After spending the past month as a cheerful amnesiac, drinking gin and making jokes while his world disintegrated, Jack Cade finally has his memories back. That means he knows exactly who Ellini Syal is, and how he feels about her. Unfortunately, he...
The cat-faced man wasn't much persuaded by these arguments, but then she hit upon a stroke of genius.
She couldn't wait any longer, she said. She wanted him to take her away now. What did the boy matter? They were wasting time. She was dying for him.
It wasn't very convincing, but the cat-faced man obviously wanted to believe.
Jack wrestled with the door handle, his insides churning, while she sold herself for him. There was another shuddering thud at the door, and this time Jack could imagine what had happened. The cat-faced man had launched his whole body at her, driving her backwards, and now he was holding her against the door, plastering grimy hands and grimy kisses all over her.
Jack gave the door handle another hopeless push, dizzy with disgust. But then there was a swish of skirts, a clatter, and the sound of running feet. Suddenly, the door he'd been pushing against fell open, but it jammed against something, and he knocked his head on the wood.
He wasn't sure whether he'd passed out or not, but when he opened his eyes, he found that one of the church's huge, wrought-iron candle-holders had toppled in front of the door, preventing it from opening all the way. Perhaps the cat-faced man – or maybe even the girl – had pushed it over in order to slow his pursuit.
He pushed on the door again and, with a horrible scraping of iron on marble, it opened wide enough to let him out.
The church was deserted, except for William's body – a confusing heap of fabric on the floor that Jack's eyes didn't want to decode.
For a long time, he paced around, thinking that she might have left him some kind of clue. He even went out of the church, the wind cool on his sweat-soaked forehead, and scanned the branches of the nearby trees, thinking she might have torn some scrap of fabric off her dress and left it there to point pursuers in the right direction. That was how it happened in stories, wasn't it?
But then it dawned on him that he was eight years old, and she probably didn't want him to find her.
He balled up his fists and shut his eyes. He didn't cry anymore – it had never done him any good – but he'd never had to think so hard about it before now. He wanted to scream and shout. He wanted to hammer on doors and wake up half the neighbourhood, but something told him he wouldn't be believed, even with William's body to corroborate his story. He was an urchin – a nobody. He'd be lucky not to be arrested for William's murder himself.
Jack was only eight years old, but he already knew he couldn't trust the adult world. Its doors didn't open for the likes of him. If he wanted to save the dark-haired woman, he would have to play the long game. He would have to grow up.
***
William had debts. It was only his volatile personality that had been keeping the bailiffs at bay. They turned up the next morning – even before the police – to give the house a thorough going-over. But they were quite taken with Jack, and let him scamper about in their midst while they were emptying drawers and shifting furniture. None of them saw him sneaking out the most valuable of William's possessions under his coat.
By the time the peelers came to take Jack for questioning, he had salvaged eight shillings, a gold ring, and a bundle of letters that he suspected – because they were the only things in the house that didn't smell of booze – had once belonged to his mother.
Jack didn't know anything about her, except that her maiden name had been Elizabeth Barrett. Mention of her around William tended to make him violent – but then, a lot of things did that. The local matrons said she had been a toff – much too delicate to survive in Cheapside. They said she'd taken one look at the unwashed curtains in William's house and keeled over.
Jack could read well enough for a broadside or a penny dreadful, but these letters were hand-written, the words all slanty and joined-up. One or two of them even had crests at the top of the paper. This was the language of nobs, and it would take him a while to decipher it.
Meanwhile, he sat meekly in the lobby of the police station, and watched the peelers argue about where to send him.
There were plenty of orphanages in the city, but many were particular about the kind of children they took. Some were only for the deaf and dumb. Some were only for the orphaned children of soldiers, or merchant-seamen. Jack wasn't sure what William's profession had been, but he was certain it hadn't gained recognition from any of the philanthropic societies. His steadiest form of income had been the protection-money he'd extorted from shopkeepers who didn't want him to break their windows.
But there was an orphan asylum for new-breeds: a foundation started by the more prosperous members of their kind. Unfortunately, these prosperous new-breeds hadn't seen anything wrong with following the same Christian curriculum as the other orphan asylums.
For three hours a day, the children heard prayers and sermons and stories about how Jesus was tempted in the desert by a creature who could well have been their great, great grandfather. It was not an atmosphere conducive to building self-esteem.
Still, out of a sheer lack of options, it was decided that Jack would be sent there. The peelers let him go home first to collect his things, before escorting him to what they cheerfully called 'The Shame Academy'.
That was when Jack had found William's real treasure-trove. He had been sitting on the floor – since the bailiffs had taken all the chairs – wondering if he was going to miss the hell-hole he'd called home, when he had seen something amber glittering up through the floor-boards.
He levered them up, using the soles of his boots in place of any tools, and found a crate of whisky. Twelve beautiful bottles packed in with sawdust to keep them from breaking, like jewels half-buried in sand. It was a very William-style treasure-trove: golden and sparkly enough in the sunlight, but bitter and evil-smelling if you managed to uncork one of the bottles and stick your nose inside.
Jack, who had already inherited enough from William, determined to trade it in for an Elizabeth-Barrett-style treasure-trove: an education. Just like Elizabeth Barrett, you couldn't touch it, but it would walk invisibly through life with you, and make things almost imperceptibly better.
The sermons at the orphanage – when he eventually got there – didn't distress him too much. Jack had always assumed he was wicked, so the information hardly came as a shock. He knew he was nothing like the girl who had clasped him to her bosom at St. Michael's, but he also had the soothing, salutary contrast of William and the cat-faced man to reassure him. He might be wicked, but he wasn't as bad as either of them.
Besides, the solution was obvious. He was amazed it hadn't occurred to any of his fellow-orphans. If you couldn't be anything but wicked, you could just use wicked means to protect the good. They couldn't do it themselves, because they weren't wicked, but they'd be sure to be trodden into the dirt if somebody didn't stand up for them. And then, when they got to heaven, maybe they'd put in a good word for you.
But he wasn't too sure about that last bit, in his heart of hearts.
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