefully all his life, from all but Alastair and one or two trusted friends.
He walked past a penny-gaff theatre with playbills posted along the wall, all red paint and maniacal, fiendish faces. The proprietor called out to the passing crowd, advertising a special performance “tonight and tonight only! The Trial of Marie Lafarge! Conviction and hanging scene. Real rope used!”
Dean considered it. He loved murder plays as a rule, but tonight, his thoughts were too apt to take a turn for the dark. He didn’t care to dwell on real women like Ms Talbot and Ms Lafarge, behind bars, their fate already decided by those who had no sympathy for their circumstances.
Much as he disliked the fact, he could not help them. He could barely help himself.
Continuing on toward the edge of the river, he passed one stall after the next, hawking nuts and oranges and all manner of other goods. Some of the vendors he spotted easily as mudlarks, selling coal and other odds and ends that had fallen off the river barges and been scooped up at low tide. A bill pasted crookedly along a wall advertised “LONDON’S EDUCATED FLEAS! AMAZING TRICKS!”
At long last, he found a man who’d set up a rickety stall stacked with thin pamphlets whose covers showed the likes of ghoulish fiends creeping in shadowy corners, masked intruders invading bedrooms and distressed females fleeing across the moors.
The salesman perked up when he saw Dean, sensing a potential customer. “Penny-bloods!” he called, in a thin, high-pitched voice that, in itself, evoked thoughts of some strange, deformed creature. If it was an affectation, it was a canny one. “Get your penny-bloods here!”
“What have you got that’s new, or only just started?” Dean asked. His words seemed to come more easily to him here, among the people he was accustomed to.
“Oh, plenty,” the man said, watching Dean with the beady eyes of one who senses good business. “A new reader, are we?”
“A returning one,” Dean said, studying the covers on the rack.
“What does the young gent favour then? Fiends in ‘uman form? Bloody murder? Highway robbery? Despoilers of women?”
Dean made no answer, as his eyes had caught on a pamphlet titled Spring-Heeled Jack: The Terror of London! The illustration on it showed a ghoulish creature with a dark, intent stare, its head crowned by horns and black, bat-like wings unfolding darkly behind its back. A forked tail looked out from behind the creature, which carried a young woman in a white nightgown in its arms. The woman seemed unconscious, having likely fainted away from sheer terror.
“This,” Dean said. “How many numbers do you have of this?”
***
The Novak house lay silent when Dean made his return. The light that had been left out for Mr Novak’s progress up the stairs still stood where it had, suggesting that Mr Novak yet lingered in the laboratory.
It was all the same to Dean. He had better things to do than to worry after his employer’s sleep. He’d bought the first two numbers of the Spring-Heeled Jack story, and he planned to make good use of them.
When he’d reached the safety of his room, he lit its single candle and made himself more comfortable by taking off his hat and coat and loosening the buttons on his collar. He’d fetched enough water in the morning that some still remained in his jug, and he used it now to freshen his face and neck. Its temperature had gone tepid in the close air of the room, but the contrast against his skin, flushed from fast walking in the night air, was still pleasant. It would have been more pleasant to bathe in the small tub set aside for his and Hester’s use behind the kitchen, but that would have meant fetching and heating water over a period of at least an hour, and at this late time of night, he’d wake up the entire household with the noise if he tried.
Next, Dean undid the fastenings of his trousers and stepped out of them, leaving him no modesty but what the long tails of his shirt provided. There was no mirror in Dean’s room, likely to discourage servants from taking pride in their appearance or another such pious reason, but he closed his eyes and pictured himself standing there, in nothing but his shirt. In his mind, his own imagination became the eyes of another. A lover maybe, or just… a watcher in the corner of the room, eyes on Dean. Desiring him.
Dean’s cock twitched between his legs. He wrapped his fingers around it and gave it a stroke. His lips parted on a quiet moan. At Millbank, he’d hardly ever touched himself. The sounds of the other inmates’ screams and sobs had been far too dispiriting to make him want to take his pleasure.
Here, in the quiet, and with the light of the candle to remind him he was a free man, he wanted to try again. And if he felt a small thrill at indulging himself like this in the house of people who no doubt disapproved of the very idea of pleasure, that was nobody’s business but his own.
He pulled his shirt over his head and discarded it on the floor, shivering all over with the thrill and shame of being so untidy.
Looking down at himself, he found his cock half hard and his nipples pebbling in the sudden exposure to the air.
He poured the last of the water into the basin, then dipped his hands in it to cup water in his palms. Slowly, he poured a trickle of the water down his chest, watching the drops chase each other across his bare skin. When the water was gone from his hands, he traced its path down his chest and belly.
“Do you like what you see?” he asked the empty room, imagining still the watcher in the corner, formless as a shadow but its eyes fixed always on Dean.
There was no answer, but Dean imagined the sound of breathing growing heavier there, filling the room with hot exhalations of need and desire.
Naked, he crossed the small distance to his bed, where he had left the penny-bloods he’d bought. He picked up the first volume and began to read.
The first three paragraphs set the mood: a dark, stormy night, the sound of rain beating against the windows of an innocent young woman’s bedroom. And then…
Lo! Our young innocent wakes! She has heard a strange sound without, audible to her sensitive, womanly ear even through the wild, incessant beating of the rain. She sits, clutching her heaving bosom to still the rapid beating of her heart even as her eyes find the figure crouching on the ledge outside her window.
“Horror!” she cries. “Fiend! Who are you and why do you visit me?”
In answer to her desperate plea, thus affectingly uttered, the figure bursts through the window, as though its fastenings were nought in the face of the fiend’s strange, dark power.
Verily, it is Spring-Heel’d Jack himself who has come to visit! A single, daring leap carries him up to his victim’s bedroom, where he now lurks in the shadow of the corner with bat-like wings and devil’s horns to match his evil grin.
“Well, aren’t you a beauty!” he snarls, the fiend’s voice as deep as the very pits of Hell.
“Help!” cries the young woman. “Help-help-help!” She faints dead away and knows no more as the ghoulish creature spreads his wings and flies to her. His hands tear the sheet from her helpless body; the fiend’s forked tail restrains her very arms upon the bed.
Dean’s hand had found his cock again. It was fully hard now and sensitive to his touch. He pictured it: the bed, the fiend crouching at the foot of it, staring up at him with burning eyes. He was helpless to it, completely without defense, at the mercy of a creature who had none.
He gripped himself harder and bit his bottom lip to keep quiet. The tip of his cock was wet, easing his strokes even as he moved faster and dropped the pamphlet, forgotten, to his side.
His other hand free now, he laid it flat against the sheets beside his head. He imagined it held in place by a strong, muscular tail or hand. No matter how hard he writhed and struggled to get free, it kept him firm.
Take me, he told the fiend of his imagination. Make me yours.
He rolled onto his side. The hand not busy on his cock moved lower, lower, down his side and back. The pad of his thumb slid down between his cheeks, parting them to reveal the puckered entrance between them. He stroked across it, sighing at the thought of the fiend’s forked tongue gliding down it, inside it—
With a final sigh of pleasure, his climax spilled out of him, coating his fingers with his spend. He kept his eyes closed a moment longer, until the fluid cooled and left him disgusted with the state of his hand.
On trembling legs, he made his way back over to the water basin to clean himself. All the while, he kept his eyes averted from the shadows in the corner, in case he might look and see a real fiend standing there.
Or, more like, in case he might look and see no one there at all.