“Just get the letter to him,” said Dodge. “Quick as you can.”
“Anything for a pal of Charles.” Harry and Dodger both glanced upwards again, then Harry returned his twinkling gaze to linger on Twill once more. “And for the fair-haired maiden whose image I shall carry with me as a balm over stormy seas!”
Dodger punched him hard in the arm and Twill felt herself flush hotly to the very tips of ears.
So while Twill perched on a barrel to add a few lines to the letter for young Oliver, Harry Bates entertained them with colourful tales of the dangers of the docks. “See that inn over there?” He indicated The One-Eyed Admiral. “That’s where the bodies from the coffin ships are brought. There’s a back room where they’re all laid out – though the official reports will say they were given a sailors’ burial at sea – and the medical students from Bart’s come and haggle for the parts!”
Twill couldn’t help but shudder at the thought as her pen scratched across the sheet of paper.
“And over there…” Master Bates cocked his tricorn hat towards a tumbledown hovel with darkened windows on the corner of Three Colts Street. “The most notorious opium den in all of Europe.”
Twill glanced in the direction he was pointing, wondering if Dodger or Harry had ever been inside that particular den of iniquity.
“And just there…” Harry indicated a house just a few doors down from where they were perched, its windows guarded by rusty iron bars that time and dirt had almost eaten away, and with such a look of desolation and neglect about the whole place it made Twill feel as if a shadow had fallen across her heart to look at it. “They say an old apothecary lives there,” said Harry. “He’ll sell you poisons that will melt your insides, or curdle your blood, or stop your brain so that you are a breathing living corpse.”
Twill was unsure whether to give credence to Harry’s tall tales any more than to his flirtation and flattery, but as if to prove the young man’s veracity, at this very moment the door to the hovel opened and there emerged from within a cloaked figure. A woman, her face fully veiled and her hood pulled low, accompanied by the apothecary – a tiny figure, twisted like an old stick and dressed in faded silken garments that had the appearance of pyjamas. The two were deep in conversation and Twill watched in fascination as the woman handed over a bundle of what looked like bank notes. In return, the apothecary reached into the pocket of his pyjama-garments and handed a tiny green bottle to the cloaked woman.
“What did I tell you!” said Harry, but Twill was straining her ears to hear what the mysterious pair were saying.
“How long?” Twill could just hear the veiled woman say to her companion. “How long will it take?”
“Patience is a virtue,” said the old man. “To he who waits good things will come!”
“You said the tisane would stop the old man’s brain, put him completely under our spell,” hissed the woman, glancing around like a conspirator.
“And as I promised has it not done?”
Twill turned to look at Dodger, who was listening to the exchange as intently as she.
“Yes, but soon … soon we need not death in life – but real death, you understand. No more breathing.”
Twill felt her heart skip a beat. Could they really be talking about murder?
“Ah – good Mistress Corney! Breath is like the wind,” said the apothecary. “When it will blow and wither, who knows.”
“No more of your riddles!” A little wind eddied through the docks, swirling away the woman’s next words out of hearing, so that Twill caught only the woman’s final question: “Will the tincture kill him?”
“Yes – in time, in time.”
“Told you,” said Harry. “Living corpses – poisonous apothecaries!”
“Shh!” said Dodger and Twill both at once, both straining to hear the woman’s next words.
“…but not before the boy returns,” she was saying. “We need him alive and under our command till then.”
“Only know this do the tides and the fates,” said the old man in a thin dry whisper that was barely audible.
The little wind whipped up again, carrying with it the veiled woman’s last few words and the hooded figure turned to go. As she did so, the breeze lifting off the sea caught her hood, which slipped just a little, and Twill caught a glimpse of her face – but did not recognise her.
“Corney,” Dodger was musing. “Now where ’ave I ’eard that name before?”
Then the sea breeze seemed to shift the tide in both their brains at once and he and Twill turned to each other before declaring in unison: “Mrs C!”
Chapter 23
In which time passes with no word from the boy Oliver
Time passed, as time will. Days rolled into nights and nights to days. London – that great stage of human drama – saw its share of entrances and exits, with little tragedies and comedies enacted daily in the houses of the great, and in the slum dwellings of the poor. Fortunes rose and fell, hearts were broken, babes born, men and women fell in love, married and breathed their last, and the great wheel that rules the fates of all – if indeed one believes all human drama to be scripted by any such higher power – rolled relentlessly onwards.
First Mate Bates set sail on the good ship Calliope and it is to be supposed he was making his way towards the Indies, but since nothing was heard of his progress and the sea can be a cruel mistress, that good sloop might have been caught in the doldrums, or taken captive by pirates, or swallowed whole by one of the giant sea monsters Master Harry claimed to have seen, for all Twill and Dodger knew.
And in the meantime the young pair were busy enough, dividing their time between pilfering from the rich, keeping watch on the Brownlow residence, foiling the Child Catchers and helping small blue boys escape from the Not-so-Benevolent-Boys’-Home-cum-Blacking-Factory. The latter two activities proved to be quite an amusing and vexing sport. For Bumble had employed into his child-catching service men possessed of more brawn than brains, which made tailing them and snatching their quarry out from under their very noses both deliciously easy and incredibly satisfying.
And increasingly necessary – for of late, alarming rumours had started to circulate that the Child Catchers had upped their activities. More and more children were being taken from the streets – and now they were also targeting girls.
A couple of little maidens were said to have been snatched from the Seven Dials; a young female selling posies outside old St Paul’s had been taken; and a chop-house girl near The George and Vulture was said to be missing too. The twins, Piccadilly and Trafalgar, claimed to have seen one such girl brought to the Benevolent, but since the tale was told in the secret pidgin-language that only the two of them fully understood, it was hard to be certain. In any case, Chelsea had warned all the Sisters to be more vigilant as they went about their work on the streets.
Sneaking small urchins out of the Benevolent Blacking Factory proved more difficult than it might be supposed, but on this exercise Dodger was hell-bent with a determination that seemed to be borne out of ancient rage. Fagin, however, seemed equally hell-bent on thwarting such efforts. He kept a jealous eye on his illicit enterprise – every door bolted triple, every window barred twice over, every access point cut off. But Dodger was undeterred.
“The old devil ain’t giving so much as an inch,” complained Dodger. “He don’t even take the boys out to church of a Sunday no more. ’E’s afraid the good folks of Clerkenwell would spot their peacock-coloured faces an’ smell a rat.”
There were some successful rescue attempts. They managed to snatch one sky-blue child by grabbing him when he answered the great iron gates to usher in the Child Catchers. Another they pulled up through the small window through which Twill had first spied the activities of the blacking factory. But these odd successes relied heavily on luck and ever-narrowing opportunities.
“We needs to find another way to confound the old devil!” declared Dodger.
It was Tommy Tickle
who uncovered a chink in the citadel. For it was he who informed Dodger that each Friday night – long past midnight – a barge made its way up the inky poison of the Fleet river and moored up by the steps behind the house of the Benevolent. A signal from the lantern on board, an answering call from a window above, the grate in the sluice slid open, and the crates of blacking were loaded up on to the barge. This exercise required several boys to handle the cargo, their blue faces lit up like purple pennies in the moonlight, while Mr Fagin watched on, scowling from beneath his red eyebrows.
After Tommy Tickle first divulged details of this weekly enterprise, Dodger and Twill watched from a hidden place beneath a rotting landing stage on the opposite bank, but thereafter they devised a plan. And the next week when the barge appeared, they were ready. While old Fagin was in conference with his supplier, Dodger slipped along the bank and grabbed a blue child.
This small rickety boy – unaware that he was being rescued and more accustomed to beatings than benevolence – struggled like a fish in Dodger’s arms and made such a deal of squealing that Dodger had to cover his mouth lest he be heard. Twill held the fortunate child’s legs and Dodger his arms, and they managed – not without difficulty – to pull him down to their hiding place beneath the moorings.
“Quiet, ya young wretch!” declared Dodger. “Don’t you know youse bein’ rescued?”
“Dodger?” The small plummy face looked up at Dodger with astonishment and wonder.
“One an’ the same! Now, stay still or you’ll have us all into the water,” said Dodger firmly, though not unkindly. “An’ lord only knows what’s in there’ll kill us as soon as we take a mouthful!”
The three crouched close to the bank, and a curious rat scuttled up beside them to survey the scene.
Mr Fagin was in earnest conference with the man on the barge, who handed over a bag that seemed to bulge with coins.
“He’s rakin’ it in!” whispered the Dodger darkly. “Makin’ the boys work like dogs, so ’e can hoard like a miserly dragon, sittin’ on his piles of gold.”
Twill thought she saw more than anger in Dodger’s eyes as he beheld Fagin. He had the look of a child abandoned. A look of heartbreak and betrayal.
“I’d like to throttle that miserly old devil and drown him in the Fleet!” Dodger declared.
“Not yet,” said Twill, putting a hand on his arm. “Remember what we said?”
“I remember!” said Dodger darkly.
The pair had sat up late at night trying to figure out the tangled web woven by the nefarious players in the Child-Catching-Blacking-Factory-Brownlow game and had come to a pretty fair understanding of the state of affairs – but not yet a complete one. There were certain pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that they had not yet slotted into place, and till they did, they needed to proceed with caution.
“If you blow Fagin’s cover now, we won’t find out what they’re up to next. And then we won’t be able to stop them,” Twill reminded him. “We need to wait for Oliver.”
“But what if ’e don’t come?” said Dodger, and Twill saw the haunted look in his eyes that had been there more and more since the reappearance of Fagin. “Or if ’e’s worse ’an useless. What then?”
“I don’t know,” said Twill. “But nobody’s gonna listen to a pair of street urchins. All we can do is keep trying to help boys escape and stop more being captured – and wait.”
“Wait for what?”
“I don’t know,” said Twill. “But something will happen. Something always does.”
Chapter 24
In which something happens, as something always does
Twill was right, of course, and – as things transpired – “something” happened sooner rather than later. They managed to get the small blue boy back to the printing press, where a system had been put in place for the cleansing and care of escapees from the Benevolent. The Sassy Sisters set right to work, scrubbing and feeding and fussing over the latest prison breaker, who was greeted joyfully by his former companions. The latest arrival – who had no memory of what his name was, though Tommy Tickle said the boys called him Nemo – was then despatched to the boys’ quarters, designated by a sign, imperfectly composed by young Angel, which read “Boys onlee! No gurls”.
But just as everyone was celebrating the success of the new rescue method, the door to the printing press slammed open, and Fleet and Sloane entered, looking red-faced and desperate.
“They’ve taken Angel!” they cried in unison.
“What?” Twill was on her feet immediately.
“Who has? Who’s taken her?” This was Dodger.
“Tell us what you saw!” demanded Chelsea.
“We was going down by Greenhill Rents when it happened!” Sloane’s one good eye was filled with alarm and she was struggling to catch her breath.
Her panting companion – who looked as if she’d taken a bath in the filthy river that shared her name – picked up the story. “We was hanging round by the Fortune of War pub…”
“Cos the doctors from the hospital drink there, which make it easy pickin’s…”
“They don’t stand too close to one another cos they stinks, see,” said Fleet, who didn’t smell too flavoursome herself just then.
“Stinks?” The question came from Tommy Tickle.
“Of death,” said Sloane, the scar on her face twitching with anxiety as she spoke. “Them medical students cuts up dead bodies to practise on – so they smells of the grave!”
“Folks keeps their distance – makes it easy to weave in an’ out, snatch wot they got in their pockets,” Fleet concluded.
“Right – um, I see,” said Twill.
“Forget that, what ’appened?” demanded Dodger. “What ’appened to Angel?”
“Well, we was just about to relieve a fancy gent of a very nice pocket watch when the Child Catchers appears!” said Sloane. “It was the big one wot looks like a bulldog, an’ that small scrawny one wiv no teeth they calls the Rat.”
“We scarpered, a’ course – hid in the gatehouse of old St Bart’s Church,” said Fleet. “But then we sees the little match girl – you know the one wot sells her wares on the corner of Cowcross Street?”
“The one wiv a stump for a leg?” asked Chelsea.
“Tha’s ’er,” said Sloane. “You remember, we invited ’er to join the Sisterhood back in the spring but she said she’d on’y ’old us back – too slow. Best stick to sellin’ ’er matches.”
“I remember,” said Chelsea, shaking her head with a frown. “We coulda found a place for ’er. Shoulda made ’er come!”
“Well, since then our little Angel always takes ’er a crust of bread when she can spare it,” said Sloane.
“An’ often when she can’t,” said Fleet.
“Too kind for her own good, our Angel!” said Chelsea. “Go on – what happens next?”
“Well, the match girl was sittin’ there, an’ then the Child Catchers swoop down on her.”
“So it’s true – they are after girls now!” exclaimed Battersea, her squashed pug-like face creased in alarm.
“The Bulldog, ’e says: ‘We are takin’ you under the protection of the City Auf-orities’,” said Sloane, in a fair imitation of the larger of the two brutish Child Catchers. “‘You ’ave nothin’ to fear.’”
“Not likely!” said Dodger.
“An they’s talkin’ ’bout takin’ her to – what did they call it?” Sloane glanced at her companion before adding, “An In-sti-toot for the Edificalation and Betterment of Young Ladies of Ill Fortune.”
Dodger and Twill looked at each other. “Never ’eard of it!” says Dodger.
“Doesn’t sound good, though,” said Twill.
“Sounds worse ’an the Benevolent Home, if you ask me!” added Trafalgar.
“So then what happened?” asked Twill, desperately anxious to learn of Angel’s fate.
“Well, the little match girl was crying as piteously as can be,” said Sloane, her one eye filling w
ith tears as she recalled the scene. “An’ the Bulldog was dragging her by ’er arm, an’ the Rat had the other arm, an’ nobody done nuffin’ to stop it. None of them doctors wot have taken an oath to do no ’arm. Not one!”
“An’ afore we knows it, Angel wos over there, beating on the Child Catchers’ legs wiv ’er little fists, tellin’ them to let go,” said Fleet. “She bit the big one, she did, an’ ’e gave a yelp like a dog in lime.”
“I taught her that move!” said Chelsea proudly.
“Then she kicked the Rat in the shins!” added Sloane. “He howled like the rodent ’e is!”
“Tha’s my gal!” said Dodger, like a beaming parent. “Bigger they are, the ’arder they fall – tha’s wot I always told ’er!”
“But what happened?” asked Twill.
“So the Bulldog, ’e lets go of the little match girl and turns his truncheon on Angel. An’ the Rat, ’e pulls ’er up by the hair, and afore we knows it she’s down in the cobbles wiv blood runnin’ over ’er face.”
“No!” Twill gasped.
“And then they were scooping her up – taking her off, leaving the little match girl crying in the road.”
“Ditn’t you try to stop ’em?” demanded Dodger.
“A’ course we did!” protested Sloane, despair written all over her lopsided face. “We followed ’em, ran hell for leather trying to catch ’em, but there were crowds outside Newgate—”
“There’s a hangin’ later this morning,” added Fleet, equally distressed. “It was like a country fayre down there – folks camped out, hawkers sellin’ hot beef rolls and ale, and a fiddler playin’.”
“We tried to keep on ’em – tried all we could. Fleet even got a chamber pot emptied on her head for her pains.”
They all glanced at Fleet, as the source of her more-than-usually pungent smell became apparent. “But we lost ’em in the crowd,” said Fleet, too sorrowful to care about the stink.
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