Printer's Devil (9780316167826) (11 page)

There seemed to be no one about in the little courtyard of brick buildings adjoining the inn. I could hear a drain trickling,
and as I crept round a corner I saw a filthy stream of water dribbling from a pipe in the wall, leaving a spreading patch
of brown slime over the brickwork all the way to the ground. A flight of stone steps led up to a door halfway up the house
side. This irregular, badly whitewashed yard must be where the fearsome bosun lived.

I decided I’d rather not knock on any doors. Holding tight to Lash’s lead, I peered through the nearest grimy window and could
see nothing. The place looked deserted; except that there was a washing-line stretched over an upper balcony, with a gentleman’s
breeches and two huge pairs of bloomers hanging on it.

There was a grille in the ground nearby, and as I squatted down to squint through it I could see another grimy little window
beneath it, as opaque and unhelpful as the other. I was about to give up, and make my way home, when I thought I saw a face
peeping out behind the grille at my feet.

I crouched on all fours now, like a beetle, and peered down. The window creaked noisily open, and Lash started backward, making
the snuffling noise he often did when he was surprised by something.

A boy’s face appeared, with short untidy hair a bit like a bird’s nest on his head.

“Who you looking for?” he said.

“Oh — er — no one,” I replied, rather stupidly.

“Why get on your knees to look down the cellar then?” he asked suspiciously. “Lost something?”

I cast a wary glance into the yard behind me. “Do you know a bosun?” I asked.

“My Pa,” said the boy. “He ain’t here. Who wants him?”

“It’s not that I
want
him,” I said. How much ought I to tell this boy?

“You off the
Sun of Calcutta?”
he asked, evidently believing like everyone else that I was some sort of sailor boy. “What you come here for?” He was starting
to be hostile. “What’s your name?”

“Mog,” I told him. “Where is your Pa?”

“Search me. Don’t know how long he’ll be, neither. All day and all night. Three months. Five minutes. Probably getting drunk
at some tavern. And you’re lucky Ma Muggerage ain’t here neither, or she’d have your hide for a wash-leather by now, crawling
round here.” It was only now that he noticed Lash, who
came nosing forward to try and stick his nose in between the bars of the grating. The boy grinned, and I suddenly saw something
in his big eyes I thought I recognized.

“Can you come out?” I asked him.

His eyes lit up. “No — but you can
help
me out. See that pink door there? There’s no lock on it. You’ll find a big heavy barrel in the scullery there. Shift that,
and there’s a trapdoor I can get out of.”

I got up off my knees and led Lash over to the scullery door. It opened easily, shedding flakes of old pink paint as it swung
open. A bare little room with a stone floor met my eye, cobwebs dangling like flags from the ceiling. There was no furniture
except for a large empty washtub and a big keg standing against one wall.

With difficulty, I pushed the keg aside, an inch at a time, until a small square wooden trapdoor was completely uncovered.
As I bent to knock on it, it opened upward towards me, making Lash sneeze again with gruff surprise.

“Someone keeping you prisoner in here?” I asked the boy, panting from the effort of moving the barrel.

“Not far off,” the boy grumbled, climbing out. He was dressed in clothes very much like mine. Indeed, as he stood up in the
little scullery I suddenly saw that he was similar to me in several ways, and some of the events of the past couple of days
started to make more
sense. “Good thing you came by,” the bosun’s boy said, grinning with gratitude. “Sorry, what did you say your name was?”

“Mog,” I said, “and this is Lash.” The boy reached out a hand and Lash’s damp nose met it, pulling back in disappointment
when he found there was nothing to eat in it. The boy laughed. For the first time he looked at me properly.

“Your clothes are all wet,” he said.

“Sorry,” I said, “I, er — was playing in a pump.”

“Sounds fun,” the boy said, “it’s so hot. It’s been awful down in that cellar these last few days. But my Pa, and Ma Muggerage,
reckon I should be kept out of mischief. I reckon the pair of
them
ought to be locked up in there. They cause more mischief than anyone else in London.”

“They didn’t mean you to get out easily,” I said. And then: “What
sort
of mischief?”

“Not sure I know, exactly,” the boy said, “they don’t tell me nothing. But they’re both in it. People come to see ’em in the
middle of the night. They go off at all hours, chasing people, carrying things, bringing money home. People leave notes. I
see bits and pieces, but never the full story. Know what Pa brought home the other day? A camel.”

I stared at him.

“I think,” I said, “there’s a story I ought to tell you.”

His name was Nick (“Dominic, by rights, they say, but no one ever called me that before”), and he was the bosun’s son. His
mother had died when he was very young, and he had been placed in the care of a formidable woman called Mrs. Muggerage, whom
he hated, and who quite evidently hated him back. He’d seen his father rarely, since he was most often away at sea, coming
home between voyages to pay Mrs. Muggerage for looking after his house. At one time Mrs. Muggerage used to pretend she treated
Nick like a king; but when it became clear the bosun didn’t care how she treated him, she dropped the pretense.

“She’s always knocked me about,” he said, “treats me like a dog. Worse,” he added, scratching Lash under the chin. “It’s twice
as bad just now, ’cos my Pa’s home, and they both hit me as hard as the other. At least when Pa’s away there’s only her to
look out for.” He’d been forced, for most of his life, to live by his wits, and he freely admitted he’d become a habitual
thief. His father had taken him to sea a few times, and in foreign cities he’d seen people with fabulous wealth, animals he’d
never heard of before or since, and women more beautiful than he’d ever imagined. But the violence and harshness of the sailor’s
life frightened him, and he hated the storms and the poor food; and his father’s embarrassment at his son’s lack of aptitude
for life at sea had quickly turned to contempt. “He says I’m soft,” he grumbled, “he’s always saying I’m soft, whatever I
do. He hates me for it, Mog, really hates me. But onboard ship, they do things — well, they do things you’d never believe
if I was to tell you.” He was supposed to accompany his father on the voyage from which the
Sun of Calcutta
had just returned: but less than an hour before she set sail he’d sneaked ashore and hidden until he was quite sure she’d
gone. Now that his father had returned he was paying the price. “Most sailors would get flogged and left for dead for that
kind of thing,” he said, “so I s’pose I’m lucky to get away with being locked up in a cellar.”

“You’ve
got
a Pa, at least,” I said to him. “I’ve got no parents or family at all, that I know of.”

“Reckon I might be better off without, sometimes,” he said in a low voice.

In practice, it turned out he was able to slip away from the bosun and from Ma Muggerage regularly, and for long periods,
without their worrying too much about where he was. He knew the streets of London as if they were part of his body; and it
wasn’t just their layout he knew, but their different characters, which were dangerous and which were safe, who lived in them,
whose favor to court and whom to avoid, how to get from one place to another in the quickest possible time, and how to disappear
completely. His
best friend was a dwarf in Aldgate who’d taught him to read. “I didn’t used to see much point in it,” he said, “I used to
think, if you want to know something, why not just ask someone who knows? Whatever someone can write down, they might as well
tell you out loud. But I changed my mind. Believe it, Mog, I learn more things off books and papers now than ever anybody
tells me,” he said. “Folks think I can’t read, see? So they leave things lying about. It’s my best secret.”

“I can’t remember learning to read,” I said, “I just — always could, I suppose. I must have learned while I was in the orphanage.
But I can’t say I know who taught me.”

“You too!” he enthused. “Well, you know what it’s like then. Easier to find things out, easier to fool people and lead ’em
astray. Know what I do? Sometimes I write notes for my Pa to find, making out they come from someone else! I can find out
gentlemen’s business just by picking their pockets. Oh, I know things I’d never know in a million years if I couldn’t read.”
When I told him I worked in a printer’s shop, his eyes grew wide with envy. “Imagine!” he said, “posters and newspapers and
announcements! You must know more of what’s going on than any kid in London!”

His eagerness to listen spurred me on. I told him
about the men at Flethick’s, and about the man with the mustache, and about Coben and Jiggs and how I’d come by the wound
on my head, and about the chest and the great knife and the
Sun of Calcutta
and the golden lantern and the man with the stammer … and all the time Nick’s eyes grew bigger and bigger until they’d almost
pushed everything else off his face.

“What a detective you are!” he said admiringly. I laughed. “But listen,” he said, urgently, “the camel all those people are
after is still here. In this house!”

“Where?” I asked, “in the stable?”

Nick pretended to laugh. “Very funny,” he said. Then he saw I hadn’t got the point. “It’s not a
real
camel,” he explained. “Look, come with me. I’ll show it to you.”

There was a door from the scullery, leading up a flight of stairs into the house. “Who’s that man in the stable?” it suddenly
occurred to me to ask, as Nick led me through the untidy rooms.

“What man?”

“There’s an old creature asleep under a horse blanket in there.”

“Can’t say. ‘S not our stable, that. Might be a drunk,” Nick said. “Now then — this is the room he’s got it hidden in, I bet.”
We were standing among a pile of odds and ends so extraordinary it made a rag
and bone shop look tidy. Old clocks, bits of cloth, pieces of wood, ropes, brass trinkets, pewter mugs, odd shoes, rolled-up
rugs, tins, candles, a wooden leg, hats, bird-cages, and meat forks were just some of the things I could see stuffed into
tea chests and spilling out over the floor and the window seat. Lash went nosing and clattering among it all, his tail flapping
with absorption.

“All looks pretty useless to me,” I said, surveying the piled-up junk.

“Probably,” Nick said, “but that’s what folks are
meant
to think — know what I mean? It’s a good place to hide real valuable stuff, under all this junk.” He began pulling blankets
out of a nearby chest. “For instance,” he said, “look what’s here.”

He’d found it. An ornament in the shape of a camel — a foot high, no more — with a single hump and a long neck arching outwards
at the front, and a rather dazed expression on its face, as though it had just been clouted over the head with a frying pan.
It was made of brass, and was designed so that it could stand on its four legs. Bits of it had turned a crusty green.

“That’s
the camel?” I said, disappointed.

“Yes, but there must be something valuable about it ’cos he was pleased as punch when he brought it home,” Nick replied. “I
heard him talking to Ma
Muggerage and he was laughing fit to burst, as though he’d got the Crown Jewels.”

“I think,” I said, “Coben and Jiggs expected this to be in the chest they stole. They kept saying the bosun had it, and asking
me where it was.” I turned it over in my hands. “Are you
sure
this is the right one? This couldn’t be a false one, to throw people off the scent?”

“That’s the one he was gloating over,” Nick said, “I saw it with my own eyes. And shall I tell you something else? He’s got
customers who are interested in this. He told Ma Muggerage he was meeting some men at the Three Friends to arrange a little
deal.”

“When?” I asked eagerly.

“Dunno. Maybe now. But more likely at night. That’s when all their shady stuff goes on, far as I can —” He stopped, and his
brow furrowed. “I’m not so sure I should be telling you all this,” he said. “How come you’re so interested anyway?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know,” I said, truthfully.

“You seem to know plenty about thieves, for an honest lad. You’re quite excited about it all, aren’t you?”

I had to confess I was.

“Well, you shouldn’t be,” he said. “If you take my advice you’ll stay out of it, and then you’ll still be an honest lad when
all these characters are locked up or
dead. Look at this.” He reached into his pocket for something — a crumpled piece of paper. He handed it to me, and I unfolded
it curiously.

Dont Think You Can tred

on ur patch.

You might hav less frends

Than you think. Eys ar

watchin you evry niht.

Eys ar watchin you now.

“This came last night,” Nick said, “pinned to the window frame, it was. There’s men after his blood for taking this.” He lifted
the camel, and it stared stupidly at me.