Barbara Metzger by Snowdrops & Scandalbroth

Author:Snowdrops & Scandalbroth [Snowdrops & Scandalbroth]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

At least there was ice. The damned winter weather was good for something. As they walked, the four men gathered up handfuls of slush and broke off icicles from the eaves and fence grilles where the melting snow had refrozen. They wrapped the stuff in lace-edged, monogrammed handkerchiefs, and applied it to Woody’s swelling eye, Algie’s split lip, Courtney’s bloody knuckles, and the lieutenant’s nose, which they did not think was broken. The other patrons of Hamlet’s gave the quartet a wide berth except for a red-haired serving girl with half-unlaced bodice who came to ask their pleasure. She addressed all of them, but looked only at Courtney.

“He’s already had his fill for the night,” the lieutenant slurred. “Broke m’beak provin’ it. My turn.” So the wench took Hydock upstairs, to tend to his poor nose and his purse.

The viscount was aggravated. He’d wanted male companionship, not reminders of male concupiscence. He hadn’t wanted to come to any place so inauspiciously named as Hamlet’s anyway, having had quite enough of that to-be-or-not-to-be folderol.

“It ain’t that kind of Hamlet,” Woody urged. “Used to be called the Pigsty, but no one wanted to eat in such a place. You’ll see.”

What the viscount saw was a narrow corridor with a long wooden bar to one side, low-ceilinged and smoke-filled. What he heard were squeals and grunts from the room beyond. Wallowing indeed. Still, he followed his friends through the curtained door.

It really was a pigsty. There were tables and chairs where customers ate and drank, but there was also a pen full of piglets to one side, and a large barricaded dirt oval in the middle.

They took a table and gave their orders to a big, cauliflower-eared man in a dirty apron, who glared suspiciously at their bruises.

“No trouble,” he warned, “no credit, and no one messes with the pigs. We run an honest track here.”

“Never tell me they race the creatures,” Courtney said when the fellow left after seeing their blunt. “Pigs?”

Algie was enthusiastic. “Why not? They give them names, dress them in coats with numbers on them, take bets, and send them ‘round. There’s a bucket of mash at the other end, so the little porkers are eager to run. The winners get better odds the next heat, and the losers—” He picked up a pork chop from his plate and shrugged. “Not much different from horse racing.”

“Of course it is! The sport of kings has decades of breeding going into each horse, track records, practice times. Why, picking a winner is a regular science.”

“Not the way we manage to lose. If it weren’t for the pater being so generous, my pockets would be permanently to let. Woody’s got his aunt Aurelia to keep him out of River Tick.”

Courtney shook his head. “It’s no wonder you’re always dipped, the way you two nodcocks will bet on anything. But this, this is picking a pig in a poke. Literally.”

Woody was staring at the chalkboard, his mouth hanging open. “They’ve got names, Court.

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