The Convicts (3 page)

My fear got the better of me. I decided that nothing that might be hidden in the mud was worth the effort it took just to stand there, with water oozing at my feet. Desperate to reach the bank again, I turned a clumsy half circle, and there was the blind man in front of me. With the mud so thick, I couldn't run. I tried to move quietly, but the black goo kissed at my shins and my ankles. My shoes, swinging on their laces, thumped against my coat.

“Who's there?” the blind man said again. “This is my bit of river. What's in it is mine.”

His face was turned right toward me now. His stick went into the mud, his knee rose, and he swung around as slick as an eel. He came squelching toward me, oozing along the riverbank.

I took mother step, suddenly terrified that the fog might thicken and hide the stairs that led to safety. I tried to struggle forward, but only fell backhand the blind man came closer.

I used my hands to lift my feet, hauling on the rolled bundles of my trouser legs. I pulled up and stepped forward, then shouted in surprise and pain as I trod upon a thing as sharp as a knife. I tottered sideways and collapsed.

“Get off my river,” said the blind man in his croaking voice. He stepped along through the mud.

My ankle was twisted painfully. I felt along the bones, along skin that was now gritty, down to my ankle. Then I felt the thing I'd stood on, something hard and sharp, and it very nearly filled my fist as I pulled it out

I could scarcely believe what I saw. Only half enclosed by my fingers, stained by a sheen of mud, was a diamond. It might have been the largest diamond the world had ever known. It caught the yellow light of the fog and turned it to a deep and amber glow. My heart leapt to see it.

And then the blind man was upon me.

The blind man bowled me down. I fell flat on my back, and he sprang on my chest, straddling it with his knees. We wrestled in the mud of the riverbank as the water rose toward us. The blind man's fingers gripped my leg and then my arm.

“What did you take?” he croaked. “Give it to me! It's mine.”

I tried to squirm out from under him. I kicked with both legs and punched with one arm, but I held on to the diamond as tightly as I could.

“You dew!,” he said. “You thief.”

I put all my strength into one hard push. I bucked up against the blind man, tipping him sideways. He lost his grip on my arm, but he didn't fall away. His hands flew straight to my throat. He-found my shoes hanging there, then the laces round my neck, and he twisted those tight in a moment.

The string cut against me, the little knots biting into sinews, closing off my throat. I looked up at the blind man's face, at a mouth of rotten teeth snarling below the bandage. I saw my own hand flailing at his shoulder, as though it belonged to someone else. I thought the fog was turning red, that bright stars and blotches of black were floating through it. But I still held on to my diamond.

The blind man twisted the shoes round and round. I couldn't breathe in and couldn't breathe out; I couldn't fight back anymore. The rising river touched my feet, then rushed into the hollowed mud all along my body. It chilled my legs, my spine, and shoulders all at once, and it turned my fear to utter terror.

Everything I could see turned to red and gray and then to black. I felt my hands fall to my sides. Then I heard a snapping sound that seemed loud as a gunshot. I was sure that a vessel had burst in my body, and I was almost glad that my end had come.

But the blind man cried out the most terrible oaths. I saw the world brighten, and felt my breaths rushing in and out, my lungs pumping like a blacksmith's bellows. I saw the blind man clearly again, ugly and mud-spotted. In his hands were my shoes, the broken ends of the laces dangling. Too knotted, too frayed, they had snapped in the middle.

I raised the diamond in my hand. I brought it up as swiftly and powerfully as I could, and I clouted the blind man on the back of his head. Black spit flew from his mouth.

I hit him again, and again after that. With each blow, the blind man grunted and swore. Then I hit him once more, and he toppled sideways. The water was halfway over my ribs, and it floated me out from die hollow, out from the grip of the mud. I feared that it would float me completely away, down past the city and out to the sea. I struggled like a flounder toward the stairs, then used the stones to haul myself upright

I looked back then, expecting to see the blind man facedown in the water. But already he was on his hands and knees, groping for his stick and his bag. His head was lifted, the bandage flapping, and I sensed that he knew exactly where I was.

I turned and ran. I mounted the stairs and dashed down the streets. At every corner I turned in a different direction, hoping to find a busy street or a marketplace. I wanted a crowd to hide among, or at the very least a poor parish Charlie who might save me, I would have to hope I didn't scare the wits from him, for I must have looked a horror. I had no shoes, no socks, a coat that was clotted with mud. But the streets seemed empty.

Chilled to the bone, I stopped at last in a narrow alley, below a lamp that east a halo in the fog. I drew the diamond from my pocket aid saw it gleam and sparkle. I knew that I held in the span of my fingers a wealth greater than Mr. Goodftllow's entire fortune. I held my father's freedom from prison, the relief forever of all his worries. I held his own ship, if that was what he wanted, a mansion for us in the country, my own curricle, and a pacer for Sunday rides. Footmen ani butlers and scullery maids danced across the faces of that diamond. Right then, in its glow, I learned the meaning of greed.

But a sound pulled me out of my wild dreams. Not far away, somewhere in the fog, I thought I heard the blind man's stick tapping at the stones. I stayed where I was, pressed between the lamppost and the wall. The man had ears but not eyes, and I hoped he would pass me by.

The tops and creaks came closer.

Then out of the fog came a horse. It stepped along with an unusual gait, as though in a slowed-down canter. Its shoulders rolling, its head bobbing high, it was the strangest horse I'd ever seen. A straw hat was tied over its ears, and a glistening blanket covered its back. But strangest of all, it had a wooden leg.

I laughed to see it, from sheer relief. The wooden leg—at its left front—hit the stones with a thump. The three good hoofs pattered after it, then the wooden leg swung forward and tapped again.

The blanket was a coat for the horse, a ragamuffin's coat made of patches of leather and silk and tartan. It was hung every inch with shells and bones, with bits of tin and curls of copper wire. A steam came off it from the horse's sweat, and whispering rustles and jingles. Behind the horse appeared a wagon, and then its driver—a bone grubber, he looked—sitting on a rickety seat. He wore the top hat and mourning coat of a grubber, both slick and bright with grease.

The horse saw me first. It shimmied away with a funny, strangled cry. Then the driver looked straight at me, and his hand went up toward his heart. His hat fell off. It bounced on his knee, on the wagon wheel, and landed right before me, spinning on its brim. Underneath the hat, he wore a dark cloth wrapped like a hood round his head.

“By jabers!” he said. “Are you toying to give me apoplexy, boy?” He shook his head. “Come out from there, young nasty-man.”

I slid from behind the post, holding my diamond in a coat pocket.

“You're wet. And you're muddy,” said the bone grubber. “What are you up to, boy?”

“Nothing, sir,” I said.

“Wal-
Ker
” he said, an expression I'd heard from many lips, but never from a grubber's.

“You're on the tidy dodge, ain't you?” he said. “You're appeaim’ to the mercies of the ladies, that's what you're doing. You're on the touch, ain't you?”

“No, sir”I didn't even know wlmt he meant

“Walker!” he said again. “I know your type.”

He seemed gruff but harmless, a bear of a man who looked even bigger in a coat too small. It stretched across his shoulders and bulged at his arms, as though the stitching could pop at any moment.

“Wfell, ain't you going to pick up me hat?” he said. “Seeing as you knocked it from me head.”

I stooped down and got it.

“What's your name?”

“Tom Tin, sir,” I said, holding up the hat. It was so foul and greasy that it stuck to my fingers.

“I'm Worms,” he said. “And it ain't
Mister
Worms neither. Just Worms is all.”

He reached down and took the hat. He secured it on his head, twisting its brim until it fell into place. “Well, Tom Tin,” he asked. “Have you a penny in your pocket?”

“No, sir,” I said. “Not a penny.”
Only a diamond,
I thought.
Only a king's fortune.

“Have you eaten today?”

I shook my head.

“Ohhhh,” he groaned. “I should be killed for my kindness. But come up, boy, and I'll feed you.”

At any other time I would have turned away from the fellow without a word. Filthy, likely homeless, he was too far beneath me to waste the time of day upon. But I was desperate to leave the haunts of the blind man, and more famished than I'd known. I climbed up into his wagon, amused to think that I, so rich, could eat the scraps of one so poor. One day, I thought, I would reward him for his act, just to see the delight on his ugly old face. I would seek him out when I'd sold my diamond, and give him a new topper, a new horse with the proper number of legs. Then, one far-off day, I would sit in the finest club with the finest fellows, and oh, how they would laugh to hear I had once dined with a ragpicker.

I settled beside him on the seat. All die things he had found were arranged in boxes behind it. There were bones of all sizes. There were white rags and colored rags, a box of broken pottery, another of bits of tin. There was a box of horse manure and a box of dog droppings, and a small box, quite ornate, that was fidl of the ragged tips of old cigars. Together, it all made a stench that I couldn't believe.

Worms turned around on the seat and rummaged among the boxes. ‘Yirst thing, a blanket,” he said, pulling one up. It was gray and worn, and likely crawling with lice, but I felt better to have it wrapped around me.

“There, lad.” He patted it into place, smiled, and patted again. “Now let's find you some belly-timber.”

His hands were black with dirt. I remembered my mother telling me that she could grow potatoes in the dirt under my fingernails. Worms could have wallowed pigs under his.

“Ah, some cheese,” he said. “That will grease your gills.”

It was moldy, I saw when he brought it out in his fist. He gave me that, and a toe of bird-picked bread, and a lump of green mutton falling from its bone. I tried to eat without chewing, without tasting, without looking at Worms, who grinned through his hood and watched till I finished. “That hit the spot?” he said, then clucked his tongue. “Start up, Peggy.”

The ttoee-legged horse pulled at its harness, jolting the wagon forward. We rumbled along into die fog, and all the little decorations swayed and rattled on the horse's many-colored coat.

“What happened to its leg?” I asked,

“Ob, I et it,” said Worms, with a pleasant smile.

I wasltappy to be with him as thewagon carried me away from the river. My dtwtond in my pocket, my life of riches ahead, I was quite content to ride for a while with the grub-ber. But I was careful to keep a hand on my pocket, and to do nothing that might make him think I had something of value.

The horse swung to the right and suddenly stopped by a heap of old ask worms picked up a stick at least twelve feet long I expected him to beat the poor horse, but he only jabbed an end of die stick into the ashes. He grunted and muttered, then turned the stick neatly around with the same sort of flourish a drum major would make with a fancy baton, A little basket was tied to the stick, and Worms pushed it into the rubbish and turned it all about. The three-legged horse watched him.

A fev moments of fishing and the tone grubber hauled in his catch: a tiny bottle with a cork; three inches of wire bent in the shape of a Q. Into the boxes went his treasures; into the wagon went his long stick. “Right-o, Peggy,” he said, and we started off again.

Wtem brushed soot and ashes from his knee. “Where are you going?” he asked.

“To the City? M said.

“Back on the tidy dodge is it?” He winked. “Or pick a pocket, perhaps?”

“No, sir,” I told him.

“Well, of course you will. What else are you to do?” The wagon stopped and Worms took up Ms stick. “Who hasn't jpw a coveatumble now and then?” He tilted the stick up high and poked it into a dustbin. “I got me start that way me-self, before I became a man of means.”

I smiled at that, to think he imagined he was rich. I decided that I would give him a bucketful of guineas, just to teach him what riches were.

He brought in the bowl of a clay pipe and a bit of cigar the size of his thumb. This last delighted him no end. He looked like a boy on Christmas morning, his eyes shining.

“You remind me of him,” said Worms as we rumbled along again.

“Who?”

“Of meself”
he said sharply. “That boy I was then. The future before me. I done well, Tom Tin.”

“I see that,” I said.

“Yes, it's a fine life I've got. There's not a bit of Spital-fields I haven't seen between old Peggy's ears.” He clucked fondly at the horse. “I been to Trinity Square, out to Woolwich and the Medway now and then to fetch the ones from the ships—and that's a long haul for a three-legged horse, let me tell you. Oh, the things I see. It's a fine life, right enough.”

“I'm envious,” I said, and he beamed.

“Tell you what, my boy. I'll give you what no one gave me. A leg up, young Tom.” He turned to smile upon me from the darkness of his hood. “I'll give you tuppence for a night's work. Two big pennies for your very own.”

I laughed. Tuppence was nothing to me anymore. But I needed something to tide me over until I found my father. I had no idea how to sell a diamond on my own. “Well, thank you, Worms,” I said.

All evening I rode with the bone grubber, from one rubbish heap to the next. The river water soaked from my clothes to the blanket, and a steam came up from that, just as it did from the horse. For the blind man I spared no more thought. I fell asleep to the sounds and motions of the wagon, and dreamed of being rich. I drove through London in a cabriolet pulled by thirty horses. They ran abreast as I dashed along the Mall, as people skittled from my path. When I woke, the fog had cleared, and the nighttime sky shone with stars. The wagon wasn't moving, and I was all alone.

Peggy stood beside a stone wall and a grim old church. Her ears, poking through slits in her straw hat, fluttered and twitched. Then I heard what she had heard, old Worms calling out in a harsh whisper from beyond the wall, “Tom Tin. Tom Tin!”

I got down and went through the gate to the churchyard. For a moment, the sight of the crosses and tombstones brought back the memory of fetching my mother from a place just the same. Then Worms whispered again, and I saw him on my right. In the blackness of the graves he shimmered in a strange, unnatural light. It glowed on his chest and his hands, as though he stood before a fire that wasn't there. Then he stooped, reached
into
the ground, and brought up a lantern, which he held high.