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London, Queen of Cities…grande dame of a thousand stories, seductress draped in veils of smoke and mist, dream and fantasy.
Sometimes Lestrade thought Sherlock hated the old girl as much as he loved her—God knows, the lad could trash-talk his own town like none other. What was the one he loved to pull out, rolling the words over his posh tongue like they were fat cherries so ripe they were a heartbeat from turning to cider strong enough to leave all the wasps in England staggering? Right: “London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained.” Sherlock could say that like a come-on.
Hell, knowing Sherlock, the lad probably thought it was a come-on: the sort of pompous, gothy thing you’d say to a girl when you were on the pull in your dramatic black coat with your tumbled rock-star hair. It might even work for him, Lestrade thought, with a chuckle, as he came out of the Met and tasted the damp fog, smelled spring in the city for the first time in months. The lad was too dark by half…and life was dark enough already.
Lestrade knew the old town and loved her. He knew her nicknames one and all, from “Babylon” to “The Great Wen.” He loved best, though, “Cockaigne,” that spoke of beauty and bounty and a generous heart. He was no man to doubt the city’s darkness. Not with the work he did for the Met, and with Mycroft Holmes—but what he loved the town for was her light, as though she blazed night and day against all darkness and fought her own corruption. London, survivor of a thousand cancers, burned and risen again into light.
He lit a cigarette, tasting the lovely, acrid smoke, as comforting as the bite of strong tannic tea, and looked up and down the street, debating whether to go home, or walk awhile. He was off the next day, and it had been a long time—months—since he’d found time to cruise the night city and delight in her charm.
It was mild out—cool enough to justify his overcoat, but not so cool as to demand it. He hooked a finger in the collar and tossed it lightly over his shoulder. He headed out, aiming for the river.
Victoria Street to Parliament Square; Parliament Square to Westminster Bridge Road. Then the lovely walk over the long, arcaded bridge, so unlike modern suspension bridges, with its straight rail and single long horizontal line, so near to the river you could see each ripple. It was beautiful. The rail was the color of copper patina, pierced with clover-leaf trefoils, with a wide pavement and no bad view of the city he could think of. Who could hate London from Westminster Bridge; London with its towers and mad motley, its great carnival Eye, its ships, its palaces?
He’d been born in London, though his Mum was from Somerset. Born within the sound of Bow Bells, as they said, though “Cockney” wasn’t what it used to be. He didn’t think of himself as Cockney, so much as just a “city man.” Lived there, grew up there, attended school and college there, learned to shift his accent up and down the social spectrum with the ease and unconscious comfort of a trained soprano leaping up the scales for a C above high C. He could step into any pub or club in this town and pass, if he had to—had even managed to slip unnoticed into Mycroft’s snoot-nosed Diogenes once, with no one the wiser, spooking that master spook out of his club chair when Lestrade appeared out of nowhere to lean on the mantel and ask why he’d been summoned.
As a younger man he’d nipped in and out of the clubs, attended raves, lurked in back alleys sussing out the gangs and the groups. He’d been perfect for passing with the skinheads—the right accent, the right swagger, the right class to ape the white-boy-without-prospects rage at the wogs and niggers and towel heads who’d taken all the dreams away. He’d helped close down a lot of trouble, then.
Donovan had heard about it, somewhere along the way. Lestrade didn’t know where, or when, or who from. He did know it was one more reason she’d applied to join the team, when an opening came up for a DS…and almost certainly one more reason she’d stuck by them even when they disagreed…when he disappointed her.
They didn’t talk about it, though. If nothing else, there were still men and women who would be glad to shoot him between the eyes for the testimony he’d provided.
He leaned on the rail of the bridge and looked at the river running through—cleaner than when he’d been a boy. The moon shone off the water, turning the surface to hammered bronze. He could hear the city—the hum and honk and murmur of her. In the distance, on the far shore, he could hear snatches of music. Oldies but goodies, he thought. Rock classics. Bit of soft-pop? He chuckled. Who knew he’d grow up surrounded by music that would be counted as the standard for generations to come?
He’d danced in clubs and discos, leaped out and been caught and floated across mosh pits. He’d never been, to his own mind, a dancer, but he knew how to stake his own bit of the floor and own it, a cocky, cheeky bull, all shoulder and arse and sturdy thighs, tossing his horns and strutting his stuff as he pulled and pulled and pulled. He remembered nights spinning like a top, from one partner to another—girls, boys. Women, men.
Remembering made him smile. If there’d been anyone to see him, he’d have pulled again, not that he knew it. But the glory of his youth rested lightly on his prime, lingering, shining, whispering he’d earned his silver hair and the strong set of his shoulders. He’d earned his manhood, and could carry it with pride.
He turned from the rail and headed east, then cut north toward the Eye and the Jubilee Gardens. The music was louder, now, though softened by distance and the hum of traffic. Only as he approached the park itself did he realize he’d been aiming for the sound.
People flowed in, all in fancy dress, with masks and costumes. Lestrade materialized by one of the guards passing people through.
“What’s up?”
“Fundraiser—for St. Thomas’ ‘Orspital, down-ways.”
“Masquerade.”
“Yeah. Folks like it, right? Dress up, put on a mask. Think it’s special.”
“Yeah.”
He cut across the road and thought about it, and smiled to himself. It didn’t take more than a few minutes to find a man who’d take a couple score for a mask. Only a few more to flash his warrant card and slip into the mob. He handed his coat and jacket over to the cloak room attendant, then paused, making the small adjustments that altered who he was in little ways. He opened the collar of his shirt, letting it gape just enough to show the first traces of chest hair; he rolled up the sleeves high, up above the elbow. He let his trousers settle. Most of all he let the air slip out of him, and with it the stance and style that screamed “copper.” He slipped on the mask—black velvet edged with a mane of black cock's feathers--long, arching tail feathers and a bristling brow-flare of hackle feathers.
That day he’d been DI Lestrade.
Tonight, he was London; tonight he was Fair Cockaigne.
The sweet, black-honey notes of a sax cried out from the center of the park. They’d found someone good, he thought. Someone who played his instrument like a lover. Someone who made it moan. “Take Me to the River,” by the Talking Heads—the sax carried the melody like it was a hot potato, tossing it up and away, catching it again with flying fingers. The singer was a gospel-voiced alto who could wail and demand.
Lestrade shivered, and let the music take him. It had been long…too long.
No talent, he thought—no talent, but heart. He had to have heart—he could feel it, racing, driving him.
The faces—London’s faces. There was a strong East Indian woman, face such a blend of races she was no race, and all races, her long jaw and high forehead showing above and below a spangled streak of crimson mask, barely enough fabric to qualify—her eyes were huge; her mouth smiled and she touched him and nodded approval before she passed on. There was a slim little man who jigged and jumped, flopping like a child’s marionette, but with such joy and delight Lestrade would have been the last to condemn for lack of skill. A girl barely out of her teens strutted up to him, spinning, tossing blonde hair.
The band played. And played. And played. The Police—“Don’t Stand So Close To Me.” Then Sting, “Moon Over Bourbon Street”—slow and seductive. A woman in a peacock green dress slid up and coiled around him, and they spent five minutes including a killer sax solo turning breath into dance and dance into sex. “Valerie” done so sweet and rough he could have sworn Winehouse was back from the dead, like Sherlock.
He passed on “Proud Mary,” and on “Twist and Shout,” finding a drinks vendor and treating himself to a beer. Then he spun through “Radio Ga-Ga.” That was followed by a quick string of Beatles classics, from their early days—fresh and sweet and easy and shiny-bright music, that made him laugh.
And then the sax spoke one long, complicated sentence of music that commanded attention, and the dancers slowed, and surged, and Lestrade found himself opposite a slim, lean figure with eyes like fire and a mop of crazy hair and sculpted lips to challenge Winehouse’s own and a simple, classic half-mask in heartache purple…Sherlock, drunk on the music and the dance and the night and his own narcissistic love of his own motion. His eyes burned neon-blue in the artificial light, startlingly bright against dark satin. Lestrade was about to greet him, when he realized Sherlock had no idea who he was—too lost in who he was to care, so long as the music played on.
It was perfect music for him, Lestrade thought as the sax took it up like scripture and preached it. The snake-supple, alien music of the intro to Billy Joel’s “The Stranger.” Sherlock turned, then gave a fast head-jerk, inviting Lestrade to meet him, match him.
Lestrade wanted to laugh—Sherlock of all people failing to recognize him. Inviting him to dance along in to the lonely, jarring music and words of that song, of all songs. Two agents, two detectives, two men eternally set apart from so much of life by the work they did.
The notes of the sax grabbed him, though, hooking on his heartstrings and begging him to surrender to their sweet love. He nodded, and stepped into the space that seemed to form around Sherlock wherever he went.
They circled each other, warily, like the toreador and the bull. Lestrade felt himself growing larger, heavier, his spirit anchoring in the earth of his city. They passed; passed again, then paused—
And the music changed, and the sax entered into passionate combat with the alto, as she growled out the lyrics of alienation and disguise.
He could never after explain to himself what happened, then. It wasn’t the classic movie game of the crowd pulling back and he and Sherlock spinning and writhing. Instead the crowd surged forward, coming to life, pushing them together until they, with all the rest, become one dancing body, one dancing soul. Swaying in place, barely able to move in the crush, they undulated and rocked.
All Lestrade could really say was that his eyes and Sherlock’s never seemed to turn to look away.
And then the music modulated, the sax took command again, and the song undulated away, a serpentine seduction leaving with a smile and a sigh…
They stood, staring at each other.
“Who are you?” Sherlock growled.
He didn’t realize, Lestrade thought. Sherlock Holmes didn’t realize.
It was as seductive as the music had been. He smiled. He pulled.
“Cockaigne,” he said. He stepped forward and stretched up, and took Sherlock’s mouth, letting his hand wrap around the nape of Sherlock’s neck. It wasn’t something he’d dreamed of before. It was something he only dreamed of later in opal dreams of Carnivale, when up was down and life and death ran giggling through the streets hand in hand, throwing confetti. Then, however, that night, he could feel the city under his feet reach up through him, grab him by the balls, and drive him to turn one kiss into enough mind-fuck to last Sherlock Holmes his whole life through. “I’m Cockaigne.”
“London,” Sherlock breathed.
Lestrade smiled, and snapped a single cock’s feather from his mask, pressing it into Sherlock’s hand. Then he slipped into the crowd and disappeared.
Anything after that, he thought, would be a let-down.
He collected his coat and jacket, slipped the mask from his head, and headed home, with the mask swinging from his fingers. The music and the lights faded behind him. The fog rose up. He called a cab, after awhile.
He slept that night like he hadn’t slept in years, and ached the next morning in ways that reminded him why he didn’t do that sort of thing much anymore. He drank hot coffee at home, and when he was called in from his weekend off for a bad case in Chelsea, he drank more hot coffee from the office coffee urn.
He saw Sherlock leaning his elbows on a desk in the outer office, reviewing the incoming information before they went out to check the site. The young man was playing with a black cock's feather, rolling it in his fingers, brushing it against his lips as he studied the files—and as he touched his lips, he closed his eyes one brief moment, and smiled.