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month, but ever since the societies were disbanded perhaps,
as you say, through an excess of delicacy, or as I saw it, the
sheer fatigue of wading through such dirt for so long they
have thought themselves safe."
"Indeed." at the slight tilt of Walker's head, a servant
rushed up to replenish the food on his plate. He kept them
well trained or not at all. "Did you know," he said, slicing his
meat into small pieces and chewing one before dabbing his
mouth with a fine linen napkin and continuing, "there is even
a molly house on Silk Alley in St. George's itself."
"No! Not in our town, surely. So far from the depravity of
London?"
"God's truth." Walker raised his hand as if swearing an
oath, and found himself feeling unusually content oh,
certainly the docklands job was an insult, and there were
many feuds on his hands which he had not yet prosecuted to
their utmost, but it was pleasant to sit and eat a good dinner
with a man who was not always criticizing, either by words or
looks. One who was appropriately conscious of the
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condescension paid him by being enlisted in this enterprise at
all. "I have seen the place myself and had one of my tars
feign to be a bugger himself and infiltrate the place. I know of
what I speak."
"But this is terrible!" Jenson pushed the good food in front
of him about with his fork and perhaps in horror did not
eat. Walker's feeling of unusual beneficence wore off at the
sight; he did dislike a stingy, stringy little falsely abstemious
man. It was an affront against hospitality to treat his dinner
with such disregard.
"No wonder we are troubled with rebellion in our Colonies,"
Jenson went on. "If what you say is true and, my dear sir,
believe me, I have no doubt of it we are being justly
punished by God for our depravities. If we put them behind
us, grubbed their dark roots from our land, so to speak, what
might that not do to turn the tide of affairs in the Americas?
We would surely bring them to a proper submission once
more, once God approved the righteousness of our spirits."
"We are of one mind," Captain Walker said, raising his
glass with only a little effort. Reverend Jenson's heart was in
the right place, whatever might be said for his stomach, and
parsons, of course, could not be expected to behave like real
men. "I suggest we begin by rousing up popular opinion
against it; the example of Sodom and Gomorrah, the
unquenched spreading of the pox, the danger to our innocent
sons. And then we may prove that the great days of the
societies are not over by going after these abominations with
extreme zeal, confident that a population educated in the
dangers they pose will not interfere with ill-judged pity."
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* * * *
"My text today is taken from Genesis, chapter nineteen,
verses one to twenty-nine."
Peter's attention was drawn back from the ceiling by the
tension in Josh's arm, pressed against his in the overcrowded
pews set aside for the gentlemen of the navy. He looked
down and saw Reverend Jenson dwarfed by the giant eagle of
the lectern, looking like a rather withered choirboy beneath
the crimson glory of his chasuble. Seeing nothing to disturb
him there, he glanced at Andrews, whose back had
straightened until it rivaled the oak of the pews, and whose
face was perfectly emotionless in a way that Peter had
learned to associate with fear.
Bending his head, as if in prayer, he whispered, "What is
it?" and Josh gave him such a look such a look of indignant
terror, as if to say, "Shut up! Shut up, don't draw attention!"
that he had to concentrate on the sermon in an attempt to
escape its unsettling effects.
But the sermon did not help. "Before they had gone to
bed, all the men from every part of the city of Sodom, both
young and old, surrounded the house. They called to Lot,
'Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out
to us so that we can have sex with them.'"
It was like the wind of a cannon ball the shot passed by
and left him physically unscathed, but within, all his vitals
were thrown into disorder and he gasped for breath.
Instantly, he felt as though there was a string of signal flags
above him pointing him out to the crowd as a guilty man. A
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man as bad as those who so long ago tried to rape God's
angels, a man whose vice was vile enough to call down
brimstone and sulfur from heaven, to induce a merciful God
to obliterate him and his city together.
"...we are going to destroy this place. The outcry to the
Lord against its people is so great that he has sent us to
destroy it."
Oh, he knew the story well enough. He had merely avoided
connecting it to himself, found something else to think about,
falsely reasoned that making Joshua happy was better than
ruining the lives or reputations of any young women.
"What can we learn from these verses?" said Jenson's
polite, Anglican voice over Peter's suddenly bowed head.
"Firstly, I think it is clear enough that God detests this sin
above all others. For no other sin has he utterly destroyed a
people, leaving even the land on which their city was built as
a desolation, salting the ground so that nothing should grow
there ever again."
Peter's legs were stretched out beneath the pew in front,
thigh to thigh with Josh's, their calves touching. Instinctively,
he moved until there was an inch of empty space between
them and saw Josh's head bow out of the corner of his eye.
Around him, other men were doing the same, tucking their
coat tails more firmly in, looking uncomfortable, but he felt
still that the very air between himself and Josh was charged
with visible guilt.
"Secondly, we can learn to fear the presence of such men
in our midst. I have reliably been told that there is a den of
this vice on Silk Alley in our very own town. Now you may say
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to yourself that is very far from being all the men of St.
George's, both young and old. Will not God looking at our
city be able to find at least ten righteous men, and thus
spare us?
"Folly, I say, for how can the toleration of this vice count
as righteousness? And in this sin, every one of us is complicit.
While there remains such an establishment permitted in our
city, there is not an innocent man in it, and that is quite apart
from the patrons of such a sink. It is of no avail to say, 'Oh,
this is a problem of others, none of my acquaintance would
sink so low', for does not the Bible tell us that both young and
old, all the men of Sodom were implicated. It spreads, my
children, like the yellow fever, until it consumes all. Indeed, it
is a very sickness of the soul, and as we fumigate our
hospitals with sulfur, so God purges this disease from the
land."
Disease, thought Peter, wishing he could escape, feeling
exposed and humiliated as he had felt when lashed to the
grating. No, this was worse, for there he had had the internal
certainty that he was wronged, that he was a victim of sin,
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