Bellefontaine's Return
Night had fallen hours ago in the London borough of Southwark. The intersection of Borough avenue and Newcomen street was crowded with carriages flowing north and south, east and west; drovers pushed their teams to pull wagons often overloaded at risky speeds. The intersection was also a dangerous but necessary crossing point for pedestrians out on nocturnal errands: common menials performing heavy labors, ladies maids procuring whatever their wealthy patrons might need, poorly paid clerks rushing to get home before returning to the counting house by dawn, and everywhere the unwholesome business of crime went on in the shadows.
This and more I saw from my perch four stories above the street on the roof of a building that lay on the southeast corner of the interaection. The building had once been a fashionable bothel in the days of the mad King George, but now it was reduced to serving as a flophouse for those who paid for their lodging by the day. Time had a way of doing that, of degrading what had once been beautiful or elegant and reducing those precious things to junk. It was the same with people, time turned vibrant energetic young women into crones, courageous men into senile gaffers and raised up children to take their place before the cycle began again. I had seen it all several times before and I was in a black mood.
