Some boys would have stuttered out their life story under that formidable gaze. This one stared straight back, undaunted. ‘They’re waiting on Drury Lane. Play’s almost finished. Where to?’
‘Where to, Mistress King,’ Moll corrected him sharply, then smiled. She’d worked the streets herself as a girl. ‘Light this gentleman to Greek Street.’
She turned the shack. On a whim I grabbed her arm and pressed my lips to hers, tasting smoke and brandy and a trace of sweet oranges. She giggled and kissed me back as the blood thrummed hard in my veins. This I would tarry for, even with a hundred warrants for my arrest. I remembered the last time we’d kissed, the night we heard the king had died. Three months ago now. I’d thought the world would change. It didn’t, of course. Moll’s hand moved lower.
Around my purse.
I seized her wrist and pulled her hand away. She gave a lazy smile. ‘Just testing. Wouldn’t thieve from one of my own, now would I, Reverend?’ She slipped back inside before I could answer.
The link boy rubbed his mouth to cover a grin. I frowned and tossed him a penny. ‘Light your torch.’
He did as he was told, holding it to the lantern burning at the door. As the pitch caught light it illuminated his face with a soft orange glow.
‘Why’d she call you Reverend?’ he asked. He crinkled his nose. ‘You a black-coat or something?’
Or something. Reverend was a nickname Moll liked to tease me with, knowing my history. I gestured to my blue silk waistcoat, cinnamon-coloured coat and breeches. ‘Do I look like a black-coat?’
He shrugged, as if to say he would believe anything of anyone. It was a weary gesture, and sat strangely on such young shoulders. This was what happened to boys who guided rakes and whores back to their beds in the dead of night. Knocked the innocence clean out of them. Well; there were worse ways to earn a penny in this city. He turned and trotted towards Soho, holding the blazing torch high. I settled my tricorn on my head and hurried after him, a ship following the north star home.
And I wondered, fretfully. Beneath my fashionable clothes, did I still have the look of a clergyman? I turned this unhappy thought over in my mind. Ever since I was a boy – younger than this little imp running ahead of me – I had been told that I was destined to join the Church just like my father, the Reverend Dr Thomas Hawkins. (There. He had even given me his name, so I might more easily become him one day.) Things had not gone to plan. I had always known, deep within my soul, that I was not suited to the clergy. The trouble was, I had no idea what I
