by Andy Gavin
My head is still groggy, but I’m pretty sure the baby was with her during the night.
“I set me son up with Nancy, somewheres safe,” Donnie says. “Sorry I lost me temper, luv.”
He hands Yvaine a paper-wrapped package. She takes it, but I see her teeth gnaw her lip, still swollen from his ‘temper.’
Inside is a dress made of green velvet.
“Lifted it from a house off Whitechapel last night,” Donnie says. “Had your name written all over it.”
“What is me name, then?” Yvaine says.
“Don’t be silly, Sassy.” His smile looks too wide on his narrow face. “Cuz, I got something for you too.” He hands me a leather case. I open it to find a bone-handled knife.
I stare at him.
“Take it. I knapped one for you and Stump each, seeing as you both got all broken up over the last.”
He’s obviously not embarrassed to laugh at his own jokes.
“Thanks,” I say, not knowing what else to do about this latest take on bizarro world.
Yvaine lays the dress down and struggles to her feet.
“You dinna take a baby from his mother, Dancer.”
“They giveth me to Parish before I was weaned.” He shrugs. “Besides, you can earn him back on me generous terms.” His grin grows even wider.
“Terms?” I say.
“Whilst I parleyed with Mr. Fusée concerning Carrot’s release, he revealed that Mr. Palmer — your Mr. Franklin’s boss — has himself a bit of a contract with Parliament. Printing special notes of credit. I hear the man is right skilled, best at making the highest quality, right impossible to forge.”
I have a bad feeling about this.
“Me darling.” Donnie pokes Yvaine with the green cane. “You wants to see your little chit again, you’re going to introduce our gang to dear Mr. Franklin. And you,” Donnie taps me with his red shoe, “are coming along with us.”
“What are we going to do?” I whisper to Yvaine when the Lord of All Evil leaves the cellar.
“What do you mean?” she says. Her bruises have faded to an ugly yellow-green. “We do what we should’ve done in the first place — what Dancer says.”
“How can you defend him?” I say. I screwed things up — royally — but still.
“I’ve lived in three centuries, and nothin’ I seen was much better.”
I want to grab her arm and shake some sense into her, but since that would probably just make her whimper in pain, I keep my cool.
“But it does get better! In my time, kids don’t work, and everyone goes to school until they’re eighteen.”
She rolls her eyes. “I’d rather work in a mine than listen to some preacher’s wife with a ruler.”
Maybe I better stick to the here and now. “Helping Donnie rob Parliamentary bank notes from Ben Franklin is a really bad idea—”
A commotion by the stairs draws our attention.
“Welcome back!” someone says.
I catch a glimpse of red hair as Carrot descends into the room.
“I didn’t even needs the plumper for me alibi,” he says, still smiling big after days in jail. “The gager I hoisted didn’t never press charges.”
He makes his way through back claps and shoulder squeezes to our corner.
“Girl, what ’appened t’your face?”
Yvaine struggles to rise. She hugs him so hard she seems almost her old self except for the bruises. I’m not even jealous. I like Carrot — it’s his boss, my rival, that I want to see bite the big one, or as Donnie himself might say: croak, dance at the sheriff’s ball, stretch out for the morning drop, do the dismal ditty, and ride the gaoler’s coach to Peg Trantums!
But back to reality. “What’s a plumper?” I ask.
“You sure be the country cull.” Carrot mock punches me in the arm. His spirits seem high, even if he looks thinner than I remember and his wrists are red and raw. “A plumper’s a git Mr. Fusée paid to say I was with ’im instead of liftin’ that shop.”
“This Fusée guy is the mob boss’s man?”
“Tight as a pigeon’s arse with the Thief-taker General,” Carrot says.
“He’s the one that told Donnie about Ben’s paper money,” I whisper to Yvaine.
“I didna never meet him.” She gives Carrot another hug. “I’m just happy to see you alive and free.”
“You needs not ’ave worried about me.” He clasps his arms behind his back and raises them up above his head, twisting his wrists back on themselves. “I didn’t even ’ave to spend me money on me irons, wiggled out meself.”
“It’s great to have you back.” I step behind him and put an armlock around his neck, but he twists out of it like an eel, his grin so big I can see his not-so-healthy looking gums.
“This new lay could change everything,” he says, “make us rich forever. Dancer’s a genius. First ’e gets me off, then this plan!”
“A right genius,” I say.
In the days that follow, Yvaine refuses even to discuss alternatives to Donnie’s lunatic plan. But her health improves to the point where she can go out pickpocketing again.
As much as part of me wants to spend the time with her and Carrot, I can’t bring myself to join their little crime sprees. Instead I wander the streets. A row of jars in an apothecary window gives me an idea. I have to use my second gold coin to buy what I need, and I set to work in a little abandoned space upstairs from our cellar, not even big enough to lie down in.
A glass jar half-filled with river water, a bit of foil, some brass rods, and two disks of leather and glass. It takes some trial and error to get it working, but by spinning the leather against the glass I can use friction to build up a charge between the foil wrapped around the jar and the brass rod in the middle. This is the experiment we did just last month in Earth Science, the one I read about it in Ben Franklin’s autobiography. I’m building a Leyden jar, which will be invented in seventeen-forty-something. About twenty years from now.
I ground myself on the brass rod I’ve rammed through the cork in the jar’s neck and receive a satisfying jolt.
Time isn’t half as clever as it thinks it is.
Chapter Ten:
The Heist
London, Spring, 1725
I CROUCH BEHIND A STACK OF BARRELS IN THE DARKNESS of the churchyard and watch Yvaine approach the building’s single door. She’s more or less fully recovered — physically — but I can sense the hesitation in her step. As for me, my guts feel like an ogre is kneading them into a ball of pizza dough.
Donnie squats so close to my right that I feel the barrel of his belt pistol pressing into my leg. He holds another gun in his right hand, a third is tucked into his sash, and of course he didn’t leave his sword at home. Stump’s also got at least one pistol. Even Carrot is armed with a makeshift club.
Yvaine pounds on the iron-banded oak door. She carries a small lantern, the only real light in the courtyard. The door’s set into a huge arched entranceway. In the old days, the whole thing probably opened, but now most of it’s been bricked over except for the little door.
A small window in the middle slides open to reveal a candle and half a young face.
“We’re closed.” A boy’s voice carries across the fifteen feet.
“I’ve business with Ben Franklin,” Yvaine says.
“At ten at night?” The boy starts to close the window.
“I’ll make it worth your while,” I see a glint of copper in her raised hand.
He snatches the penny and the window slams shut.
A few minutes later, it opens again and Ben’s bespectacled face appears.
“Can I come in?” she says. “I needs talk to you.”
“I’m working late as it is, I don’t want it to be any later.”
“Please.” Even in bad light, the look she gives him would make me do anything.
The window shuts. I hear the scraping metal-on-wood sound of the door being unbarred. It swings open.
Donni
e grabs my arm and pulls me up with him.
Carrot’s shrouded by darkness, but I know he’s slinking toward the door.
My heart is pounding so loud in my ears I can’t hear what Yvaine and Ben are talking about. But I don’t have long to wait. Carrot’s shadow leaps out of nowhere to shoulder the half-open door.
We’re on our feet now, closing the short gap to the entrance.
Ben pulls Yvaine inside and struggles to get the door closed, but it’s big and heavy and Carrot starts it swinging in the other direction.
Stump is inside before Ben gets it under control and Donnie puts his pistol to the head that will eventually grace the hundred-dollar bill.
Once we’re in the shop, I hear shouting and scrambling from the workroom behind the curtain. Stump in action.
“Mr. Franklin,” Donnie says, “you may close that there door now.” He thumbs back the flint-tipped hammer of his bulky pistol.
A pale Ben complies, then sees me standing there.
“Aren’t you with the girl?” he says.
Donnie pistol-whips him across the back of the head. Ben collapses.
“They both be with me,” he says. Not that his victim, unconscious, can hear him.
“Dancer, you didna have to hit him,” Yvaine says.
“Sassy, help me move him. Cuz, you get that door bolted, and don’t let anyone leave. If they do, I won’t go easy on her like last time.”
Yvaine takes one of Ben’s legs and they drag him across the room, Donnie smiling the whole way.
“I hear Mr. Franklin’s a smart man. Seeing as I be the only one allowed any smart ideas tonight, mum’s the word for him.”
They pull Ben through the curtain separating the store from the workshop. I could use a bright idea myself.
When they’re gone, I look around for anything useful. Ever since Donnie put us up to this insane plan, I’ve been trying to figure the best way out. So far I’ve only come up with two choices:
Go along with the heist, hope no one gets hurt, and pray Donnie gives Yvaine back her baby.
Or try and sabotage things, hope no one gets hurt, and pray the situation becomes so desperate Yvaine is forced to hop with me to a different time.
Neither plan strikes me as a winner. The first just seems like aiding and abetting, and the second leaves Billy at the mercy of fate — and Donnie.
Anyway, the boy under the table tips me toward Plan B.
Out of the corner of my eye I see him crawling through the shadows toward the entrance. He might even be the same boy that answered it a few minutes ago.
I haven’t bolted it yet so I kick it open and wave him through.
His eyes go wide but he darts forward and out into the night.
By the time I secure the door and enter the workroom, the bad guys — that’s us — have won.
The space is cavernous, surprisingly hodgepodge, with the printing presses clustered in a side vault. The rest of the room is strung with twine from which newspaper-sized squares of paper hang to dry.
Donnie is leafing through papers while Carrot and Stump finish tying two prisoners to chairs. Ben is still unconscious, but the other, a teenage employee, is alert and unharmed.
If you don’t count the bloody nose and missing teeth.
“This is what them notes look like,” Donnie says, holding up a sheet of paper. “But these here be missing half the words.”
He takes the paper over to the conscious prisoner, draws his sword, and places the tip against the boy’s throat.
I try to edge closer to Yvaine, who stands like a statue off to the side.
“Where be the proper notes?” Donnie says.
“T-two pass job.” The boy’s so terrified he can hardly speak.
“That ain’t me question.” Donnie drags his blade across the boy’s neck. Red blood dribbles onto the white ruffled collar.
“In the crypt, sir.”
“Thanks and wine.” Donnie points the sword at me.
“Cuz, with me to the crypt. Stump, you be captain in me absence. Locate anything else worth taking.”
Books are stacked everywhere, and the shelves contain rows and rows of lead type and little pots of ink — which I don’t think is what Donnie has in mind.
He waves his sword again and I follow, our footsteps echoing in the big space. I doubt it’s been used as a church in a long time. At the end where I suppose the altar stood, a huge anvil lurks half buried in a mess of hay. Nearby a makeshift chimney of red brick stands out against the blackened, decrepit stone walls.
Walking behind Donnie, I twist my fingers into an imaginary pistol and practice shooting him in the head. Maybe I can figure out some way to lock him in the crypt, or push him down the stairs and hope luck and time knock him out cold.
But he stops.
“After you, if you don’t mind.” Donnie uses his sword to indicate a dank stairway between the entrance and the altar. He thrusts a candelabrum into my hands.
So much for the push-him-from-behind idea.
The temperature, never that warm to begin with, drops sharply as we descend the stone steps. Donnie is so close behind he’s literally breathing down my neck.
At the bottom of the short flight, our way is blocked by a heavy wood door with a small barred window.
“Light,” Donnie orders.
I hold up the candles and he fusses with the door. There’s a bulky padlock, but even though it’s open, the door refuses to budge.
“It’s bolted from inside,” a young voice calls through the window.
Donnie puts his sword away, takes the light from me, and shoves it up to the small opening.
“You there inside, open up.”
“Don’t think I’ll do that, sir. Me master’ll whip me good.”
Donnie rattles the door again.
“He don’t even pay you ’prentices. Let us in and I’ll give you ten guineas.”
“Show ’em to me,” the boy says.
Donnie fishes in his pockets and holds up some gold coins.
“That be only two, sir. Not enough for breakin’ me oaths.”
Donnie holds the candelabrum up to the hole again, draws a pistol, shoves it through the bars, and fires.
The blast sets my ears ringing. I put my fingers to them, not that it helps after the fact.
“You missed!” The boy’s voice is muted by my diminished hearing, but I have to give him points for bravery.
Donnie kicks the door, then waves the candles over the surface. It’s pretty hefty, made of thick planks banded in iron and set deep into the stone walls.
“I’d get to confessing,” he calls through the window.
“Boy needs a little incentivizing,” Donnie tells me as we climb back to the others.
“I don’t see how we can get inside before morning,” I say. Not that there’s much chance of him giving up on his dreams of paper riches, but at least he’s stalled for the moment.
“Leave that to me.”
“Dancer,” Carrot says when we return, “I got me some news most unfortunate.”
Donnie pulls off his hat and wig and throws them onto a printing press.
“What now?”
Carrot indicates the shop area where Yvaine’s standing at the front door. The only door.
“Stump, stay with them prisoners,” Donnie says as we walk over to her.
She’s peering out the head-sized view hole. I hear people in the courtyard beyond.
Donnie shoves her aside and looks for himself.
“Buttock and Twang!” he says. “How’d them find us out?” He storms back into the main room.
Yvaine’s face is pale under its usual layer of grime. I glance out the window myself to find twelve or fifteen Londoners holding torches. A boy amongst them is waving at the church.
The boy I let out through the door.
“What will they do if they catch us?” I ask Yvaine.
“If we’s lucky — and I means really lucky — they’ll turn us over t’th
e magistrate.”
“And what’s the punishment for…” Breaking and entering, kidnapping, and who knows what else.
“Same as everything else.” She holds a fist up to her neck, tilts her head, and sticks out her tongue.
In my mind, I hear my Dad saying, Man is not God. All actions have consequences.
“We could just—”
Donnie returns dragging the bloody-necked printer boy at gunpoint.
“Journeyman, tell ’em t’go home.” He shoves the boy up to the porthole. But the kid starts ratting Donnie & Co. out at the top of his lungs.
“Burglars! Five—”
Donnie slams the boy hard into the door then punches him in the gut. He falls to the floor.
“That was awful stupid.” Donnie adds a kick to the face by way of punctuation.
Yep. All actions have consequences.
For a while, we hear heavy thuds against the oaken front door.
“Get back,” Donnie says. “They’re right outside.”
He drags his prisoner over to the curtain separating the shop and the church proper. The rest of us trail behind.
“Boss, what we goin’ t’do?” Stump says.
“We ain’t stolen nothing yet,” Carrot says. “We lets them in, they just give us a beatin’ on the way t’Newgate.”
“Stop your blubbering!” Donnie fidgets in place, then snatches up a nearby lantern and hurls it at the front door.
The glass shatters. Burning oil explodes across the wood.
“What you do that for?” Stump plunges his knife into one defenseless book after another.
“I ain’t going back t’Newgate.” Donnie’s voice is cold as a Vermont mountaintop. “Ole Half-Deaf will have his retributions from me in pieces.”
I glance at Yvaine.
“The second time he escaped,” she whispers, “he bited off a sub-warden’s ear.”
Wonderful. The whole door is now coated in flames. Thin tendrils of smoke curl upward.
Outside I hear voices, then shouts.
“Fire! Fire!”
Carrot cradles his head in his hands. “I should’ve stayed in jail.”