TIME AND PLACE: 1890s London
006. Blind
‘You don’t… look blind.’
‘Half-blind,’ I snapped. ‘What’s a half-blind s’posed to look like, anyway? Hobbling around on a stick and begging?’
Rat wrinkled up his nose and looked at the ground. Beside him, Simpson lifted one bare foot and delicately touched the wall of the alley with one toe. This was the first time I had seen them in months, and breaking my news had been more difficult than I thought it would have been. And I still needed to tell the others…
‘Anyway,’ I said, pursuing my point, ‘me being half-blind ain’t – isn’t going to be…’
‘A problem?’ Simpson suggested.
‘Yes! I mean, no, it won’t be.’
‘Kit, you really don’t think, do you?’ Rat looked out of the alley into the street. A hansom passed, the spokes of the wheels flashing together into a whirling blur of noisy movement. A costermonger leading a donkey cart full of cabbages paused in his cries long enough to curse the cabby, then began again: ‘Cabbages, ni-ew cabbages, penny a bunch!’
The small boy trotting by his side added his shrill voice – ‘Ni-ew, ni-ew, ni-ewww!’ – and their cries rose up and mingled with the smells of fruit, fresh fish, dried fish, bruised vegetables, smoke and hot plum duff.
‘What d’yu mean, I don’t think?’ I scowled at him.
He drew his gaze back from the street and looked at me out of exasperated brown eyes. ‘You’re cracked.’
‘Am not!’
‘Are too.’
‘Are not!’ I grabbed a handful of his shirt.
‘Idiot.’ He calmly removed my hand. ‘Did it matter wi’ Li?’
‘Of course it didn’t! But Li was just… he wasn’t blind….’
‘’alf-blind,’ Simpson corrected.
‘… like me.’
‘An’ what about me?’ Rat looked meaningfully at his right arm, and I felt my ears go hot. ‘It weren’t your fault.’
‘Of course it wasn’t!’
‘So why are talkin’?’
I kicked at the wall, scraping my boots in the dirt and rubbish. Cross and confused, I said, ‘Where’s Wiggins?’
Simpson pointed. ‘Down there at the cab stand, carryin’ parcels.’
‘And the others?’
‘Dunno. Somewhere about.’
‘Fat lot of good you are.’ I pushed past him and out of the alley. Rat came with me, but when I looked behind, Simpson was picking over the rubbish heap, looking over the dead rat he had been poking when I had first found him.
The cab stand was full of bustling people – a gentleman with old fashioned bushy side whiskers, a family with two small boys in knickerbockers and an older girl with a pink bow in her hair, ladies in wide rustling skirts and wide beribboned hats. I saw a boy looking after a leaving cab and spitting on a coin in his hand.
‘Wiggins!’ I yelled.
He looked up and stared, dark eyes wide. ‘Kit!’ He ducked under a parasol swinging on a lady’s arm and ran towards us. ‘Kit!’ He grabbed my arm and thumped my shoulder excitedly and I grinned at him.
‘’ey, Wiggins.’
‘Where you been all this time?’
‘Well, it’s… ’ I stopped, not knowing quite what to say. ‘Tricky,’ I said finally.
Wiggins’ eyes never left mine. He shook his head slightly. ‘It don’t matter much, Kit. I’m… I’m glad you’re back.’
In spite of my blind eye, in spite of everything… this was home.
039. Hat
‘Give it back!’ Wiggins demanded, grabbing a handful of my hair and pushing my head into the puddle. I choked on a mouthful of dirty water and began coughing. He dragged me up. ‘Gimme my ’at!’
I spluttered and hacked, and Wiggins found my hand, pulling my wrist up and back, prying his cap out of my fingers. He let me go and as I fell back on one elbow in the mud, he plonked his cap proudly on his head, pulling it down over one eye. Then he frowned. He took it off and glared at it. ‘This ain’t mine!’
From my puddle, I grinned and coughed.
Wiggins looked round and latched his gimlet eye onto the other boys. He gave a squawk. ‘Harry!’
‘Wha’?’ Harry asked.
‘You got my cap!’ Wiggins launched himself forward and yanked it off Harry’s head.
Harry yelled, ‘Ow!’
I grinned.
Harry glared at me and I hastily got up. ‘You twerp! You swapped ’em!’
‘Yes,’ I said smugly. ‘I swapped ’em.’
He grabbed my jacket and I punched his chest.
‘Stop it,’ Wiggins ordered, lovingly brushing off his cap and pulling it on. ‘You’ll make too much noise.’
‘Says the one who started it,’ I retorted.
He grinned. One of his front teeth was chipped. ‘I’m allowed to. You ain’t. I’m the biggest, so there.’
He was the biggest and the tallest and the oldest. I gave in.
078. Star
The wind whipped through my jacket, going down my collar like thieves’ breath. I huddled deeper into the small niche set in the concrete and blew on my hands.
I looked up at the sky. It was very dark and full of clouds, covering everything. Like the world, I thought sourly. Like the stupid, cruel, heartless world, all filled with people like Bird and Moran and…
Moriarty?
I can’t judge, I answered that thought primly. I never knew him.
Sigh. More clouds blew across the sky, wreaths of smoky grey-blue. Then a patch of navy appeared. I blinked. A single star blazed out in the clear patch of navy sky, a white needlepoint stabbing at the choking clouds.
019. Corset
‘What is that?’ Zo pressed his nose against the shop window.
‘It says down there, on that label.’ Li pointed, his finger leaving a dirty smudge on the glass. ‘I can’t quite see, though.’
‘I know what it is,’ said Wiggins. ‘It’s a corset. Ladies wear ’em.’
‘I knew that, too,’ I said. ‘Ladies wear ’em.’
‘Will you have to wear one too, Kit?’ Rat asked.
‘No,’ I said confidently. ‘You only wear one if you’re married.’
‘You ain’t gonna do that, are you?’
‘’Course not! Getting married’s stupid.’
‘Yeah,’ Wiggins agreed. He gave the corset a disdainful glance and looked up the street. He gave a whoop. ‘Looky! There’s Red. Come on!’
We ran to meet Red, the corset forgotten.
018. Confession
The sheet of newspaper was ragged and dirty, but Li was poring over it, his pale blue eyes squinting at the print.
‘What you reading?’ I asked.
He didn’t look up. ‘I’m findin’ my name.’
‘You what?’ I pushed off from the wall and came and sat beside him on the steps.
‘I saw my name in ’ere an’ I’m tryin’ to find it again.’
I scanned the paper. ‘It’s about the trial of Elijah Kendal, convicted for murdering his wife… no one called Li.’
‘Nah, it’s the Elijah part. Where?’
‘Elijah?’
‘Where is it?’
I pointed and Li dug his thumbnail under the name, making a dent in the paper.
‘Your name is Elijah?’
‘Yep.’
‘Since when?’
‘ I dunno. It’s what people called me.’
‘Then where did the Li part come from?’
Li cupped his chin in his hands reflectively. ‘Someone in the boardin’ ’ouse I was at was doin’ some writin’. He showed it me, and said that there was my name.’
‘And…?’
‘I didn’t like how it looked. Too long and posh. Then I saw that bit.’ He put both his thumbs over the name, showing only the second and third letters. ‘Li. It looked nicer.’
‘But it sounds different.’
He sighed. ‘I liked it.’
‘Well, your name, not mine.’
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Yes, I know Star is horribly cliched.
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