It was a lovely day when Gregory died.

The sun was high and bright in the sky so that even the soot-stained walls of London’s back streets looked cheerful. Women chatted in shop entrances, men hurried along looking important and children ran shrieking through alleyways. Horseshoes and wagon wheels clattered over the cobbles.

Arthur and Gregory were part of that noise and hubbub that made up the breath of the world’s largest city. They ducked flailing elbows and dove between swirling skirts and swinging walking sticks on instinct. The honey cake was sticky in Arthur’s fingers, the sweetness of that first bite taken on the run mingled with the tang of his rasping breath as his feet slapped against the cobbles. Gregory gave an elated hoot behind him, laugh as bright as the sunlight. Arthur dove across the chaos of a main thoroughfare, gained the safety of the curb, cut off from any pursuit.

Later, he wondered if he’d really felt the apprehension he remembered or if that was a conjuration of his mind, fuelled by later knowledge.

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