Wilful Impropriety (53 page)

Lind never imagined pixies would come looking for the glamour. How’d they find him?

Something sharp dragged across the soles of his feet and he screamed.

“Rings on his fingers, bells on his toes, he shall have trouble wherever he goes,” sang the unseen pixies, who stank like split casks of last year’s cider.

The bindings bit through the sheets, shirt and skin when he thrashed. Several snapped before the pixie atop him could stab down with the nail.

He struck the pixie, its middle giving way to his fist as if he had crushed a rotten apple. Its scream was shrill and awful.

The others flew to the window, breaking glass, or to the door, sending it slamming against the wall. More plaster fell.

Blood streaked the sheets, mostly his own. He plucked a wing from the dead pixie. With the warmth of his touch, it gleamed like a scrap of gold leaf. He ripped the rest free of the corpse. Tupp wouldn’t approve, but why trouble his partner’s morals by confessing?

He hobbled to the center of the room. The floorboards had been pried apart, revealing where he had hidden his share of the remaining glamour. The pixies would have stolen away with it if not for the heavy chain he’d wrapped around the small bag. Lind didn’t care why none of the Folk could stand the touch of iron. The thick links would have charred a pixie’s hands to cinders.

He’d have to abandon the room, the building as well. But if the pixies didn’t return, something else would come calling, something nastier.

Lind ripped the sheets apart and wrapped the cleanest strips around his bloody legs. He then took everything of worth. The pixies had so thoroughly knotted the sleeves of his second, better shirt that he’d never be able to wear it again. He kept it for entry to the Exchange. As he dropped the worn file and chisel into the small sack he brought along when calling upon a house, a strange sense of awareness filled him. He was looting his own room, and the haul wasn’t worth more than fourpence except for what the Folk had brought—glamour, wings, and ring. Suddenly fearful that the pixies had robbed him after all, he went to his pockets. But no, he found the ring where he’d left it and laughed. The Folk weren’t so clever after all.

The makeshift bandages allowed him to make the long walk to Houndsditch. Countless restless voices, each seeking to capture passersby, rose from the Old Clothes Exchange. Lind breathed through his mouth to escape the varied stink of sweat-soaked clothes, moldy clothes, and worthless clothes and, underneath the lot, the most wretched rags. But deeper into the Exchange, there’d be worse. His stomach murmured and churned at the memory of hare skins hanging raw, sold close to fatty cakes, the crusts brilliant with grease.

This hour was the busiest for the Exchange, and Lind stood next to the old-clothes men in their uniforms of tight gabardine coats and smocks, armed with fistfuls of stacked hats and shouldering sacks. Each tugged at their beards as they eyed their fellows, their rivals in line beside them. “Solomon never judged so much,” Kapel would often tell Lind.

Yet Lind felt so comfortable among them. Did the Sight allow him to peer past their stern faces and thick gabardine? He saw men who acted as brothers when they shared laughter and sips of plum brandy after a deal, white-bearded grandfathers nodding praise over the shoulders of reading children, their language loose from the confines of church to be welcome in the home.

Mr. Barling had boasted to his clients that he considered his climbing boys “me own brood, such li’l dears.” But Lind remembered the sound of Barling’s footsteps as he left his dears alone in the cramped basement, so dark, often so cold. The gonophs had promised to be brothers. More like that Cain bloke. The underworld of London was no better or worse than these earlier families—kind when the rounds were brought and cruel when the finger comes down.

He sold to the Jew beside him his knotted shirt for a penny. Lind reached the gates and their tollman, Barney Aaron, round of head and belly, held out a hand for a copper. His young son, already thick in the middle and with dull eyes, held a leather satchel that by the day’s end would be so heavy it crept near the ground and would tempt any villain in London who guessed its contents.

Oh, he hated how that satchel taunted him. Lind paced some evenings in the company of a gin bottle and devised seven different schemes, including one that required a slavering mutt as a distraction. But once he stole from the Jews, he’d never be able to return to Kapel, so he would arrive at the Exchange early, when the young Aaron hefted a light satchel high over his shoulder.

As he pushed and slipped his way through the narrow paths of the Exchange, fingers tugged at his sack. He ignored the calls around him.

Atop a small stage in the center of the maze, Kapel stirred a kettle over a small stove and shouted through his smoke-colored beard, “Hot wine. Ha’penny a glass.”

Lind winced at how clumsily his wrapped legs took the stage’s steps. “Two glasses.”

He dropped his sack to the wooden boards.

“It’s good wine.” Kapel poured from the ladle.

Lind acknowledged the lie with a nod. Kapel’s insistence that every deal be made with the blessing of God remained amusing. So the old Jew had taught him a prayer over the acrid wine he sold.

“Baruch atah—”

A short figure roaming the Exchange caught his attention. Stockier than Tupp, and with a wide cap of green moss and long, drooping feathers. Passed right near the stage but didn’t raise its gnarled head at him.

Lind began the prayer again, “
Baruch atah adoney
—” but then the Folk started a loud dicker over the torn sleeves of a coachman’s coat atop one mound of clothes. The attendant Jew argued and showed the lining.

He heard Kapel clear his throat, so he muttered the middle part before finishing. “
Borey pahree hagoffem
.”

“Is good you are so eager, eh?” Kapel winked as he sipped. The wiry hair around Kapel’s mouth was darker than the rest of the beard and made his teeth look large. “Will I have to turn out my pockets today?”

He nodded but kept his eye on the Folk who dropped broken eggshells into the palm of the Jew, who seemed pleased with himself. Poor bloke.

He took the ring from his pocket and swallowed the wine, tepid and the more sour for it. He switched hands returning the glass to Kapel, and his fives dropped the ring into the red dregs left at the bottom.

When Kapel set the glass down with the others, the ring had been palmed, then cleaned with some spilled wine.

“A commendable piece,” Kapel said softly. “I can give a good price.”

Lind pantomimed searching through his sack as he spoke. “I need a very good price, my friend.” He would give all the coins to trusting Tupp. Even if it meant Lind went hungry for a few days.

“Nu, don’t I offer the best? You are either visiting better people to bring such finds. Or worse.”

Lind nodded. “I fear it’s both.” His legs pained him. He thought of the walk to meet Tupp at the bridge. And then? Another job, more of the Folk, who hated him. Perhaps he should take the coin and leave London for good, escape the Folk. But the idea left him cold. Lonesome and cold.

“I’m up the flue.”

“Oh?”

Lind nodded. The words wanted to rush out, and he bit most down. Even weak wine on an empty stomach could make him foolish. He didn’t dare talk of the Folk to Kapel. He might be wise, but Kapel would see him mad. Lind had to talk clever for once.

He whispered. “Worse than the traps, worse than a tuck-up fair and watching your mates do the drop.” Lind tugged at his collar to emulate being hanged.

“Tell me.”

“I’ve made some . . . well, goods of a sort. There are folk who pay well for them. That ring there, the sorts of loot I’ve brought you, all came from them. But they’re a queer lot, and some aren’t willing to buy. They’d rather take. And I don’t think they care how they leave me.”

“What are you selling,
boytchik
?”

“That I can’t tell—”

“Then how can I help you?”

Lind stood there, not sure what to say. He didn’t have an answer. There might not be one. He felt trapped by his heart.

“Stealing is no life. Listen to me. What I do is a little sin. You’re a little sin to me as well, but one I enjoy helping.” Kapel climbed down from the stage and motioned for Lind to follow. “I would be sorry if you would be found dead in some alley.”

Lind thought of Eur Du’s threat and shuddered. He followed Kapel through the Exchange and watched as the old Jew took his time greeting merchants, arguing over a price, until they reached the gates.

Kapel then turned to him and pressed some folded pound notes into Lind’s palm. Lind, displeased that the advice would benefit a bumpkin squire from the countryside and not a dedicated cracksman who knew the streets, the housetops since he was a child, made a show of counting the pounds.

“More than enough for the ring, I think. And for you to leave.”

Lind hugged Kapel before leaving the Exchange. Perhaps for the last time.

•   •   •

On the way to Waterloo Bridge, Lind stopped at a whelk-seller. Half his cart sold for a penny four of the large, pickled snails on chipped saucers, the other offered them live in a tub of cold, scummy water. A little girl shivered beneath a tattered shawl, the ends trailing into the brine and the weight of lead, as she wiped the whelk shells to a shine. Lind bought four from the man. Though bitter, the flesh was firm and would last in his stomach. He wiped his lips, then held out a penny to the girl, who had cautious eyes but quick fingers. Lind regretted that the penny would end up in the man’s pocket by the night’s end.

The bridge’s tollman barely glanced at Lind when he approached the turnstile. “Ha’penny to cross.” The man shifted on his seat, and the sound of a bottle rolling about his feet made the man blush and cough. Lind joined the other furtive folk who dared walk the bridge on a barren night. Half were desperate, the other half not to be trusted, which made Lind smirk and wonder to which he belonged.

Lind often found Tupp sitting, or once lying, atop some ledge with his gaze on the west, following the setting sun.

He saw Tupp standing on the stone ledge now, still as a statue, yet a moment of worry stole through Lind. A simple step forward would topple Tupp. Waterloo earned its second name of Bridge of Sighs after women had taken to leaping off it into the Thames. Lind looked over the edge. No boats in the cold water, so perhaps no one else had seen him. Pub talk had said the boats carried Bible and coin for anyone dragged alive from the waters. Redemption of soul and pocket.

Lind advanced stealthily, partially due to his sore legs, but also because this was one of the few times he could observe a wistful expression on Tupp.

At first, Lind thought the Folk could only feel anger or delight—they seemed to only raise their voices in rage or cheer. As if children, awful children, with magic behind their whims and no thought for anyone but themselves.

But in the past month, Lind had glimpsed moments beyond growl and grin. The way Tupp watched him with such interest. Treating any of the Folk as if they were men of London was dangerous. He worried he’d let his guard down and end up like that poor sod who embraced Jenny last night.

Yet, when Lind had stepped close enough to see the wistful expression on Tupp’s face, see how the wind made Tupp’s blue eyes water, Lind felt reluctance to think that his partner ever meant him harm.

Tupp glanced down at Lind, then gestured for Lind to join him on the ledge.

Why didn’t the gusts carry off his askew top hat? Lind didn’t want to test his scratched legs against the wind. And Tupp had never made such a request of him before when they met.

“Only one step up. Perhaps two. You are a master cracksman . . .”

Lind sighed. He cautiously climbed up on the ledge. The wind snatched at his coat. He felt it tug him back and forth, then, as if it had decided the water would be a better fate than the stone of the bridge, the wind howled and pulled him down.

•   •   •

Tupp grabbed Lind before he fell. “You’re limping. You’re hurt.”

Lind sat down. “Oh, some pests came looking for our haul.” He reached into his coat and withdrew first the pouches of glamour, and then a handful of coins. “Your share.”

“Sizable. Have you ever been to Wessex?”

“No.”

“I come from there. And there are days I miss it so much that not even glamour can keep me from feeling sick.” He shook the coins. “This could pay for both of us to travel there.”

“And what would we do when the glamour runs out?”

“There are fewer Folk there. Less iron, too. But we won’t be taking this,” Tupp said as he held the glamour out over the water.

“What? No, that’s worth a fortune!” Lind reached out until he risked slipping from the bridge.

“True. Although some fortunes aren’t measured in coin, but in years.” Tupp opened his hand and the bags splashed into the noisome river below.

He pointed out movement below. Jenny’s head broke the water’s surface, long and limp hair hiding much of her face.

Lind stiffened next to Tupp.

“Your debt is paid, mortal,” she said, her voice melodic despite being full of the Thames. “And my silence bought as well, when kith and kin ask where you have gone.” Then she sank, as if eager to walk the cold river bottom.