* * *
He had lain wide awake for a good two hours before Clem Giblet and her friend came down to breakfast – bread and a cup of water. Afterwards the other woman produced a trunk. Nat still did not know her identity. ‘I’ve cut a likkle hole in one corner so you won’t suffocate. See? Put your face up yon end and you’ll be all right.’
‘Oh Christ, I forgot about his lordship.’ Clem Giblet looked even more vinegary this morning, and made Nat drag the trunk by himself to the railway station. Being of cheap materials it was not all that heavy, though the station seemed a long way, especially with such a grumpy partner. Still, it gave Nat plenty of time to think about yesterday’s episode with Kendrew and to plot his revenge.
‘Get out o’ the bloody way!’ Clem pushed a man off the footwalk. He staggered in amazement but did not offer retaliation, having previously witnessed one of Clem’s fights.
Nat tensed. But of course! Here was the answer, to one problem at least. Heaving the trunk behind him, he glanced up at Clem, swallowed, then forced out the question. ‘Will you hit anybody?’
Clem was not selective. ‘If the pay’s right.’
Nat grew bolder. ‘If I can save enough money will you hit somebody for me?’
She cast a disdainful eye at him. ‘Who might that be?’
‘A bloke called Sep Kendrew. He’s got brown hair and a hole in his cheek and he lives near that fishy place where we were last night. When you come back to Hull will you get him for me?’
Clem uttered what passed for a laugh. Nat did not know whether this meant agreement and did not have time to enquire, for they had reached the station. Clem waited until there was no one nearby then said, ‘Climb in!’
Making sure that his head was at the end where the hole was, he rolled up inside, hugging his knees. It was horrible hearing those locks snap shut. He felt a great lurch, then a series of bounces and bangs as Clem tried to lift the trunk onto a trolley. He heard her holler for a porter, then felt himself being tipped upside down with his face squashed into a corner and the blood rushing to his head. Despite it being the corner with the hole in, Nat felt sure he was going to suffocate and sucked desperately at the hole for air. After being trundled what seemed like miles down the platform, he was loaded aboard and mercifully did not have to wait long before the train jolted into movement.
The journey was terrible. Nat could hardly breathe. He started to cry but discovered that this made breathing worse and so instead tried to sleep. After what seemed like hours of hell they arrived in York. Again the trunk, with Nat contorted inside, was balanced on a trolley and wheeled down the platform.
Once outside the station his gaoler casually released him. Nat clambered out, then had to sit on the path to recover. ‘Oh, oh me legs!’ He rubbed them and rocked back and forth. ‘They’re paralysed, I can’t walk!’
Totally unsympathetic, Clem put the trunk on her shoulders and moved off. Nat gave his legs a final brisk rub and got up, stamping his feet. ‘Ow, it feels as if I’m walking on a bed of pins!’
‘Thought you said you couldn’t walk.’ Clem offered a final sarcasm.
Nat ran after her. ‘I almost peed meself in there.’
To his shock Clem spun and hit him around the head. It was only a tap by her standards but it knocked him to his knees. ‘Don’t be so vulgar!’
‘What? I only said…’
‘I heard what you said! There’s a little old lady over there, she doesn’t want to listen to your foul language!’
Amazed, Nat simply stared. Clem hefted the trunk and moved off. The boy hastened to his feet and followed. Not pausing, Clem turned a gimlet eye on him. ‘You asked me to fetch you to York, you didn’t ask me to be your mother.’
Nat faltered. ‘But I won’t know where to find you when I want to give you the money to hit Kendrew.’
Clem frowned. ‘Kendrew?’
‘You know! I said I’d save up…’
Clem groaned. ‘All right, all right! Stop wittering, I’m too tired to listen to your rantings.’ She threw down the trunk. ‘If I’m still to be encumbered with you, you might as well carry that.’
Nat picked up one end of the trunk and dragged it after him.
‘Don’t expect me to feed you, mind!’ Clem warned him. ‘You’ll have to earn your keep.’
Nat vouched that he would, little guessing what she had in mind. That evening, when the two were ensconced in the poky upper room of a medieval inn by the riverside, she gave him instructions; he was to go around all the taverns, drumming up custom for a fight.
How would this shy boy accost the sort of men she had described and recite her invitation? A flogging would have been kinder. Yet fearful of Clem’s wrath, he made a start in the taproom downstairs. Approaching a hard-looking man he said, in quaking voice, ‘Bareknuckle fight, eight o’clock St George’s Field. Crippling Clem Giblet’ll take on anybody. Tell your friends.’ The man eyed him, then simply nodded over the rim of his tankard. Nat backed away, then went outside. Not knowing whether he had been successful, he visited two more hostelries and repeated the invitation many times. Then, deciding that if the men told their friends there would be enough spectators without him having to carry on, he went back to Clem.
Luckily for Nat a fine crowd turned up. The punters, having first believed Crippling Clem to be a man, were quick to spot easy money and large bets were placed on her opponent, a local man. Nat was given the money to hold and threatened that his throat would be cut if he moved so much as one inch. He clutched the purse and watched the fight intently, hoping to pick up some tips in self-defence and coming to the conclusion that if one wanted to win one had to fight dirty. Clem had the man annihilated in five minutes, winning almost twenty guineas. There were no further candidates. Well pleased with Nat, she treated him to supper and said that he could hang around for the races where they would find more custom.
It was a different type of custom to that which he expected. Clem didn’t bet on the horses, telling Nat she only placed money on certainties. Instead she sat on the grass amongst the racegoers and spent the afternoon doing absolutely nothing – or so it appeared to Nat. In fact she had been watching her next source of income.
The yokel was the embodiment of innocence with his fresh face, his linen smock and his billycock hat. He had brought his farm products to the market that morning and had stayed for the races. It was his first time in York without his father. He felt very grown up. Clem could see that by the way he swaggered, and during the afternoon his lucky wagers on the horses made him strut all the more. After the last race of the day when the crowds went home, Clem shadowed him. A bored Nat ambled behind. The yokel made his way back to where he had left his horse and cart. Before he had time to move off, Clem approached him. ‘Excuse me, squire, could I trouble you for a ride back into town? It’s a long way for my son to walk and my husband’s lost all our money on the nags, left us to find our own way home.’
The yokel had not actually been going back through York but, flattered at the term squire, he bade them climb up. Whilst they rode Clem chatted – Nat had never heard her talk so much without swearing. By the time they arrived outside the pub where they lodged she had persuaded the young man to join them for a noggin. The guest tarried so long that Nat fell asleep.
In the morning he woke to the sound of groans. The yokel was laying on the floor, his face purple with bruises, and Clem was nowhere to be seen. With her victim in too befuddled a state to catch him, Nat picked up his jacket and ran, cursing bitterly that he had lost his only chance of wreaking vengeance on Kendrew.
6
Alone again, Nat was at a loss as to what to do, roving aimlessly along pavements encrusted with dried vomit, cabbage leaves and orange peel. He could of course have gone to the Maguires yesterday, but as that would mean having to explain about his mother he chose not to, though he felt a desperate need to see a familiar face, especially Bright’s.
He turned the corner into Parliament Street, a broad ex
panse of road flanked by tall buildings, mainly banks and shops. Outside the latter hung the commodities to be purchased within: kettles, pots and pans, racks of clothes and boots, linen and lace. Today was a market day. Five rows of covered stalls ran the length of the street, with intermittent gaps to allow access for horse-drawn transport. Nat weaved his way in and out of the busy shoppers, coveting the fruit on the market stalls. He had never stolen in his life, but might have to resort to it now. The way became blocked where housewives with baskets queued at a stall that had better quality fruit than the rest. Nat ducked under the counter to escape the crush and in so doing he noticed another stall that appeared to have no one in attendance. Other market holders were too busy to notice a little thief. After crafty surveillance, he reached out for an apple… just as the owner who had been stooping at the front of his counter bobbed up. Hands on hips, he tilted his boater and beheld Nat with a look of mordancy. ‘Don’t take it from the back, son, I put all the rubbish there. Why don’t you have one of these nice ones from the front.’
Misreading the sarcasm, Nat said, ‘Thank you,’ and reached out to take the man at his word.
‘You saucy litt—!’ The trader made a bid to cuff his ear.
Dodging, Nat grabbed a bunch of bananas, scrambled under another counter and was away. The man chased him. Nat snatched at a rack of linen and brought it crashing down to impede his pursuer. The man leaped over it and continued to chase him: ‘Out of the way! Stop, thief!’ Then Nat swerved right into Jubbergate where the trader lost sight of him and gave up with a harsh curse.
Nat ran on into Newgate where a choice of alleyways offered certain escape. Looking over his shoulder he saw that the man had abandoned the chase and, after wheeling into Patrick Pool, Nat decided it was safe to slow down. Breathing heavily, he came to rest by a medieval church surrounded by railings, laughed to himself and leaned against the iron gate belonging to what remained of the church’s graveyard – when suddenly the support gave way, he was pounced on by ruffians, his bunch of bananas was wrenched from his hand and he was dragged into the churchyard and sat upon.
There were four of them. Craning his neck upwards, Nat could see three boys gloating at him whilst they devoured his fruit. The fourth was sitting on his back. All Nat could gauge of him was his weight and that he ate very noisily.
‘Get down till I say you can move!’ A rough hand shoved his head at the ground.
The bananas were consumed with leisure. Powerless, Nat felt his hip-bones grinding into the tombstone upon which he had been spreadeagled.
‘What shall we do with him now?’ The boy on his back dangled an empty banana skin over Nat’s nose, then draped it on his head like a cap.
The others began to make suggestions, none of them agreeable either to Nat or the boy on his back who seemed to have authority here. He jumped to his feet, dragging Nat up with him. ‘I’ve got a better idea – let’s thump him.’
Nat flicked the banana skin from his head and struggled to confront his tormentor, but the boy had him around the throat. ‘I’ve some friends who’re bigger than you! Touch me and they’ll get you!’
His captor sneered. ‘I don’t see them.’
Nat twisted and writhed. ‘They’re locked up at the moment but when they get out…’
This seemed to impress. The leader asked where they were locked up. ‘Marygate,’ supplied Nat. ‘I’ve just done two years there meself.’
The ruffian’s approach altered. Freeing Nat, he allowed him to turn. ‘Ragged school? What did they stick you in there for?’
‘Murder.’ Nat pulled himself to his full height and tugged his clothes into order.
This was a little too implausible. The boys fell about laughing. ‘They don’t stick you in ragged school for murder!’ scoffed their leader.
‘Well… I nearly murdered somebody,’ blustered Nat. ‘His name was Kendrew. He pinched something what belonged to me so I waited for him in the dark and hit him over the head. Then when he fell down I jumped on his face and broke his nose and did other things to him. Then the police came and stopped it before I really killed him.’
His audience did not know whether to believe him or not. These were not street arabs but ordinary schoolboys; their kneebreeches and stockings might be darned, but they weren’t pauperized and all wore boots. Nat, realizing with burgeoning confidence that he was getting the better of them, let his eyelids droop at the edges to make himself look tough as he returned their stares.
The leader jumped up onto the tombstone, looking down on his underlings. ‘How old’re you?’
‘Eleven, nearly twelve.’ Nat looked the speaker up and down. His legs were pronouncedly bowed – obviously a result of rickets. Due to this, the leather of his boots was in a very poor state on the outer edges. He had curly brown hair and eyes that were an abnormally pale shade of blue set into what Nat considered to be the face of a wax doll, his skin sallow. The tough image he tried to present was offset by a girlish, rosebud mouth and the frailty of limb. Nevertheless, he was dangerous. There had been a boy with eyes such as this who had spent the briefest of terms at the Industrial School. He had gone there completely uncontrollable and had left the same way within days; everyone had said he was mad.
‘I’m twelve and a half,’ retorted the leader, and fixed Nat with his pale blue eyes. ‘I’m meant to be at school but I jigged off after the first lesson. I’ll be leaving soon anyway, so I do what I want.’
‘What about you?’ Nat enquired of the other boys.
‘They jigged too,’ their leader answered for them. ‘They do what I tell ’em. So, d’you want to be in my gang, then?’
This was unexpected. Nat made himself appear nonchalant. ‘Could do.’ He joined the other three boys to sit cross-legged on the grass.
‘You have to go through an initiation ceremony,’ said the leader, hitching his wrinkled stockings and jumping down from the gravestone.
Nat tried not to flinch. There had been plenty of initiation ceremonies at the Industrial School, most of them unspeakable, but he couldn’t lose face now.
‘Right, what’s your name?’ the boy asked Nat.
‘Nat Prince.’ Nat squinted up warily.
‘Mine’s Denzil Kneebone, the boss of this gang.’ He reached down for his cap, which had fallen to the grass in the scuffle, and put it on his head, tugging the peak. ‘This is my right hand man, Roger Carter.’ He kicked at a thick-set boy, of a similar age to himself, dark like a gypsy with almond shaped eyes and a felt hat pulled well down over his brow, no jacket, just a shirt, a neckerchief and a waistcoat.
‘That’s Spud Cato.’ Nat was later to discover that Spud was so named because of the rather tenuous link with his surname. At first he had been known as Cato Potato, then somebody had called him Spud. However, for now Nat assumed the nickname to be because of the boy’s likeness to a spud; he had a lumpy face and tiny eyes, a slack mouth and a slack jacket that hung off his shoulders like a bag. His waistcoat had been buttoned in the wrong holes. The overall impression was one of a dullard.
‘…and Gunner Ray.’ A bigger boy than the rest, to Nat it seemed anomalous that Gunner wasn’t the leader, for he put Denzil in the shade. He had dark eyes and hair like Roger, but was less swarthy. His head was particularly large; the cap he wore looked ridiculous perched on top. For this reason alone Nat didn’t like him, but was impressed by the military sounding name.
Denzil relaxed on the tombstone and commanded, ‘Right, all stand!’ The boys rose, leaving circles of flattened grass in their wake. ‘Tell him what he has to do, Rodge.’
It transpired that the initiation consisted of robbing an item from a pawnbroker’s shop and selling it to another. Fresh from the thrill of hooking the bananas, Nat considered this a tame enrolment.
However, when they arrived at the symbol of the three brass balls in Low Petergate he saw that this would require nerve. The man was behind the counter. There were a few items by the door, but Denzil ordered Nat to go right in a
nd take something from the shop. Caution began to tickle his gut. The boys shoved him inside. Mr Merriman looked at him and said, ‘Yes, what can I do for you, young man?’
Nat’s mind whirred. ‘Er, you’ve got a telescope in the window. Can I have a look at it, please?’
The man leaned on the counter. ‘You just want to look or you want to buy?’
Nat hoped he sounded convincing. ‘I don’t want to buy it until I’ve had a look through it.’
‘Show me your money.’
Nat looked innocent. ‘Why?’
‘Because I’m not taking the trouble to get it out of the window if you cannot afford it.’ Obviously it was the boy’s shorn head that was the giveaway.
Through the window the others watched his performance. ‘I can afford it,’ pleaded Nat.
‘I don’t believe you.’ Merriman’s expression was challenging. ‘You’ll wait until my back’s turned and then you’ll steal something from me. I know you boys.’
Nat was outraged. ‘I don’t steal!’
‘Empty your pockets then.’
Nat beheld him in disgust, and turned to walk out – then saw the looks of ridicule on the other boys’ faces. He must do something. In a trice, he seized the arm of a jersey, catching another with it as a bonus, and ran out of the shop. The looks of scorn turned to ones of disbelief. Even before Nat emerged with the man on his tail they had taken flight.
‘Stop thief!’ The pawnbroker ran a few yards, but being unable to leave his shop unattended, was compelled to stand there shaking his fist. No one else tried to accost them. Running for his life, dodging carts and hansoms, Nat followed in the trail of the others, heading back for the camp in St Sampson’s churchyard.
When they caught their breath, Denzil thumped Nat in the chest. ‘You daft idiot! You nearly had us all copped. If you ever do that I’ll kill you.’ And Nat could tell that he meant it.
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