The Magnificent Lizzie Brown and the Mysterious Phantom (11 page)

“Yes!” Lizze exclaimed.

Nora softened. “I'll give you a hand up.”

Lizzie watched in amazement as Nora hoisted herself up and out of sight in a few quick moves. She was so strong! Nora reached an arm down from the roof to take Lizzie's hand, and she gripped Nora's hand tight. Below the caravan's single wooden step, the London street was rolling past faster than she liked. Then Nora pulled without warning, and Lizzie was lifted clean off her feet. She managed a sort of flailing scramble up the rear of the caravan, scuffing even more of the paint off as she went.

“See?” Nora said. “Easy.”

“Blimey,” said Lizzie, settling down on the gently swaying roof. “Good view from up here.”

The vast, open arch of the sky was thick with stars, like a daisy meadow. As they watched, a faint streak of light slid silently down the darkness.

“Make a wish,” Nora and Lizzie both said instantly. They looked at one another and burst out laughing.

The horse-drawn trailers creaked their slow, steady way through central London. In the streets, the night people were at large. A staggering man, his arm around his friend's shoulders, paused from belting out a song to cheer the passing caravans. A chestnut-seller, tapping the gas from a lamp to roast his wares, called out to anyone who might be listening, “Nuts-oh, pipin' hot! Lovely nuts!”

It was like being in the audience of her very own circus, Lizzie thought from her perch on the trailer. All of London was putting on a show, and she got to watch it.

“We better get back inside, Lizzie,” Nora said.

“In a minute,” Lizzie told her happily. But then, to her horror, she saw a figure she knew. He staggered a few steps, stopped to prop himself against a lamppost and stare down at his feet, then staggered on. It was Pa, drunker than she'd ever seen him.

“Get down!” Lizzie shoved her friend down flat on the trailer roof.

“Eh?” Nora said.

“He ain't seen us yet,” Lizzie whispered.

But he had!

Pa looked up. His eyes went wide, then narrow. “LIZZIE!” he roared.

“Don't look at him!” Lizzie told Nora urgently. “You mustn't look him in the eye. It sets him off!”

“You get down 'ere
now
, girl, do you hear me?” Pa bellowed.

The trailer was passing right by him now. Lizzie didn't want to look down into that horrible twisted face.

“That's your old man?” Nora whispered.

Lizzie nodded.

The trailer shook as Pa's fist slammed the side of it.

“Hey, knock it off!” the driver at the front told him.

Pa sneered. “Who you talkin' to, ya dirty gypsy scoundrel? Eh? C'mon an' take a swing at meh.” He hiccupped, and a wave of froth washed out from his mouth and spattered on the pavement.

“Don't look at him,” Lizzie pleaded.

Pa began to jog alongside the trailer. “Lizzie!” he howled, as if she'd hurt him. “You've let me down. Me own flesh and blood!”

People were starting to take an interest now, nudging one another and pointing. Lizzie wanted the ground to swallow her up — Pa was shouting even louder than the chestnut-seller was. “I need yeh back! Come home!”

Nora's arm was around Lizzie, hugging her tight. “He'll not take you. Not while I'm here.”

Pa stopped, panting heavily, and the trailer began to leave him behind. “I got nuffin' without you, girl! I'm penniless!” He spat the word out, and a lot of spit came with it. “I got debts! I'll end up in the work'ouse . . . all cozza
yoo
. . .”

Then fresh, ugly determination came over Pa's face. His self-pity wasn't working. Anger took its place, and he came charging at Lizzie, his boots pounding the cobblestones. “You selfish little wretch! I'll pull you down, I'll drag you 'ome, I will! By your hair!”

Lizzie clung tightly to Nora, who glared down at Pa. “You will
not
!” Nora yelled down at him. “Get out of here, you old devil!”

Pa spread his arms out wide as he ran. “I'm taking you home . . .”

The next second, he went flying through the air like an acrobat, tripped by a loose stone. His huge chin smashed down on the stones and metallic objects shook out from his pockets and rolled free. He lay with his face in the gutter, groaning, brown mud spattered over his eyes and mouth.

Lizzie stared in disbelief at what had been in Pa's pockets. Gold chains, watches, and coins lay in the dirt. Passing street people descended on the treasures, and Pa was hidden behind a crowd.

“Your da's a thief?” Nora said.

“He always was,” Lizzie said, making a sour face. “He's never stolen as much as that before, though. A few silk hankies, the odd watch maybe.”
He's gone up in the world since I left
, she thought bitterly.

Nora shook her head. “Pockets full of other people's gold, and he still wants you to pay his debts. The nerve.”

Lizzie nodded in agreement, but her thoughts were far away. With her out of the picture, Pa would have been desperate for money. Desperate enough to break into the bigger houses and rob rich people?

Maybe she'd dreamed of the Phantom because, deep down, she already knew who he was — her own flesh and blood. No. It couldn't be. Pa just wasn't clever enough to avoid getting caught. But Lizzie still shuddered at the thought.

“I ain't never going back to him,” she told Nora.

“You'll never have to,” Nora promised. “You're one of us now.”

Lizzie felt close to tears, and not just from the shock of seeing Pa like that. His words had hurt. He'd called her a selfish wretch in front of all those people. For all they knew,
she
was the bad one.

I did the right thing
, Lizzie told herself.
He really would have dragged me off by my hair if he'd caught me. Thank goodness for Fitzy taking me in.

>* * *

The circus set up in a wide green park that lay like a blanket in the midst of London's East End. Crowds were already beginning to gather before the tents were even up, and there was a crush to get in on the opening day. The main tent was packed night after night, and the sideshows drew a waterfall of pennies and shillings.

“Always a good stop, the East End,” Fitzy told her, surveying the sea of faces. “Your poor hardworking man wants value for money, and that's what we'll give him. I swear it.”

Lizzie worked as hard as everyone else. The hard part wasn't seeing people's futures, she now realized. That part was easy. The hard part was telling the client the truth about what she saw. People didn't always like that.

“People don't go to a fortune-teller to be told the truth,” Malachy told her. “They want you to tell them that everything's going to be all right.”

But Lizzie had made up her mind not to lie, even if it was difficult. An ounce of real help was worth a ton of comforting lies.

June came, bringing blistering heat and even more customers. Lizzie sweltered inside her airless little tent. One especially stifling day, a round-faced man came in. Lizzie already had a headache.

“Now I'm not what you might call a believer,” the man said, settling himself in the seat opposite Lizzie. “All this psychic stuff is so much nonsense, if you ask me. But my wife believes it all lock, stock, and barrel, so here I am.” He thrust out his hand, daring her to take it.

Lizzie smiled despite the sharp pain building up in her head. She took his hand and the pain suddenly grew, searing through her skull like burning gunpowder.

The pain must have showed on her face. “You needn't bother with the theatrics,” the man said smugly.

Right
, Lizzie thought.
I'll show you.
She traced her finger down his life line. Visions began to appear, but it was hard to see them clearly through the clouds of pain in her head.

“I can see you walking along a beach, as a little boy—” Lizzie began.

“I was hardly the only small boy to have gone to the seaside,” the client interrupted, laughing at his own wit.

“You're crying . . . a crab's nipped your toe, and everyone's laughing.”

For a moment the man stopped chuckling and sat still. Then he scoffed. “Happens to lots of children.”

Lizzie went on, describing what she saw. Her head was pounding now. The client refused to be impressed, no matter how many scenes Lizzie described. She tried to see clear details, but it just hurt too much.

Suddenly a vision blazed in her mind, clear and bright as the sunrise, cutting through the fog of pain. “I can see a tall house in an alley,” she said. “Posh one too. There's a big bronze door knocker in the shape of a lion's head.”

She felt the man stiffen.

“You're coming out the door. Big bunch of keys in your hand. Looking left and right.”

The man was silent. He seemed lost for words.

Lizzie shuddered. “Something's close, something evil. It's like there's blood in the air.”

The customer laughed nervously. “Back to the theatrics.”

“It's him!” Lizzie sucked air through her teeth.

“Who?” the man asked.

Lizzie bit her lip.
A man with a mask over his face. Carrying a sack over his shoulder. Creeping ever so quiet and slow. He don't want to be seen.
She strained to see more. She saw a church at the foot of the alley with a golden dragon perched on its tall spire. A voice was calling in the distance. It was the same noise she heard every night. “
Last show, last show . . .”

Lizzie abruptly dropped the man's hand and took a few deep breaths. “Do you live in a tall house down an alley?”

“No, I don't,” said the man.

Lizzie frowned. Maybe her vision had been wrong. Or perhaps she hadn't understood it properly.

“But I
am
looking after a tall house while the owner is away,” the man added. “I watch over it during the daytime, then at night I make sure it's all locked up. Now will you tell me what on earth you're getting at?”

“I think you're going to be robbed,” Lizzie warned. She deepened her voice so he would take her seriously. “By the Phantom himself!”

The man's cheeks puffed up like a frog's, and he burst out laughing.

“It ain't funny!” Lizzie yelled.

“Oh, that does it!” he laughed. “Wait until I tell my wife! Psychics, indeed.” He wiped his eyes. “Dear child, you've put on quite a show for me, but you've pushed it a bit too far.”

Lizzie sat there red-cheeked and fuming as the man explained that the police had offered special protection to all houses with valuables in them. The house's owner had asked the local police to keep an eye on his property — and hired him as a watchman for extra protection.

“So the one thing that definitely
won't
happen is a robbery! Not on my watch!” He was pink as a sliced ham from laughing now.

“I know what I saw,” Lizzie insisted.

“And by the Phantom, of all people! Tsk! Don't you know that the Phantom has been made up by the newspapers to thrill stupid readers?” He stood up, still laughing, and tossed Lizzie a penny as he left. “You've earned it. What a little storyteller you are!”

“Serve him right if he did get robbed,” Lizzie muttered. She sat and stewed for a moment, then made up her mind and sprang out of the tent. She took off running after the man. His life could be in danger. He
had
to listen.

Up ahead, Lizzie spotted the man talking to a police constable. Neither of them had seen her. “Something amusing, sir?” the constable was asking.

“Dark forebodings from a fortune-teller!” said the client. “The Phantom is coming to rob the house I guard!”

The two men laughed together.

“I'd say you've been robbed already, sir, handing over your money to one of them lot,” the policeman said. “Don't ever believe a word those circus folk tell you. They're cheats and liars. All of 'em.”

Lizzie turned around and walked away before she was seen. The constable's words burned in her ears. “It ain't fair,” she whispered. “I'm no liar! I just wanted to help.”

Despite the people who swirled around her, Lizzie felt very alone. She knew what she had seen. She might be the only person in the world who knew where the Phantom would strike next!

The rest of the day couldn't go fast enough for Lizzie. There was no chance to get away from the stream of clients, even for a moment. She had to tell someone about the Phantom. Someone who would listen.

Finally, she got her chance. Once the last of the spectators had been ushered out of the main tent, she met Malachy, Hari, and Nora there. Dru and Erin, who was understudying for Collette, cartwheeled through the air high above, cramming in some last-minute trapeze practice. Lizzie almost couldn't bear to look.

Hari studied her. “You've had another vision,” he said.

Lizzie stared at him. “How can you tell?”

“You're clenching your right hand. The one you use to do the readings. You did that last time too.”

Lizzie felt uneasy. She hadn't known Hari very long, but it was alarming how easily her new friend could read her.

Once Dru and Erin had clambered down the rope ladders, sweaty and breathless from their practice session, everyone gathered in a circle. Malachy sat on top of a hay bale like a king holding court. He nodded for Lizzie to start speaking.

“This is going to sound crazy, but just listen, all right?” Lizzie said. When she had their attention, she continued. “I had a customer today — a man who watches over a posh house. I saw it in the vision. And I saw someone come along with a sack like they was going to rob it.” She took a breath. “It was the Phantom.”

“You saw the Phantom?” Erin leaned forward, excited. “What's he look like?”

“Nobody knows,” Nora said scornfully. “He wears a mask, doesn't he?”