by Gaelen Foley
When Eddie shook his head in fright, O’Dell flipped a nod at Tyburn Tim, who eased his hand off Eddie’s mouth. The boy gasped for breath, his chest heaving.
“Now, then, Master Eddie. You know who we are, don’t ye?”
“Aye, sir. The Jackals.”
“That’s right. And pretty soon, all you see around you is goin’ to be our turf. Why do you want to cast your lot with a pack of poltroons like the Fire Hawks, Eddie? A plucky little knuckler like you can do better. We think you should join wid’ us.”
Eddie held very still. O’Dell’s tone was sly and silky, but the hard, wild glitter in his blue eye scared him.
“Aye, now you’re listening, ain’t ye?” O’Dell reached into his pocket, pulled out a shilling, and held it up in front of Eddie’s face. “I’m gonna give this to you, little Master Eddie.” He dropped the coin in Eddie’s coat pocket. “There’s plenty more where that came from if you do what I ask.”
“And if I don’t?” he asked defiantly, trying to be as brave as Blade.
O’Dell laughed gruffly and turned to his mates. “I told you he had pluck.”
Eddie looked at him warily.
O’Dell turned back to him with a cold, indulgent smile. “If you don’t, I’ll have Bloody Fred here skin you alive and make your hide into my wallet.”
Eddie gasped, jolting back against the wall at the horrible threat. When he looked up at the ex-Bedlamite, Fred held up his knife and breathed on it with a smile, polishing the blade with his dirty sleeve. For a second, he felt he might puke. There was no doubt in his mind that Bloody Fred would happily flay him and make him into a wallet.
Rookery lore claimed that Bloody Fred had once murdered and eaten one of his former landlords.
“What do you want with me?” Eddie cried, turning to O’Dell.
O’Dell smiled, edged closer, and dropped his voice. “I want you to become my spy, Eddie. I want to know where and when Blade means to carry out his next housebreakin’.”
“Why?” Eddie breathed, wide-eyed.
“Don’t ask foolish questions, laddie. And don’t even think about double-crossin’ me, because I’ll find out and let Fred have at you. You’ll do as I ask, or you’ll wish you was never born.” With that, O’Dell let him go.
Eddie slipped free and ran away as fast as his pumping legs could carry him.
CHAPTER FIVE
Reclining on his tent-bed under the draped veils, a cheroot dangling from his lips, Blade stared sullenly across the room at the spot where the Canaletto had sat. Earlier today he had pawned the painting to buy more guns for his war against the Jackals. It was no mean trick moving a one-of-a-kind work of art through the black market, but his acquaintances in the art specialty were reliable and discreet. Now the aura of glamor that had visited his drab cell had fled, leaving it as it had always been, mean and hard and bare. The walls were cracked, the ceiling stained, and every damned time it rained, the roof leaked.
With an exhalation of smoke, he rested his elbow on his bent knee and lifted his hand to gaze at the diamond necklace wrapped around his fist like a tiny, glittering lifeline. What a devil that girl was, leaving it here for him to find.
His stare was faraway as he brooded on what to make of the gift. What did it mean? His male pride bristled; his survivor’s wariness warned of a thousand dangers; hope danced painfully like flickering flames torturing his implacable will. By God, he was no charity boy. His pride would not countenance her pity. For all he knew, she had left the necklace as a trap, setting him up with the outrageous donation only to accuse him of stealing it. It would be a neat means of revenge for returning her to her family and to the unwanted marriage that awaited her.
But maybe, just maybe, came his vulnerable heart’s small whisper, she had left it because she had seen something good in him. Something worth saving. The possibility that this was a gift freely given simply because she had thought him worthy shook him. And as he stared into the glittering facets of the diamond, brilliant in the dusty daylight slanting through the window into his room, his mind drifted back to a day long ago, the day he had learned, for once and for all, that he was worth nothing, to memories he rarely dared revisit of Cornwall and the sun’s bright glitter on the wide blue sea…
“Biiill-yyy!”
“Look at that one, Billy!”
“I’m looking!”
Laughter. Boyish voices.
The low-sinking sun glinted gold off the brass folding telescope as Billy Albright braced his foot on the gunwale and steadied his aim against the skiff’s pitching, the salt wind riffling through his flaxen hair. One suspender fell over his shoulder, and the breeze billowed through his loose white shirt as he stared through his father’s borrowed telescope at the bewhiskered gray Atlantic seals posturing and barking at each other from their various perches upon the greenish black rocks. Before the days of King Arthur, the giant of Portreath had hurled the boulders there to help him catch his supper in the form of unsuspecting ships. Already told them that one. Every inch of this corner of Cornwall had an old legend or strange tale attached to it. Billy racked his brain for another with which to regale his two schoolmates, who had come home from Eton with him for the spring holiday.
All three boys were thirteen years old. Reg Bentinck, dark-eyed and slightly anemic, was fishing excitedly off the port bow, while freckled Justin Church, with his shock of carrot-red hair, minded the oars and tossed up bits of bread now and then to the screeching gulls that tirelessly flapped apace with them. Billy was anxious that his guests should not grow bored. He had never had friends to stay with him before—he was not sure he could say he’d ever been allowed to have friends before—but now that he was a proud Etonian, his whole life was different.
Many of the new boys had been wretched with homesickness during Michaelmas Half, but not him. For him, school was just the thing. Outside the reach of his father’s dark shadow, he had begun to thrive. In the span of one short term, the masters at Eton had already begun to fortify his bravado with true confidence. He had been astonished to find that, contrary to his father’s frequent assertions, he was actually rather intelligent.
At home he was treated with all the welcome of a rabid stray dog, but at school, he was shocked to find himself well liked, even popular, thanks to his skill at fives, his willingness to impress the other boys with reckless feats of daring, his occasional cheekiness to the teachers, and the word lord in front of his name. Lord William Spencer Albright, to be exact, second son of the marquess of Truro and St. Austell.
It was the last factor that had gained him his friends’ company for the spring holiday. Reg and Justin were of the landed gentry and the lower nobility; their parents had practically tossed them headlong into the coach upon hearing that their offspring had been invited by the younger son of a marquess to spend the break at His Lordship’s castle in Cornwall. Amid many hurrahs, the three boys had been on their way. Of course, if Reg and Justin’s parents really knew his father, he mused with a cynicism beyond his years, they would think differently. In any case, all that concerned him now was making it through the break and getting back to school without incident.
His young face hardened as he slowly lowered the telescope from his eye. He would never admit to it aloud, but the truth was, he had brought Reg and Justin home with him not merely for their jolly company, but out of the rather desperate hope that their presence would help to mitigate his father’s inevitable black spells.
Thank God the old blighter was not expected back until the day after tomorrow, he thought. Snapping his father’s telescope shut with a vengeful snick, he turned to his companions, pink-cheeked with sun and wind, a sparkle of mischief in his eyes.
“Want to see some smugglers’ caves?”
“Real smugglers?” Justin cried, turning to him, the wind running riot through his carroty hair.
Billy nodded with cool bravado. “Coast is crawlin’ with ’em.”
“Aye, Captain!” Justin yelled, but Reg pal
ed and clung to the gunwale with a white-knuckled grip as the little boat rode the blue waves past the towering, folded cliffs.
“It sounds a bit…dangerous.”
“It is.” Billy flashed him a fearless grin, handed the telescope back to Reg, and slid down jauntily at the oars. Justin took his place at the bow to catch the sea spray on his face, while Billy rowed hard against the seething sea.
He was a strong boy, taller than the others. Everyone said he was going to be big like Papa, for he was already as broad across as his seventeen-year-old brother, Percy.
Beneath the stark, stone ruins of an ancient fort high upon the sun-baked pinnacles, he rowed past the round-mouthed cave where a fortune in black-market goods was rumored to be stored. All the girls around here were in love with the romantic dashing smugglers. With a cocksure look, he asked his friends if they wanted to go and have a look inside the caves, but was secretly relieved when both shook their heads in fright. They were glad enough not to have spotted the French fleet and Boney come to carry out his longstanding threat to invade England.
At length, Billy rowed them back to the short stretch of beach from which they had set sail that morning. While sunset smoldered in the west behind them, he and Justin hopped out of the boat, barefooted, their trousers rolled up around their shins, and dragged the skiff back up onto the golden sands. Their bellies rumbling, they climbed up onto the dramatic vantage point of the promontory to have their picnic of Cornish pasty and West Country cheese washed down with a jug of delicious scrumpy.
They sat in contented silence for a while, watching sunset light the ocean, a spreading stain of liquid gold. The sky glowed fierce fiery orange and pink streaked with purple, while restful blue stole down softly from the east, lighting the little stars one by one. Billy felt lulled by the rhythmic thunder of the waves buffeting the rocks below like a mother’s heartbeat.
Slowly the sea deepened to indigo and the sky to black, and the lighthouse on the small rocky islet a league offshore sent its beam sweeping out over the water and the rocks where the seals snuggled down for the night. The boys remembered then that Cook had promised them clotted cream with black treacle when they returned. They climbed to their feet; gathered up their play pirate swords and fishing rods, their catch of bream and monkfish in the bucket, their finds of seashells and interesting rocks, bits of serpentine and feldspar wrapped securely in a polka-dotted neckerchief; and trudged homeward through the twilight.
Billy slipped the telescope into the deep pocket of his coat just as he walked through an odd chilly patch. The misty coolness grazed his cheeks like a ghost wafting past. The sensation raised the hackles on his nape, but then, as the boys stepped up onto the crest of the ridge, the towers of Torcarrow came into sight, then the rest of the sprawling pile. Torcarrow consisted of a fourteenth-century fortified manor house appended to an ancient towered keep overlooking the sea, for the warrior lords of Truro and St. Austell had guarded Cornwall against French invaders for nearly three hundred years.
But as Billy gazed down the sloping green toward his home, he felt his blood run cold.
Father’s carriage was there.
At once, his heart began to pound. He had not expected Truro the Terrible back for another few days, but there, by the light of the flambeaux burning around the courtyard of the east entrance, he beheld the marquess’s coach crouched like a beast ready to spring.
Billy swallowed hard and did his best to mask his fear from his friends. He suddenly lost his appetite for Cook’s sweet treat and could think of nothing but returning his father’s telescope to its glass case in the study before it was missed. Unfortunately, the dusty oak-paneled study was the first place the marquess usually went upon returning home, to see to any matters of business or correspondence that might have arisen during his absence. Drunk or sober, Lord Truro enjoyed the duties that enhanced his sense of power and control over all matters pertaining to his holdings and possessions, among which he counted the members of his family.
It took the lads another twenty minutes before the meandering drive brought them into the shadow of Torcarrow. Billy led Reg and Justin around to the kitchens to deliver their fish and to tell Cook they were ready for their dessert. Anxious to return the telescope before his sire reached his study, he excused himself and told his friends he’d be right back, but he paused, glancing at Mrs. Landry, their dear old Cook.
“Cooky, where’s Mother?”
“Why, Master William,” the stout old woman said, giving him a subtle warning look, “Her Ladyship has just retired to her rooms for a rest. A bit of the headache, I’m afraid.”
Billy absorbed the news grimly. Mother had a sort of internal barometer that always measured Truro’s brewing storms. Whenever she felt one coming on, she wisely retreated to the safety of her chamber and did not come out until the headache had passed. She never asked Billy about his bruises.
With the telescope hidden in his loose coat pocket, banging guiltily against his side with every step, he prowled stealthily through the corridors, past the big, mahogany staircase. He saw the servants huddling here and there, trying to keep out of the master’s way. A familiar, eerie quiet had come over the house, but well before his father’s study came into view, he heard the marquess yelling at a footman. The dressing-down sounded even more stringent than usual.
“Bloody hell,” Billy whispered to himself as he heard his father accusing the footman of stealing his telescope and threatening to turn him over to the sheriff.
“Father, perhaps they were only cleaning it!” Billy heard his elder brother, Percy, say inside the library.
A superior seventeen-year-old down from Oxford, Percy, the heir, was, aside from Mother, the only one in the household who never took a beating. It was just as well, for he was a thin, poetic sort of lad who caught a sniffle in every cold breeze. One round against Father would probably have killed him. Billy, however, was another story. Billy could take a punch.
As he walked toward the study, his palms went cold and began to sweat, but somehow he summoned his courage. Even before he stepped into the room and saw his old man, drunk and disheveled in his rumpled velvet coat, slamming the bewildered footman against the wall, he knew that when he confessed to the deed, it was going to be a bad one.
Best to go out boldly, he thought, unaware that Reg and Justin had followed him and were about to see everything that was to happen.
He squared his shoulders and strode into the library, pulling the telescope out of his pocket. “Sir.” He held it up. “I have your telescope. No one stole it. It’s right here.” He stopped, holding up the spyglass as his father turned around, his chest heaving, his face red from his tirade. “I borrowed it.”
Truro’s bleary eyes narrowed at Billy. He dropped the liveried footman unceremoniously. The young manservant scrambled away. “Well,” said the marquess. “Borrowed it, did you, now?”
Billy held his ground. The redness of Truro’s eyes due to drink made his green irises look all the more wild and bright. With his lank brown hair streaked with gray and his scruff-darkened jaw badly in need of a shave, the marquess looked more pirate than Billy could ever hope to be, but as his father bent near, breathing liquor fumes in his face, all Billy could think of was the giant of Portreath.
“Father,” Percy said in a warning tone as the marquess stalked slowly toward his younger son.
Billy held his father’s stare with the insolence of one who had long since learned it was no good groveling.
“Father,” Percy begged in despair, “please! Leave him alone—”
The first blow sent Billy flying into the nearest bank of bookshelves. He banged his lip on a wooden shelf and fell, a rain of books tumbling down upon him. His father strode through the pile of dusty, unread tomes and picked him up by his arm, lifting him just high enough to get a good angle for a second punch and a third. From the corner of his eye, Billy saw his blood fleck the open pages of Le Morte d’Arthur, but there was no escape from the hail of h
is father’s punches and kicks. Truro even picked up a hefty dictionary and slammed him in the head with it.
“How many times have I warned you not to touch my things? You little thief! Thought you could sneak it back without my knowing, did you? You think you’re clever?”
Billy was aware of his own voice spluttering out a frantic denial and a cascade of apologies that did him no good whatsoever. He let out a sharp cry of pain as his father grasped a handful of his hair and jerked his head back.
That was when he realized that this time his old man was going to kill him.
“Father!” Percy shrieked, rushing toward them, only to be sent sprawling when Truro swiped him away with a stinging backhand.
“Never touch my things. It’s that school that’s teaching you to put on airs, ain’t it, William? Well, maybe you just need to stay here with me where I can teach you some manners!”
Bleeding from the nose and the corner of his mouth, feeling his left eye already swelling shut, Billy lifted his head and looked into his father’s face in silent, pleading pain. The marquess slammed his head down on the strewn books and kicked him in the stomach. Over the next few minutes, several eternities ran together, and Billy felt awareness slipping away from him. His ears were ringing almost too loudly to hear someone crying.
“Stop!” a high-pitched voice screamed.
Miraculously, the command worked, but when Billy rallied himself to look over at the doorway, he saw Justin and Reg standing there, pale and terror-stricken—and his humiliation was complete. His pride crumbled, his terrible secret revealed. In an instant, his whole life was ruined. His new friends were bound to tell the other boys at school what they had seen; then everyone would know that he was worth nothing, unwanted. The haven he had found at Eton vanished into the mist like the lost kingdom of Lyonesse, which according to legend, had sunk into the sea off the Cornwall coast centuries ago. His father straightened up slowly and regarded the intruders for such a long, hazy moment that Billy half feared he would attack them, too.