The Apprentices

by Leon Garfield

  “The image you’ve made will have destroyed your enemy. Now do you see that you’ve not been tricked? You do see it, don’t you?” went on the youth with a sudden earnestness, as if to convince Hobby of his desire to deal honourably.

  “If you hadn’t made it so marvellously well—and all credit to your divine spark!—you’d never have dreamed of smashing the flesh-and-blood Larkins just to preserve the Larkins of clay! Yes, my dear boy, it’s been a certainty from the moment you put your heart and soul into it! One way or the other, this image will destroy your enemy. As I believe I mentioned, I move in mysterious ways.”

  He looked hard at Hobby, and then, with a shrug of his shoulders, he slid his box from the counter and brought it down to Hobby’s level. He fiddled with the clasp, clucking with annoyance as it seemed to stick. At last he opened it.

  “My credentials,” he said, and displayed to Hobby a red velvet interior in which was fitted, very neatly, a pair of horns with brass screw fittings and a long black button-on tail.

  Hobby awoke with a scream. Trembling, he got out of bed and looked round the workroom and shop for some evidence of his nocturnal visitor. Of course, he found none. He had only had a bad dream.

  Why, then, did he sweat so much . . . and why did his eyes keep turning from side to side in dread? Because he had found, lying on the floor beside his bed, Mr. Greylag’s sharp knife!

  Over and over again he tried to persuade himself that he’d brought it in himself, in order to finish off some tiny detail of his work, but he could not remember ever having done such a thing. And all that came into his mind were the fatal words: “One way or the other, this image will destroy your enemy.”

  He picked up the knife and put it back in the workroom; then he went outside to take down the shutters. He saw Larkins—worse-than-ever Larkins—laughing and joking and boasting of the night to come with Miss Linnet as she leaned out of her window and brushed her long brown hair. Neither of them spared Hobby a glance.

  Savagely he went back into Falconer’s. There was no doubt that the very sight of flesh-and-blood Larkins drove him wild. He brooded on all the injuries Larkins had done him . . . of which the last was the worst of all. Because he was so hateful he’d forced Hobby to hide away the best work he’d ever done—his very soul—from the sight of an admiring world. Carefully he wrapped up his masterpiece and hid it among his bedding.

  Mr. Greylag arrived, and Hobby cursed the hatred that now denied him the old journeyman’s praise. At eight o’clock Mr. Falconer came down, and Hobby’s curses were redoubled. Throughout the day, customers came and went, were charmed by this plaster sweep or that smiling beggar child . . . and went away without an inkling of the wonder the apprentice had created, and was too frightened and ashamed to show.

  And all because of that swine Larkins.

  At last Mr. Greylag hung up his apron, and Mr. Falconer, in company with his lady wife, went off to Michaelmas goose in Cheapside.

  Hobby was alone. His feelings by now had passed through a furnace in which everything less than fireproof had been consumed. His dream—if dream it had been—had been true. The clay image, standing on the shop counter—now mysterious, now frightening, now inexplicable in its secret life—was doomed to destroy his enemy, just as surely as its smile of blind certainty declared that it could not be destroyed itself.

  He gave his masterpiece a last deep look, in which pleasure and fear were equally mingled, left the shop, and hastened towards Covent Garden.

  There’d been a smallish riot at the Nag’s Head. Pies and spiced apples had flown like cannonballs and ripe plums had exploded against the walls. There’d been thunderous dancing on the long table, and the landlord, hoping to lay out the turbulent apprentices cold, had laced their beer with gin. But it had only made them worse.

  Having demolished their roast goose, they’d set about demolishing the Nag’s Head itself; the landlord, driven frantic, had shouted that he’d send for their masters if they didn’t clear off and never come back.

  They took his word for it, and tumbled outside in a heap, where the cool night air, acting on their heated brains, caused them to caper about with tipsy abandon and seize innocent passersby in ferocious attempts to dance.

  Dancing was the order of the night, and though feet were sometimes uncertain, spirits were as deft and nimble as mice.

  Larkins was well away. He skipped and hopped in a blaze of hiccups and broken gallantries, while the pie maker’s lovely daughter, wearing her ma’s hoop, swung and chimed haplessly in his wake.

  He clutched her by the hand, the waist, the neck—and sometimes lost her altogether, when he’d cry out: “Miss! Oh, miss! Come back or—hic!—was you always only a dream?”

  And Miss Linnet, acting on the principle that the devil she knew was likely to be the better proposition, endeavoured to free herself from other hands and recapture her capering Larkins.

  He wove in and out of the dark arches of the marketplace, tottering for support from column to column.

  “Miss—oh, miss!” he called, stretching out his hand into the shadows.

  “Larkins—oh, Larkins!” murmured Hobby.

  He’d watched his enemy leave the Nag’s Head and had followed him as softly and secretly as the angel of death. He reached out to grasp Larkins’ hand, but suddenly it was snatched away as Miss Linnet dragged him off to join in the general dance.

  Hobby cursed and waited . . . and sure enough, Larkins came weaving back.

  “Miss—oh, miss!” he called.

  “Larkins—oh, Larkins!” whispered Hobby, when again the hand was snatched from his grasp.

  The apprentices had made a serpent—a long, tipsy serpent of linked arms, of swinging skirts and silken ankles and great brass buckles that jumped on the cobbles like firecrackers.

  It rolled along by the arches, and then, on a confused impulse, for it was a serpent of many minds, it began to tug and pull away. With shrieks of laughter and snatches of song, it danced across the wide marketplace, leaving in its wake a mysterious fragrance of ghostly roast goose and phantom beer.

  A dozen times the shadowy Hobby saw his enemy stumble and fall . . . and a dozen times he saw him gathered up and danced away. He bided his time, knowing that sooner or later his enemy would be delivered into his hand.

  A linkboy, more needy than wise, darted forward and stood over the newly fallen Larkins, with torch uplifted and downcast, hopeful eyes.

  “Light you ’ome, young sir? Light you ’ome for a penny?”

  “A candle!” hicupped Larkins, looking up and seeing many more candles than one. “A candle to—hic!—light me to bed!”

  At once the cry was taken up by his companions of Michaelmas night.

  “Here comes a candle to light you to bed;

  Here comes a chopper to chop off your head!”

  The linkboy, with an inkling of disaster, backed away.

  “Chop—chop—chop!” chanted the apprentices, making menacing arches of their joined arms.

  The linkboy wailed and fled.

  “Chop—chop—chop!”

  The linkboy departed from the marketplace so rapidly that his torch was almost torn out. His passing was marked by a scribble of smoke and a blinking of sparks.

  “Chop—chop—chop!” shouted the apprentices, streaming after the light.

  Desperately the little linkboy darted along King Street. What would they do to him if they caught him? Would they really chop off his head? He vanished, like a fiery mouse, down an alley and into Three Kings Court.

  “Chop—chop—chop!”

  It was no use. His light had betrayed him and they’d followed it. They poured down into the court, chanting and stamping till the windows rattled and the doors shook.

  The linkboy squealed in panic and fled from doorway to doorway. Then an old man came out.

  He was a savage, unshaven old man—a sour-faced lamplighter whose beauty sleep had been shattered beyond repair. He roared out with his ladder and wielded
it like a scythe.

  “Chop—chop—chop!” he snarled. “I’ll give yer chop—chop—chop!”

  He made a rush at them—and the apprentices shrieked and fled. But Larkins remained behind. He lay in the alley in the old man’s murderous path.

  He’d danced too high and fallen too far; he’d twisted his ankle and could scarcely stand.

  “Help me—help me!” wailed Larkins, seeing the shadows of the old man’s weapon racing up the alley walls like the wings of death. “Save me—save me!”

  A hand reached out and clutched at his, and arms helped him to his feet.

  “Chop—chop—chop!” panted the old lamplighter, hobbling up the empty alley. “I’ll give yer chop—chop—chop!”

  He peered venomously into the darkness, like an ancient cat who had scattered a flock of birds.

  “You saved me life!” puffed Larkins, halting painfully in a black corner off Henrietta Street.

  “That’s right,” said Hobby. “I did.”

  “I’m much obliged to you, Hobby.”

  “Don’t mention it, Larkins.”

  The pie maker’s daughter gazed in bewilderment from one apprentice to the other.

  “I’m glad you two have made it up,” she said.

  “But we’ve always been friends,” said Hobby. “Really.”

  “Have we?” asked Larkins, bending to rub his injured foot.

  “Oh, yes. I’ve always liked you, Larkins.”

  “Come to think of it,” said Larkins, feeling it was called upon him to respond, “I’ve always rather liked you, Hobby. Old friend.”

  “By the way,” said Hobby casually—as if it had just come into his mind—“I’ve done rather a fine head of you, Larkins. In clay.”

  “A head of me? What for?”

  “Because I like you, Larkins. Because you’re my friend.”

  The devil, thought Hobby, with a cunning smile, ain’t the only one what moves in mysterious ways. His, Hobby’s, ways were considerably more mysterious. He beamed. Now he could show to the world, not the image he’d made of his enemy but the marvellous likeness he’d fashioned of his friend.

  Just as his dream had advised, he’d destroyed his enemy. But he’d destroyed him without either loss of blood or ruin of clay. He’d done it by turning him into a friend.

  “And—and is it really like me, Hobby, old friend?”

  “Oh, Larkins—dear Larkins! If them eyes and cheeks weren’t your own, I’d swear you’d nicked ’em from me clay!”

  The pie maker’s lovely daughter held her peace. She found it hard to decide between two such suitors, one of whom was a marvel with words and the other, it seemed, with his hands. Oh, well, she thought, shrugging her tempting shoulders, she’d seven long years in which to make up her mind. . . .

  There was a quietness all about Covent Garden—a quietness of held breath and watchful eyes. Then, from somewhere in the distance, over London Bridge way, a solitary church bell began to chime. One . . . Two . . .

  “Oranges and lemons,” came a soft voice, singing from one of the dark courts into which the Michaelmas apprentices had fled.

  “Say the bells of St. Clement’s,” came an answer from an alley.

  Three . . . Four . . .

  “You owe me five farthings,” chanted a thin voice, sweet as a starling, from Drury Lane.

  “Say the bells of St. Martin’s.”

  Five . . . Six . . .

  “When will you pay me?”

  Seven . . . Eight . . . The lonely bell pealed on, and the chorus, ever growing, replied, “Say the bells of Old Bailey.”

  Nine . . . Ten . . .

  “When I grow rich . . . when I grow rich . . . WHEN I GROW RICH!” swelled the voices, from every alley and court, from every shop and workroom, from every bed and dream, and from every young heart all over the town.

  “When I grow rich . . .”

  Back in Three Kings Court, the old lamplighter leaned his ladder against the wall. The little linkboy, standing by his side, looked up at him and then to the stars. The chorus drifted down. The pair of them listened, and then the lamplighter scratched his greasy head.

  “We give ’em light,” he mumbled. “And what do they do with it?”

  The linkboy shook his head, and turned away to hide his smile.

  Eleven . . . Twelve . . .

  About the Author

  Leon Garfield was born in Brighton in 1921. He was the acclaimed author of more than thirty novels for children and adults including Devil in the Fog, winner of the inaugural Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize in 1967, The God Beneath the Sea, winner of the 1970 Carnegie Medal, and John Diamond, winner of the 1980 Whitbread literary award. He was also elected a member of the Royal Society of Literature. He died in 1996.

  Also by Leon Garfield

  The Apprentices

  Black Jack

  Blewcoat Boy

  Bostock and Harris

  The Boy and The Monkey

  The Confidence Man

  The December Rose

  Devil-In-The-Fog

  The Drummer Boy

  The Empty Sleeve

  The Ghost Downstairs

  The God Beneath The Sea

  The Golden Shadow

  Guilt and Gingerbread

  The House of Cards

  John Diamond

  Mr Corbett’s Ghost

  The Mystery of Edwin Drood

  The Pleasure Garden

  The Prisoners of September

  Sabre-Tooth Sandwich

  The Saracen Maid

  The Sound of Coaches

  The Strange Affair of Adelaide Harris

  THE APPRENTICES

  AN RHCP DIGITAL EBOOK 978 1 448 17390 7

  Published in Great Britain by RHCP Digital,

  an imprint of Random House Children’s Publishers UK

  A Random House Group Company

  First published in Great Britain by William Heinemann Ltd as twelve separate volumes: The Lamplighter’s Funeral; Mirror, Mirror; Moss and Blister; The Cloak © 1976; The Valentine; Labour-in-Vain; The Fool; Rosy Starling; The Dumb Cake; Tom Titmarsh’s Devil © 1977; The Filthy Beast; The Enemy © 1978

  This ebook edition published 2013

  Copyright © Leon Garfield, 1982

  The right of Leon Garfield to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

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