warm. A slight, directionless breeze stirred the air lazily.
At ground level, ribbons of steam twisted slowly across the surface of the road, occasionally rising up like serpents poised to strike. They swirled away from passing traffic then curled back inward.
There were far fewer vehicles on the streets than usual.
“Where is everyone?” Swinburne called over the racket of his penny-farthing's chugging engine.
“Sheltering behind locked doors, I imagine,” Burton responded. “Or resting after a hard day's rioting!”
“By golly, what a lot of broken windows! It looks as if a tornado passed through town!”
“Watch where you steer. There might be debris in the road. Hey! Where are you going?”
“This way, it's a short cut!” the poet shrilled, suddenly veering off the main street and into a narrow lane.
“Blast it, Algy, what are you up to?”
“Follow me!”
The steam proved to be much thicker in the backstreets; a dense milky pall, reminiscent of that which rose from the Crawls in the grounds of Tichborne House. The top of the cloud was almost level with the saddles of the velocipedes-about the same height as the top of an average man's head-and the two penny-farthings, as they clattered through it, left a widening wake behind them, exactly as if they were steering through a liquid.
Gas lamps flared, casting sharp shadows on the sides of the buildings and walls on either side of the lane, and making the top of the mist glaringly luminescent.
“Slow down, Algy! I can't see the surface of the road! Are you sure you know where we're going?”
“Yes, don't worry! I've been this way many a time!”
“Why?”
“For Verbena Lodge!”
“The brothel?”
“Yes!”
“I might have-” Burton's teeth clacked together as his vehicle bounced over a pothole “-known!”
They turned right into a less well-lit street, then left into another, and immediately found themselves in the midst of a disturbance. Yells and screams rose out of the cloud, women's shouts and men's protestations.
There came a loud report, almost like a gunshot, and Swinburne suddenly vanished.
The king's agent saw the small rear wheel of his assistant's velocipede fly upward before dropping back into the mist. He heard the machine's engine race, cough, splutter, and die.
He squeezed his brake levers and swung down from his vehicle, plunging into the cloud.
“Algy? Did you hit something? Are you all right?”
“Over here, Richard! I-”
Crack!
“Yow!”
Burton moved toward the raised voices, peering into the murk. Were those figures just ahead?
“Algernon?” he called.
“Gah!” came the response.
A man ran out of the rolling vapour. He was dressed in nothing but a ripped and bloodied shirt, a top hat, and a pair of socks held up by gaiters. “She's bloody insane!” he wailed, and sped past.
Another gentleman followed, barefoot and buttoning up his trousers. “Get out of here! The strumpet is spitting feathers!”
A woman in a floral dressing gown hurried into view and shouted after them: “Oy! Sir George! Mr. Fiddlehampton! Come back! Sirs! Sirs! You ain't paid the bleedin’ Governess!”
She looked at Burton. “You a bloody rozzer, or what? ’Cos if you are, you can bleedin’ well stuff it.”
“I'm not the police. What's all that noise about? Who's screaming?”
Crack!
“Yow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ha ha!”
That was Algy!
“What's happening? Answer me!”
The girl shrugged and gestured over her shoulder. “It's Betsy, ain't it? She's gone bloody loopy. ’Ere, if ya ain't a rozzer, maybe we could-”
Burton pushed past her and strode forward until he found himself mingling with a small crowd of semi-clad men and girls who'd gathered in a wide ring around a curvaceous brunette. She was heavily made-up, and wore little more than a tight black whalebone bodice, French bloomers, and high-heeled boots.
In her left hand she held a whip, the end of which was coiled around the neck of a man kneeling meekly behind her wearing nothing but underpants. She had a second whip in her right hand, and with this, she was lashing at a small figure that hopped, jerked, and danced before her.
It was Algernon Swinburne.
Crack!
The leather thong coiled around the poet's hindquarters.
“Ouch! Ouch! Hah, yes! But really, Betsy, what do you think-”
Crack!
It slashed at his waist, ripping his shirt and slicing through his belt.
“Woweee! No! Ow! Ow!-do you think you are doing with that-”
Crack!
His trousers slid to his ankles.
“Narrgh! Oof! Ha ha ha!-doing with that poor gentleman?”
Burton glanced at the woman's prisoner. He looked again, and recognised him: it was the Chancellor of the Exchequer, William Gladstone.
“Mr. Gladstone!” he called, pushing past prostitutes and angry customers. “What are you doing?”
“Shut up!” snapped the whip-wielding woman, who Swinburne had addressed as Betsy.
“It's all right, Richard!” the poet panted. “I have the situation under control.”
“So I see,” Burton replied sarcastically.
“Who are you, sir!” the kneeling politician demanded haughtily.
“Sir Richard Burton.”
“I said shut up!” Betsy ordered.
“Palmerston's swashbuckler?”
“Well, I wouldn't put it quite like that, but-”
Crack!
Burton cried out and fell to one knee, clutching his head, feeling his scalp open up above the left ear. Blood dripped through his fingers.
Crack!
Leather encircled his forearm and neck, tightened cruelly, ripped his sleeve, and slid away. The explorer toppled to the cobbles and quickly rolled aside as the lash sliced through the air again and smacked loudly against the road beside him.
“Hey! I say!” Swinburne shouted. “Don't flog him! Flog me!”
“Be quiet!” Betsy commanded.
“Yes,” said Burton, scrambling to his feet, “be quiet, Algy.”
Above the general hubbub, there sounded the clank and rattle of an approaching litter-crab.
The crowd thinned as men slipped away into the mist.
“Burton,” called Gladstone. “Do not misjudge what you witness here. I am present simply to rehabilitate these fallen women.”
“In you undergarments, sir?”
“They stole my clothes!”
Betsy pulled her lips back over her teeth and hissed: “Oppressor! Hypocrite! Conspirator!”
“Betsy, dear,” said Swinburne, soothingly, “the middle of the street is no place for a discussion about-about- by the way, what is it we're discussing?”
“Pervert!”
