The Tender Touch of Night by Vlad Kahany

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About the author:

Raised on the love for music and literary classics, Vlad Kahany has later studied philology and religion.

What inspired you to write your book?

Historical research.

Here is a short sample from the book:

Frank “Lucky” Handley’s life started on the outskirts of London. Or so he thought. He didn’t know the date. Nor did he remember the date assigned by the parish that he was brought to as an infant. He was found at one of the stables at Rotten Row near Hyde Park. Found by a woman, taken into the parish by one of the stable attendants, so, naturally, his name was that of the attendant, Frank, and the woman who found him, Handley. He was dispatched into the country to the care of the wet nurses. Several years later, one of the nurses, under the pretense of taking him to a potential family, took him with her to see her lover. That evening, the nursing house burnt down to the ground. Only a few survived—among them the amorous nurse and baby Frank. That was his first stroke of luck.
He was sent to an orphanage in the city, then another, and at the age of seven found himself in the parish of St. Giles-in-the-Fields in Central London. He was never bothered by his fate, or where he had come from. If his parents didn’t want him, then he didn’t want them either. If they weren’t alive, then it didn’t matter. He adopted this realistic outlook on life at an early age, as well as his habits of getting his little nose into everyone’s business and looking for trouble. He was a curious child. Though he was taught at an early age to accept lowliness and practice utmost obedience, his actions seemed to be the extreme opposite, as if there was something in his blood that rebelled against his unfortunate circumstances. The very word “unfortunate” did not exist in his mind, though he was constantly beat up for misbehavior, always in trouble for venturing into places that he wasn’t supposed to, always with the hungry blazing eyes and a curious mind. He found the ways to get past the locks, bolts, and the mean rules that seemed to kill off more children than they saved and made it a habit to sneak out of the parish. One grim day, he was sold to a workhouse, and his life became an endless hell of toiling away by day, falling down from exhaustion and hunger by night, then waking up and repeating it all over again. He found better food in the leftovers behind the eateries in the West End. The city streets seemed to be full of life and action. And though the slums didn’t promise much in terms of prospects, the walls of the workhouse were suffocating, his stomach was always hungry, and spending his life in such misery wasn’t anything to look forward to. Frank’s curiosity was getting him in all sorts of trouble. So, when he was around ten, he ran away and never looked back.
Life wasn’t easy in the slums. At times, it was miserable and unbearable. But Frank learned the meaning of freedom. He’d never had a family, nor did he care for one, but in his case, he found unlikely happiness in being on his own and going wherever life led him. Beat up, dirty, and starving more often than not, he was convinced that life had much more to offer. He just had to look in the right places.
The places he looked in weren’t enchanting, to say the least. He ventured to the center of London plenty of times, but with his shabby looks, he wasn’t getting anywhere there. He needed money. And that he could only get in the place he knew best—the slums of St. Giles.
Pickpocketing, petty theft, street scams. By the age of twelve, he’d tried it all. He was a mud lark for a short time, walking up to his waist in mud on the shore of the Thames, collecting anything of value that could be sold or traded. He was lucky enough to find a gold bracelet once. It didn’t bother him that it was attached to a dead man’s hand. When he couldn’t get it off, he took the bracelet together with the hand to the trader’s shop. The owner gave him a horrified stare while Frank stood nonchalantly, hands in his pockets, proud as could be, waiting for his pay.
One time, he made a deal with owners of the dog-fighting cages and came to clean them out every other day, then collected the dog feces and sold them to the local tannery on the edge of St. Martin’s.
What he didn’t try!
He was a natural-born hustler. He didn’t have a home, and for a while, for a small weekly fee, he slept with other street kids in the attic of a dilapidated building with a leaking roof and the winds so cold in the winter that they had to burn bonfires on metal sheets right there. Until one day, the floor gave way under time and heat, and fell right through, burying whoever was there at the time.
Frank wasn’t one of them.
At the age of twelve, he tried gambling. He had watched men in the local gambling dens long enough to learn the game. He was a quick study. After two months of managing not to lose whatever little money he had, he finally won big. Elated, he got drunk on gin. That very night, crossing the bridge over the river—for whatever ungodly reason he was even there—he was robbed and thrown over the bridge into the cold waters of the Thames. He was fished out an hour later, ribs broken, his entire body bruised. His lifeless body lay on the shore as the local fisherman and a curious bystander searched for his pulse but didn’t find it. The city watchman was called. But before he arrived, Frank moved the fingers on his hand. Two weeks later, he was back on his feet, wobbling, brown with bruises, but alive and not a penny to his soul. He thought it was a sign and never gambled or touched gin again. The curious bystander—Gnarly Dog, as he later introduced himself—was the one that had taken him to a boarding house for street kids.
“Boy, are ye lucky,” Gnarly Dog said to Frank the day the boy managed to get back on his feet. “Sometimes, the gods smile on ye, don’ey?”
“Can ‘ey smile on ye all the time?” Frank asked, barely able to breathe from pain.
Gnarly Dog laughed.
“Yer in the Giles, kid. Sometimes the gods can’t see through all the smoke from the fire pits.”
Lucky didn’t believe that.
“Why not?” he asked.
The man didn’t have an answer and only shook his head with a smile.
Frank had his own theory, however flimsy. But the name Lucky stuck. And the boy stuck to Gnarly Dog.
It turned out, the boarding house wasn’t just for any street kids, but for the ones that worked for the Bankee Boys, a local gang led by the man named Rocco.
Lucky’s life didn’t change much at first, except he felt he acquired some distant family that constantly expanded and changed faces. He discovered a love for fighting. It was a necessary part of a boy’s education when one grew up on the streets. Not just for protection and to survive but, more importantly, to acquire a reputation that, with time, earned him respect and attention. He learned to work his fists well early in life. In fact, he had been known to be able to beat anyone several years his senior since he was a toddler.
“A savage puppy,” laughed a man when Lucky, ten years old and fresh on the streets, fought a twelve-year-old who stole from him. When kicked to the ground, Lucky grabbed the boy’s foot, bit into it as hard as he could and wouldn’t let go, working his way up to the knee until the men around them, roaring with laughter, tore him off the screaming fellow.
Lucky’s childhood wasn’t pretty. Neither was his face by the time he reached adolescence. But one thing he learned on the streets was that ferocious fighting could catapult you in life much faster than any other skills or education. At least in London, the biggest city on earth. At least in the slums. Definitely in the slums.
The older he got, the fiercer he became and the sharper his fighting skills got. It was often said with a laugh that he could muzzle a handful of lads before breakfast.
And that was how it went down when one fateful night he got into a bar brawl. He was with Gnarly Dog and several other men in Old Billy Tavern on Church Street. He recognized the men that walked in, throwing arrogant glances at them. He knew they were from the rival gang, the Smethwicks. Lucky and the men were in neutral territory, yet much outnumbered.
He remembered exactly how it all went down. It wasn’t his fault when one of the men, several years his senior and a foot taller, started insulting the men at the nearby table. No one dared to say a word. No one dared to intervene even when the man punched the innocent quiet drunk and kicked him to the ground. The tavern was silent at the unnecessary display of cruelty and power. But Lucky wasn’t a no one. Nor did he like the unnecessary display of cruelty. Nor did he like the ugly grin of the guy with beady eyes. So he intervened. Next thing he knew, the ugly schmuck drew out a knife and slashed him on the cheek, and…
Well…
If Lucky couldn’t stand unnecessary cruelty, he definitely didn’t let anyone hurt him, let alone carve his face. So he threw himself at the man with the fierceness of a cock in a cockfighting pit. If anything, he thought later, he’d practiced for fifteen years for this very moment, because he kicked the man to the ground and threw half of the rest around with so much ferociousness that even Gnarly Dog gaped in surprise, and the rest of the folks cheered.
That night, he barely made it out alive. But the next day, for the first time, bandaged and cut, but with the usual smirk on his face, he stood in front of the scrutinizing and inquiring eyes of none other than Rocco, the leader of the Bankee Boys.
That afternoon brought pandemonium to the quarters adjoining St. Giles. No one quite knew how the riot started except it began with a dozen Smethwicks seeking out the Bankees and picking a fight over the bar happening the night before. What started as a brawl, stones and sticks thrown in all directions, spilled onto the streets. And when the word got around, several hundred young Bankees and Smethwicks were at it, breaking windows, trashing everything around, attacking each other and pulling in passersby. The riot went late into the night. Several arrests were made. Rumors changed hands, and by the end of the next day, it sounded as if the two gangs had decided to beat each other to extinction.
The damage one bar brawl can do!
That day started a silent war. But it also marked the start of Lucky’s new life. For in three years’ time, he wasn’t doing much fighting. Instead, he was one of Rocco’s right-hand men.
The man that he stood up to that night didn’t forget, and he forever remembered Lucky’s face. That man wasn’t just anyone. He was the major weight in Smethwick Gang. They called him Skriller.
The incident was more than a decade ago. The times were changing. The Bankees weren’t just a street gang anymore. Neither were the Smethwicks. New business opportunities arose and required careful thinking, diplomacy, and alliances, including the one between the Bankees and the Smethwicks, which was quietly talked about but wasn’t yet a sure thing.
But one thing that time didn’t care for was hate. And it brewed silently in the two men’s hearts, waiting for the proper moment to strike. Little did they know that the moment would be marked by a harlot from the Belle House that one day made it to St. Giles.