The Traitors' Gate

by Avi

  I heard more rattles, which told me that it was the police who were following. Thank heavens! Chief Inspector Ratchet had not heeded my request.

  Stopping on the wharf, the Traitors’ Gate to my left, I stared out into the water. I was just in time to see that little steam launch pulling away out into the River Thames, spewing sparks like hot confetti. I’m not certain I saw Sary, but I know I heard her voice.

  For no one else would have cried out, “’Ey, John! Don’t forget me. This girl ’as a ’eart too!”

  CHAPTER 47

  I See an End to It … Almost

  I was still hearing her words when Chief Inspector Ratchet caught up with me, bull’s-eye lamp in hand. He aimed the light into my face, its brightness making me shut my eyes.

  “Who was it?” was the first thing he asked.

  “Sary,” I said.

  “Sary!” he cried, and swore. “I should ‘ave known,” he said. “Who was she workin’ for?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t you?” he demanded.

  “No, sir.”

  He sighed. “Did she get the secret?”

  “I don’t know that, either,” I said. “Maybe not. We need to go back to the church. She left part of her jacket.”

  “Come on, then,” to which he added: “A good thing we ignored you.”

  I had nothing to say.

  When we arrived at All Hallows, we found Mr. Snugsbe in conversation with Mr. Tuckum.

  “’Ave you the girl’s jacket?” demanded the chief inspector without ceremony.

  Mr. Snugsbe held up the sleeve. “A man’s—or woman’s—coat,” he said, “is his destiny.”

  I plunged my hand down.

  And came up with the plan.

  I handed it to Chief Inspector Ratchet. He unfolded it, glanced at it, nodded toward Mr. Tuckum, and left the church without another word.

  My first thought was that he was angry with me. But when I thought about it, I realized he was angry at himself. Sary had fooled him—and everybody.

  Most of all, she had fooled me.

  Of course, there was more.

  Next day Mr. Tuckum informed me that Brigit’s brother was gone from London. Did he go to Ireland or America? By his own leave or forced? I never learned.

  For her part, two days later Brigit herself took me aside. Weeping, she begged me—without confessing what she had done—to forgive her sins. She was not sure they were sins, she explained. She was only wanting to help her family, her two families, as well as her oppressed land.

  For my part, I was willing to forgive and forget.

  Sergeant Muldspoon closed down his school and left the country quickly too. Again it was Mr. Tuckum who told me. The word was that Old Moldy was engaged by the Imperial Russian Army as an artillery instructor.

  Mr. Snugsbe? He and Mr. Tuckum became good comrades, talking no doubt of old-fashioned coats.

  Mr. Nottingham? I suppose he went on as before, playing various roles of his own creation before unsuspecting audiences, never winningmuch applause. I never—knowingly—saw him again. Who knows on what stage he performs?

  As for my father, his circumstance was odd. Though it was clear to authorities just who Mr. O’Doul was, the law being the law—as Mr. Tuckum eloquently explained—there could still be no release from the writ of debt. Apparently, Mr. O’Doul had to withdraw it himself or the repayment had to be at least offered to the court. If the money was not claimed, the writ would go forfeit, yet it first had to be paid.

  But since O’Doul was gone, my penniless father remained in prison. There things stood.

  A week after the events that led to Sary’s escape, I was at the prison when I learned I had a visitor.

  Surprised, I went to see who it was and found William/Wilkie. My great-great-aunt, he said, wished me to visit her.

  “For good or ill?” I asked, reluctant to attend another abusive scolding.

  He only looked at me, replying, “You shall see.” I could read no more in his otherwise eloquent eyebrow.

  So it was that I found myself once again in my great-great-aunt’s presence. She was as huge as ever, surrounded by her medicines, waited upon by her maid.

  “You sent for me, my lady,” I said, my head already bowed to take on her attack.

  She inhaled deeply. “You have acted well,” she said.

  That, coming as a surprise, made me look up.

  “Have I?”

  “So I have been told by my friend.”

  “Mr. Nottingham?” I asked.

  “Chief Inspector Ratchet. He informed me you were a hero and urged me to reward you suitably. You will receive a gift of three hundred pounds. From me.”

  “My lady, you are more than kind,” I somehow managed to say through my astonishment.

  “I am exactly that,” she said. “I am. It’s the least I can do for the last Huffam.”

  As I was leaving, I turned to William/Wilkie at the front door. “She proved generous after all,” I said.

  “Not so,” he whispered. “It was Inspector Ratchet’s doing. He knows my lady. I know him too, and he told me much. It appears the government wished to reward you for saving that secret—about which I know nothing—from our enemies. But the authorities did not desire to make the circumstances of your reward public. The government therefore gave the money to Lady Huffam, with specific instructions that she give it all over to you—in her name.”

  “Truly?” I cried.

  William/Wilkie looked at me and lifted his eyebrow, which I understood to mean: You may believe it.

  I gave the money to my father and insisted he present it to the court. This he did, but only after much pressure from Mother and me. Since there was no Mr. O’Doul to claim it, the money was refunded back to him and he was set free, of both prison and debt.

  Truth to tell, he resumed his life: clerk, amateur actor, husband, and father—in his own fashion—and richer by three hundred pounds.

  As for my sister, she did marry Mr. Farquatt. No doubt he was a spy, but he had worked for the Credit Bordeaux. And since he didn’t actually commit any crime, he was only asked to leave England. Which he did. With my sister. Even spies—as I saw—can fall in love, marry, and prove good husbands. He and Clarissa live in the little town of Surlot. Letters are exchanged. Mother has visited, but she is unhappy with my sister’s French ways and her grandchildren’s French language. Letters and visits grow fewer.

  I, too, resumed my life—at a different school, to be sure, but otherwise much as before—excepting I am always wondering at what lies beneath stones … and at the life that’s all about me.

  I must admit that from time to time I think about these events and, most often, about Sary.

  I wonder if she ever reached Australia. If she ever reached her pa. And if I might not go out someday and find her.

  But where would I begin? I didn’t even know her full name.

  In that regard I had wanted to ask Inspector Ratchet, but since he was completely out of my life, I turned to Mr. Tuckum—who had become a kind of uncle to me—to see if he knew Sary’s surname. She had only told me in jest once that it was “Waitin’.”

  “I don’t exactly remember,” he said. “Sagwitch. Magwitch. Lagwitch. Something like. Why did you need to know?”

  I was not about to tell him.

  Thus the days and months and years pass. Sometimes that melody my father used to whistle, “Money Is Your Friend,” comes to my mind. It seems to mock me. But mostly when I think of all that happened, I think about Sary. For while she had fooled us all, she did not get the secret. I had saved her from becoming a traitor. What, I wondered, had she done and thought to do once she discovered that fact?

  And … would she come back?

  Most of all, I often think of Sary’s last words: This girl ’as a ’eart too!

  I can only hope.

  For I, at least, will not be a traitor. Not to her.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The full name
of Charles Dickens, the extraordinary Victorian novelist, was Charles John Huffam Dickens. Not only was the name of my hero of this book taken from the writer, one of the key incidents of the writer’s life—his father’s imprisonment for debt—lies at the heart of this story. That said, there is little in the imprisonment of Dickens’s father that truly resembles the events of this novel, although Dickens’s father did work for the navy establishment and his aunt did provide sufficient financial help to enable him to get out of prison.

  Other aspects of Dickens’s life have been used here. The year 1849—when this story takes place—marked the publication of David Copperfield, the author’s famous autobiographical novel.

  Police Inspector Ratchet is based on a real person, Police Inspector Field of Scotland Yard, one of Dickens’s good friends.

  The Tales of the Genii, by Charles Morell, was an eighteenth-century rendition of the work we know as The Arabian Nights. It was a favorite of the young Charles Dickens and is mentioned in some of his work, including A Christmas Carol and David Copperfield.

  Sary’s last name, Magwitch, derives from Abel Magwitch, the formidable transported felon and benefactor of Pip from Dickens’s novel Great Expectations. But Sary’s world of poverty was very real indeed. Consider: Even in 1873, four fifths of Britain’s land was owned by just seven thousand individuals.

  London street names and locations are based on contemporaneous maps. But both the City and the Church of All Hallows Barking (to give its full, proper name) were different in 1849 than they are today insofar as the area was severely bombed during World War Two and since then much rebuilt.

  Of course, the city of London itself—so central to Dickens’s life, work, and art—is, in its way, a central character here too. Having read much about London—in fact and fiction—having often visited, having lived there, and having had one of my sons born there, the city holds much allure for me. One recalls Samuel Johnson’s much-quoted remark: “When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.”

  It has been my great desire to bring some of that life to these pages.