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fellowshippers2005-11-10 11:28 pm
precious-rosie.livejournal.com) wrote in fellowshippers2005-11-10 11:28 pm
FIC: The Captain's Boy (13/14) Andy Serkis/Elijah Wood - NC-17
Title: The Captain’s Boy
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
precious_rosie
Pairing: Andy Serkis/Elijah Wood.
Type: RPS AU
Series: 13/14
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: Total fiction, from the depths of my imagination.
Summary: Set in mid 1880's, Elijah is working in a high- class male brothel. The madame has fixed him up with a very special client.
Warning[s]: prostitution, glorious hot sex
Feedback: is always welcome! *bg*.
Beta:shy_nerthuserce, who is as wonderful a friend as she is a trusted and respected beta. *hugs* :-) ♥ Any mistakes are mine.
Archive:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
rockabillyblue
Author’s note: This is a story that I started back in April 2003 and it received high praise. Sadly thanks to that awful thing called “real life" , I’ve still got to complete it, along with several other projects. Perhaps this LJ is the kick up the backside I need! This chapter had been left half finished from last year and was completed this month.
Author's Note No.2: *Twist = Victorian slang for “girl”.
Author's Note No.3: All references regarding the Jack The Ripper case have been taken from a series of books, notably The Complete Jack the Ripper by Donald Rumblelow, Prince Eddy and the Homosexual Underworld by Theo Aronson and that 'splendid' work of fiction - Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution by Stephen Knight! *eg*
x-posted torockabillyblue
Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve
Three years later – late September 1888
Madame Louise sighed as she gazed through the window of her private drawing room on the second floor at No. 20 and watched the young boys in Hanover Square ply their trade.
One young thing with enormous blue eyes, dark hair, and pale skin reminded her of Elijah. A mere child, he would have been around the same age as Elijah had been when he first started on the game.
She watched as the boy moved in towards a gentleman wearing a top hat and carrying a large leather case, who pretended to ignore him. The boy followed and was sharply pushed away as the man approached the brothel. Madame Louise quickly withdrew. Men in top hats or carrying large bags made her jittery.
There was a maniac on the loose in Whitechapel, slaughtering whores. Two had been found dead within the last month. All within a three-mile radius of each other and all ripped like pigs at market.
And then that faux Danish Count’s body had been washed ashore at Greenwich last November. After a couple of years in the water the corpse had been so badly decomposed that the only item to identify its owner was a signet ring with the Mortensen family crest on it. His skull had been smashed in with such ferocity that it was sure to have killed him, the coroner had said.
But of course the man who’d claimed to be the Count wasn’t a Count at all. It had transpired that he was a Danish confidence trickster, whose speciality had been to affect the persona of an aristocrat and to woo widows out of their money. Easy enough with a handsome face and when you share the same name as one of Denmark’s foremost families. How he had acquired the ring was anyone’s guess.
Mortensen’s grisly fate was simply filed away as another unsolved murder in the light of the socialist riots in Trafalgar Square on 22nd November. The hundred thousand people who’d crowded the area took on the might of three hundred armed Grenadier Guards and three hundred armed Life Guards who were supporting some four thousand policemen. Compared to this, the unexplained death of a drifter was small beer – besides, since there had been no concerned enquiries from Denmark, the police had reasoned that this could be no blue-blooded corpse after all.
Naturally, Billy and Dominic had been amongst the Trafalgar Square throng, much to Madame Louise’s horror. Suffice to say, they returned to Hanover Square with minimal bruising, but full of stories of their bravado and derring do.
The small Madame shivered. London was always a dangerous place. It was at times like this that she wished she was back in the small Black Country town of Halesowen. Perhaps she should have stayed there with her family, where her late father had worked on the railways and her mother still worked as seamstress in a dress shop, rather than gone to London “to seek her fortune”.
Not that any of her family would approve of what she was doing. They would never have understood. As far as they were concerned, she was still a companion to a wealthy widow and regularly sent money home to make her mother’s existence more comfortable. They didn’t need to know that – after growing disillusioned in the service of the widow and wishing that she were doing something more challenging and less dull, Madame Louise ended up running the brothel at No. 20 after answering an advertisement for a housekeeper to an “exclusive gentlemen’s club in Mayfair” in a society magazine that the widow would often read.
Of course, the “exclusive club” was, in fact, the most sought after male brothel in London and “housekeeper” was a euphemism for the position of Madame. The original proprietor had used the term “housekeeper” as it was more respectable and it was his intention, until he could be completely satisfied that the candidates would not run screaming from the building in horror, not to divulge the true nature of what went on in the big house in Hanover Square. It was also his intention that the tasks associated with a housekeeper’s position were all that her duties were to be. However, as time went on, this plain speaking, hardworking, no-nonsense Black Country woman became the most respected Madame in London and the surrounding Shires.
The boys in her charge were her family too, now, and the recent murders were very much on her mind. Madame Louise warned her boys not to go walking out with new clients just in case. Who was to say that this killer’s tastes did not also extend to rent boys?
Meanwhile, regular customers were searched by an over zealous Hugo. On the first occasion this was implemented, Sir Ian McKellen had been somewhat amused as the stony-faced butler made him empty out his pockets and then frisked him.
“I say!” he’d carolled. “My darling Hugo, if one wishes to be touched up in such a charming manner, I would have asked if that was included in the price!”
With Jack overseeing his factories in the North, sometimes for weeks on end, Madame Louise felt vulnerable. She wished that Captain – no, still she forgot – Andrew Serkis were around still, but he and Elijah now had their new life together in Venice, having moved there the previous year. They were both extremely happy, according to the letter she had received from Elijah a fortnight before. It was obviously written with the help of Andrew, and copied in Elijah’s large, looping, childish handwriting.
“I’ve never been more happier. Andy’s paintings are selling well and he can now afford two more models. They are very pretty girls called Rosina and Ella. This evening we are off to an open air concert in St Mark’s Square.”
They were blissfully unaware of what was happening in London.
Dhani Harrison too was settled into New York life, as far as she knew; he’d improved his literacy and wrote when he could, telling her of how he’d been working as a bellboy, bagel seller and in various other jobs – some of which were often illegal.
Madame Louise was relieved when thankfully the man in the top hat walked past the brothel and headed down towards Conduit Street – only for her thoughts to be distracted by the rattle as the front door was closed and then the noise of Billy and Dominic’s incessant chattering as it came to the fore.
Billy bounced over to the solemn Madame and patted her bustle affectionately. “Ye’ll ne’er guess what the gossip is at Court now!”
“We might ‘ave to be witnesses if it all comes out!” Dominic added excitedly.
“But of course, they have to prove it!”
Madame Louise was now somewhat alarmed. “You know something, boys?”
“Only rumours,” Billy began.
“We never started ‘em,” Dominic was quick to assure her. “The Court is rife with all sorts.”
“What?” Madame Louise demanded in exasperation. She had far better things to worry about than idle Court gossip, however tasty the morsels.
“They’re saying Prince Eddy is caught up in all this murder business!” Billy announced triumphantly, now picking his nose.
“They say as ‘e’s been sneakin’ out under another name to go to the stews in Whitechapel an’ to that brothel in Cleveland Street,” Dominic added.
Billy snorted. “Och, I dinna ken why any gentlemen worth the name want tae go there; nothin’ but cheap dirty tarts in that place – they dinnae wash after a client!”
Despite his disgusting manners, Billy was an incredible snob when it came to other male brothels. As far as he was concerned, there was only one male brothel and that was No. 20 Hanover Square. The pride he felt extended to all the boys working there; he might tease Orlando unmercifully, but the tall youth was still one of “Madame Lou-Lou’s boys” and Billy would have died defending him. The brothel was going from strength to strength, despite the departure of Elijah, the most popular of her boys, to go and live with the former Captain Serkis nearly three years before: Madame Louise had engaged some very commendable replacements.
Young Daniel, previously employed as the kitchen boy, was developing into a very handsome young man, with dark floppy hair, blue eyes, and pale skin, eerily reminiscent of Elijah. He was approaching his seventeenth birthday. He’d begun purely as decoration – strictly not for sale at any cost. He simply helped Hugo with refreshments and was a more pleasant distraction than the still sullen Tom, whose ice-king, blond good looks were very popular with the clients. And Bunny, that beautiful – if decadent – Glaswegian, frequenter of high society parties and exquisitely expensive and exclusive, had become a regular at the brothel parties on Billy’s recommendation. If he attracted the attentions of gentlemen, as he often did, Madame Louise took a percentage. It was after all, her establishment, which she had more or less built up single-handed since the death of her original benefactor. But despite the added attraction of new blood, it did not alter the fact that these young men were not Elijah.
Thinking back over what Billy was saying, Madame Louise turned her attention again to the flatulent little Scot. “What on earth are you implying, Billy? Is it that bloody Crook girl again?”
“Oh ‘er!” Billy sniggered. “I always knew that girl wasn’t right in the ‘ead, even when she used to skivvy ‘ere for us!”
“Oi!” Madame Louise clipped him around the ear sharpish. “There’s no shame in skivvying. She was a working girl, just like I am!”
There had been rumours for some time that the young heir apparent had been married in secret to a young Catholic girl, a commoner by the name of Annie Crook four years before and that he had a daughter by her.
Annie Crook had crossed the doorstep of No. 20 Hanover Square and Madame Louise only a few years earlier as Mr Astin’s scullery maid. She’d been a nice girl, but her constant daydreaming and inability to keep her mind on her work had made both Mr Astin and the Madame despair. Finally, after months of reprimanding the girl, Madame Louise had found Annie a post in a tobacconist shop in the notorious Cleveland Street. It was there she had allegedly met and married Prince Eddy through a supposedly mutual friend, the artist Walter Sickert who happened to live in the street.
Sickert, who in fact had never actually been acquainted with the Prince, had known Billy and Dominic during their employment at the GPO when they took rooms next to his studio in Cleveland Street. The artist and the two rent boys took an instant dislike to each other. It was Billy and Dominic who found out that Sickert was the father of Annie’s child and that the whole Eddy affair was a mere fabrication. Confronting the artist with this information, they’d even got a confession from him: it was surprising just how persuasive and intimidating the two boys could be when they chose.
Sadly, Annie had suffered the consequences of bearing a child out of wedlock and been sent to a workhouse; the child went with her and, as far as Sickert was aware, the two were still under the care of the authorities. It was unlikely that he ever spared either of them much more than a fleeting thought these days.
Suddenly Orlando’s high-pitched screeches could be heard from the main parlour across the hall, accompanied by the incessant yapping of Mitzi his spaniel and the deeper barks of Bertie, Madame Louise’s newly acquired Staffordshire Bull Terrier.
That’s all I need, sighed the Madame despondently. Those two bloody two dogs fucking again!
Having been saved by Billy and Dom from a gang of street urchins who were tormenting the poor thing, Bertie had been given to Madame Louise as a companion and for protection whilst Jack was away on business. The cheeky mutt had been named after the Prince of Wales and, like his namesake, had trouble keeping his libido to himself. If he wasn’t fucking Mitzi – much to Orlando’s horror – he was buggering the kitchen cat, or attaching himself to various legs belonging to the boys, their clients, and the furniture. His sexual preferences were rather catholic to say the least.
The trio hurried into the parlour to find not Mitzi and Bertie engaged in their regular and very public trysts, but Orlando in a half-faint in Han’s arms; a peculiar sight as Hans was beautifully dressed in a blue silk gown and bustle and Orlando in his tennis whites, having returned from a game with Sir Ian. Mitzi had unceremoniously peed on the carpet in the excitement and Bertie was trying desperately to mount her.
Daniel and Tom, perched on a couch and reading the evening paper, were agog. One thing that Madame Louise insisted upon was that her boys could read, write and do basic arithmetic once in her employment. Their skills in the bedroom were as important as physical beauty, but they must also be able to hold a conversation, be it on current affairs, the arts or the news at Court with the gentlemen they were entertaining. Sometimes, however, this could be a mixed blessing.
Little Daniel’s eyes shone, too much like Elijah’s when he got excited. “E’s got a name!”
“They’re callin’ ‘im ‘Jack The Ripper’!” Tom announced excitedly.
Daniel pouted even more prettily than did Orlando. “Aww! I wanted to say that!”
“They won’t catch him, you know!” Tom remarked haughtily. “He’s too smart!”
Daniel looked scared. “Ooo, don’t be sayin’ that! They will!”
“Listen to this,” Tom announced to his gathered audience. “This is the bit wot made ol’ Orli ‘ere faint!” He indicated Orlando, who was not too happy at having Hans’ smelling salts bottle shoved under his nose. “It’s a letter received by the Central News Agency on the 27th of September and they forwarded it to the Metropolitan Police on the 29th of September,” Tom continued. “This Jack says: ‘I am down on whores and I shan’t quit ripping them till I do get buckled...’!”
“Such an elegant turn of phrase!” Hans remarked dryly.
“He means us!” shrieked Orlando, causing Mitzi to yap loudly as he tried to struggle free of Han’s tight grip. “We’re all going to get slaughtered in our beds!” Mitzi yapped her horror in agreement with her master.
“Don’t be stupid, you fat headed twit!” Hans shoved the bottle further up Orlando’s nose. “It’s obvious this man is working out of Whitechapel and the East End.”
“And when he has killed all the tarts there – he is going to start looking elsewhere!” Orlando sounded as if he had a bad cold, thanks to the neck of the bottle sticking into his left nostril.
“Oh, do stop behaving like some third rate prima donna, Orli!” Madame Louise snapped as she snatched the paper from Tom to see the news for herself. “Until we get more police news, there is no reason to assume we are in any danger.”
“You won’t be saying that with your throat cut!” whined Orlando pathetically.
“She won’t be saying anything – not if her throat’s been cut!” sniggered Billy to Dominic, loud enough for Orlando to hear.
Orlando pushed Hans out of the way and tried to stand up. “Laugh all you want, William! You’ll be laughing on the other side of your face if some gentleman advances on you with a butcher’s knife!”
“I’ve got cuttings of what ‘e did to the uvver women!” Tom announced proudly. “One of ‘em, she ‘ad her insides taken out!” He then went on to describe in great detail the extent of the mutilations, purely out of spite, to see the reaction on Orlando’s face. Tom had learnt how easy it was to tease the older whore and frequently made him the source of constant amusement. He’d even “kidnapped” Orlando’s beloved toy bear, Aloysius, which caused no end of disruption one wet Sunday afternoon.
“Oh God! Stop! Stop! You evil child!” Orlando pulled out a handkerchief and placed it to his lips to stop him gagging. “I shan’t be able to work tonight; I’m too distraught now!”
“Thank you very much for that, Tom!” scolded Madame Louise. “You’ve started him off now! I’m not going to get any sense or work out of him now! Oh! Shut up Orlando, you big twist*!””
“This is what comes of teaching that little guttersnipe to read!” Orlando exclaimed, glaring at Madame Louise accusingly before turning his baleful gaze back onto Tom. “And you should have been drowned at birth,” Orlando griped at Tom, who was cackling happily whilst Billy, Hans and Dominic tried hard not to snigger. “Come, Mitzi.” He swooped the still yapping spaniel up under one arm to avoid the amorous attentions of Bertie. “Let’s go!”
Little Daniel, who had now placed himself beside Madame Louise, gamely tried to read the rest of the newspaper she was still clutching in her beautifully manicured fingers. “We will be safe ’ere, won’t we, Madame Lou-Lou?” he asked quietly, so that the others wouldn’t hear.
“Oh yes! The Madame gazed in horror at the newspaper article and, if only to convince herself, added: “I’m sure we will!”
***********
Elijah yawned and stretched languidly as he lay on the couch, barely covered by a crimson cloth that draped across his groin like a pool of blood. He adjusted the crown of laurel leaves that had slipped down over his forehead.
Only two feet away, Andrew was furiously daubing paint from a palette onto a large canvas, his dark, perfectly shaped eyebrows knotted in concentration.
“Stop fidgeting, Elijah!” he scolded gently as he applied more fleshy tones to the portrait.
Elijah yawned again. “S’not my fault! If we hadn’t got in so late from that party –”
“– And you complained that you didn’t want to leave so early!” Andrew smiled, placing the palette on a small table covered with brushes, tubes of paint, a half -finished bottle of red wine and some olives, bread and cheese. “I do need to get this painting completed by next week. The exhibition is due to be shipped over to London. And stop fiddling with that laurel leaf crown, it looks perfect as it is: very decadent!”
Elijah replied by childishly poking out his tongue.
“If the wind changes direction, you’ll stay like that!” chided Andrew, bending over Elijah and placing the laurel crown at a jauntier angle. As he did so, he placed a light, loving kiss on the tip of Elijah’s nose.
The sounds of girlish chattering interrupted his flow of speech and two voluptuous, pretty women walked into the studio. Rosina and Ella were models Andrew had employed for several of his paintings, which always featured Elijah. He had depicted them as nymphs being chased by Eros, sirens calling for Odysseus, Bacchantes pursuing a hapless Pentheus, rosy cheeked, naked goddesses watching Ganymede recline on the lap of Zeus, maidens tempting the purity of Sir Galahad...
They were not required for the current work he was gamely trying to complete: Elijah as a young Nero. In the corner stood a completed canvas of Elijah as Saint Sebastian, his eyes upturned in pain as the “arrows” pierced his skin. It was a horrific, if erotically charged piece of work, and probably the most extreme Andrew had ever painted.
Elijah watched the two girls through heavy lidded eyes. Rosina, blonde and buxom, seemed more assured and confident as she gabbled away in Italian to Andrew, showing him a newspaper, jabbing a small finger at the page. Ella, on the other hand, blushed whenever he addressed her, keeping her big brown eyes fixed on the floor.
Andrew had grasped the Italian language extremely quickly, whereas Elijah, too lazy and indolent, had only managed a few phrases as yet. He recognised “London” and “murder” though and wondered why this was causing the two girls such excitement. It couldn’t have been anything about that Mortensen; that was all finished and the nightmares over now and Dhani was somewhere in New York, most likely conning gentlemen and women out of their money.
Elijah had taken to Venetian life well. He was cosseted, petted, and adored by both men and women, whose cries of “Bello ragazzo!” echoed in his ears whenever he went out for a stroll with his lover.
His hair hung to his shoulders now. The chestnut brown curls fell around his face luxuriantly, a stark contrast to his white complexion, soft tender mouth and those remarkable large, blue eyes. The way Andrew painted him emphasised the beauty of his features, but there was now a streak of masculinity in his body, with well-defined muscle in his leg, upper arm and his perfect hairless torso. All of Andrew’s desire, love, and longing for Elijah went into those paintings.
People compared Elijah to Michelangelo’s statue of David, its fluidity of line, shape, and muscle texture – though Elijah couldn’t see it himself when he and Andrew had viewed the stature themselves in Florence the previous year. Though few of them could understand English, Andrew’s fervour and enthusiasm had been perfectly clear to the small crowd that had gathered around the statue with them, listening rapturously to Andrew’s passionate words as he compared Elijah’s facial features to those of the statue.
“See how Michelangelo chose to represent David as an athletic, manly character, very focussed and ready to fight,” Andrew shad explained, his large, square hand moving gently down the body of the carved figure, hovering reverently above the finely-carved marble. “The tension he feels is evident from his look of concentration and in his right hand he’s holding the stone that he’ll use to kill Goliath. He has the very same look you do when you’re thinking!”
Stretching out and sitting up, Elijah yawned again and re-read the last letter he had received from Billy; it was written as the little Scot spoke, rambling on and on without stopping for breath. Elijah felt quite exhausted at the end of it. He chuckled to himself as he re-read the account of Orlando trying to make coffee that morning for the rest of the boys.
“An’ he said to me – ‘Do you want coffee, William? How is it done again? Do you put the coffee in the water? Or in the jug? Can you make the coffee, William?’”
Elijah started to giggle in that high pitched irresistible way of his, until Andrew called to him.
“Lij –” His voice sounded bleak. “Lij, you knew an Annie Chapman, didn’t you?”
“I did!” Elijah placed the letter to one side and picked up the glass of wine that stood on the table nearby.
“She’s dead.”
Rosina and Ella nodded frantically. “Morta!” they sang in unison.
Andrew walked over to Elijah and threw the paper onto the younger man’s lap. Elijah screwed up his eyes to read it.
“What am I looking at?”
Andrew jabbed a finger at a small column on the right hand side of the front page. “There.”
“It’s in Italian!” whined Elijah petulantly, throwing the paper back down. “Why can’t we get English papers?”
“Because we’re living in Italy now, Elijah,” Andrew replied patiently.
Rosina snorted. “Eef you learn to speak our language, silly child,” she chided him in her heavily accented English, “you will be able to read eet!”
Elijah’s reaction was to stick his tongue out at her as she approached him.
Rosina smacked him lightly across the hand with her fan. “You do that. I will bit eet off next time!”
Ella simply giggled. It was not the first time Rosina had scolded Elijah as she would a child. And Elijah didn’t seem to mind; he loved both women and enjoyed their flattery and teasing.
Andrew pushed a large, paint-stained hand through his thicket of black curls. “Rosina has a point, Elijah – you really need to learn some more of the language.”
Elijah stuck his tongue out petulantly and blew a raspberry.
“I told you, if the wind changes - !” Andrew teased gently.
Elijah pouted and adopted a baby-like tone. “Shan’t!”
“Shall!” Andrew retorted.
“Shan’t!”
“Oh shut up and have a grape!” Andrew sighed, taking a grape from the bowl next to him and throwing it at Elijah, who batted it away with his hand.
Such playful banter was adorable to watch and frequently had the two Italian girls sighing jealously as they each wished for a lover as handsome, strong, intelligent, artistic, and tender as Andrew. To them, Elijah was merely a playful puppy – a beautiful doll that they dressed up, painted, perfumed, and took out with them. He was to be admired as would a painting or a statue – and there was no shortage of admirers of both sexes for him.
Boys even more beautiful than he peered with sultry doe eyes through thick lashes from behind their masks during the Commedia D’Arte festivals and pretty girls giggled coquettishly behind their fans as Elijah passed or spoke to them. Older gentlemen, with their impeccable attire and a taste for young men, surveyed him as lions observe their prey and married women day-dreamed of committing adultery with such a succulent young man – or perhaps with his older, virile lover.
And though there had been approaches, Andrew and Elijah always declined politely and firmly. They had no interest in anyone else, only each other. The couple were totally committed to each other, something of a rarity when adultery appeared rife in those times. Their behaviour was as loving and as playful as it was in those early days of No. 20 Hanover Square. And the sex – the sex was passionate, wild, uninhibited, and glorious!
“So –” Idly, Elijah picked up another grape and popped it into the rosebud mouth that sent fashionable Venetian girls and women into a frenzy trying to find the exact same shade of lip rouge. “Annie’s dead. ‘Ardly newsworthy enough to make ‘eadline news. ‘Hores die all the time in Whitechapel.” He still spoke with the hardness of one raised on the streets, one who’d seen it as part of every day life. He had woken up in the penny hanging houses next to enough corpses of those who had died during the night and stepped over the bodies of men and women who had fallen into drunken comas and never woken up. He shook his head sadly. “If it ain’t from a botched abortion, it’s usually the gin!”
“This was neither!” Andrew stabbed a long finger at the article. “She was ripped apart and her insides left all over Hanbury Street – you said you had a room there –”
Elijah shivered; suddenly he felt very cold. He wrapped the sheet around him as he took the paper from Andrew, who was continuing to read from it.
“The police think it’s connected with an earlier murder in Buck Row, a Mary Jane Nichols –”
Now Elijah felt immeasurably sad. Both Mary and Annie had been kind to him when he was on the streets, feeding him and providing him with shelter when he failed to make the rent that week. Annie, a skilled seamstress, would mend his coat for him. Her husband had left her years before. Like many women of her class, she’d faced the stark choice of starvation or working the streets. Elijah was a surrogate son to her, as he was to a lot of women who walked the dark streets of London, and he often used to chase off their more aggressive punters or those who didn’t pay.
Now some bloody maniac had ripped them up.
“Probably some punter.” Elijah shoved the paper back at Andrew nonchalantly. “You know what they can be like, Andy.”
“According to this there was some expertise involved, judging by the wounds inflicted on the second victim,” Andrew pointed out.
“So, what are yer sayin’? It weren’t a punter?”
“Could be.” Andrew shrugged and placed the paper down amongst the paints on the table. “Now,” he continued, changing the subject. “You know Lorraine and the children are arriving the day after tomorrow?”
Elijah nodded and slid back on the chaise longe and started to eat the grapes in the bowl beside him noisily. Rosina and Ella chattered away in Italian as they retrieved the newspaper and waited for Andrew to pay their wages.
Watching the scene before him, Elijah thought about the horrors that were occurring in London’s East End, thinking himself extremely fortune to be out of that nightmare existence. If this murderer was intent on slaughtering the girls, what was to say that the renters wouldn’t also be on the agenda?
Again, Elijah counted his blessings. He was lucky. Shoving another grape into his mouth, he resumed his earlier pose as Andrew took up his palette once more.
**************
“Off out again, Hans?” Madame Louise asked as she caught her most trusted aide-de-camp, a vision in pale pink satin, leaving No. 20 that bitterly cold night in London.
“Sir Ian’s dinner party at the Savoy with that American actor fellow, Dickie Mansfield as the guest of honour.” Hans smiled, accentuating his dimples. “It appears that he doesn’t want a male companion, so Sir Ian said he would fix him up with someone special.” He curtsied prettily. “So here I am! Hannah at your service, Milady!”
The Madame couldn’t help but smile at Hans’ charade. She also made a mental note to have words with Sir Ian the next time he paid a call. “And does he know you’re not a real woman? You’re playing with fire, lad!”
“I won’t tell if you won’t!” Hans pouted coquettishly. “Besides, I’ve heard from Billy and Dommie that he’s an absolute bore. They met him a party last week following that gala performance of that play he’s in. Talks about himself all the time and I won’t let his hand go wandering down south, in case you’re worried”.
Madame Louise lowered her voice. “It’s not that I’m worried about! You know what some of these fellas are like, Hans. Once they realise you’ve got meat and two veg down there, it could turn nasty. You hear of other Mary Annes getting seven bells kicked out of them or worse! You don’t want to end up on a mortuary slab like those poor women –”
Hans, who was in the process of unlocking the front door, stopped and sighed. Placing a delicately-shaped gloved hand on the Madame’s shoulder, he bent down to kiss her cheek affectionately. “You forget, I’ve got a swift right ‘ook!”
“So did Annie Chapman and look what happened to her!”
Hans grinned and gave the Madame a most unladylike wink. “But I ain’t Annie Chapman!”
And with a swish of his skirts, Hans strode down to the street, climbed into the waiting cab, and then disappeared into the cold, dark night.
************
Like a playful puppy, Elijah wriggled slowly up beside Andrew, planting little kisses on his lover’s naked body. Still recovering from a slow, sensual evening of lovemaking and a great deal of red wine, Andrew drowsily pulled Elijah closer to him.
“Are you ready now?” Elijah asked as he caressed Andrew’s nipples, eager for their games to begin again.
“Mmm...” One very blue and very sleepy eye opened and looked at Elijah. “Give me a minute.”
“If I give you a minute, you’re going to fall asleep!” laughed Elijah, poking Andrew in the ribs to stir him before deciding to take matters into his own hands. Sliding back down the bed, he stroked his lover’s semi-erect cock gently before taking it into his mouth.
Andrew moaned and shifted slightly. There was one thing Elijah never failed to do and that was to rouse him from a drunken state into that of complete ecstasy. Andrew simply lay back and enjoyed the attention being lavished on him by his boy.
As he licked, kissed, and gently nipped along the cock’s impressive length and girth, Elijah felt the stirrings of his own arousal. He felt the pressure of Andrew’s hand in the small of his back as he positioned himself across Andrew’s chest, so that he was more or less sitting across him.
There were low, animalistic growls from the former captain as Elijah continued to fill his mouth with Andrew’s cock. “Beautiful boy, bello ragazzo!” groaned Andrew as he started to thrust up into Elijah’s mouth. “Take it in, take it all in!”
Using both hands, Elijah held Andrew’s cock steady as his lover’s rhythmic thrusts grew more urgent. His own cock was straining painfully now and he knew he’d be unable to last much longer. He came up for breath and turned slightly, noting with quiet satisfaction the look of extreme pleasure on his lover’s face.
Andrew caught his gaze and looked down at him with a knowing smile. Elijah knew what was going to happen next.
He was flipped skilfully over onto all fours, as Andrew slicked lubricant from a jar by their bed onto his throbbing cock. Spreading the cheeks of Elijah’s arse, Andrew mounted him and, prolonging the agony of his own orgasm, rubbed his cock up and down between the firm, pert cheeks. Elijah writhed and moaned and howled in response, rubbing his own cock against the sheets.
Unable to bear the stimulation any longer, Andrew put the tip of his cock to Elijah’s arsehole and then, with all his might, gave a shove forwards and pressed in, jolting Elijah forward.
Grabbing Elijah’s narrow buttocks, Andrew started to pound deeper into him. The younger man moaned as the delicious sensations spread throughout his body. With a practiced hand, Andrew leaned forward and gave Elijah’s balls a squeeze before circling his cock. He slowed his pace to give Elijah the full pleasure of thrusting in and out of his lover’s hand.
“Fuck me, Andy!” Elijah groaned. “Fuck me hard!”
With a low, gruff, throaty rumble of laughter, Andrew complied and started to thrust deeper and harder into Elijah’s arse. Spreading his thighs wider, to allow easier access, Elijah raised his arse to meet the thrusts and could soon feel his climax approaching.
As the waves of pleasure slowly enveloped them both, Elijah plunged closer to his orgasm, whimpering in ecstasy as he pumped hard in Andrew’s solid, comforting hand. Andrew emitted more animalistic growls from the back of his throat as he too came in long, hard spurts.
It was as if they were both spinning out of control, their combined voices crying out in blissful abandonment. Tears spilled down Elijah’s cheeks as he felt the room start spinning. He never wanted this feeling to end; he wanted it to be frozen in time, to feel the way he did at this precise moment forever.
With a final thrust and a guttural yell, Andrew’s orgasm peaked. His hand slicked with Elijah’s come, he fell across Elijah’s body and the two collapsed together onto the rumpled sheets.
***********
His dark curls were stuck to his forehead with sweat. Pushing them back slowly, Andrew looked down, panting, at the equally spent Elijah, before kissing the boy’s back lightly, his stubble grazing the soft skin.
Elijah stirred. “I love you, Andy.”
Andrew curled the boy up in his arms. “I love you too,” he replied softly as a deep, contented sleep overtook them both.
***********
Whilst Andrew and Elijah drowsed in their post-orgasmic slumbers, back in London Hugo locked the doors at No 20 Hanover Square as Madame Louise counted the night’s takings. It had been an excellent evening; the boys had been on top form and the gentlemen they had entertained and pleasured were content and satisfied.
***********
It had also turned out to be an excellent evening for the forty three year old prostitute Catherine Eddowes as she walked through the streets of Whitechapel, having been released from her police cell in Bishopsgate. Cathy had expected to be detained all night and now, having sobered up, she bid a cheery goodnight to her gaoler and left the police station in good spirits at 1.00am, completely unaware that the body of Elizabeth Stride had been found in Berner Street.
Forty-five minutes later, Catherine Eddowes’ mutilated body was found in Mitre Square.
**************
Chapter 14 to follow
Author:
precious_rosiePairing: Andy Serkis/Elijah Wood.
Type: RPS AU
Series: 13/14
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: Total fiction, from the depths of my imagination.
Summary: Set in mid 1880's, Elijah is working in a high- class male brothel. The madame has fixed him up with a very special client.
Warning[s]: prostitution, glorious hot sex
Feedback: is always welcome! *bg*.
Beta:
shy_nerthuserce, who is as wonderful a friend as she is a trusted and respected beta. *hugs* :-) ♥ Any mistakes are mine.Archive:
rockabillyblueAuthor’s note: This is a story that I started back in April 2003 and it received high praise. Sadly thanks to that awful thing called “real life" , I’ve still got to complete it, along with several other projects. Perhaps this LJ is the kick up the backside I need! This chapter had been left half finished from last year and was completed this month.
Author's Note No.2: *Twist = Victorian slang for “girl”.
Author's Note No.3: All references regarding the Jack The Ripper case have been taken from a series of books, notably The Complete Jack the Ripper by Donald Rumblelow, Prince Eddy and the Homosexual Underworld by Theo Aronson and that 'splendid' work of fiction - Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution by Stephen Knight! *eg*
x-posted to
rockabillyblueChapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve
Three years later – late September 1888
Madame Louise sighed as she gazed through the window of her private drawing room on the second floor at No. 20 and watched the young boys in Hanover Square ply their trade.
One young thing with enormous blue eyes, dark hair, and pale skin reminded her of Elijah. A mere child, he would have been around the same age as Elijah had been when he first started on the game.
She watched as the boy moved in towards a gentleman wearing a top hat and carrying a large leather case, who pretended to ignore him. The boy followed and was sharply pushed away as the man approached the brothel. Madame Louise quickly withdrew. Men in top hats or carrying large bags made her jittery.
There was a maniac on the loose in Whitechapel, slaughtering whores. Two had been found dead within the last month. All within a three-mile radius of each other and all ripped like pigs at market.
And then that faux Danish Count’s body had been washed ashore at Greenwich last November. After a couple of years in the water the corpse had been so badly decomposed that the only item to identify its owner was a signet ring with the Mortensen family crest on it. His skull had been smashed in with such ferocity that it was sure to have killed him, the coroner had said.
But of course the man who’d claimed to be the Count wasn’t a Count at all. It had transpired that he was a Danish confidence trickster, whose speciality had been to affect the persona of an aristocrat and to woo widows out of their money. Easy enough with a handsome face and when you share the same name as one of Denmark’s foremost families. How he had acquired the ring was anyone’s guess.
Mortensen’s grisly fate was simply filed away as another unsolved murder in the light of the socialist riots in Trafalgar Square on 22nd November. The hundred thousand people who’d crowded the area took on the might of three hundred armed Grenadier Guards and three hundred armed Life Guards who were supporting some four thousand policemen. Compared to this, the unexplained death of a drifter was small beer – besides, since there had been no concerned enquiries from Denmark, the police had reasoned that this could be no blue-blooded corpse after all.
Naturally, Billy and Dominic had been amongst the Trafalgar Square throng, much to Madame Louise’s horror. Suffice to say, they returned to Hanover Square with minimal bruising, but full of stories of their bravado and derring do.
The small Madame shivered. London was always a dangerous place. It was at times like this that she wished she was back in the small Black Country town of Halesowen. Perhaps she should have stayed there with her family, where her late father had worked on the railways and her mother still worked as seamstress in a dress shop, rather than gone to London “to seek her fortune”.
Not that any of her family would approve of what she was doing. They would never have understood. As far as they were concerned, she was still a companion to a wealthy widow and regularly sent money home to make her mother’s existence more comfortable. They didn’t need to know that – after growing disillusioned in the service of the widow and wishing that she were doing something more challenging and less dull, Madame Louise ended up running the brothel at No. 20 after answering an advertisement for a housekeeper to an “exclusive gentlemen’s club in Mayfair” in a society magazine that the widow would often read.
Of course, the “exclusive club” was, in fact, the most sought after male brothel in London and “housekeeper” was a euphemism for the position of Madame. The original proprietor had used the term “housekeeper” as it was more respectable and it was his intention, until he could be completely satisfied that the candidates would not run screaming from the building in horror, not to divulge the true nature of what went on in the big house in Hanover Square. It was also his intention that the tasks associated with a housekeeper’s position were all that her duties were to be. However, as time went on, this plain speaking, hardworking, no-nonsense Black Country woman became the most respected Madame in London and the surrounding Shires.
The boys in her charge were her family too, now, and the recent murders were very much on her mind. Madame Louise warned her boys not to go walking out with new clients just in case. Who was to say that this killer’s tastes did not also extend to rent boys?
Meanwhile, regular customers were searched by an over zealous Hugo. On the first occasion this was implemented, Sir Ian McKellen had been somewhat amused as the stony-faced butler made him empty out his pockets and then frisked him.
“I say!” he’d carolled. “My darling Hugo, if one wishes to be touched up in such a charming manner, I would have asked if that was included in the price!”
With Jack overseeing his factories in the North, sometimes for weeks on end, Madame Louise felt vulnerable. She wished that Captain – no, still she forgot – Andrew Serkis were around still, but he and Elijah now had their new life together in Venice, having moved there the previous year. They were both extremely happy, according to the letter she had received from Elijah a fortnight before. It was obviously written with the help of Andrew, and copied in Elijah’s large, looping, childish handwriting.
“I’ve never been more happier. Andy’s paintings are selling well and he can now afford two more models. They are very pretty girls called Rosina and Ella. This evening we are off to an open air concert in St Mark’s Square.”
They were blissfully unaware of what was happening in London.
Dhani Harrison too was settled into New York life, as far as she knew; he’d improved his literacy and wrote when he could, telling her of how he’d been working as a bellboy, bagel seller and in various other jobs – some of which were often illegal.
Madame Louise was relieved when thankfully the man in the top hat walked past the brothel and headed down towards Conduit Street – only for her thoughts to be distracted by the rattle as the front door was closed and then the noise of Billy and Dominic’s incessant chattering as it came to the fore.
Billy bounced over to the solemn Madame and patted her bustle affectionately. “Ye’ll ne’er guess what the gossip is at Court now!”
“We might ‘ave to be witnesses if it all comes out!” Dominic added excitedly.
“But of course, they have to prove it!”
Madame Louise was now somewhat alarmed. “You know something, boys?”
“Only rumours,” Billy began.
“We never started ‘em,” Dominic was quick to assure her. “The Court is rife with all sorts.”
“What?” Madame Louise demanded in exasperation. She had far better things to worry about than idle Court gossip, however tasty the morsels.
“They’re saying Prince Eddy is caught up in all this murder business!” Billy announced triumphantly, now picking his nose.
“They say as ‘e’s been sneakin’ out under another name to go to the stews in Whitechapel an’ to that brothel in Cleveland Street,” Dominic added.
Billy snorted. “Och, I dinna ken why any gentlemen worth the name want tae go there; nothin’ but cheap dirty tarts in that place – they dinnae wash after a client!”
Despite his disgusting manners, Billy was an incredible snob when it came to other male brothels. As far as he was concerned, there was only one male brothel and that was No. 20 Hanover Square. The pride he felt extended to all the boys working there; he might tease Orlando unmercifully, but the tall youth was still one of “Madame Lou-Lou’s boys” and Billy would have died defending him. The brothel was going from strength to strength, despite the departure of Elijah, the most popular of her boys, to go and live with the former Captain Serkis nearly three years before: Madame Louise had engaged some very commendable replacements.
Young Daniel, previously employed as the kitchen boy, was developing into a very handsome young man, with dark floppy hair, blue eyes, and pale skin, eerily reminiscent of Elijah. He was approaching his seventeenth birthday. He’d begun purely as decoration – strictly not for sale at any cost. He simply helped Hugo with refreshments and was a more pleasant distraction than the still sullen Tom, whose ice-king, blond good looks were very popular with the clients. And Bunny, that beautiful – if decadent – Glaswegian, frequenter of high society parties and exquisitely expensive and exclusive, had become a regular at the brothel parties on Billy’s recommendation. If he attracted the attentions of gentlemen, as he often did, Madame Louise took a percentage. It was after all, her establishment, which she had more or less built up single-handed since the death of her original benefactor. But despite the added attraction of new blood, it did not alter the fact that these young men were not Elijah.
Thinking back over what Billy was saying, Madame Louise turned her attention again to the flatulent little Scot. “What on earth are you implying, Billy? Is it that bloody Crook girl again?”
“Oh ‘er!” Billy sniggered. “I always knew that girl wasn’t right in the ‘ead, even when she used to skivvy ‘ere for us!”
“Oi!” Madame Louise clipped him around the ear sharpish. “There’s no shame in skivvying. She was a working girl, just like I am!”
There had been rumours for some time that the young heir apparent had been married in secret to a young Catholic girl, a commoner by the name of Annie Crook four years before and that he had a daughter by her.
Annie Crook had crossed the doorstep of No. 20 Hanover Square and Madame Louise only a few years earlier as Mr Astin’s scullery maid. She’d been a nice girl, but her constant daydreaming and inability to keep her mind on her work had made both Mr Astin and the Madame despair. Finally, after months of reprimanding the girl, Madame Louise had found Annie a post in a tobacconist shop in the notorious Cleveland Street. It was there she had allegedly met and married Prince Eddy through a supposedly mutual friend, the artist Walter Sickert who happened to live in the street.
Sickert, who in fact had never actually been acquainted with the Prince, had known Billy and Dominic during their employment at the GPO when they took rooms next to his studio in Cleveland Street. The artist and the two rent boys took an instant dislike to each other. It was Billy and Dominic who found out that Sickert was the father of Annie’s child and that the whole Eddy affair was a mere fabrication. Confronting the artist with this information, they’d even got a confession from him: it was surprising just how persuasive and intimidating the two boys could be when they chose.
Sadly, Annie had suffered the consequences of bearing a child out of wedlock and been sent to a workhouse; the child went with her and, as far as Sickert was aware, the two were still under the care of the authorities. It was unlikely that he ever spared either of them much more than a fleeting thought these days.
Suddenly Orlando’s high-pitched screeches could be heard from the main parlour across the hall, accompanied by the incessant yapping of Mitzi his spaniel and the deeper barks of Bertie, Madame Louise’s newly acquired Staffordshire Bull Terrier.
That’s all I need, sighed the Madame despondently. Those two bloody two dogs fucking again!
Having been saved by Billy and Dom from a gang of street urchins who were tormenting the poor thing, Bertie had been given to Madame Louise as a companion and for protection whilst Jack was away on business. The cheeky mutt had been named after the Prince of Wales and, like his namesake, had trouble keeping his libido to himself. If he wasn’t fucking Mitzi – much to Orlando’s horror – he was buggering the kitchen cat, or attaching himself to various legs belonging to the boys, their clients, and the furniture. His sexual preferences were rather catholic to say the least.
The trio hurried into the parlour to find not Mitzi and Bertie engaged in their regular and very public trysts, but Orlando in a half-faint in Han’s arms; a peculiar sight as Hans was beautifully dressed in a blue silk gown and bustle and Orlando in his tennis whites, having returned from a game with Sir Ian. Mitzi had unceremoniously peed on the carpet in the excitement and Bertie was trying desperately to mount her.
Daniel and Tom, perched on a couch and reading the evening paper, were agog. One thing that Madame Louise insisted upon was that her boys could read, write and do basic arithmetic once in her employment. Their skills in the bedroom were as important as physical beauty, but they must also be able to hold a conversation, be it on current affairs, the arts or the news at Court with the gentlemen they were entertaining. Sometimes, however, this could be a mixed blessing.
Little Daniel’s eyes shone, too much like Elijah’s when he got excited. “E’s got a name!”
“They’re callin’ ‘im ‘Jack The Ripper’!” Tom announced excitedly.
Daniel pouted even more prettily than did Orlando. “Aww! I wanted to say that!”
“They won’t catch him, you know!” Tom remarked haughtily. “He’s too smart!”
Daniel looked scared. “Ooo, don’t be sayin’ that! They will!”
“Listen to this,” Tom announced to his gathered audience. “This is the bit wot made ol’ Orli ‘ere faint!” He indicated Orlando, who was not too happy at having Hans’ smelling salts bottle shoved under his nose. “It’s a letter received by the Central News Agency on the 27th of September and they forwarded it to the Metropolitan Police on the 29th of September,” Tom continued. “This Jack says: ‘I am down on whores and I shan’t quit ripping them till I do get buckled...’!”
“Such an elegant turn of phrase!” Hans remarked dryly.
“He means us!” shrieked Orlando, causing Mitzi to yap loudly as he tried to struggle free of Han’s tight grip. “We’re all going to get slaughtered in our beds!” Mitzi yapped her horror in agreement with her master.
“Don’t be stupid, you fat headed twit!” Hans shoved the bottle further up Orlando’s nose. “It’s obvious this man is working out of Whitechapel and the East End.”
“And when he has killed all the tarts there – he is going to start looking elsewhere!” Orlando sounded as if he had a bad cold, thanks to the neck of the bottle sticking into his left nostril.
“Oh, do stop behaving like some third rate prima donna, Orli!” Madame Louise snapped as she snatched the paper from Tom to see the news for herself. “Until we get more police news, there is no reason to assume we are in any danger.”
“You won’t be saying that with your throat cut!” whined Orlando pathetically.
“She won’t be saying anything – not if her throat’s been cut!” sniggered Billy to Dominic, loud enough for Orlando to hear.
Orlando pushed Hans out of the way and tried to stand up. “Laugh all you want, William! You’ll be laughing on the other side of your face if some gentleman advances on you with a butcher’s knife!”
“I’ve got cuttings of what ‘e did to the uvver women!” Tom announced proudly. “One of ‘em, she ‘ad her insides taken out!” He then went on to describe in great detail the extent of the mutilations, purely out of spite, to see the reaction on Orlando’s face. Tom had learnt how easy it was to tease the older whore and frequently made him the source of constant amusement. He’d even “kidnapped” Orlando’s beloved toy bear, Aloysius, which caused no end of disruption one wet Sunday afternoon.
“Oh God! Stop! Stop! You evil child!” Orlando pulled out a handkerchief and placed it to his lips to stop him gagging. “I shan’t be able to work tonight; I’m too distraught now!”
“Thank you very much for that, Tom!” scolded Madame Louise. “You’ve started him off now! I’m not going to get any sense or work out of him now! Oh! Shut up Orlando, you big twist*!””
“This is what comes of teaching that little guttersnipe to read!” Orlando exclaimed, glaring at Madame Louise accusingly before turning his baleful gaze back onto Tom. “And you should have been drowned at birth,” Orlando griped at Tom, who was cackling happily whilst Billy, Hans and Dominic tried hard not to snigger. “Come, Mitzi.” He swooped the still yapping spaniel up under one arm to avoid the amorous attentions of Bertie. “Let’s go!”
Little Daniel, who had now placed himself beside Madame Louise, gamely tried to read the rest of the newspaper she was still clutching in her beautifully manicured fingers. “We will be safe ’ere, won’t we, Madame Lou-Lou?” he asked quietly, so that the others wouldn’t hear.
“Oh yes! The Madame gazed in horror at the newspaper article and, if only to convince herself, added: “I’m sure we will!”
Elijah yawned and stretched languidly as he lay on the couch, barely covered by a crimson cloth that draped across his groin like a pool of blood. He adjusted the crown of laurel leaves that had slipped down over his forehead.
Only two feet away, Andrew was furiously daubing paint from a palette onto a large canvas, his dark, perfectly shaped eyebrows knotted in concentration.
“Stop fidgeting, Elijah!” he scolded gently as he applied more fleshy tones to the portrait.
Elijah yawned again. “S’not my fault! If we hadn’t got in so late from that party –”
“– And you complained that you didn’t want to leave so early!” Andrew smiled, placing the palette on a small table covered with brushes, tubes of paint, a half -finished bottle of red wine and some olives, bread and cheese. “I do need to get this painting completed by next week. The exhibition is due to be shipped over to London. And stop fiddling with that laurel leaf crown, it looks perfect as it is: very decadent!”
Elijah replied by childishly poking out his tongue.
“If the wind changes direction, you’ll stay like that!” chided Andrew, bending over Elijah and placing the laurel crown at a jauntier angle. As he did so, he placed a light, loving kiss on the tip of Elijah’s nose.
The sounds of girlish chattering interrupted his flow of speech and two voluptuous, pretty women walked into the studio. Rosina and Ella were models Andrew had employed for several of his paintings, which always featured Elijah. He had depicted them as nymphs being chased by Eros, sirens calling for Odysseus, Bacchantes pursuing a hapless Pentheus, rosy cheeked, naked goddesses watching Ganymede recline on the lap of Zeus, maidens tempting the purity of Sir Galahad...
They were not required for the current work he was gamely trying to complete: Elijah as a young Nero. In the corner stood a completed canvas of Elijah as Saint Sebastian, his eyes upturned in pain as the “arrows” pierced his skin. It was a horrific, if erotically charged piece of work, and probably the most extreme Andrew had ever painted.
Elijah watched the two girls through heavy lidded eyes. Rosina, blonde and buxom, seemed more assured and confident as she gabbled away in Italian to Andrew, showing him a newspaper, jabbing a small finger at the page. Ella, on the other hand, blushed whenever he addressed her, keeping her big brown eyes fixed on the floor.
Andrew had grasped the Italian language extremely quickly, whereas Elijah, too lazy and indolent, had only managed a few phrases as yet. He recognised “London” and “murder” though and wondered why this was causing the two girls such excitement. It couldn’t have been anything about that Mortensen; that was all finished and the nightmares over now and Dhani was somewhere in New York, most likely conning gentlemen and women out of their money.
Elijah had taken to Venetian life well. He was cosseted, petted, and adored by both men and women, whose cries of “Bello ragazzo!” echoed in his ears whenever he went out for a stroll with his lover.
His hair hung to his shoulders now. The chestnut brown curls fell around his face luxuriantly, a stark contrast to his white complexion, soft tender mouth and those remarkable large, blue eyes. The way Andrew painted him emphasised the beauty of his features, but there was now a streak of masculinity in his body, with well-defined muscle in his leg, upper arm and his perfect hairless torso. All of Andrew’s desire, love, and longing for Elijah went into those paintings.
People compared Elijah to Michelangelo’s statue of David, its fluidity of line, shape, and muscle texture – though Elijah couldn’t see it himself when he and Andrew had viewed the stature themselves in Florence the previous year. Though few of them could understand English, Andrew’s fervour and enthusiasm had been perfectly clear to the small crowd that had gathered around the statue with them, listening rapturously to Andrew’s passionate words as he compared Elijah’s facial features to those of the statue.
“See how Michelangelo chose to represent David as an athletic, manly character, very focussed and ready to fight,” Andrew shad explained, his large, square hand moving gently down the body of the carved figure, hovering reverently above the finely-carved marble. “The tension he feels is evident from his look of concentration and in his right hand he’s holding the stone that he’ll use to kill Goliath. He has the very same look you do when you’re thinking!”
Stretching out and sitting up, Elijah yawned again and re-read the last letter he had received from Billy; it was written as the little Scot spoke, rambling on and on without stopping for breath. Elijah felt quite exhausted at the end of it. He chuckled to himself as he re-read the account of Orlando trying to make coffee that morning for the rest of the boys.
“An’ he said to me – ‘Do you want coffee, William? How is it done again? Do you put the coffee in the water? Or in the jug? Can you make the coffee, William?’”
Elijah started to giggle in that high pitched irresistible way of his, until Andrew called to him.
“Lij –” His voice sounded bleak. “Lij, you knew an Annie Chapman, didn’t you?”
“I did!” Elijah placed the letter to one side and picked up the glass of wine that stood on the table nearby.
“She’s dead.”
Rosina and Ella nodded frantically. “Morta!” they sang in unison.
Andrew walked over to Elijah and threw the paper onto the younger man’s lap. Elijah screwed up his eyes to read it.
“What am I looking at?”
Andrew jabbed a finger at a small column on the right hand side of the front page. “There.”
“It’s in Italian!” whined Elijah petulantly, throwing the paper back down. “Why can’t we get English papers?”
“Because we’re living in Italy now, Elijah,” Andrew replied patiently.
Rosina snorted. “Eef you learn to speak our language, silly child,” she chided him in her heavily accented English, “you will be able to read eet!”
Elijah’s reaction was to stick his tongue out at her as she approached him.
Rosina smacked him lightly across the hand with her fan. “You do that. I will bit eet off next time!”
Ella simply giggled. It was not the first time Rosina had scolded Elijah as she would a child. And Elijah didn’t seem to mind; he loved both women and enjoyed their flattery and teasing.
Andrew pushed a large, paint-stained hand through his thicket of black curls. “Rosina has a point, Elijah – you really need to learn some more of the language.”
Elijah stuck his tongue out petulantly and blew a raspberry.
“I told you, if the wind changes - !” Andrew teased gently.
Elijah pouted and adopted a baby-like tone. “Shan’t!”
“Shall!” Andrew retorted.
“Shan’t!”
“Oh shut up and have a grape!” Andrew sighed, taking a grape from the bowl next to him and throwing it at Elijah, who batted it away with his hand.
Such playful banter was adorable to watch and frequently had the two Italian girls sighing jealously as they each wished for a lover as handsome, strong, intelligent, artistic, and tender as Andrew. To them, Elijah was merely a playful puppy – a beautiful doll that they dressed up, painted, perfumed, and took out with them. He was to be admired as would a painting or a statue – and there was no shortage of admirers of both sexes for him.
Boys even more beautiful than he peered with sultry doe eyes through thick lashes from behind their masks during the Commedia D’Arte festivals and pretty girls giggled coquettishly behind their fans as Elijah passed or spoke to them. Older gentlemen, with their impeccable attire and a taste for young men, surveyed him as lions observe their prey and married women day-dreamed of committing adultery with such a succulent young man – or perhaps with his older, virile lover.
And though there had been approaches, Andrew and Elijah always declined politely and firmly. They had no interest in anyone else, only each other. The couple were totally committed to each other, something of a rarity when adultery appeared rife in those times. Their behaviour was as loving and as playful as it was in those early days of No. 20 Hanover Square. And the sex – the sex was passionate, wild, uninhibited, and glorious!
“So –” Idly, Elijah picked up another grape and popped it into the rosebud mouth that sent fashionable Venetian girls and women into a frenzy trying to find the exact same shade of lip rouge. “Annie’s dead. ‘Ardly newsworthy enough to make ‘eadline news. ‘Hores die all the time in Whitechapel.” He still spoke with the hardness of one raised on the streets, one who’d seen it as part of every day life. He had woken up in the penny hanging houses next to enough corpses of those who had died during the night and stepped over the bodies of men and women who had fallen into drunken comas and never woken up. He shook his head sadly. “If it ain’t from a botched abortion, it’s usually the gin!”
“This was neither!” Andrew stabbed a long finger at the article. “She was ripped apart and her insides left all over Hanbury Street – you said you had a room there –”
Elijah shivered; suddenly he felt very cold. He wrapped the sheet around him as he took the paper from Andrew, who was continuing to read from it.
“The police think it’s connected with an earlier murder in Buck Row, a Mary Jane Nichols –”
Now Elijah felt immeasurably sad. Both Mary and Annie had been kind to him when he was on the streets, feeding him and providing him with shelter when he failed to make the rent that week. Annie, a skilled seamstress, would mend his coat for him. Her husband had left her years before. Like many women of her class, she’d faced the stark choice of starvation or working the streets. Elijah was a surrogate son to her, as he was to a lot of women who walked the dark streets of London, and he often used to chase off their more aggressive punters or those who didn’t pay.
Now some bloody maniac had ripped them up.
“Probably some punter.” Elijah shoved the paper back at Andrew nonchalantly. “You know what they can be like, Andy.”
“According to this there was some expertise involved, judging by the wounds inflicted on the second victim,” Andrew pointed out.
“So, what are yer sayin’? It weren’t a punter?”
“Could be.” Andrew shrugged and placed the paper down amongst the paints on the table. “Now,” he continued, changing the subject. “You know Lorraine and the children are arriving the day after tomorrow?”
Elijah nodded and slid back on the chaise longe and started to eat the grapes in the bowl beside him noisily. Rosina and Ella chattered away in Italian as they retrieved the newspaper and waited for Andrew to pay their wages.
Watching the scene before him, Elijah thought about the horrors that were occurring in London’s East End, thinking himself extremely fortune to be out of that nightmare existence. If this murderer was intent on slaughtering the girls, what was to say that the renters wouldn’t also be on the agenda?
Again, Elijah counted his blessings. He was lucky. Shoving another grape into his mouth, he resumed his earlier pose as Andrew took up his palette once more.
“Off out again, Hans?” Madame Louise asked as she caught her most trusted aide-de-camp, a vision in pale pink satin, leaving No. 20 that bitterly cold night in London.
“Sir Ian’s dinner party at the Savoy with that American actor fellow, Dickie Mansfield as the guest of honour.” Hans smiled, accentuating his dimples. “It appears that he doesn’t want a male companion, so Sir Ian said he would fix him up with someone special.” He curtsied prettily. “So here I am! Hannah at your service, Milady!”
The Madame couldn’t help but smile at Hans’ charade. She also made a mental note to have words with Sir Ian the next time he paid a call. “And does he know you’re not a real woman? You’re playing with fire, lad!”
“I won’t tell if you won’t!” Hans pouted coquettishly. “Besides, I’ve heard from Billy and Dommie that he’s an absolute bore. They met him a party last week following that gala performance of that play he’s in. Talks about himself all the time and I won’t let his hand go wandering down south, in case you’re worried”.
Madame Louise lowered her voice. “It’s not that I’m worried about! You know what some of these fellas are like, Hans. Once they realise you’ve got meat and two veg down there, it could turn nasty. You hear of other Mary Annes getting seven bells kicked out of them or worse! You don’t want to end up on a mortuary slab like those poor women –”
Hans, who was in the process of unlocking the front door, stopped and sighed. Placing a delicately-shaped gloved hand on the Madame’s shoulder, he bent down to kiss her cheek affectionately. “You forget, I’ve got a swift right ‘ook!”
“So did Annie Chapman and look what happened to her!”
Hans grinned and gave the Madame a most unladylike wink. “But I ain’t Annie Chapman!”
And with a swish of his skirts, Hans strode down to the street, climbed into the waiting cab, and then disappeared into the cold, dark night.
Like a playful puppy, Elijah wriggled slowly up beside Andrew, planting little kisses on his lover’s naked body. Still recovering from a slow, sensual evening of lovemaking and a great deal of red wine, Andrew drowsily pulled Elijah closer to him.
“Are you ready now?” Elijah asked as he caressed Andrew’s nipples, eager for their games to begin again.
“Mmm...” One very blue and very sleepy eye opened and looked at Elijah. “Give me a minute.”
“If I give you a minute, you’re going to fall asleep!” laughed Elijah, poking Andrew in the ribs to stir him before deciding to take matters into his own hands. Sliding back down the bed, he stroked his lover’s semi-erect cock gently before taking it into his mouth.
Andrew moaned and shifted slightly. There was one thing Elijah never failed to do and that was to rouse him from a drunken state into that of complete ecstasy. Andrew simply lay back and enjoyed the attention being lavished on him by his boy.
As he licked, kissed, and gently nipped along the cock’s impressive length and girth, Elijah felt the stirrings of his own arousal. He felt the pressure of Andrew’s hand in the small of his back as he positioned himself across Andrew’s chest, so that he was more or less sitting across him.
There were low, animalistic growls from the former captain as Elijah continued to fill his mouth with Andrew’s cock. “Beautiful boy, bello ragazzo!” groaned Andrew as he started to thrust up into Elijah’s mouth. “Take it in, take it all in!”
Using both hands, Elijah held Andrew’s cock steady as his lover’s rhythmic thrusts grew more urgent. His own cock was straining painfully now and he knew he’d be unable to last much longer. He came up for breath and turned slightly, noting with quiet satisfaction the look of extreme pleasure on his lover’s face.
Andrew caught his gaze and looked down at him with a knowing smile. Elijah knew what was going to happen next.
He was flipped skilfully over onto all fours, as Andrew slicked lubricant from a jar by their bed onto his throbbing cock. Spreading the cheeks of Elijah’s arse, Andrew mounted him and, prolonging the agony of his own orgasm, rubbed his cock up and down between the firm, pert cheeks. Elijah writhed and moaned and howled in response, rubbing his own cock against the sheets.
Unable to bear the stimulation any longer, Andrew put the tip of his cock to Elijah’s arsehole and then, with all his might, gave a shove forwards and pressed in, jolting Elijah forward.
Grabbing Elijah’s narrow buttocks, Andrew started to pound deeper into him. The younger man moaned as the delicious sensations spread throughout his body. With a practiced hand, Andrew leaned forward and gave Elijah’s balls a squeeze before circling his cock. He slowed his pace to give Elijah the full pleasure of thrusting in and out of his lover’s hand.
“Fuck me, Andy!” Elijah groaned. “Fuck me hard!”
With a low, gruff, throaty rumble of laughter, Andrew complied and started to thrust deeper and harder into Elijah’s arse. Spreading his thighs wider, to allow easier access, Elijah raised his arse to meet the thrusts and could soon feel his climax approaching.
As the waves of pleasure slowly enveloped them both, Elijah plunged closer to his orgasm, whimpering in ecstasy as he pumped hard in Andrew’s solid, comforting hand. Andrew emitted more animalistic growls from the back of his throat as he too came in long, hard spurts.
It was as if they were both spinning out of control, their combined voices crying out in blissful abandonment. Tears spilled down Elijah’s cheeks as he felt the room start spinning. He never wanted this feeling to end; he wanted it to be frozen in time, to feel the way he did at this precise moment forever.
With a final thrust and a guttural yell, Andrew’s orgasm peaked. His hand slicked with Elijah’s come, he fell across Elijah’s body and the two collapsed together onto the rumpled sheets.
His dark curls were stuck to his forehead with sweat. Pushing them back slowly, Andrew looked down, panting, at the equally spent Elijah, before kissing the boy’s back lightly, his stubble grazing the soft skin.
Elijah stirred. “I love you, Andy.”
Andrew curled the boy up in his arms. “I love you too,” he replied softly as a deep, contented sleep overtook them both.
Whilst Andrew and Elijah drowsed in their post-orgasmic slumbers, back in London Hugo locked the doors at No 20 Hanover Square as Madame Louise counted the night’s takings. It had been an excellent evening; the boys had been on top form and the gentlemen they had entertained and pleasured were content and satisfied.
It had also turned out to be an excellent evening for the forty three year old prostitute Catherine Eddowes as she walked through the streets of Whitechapel, having been released from her police cell in Bishopsgate. Cathy had expected to be detained all night and now, having sobered up, she bid a cheery goodnight to her gaoler and left the police station in good spirits at 1.00am, completely unaware that the body of Elizabeth Stride had been found in Berner Street.
Forty-five minutes later, Catherine Eddowes’ mutilated body was found in Mitre Square.
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