Jackdaw (3 page)

Jonah whispered acquiescence, body stilling and going limp, and Ben stormed him, keeping his tight grip on Jonah’s hair, pounding without regard, grinding his hips against Jonah’s body. He fucked Jonah, and muttered words of contempt and hatred in place of the other words he’d used so often, refusing to think about whether Jonah was aroused, what he was thinking.
Do you love me now? Do you?

It didn’t matter. This was vengeance, nothing more. Ben used his calves to trap Jonah’s legs to the floor, hissing at every little grunt and gasp he forced from the other man.
I hate you, I hate you…

God, but he felt good, though. The muscled back that he knew so well, flexing under him, braced against Ben’s grip on his hair. Jonah was moving again, pushing back to meet Ben, making incoherent noises that might have been pain, or not, and Ben could only think of burying himself deep in Jonah, making sure the man never forgot him.

“Take it,” he gasped in Jonah’s ear. “Bloody take it. Say my name.”

“Ben.” Jonah’s head was tilted back as Ben pulled his hair, throat exposed. “Ben. More.”

He was aroused, Ben was sure of it. That choke in his voice. Jonah wanted this, and the fact should have disgusted Ben, with Jonah or himself, but dear God, it didn’t, and that just made him angrier.

“You bastard.” He let go of Jonah’s hair and slammed his hips into him, punctuating the words with driving thrusts. “You vicious, worthless swine. I hate you. You know that?”

“I know,” Jonah whimpered. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry…”

Ben stared down at Jonah’s bowed head, a tangle of black against the linen, its white streak far brighter than the cloth. “I hate you,” Ben whispered, and came, with little gasping breaths that might have been sobs.

It was only as the aftershocks subsided through his body that he realised his hand, stretched out to the bedframe, was clutching Jonah’s cuffed hand, their fingers tangled together, palm to palm.

He pushed it away. Jonah let his arm fall to the mattress, without protest. Ben jerked out of him, sitting back on his calves, erection wilting fast. Jonah didn’t move. He was sprawled half-naked, skin showing the finger marks of brutal use.

He would not ask if Jonah was all right. He would
not
.

The silence stretched out.

“I’m going to take you to the police,” Ben said at last. “The Met. You’re going to gaol.”

“Yes.” Jonah’s voice was muffled in the sheets. “But I’ll run. You do understand that? I always run.”

“I won’t let you.”

“You’ll do what you have to.” Jonah sounded very weary. “And I’ll do the same.”

“Of course you will. You already did, and ruined my life with it. Now it’s your turn.”

Jonah’s shoulders sagged into the sheets. “Oh, God, Ben. If you’d just—” He jerked up. “What was that?”

That
was a splintering crash from downstairs, and even as Ben’s head turned, he heard the unmistakable sound of a police whistle.

“For Christ’s sake.” Jonah spoke with sudden energy. “It’s a raid.”

Ben recoiled, as though at a blow. No. Surely not. Not this, not now—

Taken in the act of sodomy in a male meeting house. Another conviction. It would be two years’ hard labour this time, a flogging too perhaps, for a shameless recidivist like himself, little more than four months on from his last conviction. He’d been seen all over London’s disreputable haunts, the police would know his face. They could convict him on that alone, not to mention the room, and the sheets, and the reek of semen, and the half-naked man chained to the sodding bed.

He couldn’t go through it a second time. He could not go back to prison.

“Ben,” Jonah said urgently. “Let me go.”

His life, what remained of it, was falling to dust, and Jonah could only think of himself. “No. If I’m going down, so are you.”

“Ben…” Heavy-shod feet were thundering up stairs and along corridors. There were cries of fear, squeals of protest as doors were flung open. They would come to this room soon. Mechanically, Ben started to tuck himself away, not in the hope of hiding anything, just for a little dignity.

“Ben! Oh, well, sod it.” Jonah’s free hand delved into his clothing for a second and came out with a twisted wire, and he was rising from the bed, wrist free, before Ben had his buttons fastened.

“What—”

“Give me
some
credit.” Jonah pulled his clothing straight. His lip was split and his cheek bruised, but there was just a hint of the old sapphire sparkle dawning in his eyes. “This seems like a good moment to leave.” He strode to the window, and Ben realised, with sickening horror, that he was going to do it again. He was going to use that damned witchcraft of his, leave Ben to be arrested,
again
…

“Are you coming?”

“What?”

Jonah threw the window open in a swift movement. “It’s about twenty feet to the next rooftop. We can do that. I’ll go over first, and you run to me, yes?”

“
What?
” It seemed to be all Ben could say.

“I walk on air, Ben. I can walk you. Just run to me. Or you can stay here and be arrested, but I wish you wouldn’t. Let me get us out of here. Please.”

“How?”

“Just shut your eyes and run straight over. Pretend you’re on the rugby pitch.” Jonah’s lips gave a tiny twitch. “Score me a try.”

There was a crash and a scream from the stairs. The police were on their floor now.

“I’m going.” Jonah swung a leg over the sill. “Come after me when I wave. I’ll hold you up. Don’t stop, don’t hesitate. If you stop running, you’ll fall.” He paused, and gave Ben a tentative smile. “Trust me? Just once more?”

Then he was gone. Ben lunged for the window, sticking his head out, and saw him sprint through the air, a few long strides. He landed with a dancer’s turn on the dark tiled roof opposite, twenty feet away and about six feet lower down.

Heavy footsteps approached the door.

If he stayed, it would be two years’ hard, and that was a death sentence for many men. If he jumped and fell, it was a death sentence without the trouble of labour, and at least it would all be over. That had been in his mind anyway, once he’d taken his revenge on Jonah, and there was nothing left in his life.

If he could trust Jonah…

He couldn’t. It was insane.

He couldn’t go back to gaol. Whatever happened, he could not bear that.

Ben swung one leg over the windowsill, then the other. The door of the room slammed open, and a policeman gave a roar, lunging for him. Jonah was perched on the roof opposite, beckoning. Ben shut his eyes and launched himself out into the void.

His foot hit something.

He jerked, and hesitated, and it went from under him, and Jonah screamed, “Run, dammit!” as something else solidified under his flailing foot, pushing him. There was a deep bellow from the window behind him. Ben ran, eyes clamped shut, one stride and another, not thinking. Familiar hands clasped his and pulled, and suddenly he was toppling over and onto Jonah’s warm body, and heard his triumphant laugh.

“Did it!” Jonah crowed.

“Oi!” roared a voice from the house opposite. “You there! Oh, how the—”

“Come on,” Jonah said urgently. He squirmed up from under Ben, grabbing his hand, and they were running again. It was utter madness. The tiles were steeply pitched, poorly fastened, brittle with age. They cracked under Ben’s feet, and he couldn’t see a thing, and every step might take them over the edge, plummeting to the stone-flagged street below.

But Jonah’s hand was warm on his, holding tight, and when Ben’s foot slipped there was a hard, impossible nudge from the air that pushed him back upright.

“Whoa.” Jonah pulled them to a halt. They had run along a line of terraced houses, and were at the end of the row. “There.” He pointed over, on a diagonal, to where another street joined theirs at a sharp angle. “We’re going to windwalk over there, me first, then you, and then we’re going to saunter away, all right? Ready?”

“No!” Ben yelped, as Jonah started to disengage his hand. “Jesus!”

Jonah grinned. “Oh, come on. It’s fun. Isn’t it fun?”

“
Fun?
”

“Fun,” Jonah assured him. A police whistle sounded from the street below. “Bugger. Come on, let’s be somewhere else. I’ll head over there first, I can’t do us both at once. Wait for my signal, shut eyes, run. No hesitating. If you stop, you fall. Let’s go.”

He pulled his hand away, turned, ran. A few lithe steps over nothing and he was on the roof opposite. He held out a hand, grin devilish.

Ben shut his eyes and pushed himself forward, and this time he didn’t stop. There was a slight give to whatever was under his feet, a sense of something that would not hold him for long, but the consuming terror that it wouldn’t hold him at all was a great deal stronger than any urge to investigate. He crashed onto the roof opposite, and Jonah’s arms closed round him, falling backwards against the pitched roofline and onto dry-slimy tiles.

He was over Jonah, with those strong arms around him, and his face buried in Jonah’s chest. He smelled of himself, of sweat and spunk, of something Ben thought might be sandalwood, an unfamiliar scent. He was gripping Ben’s shoulders, thighs moving apart as if to accommodate the man on top of him, and Ben gasped and opened his eyes.

Jonah was looking up at him, bruised face unreadable in the moon shadows. Ben stared down. There was a long, impossible moment, when neither of them knew what to do, and then Jonah gave Ben a gentle push.

“Up you get. Come on, up. I won’t let you fall.” Ben made it to his feet, and Jonah gripped his hand once more. He didn’t resist. “This row meets another, so it’s just a stroll now. On we go.”

Ben would not have called it a stroll, slipping and sliding over the roofs of house after house, not looking down, feet cramping with the awkward angle, clambering over attic windows and around chimneys, but at last Jonah stopped. “Up here.” He tugged at Ben’s hand, and something shoved under his feet. They clambered up, and Ben found himself sitting on a rounded roof ridge, back to a chimneystack, as firmly lodged as it was possible to be on a roof three stories up.

“There.” Jonah crouched to sit on the ridge tiles a little further along, and winced as he lowered himself. “Ow.”

Shame, staining pitch-dark shame, washed over Ben in waves of heat. “Are you—are you hurt?”

“Well, I’m going to know about it tomorrow,” Jonah said. “It’s fine.”

“I…” Was he sorry? No, he couldn’t be. Jonah had deserved it, and worse. He’d betrayed him.

Betrayed him, and saved him.

“I don’t understand. I don’t understand any of it. How did you—why—”

“Ssh.” Jonah shifted closer, tapped Ben on the arm, pointed. “Look.”

Ben looked, not sure what he was indicating, and saw London.

The roofscape stretched out in front of him for a mile at least, swards and hills of brick and tile and slate, jaggedly topped by slanting rooflines, pierced by spires and chimneys. The dome of St. Paul’s rose molehill-like in the distance. A dark city, huge beyond imagination, made stark and silver by the moon.

“Just look at it a moment,” Jonah said softly. “Not many people see this.”

They sat, looking out over London in silence. Ben knew he should be shouting, accusing, pushing the bastard off the roof, but that earlier burst of violence had left him feeling hollow and limp, and he was trapped in this suspended moment above the city, not yet ready to break the quiet and the spell.

Nothing had changed, nothing to remedy his pain and anger and hate. Jonah was a thief, a liar, an accessory to murder. But he had said “Score me a try”, and the words had stabbed Ben’s heart with sweetness.

Chapter Three

Last April

“Oh God, I have to get up,” Ben muttered, looking blearily at the daylight through the heavy brown curtains. “It’s past nine already.”

“Why…oh, rugby.” Jonah rolled onto his side, running a hand over the sparse hairs of Ben’s chest. He was much hairier, surprisingly so, with a thick wiry tangle of black over his pectoral muscles, his forearms and calves. It gave Ben an odd thrill that he couldn’t quite identify. He liked being the bigger man of the two, even though it wasn’t by much, he liked the way his solid rugby player’s build matched and countered Jonah’s athletic strength. But there was something about Jonah’s body hair, that incontrovertible evidence of his masculinity, that made Ben feel…not that he was less manly, precisely, but that Jonah was more so. That probably made no sense, he reflected sleepily, and didn’t care.

“Rugby,” he mumbled, because Jonah’s exploring hand was making him think of other games to play. “Get off, Jay. Got to get up.”

“Can I come?”

Ben blinked at that. It was not that Jonah was a secret, exactly. Ben had introduced him in the pub, casually, his pal sharing the expenses. It wasn’t an unusual arrangement, and to be secretive would attract more attention than openness. Still, to have Jonah come and watch him, in public…

“Not if you don’t want.” Jonah had read his expression. “I just thought…” There was a little disappointment on his face, perhaps a little hurt, but it was washed away almost at once by the smile. “I just thought I’d like to see you in shorts. Clutching all those big thighs.”

“I don’t do anything of the sort.”

“You play scrum half,” Jonah said. “
I
know what that is. All hugging each other and putting your head between their legs. I’m jealous.”

“You’re a menace,” Ben told him, and grabbed his shoulders, rolling him over on top of his own body for a kiss. Jonah came easily at the pull—it was astonishing how light he felt, sometimes, almost weightless—and settled comfortably over Ben, tongue warm and mobile in his mouth, hands exploring.

“Mph,” Ben muttered at last. “Got to go.”

“I know.” Jonah kissed his nose. “I’ll wait.”

“Come if you like.” Ben hadn’t meant to say it, but as he did, it seemed absurd not to. For heaven’s sake, why shouldn’t his pal watch the match? Plenty of locals did, plenty of friends cheered them on. Jonah could cheer him. His secret lover, his Jay, there in the crowd. The thought was a thrill.

“Really?” Jonah’s eyes widened. “Can I, Ben?”

He seemed almost childlike in moments like this, as though the tiniest concession was unexpected and thrilling. It squeezed the air from Ben’s lungs every time. “Of course you can. I want you watching me.”

“Oh, I will.” Jonah’s smile was brilliant. “Every tackle and scrum and, um…”

“Pass.”

“Pass,” Jonah agreed. “And score a goal for me.”

“Try,” Ben said patiently.

“Don’t just try, score one.” He yelped as Ben rolled him over again, onto his back. “Hey!”

“It’s
called
a try, you ape.” Ben shook him, laughing. “You’ll have to learn the rules.”

“I’ll learn. And you’ll score me a try. And when we come home, I’ll do the trying and deal with the tackle.”

Ben did score a try—two, in fact, reckless and unbeatable in the knowledge of his lover’s eyes on him—and Jonah whooped from the sidelines, a gaggle of new friends already formed around him. Part of the crowd. Part of Ben’s life.

“Score me a try,” was what Jonah said every game after that, and more often than not, Ben had.

Even at the time, dizzied by the constant ripple of laughter and chatter that had overtaken his quietly ordinary life, and by the bewildering pleasures of Jonah sprawled in his bed, Ben had questions. The most obvious was where the man got his money. Jonah could not read, not even a few words, but his hands showed that he was no manual labourer.
Contract work
, he said when pressed, distracting Ben with a kiss, and every now and then he would disappear for a day or two or three, and come back crackling with gleeful energy and flush with guineas.

Ben didn’t ask. He didn’t let himself consider if he should. It was perfect, impossibly perfect, and to ask would be to break the enchantment, like the fairytale prince who lit the candle to look on his lover, and lost her. That was a ludicrous thought, himself in that role, but this felt like a fairytale, or a fantasy. Glorious Jonah, with his ever-brimming eyes and his warm, shameless body, and all for staid, straightforward, serious Ben.

There was a night when they lay in each other’s arms in the still-hot evening air, a light rain drumming on the open window that neither had the energy to get up and shut. Jonah had fucked him wonderfully, crowing with pleasure as Ben bucked and cried out under him, whispering his name as he came in his turn. Ben held him afterwards, sated and pleasantly sore, and Jonah ducked his head into the crook of Ben’s shoulder and said, “I love you.”

He said it so freely, so generously, and every time it made Ben’s heart stretch a little wider, letting him in.

“I love you too.” Ben kissed his tousled black hair. Jonah snuggled down with a satisfied sigh, but Ben couldn’t leave it there. “Why?”

“Why what?” Jonah asked. “Why do I love you?”

“Well. Yes.”

Jonah gave him a look of some confusion, more amusement. “But why would I not? Of course I love you.” He spoke as though it were axiomatic.
I am Jonah, therefore I love Ben.
And the converse would be true, Ben recalled from distant memories of arithmetical logic.
I am Ben, therefore I love Jonah.

“Because you’re perfect. You’re extraordinary. I’m so ordinary.” Ben didn’t feel ordinary in Jonah’s arms, and this was pure self-indulgence, but the question still nipped and buzzed around him.

“But you aren’t ordinary. You’re Benedict Spenser. There’s only one of you in the world, and you love me. Nobody’s ever been less ordinary than you.” Jonah paused, looking at Ben, and the laugh died out of his eyes, leaving deep seriousness. When he next spoke it was more slowly, as if puzzling the words out. “You’re not ordinary, Ben, but…you make me feel ordinary.”

“You? What do you mean?”

“I don’t mean boring. I mean… You make me feel as though there’s nothing different about me. That there’s no reason anyone should hate me or condemn me or arrest me, or even look at me twice. I’m just an ordinary man quietly getting on with his quiet life, and I’m doing it with you.” Jonah smiled up at him. It was a gentler, more serious smile than the usual blinding sparkle, and it thrilled Ben all the more deeply for that. “It’s wonderful.”

Ben thought he knew what Jonah meant, that he was referring to their illicit affections. He had no idea that it was as close as his lover would come to a confession.

Now

A cat poked its head around a chimneypot and made Ben jump out of his reverie. Jonah laughed, that merry laugh that had been missing from Ben’s life so long.

“The cuff,” Ben said abruptly. “You could have picked it. Freed yourself.”

“I could, yes. More to the point, I’m a practitioner, Ben. I can manipulate the ether, the air around us. Your thoughts. I can do…a lot of things. I could have stopped you putting it on me at all.”

“Why didn’t you?”

Jonah gave a one-shouldered shrug. He wriggled down the roof so that he could lie back on the tiles, bracing himself with a foot against the gutter.

Ben looked at him, his own hands, the roof tiles, and then out, over the night city. “Why didn’t you tell me what you were?” As if that was the most important thing, but it was the answer Ben needed now.

“I didn’t want to.” Jonah’s voice was calm and remote. “I didn’t want you to know. I wanted you to see
me
. Not a windwalker or a practitioner. Not a thief. Not what I do, or what I can do, just who I am. Just Jonah, who loved you. If I’d told you—what would I have said?
By the way, lover, I walk on air. By the way, I’ve been stealing for a living since I was twelve. By the way, you can’t trust me.
” He stared up at the sky. “I didn’t want that to be true. I wanted to be someone else. With you.”

Ben clamped his lips together, squeezed his nails into his palms.

“I’m not very good at planning,” Jonah went on. “I should have known I couldn’t stay in one place, or if I did, that I had to travel further to steal more safely. I didn’t. I wanted to be with you, not go off to steal in Manchester or Birmingham. It was stupid. I do know that, but I…believed it would work, I believed in us and we seemed to be charmed. Until they found me.”

“They found you, and you ran,” Ben managed. “You used me and you left me behind, and they put me in prison for it.”

The night lay between and over them like a quilt.

“Was it bad, in gaol?” Jonah asked at last.

That question was so enraging, so utterly Jonah. “Yes,” Ben said distantly. “It was very bad.”

“And you lost your job.”

“Dismissed with dishonour.” The words were sour in his mouth. “They stripped me of my post, while people watched. The landlord evicted us. My parents disowned me.”

“Oh God.” Jonah had met Ben’s parents, dropped by with him for tea.
Nice chap.
Our Benedict’s pal.
“Oh, Ben.”

“They’ll never speak to me again.” Ben had to swallow hard against that thought. His voice shook. “I lost them, I lost
everything
when I lost you. When you left me behind.”

Jonah stared at the moon. “I want to tell you why,” he said at last. “Why I ran then.”

Ben felt the anger rise. “You already told me.” He mimicked Jonah’s voice. “You always run.”

Jonah sat up, a quick, fluid movement that made Ben flinch with an instinctive fear of the drop that yawned below them. “I don’t ask you to like it or to forgive me. I don’t expect that. But if you’ll listen—”

“No. I don’t want to.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t want to know!” Ben shouted. “I don’t want to know what was more important than me!”

His voice echoed flatly off the roof tiles. Below them, a dog gave a single gruff yelp.

“I could tell you—” Jonah began.

“It doesn’t matter. I don’t care. The way you left me there, you sent me to gaol as surely as if you’d testified against me. There’s nothing you can say that would change anything.”

“It won’t change that. But if you understood—”

“I’ll never understand. Or, no. I already do. You said you loved me, but you saved yourself. That’s all there is.”

They stared at each other, lost in hurt, the three feet between them a chasm.

“Will you meet me?” Jonah asked at last.

“What? Why?”

“Let’s say Regent’s Park. Queen Mary’s Gardens, tomorrow at four. If you were ready to listen to me, I could tell you things, and if you’re not, we’ll…talk about something else, I suppose.”

“Is there anything else to talk about?”

“I don’t know.” Jonah pulled his knees to his chest, hunching over himself. “Maybe not. We could find out, if you come.” He glanced at Ben, hesitant and silenced, and went on, “Well, I’ll be there. And if you’re not there, I’ll be there next Wednesday at four, and the next, and the next, until I have to leave London, which may happen. But I’ll keep coming back, when I can. In case you want to hear.”

Ben rubbed his hands over his eyes. He felt drained. “Jonah…”

“I can’t do much else,” Jonah said. “I made all the wrong decisions. I’m not very good at planning. I made a terrible mess of you, of us, but I can give you some sort of explanation, when you want to hear it. Or if you want to hate me forever and never know why, you can do that too. I don’t have many choices left.”

“And what if I turn up tomorrow with the Met and the justiciary for you?”

“Then I’ll run.”

“Naturally you will.” Ben rested his head against the brickwork. The night chill was coming on, biting through his thin coat. “All right. You’ll be at Queen Mary’s Gardens, at four. I…I’ll think about it.”

Jonah nodded. “I’ll get you down now, if you like. The police will be long gone.” He reached out a hand, standing steady on the roof, and Ben took it, rising far more cautiously. Jonah was washed clean by moonlight, the blood and bruising Ben had inflicted mere shadows under his piebald hair, and Ben wanted for a stupid, painful instant to kiss the lines of his throat and the generous curve of his mouth, to see him smile again.

Of course Jonah was not callous or uncaring. He never had been. Ben had made him into a monster in his mind, because it had kept him sane to do so, but this was the reality: a deeply flawed man, a thief, a coward who ran away. He had saved Ben this evening because he could, but he had left him when he could not, and Ben knew, with a sullen weight on his heart, that the explanation Jonah promised would be no more than that bare, sad truth of self-preservation at all costs, dressed in fine words. A jackdaw in peacock’s feathers.

Perhaps Ben could stop hating him, though. That would be something, a small victory against the loneliness, if he could not be full of hate.

“Nobody about.” Jonah was peering over the rooftop. “Come on, I’ll take you back to earth.”

Ben barely slept that night. He probably wouldn’t have slept anyway, but it didn’t help that, every time he closed his eyes, he saw the first lurching step into empty air. The fact that he’d had his eyes shut was neither here nor there: his imagination painted a yawning chasm into which he tumbled, as Jonah laughed from the house opposite.

He couldn’t sleep, and he couldn’t decide what to do.

He could go to the justiciary. Bring them along to Regent’s Park. Perhaps Jonah would escape, but at least he would have done his duty.

He could walk away. Leave London, go home—no, there was no home. Go
somewhere
. Take a new name, start a new life, leave all this behind. Forget about vengeance, forget about betrayal, remember only never to trust or to leave himself open to another person ever again. That wasn’t Ben’s way, but perhaps that had been his mistake.

Or he could step over the parapet of the nearest bridge, over the turbid waters of the Thames, and jump. That had tugged at him for long months, the urge for this to be over because there was nothing to carry on for.