The walls narrowed like sclerotic veins as they pierced the heart of the sprawling soot-blackened city. Primrose was half led, half dragged along one side of the stained cobbles of the street by her gangly brother. Both were immaculately dressed and moving in the direction of the church steeple, their best means of navigation through the choked alleys.  She thought the steeple like the hilt of a butchers-knife plunked down into the earth.

 God, how I hate Sundays, She felt a sudden twinge of claustrophobia and barely resisted the urge to kick her brothers shin as he hoisted her over a puddle.

The air was clogged with a roiling pea green smoke that burnt the nostrils and seared the lungs. At times the stench grew so foul she was forced to thrust her silken handkerchief over her nose and mouth.

Her brother snorted and turned his long nose towards her. Cursed driver. Drunk again. Ill see that papa turns him out into the street. Well be awfully late.

As he cursed and tugged on her elbow, she found her eyes drawn to a mangy knot of village folk gathered on the corner. They were lively bunch heaving and kicking at something on the ground, a bundle of rags that quickly resolved itself into the body of a cursing hunchback, who threw himself through the legs of his tormentors and ran silently down the alley clutching his bloody forehead.

 Did you see that?, she tugged at her brothers sleeve, turning so that the sun caught her face, burning in the fine strands of hair.

It is the hunchback, her brother said. a man afflicted by god for his evil ways. Pay him no mind.

What crime did he commit that the people treat him so?

Well for a start he is ugly and filthy.

Is that a sin?  she wondered.

 Then this city too must be a sin. The streets are warmed with sulfur from the factories, the air is stale like unwashed clothes. The gutters are

overflowing with waste! It is a pigsty in gods own home. This city must be a sin also.

A sudden thought illuminated her heart.

What is the form of man but the creation and slave of man, she reasoned, god creates what is inside of us, so how can we judge by appearances.

Perhaps, she reflected, this hunchback is like a golden bowl encrusted with dirt, first he should be handled gently. Then the light will shine through!

Wisely, she kept her thoughts to herself. Her brother would have cuffed her on the chin and rightly so!

ii

Dear reader, it was her youth that made her full of this noble minded shit. That hunchback was an evil minded parasite with a heart like a rotten apple, but like all youth and all great men of science, she must test her theory out in the field

she must be rebuffed by reality again and again until she is like the rest of us, tired, disappointed and toothless. Let the dice fall where they may!

At the corner, using a passing hay wagon as a shield and for reasons she barely understood, she ducked away from her brother and gathered her skirts, running daintly after the hunchback, following him back to his nest of rags and mud. He in turn, aware of her presence, led her on gently as pleased as if he had discovered a golden sovereign lying face down in the muck.

It was my intention, dear reader, that the hunchback should be saintly, forever making passes over his cupped hands and producing little kittens, rabbits, anything to amaze this naive young girl.  He would produce little songbirds in a variety of tasteful colors from his sleeves.

 That was however, before the onset of my gout, and the sad truth is that this storey is beginning to stick in my throat like a chicken bone.

No! he was as evil minded as she was noble, and everything about him was nasty from his hunchback down to the wart in the middle of his nose, he waited for her in the dark clutching the thighbone of one of the blighted souls that he had eaten, with every intention of braining her in the dark

She in turn stepped through the gutters with the reverence of a saint in the house of god, not caring that her brocaded silks were being ruined, for all she had in her mind was the image of that golden bowl and her part in its unearthing.

iii

Well perhaps I have judged that hunchback too harshly dear reader, for after all, isnt an asp an asp out of the nature which god lovingly bestowed on it, perhaps there lurks under that cold itching skin a little warmth after all. I am Christian enough to be charitable. Perhaps that hunchback will rid us of one more youth idealist and prove his worth after all!

Primrose faltered at the mouth of the catacomb. The darkness was thick as treacle and heavy with foul air. Overhead sickly yellow mud poured from the pipes and gutters, splattering the street. She took a step into the shadows, and then another.

dear little hunchback, she said in her soft melodious voice,  can you hear me?

His gnarled hands trembled on his gruesome cudgel and he smacked his thick wet lips.

I saw..  I saw you get hurt, come out of your darkness. she cried

Of course you can picture her delicate little face raised up to the shadows, her pale green eyes awash with trust and love. I dont need to paint you a portrait.

How sanctimonious! Bring down your club dear hunchback, bring it down once and for all and end this pitiful story.  

You dare to hesitate? To think when I conceived you that I spared you the holy fire of scabies!  Bring down your club!

iv

Can it be that somewhere in that moldering pork chop of a heart lurks a shred of human decency?  Had you seen this dirty little thief raised from a frog to a man as I have, youd think it unlikely.

Ger out of ere, he hissed from the dark, dropping the thighbone into the muck, Ger outta here afore I brain ye. His voice was drink roughened and harsh as corrugated metal. Inwardly he cursed at the thought of all the beef dinners he was giving up. He felt around for his thighbone cudgel with the end of his foot.  The hunchback felt a tug in his chest. Heartburn he thought. All the offal I bin eatin.

At the sight of his bloodied face leaning out the gloom she gave an involuntary cry of fear and stumbled back. The hunchback was quicker and caught her up in his hairy arms. His muscles were hard as iron bars, his grip sure. He righted her and looked with dismay at the mud on her white dress.

I saw them.. beat you.  I thought perhaps.., she hesitated, her mouth trembling.

Oh ye thought?,  the hunchback grimaced. Ye didn do very much thought at all or else yed not be walkin around here by yerself. There be less kindly folk down here than I.  What do ye want?

To help you., she lifted one hand up to her mouth.

Well, kind of ye to ask. At the moment I got a right pain in the ass and you are it.  Get out of here before they come lookin for ye and I get my head staved in.

He drew a stubby finger across his throat and exposed his teeth.

You want to see me head stuck up on a pole?

In the weak light falling in from the street, hunchback and girl studied one another.  What in the name of hell is this strange camaraderie? You may very well ask that question dear reader. You will find me clueless.  I brought these characters together will all the magnanimity of a roman emperor. 

 The hunchback skipped over her face like it were soiled underclothes, her beauty repulsed him violently.  Yet I believe in her eyes he saw something dark and wild. The beauty of her he cursed but something spoke from her to him and it was not a fair language but a wild and lonely one, it was one he understood all too well.   Hed seen it before in the eye of the carthorse straining under a wagon of scrap.  It was the look of a suffering animal under a mans yoke.

She in turn passed over the ulcerous crags of his face and his bulbous nose with great interest, like an artist making a study for a painting. She saw in his eyes a glow like fire.  For a moment she had the strangest feeling that this was the first real human being she had ever met. The city became in that moment a sickly fevered dream, a land of ghosts. All the posturing and good manners drained out of her like fluid from an abscess and she felt herself in that moment to be a person outside of the straightjacket of her sex.

Each feared to blink in case the strange spell would be broken. Both ceased their struggle for words at the same moment.

The hunchback blushed and stuck out one gnarled hand. "Norbert."

She took it in her own. "Primrose."

Friends, forgive me for the nauseating progression of this tale. Had I predicted

the maudlin bent of my characters I would have tossed it in the trash and wrote it off as a bad investment.  Let me assure you that the decent god-fearing folk of Norfolk would not allow such a travesty to stand. Even as we speak a crowd of angry villagers armed with muskets and pikes are combing the city.

Rest assured that they will find a clear trail to the nest of our prospective lovebirds and justice will be done. I, the author, swear on this leg of mutton that I shall not rest until this salubrious pair is brought to justice.