The Gentleman Thief

by Kate Gragg

  Tosca and I stood in a grand wood-paneled hallway lined with massive gilt-inlaid doors. Tosca ran an admiring hand down the carvings of one, a hunting scene featuring a knight on horseback flanked by a pack of dogs.

  “This is dwarven work,” she marveled. “Look at the hinges, solid brass. It’s a pity we can’t make off with these things. They’d fetch thousands at the night market.”

  “Let’s stay focused on what’s on the other side of these doors,” I said. I could hardly believe it, but Tosca had been my biggest problem all day. She didn’t usually go along for the actual heisting, it turned out, and she had a terrible problem keeping on task. Her mind was always searching out details, useful for figuring out ways to get inside but not so useful for avoiding getting caught once you were in there.

  “Right,” she said, and squinted through the keyhole, set in a gold and ivory frame the size of a dinner plate. “This looks like a simple three-tumbler affair. I’ll have it open before you can spit.”

  “Are you nuts?” I said, grabbing Tosca by the shoulder. “We’re chimneysweeps, remember? We don’t even touch doors like this. Rich people will literally cut your head off for getting their shiny things dirty.”

  “Well, what are we supposed to do then?” Tosca said.

  I pointed at the fireplace at the end of the hall, where an entire tree trunk was cheerily crackling away, warming a cluster of wing-backed chairs that had never been sat in next to a shelf full of books that had never been read.

  “We take the service corridors.”

  There’s no trick to climbing into a chimney while the fire’s still going. You just do it as quickly as possible and resign yourself to getting a little singed. I’d been roasted often enough that my hands were nearly fireproof, but Tosca had a rough time of it. I let her stand on my shoulders and braced my boots on either side of the brazier, avoiding the red-hot coals, then jumped.

  “Try to find the ledge where the chimney branches off,” I said.

  Tosca swung her hands around blindly, cursing every time she touched a hot brick.

  “I can’t see anything!”

  “You won’t be able to. Close your eyes and do it by feel,” I said. I was getting impatient. The smoke was so thick I could barely breathe, and I could feel the soles of my boots starting to peel from the heat.

  If at first you don’t succeed, my dad said, try a few more times and then give up. We agreed that I’d climb the chimney alone, while Tosca would ready for the getaway. She slunk off nursing a burn on her hand, and I hope contemplating her newfound respect for my noble profession.

  Amazing how much easier it is to do anything when you don’t have a surly wildcat standing on your shoulders. I clambered up the chimney in a flash, finding the network of flues and vents to be surprisingly spacious once I got up there, big enough for me to walk through at a crouch instead of crawling. I dropped down through the first unlit fireplace I came upon and rolled out into a room that had been turned into a sort of armory. There were swords, axes and shields mounted on the walls all the way up to the ceiling, barrels full of spears, and several full suits of armor. I didn’t see anything that looked like a treasure chest, so I slipped back up the chimney with relief.

  The next room was a cavernous ballroom, half set up for what I imagined would be the wedding banquet. Long tables, lots of chairs and candlesticks, no coinage. Next!

  The next room was a lot more promising. It was clearly the Duke’s private retreat, and unfortunately the Duke was still in it. By sheer luck the fireplace was blocked with a big screen, so he didn’t see me. I crouched down and watched him through the fleur-di-lis perforations in the bronze. He was seated at his desk, talking to a ludicrously over-muscled, fair-haired man who had his back to me.

  “Hmm, I think it’s a bit early to go into all that, Cliffy,” the Duke said.

  He tugged at his beard when he said this, a gesture echoed in the dozens of paintings and tapestries of his estimable personage that were strewn about the room. I don’t mean just the usual amount of flotsam you see in any fine old house, where the candlesticks can’t be replaced because great-great-granduncle looted them from the Sultan’s palace during the Crusades, and look there’s his portrait there, isn’t that lovely how the artist so accurately captured the blood dripping from his sword. No, I truly do mean that every single flat surface, and some of the curved and lumpy ones too, had the Duke’s face staring back at me. Sometimes he was on horseback, sometimes he was sitting atop a golden throne he certainly didn’t own, sometimes he was draped on a garden bench with a lute on his lap, tugging at his chin like he couldn’t make up his mind whether to play it or bash a servant-boy’s head in with it.

  “There’s no time to wait on formalities, your Grace. I will win your daughter’s hand. It’s a certainty. And with tensions mounting in the North, delaying these matters by even a few days would be–”

  “Hmm,” the Duke said. Tug, tug, tug. “Hmm, no, I don’t think I’ll sign the patens of command just yet. Saunders said he expects some late entries this year. Some people feeling hesitant, mortal peril and all that.”

  “Your armies have been at the front for over a year with no one commanding them,” the younger man persisted.

  The Duke laughed. “A year ago, you were a glorified servant boy. What makes you think you’ve even got it in you to lead?”

  I could tell Cliffy, whoever he was, was trying hard not to show his irritation.

  “It’s Clifton, please. And I’m a squire, not a servant. To put it boldly, the simple fact is that it is my destiny, the same as it is to marry Althea.”

  “There are an awful lot of assumptions bound up in that statement, Cliffy.”

  “Such as?” Clifton-not-Cliffy said, not bothering to hide his impatience.

  “Well, for one, it’s a bit of a rummy thing to even allow commoners to enter the trials. If Saunders hadn’t stood for you, I don’t know if the rest of the council would have agreed. To be honest I don’t know what he sees in you, or Althea for that matter.”

  “What they see, your Grace, is a knight.”

  That point seemed to land. The Duke got up from the desk and paced around the room, tugging his beard contemplatively as he admired a mahogany chest resting on a heavy table. That had to be it. It was smaller than I expected, but that meant the contents should all fit in the bag I had tucked into my belt. I had to get these two bores out of the room so I could get to work.

  Silently, I pulled the burlap sack out of my waistband and unfurled it, stuffing a few small logs from the fireplace into it at odd angles and rolling it shut. Then I inched my way back up the chimney by a foot or two, bracing my back and arms against the walls, and then let myself drop. I kicked my legs out as I fell, knocking over the bronze screen.

  It made a fantastic amount of noise, just as I intended.

  I rolled out, kicking up as much soot as I could, and gave the two men my cheekiest grin.

  “Oof! Sorry there, guv, had to wrestle a badger out of the flue up there,” I said.

  Clifton advanced toward me, pulling a nasty-looking dagger out of his belt. I held my hand out to him.

  “I wouldn’t get to close if I were you, boss. I’m afraid ‘e’s been up there a good while. Poor blighter started to turn, smells somethin’ ripe.”

  I held up my burlap sack, daring him to smell it for himself. He recoiled.

  “Er, maybe we should join Althea in the drawing room. She’s got tea waiting,” stammered the Duke, backing out of the room.

  “Tea would be just the thing.” Clifton turned to me, jaw imperiously clenched. “See that you dispose of that immediately.”

  He turned on his heel and left, slamming the door shut behind him.

  There was no time to waste feeling pleased with myself, so I got right to work. There was a new wrinkle in the plan in the form of how the Duke would definitely know who stole his gold now, but like my dad said, you might wake up dead tomorrow so what’s the use of worrying? I po
pped open the chest (which wasn’t even locked, my god what must it be like to be rich?) and took in the gratifying sight of hundreds of gold coins, all engraved with the Duke’s face, of course. He was even tugging his beard on those. Incredible.

  I shoveled them all into my sack as fast as I could and just got my sack tied shut when I heard a delicate cough behind me. I whipped around, my self-preservation instincts kicking in at the last second and plastering a look of oafish innocence on my face.

  If Princess Althea saw what I was up to, she didn’t betray anything on her face.

  “Are you the chimneysweep?” she said.

  I nodded.

  “I think something’s blocked in the fireplace in my room,” she continued. “It gets quite chilly in the morning even in summer. Do you suppose you could look at it?”

  “I’d be happy to,” I said, forgetting my accent entirely. I gave her a sheepish bow and shuffled toward the door, but she stopped me.

  “Oh, one more thing.”

  “Er, yes… miss?”

  What did servants do when princesses talked to them? All those admonishments about not looking your betters in the eye were hard to follow when she insisted on staring at me like that.

  “I think you have something of mine,” she said, gesturing toward the now-heavy sack on my back, “and I’d like to get it back.”

  “Something in my sack?” I said stupidly.

  “I hid it in the chest for safekeeping. Am I safe to assume everything that was once in the chest is now in your bag?”

  I couldn’t do anything but nod. I felt like I was bewitched, her emerald-green eyes boring holes into my skull. I put the sack down and untied it for her, the clanking of the gold coins suddenly feeling deafening. How could I ever have thought this plan would work?

  She nodded, more to herself than to me, and pushed up her voluminous lace sleeves, rooting around in the bag like she’d dropped an earring down a sink drain. She gazed off into the middle distance as she worked, navigating entirely by touch, then smiled and stood up with a happy sigh. She had a coin in her hand, but not one of the gold ones. It was a bit larger than the gold coins, copper, but rather badly tarnished, and with an odd, undulating edge. It looked foreign.

  “It is,” she said, then laughed at the look of horror on my face as I realized I’d said that out loud. It was exactly the sort of laugh a princess ought to have, tinkly and infectious. I realized that I liked her.

  “My lucky penny,” she said, pressing the coin to her lips.

  “I would never have taken it if I’d –” I stopped myself to smother a sneeze. It was probably just an ordinary one, from the soot, but I couldn’t take the risk. Turning the Duke’s daughter into a bug was almost certainly a hanging offense.

  She watched this series of thoughts march across my face, amused.

  “A choosy thief, then? You’ve never taken anything that has sentimental value?” she teased.

  She smiled, and it was impossible not to smile back.

  “I like to stick to gold,” I said. “It never goes dull.”

  Footsteps sounded in the hallway, along with the strains of the Duke’s argument with that squire, apparently still ongoing.

  “I wish the same were true of men,” she sighed, tugging down her sleeves and pasting an empty, pleasant expression on her face.

  “Where is she?” Clifton demanded, his voice booming even from the other side of the door.

  “How should I know?” the Duke huffed. “Sometimes it feels like she’s got a mind of her own.”

  “Hurry,” the princess said out of the corner of her mouth, “close that back up before they see.”

  “You’re not going to turn me in?”

  She let loose a little snort, less princess-like but still charming.

  “For this?”

  The two men barged in and, seeing the princess, immediately snapped their argument shut.

  “Darling,” the Duke said, letting go of his beard long enough to give her a peck on the cheek. “We’ve been looking all over for you. What are you doing in here? Your tea’s gone cold and the dressmaker will be here in minutes. Your mother’s having fits.”

  “I was just telling the chimneysweep about that drafty flue in my chambers.”

  “Darling, we have people to talk to people like that,” the Duke tutted.

  “Of course,” Althea said. “I’ll go find mother. Mr. Crome, lovely to see you as always.”

  The princess gathered her skirts to curtsy to Clifton, and as she did the penny slipped out of her hand and bounced along the floor, aiming straight for an open window. I dove for it, and Clifton, seeing me dive, did the same. He landed on the arm I was holding the bag of gold with, making a telltale clank I tried to cover with an exaggeratedly pained grunt. Clifton grabbed my hand with both of his and pried my fingers open like a seagull greedy for an oyster.

  “Clifton what are you doing?” the Duke said, standing protectively between his daughter and the wrestling match that had suddenly broken out on his parquet floor. I took advantage of the distraction to use a little trick I’d learned from the Pickering Street Purse-Lighteners, deftly retrieving the penny.

  “Oh, I was just…” Clifton seemed to realize how undignified he looked and stood up, feigning composure. “The princess had dropped… you see… well no duty too small, and all that.”

  He opened his hands, confused to find them empty.

  “He was stealing!” Clifton said, pointing at me.

  I gently set my sack down, taking care that it stayed closed, and held the coin out to the princess.

  “You dropped this, miss.”

  “Oh, thank you,” she said airily, reaching out her hand without looking directly at me.

  “That’s your highness, coming from you,” Clifton snapped, “and she doesn’t want anything that’s touched your dirty hands.”

  “I’m so clumsy, dropping a penny like that.”

  “It was only a penny?” Clifton said, not hiding his disgust. “I thought you’d dropped one of those pearls you’re always wearing.”

  “Oh, he’s a rich man that wouldn’t stoop for a penny, guv,” I said, wearing my most guileless expression.

  “It’s a poor man who would steal one,” Clifton retorted.

  “Even if it was only a penny, I thank you both for returning it to me,” she said, sneaking a look at me when she said both.

  “Not every day a fellow like me can be of service to a princess, your highness,” I said. I held it out to her again, ready to wrap this up. I’d had enough drawing room comedy for one day.

  “Come now darling, I’m sure that poor wretch needs a penny more than you do,” the Duke said, taking her by the arm.

  “Of course,” she said, frozen, smiling with everything but her eyes.

  “Oh, that’s hardly necessary sir, it is her property,” I said.

  “Don’t you listen?” Clifton said, thumping me on the chest, “she said take it.”

  “Are you sure?” I said to her. She flinched. Just for an instant, but I saw it.

  “Yes. It’s yours now. I’ve given it to you.”

  “Maybe you can buy some soap,” Clifton sneered, wheeling Althea away on his arm.

  The Duke looked at me warily.

  “You’ll er, take that with you, yes?”

  I stared at him blankly, no idea what he meant. He cleared his throat and tugged his chin in the direction of my bag.

  “Oh! Oh yes sir, don’t have to worry about him. He’ll make a fine meal for the kids back home.”

  That got him out of there right quick.

  *

  I legged it out of there as fast as I could with a sackful of gold slung over my shoulder and met up with the others. As soon as we were out of earshot of the palace Tosca started crowing about how she couldn’t believe “we” had pulled it off. Now that I had a little distance from the ordeal, I felt like the gang hadn’t actually been much help at all, and had a brief suicidal thought of just giving th
em all the slip and letting Alphonse skim his gold out of somebody else’s sack. But the farther we got from the palace, the more cheerful I felt about it. I’d made my bones, and with witnesses no less. I could write my ticket now. Hell, a few more jobs like this and I could buy my own house and hire somebody else to clean the chimneys for me.

  The sun was high in the sky as we cut through the ragged alley full of shop stalls that served as the outer boundary of Cheapside, and somewhere in the crush of hawkers and their prey we lost Dorinda.

  “Shit! Alphonse wanted to talk to her,” said Tosca, shading her eyes with her hand and scanning the crowd. I could tell her from hard experience that she was looking at exactly the wrong height to find a little street goblin like Dorinda or, once upon a time, me. They were always either on a rooftop or lurking in a gutter, no in-between.

  “She’s fine,” I said. “Probably saw a friend, or a bakery cart wanted stealing from. She’ll find her way to us if she wants something.”

  “That’s exactly it, what if she decides to blackmail us?”

  “Dorinda?” I laughed. “No street rat would even breathe the word. Your honor’s all you’ve got out here. Don’t you remember anything from being a kid?”

  “I had parents,” Tosca said primly.

  “So did I, until I didn’t anymore. You really didn’t grow up here?”

  “Of course I did,” Tosca snapped. “In a house. My parents were high up in the Hook and Dagger gang.”

  I whistled. “Nobody’s heard from them since they pulled off the army payroll job half a generation ago. I have always wondered where they hid out.”

  “As if I’d ever tell you.”

  I stopped at a brewer’s stall.

  “How about a truce? We’re on the same team now.”