Jim Morgan and the King of Thieves

by James Matlack Raney

“What a nice bird,” Lacey said happily as she and Jim watched the raven fly over the rooftops of London.

  “Oh, yeah, compared to all of the nasty ones you’ve met,” Jim threw in, still quite miffed that he had no idea how the raven knew so many details about his dire situation.

  “Now don’t you start too, Jim,” Lacey said. “We have enough grumpiness waiting for us at home if you don’t remember.”

  “I remember.” Jim kicked some snow at his feet, finally tearing his eyes from the place in the clouds where the bird had flown.

  “What are we going to do about that, anyway?” Lacey asked.

  “I don’t know, Lacey,” Jim said, starting for home with Lacey beside him, his hands in his pockets, and his mind slowly returning to the unhappy thoughts that had occupied him when he first began this oddly eventful walk. “Do you think maybe they’ll just get over it and get back to normal?”

  “Peter and Paul, maybe,” Lacey said. “But without George, they won’t ever be the same. They do what he does, if you know what I mean. All George ever talked about was the day we would leave here. He talks about liking life on the streets and being happy with stealing coins and apples, but when you get to know him a bit more, you realize he’s just trying to act tough for his brothers. All he really wants is for them and us to find something better, you know?”

  “Yeah, I do,” Jim said, suddenly feeling a little guilty for only thinking about how his dreams were falling apart, and not giving a thought for what George must be feeling. George had been betrayed by someone he trusted, just as Jim had been tricked by Aunt Margarita. So before he and Lacey reached the hole in the cellar beneath the shoe factory, the two of them decided to be patient with the Ratts and see if their funk would wear off before long. But Jim’s mind also lingered on the appearance of the talking raven, and on the frightening memory of its owner, the Shadow Pirate. Whatever they were up too, Jim imagined, he was sure it was hardly good news for he and his friends.

  TWENTY–TWO

  s it turned out, the talking raven’s appearance had not accompanied immediate disaster for Jim, but riding out the Ratts’ slump was a task easier said than done. George remained as intolerable as ever, although he had ceased saying mean things to Lacey. Jim imagined George still felt fairly bad about what he had said before, but nevertheless, his poor mood did nothing to improve the spirits of Peter and Paul, who mostly sat around saying little and doing less. While all that might have made life in the little cellar nothing but misery for Jim and Lacey, the situation actually resulted in an unforeseen benefit. Since the Ratts were no longer in the business of thieving for the majority of the food and necessities, it fell to Jim and Lacey to improve their own skills and pick up the slack.

  At first, the results were mixed, which might be more than fair to poor Jim, and the rewards meager, with many attempts ending in mad dashes from Butterstreet and the King’s Men. But as the cold winter wore on, Jim noticed more and more that he had to flee less and less. His fingers became deft at thieving, and his eyes grew sharp. But more than that, Jim became pluckier by the day, more daring and adventurous than he’d ever been, trying new maneuvers and even inventing a couple of his own to relieve some of London’s wealthiest of a bit of their treasure. There was one move in particular he liked called the Kaiser’s Underpants, which would have made even George proud.

  As for Lacey, she began to leave kernels of corn and seed outside the little hole in the cellar every day, and sure enough, every once in a while Cornelius the raven would drop in for a bite and some friendly words. Yet Jim was nothing but suspicious.

  “How do you know where our hole is, bird?” Jim demanded one day.

  “His name is Cornelius, boy,” Lacey said, petting the raven on the head. “He really is rude, isn’t he, Mister Cornelius?”

  “An absolute tragedy of manners,” the bird harrumphed. “A metaphorical shipwreck of chivalry!”

  But Jim hardly cared. He didn’t entirely trust the bird, and still feared his shadowy master even more. Those two knew something, something the bird wasn’t telling Jim. Whenever Cornelius would ask Jim questions about his latest misadventures or about his life before, Jim purposely ignored the raven, insisting that he had to go out and lift some more coal for the stove.

  But on days when Jim and Lacey weren’t out thieving or making small talk with their new friend, Jim also made good on his promise to teach Lacey to read, but only Lacey, for George and his brothers refused to participate in such rubbish (even though when George stepped out or went to sleep, Peter and Paul would lean in extra close and pay more than a little attention). It was slow going at first for certain, and both Jim and Lacey got frustrated enough with each other to stomp to opposite sides of the cellar and sulk for a bit, and this, coupled with the Ratts’ already sour disposition, made the cellar at those times a most inhospitable place to be indeed.

  On one such uncongenial day, after Jim and Lacey had lifted enough coal, a couple of loaves of bread, and a strip or two of jerky to last them for a few days, they left the Ratts to their arguing and wrestling and stepped out into the early evening for some air.

  The streets of London seemed strangely crowded for this time of evening, all the shop windows and inns alive and blinking with freshly lit candles, snow drifting ever so lightly to decorate the rooftops, and the winter cold feeling somehow less than deathly for the first time in many weeks. Jim and Lacey breathed deeply as they came to the market square, the smells of fresh baked breads, cinnamon on roasted apples, and crackling meat on spits drenching the air. Lacey looked about curiously as Jim stuck his tongue out to catch a snowflake.

  “It’s awfully busy tonight, isn’t it, Jim?”

  “Yep,” Jim agreed, keeping his eyes fixed on his next snowflake.

  “Oooh!” Lacey suddenly stopped, jerking Jim back by his coat sleeve and causing him to miss his snowflake. “Here’s another one I want to try!”

  “Again?” Jim groaned, but Lacey ignored him.

  “T-t-t-imothy of Dunkrick - no, I mean, Dunkirk…”

  Jim tapped his foot on the ground as Lacey kept on spelling out the words to Timothy of Dunkirk’s Barber Service shingle. She must have read almost twenty-five signs in the last two days, and Jim was wondering if it were possible to unteach her how to read, just so that they could get to wherever they were going in less than three hours.

  “Jim, isn’t reading wonderful?”

  “Oh, yes, extraordinary,” Jim said wryly, watching crowds of people stream into a cathedral not too far away. “Is it Sunday already, Lacey?”

  “I don’t think so, Jim — oooh, another one, look at this one, look at this one!” Lacey dashed over to a nearby shop where the owner had cleverly twisted some branches into the shapes of letters in the window. “That’s so beautiful, Jim! Let me read it!”

  “If you must,” Jim grumbled. He didn’t even bother to read the sign himself, but instead tried to catch another snowflake on the tip of his outstretched tongue.

  “Happy Christmas,” Lacey slowly made out.

  “I’m sorry?” Jim said, having not quite heard her in his snow-catching efforts.

  “Happy Christmas!” Lacey cried and clapped her hands together. “Jim, that’s why everybody’s about tonight - it’s Christmas Eve! Happy Christmas!”

  “Oh, I suppose it is,” Jim said, shrugging his shoulders and starting back down the street.

  “Jim Morgan!” Lacey suddenly put on her motherly tone and rushed up beside Jim as he walked. “I said Happy Christmas to you and you didn’t say it back. Don’t you like Christmas?”

  “Well,” Jim replied with a casual nod, not really thinking about what he was saying, “I used to, but you know, there aren’t really presents or parties or things like that out here, so I guess I wasn’t really looking forward to it. Especially not this year.”

  “Out here? What do you mean by, out here?” Lacey crossed her arms, her blue eyes flashing like lightning.

  “Er … nothing, I
just meant …” Jim tried to backpedal as fast as he could, thinking up something to smooth things over, but he knew that once Lacey’s eyes blazed bright and bold, there was little chance of getting any words in edgewise.

  “My family never had any of those things: gifts, or parties, or a big cooked goose, or anything, but we still had Christmas! We sang songs and we told stories, and it was the most wonderful thing in the world!” Lacey’s eyes started to get wet and her chin quivered a bit. Jim felt an increasingly sore feeling well up in the pit of his stomach.

  “Lacey, that’s not what I meant!”

  “Oh, you shut up Jim Morgan! Now you know good and well that we haven’t pestered you at all about where you came from or what was in your stupid box, but just because you had certain things back there, doesn’t mean that we weren’t also enjoying ourselves out here.”

  “Oh, now come off it, Lacey!” Jim barked back. “You know that’s not what I meant. In fact, why don’t we go get some things and have a little celebration of our own? It will be fun! I’ll get some muffins and buns and a bit of roasted bird and you could get some roasted apples and a bit of green stuff. Who knows, maybe it will cheer up the stinkers back at the cellar.” Jim tried to smile, but Lacey’s tearful eyes suddenly erupted into all-out crying, and she stomped her foot in rage.

  “Jim Morgan!” she screamed. “We can’t steal on Christmas! Oh, you just don’t get it at all, do you? Oh, I’m so angry I could scream!”

  “You already are, if you can imagine,” Jim said timidly, and then Lacey really did scream, turning on her heel and marching toward home.

  “I’m going home, Jim Morgan, and you can just stay out here and freeze for all I care!” Then she stopped, turned around once more, and glared at Jim one last time. “And Happy Christmas!”

  Jim let out a long sigh and just scuffed his feet on the snowy cobblestone as he shook his head.

  “Tricky creatures to understand, aren’t they?” an unnaturally squawky voice said from somewhere above Jim’s head. He looked up to find Cornelius the raven perched atop a nearby shingle, leaning against the wall on one wing like a street urchin on a corner. “I once composed a poem of the beauty and incomprehensibility of women after I had met the most perplexing mermaid. Would you like to hear it?”

  “There’s no such thing as mermaids,” Jim said sulkily, kicking at some snow at his feet.

  “This coming from the boy with the magically locked box conversing with the talking raven,” the bird replied.

  “Fine then,” Jim said. “Even if there are mermaids, I still don’t want to hear about it.” He turned on his heel and started down the street, but Cornelius fluttered over his head, landing on the corner of the next building’s roof.

  “Feeling a bit rotten, are we? A pity considering the holiday.”

  “Oh, not you too,” Jim said with a sigh.

  “Oh, my dear boy, but I have had such Christmases! I could regale you with the tales of the feasts and the joys … ahhh.” The bird sighed with the memories. “It really is a magical time of year.”

  “Oh posh!” Jim shouted up at the bird, now feeling especially grumpy. “There’s no such thing as…as …”

  “Magic?” The raven smiled and shook its head. “Now Jim Morgan, we both know better than that, don’t we?”

  “Well I don’t see what’s so wonderful about it. It’s just another day as far as I’m concerned.”

  “Is it now?” Cornelius said, fluttering down to the windowsill of the next shop. Jim walked up beside him and looked in through the frosty glass. It was a toyshop, wooden tops lying in rows on tables, rocking horses tipping back and forth on the floor, and straw dolls lining the shelves inside. A couple stood by the wrapping counter, putting a few coins into the shopkeeper’s hands, from the look of their clothes, which were about as tattered as the Jim’s, Jim imagined those coppers may have been the last those people had. But smiles decorated their faces as the shopkeeper carefully wrapped the wooden soldier in cloth and handed it across the counter.

  “Those in there certainly believe in the magic, don’t they?” Cornelius offered, looking away from the window and into Jim’s face. He opened his beak to say more, when the door to the shop opened and an old man in a fine winter coat and fur-lined hat came out of the store with several packages beneath his arms. His plump old face was flushed with the cold, but he smiled in the mist of his breath. He looked over at Jim, who was now staring into the shop window all by himself, for Cornelius had fluttered up to the roof when the man had looked their way.

  “Happy Christmas, young man,” the old gentleman said to Jim.

  “Happy Christmas, sir.”

  “Shouldn’t we be running along home, now? It’s awfully cold tonight.”

  Normally Jim and the Ratts told such marvelous lies when people asked them about home and parents, to keep off the suspicion, but for some reason those, lies failed Jim completely. “I … I don’t …” was all Jim could say before the huskiness in his voice stopped him from talking.

  The man looked at Jim from underneath his thick hat and bushy white eyebrows for a long moment, and Jim wondered if he was thinking of a way to trick Jim into following him to St. Anne’s or to Butterstreet’s. But then the gentleman smiled and reached deep into his pocket with his free hand. He pulled out an entire crown and held it out toward Jim. Jim Morgan knew he was a proud fellow, but that night, in the falling snow, he reached out and took the large coin in his cold little hand.

  “Peace on earth, good will toward men,” the old man said rather quietly. “Happy Christmas, son.”

  “Happy Christmas, sir,” Jim said again, and the old man smiled and walked off into the night. The thickness in Jim’s throat did not go away - in fact, it hardened ever so slightly in a lump, and Jim suddenly felt like an invisible hand was pinching his nose and watering his eyes.

  Jim looked into the store window again and then back down into his palm. For the first time in many months, Jim had money that was his own. It was not stolen, but it was given. It was all his. For a quick second he wondered what fantastic things he could buy with an entire crown all to himself. There were the tops, and the wooden soldiers, and oh, look, sweets…but then, just as he was about to rush into the store, another thought stole into Jim’s mind. He dwelt on that thought for a time, a smile spreading across his face, some warmth spreading into his arms and legs from within his very self, the cold of the night suddenly feeling not so oppressive or deep.

  Jim burst into the hole of the cellar with snow falling off his shoulders and hat. “Hello, George, Peter and Paul!” he cried. “Happy Christmas!” Now, ever since the death of his father, Jim had become a rather serious boy, but just then he could not keep the smile from his face. From the way the three Ratt brothers stared at him as he leapt into the light of the stove, Jim thought for a moment that they hardly even recognized him.

  “Happy what?” George said rather sulkily, but Peter and Paul smiled back as though they’d been waiting to smile for weeks and only now just found the joy to do so.

  “Happy Christmas, I said!” Jim repeated. “Didn’t you know? It’s Christmas Eve!”

  “Who bloody well cares?” George seemed intent on staying as cranky as possible, but Jim remembered that he felt that same way staring into that barrel of rainwater until the reflection’s of his friends’ faces appeared beside his own.

  “Well, I do.” Jim kept the smile on his face. “And now you have to as well.”

  From behind his back, Jim pulled out four packages wrapped in brown paper and tied up with string.

  “What are those?” Paul asked eagerly, but Jim could tell he already knew and just couldn’t believe it.

  “They’re presents, Paul,” Jim said, handing both Peter and Paul a gift-wrapped present each. The two boys stared at Jim, then at each other, then tore the brown paper to bits.

  “Toy soldiers!” they cried together, immediately engaging their wooden troopers in battle before laughing aloud and seizi
ng Jim in a giant bear hug.

  “Thanks, Jim!” Peter said.

  “Happy Christmas, Jim!” Paul’s smile covered the entire bottom half of his face.

  With all the shouting and joyous ruckus, George wandered over to where his brothers and Jim stood on a carpet of shredded paper. He looked at Paul and Peter, playing happily with their toys, then he looked at Jim, and then he looked down at the other brown paper-wrapped gift in Jim’s hand.

  “Jim … I …” George mumbled.

  “George, you silly goose,” Jim said, pushing the package into George’s hands. “This is a small thing, really. Without you, I don’t know where I’d be right now.”

  George took the package and opened it up. It was a tricorn hat, maroon with gold threads along the edges. He stared at it for a few moments and then threw his cap off and set the hat on his head. With a sprinkling of awe in their eyes, Jim, Paul, and Peter gazed at George in his new hat.

  “George, you’re—” Peter began.

  “—just like a gentleman of London.” Paul said, finishing the thought. George blushed a bit, and for the first time in weeks, like his brothers, he smiled, some of the old Ratt mischief seeping back into his eyes.

  Then Jim looked past the Ratts to a pile of potato sacks in the corner, where Lacey sat with her arms folded over her chest and a rather sour countenance on her face. Jim walked slowly over, the last package in his hands.

  “I told you earlier, Jim Morgan,” Lacey said without looking at him. “I don’t steal on Christmas, and I don’t want anything that was stolen on Christmas.”

  “So do you think I lifted the wrapping paper and string as well, and tied them up in the middle of the street with no one noticing? I didn’t steal them, Lacey. And I didn’t get them with money that I stole. It’s a real present. A real one. Happy Christmas, Lacey.”

  Jim watched as Lacey’s angry face slowly melted into a believing smile, and she took the package into her hands, carefully unwrapping it. She undid the little string and peeled back the paper with such care so that not one corner or edge was ripped or tattered. When she found a little cloth doll with blonde yarn hair, dressed in a little yellow dress, resting in the crinkled folds of the paper, she looked up at Jim with wonder in her eyes.