Jim Morgan and the King of Thieves

by James Matlack Raney

  James shut his eyes tight, anticipating the blow. But just before it came he blurted out his desperate reason for his desperate need: “I have to have it back! I have to take it to the king!”

  James waited for the punch, hoping it wouldn’t land on his nose (that would hurt a lot, he imagined), so he angled his forehead toward Red’s fist, thinking it might be the least painful spot on his face to take a beating. And so James waited, looking completely ridiculous, with his scrunched-up face and forehead poked forward like a charging rhinoceros…but the beating never came.

  James peeked one eye open. Red’s fist hung suspended in midair, his mouth gaping on his stupefied, lunkish face. James opened the other eye and found the same stunned looks on the faces of Red’s acquiescing compatriots.

  “Did you just say you…you were taking this to the king?” Red asked, holding the box up with his other, un-fisted hand.

  “The king?”

  “The king?”

  “Shouldn’t see the king smellin’ like cabbage —”

  “Shut up!” Red shouted instead of the usual finger snap. This was apparently serious. “So?” he asked James again, raising his fist back to remind James how grave the situation was.

  “Yes,” James said with a nod, still trying to angle his forehead toward the potential blow. He was completely confused, but supposed the truth couldn’t hurt now.

  “What’s in it?” Red demanded.

  “Nothing really, a letter on a bit of parchment and a necklace,” James managed.

  “A necklace?” Red arched one curious eyebrow, slowly lowering his fist, and standing to his full height. “Let’s ’ave a look-see, shall we?” he said and tugged once on the lid. Then he tugged again. Then he bent over the box and pulled so hard that his face turned as red as his hair and his freckles nearly disappeared. He growled in anger and yanked James toward him by the front of his shirt.

  “How d’ya got it locked up so tight?”

  “I…I…” James tried to think of a clever lie, but the bizarre truth tumbled out instead. “I didn’t lock it. A gypsy, a gypsy witch did it with magic!” He spewed, half expecting the boys to beat him senseless on the spot for even suggesting something that ridiculous. But the gang just stood there, mouths open, staring back and forth at one another, dumbstruck.

  Red looked as if he wasn’t sure what to do. After a moment, Red’s friends, who looked just like Red now, sporting the same clueless faces they’d worn since James first saw them, collectively had an idea. They looked at one another, then at Red, then one of them spoke up.

  “Well, if that lil’ box is for the king, hadn’t we be’er be takin’ him to see the king?”

  James would have thought they were mocking him again if it weren’t for their solemn expressions. And he didn’t want to tell them that the box wasn’t actually for the king, as that seemed to be the only reason they weren’t beating him like a rug that very moment.

  “You know the king?” James asked skeptically.

  “Know him?” Red said with a growl. “WE — my good fell-ow —happen to be in the king’s employ, if you know what I mean. And if you can keep your dandy mouth shut for a minute, WE might find the civilness to take you to see him.”

  “You will?” James nearly collapsed in disbelief. The thieves who had just robbed him seemed not only entirely certain that they worked for the king, but that they should take James to see him. Any relief that James felt, however, slipped away as Red leaned in close, looking him eye to eye, his lips curled into that horrible sneer.

  “But if the king says he don’t know you, and I find you made all this hog slop up …” Red clucked his tongue, his eyes smiling in cruel delight. “Me and my chums here are gonna redecorate your pre’ty visage, go’ it?”

  “Got it …” James said, nodding vigorously. And without further ado the quartet of ruffians turned and bustled quickly down the street, with James, having anything but another option, hurrying after them.

  ELEVEN

  he final, curved edge of the sun disappeared beneath the horizon as James followed the four boys who, just a few minutes ago, had been ready to pound him into little boy pulp. But the farther they went, the more James wanted to turn and run back, box or no box. James had never walked these streets, nor even ridden down them in a carriage. This was the dark side of the city - dark as though a permanent cloud stretched over top of it just to keep out the light.

  The buildings here stood shabby and gray, rundown windows and faded doors looking like sad little faces, all in a row, with eyes turned down toward the ground. Every once in a while James glimpsed a candle-lit figure in a window or doorway. But the moment their eyes met, doors slammed, drapes snapped shut, or quick breaths snuffed out the light. The people on the streets looked no happier than the houses around them, filthy from head to toe, soot imbedded in the creases of the frowns lining their greasy faces. They scurried down the streets with their heads down or huddled in twos and threes on the street corners, whispering amongst themselves.

  “Is it much farther?” James asked, shivering as the cool night swept away the last warm traces of the day.

  “Not far,” the closest lug said over his shoulder. “Good thing, too. We don’t wanna to be late for court!”

  James had no doubt that this gang of thugs were liars as well as thieves, but the sure tone in their voices and the swift pace of their gait had James just hoping against hope that they were telling the truth. Those things and the fact that they could have easily pummeled James into the cracks of the cobblestones had they desired, but they had not. Such was their respect for the king.

  Finally, after walking for miles along streets as bleak and cheerless as James had ever seen, the four boys led James down an alleyway that seemed to drop straight into the earth itself. They tread slowly down the steep hill where, at the bottom, they came to an ancient church, abandoned, though still guarded by hideous gargoyles and wedged between an empty warehouse and a crumbling stack of mortar and stones overtop a city sewer. The boys fell to their knees and without hesitation crawled through a broken drain.

  “The king is down there?” James asked, just as the last boy was about to crawl into the hole. The tunnel was black as ink and the three toughs that had gone before had completely disappeared.

  The boy nodded “yes” and without a word vanished himself into the dark. But a moment later, James heard his voice echo back down the drain. “You’d be’ter hurry! Court’s nearly started!”

  James stared into the solid blackness, his knees and hands trembling nervously. A nightlight had lit James’s bedroom every night of his life from his first crib to the four-post bed he now missed so much, and the dark frightened him to the point of petrifaction. But James’s options were more than a little limited. So, drawing in a trembling breath and shaking the nervousness from his hands and feet, James mustered up the last of his courage and threw himself down the pipe.

  The tunnel’s wet, slimy ground stuck and slurped beneath James’s hands and knees, and scuttling bug feet and buzzing insect wings clicked in the dark. “I hate bugs,” James whimpered to himself. “I hate rats, I hate worms and snakes, and I hate red-headed thieves, and all of bloody London!” He would have continued listing the numerous objects of his disaffection, but the tunnel wasn’t that long, and a spot of light appeared before James’s eyes. As he neared the light, the sound of a great many voices echoed down the drain. Perhaps this was a secret passage into court after all, James wondered, hope flaring up once again in his chest for a brief moment. But when he finally reached the pipe’s end and stood up on the other side, he saw a sight he’d never imagined in a thousand dreams.

  Children were everywhere, hundreds of them. The space between the back of the church, the warehouse, and the sewer wall formed a courtyard indeed, but instead of nobles and ladies and consorts gossiping and paying homage to the king, which is what Aunt Margarita had explained what court was really all about, street urchins no less filthy and rough than th
e redhead and his gang filled the entire space. They sat on walls and perched in knocked-out warehouse windows, screaming and shouting at one another across the yard. They rolled dice and spun tops and hung from the gargoyles, sticking their tongues out at the hideous stone creatures.

  And the clothes they wore! Not one of them had a single piece that matched another. Breeches of gray wool matched with brown canvas jackets, red knit hats with blue stitched scarves, or a black shoe with a gold buckle on one foot and a brown shoe with silver on the other. It was as though a single piece of clothing had been lifted from every clothesline behind every house in London and passed out one at a time at random to every member of this kinder court. James stared at it all, dumbstruck. This wasn’t the court he’d expected to find, but he had to admit that it was the brightest burst of color he’d seen in the gray streets of this forgotten borough, a dirty stained-glass kaleidoscope of jabbering, hooting, and hollering pandemonium.

  Just when James thought the scene could grow no stranger, a young boy appeared from behind a decrepit arch at the back of the empty church, he raised a dinged-up, brassy horn to his lips and blew a warbling note that sounded not too unlike a dying goose. The courtyard grew silent in an instant. The games of dice and hopscotch and the running and wrestling ceased immediately, the center of the little gray square emptying out in a flash. The children gathered in groups, lining the walls and staring in anticipation at the boy before the arch.

  “Ladies and gents of London! Welcome one and all!” the boy shouted. He wore a scuffed-up silk hat and a dirty cravat about his neck, but he wore them with all the pride and dignity of a circus ringmaster.

  “Welcome!” the children shouted back at him, and the boy pranced about before the restless crowd.

  “Anover monf has slipped by under the noses of the truant officers!”

  “BOO!” the children clambered.

  “Out of the grasp of the priests and the nuns!”

  “BOO!”

  “Behind the back o’ our esteemed Constable Butterstreet and his bumblin’, tumblin’, stumblin’ band o’ lawmen!”

  “DOUBLE BOO!”

  “And who do we have to thank for that?”

  “The king, the king, the king…” The chant started slowly and quietly.

  “Who keeps us in order and eatin’ and sleepin’ and playin’?”

  “The king, the king, the king!” The volume rose with each successive shout.

  “And who fills our pockets up wif more than we ever go’ from any stinkin’, filthy, lyin’, no good grownup any of us ever met?”

  “THE KING, THE KING, THE KING!”

  “Ladies and Gents!” the boy cried, whipping the throng into a wild frenzy, “I give you the one, the only, untoppable, unstoppable, undroppable … THE — KING — OF — THIEVES!”

  The crowd cheered wildly as out from behind the archway stepped a full-grown man in black breeches and a black split-tail coat, glimmering, shined gold-buckle shoes on his feet, and one of the sharpest silk, tricorn hats even James had ever seen. He stood straight up and down, from head to toe as spindly as a spider, twirling a neat cane in his left hand like a rat might twirl its own tail. Behind him, in the shadows and nearly unnoticed by all else in the crowd save James, a squat man crept, with a huge thrummed cap too big for his head. The little man waddled more than walked, but as soon as he had appeared, he slunk back into a dark corner to remain unseen, as his flashy counterpart took center stage.

  The king, as the children of the court hailed him, held his long arms open to the crowd, smiling and soaking in their affection. He then took off his hat to reveal long strands of black hair greased back over his head, bowing deep and low to the thunderous applause of his miniature court. But while the other children clapped and whistled, James felt his stomach slide down to the bottom of his gut. Whoever this King of Thieves was, he was not the king James needed to see.

  “Welcome! Welcome! Welcome!” The king paraded before the mob. “My friends of the streets, my brothers and sisters of the alleys and sewers, I welcome you yet again to my court! Every clan of our kingdom is represented here tonight!”

  “The Liversham Lions!” A fierce group of boys roared and growled, and James thought they seemed very lionish indeed.

  “The Westminster Night Owls!” A rather bookish clan stepped forward, large, stolen glasses that didn’t quite fit properly on each of their clever faces.

  “The Redbridge Banshees!” An all-girl clan who nearly pierced James’s ears with their cry.

  “The Sutton Flyers!” Who were indeed a very acrobatic bunch.

  “And the Dragons of Kingston!”

  One of the dragons leapt out before his clan and blew a ball of fire like a carnival performer, and the entire court, James included, oohed at the bright flash of light. James noticed Big Red clapping and cheering his red head off at the name of this clan. He was a Dragon, James surmised, and for the first time he noticed on Red’s sleeves a crude patch of a serpent with a flame for a tongue. The Dragons were the biggest and boldest of all the children, and James noticed how the others shrank back just a little at the sound of the Dragons’ cheers.

  “Now that we’ve all been introduced —” the king began again, but was immediately interrupted by a high-pitched squeak from the back.

  “What about us?” the voice complained, and children all around the voice split to reveal what must have been the most pathetic excuse for a clan in this entirely bizarre court. There were only four members, and three of them were the shortest, most mousy set of boys James had ever seen. What was more, he could hardly tell one from the other, for they were without doubt three brothers. To add to all of that, the fourth member of the clan was a girl so innocent and sweet looking that James would never believe her capable of stealing a thing.

  “How could I forget?” the king said dryly. “The Ratt Brothers.” He flipped his hand toward the boys, and though they did their best to clap for themselves and puff out their chests, the entire congregation laughed and teased them off, shoving them back to the rear as the court of the King of Thieves returned to business.

  “Right!” the king said, plopping his hat back on his head and twirling his cane. “The rest of the world lives by its boneheaded rhyme and reason. Who needs ’em? Out here, we have our own rules. Just two of ’em! What are they?”

  “Take what’s yours!” was the first. “Share and share alike!” was the second.

  “So have you taken what was yours this month?” the king smiled knowingly, the children laughing at cheering at their own guile and cleverness. “Then it looks like it’s time for some sharin’.”

  The king opened his arms and children from every clan rushed in to pile their earnings from a month’s worth of picking pockets, shamming vendors, and looting unminded shops at the tall man’s feet. When the flock of depositing thieves cleared, they had left a mighty pile of gold necklaces, shiny coins, silver pieces, family heirlooms, and glimmering jewels nearly half as tall as James himself.

  “An excellent month’s work,” the king said, nodding with satisfaction. “Before long, we’ll have enough to make every one of our dreams come true. You know the promise I made to you: if you put the rich stuff into my hands I’ll turn it into your dreams. I’ll find us a place, a perfect place, where we can breathe easy and put up our feet for the rest of our lives! You can trust me, friends, I’ll put this all away in our secret vault, and when the time is right, we’ll spend it like it was sand on the beach!”

  The children roared their approval, chanting “the king!” over and over at the top of their lungs.

  “Now,” the king said, seemingly eager to wrap things up, “any other business needing tending this evening?”

  He was about to assume that there was none, and James also hoped the same, but to the king’s disappointment and James’s horror, Big Red spoke up.

  “’Scuse me, sir,” Red said, not looking nor sounding nearly as tough as a few hours ago, when his fist had been po
ised to smash James’s nose. He timidly stepped out from the ranks of the Dragons. “There is somethin’…”

  “And what is that?” the king asked, concealing only slightly well the ample hint of irritation in his voice.

  “Well, sir,” Red said, gulping down his nervousness before pressing on. “This boy over there.” Red pointed directly at James. All eyes in the court turned on him, and James wished he could disappear into the shadows like a ghost. “We nicked this box from him you see, but he said he was bringin’ it to you. We tried to open it, but we couldn’t. He says it’s because it’s been locked up tight by gypsy magic.”

  James heard a small gasp followed by a trickle of murmurs as the crowd of children grew oddly hushed and excited, craning their necks to gawk at the boy and his magic box. Even the king suddenly seemed quite a bit more interested, more interested than James particularly liked.

  “Let me see the box, Red,” the king said, patting Red on the head with a kind hand as the street thief handed him the box. “Well done. Bonus future share for the Dragons!” the King proclaimed, and the Dragons cheered loudly, clapping the now-swaggering Red on the shoulders.

  The King’s eyes turned on James. He studied him intently for what felt like ages with eyes so dark they seemed black within black - but James refused to look away. He had to recapture his box no matter who he had to go through to get it.

  “Well, well,” the king said. “We have a haughty one here don’t we?” The court of clans mocked James with false oohs and aahs. “Gypsy magic, eh,” the King said, smiling. “Let’s see what you’ve got for me.”

  The King reached with his long spidery fingers for the lid of the box. But no sooner than he did, he stopped cold. The briefest flash of surprise blinked across his face as he stared at the lid of the box. If James had not been quite so distracted by the hundreds of faces staring down at him, he would have recognized that brief glance for what it was with a chill: recognition. Somehow, someway, the King of Thieves knew the symbol carved into James’s box. But as soon as that fierce glance flared up it disappeared again. Reaching out with one long arm, the oily smile returning to his face, the king beckoned James closer with a curling, spindly finger.