The Eyeball Collector (3 page)

‘“No,” replied the young man brazenly.

‘“That is a lie!” shouted the crowd and he was arrested and thrown into prison.

‘The next day he was brought before the King and a jury of twelve.

‘“You have been found guilty of lying,” said the King. “You may say one last thing before you die, but be warned: if your statement is true, then you will be given a strong sleeping draught and you will die painlessly. But if your statement is a lie, then you will be burned alive and die screaming.”

‘The young man spoke only one sentence in reply and the King had no choice but to release him.’

The boys were still, listening hard, and Hector felt a brief shiver of something, almost pride. Yes, they held him captive by force, but he too had them gripped, with his words.

‘So, what did he say?’ asked a small boy at the front. He was sporting Hector’s cravat.

‘Exactly,’ said Hector with a hint of triumph. ‘
That
is the riddle.’

There was a long pause. ‘It’s a riddle all right,’ shrugged the leader, and suddenly they all ran off, guffawing loudly.

Hector stood alone and motionless in the gloom. It seemed he was right. Such street urchins did not honour deals. But he was free, and at the realization relief flooded his veins. ‘Sly devils,’ he murmured with more than a little admiration. ‘At least I have my life, if not my clothes.’

Nonetheless, he was coatless, hatless and bootless on the wrong side of the City. He had to get back to the Bridge.

But which way to go?

‘Well, Hector,’ he said ruefully to himself, ‘you wanted adventure and that’s exactly what you got.’

North of the river in the City of Urbs Umida, like so many others of his ilk, Hector lived a life of ease and sophistication with few cares. Unlike those others, however, he was not satisfied. He wanted something else. South of the river, as he was now, he thought he might have found it. The littered streets were narrower, the roads potholed, the gutters oozed slime. The buildings, sooty and rundown with broken shutters and windows, were packed so tightly together they created a maze of narrow alleys in between. People hurried through the shadowed streets, hugging their secrets to them and often up to no good. And the stink! But how Hector loved it. For all its horrors, at least it made him feel truly alive.

Suddenly, without warning, a hand rested on his shoulder. Hector whipped around to see one of the boys, the small one, standing behind him.

‘Now what do you want?’ asked Hector in exasperation. ‘My breeches too?’

‘Nah,’ said the boy, and he almost looked offended. ‘I want to know the answer. I’ll tell yer the way out of here,’ he cajoled. ‘It’s dangerous round these parts for someone likes yerself. You’ll get in worser trouble than wiv us.’

Hector smiled. ‘Very well,’ he said and told him the answer.
¹
The boy screwed up his dirty face in puzzlement. ‘I don’t get it,’ he said, and before Hector could react the boy pressed something into his hand and ran off.

‘Wait,’ called Hector after him. ‘How do I find my way out of here?’

‘Just keep left,’ came the shouted reply. ‘Past Squids Gate Lane and Old Goats Alley, go through the graveyard and that’ll take you back to the river.’

Hector opened his hand and there in his palm lay his ebony cocoon. ‘Thanks,’ he called, but the boy was gone.

Gulliver Truepin went to the window, instinctively taking up a position to one side so he couldn’t be seen. From up here on the fourth floor he had a fine view across the grimy City to the sluggish river. Without thinking, he placed his hand palm down on the wall but grimaced and removed it immediately. The wall was tacky to the touch and he hardly dared to imagine what substance it was that could be so sticky. Quickly he wiped his pale and slender hand on his handkerchief.

It was some years now since Truepin had been in Urbs Umida. He had not missed the place and he would not have come back were it not for the fact that in his line of business – the business of swindling – Urbs Umida had more than its fair share of potential victims. Not on this side, however; they were too smart for his game, many playing it themselves. No, thought Truepin as he looked north over the River Foedus to the red tiled roofs and the gleaming doors and the wide white pavements, his target was
them
over the river. The rich were easy pickings, surprisingly simple to trick, blinded as they were by their own greed. They deserved whatever they got.

But first he had to find a way to move more easily among them.

Truepin looked in the small fly-spotted mirror on the wall and pulled up his eye patch briefly to reveal his scarred socket and the false eyeball nestled within. The scar, less raised than it used to be and much faded after all these years, wasn’t so bad, but the false eyeball was hardly a pleasant sight. It was dull and yellowing, showing signs of age and its poor quality. He wore it to stop his socket from collapsing, but he was appalled enough by it to keep it covered.

‘Not for much longer,’ muttered Truepin. The day was fast approaching when he could take or leave the patch. He examined his hairline and ran his fingers through his lank locks. He was not entirely sure that they were quite as thick as they had been before. He tutted and reminded himself that this relatively minor problem was a necessary sacrifice for the financial gain.

You see, Truepin’s thinning mane was not down to age but to a travelling pedlar’s potion. Truepin had bought the potion hoping that it would cure his ongoing stomach trouble, as the label and the pedlar so enthusiastically claimed. Surprisingly enough the sour brown liquid
had
cured his ills, but the side effect had been rapid and substantial hair loss. In a fury Truepin had made strenuous efforts to track down the pedlar and after three days and nights he came upon the unfortunate man at a county fair. There, Truepin sneaked up behind him and began to throttle him, stridently demanding to know the remedy.

‘Stop taking the potion and your hair will grow back,’ croaked the pedlar.

‘Is that it?’ asked Truepin.

‘Yes,’ he gasped. ‘You’ll see, it will grow back straight away.’ Then he lost consciousness.

Truepin immediately saw a wonderfully twisted opportunity for personal gain and true to form he seized it. When the pedlar recovered (two sharp slaps to the face helped) he took him to the nearest ale tent, plied him with drink and wheedled the recipe for the potion out of him. It was as he suspected: mainly water, with the addition of colouring and one extra ingredient which, he deduced, both cured the stomach and caused the hair loss. Truepin bottled up a few gallons of it himself and set off for the nearest small village. By the light of the waxing moon he poured copious quantities of the potion down the village well and waited in the wooded outskirts. Within a matter of days all who had taken water from the well noticed extreme hair loss . . . but suffered no longer from indigestion. To every cloud there is a silver lining! The village was in uproar, having no idea what was causing their misfortune or how to cure it.

It was then that Truepin made his entrance proper. He posed as a travelling apothecary and sold his own cure for baldness (in essence a bottle of flavoured water) with strict instructions to drink only the remedy and milk for ten days. Of course, having not drunk from the well for over a week, everyone’s hair was soon growing back and Truepin was hailed as a miracle worker. He was given rooms in the best tavern, fed the finest food the villagers could offer (not so fine, Truepin thought), consulted on – and paid handsomely for – his wise opinions on all matters ranging from mole-catching to bacon-curing.

The trick with conning people was to know when to stop. And this was a maxim by which Truepin lived. After a week or so he bade the grateful villagers farewell and moved on, his purse much the heavier, to another set of victims, and began the whole charade all over again until he had worked his way back to Urbs Umida.

Gulliver Truepin had spent many years now cheating and lying for a living and had a raft of ruses, disguises and pseudonyms in his arsenal. He had perfected the pawnbroker swindle (a little tricky yet ultimately very rewarding), he had made a pretty penny selling ‘genuine’ pieces of Noah’s Ark and had achieved great success with a dancing ferret (until its untimely death). A master of mimicry from an early age, he had long ago discarded his true accent along with his real identity (he was christened Jereome Hogsherd and had begun his life as a lowly peasant). He could switch at will between one mode of speaking and another, allowing him to mingle with the lowest of the low and, as was his preference, the more elevated of society. He had at his disposal the French nuance – he had once played very successfully the part of a Parisian card sharp – and he could drop his aitches with the best of them.

Gulliver Truepin’s success in the field of deception, of which he was very proud, could be measured by the substantial sum of money he had accrued. Unlike others in the same game, he hadn’t frittered it away on drink and women and other questionable pursuits. Gulliver Truepin always had one eye (literally) to the future. And the future was now. He was tired of the nomadic lifestyle and ready to enjoy fully the fruits of his dishonest labours. He wanted to settle down, and not in any average sense of the word. His sights were set much higher than that. All his ordinary cons and swindles so far had been merely the springboard to his grandest change of identity yet and the lifestyle of luxury he had always desired and believed he deserved.

But for all this he needed even more money. To this end he had a plan, the first stage of which was to be executed tonight. It was simple, old fashioned – he found this usually proved most effective – and it would take a modicum of daring and deceit. Hardly difficult for a man such as Gulliver Truepin.

It was that old chestnut. Blackmail.

From his lodgings Truepin could also see the Nimble Finger Inn opposite. He had an appointment there in fifteen minutes. He went to the bed, where two sets of clothes were laid out on the coverlet. The quality and finish of each set could not have been more different. On the one side was a smart black velvet jacket and matching breeches, on the other a coarse greying shirt and threadbare waistcoat. He ran his hand over the velvet regretfully. But this was not the time to indulge his taste for quality. He pulled on the latter outfit delicately, as if he could hardly bear the feel of it on his skin. Over these clothes he threw a tatty brown cloak. He looked down at the accompanying boots, worn and scuffed, and shook his head.

‘Not long now,’ he thought, ‘and I can cast off these rags for the last time.’ He could endure this discomfort because he knew that the end was in sight.

The light was fading as Gulliver crossed the road. A dark-haired young boy with piercing eyes, oddly underdressed for the weather, bumped into him halfway across. Truepin, suspecting a pickpocket, grabbed him and snarled at him menacingly before releasing him roughly and slipping into the Nimble Finger. He purchased a jug of ale (he would have preferred sparkling wine, of course, but it was not available) and took a seat in a dark corner. His dress ensured that he blended in with the crowd. Easily done too, for no one in the Nimble Finger wished to draw attention to him or herself. Truepin waited, sipping distastefully at his warm ale.

‘Truepin?’

He looked up to see a stout fellow in a dark coat and hat swaying over the table. He nodded. The newcomer slid clumsily in beside him.

‘Ale?’ offered Truepin, though he suspected from the man’s drowsy demeanour and reddened nose that he was already gin-sozzled enough.

‘Aye,’ came the gruff reply. Truepin poured another cup.

‘So,’ said the man after a long noisy swig, ‘I believe you want a new name.’

‘I do.’

‘And a title?’

‘Indeed.’

‘It’ll cost yer, and cost good,’ the man slurred.

Truepin nodded. ‘I have the money.’ Or I will soon, he thought.

‘Then it is done. Come back at midnight – it’ll be ready.’ With that the fellow swallowed the other half of his ale and disappeared into the crowd.