A Matter of Magic (5 page)

The magician motioned to her and started off, but instead of heading back out to the lane, he went farther into the alley. Kim followed with some trepidation. The cramped maze of garbage-strewn alleys that twisted through the spaces between the main streets was no place for anyone who didn’t know where he was going.

Mairelon, however, chose his course without hesitation, and in a few minutes they emerged on a side street two blocks from the Dog and Bull. “You can talk now,” he said.

Kim was silent for a moment, trying to decide what to ask first. “Why was that skinny toff so wishful to get his dabbers on me?” she said finally, starting with the question which was of the greatest personal interest.

“I rather think he was afraid you might come and tell me what he’d been doing,” Mairelon replied.

Kim did a quick review of the conversation they’d overheard. “He thinks you’re this Merrill cove?”

“Not any more,” Mairelon said cheerfully. He tipped his cap to a heavily rouged, overblown woman in an exceedingly low-cut gown. She eyed his shabby raiment and wrinkled her nose, then hurried past in search of more promising customers.

“So that’s why you was so set on me gammoning the cull I’d done what he wanted,” Kim said. She looked at Mairelon thoughtfully. “Are you?”

“Am I what?”

“Are you Merrill?”

“ ‘What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.’ ”

“Huh?” Kim said, thoroughly confused.

“Not literary, I take it? No, of course not, you wouldn’t be. We shall have to do something about that.”

“About what?”

“Teaching you to read.”

“Read?” Kim’s eyes widened, and she stopped short. “Me?”

“Why not? It’s bound to be useful. Come along; you don’t want to spend the night standing in the street, do you?”

Kim nodded and started walking again. It was a moment before the novelty of the idea wore off and she realized that she had been very neatly distracted from her original question. She scowled and kicked a pebble. It skittered over the cobblestones and disappeared into the damp and foggy darkness in the middle of the street.

Mairelon looked across at her and raised an eyebrow. Kim’s scowl deepened. “You knew all that was going to happen!” she said accusingly.

“Hardly. I was suspicious, that’s all.”

“Then what were you doin’ down at the Dog and Bull?”

“I was looking out for you,” Mairelon said promptly.

“I don’t need no lookin’ out for,” Kim retorted. She was suddenly tired of all these swells talking her into things without telling her enough about them first. Of course, her own curiosity was at least as much to blame as Mairelon, but that only made her more irritable.

“I’m inclined to agree,” Mairelon said. He raised his hand and touched his right eye gingerly. “I believe you blacked my eye with that last swing.”

“Too bad,” Kim said callously. “It wouldn’t of happened if you’d of told me you’d be there.”

“If I’d told you I was planning to follow you, you would have told me to be off about my own business,” Mairelon pointed out. “Which, as things turned out, wouldn’t have been at all wise, now, would it?”

“Huh.” Kim couldn’t contradict him, but she wasn’t willing to admit it.

“Besides, it wouldn’t have been at all the thing to have sent you off into trouble without warning you
and
without sending along anyone to help in case there was trouble.”

“Then why didn’t you warn me?”

“About what? I wasn’t
sure
anything was going to happen. And would you have listened?”

“If you would of explained—” Kim started with some heat, then stopped, her brain working rapidly. Mairelon had caught her rifling his wagon; he would have had to be very stupid to give her any explanations without learning more about her first. And however careless he might seem, he was not stupid. The thought crossed her mind that he had been watching to see whether she would tell the skinny toff the whole truth about what she had found in his wagon.

Curiously, the idea that he had been testing her drained away most of her anger. Caution was a thing she understood; if she wanted Mairelon’s trust, she would have to earn it. She wasn’t about to admit she knew it, though. “You shouldn’t of gone,” she said grumpily.

Mairelon gave her a quizzical look. “I couldn’t let you go alone, and there was no other choice. I simply couldn’t send Hunch.”

Kim stared at Mairelon. Then her mind brought up a picture of Hunch, drooping over the skinny toff’s shoulder and chewing on his mustache while he tried to tip over a beer mug. It was too much for her sense of humor; she burst into laughter. “No, I guess you couldn’t. I bet he didn’t want you goin’ off in them flash togs, neither.”

“You’re right about that,” Mairelon replied cheerfully. He raised his hand to touch his eye again, and winced. “He’s going to be simply delighted about this, I’m sure.”

“Not hardly he won’t.”

“He’ll say it’s what I deserve for going off without him. He may, just possibly, be right,” the magician added thoughtfully.

“You goin’ to tell him how you got it?” Kim said.

Mairelon looked at her and blinked; then he grinned. “Oh, I see. I hadn’t thought of that.” The grin widened, giving him a strong resemblance to a mischievous small boy. “Well, such things happen quite frequently in taverns, particularly the less respectable ones. I don’t think there’ll be any need to go into details, do you?”

Kim shrugged, sternly suppressing a flicker of relief. “It don’t matter to me.”

“Quite so,” Mairelon said gravely. They walked a block in silence,
watching the heavy, wide-wheeled drays clatter by over the cobblestones. Then they turned a corner and the sights and sounds of the Hungerford market washed up to greet them.

To Kim’s surprise, Mairelon did not go directly to his wagon. Instead, he led Kim around the fringe of the market to a cramped alley. He paused in the shadows, watching the lamplit shops. Though the twists of the buildings hid them from sight, Kim could hear the calls of the costermongers clearly. It was a good place to hide; Kim had used it herself a couple of times. She was surprised that Mairelon knew it.

Kim heard a scratching sound behind her and tensed. Mairelon smiled and turned, his shoulders brushing flakes of paint off the building on his right. A moment later, Hunch appeared from an even skinnier opening near the back of the alley.

“Well timed, Hunch!” Mairelon said in a low voice. “You brought everything?”

“Right ’ere,” Hunch said, lifting a large canvas bag in one hand and scowling as if he wished he could disassociate himself from such undignified proceedings.

“Good!” Mairelon stripped off his cap and dropped it, then pulled off his tattered jacket. He wiped his face and hands on the shreds of lining, which seemed relatively clean, then dropped the jacket on top of the cap and begin pulling off his heavy workman’s boots.

“Master Richard!” Hunch’s voice was not loud, but it expressed volumes of scandalized disapproval.

Mairelon paused and looked up. “What is it?”

“You ain’t never going to just—” Hunch stopped and looked at Kim. “Not with ’er standing there!”

“Oh, is that all that’s bothering you?” Mairelon looked at Kim and grinned. “Turn your back, child; you’re offending Hunch’s proprieties.”

Kim flushed, as much from surprise as embarrassment, and turned away. “I ain’t no child,” she muttered under her breath.

“Under the circumstances, that’s so much the worse,” Mairelon replied cheerfully.

Kim snorted. She could hear various scraping and rustling noises behind her, and Hunch muttering through his mustache. She frowned,
certain that at least some of the mutterings were derogatory comments directed at her. She couldn’t quite hear them, and after a moment she was glad. If she knew what Hunch was saying, she would have had to answer in kind, and she couldn’t see arguing with someone while her back was turned. It was too much of a disadvantage.

The rustlings stopped, and Mairelon said, “There, that’s better. You can turn around now.”

Kim did, and blinked. Mairelon still smelled faintly of beer, but otherwise he was once more the well-dressed stage magician she had first seen. Top hat, cape, mustache—mustache? “How’d you do that?” Kim demanded.

“The mustache?” Mairelon said. “Spirit gum and horsehair. It isn’t crooked, is it?”

“Not as I can see,” Kim replied.

“Good! I was wondering; it’s a bit tricky to do without a mirror. Still, it only has to last until we get back to the wagon.”

“What about them things you was wearing?” Hunch demanded. “You ’adn’t ought to be leaving them ’ere.”

“No, I suppose not,” Mairelon said, nudging the little pile of dirty, beer-scented clothing he had been wearing. He glanced at Hunch’s face and turned to Kim. “Can you get rid of them?”

“I could pitch them in the river,” Kim offered, eyeing the clothes almost as dubiously as Hunch.

“No, no, sell them somewhere or give them away. Preferably not in this market.”

“Huh. You don’t expect much,” Kim muttered, but she picked up the clothes and wadded them into a compact bundle. The boots were in fairly good shape; she might actually be able to turn a few shillings on them.

“We’ll see you at the wagon in an hour or so, then,” Mairelon said. He smiled as he followed Hunch out the back of the alley.

Kim whistled softly through her teeth as she finished making up the bundle. The secondhand clothes dealers on Petticoat Lane ought to fit Mairelon’s requirements. Tom Correy would be the best; he was sure to
take the clothes in order to get the boots. He’d think Kim had stolen them, so he wouldn’t pay much, but he wouldn’t ask questions, either. It evened out.

She swung the bundle to her back and hesitated. Mairelon had sounded casual enough, but he’d nonetheless been taking fairly extreme precautions against being seen. Maybe she should do the same. She slipped easily through the crack at the back of the alley and worked her way among the courtyards to the street.

She was turning to head for Petticoat Lane when she remembered the money she’d collected in the Dog and Bull. Tom was a good fellow, but some of his customers weren’t. She didn’t want to lose her five pounds before she’d even gotten used to the idea of having them.

Changing direction, she circled the market until she came to the hidey-hole where she spent most of her nights. It was little more than a few rotting boards leaning against a tenement, but it provided privacy and a minimum of shelter. Kim wormed her way inside, then set about redistributing her newfound wealth. She buried a few shillings in the corner of the hidey-hole and slipped a few more into her shoes.

After some consideration, she tore a strip of cloth from the bottom of the shirt Mairelon had been wearing and bound the rest of the coins tightly around her bare waist. She pulled her own shirt down over the resulting lumpy wrap and belted her breeches. She studied the effect, then smiled and patted her belt with a sense of satisfaction. In the dark, and with her jacket over the top of everything, even old Mother Tibb would have been hard put to notice anything unusual.

She rebundled the clothes and set off. Near Holborn Hill she swung herself onto the rear end of a farmer’s wagon that was heading in the right direction. She hunched down behind the hay, clinging to the backboard and hoping she would not be noticed. Her luck held; not only did the wagon continue east, but the driver did not see her until she jumped off. She darted into the gloom, pursued by his angry cries. He’d settle down once he realized that all she’d stolen was a ride.

Petticoat Lane was only a few minutes’ walk. Tom’s shop was closed, but Kim had expected as much. She slid around to the rear of the building
and rapped at the weathered oak door. She had to repeat her knock before a stocky, grizzled man opened the door and peered out at her. “ ’Oo’s that?”

“Kim. I got somethin’ for Tom.”

“Ah. Inside, then.” The man stepped back and Kim lifted her bundle and followed him in.

The back room of Tom’s secondhand shop was a mess, as usual. Clothes were piled carelessly in every corner and stacked on top of the single chair. Kim saw everything from a laborer’s homespun smock to a tattered but undeniably silk cravat.

Four men were seated on crates around the rickety table in the center of the room. The tin cups and the reek of gin made it clear what they had been doing before Kim’s arrival; just at the moment they were staring at her. Two of them were as unknown to Kim as the doorkeeper. The third was Tom’s brother-in-law Jack Stower, a dirty dish if Kim had ever seen one. He’d never had much use for her, either.

The last person at the table was a grey-haired man with squinty eyes, wearing a dark grey coat and a linen cravat. Kim stiffened. “Dan Laverham!” she blurted. What was that flash cull doing in Tom’s back room? For all he carried himself like Quality, he could call up half the canting crew from Covent Garden to the Tower of London if he had a need for them.

“Kim, dear boy, how good to see you,” the grey-haired man replied. His eyes raked her apparel, and she was suddenly very, very glad she had hidden her money so carefully before setting out. Dan would think nothing of ordering his men to strip her of her hard-won gains, if he knew of them.

“Been a long time,” Kim offered, keeping her tone noncommittal. Dan was a bad one to offend. He was smart and smooth, and he’d hold on to a grudge until the moon turned blue. She suspected that he was the one who’d turned stag and peached on Mother Tibb to the constables, though he was too clever to have acted openly.

“That it has,” Dan said, leaning back on his crate as though he sat in a tall, straight-backed chair. “And to what do I owe the good fortune of your arrival?”

“Says ’e’s got sommat for Tom,” the doorkeeper said.

“Then, my dear, go and fetch him,” Dan replied. The doorkeeper grunted and clumped up the stairs. Dan looked at Kim. “Do join us,” he said, and waved at the table.

Kim shook her head. “I ain’t got time,” she lied.

Jack Stower shifted so that his crate creaked alarmingly. “Think you’re too good to have a drop of Blue Ruin with your friends, eh?” he mumbled.