The Phoenix by Ruth Sims

THE PHOENIX is the story of two men whose lives are destined to cross and merge in love and separate in antagonism and fury. One of them is haunted by God and the other by a secret so terrible it could send him to the gallows. In the excerpts that follow, you will meet them as two boys born into different worlds, though both worlds are in the waning days of Victoria's England.

Excerpt from Chapter One.

Excerpt from Chapter Two.

Exceprt from Chapter Five.

Excerpt from Chapter Seven.

THE PHOENIX

RUTH SIMS

ISBN 1-932133-40-2

Excerpt from

CHAPTER ONE

London, 1882

Michael turned anxious brown eyes to his twin, and said in an edgy voice, "He'll be here today."

Jack Rourke neither answered nor acknowledged his brother's spoken fear. He had no time to worry whether the old man was returning. He was too busy searching for an easy-to-pick pocket in the crowd boarding the Margate steamer. Behind the thicket of curly blond hair, Jack's dark eyes were those of a man beset by devils, though he was not quite fourteen.

Beyond and around the two boys, families and their baggage streamed toward the huffing steamer boats that would take them out of London on holiday. In front of Jack, a man's coat pocket gaped as he bent to pick up a caterwauling child. Jack expertly removed the man's purse and slipped it to his motionless brother. Then Jack bumped the man and ran.

The man shouted, "Thief! Thief! Stop him! Stop him! Thief!"

A dozen men gave chase, but the fleet-footed Jack ducked into alleys, jumped fences, ran through a dirty tavern, and left them behind. Michael passed unnoticed through the holiday crowd, the purse inside his shirt, heavy against his thin body. When he reached their hideaway, an abandoned bottle shop, Jack was already there.

Michael handed him the purse and sat down on one of the rickety upturned crates. Jack paused in opening the purse, and glanced at the smaller, frailer version of himself. Michael was paler than usual.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"I thought I saw him."

"Well, you was wrong," Jack said. "The old bastard wouldn't have been down there. He ain't supposed to come back for another week."

"I know. But he's coming today, Jack. I know he is."

Jack knew too, though he'd eat a rat before he'd admit it. He knew the same way Michael did. Whenever Mum got a letter saying he was coming home things got bad. She drank more gin, hit them with both her voice and her hands, and paced the floor. A dozen times a day she stepped outside to peer down the narrow, filthy cobbled street.

"Bugger the old man," Jack muttered, and shut him out of his mind. In a cracked brown jar hidden beneath a warped floorboard was every shilling they'd found, earned, or that Jack had stolen. When today's swag was added and the jar hidden again, Jack sat down beside Michael.

"We'll have enough money to leave here real soon, Michael. We ain't never gonna have to see that old sod again. God, I hate him!"

Michael's forehead wrinkled. "You oughtn't say that, Jack. The missionary man says we must forgive and turn the other cheek to our enemies."

"He likely says we oughtn't steal too, so what do you think he'd say if he saw you nip off with the money today, hey?" Seeing the hurt in his brother's eyes, Jack mumbled, "I didn't mean it."

"Jack, I don't like stealing," Michael said, not for the first time. "Can't we stop?"

"Not till we got all we need."

"Maybe…maybe things'll be better this time when he's home."

"Maybe I'll fly." Jack rubbed the crooked little finger on his right hand. The last time the old man was home he'd bent it backward until it broke with the sound of a stick cracking. It ached most all the time. There'd be new aches, and new bloody welts from the strap before the old sod left again. Jack got up and rumpled the dirty blond hair that matched his own. "Are you rested? Let's race." It was an unequal contest. He was laughing and panting upon the sagging step of the sooty crumbling tenement that leaned against its neighbor when Michael ran up and flopped down beside him.

"Someday I'll be bigger and faster than you," said Michael, without much hope.

Jack grinned. "I'm twenty minutes older. You'll never catch up." He waved to his two friends, Toad and Spitter. Toad swung something as he walked. "What you got?" Jack asked.

"Dead cat. What's left of it. Gonna pitch it at the first copper I see." Toad chortled and held the sunken-eyed, maggoty object at arm's length. Jack laughed. Michael cringed. Toad said, "There's your old man. I ain't sticking around." He and Spitter disappeared into an alley.

Jack stiffened at the sight of a brawny man, well over six feet tall, who trudged toward them with a sailor's rolling gait, a seaman's bag over one shoulder, brass buttons glinting. Jack wasn't surprised when his friends ran away. Even grown men stayed out of Tom Rourke's way. And nobody interfered when he beat his wife and sons.

Jack scrambled to his feet. "I'm going away for a little while."

"Don't go, Jack," Michael begged, clutching his sleeve. "I don't want to be the only one here."

"Oh, you know he's always nice to start with."

"Then why go?"

"Because I don't want to have to look at him." He frowned and looked up, as if he could see over the roofs to another life. "Let's run away, Michael. Right this minute."

"We can't leave Mum alone with him."

Jack bit his lip to keep from saying what he knew, that she'd leave them quick enough if she had anyplace to go. Just yesterday he'd heard her say to her friend Lucy, "If I knew for sure who bred those brats on me, I'd leave Tom and go live with him." Then in answer to her friend's question, she said, "Take the boys? What would I do with them, I'd like to know. They can look out for themselves."

He hoped it was true they wasn't Rourke's boys. He'd rather be the bastard of that blood-hawking chimney sweep on the corner. Or maybe their old man was one of the nameless sailor boys who came home with her from time to time. They was usually young and drunk, and they laughed with her and told her how pretty she was with her yellow hair and dark eyes.

"I'll be back before he misses me," Jack said. "He don't ever remember which of us is which anyways." He patted his brother's shoulder and left.

Jack's quick and purposeful path wound through several neighborhoods of dingy shanties, tenements, gin shops, pubs and little shops with flyblown windows. He was going to the Royal Lion, the wonderful place he had found one night last year when he was running away from the old man's fists…

End Chapter One Excerpt

EXCERPT FROM

Chapter Two

[…]

Scarcely able to see from his swollen eyes, he felt around until his fingers closed around the handle of his mother's long-bladed, razor sharp fish knife. He staggered to where Rourke lay sprawled, his shirt unbuttoned. With both hands, he lifted the knife above his head and plunged it into the broad, black-furred chest. Blood shot out around the blade. Rourke's eyes flew open. Jack yanked the knife out and plunged it in again. Rourke tried to rise, then fell back and did not move.

Jack left the shack and crept through the misty shadows, hiding from the world, holding the one thing he had taken with him: Michael's windup clown. He made his way to the theatre and collapsed in the dressing room, moaning and hugging the toy to him. Someone grabbed him; someone carried him to the hangman's rope. He struggled, and woke to find Lizbet kneeling beside him.

"Jack, my poor darling, what happened? What did that monster do to you?"

"He killed Michael and I killed him and what am I going to do?" His teeth clicked together; he shook until it seemed he would shake apart.

She helped him to his feet. "Come home with me. It isn't far."

In her small parlor Lizbet treated his wounds, and listened, her face ashen. "I should have made you come here."

"They'll catch me. They'll hang me!"

She held his icy hands in hers. "No, dear. They won't. No one knows you're here. You're safe." She brought a pillow and a warm blanket and fixed him a bed on her settee. "Drink this. It will help you sleep." She gave him a cup of tea laced with laudanum.

He lay down and Lizbet drew a blanket over him. "Don't leave me," he begged.

"I'll be right here. I won't leave you," she said, and made herself as comfortable as possible in the chair beside the fire. A hoarse scream jarred her awake. Jack's his head was thrown back, his throat and jaw rigid, his limbs shaking uncontrollably. Lizbet wrapped her arms around him and rocked him. "Hush, hush, hush."

"He ain't dead! He's coming after me. He was there! Right there by the door. I seen his eyes. I seen the buttons on his coat."

"No, now, Jack. Hush. You're safe here. Safe. Hush now." Was Rourke dead? Uneasily she looked about, but saw no sign of an intruder. Gradually Jack stopped raving and, worn out, laid his head on her shoulder. She soothed him back to sleep and silently cursed the soul of Tom Rourke, hoping he truly was stone cold dead and burning in Hell.

End Chapter Two Excerpt

Excerpt From

CHAPTER FIVE

Four years before Jack Rourke was brought howling in protest into his squalid world, a boy was born to a self-taught physician and his wife, in a village lying on a slope of the Cotswolds. The village overlooked lush, sheep-dotted grazing meadows created by the Almighty with help from frequent flooding of the River Severn. The boy born to the physician was a late blessing of God, coming twelve years after his sister Agnes, the presumed last of the brood.

William Stuart delivered the child, though his wife neither wanted nor needed his help. "I've already had six, Mr. Stuart," she had reminded him. "If I don't know how to do this by now, I never will."

He inspected the infant for any missing or deformed parts. "A perfect boy child," he announced. The baby mewled, his rosebud mouth opened and shut like that of a little fish as William Stuart swaddled him and laid him in his mother's arms. She pressed her cheek to the downy little head. "Aye, he is the handsomest of the litter," she said, the Irish brogue of her youth still much in evidence.

"He is not a puppy, a kitten, or a pig, Mrs. Stuart," said William Stuart, in sharp rebuke. "He is my child. My son. I will thank you to remember that."

"Your son? And would ye be tellin' me, Mr. Stuart, when you started to feel the pangs of labor? We'll name him Patrick," Bridgett Stuart said, looking down at the baby. "After the Patron Saint of Ireland."

"Indeed, Mrs. Stuart, we shall not! That Papist superstition is not fit for a God-fearing Baptist family. We'll name him Nicholas after my father." He smiled proudly. "And he'll take over my practice when the good God calls me home."

"Perhaps the lad will have another future in mind, Mr. Stuart."

Her husband's face darkened. "We gave the other boy choices and lived to regret it. This boy will be a doctor and there's an end to it."

The Stuart household began each day at 4:30. As the family filed into the small parlor, the children yawned and sometimes stumbled over one another. There they knelt, beside an open window in good weather, beside the bright hearth in bad. Mr. Stuart first, his wife beside him. At her side or in her arms was the youngest child, the rest arranged around their parents. As the years passed, son John took a wife and left home. Then Elspeth, Deborah, Elizabeth and Mary became wives and left. Only Agnes and little Nick remained, and their mother, reminded every day of Agnes' sour disposition, was resigned to having her at home forever. Even though the family dwindled, the tradition and the prayer never changed.

"Oh, Mighty God and Heavenly Father, Ruler and Judge of All, hear my prayers and those of my family." William Stuart exhorted God to bless them and to forgive Mrs. Stuart her sharp tongue, Agnes her quick temper, Nicholas his sauciness and teasing of his sister… The sins of each child, both home and away, and the sins of their spouses and children were laid before the Almighty and promptly forgiven. The prayer ended when the old clock chimed five.

If Nick's eyes drooped, Agnes jabbed his ear with her elbow. If he jabbed her in retaliation, his father's eye fell hard upon him and he sniffled into silence. After the morning prayer came thirty minutes of reading from the Bible as they wended their way through it from Genesis to Revelation once a year. Evening prayers preceded bedtime.

The three-hour church services on Sunday morning were torture. NickÕs eyes glazed. In his head he was somewhere else. He ran barefoot in the thick green grass, or pranced with abandon in the rain, his head thrown back to catch raindrops on his tongue. Sometimes he rolled down hills in the snow, or lay spread-eagled in the sun, and baked like bread. As sermons droned, he opened his eyes wide to keep them from falling shut. When that failed he rolled his eyeballs in circles, first one way and then another; that made him dizzy. He counted the cracks in the wood floor. He pressed his lips tightly together to capture errant yawns, and then wondered how he could yawn inside but not outside. If a yawn escaped Nick or he nodded off or looked about, Agnes dug her elbow into his ribs. Nick was convinced Agnes sharpened her elbows the way his mother sharpened kitchen knives.

Sometimes something caught his small-boy interest. One Sunday during the sermon, a fat fly landed on Mr. Duckett's hairless head. It stomped about, stopping every now and then to rub its front feet together in obvious glee. It trooped up and down and around the double pink hillocks above the starched collar where Mr. Duckett couldn't reach it without drawing attention. After church Agnes always recited to their father the long list of her brother's wrongdoing. Their father listened, frowning, and asked Nicholas if the accusations were true. Knowing that Hell awaited liars, he always admitted his guilt, fetched the birch switch, and bent over. Once he asked indignantly, "If she has her eyes closed during prayer, Father, how does she know what I'm doing?"

"God sees," said his father.

"Agnes is not God." Chin high, without another word, Nick brought the switch, dropped his trousers, and bent over his father's knee.

Once in a while he got revenge. Several times he tied Agnes' high-buttoned boots together. Once he dumped a fruit jar full of worms in her bed. Her screams were worth the birching his father gave him.

Nick was four when he fell in love with a ten-year-old girl named Angelica. She had hair like sunshine. She carried him around, teased him, played games with him, and helped him with his lessons. When she became a young lady he was jealous of the boys who courted her. Except for Martin, Mr. Somers' farmhand, who fascinated him. Stripped to the waist in the hot sun, Martin's body shone with sweat as he forked hay higher and faster than anyone else.

On Nick's sixth birthday his father announced, "Nicholas, today you begin your training. I'm going to geld Farmer Tucker's pigs and I want you to observe." He placed a proud hand on Nick's unruly dark hair. "I started my medical training the same way, watching my father."

Nick stared in fascinated horror as Farmer Tucker seized each struggling little pig by his front trotters, held him suspended, snout forward, while William Stuart made two quick cuts with his razor-edged scalpel. Shrill squeals of pain shattered the air and ribbons of blood ran down the pink little bodies. Nicholas gulped down nausea. Returning home in the old buggy, he asked, "Why do you geld them? It's awful cruel."

"It is done," his father answered, "so they have no desire to fornicate." He looked at Nick as if to add that the same should be done with little boys. Nick didn't know what 'fornicating' was. Like 'circumcision,' it was a word read aloud in scripture but never explained. Was he guilty of it? How could he be guilty when he didn't know what it was? But just because you didnÕt know something was a sin, didn't mean you weren't guilty of sin if you did it. The Scriptures were clear about that. He was confused and frightened.

After the pig gelding, he went regularly with his father. He made up his schoolwork with Mr. Spencer, the village schoolmaster, whenever he could. He and his father rode in silence from village to village, from farm to farm, in the valley. He stood at his father's side, helping wherever his father directed, handing him instruments or water or clean cloths. By the time he was seven, he was no longer dismayed when his father had to thrust his entire arm into a cow's body to help a calf get born. He often knew the joy of helping a new lamb, a wobbly foal, or a tiny pig stand for the first time. When he was nine he assisted at the birth of a farm wife's baby.

His father had intended to keep him well away from human birth for some years, but the woman had no female relatives, her husband was recently dead and the only midwife in the valley was ill. His son would have to do. He gave Nick a basin of water, a small ewer of oil, several towels and cloths and directed him to sit beside the fireplace and keep them warm. Nick sat beside the fireplace and listened to the cries and grunts of pain that came from the birthing room. Finally he heard his father call, "Nicholas, bring the water and warm towels."

In the doorway, Nick blanched at the birthing smells. It was no worse than when a cow calved, he told himself, or when a mare had a foal. It was only the small, hot room that made the difference.

"Well," said his father impatiently, "will you bring those towels over here today or wait for Christmas?"

He kept his eyes averted from the woman, but need not have bothered. His father had her decently covered. His father took the baby, slimy with blood and mucus, wrapped it in the warm towel and placed the precious bundle into his son's arms. "Take him and wash him gently. Scarcely touch him. Be careful not to get water on the cord. Oil his skin and wrap him well. Then keep him warm until I call you again."

As he carefully carried out his assignment, Nick was almost overcome by the incredible helplessness of the tiny creature. It was the most wonderful thing he had ever seen. As he waited for the summons, he held the baby and gazed in wonder at the bruised, swollen eyelids, at the skin softer than any cobweb. When he was called again, he carried the newborn into the birthing room. Eyes shining, he smiled as he handed the infant to his mother. The woman later told her neighbors, "The little Stuart lad is such a love. He helped bring my baby into the world, and when he smiled at me, it was like the sun coming out over the hills. I named the baby for him, you know."

William Stuart was thunderstruck when the story got to him a few weeks later that his young son had single-handedly delivered Mrs. Oliver's baby. Nick laughed in delight. His father did not.

End Excerpt From Chapter Five

Excerpt from

CHAPTER SEVEN

A large bathtub dominated one corner of the dressing room. The old man filled it with hot water and ignored Nick.

How, Nick wondered, could he have let himself come to such a place? A theatre, a place of actresses no better than painted harlots and actors who likely did not know the meaning of the word morals. Safety lay beyond that door. Just as he reached it, the door flew open.

A tall young woman swept into the room, her red hair flying in all directions. "Kit, are you all right?" She stopped. "Who are you?"

"I'm the doctor."

"You took care of his arm? I almost fainted when I saw real blood. Will he be all right? Our company doctor was drunk again; Kit's going to kill the worthless sot." She smiled and stuck out her hand like a man. "Thank God you were here. I'm Rama Weisberg. I played the queen." When he did not take her hand she withdrew it. "Didn't you like the production? Or was it just me you didn't like?"

"Nothing of the kind. It's just that my friends accused me of being in love with you."

"'Accused' you? It's hardly the same as being in love with a piece of three-day-old mutton! Some men find it quite pleasant." She flounced from the room and disappeared into the hallway.

St. Denys returned a moment later. "What did you say to my leading lady?" he asked. "She's positively spluttering."

"I'm not really sure. She seems to think I called her a mutton, but I didn't."

"Ah, well," Kit said, laughing. "She has a redhead's temper."

"Your bath is ready, Mr. Kit," the old man said, and helped him remove the jerkin and the full-sleeved bloodstained white blouse.

"Thank you, Nathaniel. Stuart, have you decided about the party? You will go, won't you?" As St. Denys talked, he sat down at the makeup table with its boxes and bottles, and removed the sweat-streaked makeup. The tips of his sweat-darkened fair mane lay in waves against the nape of his neck and hid his ears; the downward curve of his jaw was strong. Nick was near enough to notice the light brown freckles on his shoulders.

The words "No, I don't think so" died unspoken. Nick gazed at the actor's naked back and muscular arms. How would they feel beneath his hands? Was his skin coarse or fine? Nick shoved his hands into his coat pockets, lest he reach out and touch him. He wished he could put his eyes in his pockets as well.

A peculiar lattice of faded, jagged white lines marred the actor's. They looked like scars, but how could that be? A small dark mole resided on his lower back, just above the waist of the black trunk hose and tights. Just then Nick realized St. Denys, with a slight smile, was watching him in the mirror. Even the tops of Nick's ears turned crimson.

"If your wife is with you, she is more than welcome to join us," St. Denys said, as the last trace of makeup vanished.

"I don't have a wife," Nick croaked. He did not realize that the way he said it told Kit St. Denys a great deal. "Mr. St. Denys," he started to say.

"Please. Call me Kit; everyone does."

"Mr. St. Denys, I wouldn't fit in at your party. I don't enjoy that sort of thing."

"I assure you, Mr. Stuart, it's but a late dinner, a bit of the grape, laughter, and song. It is not a bacchanalian orgy."

"I didn't mean that."

"Then you will come." Kit turned toward him.

Nick's good resolves sank out of sight. Nick had hoped that the glamour and sensuality were all an illusion. He could go home and forget he had ever spoken to the man. But no, the Devil himself had conspired to make St. Denys younger and more handsome than he had been with the makeup.

With complete unconcern, St. Denys stood up and let the old man help him finish undressing. Nick tried not to notice the authentic costume's codpiece. He broke into a sweat and clenched his fists tighter in his pockets. How would it feel to spread his hands on that firm arse? Or see him erect and ready? Oh, dear God, he had to leave there! But the Devil who had made St. Denys beautiful had also nailed Nick's feet to the floor.

St. Denys stepped into the high-backed tub of hot water and, careful to keep his injured arm dry, he exhaled a gusty sigh of pleasure as the old man fussed over him with scented soap and a sea sponge. "What is your given name, Stuart?"

"Nicholas."

"And what do your friends call you?"

"I have no time for friends."

"We must do something about that. Tell me, are you particularly interested in Shakespeare?" "Uh… yes. Very interested. In Shakespeare. Yes."

"And your favorite of his plays is…?"

"Well, um, Hamlet, of course."

"Of course."

It annoyed Nick to know St. Denys was having fun at his expense. "Well, it is." Then it didn't matter because like a young Neptune rising from the sea St. Denys stood up in his tub and stepped out. He grinned as if he knew the evil in Nick's mind. Nick's eyes sought a fascinating blank corner on the ceiling.

"Only a few more minutes, Mr. Stuart. Then we can leave." The old man helped him into his clothing. As he started to do up the buttons on the shirt, St. Denys said, "I can manage from here, Nathaniel. Thank you. You go freshen up for the party."

"Very good, Mr. Kit." Nathaniel favored Nick with one more disapproving glare and was gone.

"I'm surprised," Nick said, still looking at the corner. "You socialize with your servants?"

"Nathaniel is not a servant. He's my dresser and has been for a long time. That I always have the right costume for any given scene is due to Nathaniel."

Nick wondered how any man who had just been nude in front of a stranger could answer with such dignity. He was surprised when St. Denys said, "You'll have to learn the ways of the theatre if you're to be around us."

"I didn't know I was."

"But you are."

The actor's dark eyes seemed to pull secrets from Nick's soul Nick was dazed by the ferocity of his desire; he had a forlorn hope St. Denys had not noticed the obvious.

"I knew the moment I looked into your eyes you that you were one of my kind. I'm never wrong."

Fear replaced lust. 'One of my kind.' Hugh had said the same thing. If St. Denys and Hugh could recognize his demon so did God. Then his fear was forgotten when St. Denys' sultry expression gave way to one of guileless charm.

"Devil of a time with the buttons. Ought to have kept Nathaniel in here. It's a bloody inconsiderate thing to ask of a guest, but could you help me?"

Nick's fingertips brushed the damp, smooth skin of St. Denys' chest and abdomen, and he was helpless against the sexual imagery in his mind as each button slid into its buttonhole. Then as he fastened the right sleeve button he saw the twisted little finger. Scars. A broken finger. What mysteries did they represent? He glanced up once more into St. Denys' eyes.

"After the party," St. Denys said softly, "you will go with me to my hotel." It was not a question.

"Yes."

"You'll stay the night." Still not a question.

"Yes." With those two yeses he accepted everything and questioned nothing, and the knowledge made him afraid.

End Excerpt From Chapter Seven