A Beggar's Kingdom Page 18

  Blessedly Mortimer sticks his head out and motions them in.

  15

  Cleon the Sewer Hunter

  CLEON IS AN UNFRIENDLY, LEATHER-SKINNED OLD MAN, WHO sits on the low bed, glowering at Julian. He wears dirty canvas trousers and a long overcoat. His worker’s apron with a dozen pockets hangs on a hook by the bed. His huge hands are permanently darkened by his profession. He’s got no time for nonsense. He has no men’s shoes either. Coldly he assesses Julian’s wetsuit. “Thermoprene, you say? Will it keep me dry?”

  “Warm, mainly.”

  “What do I care about warm,” says Cleon, standing up and touching the suit. He is Julian’s height, but thinner. The suit will be too big on him. He offers Julian a farthing for it.

  Julian asks for a straight trade instead. Wetsuit for shoes. “I don’t want your boots, Cleon,” he says. “I need shoes. I can’t wear boots with breeches and hose. What am I, a stablehand?”

  Cleon is unmoved by Julian’s keen sense of fashion. “You scoundrel,” he says to Mortimer. “You woke me up for a jester who doesn’t want to sell the only thing he’s got?”

  How is Cleon still alive after going into the sewers every night for seven decades? “When were you born?” Julian asks him, trying to keep the longing out of his voice. He wants Cleon to be a hundred and ten. Maybe he’s seen some things, remembered things from the Great Fire.

  “In 1695,” Cleon says. “What’s it to you?”

  He’s eighty! Cleon is a roach, built to survive the sub-earth’s pathogens. His immune system has been toughened by the gutters of London. He’s become impervious to infection, viruses, bacteria, parasites, and tumors.

  “London has four hundred sewers,” Cleon tells Julian. “And I been through them all. You want a job? I got a spot open since Basil hit that little snag. It’s man’s work, though, and frankly you look like a white-gloved pansy.” Before Julian can disagree, Cleon continues. “You know how many miles of tunnels me and my men navigate? Twelve thousand. We go into the sewers at low tide and wander under cover of night collecting things that fall through the gutter grates. Metal, cutlery, coins, jewelry.”

  Julian gets an idea. “In the dark?”

  “We carry torches. Lanterns.”

  Julian smiles. He does have something to barter with, after all. He shows Cleon his two headlamps, one with a still-fresh battery. “Have you seen one of these?” he asks innocently, knowing well that no one has seen them because they don’t yet exist. He demonstrates by strapping it to his forehead and flicking on the switch. Cleon gasps. The lamp burns bright. It takes a lot to impress the sewer hunter. He’s seen it all. But not this.

  Miri doesn’t gasp. She’s resistant to headlamps.

  “It’s like your torch, Cleon,” Julian says, “but you strap it to your head. And the light is cold. Nice, huh?” He sees by Cleon’s face that it’s the greatest thing the ancient hunter has ever seen. Cleon will give him all the treasures in his room for it. He will sell Julian a human being for the lamp. “The cold light is called LED. Light-emitting diode. Do you want to try?” Julian fits and adjusts the strap around Cleon’s head and teaches him how to turn the lamp on. Cleon switches it on and off, on and off. Julian puts his hand over the switch. “Stop. Turn it on only when you’re using it, or the battery will drain.”

  “What’s a battery? How much do you want for it?”

  “I want shoes with buckles and six shillings,” Julian quickly says; six shillings for the masonry supplies. What a surprise, turns out that Cleon does have a pair of shoes, right under his bed. He gives Julian another two shillings for the wetsuit, eight shillings in all. Julian is pleased. Not bad for a day’s work, and he didn’t even have to go into the sewers. He goes out into the corridor to change. The breeches on the suit Miri brought for him are too short, as are the shirt sleeves. The waistcoat is too tight, and the felt hat too small. Cleon’s shoes are old and smell like a run-over skunk. But who is Julian to be so picky. He’s nothing but a beggar.

  He returns to the room, handing the wetsuit to Cleon.

  “It’s from the future, Cleon,” Jasper says proudly, as if the wetsuit was his to give.

  “I don’t doubt it one bit,” Cleon says, cradling the headlamp to his chest. “Where else would he get something magical like this?”

  “I got to go, toshers,” Miri says. “You can stay and wax about the future. In the present, I got a war to peddle.”

  “Wait,” Julian says, “I have to go, too. I’ll follow you out. I won’t find my way without you.”

  “Monk’ll show you.”

  “I don’t trust him.”

  “As well you shouldn’t, mate,” Monk says, with a mock bow. “You shouldn’t trust none of us. We’ll rob yer blind and throw you in the sewer.”

  ∞

  Julian and Miri walk without speaking. She runs ahead of him on to Monmouth Street and heads to Piccadilly. “Why are you following me?”

  “I’m not, really. I’m walking in the same direction as you.” Julian pauses. “I’m trying to be chivalrous.”

  “Can you be chivalrous from across the street?”

  He can’t tell if she’s joking. “Aren’t you going to ask me what my name is?”

  “I would,” Miri says, “but here’s the thing. I don’t give a toss.”

  She slips into a joint and emerges five minutes later with a bound stack of the London Chronicle. The date reads May 20–24, 1775. Lexington and Concord have already fallen to the Americans a month earlier in April. The front page doesn’t mention it. The front page reads as if the battles that began the American Revolution have not yet been fought, much less fought and lost. What’s that all about? “Have you heard the news about Lexington and Concord?” he asks her.

  “Oh, you’re still here.”

  “Yes. Can I carry those for you?”

  “Why, so you can steal ’em? No.”

  At the intersection of Monmouth and Piccadilly, Miri jumps on top of a beer crate and starts yelling. “A great empire and little minds go ill together!” she proclaims. “The great Edmund Burke said so himself. America’s rebels are about to fall. Read all about it! The Crown calls them a mob of merchants. But is that what they are? Read all about it! The Crown says the rebels’ military cause is hopeless. But is it hopeless? Read all about it! They’ve run out of gunpowder, rifles, clothing, and food. Can they still fight? The Chronicle will tell you! What is the rebels’ aim? It’s all right here! They have never governed themselves. Do they really think they can win? Put a penny in this bucket, gentlemen, and find out!”

  As always, Julian is captivated by her, impressed by her bravado, theatrically barking to indifferent businessmen and gentlemen of leisure. But despite her great gifts, business is slow. The Londoners are as suspicious of Miri as she is of Julian. They don’t like a pauper girl shouting at them in the middle of their city. After fifteen minutes, barely a dozen pennies line the bottom of her bucket. Didn’t she say she needs two pounds to spring her lover from prison? That’s four hundred and eighty pennies. Julian may soon be able to give her the money she needs, but is that a smart move? Does he really want to be grappling with another fiancé? How many days between now and Fulko’s hanging? Maybe it’s better to let the halls of justice do the dirty work for him.

  The crossroads that will one day become Piccadilly Circus is narrow, uneven, poorly cobbled. Miri has not picked a great spot to sell her newspapers. There are no sidewalks, and the people treat her as a nuisance. Just as Julian thinks that she’s in danger of coming to blows with someone, an annoyed wiseacre in a well-made suit shoves her off her crate. The people hurrying by cheer. She swears.

  Julian does more than swear. Taking a step forward, he bodychecks the man. The man loses his balance and falls. Julian stands over him. He’s barely taken his hands out of his pockets. “What the hell did you do that for?” the man yells, scrambling to his feet. His tailored suit has mud all over it.

  “I could ask you the same question
, mate,” Julian says. “What are you doing shoving young ladies off crates?”

  “That’s not a lady!”

  Julian grabs him by the jacket collar. “You’re a true gent,” he says, shoving him away. “Move along. But if it’s trouble you want,” he adds, his fists up, “come get it.”

  Cursing, the man slips away into the crowd. Julian turns to Miri. She’s almost smiling. “What did you do that for?” she says, but breathier. “I get knocked off me crate a dozen times a day.”

  “Not while I’m with you,” Julian says. “But look what the gent kindly left behind.” He opens his palm to show her the man’s small coin purse.

  “You fleeced him?” She sounds thrilled but incredulous.

  “Let’s say I relieved him of his monetary burden.” Julian smiles.

  Miri keeps herself from smiling. “I wouldn’t go around knocking men to the ground and mugging them,” she says. “That’s what Fulko did and look where it got him.” They count the coins. Two crowns. Two crowns—that’s what Fabian gave Mallory to lie down with Julian. “Two crowns,” she says excitedly, as he watches her face for a blink of old memory, of new meaning, of anything.

  “Yes, a half-pound,” he says slowly. “A few more of these and you’ll have your share for Fulko.”

  Miri chews her lip. She wants to take the purse. “What do you want for it?” she says. “I ain’t foining with you, if that’s what yer thinking.”

  “Did I ask you to foin with me?” Julian is crestfallen to be so misunderstood. Though one time you asked me to foin with you for two crowns.

  Leaving the purse with him and grabbing her papers, Miri walks quickly. “How am I gonner sell my papers at Piccadilly tomorrow? I liked that spot. Can you hurry? Yer crawling like yer headed to confession. The bloke will come back and bring a charlie with him.”

  She returns the unsold papers to the Chronicle office and keeps six pence for the two dozen papers she sold. Julian needs to leave her but doesn’t want to. Masonry supplies, the wall, goldsmiths, men’s clothing shop, apothecary for her mother, a meal, a bath. If he gives Miri the man’s stolen purse, he’s afraid he won’t have an excuse to seek her out when he returns to St. Giles. What if he doesn’t find her again in that tangled warren? He is so lost in thought about the girl that he doesn’t hear the actual girl address him. “Monk keeps calling you Jack,” she says. “You got a real name?”

  “Julian Cruz.” He roams her face for recognition.

  “Julian Cruz,” she repeats, eyeing him cautiously. His name off her lips jolts his loins. He can’t call her exceedingly good-humored, but at least she no longer stares at him as if she’s about to stick him with a shiv.

  “Let me help you again tomorrow, Miri.”

  “You think you helped me today? Ha. You made it so I can’t go back to my favorite spot to sell my papers, yes, you’ve helped me marvelous much.”

  “We’ll go somewhere else. You bark, I’ll be security. Every good barker needs security.”

  “Yer going to provide security?” With great doubt she looks him over. “You nearly needed smellin’ salts earlier because of a little stench. Some security you’ll be against actual fists.”

  “I got actual fists, too, don’t I?”

  “What you got is no sense.”

  Julian’s hazel eye catches her brown eye just long enough for a beat of a heart to pass from his chest into hers. He extends his hand with the purse in it. “Go ahead, take it,” he says. He forces out a smile. “I’ll come back to return your suit. Where can I find you?”

  She doesn’t smile back as she grabs the pouch. “You ain’t got to come back at all now. Consider us square.”

  “No, I’ll come back.”

  “No, you don’t got to.”

  “I do. I promised chickweed to Hazel. And your mother…”

  “Leave my mother alone,” she says. Julian’s face must show his misery, because she adds, “If you see me mum, or Monk, or the others, don’t tell them about the money. They’ll steal it off me when I sleep.” And off his fallen face, she says, “Everything, everywhere is for the demon drink. Nothing left for nothing else.”

  “Not even two quid for Fulko?”

  “Nothing,” Miri repeats. “But if he hangs, mark my words, I’ll be the only one they’ll blame, as if I’m the only one with the power to save him.”

  “Aren’t you?” Julian whispers.

  Miri runs.

  16

  Agatha

  JULIAN CAN’T EXPLAIN WHY HE DIDN’T FIND THE SPACKLED stones in the London Wall when he was with Ashton. He barely has to search for them in 1775. And that’s despite the passage into the City at Cripplegate having been dismantled and replaced with a wide road, and the church at Cripplegate having been thrown into such disrepair that it’s been shut down for supposed renovations. Despite the changes in infrastructure, Julian finds his unmarked gray boulders three feet off the ground in less than five minutes.

  It’s another matter to retrieve the leather purse from the wall. It takes hours. Julian gets muddy and grubby, sweating with the labor of chiseling out and removing the heavy exterior stone. The purse is dusty and the leather is cracked in places but otherwise it’s aged reasonably well over the last hundred years. Inside, the money is pristine. He is so relieved. It means he won’t have to sleep in the rookery. Though it does mean he won’t sleep in the rookery with Miri. Well, he’ll have to find another way to get close to her. He’s not planning to stay with her in St. Giles. The endgame is to get her out of the rat sewer as soon as he can.

  Julian shakes with indecision about how many of his remaining 47 coins to take. Getting money out of the wall is a time-consuming and dangerous task. The risk of getting noticed and caught is great. But it’s also a risk carrying gold into a place like St. Giles. Fabian was killed for this money in the past; Julian can certainly be killed for this money in the present. Miri’s gang will slice him open if they suspect he has even two guineas. Look at the way Monk has been patting his wetsuit, searching for a pocket.

  But here’s the thing. It’s not his gold. It’s hers. To protect what’s hers, Julian takes only four coins to start. He will come back for the rest when the time comes. The wet mortar gets all over his trousers and shoes and sleeves as he trowels around the stone to seal it. When he is done, he chisels a small cross in the soft cement, like a Hansel and Gretel crumb, and, cleaning himself up as best he can, heads to Cheapside.

  Many of the bullion traders’ businesses have been destroyed in the Great Fire, and though Cheapside has been rebuilt, the old ostentation is gone. The dealer shops are as elegant as before, but there are no more gold candlesticks or gold frames on the wall behind Lord Asquith, the gentleman who sits at the walnut desk across from Julian. What does remain is the abounding white-gloved reverence for his Elizabethan treasure. “Wherever did you get this, sire?” Asquith asks, in the tone of someone inspecting the fine details of a beautiful woman. “And are you sure you want to trade it? It must have some sentimental value.”

  “It does,” Julian says. “But it’s gold. It’s meant to be spent. I’m not making a wedding band out of it, am I?”

  “Quite right. Do you have a number in mind?” Asquith coughs. “There are fifty-two goldsmiths around here in a space of a mile, and I realize you could’ve gone elsewhere, so I appreciate your honoring us with your business. Tell me a number, and I will try to match it.”

  Julian hasn’t thought of a number. He can barely remember what he got last time. Mallory told him he was undersold. “Five hundred shillings,” he says.

  The speed with which Lord Asquith hands Julian a velvet pouch with twenty-five pounds sterling tells Julian he has once again grossly undervalued the coin’s worth. Mallory would not be happy with him. He thanks Asquith and walks down the street to find another dealer. Instead of asking Julian for a number, the second man offers Julian a number: one hundred pounds for his freshly minted sovereign. That bastard Asquith! Never mind. It’s Julian’s fa
ult. As in the rookery, so at the goldsmiths, a fool will soon be parted from his money.

  With £125 in his pocket and another two gold sovereigns for the just in case, Julian takes a carriage to the Sir Paul Pindar’s Head Tavern in Bishopsgate, past Finsbury Fields. Julian’s heart aches when he glimpses the field where he once strolled with Mary.

  Ambassadors to England used to stay at the Pindar Mansion, but by 1775, it has been subdivided into a ward for paupers. Downstairs it remains a tavern. Julian has a large meal of mutton and potatoes and washes it down with two pewter tankards of strong ale. For a shilling, he rents the best room at the inn. After bathing, he sleeps so long that when he wakes up, he fears two precious weeks have flown by.

  But no, it’s the next morning, May 21, 1775. Below the Silver Cross dots on his left forearm, Julian begins a new column of hope and hopelessness by tattooing his first rookery speck with a quill full of ink. He is not going to miss marking a single day this time. He plans for success, won’t settle for anything less, but once and for all, he is going to know whether he and Josephine are free or enslaved to a demon.

  At Birkin’s tailors on Bond Street Julian buys himself a fine wool suit, gold-buckle shoes, a white linen shirt, silk hose, and a fine felt hat. But when he catches his reflection in the mirror, he reconsiders. He looks somewhere between pompous and dashing. He looks like a man a girl like Miri will rob, not a man she will ever trust, or love.

  He keeps the dandy threads, but purchases a second suit, well made but more modest, a subdued narrow waistcoat, a matching vest, an off-white shirt and hose. And simple shoes with pewter buckles. He keeps the fancy hat because he likes it.

  Thus outfitted, on a sunny May morning, Julian strolls a few city blocks to Grosvenor Square. In a tall white-granite townhouse on one of the corners of the exquisitely landscaped park, he finds three large impeccable rooms for rent on the top floor. Julian pays upfront until the end of May. It only costs him a pound. On second thought, in an act of rebellion and bravery, he pays through for another hundred days—until the end of the summer.