A Thousand and One English Nights (Book Three of The Powder Trail)

Chapter Thirty Four: Lambeth

Ellini let Robin sleep off the booze – or whatever it was that had made him so feverish – and picked up the thread of her furious thoughts right where she had left off in the slop house. 

She would go after the Wylies. She would save any other young men who'd had their feelings stolen by those bitter, manipulative women. And, in this way, she would avoid becoming a bitter, manipulative woman herself.

Robin understood her motivation better, though. And the next day, while they were walking through the Lambeth Public Baths, he voiced it with admirable succinctness.

"So you're going to get your revenge on men by offering them the humiliation of being saved by a woman?"

He had been inquisitive when he'd woken up, even if he was hung-over. There was no more talk about the people he'd killed, or the agony of remorse – in fact, she got the feeling he regretted saying as much as he had last night. But there had been plenty of questions.

With bleary eyes and a gravelly voice, he asked her where Jack was – "Oxford" – and why he wasn't here right now – "He thinks I'm dead."

Ellini delivered these explanations in a terse, haughty manner, trying to make it clear that she didn't intend to trust him, and she didn't believe in his so-called repentance, no matter how many notches he carved into his flesh. He hadn't carved anything onto his pretty face, had he? That was proof positive that he was still Robin.

She had to tell him a little bit about the Wylies – although she suspected, from the guarded look on his face, that he'd heard of them before. She didn't mention Myrrha's name, but she could tell he knew she was at the heart of it. Ellini wondered for a moment why she was trusting him to help her bring down the evil empire of his own wife, but there wasn't time to answer that question. She wouldn't get the answer for over a month.

Robin accepted her explanations without comment – although perhaps there were a few eyebrow-raises, particularly around the phrase 'He thinks I'm dead'. Then he took her to the Lambeth Public Baths.

For the last six months of the year, the Lambeth Baths were drained and turned into a gymnasium for men. It contained all sorts of equipment: dumb-bells, parallel bars, vaulting horses, a boxing-ring. In the echoey, tile-lined interior, dozens of men, wearing nothing but their vests and drawers, lifted dumb-bells, got each other in head-locks, practised fencing and counted push-ups.

The poster outside the baths-turned-gymnasium said it offered all kinds of 'healthful, manly exercise', and this was the reason why Robin had insisted she tie her hair up under a cap and put on men's clothing.

"Women aren't allowed in the gymnasia," he explained, as they walked through the raised gallery – what would have been the side of the pool in warmer weather. "It would be impossible for you to dress modestly and still use the equipment. And anyway, all that vigorous exercise can damage your childbearing capability. I met a Doctor once in Berne who said that women's organs can go rattling about inside their torsos if they're not careful. Your organs need support at all times. That's why you have to wear a corset."

"Really?" said Ellini, watching as one of the men below her vaulted the horse, the contents of his long-johns flapping under the thin cotton. "It's your organs that look vulnerable to me."

Robin grinned. "I don't know what happened to you in Oxford, but I like it."

She didn't rise to this. Instead, she pulled warily at the waistcoat he had given her to put on, and said, "Where did you get these clothes?"

"You know how women will do anything for me?" This wasn't a boast but a long-established fact, and Ellini acknowledged it with a stony-faced nod. "Well, some men will do anything for me too. The boy who gave me those clothes was as pretty as you."