by James Somers
My first thought told me the kind stranger must have returned at some point in order for me to find it thus. But either way, I was just glad to know I’d not been losing my mind the night before. Of all I had seen of the man, or angel or whatever he was, the blanket still testified to my sanity. He had indeed been here. He had given me food and even a bit of advice, although that part remained cryptic at best.
I’d heard my father preach many times and I believed that angels existed. I’d put my faith in the Lord Jesus nearly three years ago during a revival my father had preached. Countless times we had thanked the Heavenly Father for our meals. I supposed this must be a blessing from him during my time of need. Now that I had truly hungered, if even for a brief time, I felt more inclined to be thankful. I prayed now, after the fact, for a meal truly appreciated and for the nameless angel who had brought it to me.
The morning sun managed to stir up the smells of the city. It seemed that not much wind blew back in these alleys, so the stench festered here. I probably smelled just as bad, having slept in the doorway all night, but no one else was there to be offended by it.
As I stood, my back creaked and popped. My porch lodging had left me sore and almost too stiff to stand up straight. I arched my back, leaning on my hips, grunting and stretching until my breath left me. Ah, that’s better.
The door behind me suddenly opened up and a straw broom lunged out after me. “Get out of here, you little worm! There’s no begging here!”
I leaped away instinctively, landing back in the alley. The bald man who emerged, with his broom in hand, took my blanket roll and hurled it after me. Without waiting to explain my predicament, I scooped up my bundle then turned and ran back toward the street.
I reached the mouth of the alley and found the bustle of London again. What had seemed an exciting place yesterday, now felt like an enemy. Who was there in this city that cared for my plight? Only the kind stranger, so far, and I felt very sure that he hadn’t come to me from London at all.
I searched up and down the street. The buildings here were not nearly as impressive as those my father and I had first encountered yesterday. Evidently, I had stumbled upon a bad area last night.
The buildings seemed to lean upon one another, as though one going down would topple them all like a line of dominos. None of them looked like businesses exactly, although clearly some were used as such. The streets were unpaved here and the mud lay carved with endless criss-crossing grooves, hoof prints and steaming piles of horse manure.
Narrow boardwalks ran along each side of the street tracked with grimy footprints. Pedestrians crowded together, trying to hold solid ground and not end up slogging through the muck. Here and there, it happened anyway and some poor soul would fight with the mud hoping to get back their lost shoe.
I continued searching the lane until I found a person of interest. A constable walked his beat down the other side of the street. Surely, I supposed, this would be exactly the person to whom I could tell my story and find justice for myself and my father.
I watched the traffic and then bolted into the lane behind a dark carriage. Mud sprang at me from the rear wheels, pelting my face. I skidded across the mud, trying to prevent my hurdling beneath another team of horses coming down the opposite side. I barely managed to keep my life, then darted behind the buggy and driver, slip-sliding my way to the boardwalk on the other side of the street.
Curses were cast my way, but I was safe. The policeman stood just a block away. I began my trek toward him, weaving through the crowd. I only barely noticed that a few shops sold their wares on this side. People stood shopping near doorways at tables with books, ceramics and various knick-knacks.
As I passed through the crowd of people, I nearly ran into a group of three boys going the opposite direction. They were all dressed worse than I was, meaning their clothes were older and more worn, whereas I wore finer quality despite having slept in an alley the previous night.
The boy leading the other two gave me a sharp look and grinned. I stopped, awestruck as they passed. They all turned slightly, wondering what my problem might be, but carried on nonetheless.
I turned back toward the constable, now only a few yards away. Had I really seen what I thought? Those ears. Preferring not to confuse my purpose, I shook myself and started back for the constable again. As I approached, he turned his nose down, giving me a suspicious look. “What are you doing, you little ragamuffin?”
“Sir, I’ve come to report a murder,” I began.
He looked scalded. “A murder? What on earth are you talking about? Where?”
I tripped over my own words, hurriedly trying to explain my situation. “It’s my father, sir. He was murdered last night in an alley. A man robbed us and killed him right in front of me.”
He stood erect, giving me a cursory look as though he hadn’t been listening. “Are you American, boy?”
I halted, confused. “Yes, sir. My father and I arrived only yesterday on a steamer from New York.”
“And you say, your father was murdered?”
“Yes, sir, before dark in an alley.”
The constable rubbed his chin. “And where was this alley?”
I thought, but couldn’t answer him. “I’m not sure, sir. I ran for my life and don’t know London at all. But I’m sure it couldn’t have been far from here.”
He gave me half a smile. “That’s very interesting. We’ve had no report of any murders last night, or the night before. We’ve certainly not recovered any bodies. Are you sure you’re not pulling my leg, trying to get one over on the bobby?”
I stood before him mystified by his response. I had just begun to protest his indifference when a shout came from down the street. “Stop thief!”
We both looked in time to see the same three boys I had just passed on the sidewalk running from the scene. A shop owner stood shouting with a broom in his hand next to an angry patron pulling on his empty coat pocket.
A massive hand snatched my coat at the neck. “You little dipper!” he barked. “So that’s your game…distracting me so your thieving friends could make off with the goods under my nose!”
I had no time to muster a defense before the constable tore down the street with me in tow. He dragged me kicking behind him, blowing his whistle and ordering the other boys to stop.
“Please, sir, I don’t even know those boys!”
But the constable didn’t listen. He shouted ahead to pedestrians to move out of his way as he maintained pursuit. I had no way to see where we were going or any way of escaping the vice like grip upon my clothing.
I heard more shouts from down the street, then the officer saying, “Hold them fast!”
As I got my feet under me again, I tried to plead my innocence. “But sir, I didn’t—”
“That’s enough of your mouth!”
He struck me across the back of the head with something very hard. I only had time to feel the sting of it and then the hot pavement smashing against my cheek before all went black.
I woke to ominous words. “You’ll hang for this.”
Curses answered this judgment, though I had no idea who had spoken. A cacophony of moaning and belligerence arose around me as my consciousness returned. I opened my eyes, but had very little light available with which to see anything.
Still, I knew two things immediately: my head ached terribly and I was no longer out in the streets of London. A foul mixture of sweat, blood and feces curled my nose to the point I thought I might vomit. The sound of retching told me somebody already was over in a corner of the room.
I lifted my eyes toward a narrow shaft of light running through a slit of a window nearly ten feet off the floor. The light barely illuminated a wall of iron bars on the opposite side of the chamber. Shock hit me as I realized my situation. “I’ve landed in prison.”
“Oy, greenie…who are you?” The voice had spoken next to me in the dark. I still couldn’t make out a face to go with it, but whoever he was he had to be near my
age.
“Where am I?” I asked.
“My question first, greenie,” he said.
I sighed, in no mood for games. But what would it hurt to give my name? Nobody knew me in London anyway, and I knew nobody. “My name is Brody West.”
The faceless stranger inched closer to me in the dark, scuffing shoe leather on the gritty concrete floor. “You’re not from around these parts are you?”
I sat up, trying to catch some details about my interrogator’s face. “I’m from America.”
The boy laughed heartily. “Oy, mates, he’s a blooming Yank!” Others joined in his mockery.
My cheeks burned. I already understood how out of my element I was. I didn’t need this fellow grinding me harder for it.
I hollered over the din, feeling a bit more aggressive. After all that had happened to me since my arrival, I felt that I had little else to lose. The boy leaned in so that I now saw his eyes close to my face. They sparkled like jewels—green, no blue. I couldn’t be sure. The boy stood up and walked around me toward the beam of light invading the cell.
Being a little short for my age, the boy stood a few inches taller than me. He might have been eighteen or nineteen, but no older. When the light hit him, I recognized his face at once. The boy I had noticed on the street, with his friends, had followed me into prison. More likely, I was here because of him.
He held out his hands like a stage performer. “You, Mr. West, are in Fleet Prison. The home of pick pockets, thieves, debtors and murderers…at least temporarily. Eh, lads?”
Inmates launched themselves at the bars to silence the young whelp. They needed no reminding of their fate. I noticed then that our cell was smaller than first understood. We were divided from the others by sets of bars. Unless the light hit them, they remained almost invisible in the dark.
The boy bowed himself, thoroughly pleased by his performance and the rousing it had produced. I stared at him accusingly as he sat down in front of me in his shabby moth-eaten clothes. His wild dark hair curled out from under the brim of his soiled fancy hat. And those ears…I had noticed them on the street. They pointed at the top.
“I’m in here because of you, aren’t I?” I couldn’t keep the menace from my voice.
He extended his hand, as though I’d just invited him to tea. “Tom’s the name.”
I left the hand dangling in mid-air, refusing to shake it. “You and those other boys you were with—I saw you just before that man was robbed. The constable thought I was your accomplice. That’s why I’m in here.”
He smiled at me. “Then you’re in good company aren’t you, Mr. West?”
I wanted to hit him, or strangle him. I couldn’t make up my mind. Tom reached over and patted me on the shoulder like he was consoling his best friend.
“Don’t worry about the drop. It’s all over quickly, ain’t it?” he said.
“The drop?”
“You know—” He bugged his eyes and stuck his tongue out the side of his mouth. His hand pulled an imaginary noose above his cocked head. “—A hanging.”
Instantly, images of the young boy I’d seen hanged in the square came back to me. I couldn’t end up that way…it couldn’t be! I rushed to the prison bars calling for help, for a policeman, anyone who might listen to my pleading. No one came. No one cared.
Tom stood behind me. “Hey, Brody, it’s no big deal. Happens to the best of us eventually.”
I sobbed with my face pressed against the rusty bars. How could this have happened? My mother had died several years ago, leaving only my father to look after me. Now he was dead too. I wondered if I had been cursed at my birth. Why me? What had I done to deserve all of this?
For a moment I wanted to blame God for it all. Then my father’s preaching came back to me. He’d told me about a man named Job who had been righteous before the Lord. All of his family and belongings had been taken from him in one day. He had been afflicted with sore boils all over his body, yet in all these things he would not blame God foolishly.
I sniffed and dried my tears with my sleeve. I still wanted to cry, but I wouldn’t. The stranger in the alley had told me I had a work to do, to walk by faith. I decided right then and there that this was as good a time as any to begin.
I turned from the bars. Now that my eyes had become more accustomed to the darkness, I found my cell shared by Tom, his two accomplices and an old man snoring in the corner with vomit on his shirt. I hadn’t been the only one shedding tears. The other boys with Tom looked scared to death.
I walked right up to him and looked again at his ears.
“What are you looking at?” he asked, meeting my gaze.
“Your ears…why are they pointed?”
Faster than I could react, Tom pinned me to the bars of the cell door. My head clanged against the metal in nearly the same spot where the policeman had hit me earlier. I almost passed out again.
Tom stared menacingly into my face with his forearm pinning me where I stood. I tried to speak, but he shoved his arm up against my throat.
“My ears look strange to you?” He hissed the question at me so low that only I could hear it. I nodded, still unable to speak and unsure why he’d gotten so angry. I assumed he must be sensitive about his birth defect.
“What’s the matter, Tom?” one of the other boys asked.
He ignored the question.
“What color are my eyes?” he whispered.
I had no idea what this question had to do with his being insulted about his ears. Still, Tom released some of the pressure so I could answer. I looked into his eyes. They sparkled even without the light from the window striking them. “Blue changing to bright green and back again.”
Shock appeared on his face. He lowered his arm slowly. I still wondered what exactly I’d done wrong and what these questions meant to him. He backed away from me looking quite perplexed. He muttered something under his breath I couldn’t quite make out. It almost sounded like some foreign language, but he didn’t seem to be talking to me, so I held my tongue.
One of the other boys asked again what the problem was. Tom didn’t act as though he even heard him. Both boys looked at me and then at Tom. He sat down in the opposite corner from the sleeping old man at the rear of the cell.
I had no clue why he had reacted this way. I decided not to raise any more questions and sat down with my back to the prison bars. Tom didn’t talk to me the rest of the time we were in our cell in Fleet prison. He only stared at me with those sparkling blue-green eyes.
The Drop
Within hours, a guard had arrived to escort me, Tom and the other two boys from our prison cell. We were led through the cell block where men awaited their fates in turn. Some had already been sentenced and this would be their home until the day of their release. Others would face what Tom had referred to as the drop in their own time.
My legs felt weak as we marched down the corridor. Some of the other prisoners spit on us as we passed. The guards quickly clubbed the bars, busting knuckles on occasion. We didn’t even have compassion from those facing a similar fate. Tom never spoke a word though he walked directly behind me. Somehow I felt as though he was still staring at me as he had been in our cell. I could not understand the dramatic change in his mood.
The guards opened up a final barred door and led our parade through. We arrived in a small room resembling what I supposed must be a courtroom, though I’d never been inside one. A high desk sat directly in front of the wooden banister where the guards lined us up. I noticed a gavel sitting upon it and assumed this must be the judge’s bench.
The bailiff announced the judge by name, upon which a small man ascended to the bench from a door in the side of the room. The man had a hawkish nose and beady eyes which examined us boys through a pair of wire rimmed spectacles. A powdered white wig sat upon his head like an octopus with its coils hanging across his shoulders down onto his chest. He leaned forward over his bench in order to catch a good view then addressed the bailiff i
n an apathetic tone.
“Let’s get on with it, Charles,” he said.
The bailiff read off a list of charges, which I only half listened to as the judge’s sneering look bored into my skull. I vaguely heard the words pick pocket and thievery among the jumble of legal terms, but was too scared to make sense of any of it.
The other two boys with Tom looked as though they were as scared as I was. However, rather than quaking in his boots, Tom looked right at me. I turned to find his mesmerizing blue-green eyes fixed upon me as they had been in the prison cell. Feeling awkward, I lowered my gaze and turned back to the judge just as the bailiff finished listing the crimes we had been charged with.
The judge addressed us directly then. “Do you have anything to say in defense of yourselves?”
Now I had my chance. I could explain to this man all that had happened to me since coming to London. Surely, he would understand and sympathize with my plight. Freedom seemed only a breath away.
I tried to speak—literally opening my mouth to voice my defense—but no words would come out. I stammered, not from fear or lack of thought, but from a complete inability to produce the sound to vocalize. I put my hand to my throat astonished by my inability to even make a peep.
The judge fixed me with a queer look. “Bailiff, is this boy a mute?”
“I don’t think so, sir, he was talking up a storm back in the cages.”
The judge went on to the other boys who also made no defense. The two on my left seemed completely mystified, as though in a trance, not even hearing the judge’s question.
His Honor quickly passed on further inquiry and handed down his judgment. “You clearly have no defense for your heinous crimes. I therefore sentence you to be hanged by the neck until you are dead. Sentence to be carried out forthwith.”
My heart skipped a beat as the gavel smashed onto a wooden block sitting upon the judge’s bench. I had said nothing—could say nothing. I continued to try, looking as though I was gagging, but it did no good. I looked at Tom and found him grinning devilishly at me.
“Having trouble speaking, Mr. West?” He arched his eyebrow with more than just amusement. Somehow he knew I wouldn’t be able to speak—somehow he had caused it this to happen.