“I might as have met him,” Grindel said. The sword seemed sure to pierce his throat, especially when Grindel swallowed nervously. He added: “He sends me a boy now and then.”
“For what purpose?”
“Nothing debauched! Nothing like that around here. There’s them as has boys for shameful purposes, but I ain’t one of those. I run a clean house and I’ve always said so. You ask the Watch. They don’t—”
“Juby says that the Watch never does a thing to you because you give them coin for it,” the boy said. He was clearly delighted by the unfolding drama.
Villiers looked sideways at the boy. He had a miserable mouselike face, streaked in dirt. “Fetch Juby for me, would you?”
The boy took off promptly.
“I can’t think what you want that boy for,” Grindel said. “It’s shameless, the way that you swells use boys for depraved purposes.”
Villiers smiled, and then exerted just a trifle more pressure. Grindel’s eyes bulged as the tip of the sword bit his skin. “I’m not the depraved one. No more surgeons? And how much money did you accept from Templeton for Juby’s schooling?”
“Naught even a shilling!” Grindel squealed. “I takes boys as a bit of charity work. Because otherwise they’d be in the poorhouse and the parish’d have to pay for them. You can ask any of the parish constables hereabout. They know what work I do. I pay the boys fair and square for what they get too. I might give ’em as much as three pence a day. That’s over a shilling a week.”
Villiers withdrew his sword so suddenly that Grindel nearly lost his balance.
A single drop of blood made its way down his throat, but Grindel didn’t bother to swab it. “I know your kind. You’re having a charitable moment, aren’t you? Thought you’d come out here and rescue a poorhouse boy, make him into a decent citizen. I wish you luck with that. Juby is a born criminal with a mind like a sewer. He’s as corrupt—”
Villiers’s smile seemed, unaccountably, to frighten Grindel into silence. “I would expect no less.”
“Why?” Grindel demanded.
“This poorhouse boy? The born criminal with the mind like a sewer?”
“What of him?”
“The boy you insisted that you knew nothing of? The boy whom you clearly were forcing to work for you under merciless and cruel circumstances?”
“Say what you like.” Grindel’s jaw jutted out again. It resembled the jawbone of a wild animal.
“My son,” Villiers said. He took out a beautifully embroidered handkerchief and delicately wiped the blood off the tip of the blade. With a shudder he dropped the cloth on Grindel’s table. “I expect you can get at least eight pence for this. That’s Belgian lace.”
Grindel didn’t even spare it a glance. “Your son?”
Villiers dropped his sword back into its sheath. “I’m taking him, of course.” Making a lightning-quick decision, he said: “I’ll be taking all the other boys as well.”
“You are a depraved son of a—”
“It’s for your own good,” Villiers said sweetly. “You said yourself that you dislike boys. They’re so messy underfoot. It would do you some good to go rooting in the mud; you might lose that belly of yours. It seems that you, at least, have had plenty to eat.”
Grindel would have lunged from behind his desk, but he was afraid of the sword. Villiers saw it in his eyes, just as he saw the raw hatred trembling in his fingers.
“I might add that Templeton seems to have run off to a rat hole somewhere. If I find him, his next residence will be the Clink. For life, Mr. Grindel. For life.”