Fallen (4 page)

I continued searching the lane until I found
a person of interest. A constable walked his beat down the other
side of the street. Surely, I supposed, this would be exactly the
person to whom I could tell my story and find justice for myself
and my father.

I watched the traffic and then bolted into
the lane behind a dark carriage. Mud sprang at me from the rear
wheels, pelting my face. I skidded across the mud, trying to
prevent my hurdling beneath another team of horses coming down the
opposite side. I barely managed to keep my life, then darted behind
the buggy and driver, slip-sliding my way to the boardwalk on the
other side of the street.

Curses were cast my way, but I was safe. The
policeman stood just a block away. I began my trek toward him,
weaving through the crowd. I only barely noticed that a few shops
sold their wares on this side. People stood shopping near doorways
at tables with books, ceramics and various knick-knacks.

As I passed through the crowd of people, I
nearly ran into a group of three boys going the opposite direction.
They were all dressed worse than I was, meaning their clothes were
older and more worn, whereas I wore finer quality despite having
slept in an alley the previous night.

The boy leading the other two gave me a
sharp look and grinned. I stopped, awestruck as they passed. They
all turned slightly, wondering what my problem might be, but
carried on nonetheless.

I turned back toward the constable, now only
a few yards away. Had I really seen what I thought?
Those
ears.
Preferring not to confuse my purpose, I shook myself and
started back for the constable again. As I approached, he turned
his nose down, giving me a suspicious look. “What are you doing,
you little ragamuffin?”

“Sir, I’ve come to report a murder,” I
began.

He looked scalded. “A murder? What on earth
are you talking about? Where?”

I tripped over my own words, hurriedly
trying to explain my situation. “It’s my father, sir. He was
murdered last night in an alley. A man robbed us and killed him
right in front of me.”

He stood erect, giving me a cursory look as
though he hadn’t been listening. “Are you American, boy?”

I halted, confused. “Yes, sir. My father and
I arrived only yesterday on a steamer from New York.”

“And you say, your father was murdered?”

“Yes, sir, before dark in an alley.”

The constable rubbed his chin. “And where
was this alley?”

I thought, but couldn’t answer him. “I’m not
sure, sir. I ran for my life and don’t know London at all. But I’m
sure it couldn’t have been far from here.”

He gave me half a smile. “That’s very
interesting. We’ve had no report of any murders last night, or the
night before. We’ve certainly not recovered any bodies. Are you
sure you’re not pulling my leg, trying to get one over on the
bobby?”

I stood before him mystified by his
response. I had just begun to protest his indifference when a shout
came from down the street. “Stop thief!”

We both looked in time to see the same three
boys I had just passed on the sidewalk running from the scene. A
shop owner stood shouting with a broom in his hand next to an angry
patron pulling on his empty coat pocket.

A massive hand snatched my coat at the neck.
“You little dipper!” he barked. “So that’s your game…distracting me
so your thieving friends could make off with the goods under my
nose!”

I had no time to muster a defense before the
constable tore down the street with me in tow. He dragged me
kicking behind him, blowing his whistle and ordering the other boys
to stop.

“Please, sir, I don’t even know those
boys!”

But the constable didn’t listen. He shouted
ahead to pedestrians to move out of his way as he maintained
pursuit. I had no way to see where we were going or any way of
escaping the vice like grip upon my clothing.

I heard more shouts from down the street,
then the officer saying, “Hold them fast!”

As I got my feet under me again, I tried to
plead my innocence. “But sir, I didn’t—”

“That’s enough of your mouth!”

He struck me across the back of the head
with something very hard. I only had time to feel the sting of it
and then the hot pavement smashing against my cheek before all went
black.

I woke to ominous words. “You’ll hang for
this.”

Curses answered this judgment, though I had
no idea who had spoken. A cacophony of moaning and belligerence
arose around me as my consciousness returned. I opened my eyes, but
had very little light available with which to see anything.

Still, I knew two things immediately: my
head ached terribly and I was no longer out in the streets of
London. A foul mixture of sweat, blood and feces curled my nose to
the point I thought I might vomit. The sound of retching told me
somebody already was over in a corner of the room.

I lifted my eyes toward a narrow shaft of
light running through a slit of a window nearly ten feet off the
floor. The light barely illuminated a wall of iron bars on the
opposite side of the chamber. Shock hit me as I realized my
situation. “I’ve landed in prison.”

“Oy, greenie…who are you?” The voice had
spoken next to me in the dark. I still couldn’t make out a face to
go with it, but whoever he was he had to be near my age.

“Where am I?” I asked.

“My question first, greenie,” he said.

I sighed, in no mood for games. But what
would it hurt to give my name? Nobody knew me in London anyway, and
I knew nobody. “My name is Brody West.”

The faceless stranger inched closer to me in
the dark, scuffing shoe leather on the gritty concrete floor.
“You’re not from around these parts are you?”

I sat up, trying to catch some details about
my interrogator’s face. “I’m from America.”

The boy laughed heartily. “Oy, mates, he’s a
blooming Yank!” Others joined in his mockery.

My cheeks burned. I already understood how
out of my element I was. I didn’t need this fellow grinding me
harder for it.

I hollered over the din, feeling a bit more
aggressive. After all that had happened to me since my arrival, I
felt that I had little else to lose. The boy leaned in so that I
now saw his eyes close to my face. They sparkled like jewels—green,
no blue. I couldn’t be sure. The boy stood up and walked around me
toward the beam of light invading the cell.

Being a little short for my age, the boy
stood a few inches taller than me. He might have been eighteen or
nineteen, but no older. When the light hit him, I recognized his
face at once. The boy I had noticed on the street, with his
friends, had followed me into prison. More likely, I was here
because of him.

He held out his hands like a stage
performer. “You, Mr. West, are in Fleet Prison. The home of pick
pockets, thieves, debtors and murderers…at least temporarily. Eh,
lads?”

Inmates launched themselves at the bars to
silence the young whelp. They needed no reminding of their fate. I
noticed then that our cell was smaller than first understood. We
were divided from the others by sets of bars. Unless the light hit
them, they remained almost invisible in the dark.

The boy bowed himself, thoroughly pleased by
his performance and the rousing it had produced. I stared at him
accusingly as he sat down in front of me in his shabby moth-eaten
clothes. His wild dark hair curled out from under the brim of his
soiled fancy hat. And those ears…I had noticed them on the street.
They pointed at the top.

“I’m in here because of you, aren’t I?” I
couldn’t keep the menace from my voice.

He extended his hand, as though I’d just
invited him to tea. “Tom’s the name.”

I left the hand dangling in mid-air,
refusing to shake it. “You and those other boys you were with—I saw
you just before that man was robbed. The constable thought I was
your accomplice. That’s why I’m in here.”

He smiled at me. “Then you’re in good
company aren’t you, Mr. West?”

I wanted to hit him, or strangle him. I
couldn’t make up my mind. Tom reached over and patted me on the
shoulder like he was consoling his best friend.

“Don’t worry about the drop. It’s all over
quickly, ain’t it?” he said.

“The drop?”

“You know—” He bugged his eyes and stuck his
tongue out the side of his mouth. His hand pulled an imaginary
noose above his cocked head. “—A hanging.”

Instantly, images of the young boy I’d seen
hanged in the square came back to me. I couldn’t end up that way…it
couldn’t be! I rushed to the prison bars calling for help, for a
policeman, anyone who might listen to my pleading. No one came. No
one cared.

Tom stood behind me. “Hey, Brody, it’s no
big deal. Happens to the best of us eventually.”

I sobbed with my face pressed against the
rusty bars. How could this have happened? My mother had died
several years ago, leaving only my father to look after me. Now he
was dead too. I wondered if I had been cursed at my birth. Why me?
What had I done to deserve all of this?

For a moment I wanted to blame God for it
all. Then my father’s preaching came back to me. He’d told me about
a man named Job who had been righteous before the Lord. All of his
family and belongings had been taken from him in one day. He had
been afflicted with sore boils all over his body, yet in all these
things he would not blame God foolishly.

I sniffed and dried my tears with my sleeve.
I still wanted to cry, but I wouldn’t. The stranger in the alley
had told me I had a work to do, to walk by faith. I decided right
then and there that this was as good a time as any to begin.

I turned from the bars. Now that my eyes had
become more accustomed to the darkness, I found my cell shared by
Tom, his two accomplices and an old man snoring in the corner with
vomit on his shirt. I hadn’t been the only one shedding tears. The
other boys with Tom looked scared to death.

I walked right up to him and looked again at
his ears.

“What are you looking at?” he asked, meeting
my gaze.

“Your ears…why are they pointed?”

Faster than I could react, Tom pinned me to
the bars of the cell door. My head clanged against the metal in
nearly the same spot where the policeman had hit me earlier. I
almost passed out again.

Tom stared menacingly into my face with his
forearm pinning me where I stood. I tried to speak, but he shoved
his arm up against my throat.

“My ears look strange to you?” He hissed the
question at me so low that only I could hear it. I nodded, still
unable to speak and unsure why he’d gotten so angry. I assumed he
must be sensitive about his birth defect.

“What’s the matter, Tom?” one of the other
boys asked.

He ignored the question.

“What color are my eyes?” he whispered.

I had no idea what this question had to do
with his being insulted about his ears. Still, Tom released some of
the pressure so I could answer. I looked into his eyes. They
sparkled even without the light from the window striking them.
“Blue changing to bright green and back again.”

Shock appeared on his face. He lowered his
arm slowly. I still wondered what exactly I’d done wrong and what
these questions meant to him. He backed away from me looking quite
perplexed. He muttered something under his breath I couldn’t quite
make out. It almost sounded like some foreign language, but he
didn’t seem to be talking to me, so I held my tongue.

One of the other boys asked again what the
problem was. Tom didn’t act as though he even heard him. Both boys
looked at me and then at Tom. He sat down in the opposite corner
from the sleeping old man at the rear of the cell.

I had no clue why he had reacted this way. I
decided not to raise any more questions and sat down with my back
to the prison bars. Tom didn’t talk to me the rest of the time we
were in our cell in Fleet prison. He only stared at me with those
sparkling blue-green eyes.

Within hours, a guard had arrived to escort
me, Tom and the other two boys from our prison cell. We were led
through the cell block where men awaited their fates in turn. Some
had already been sentenced and this would be their home until the
day of their release. Others would face what Tom had referred to as
the drop
in their own time.

My legs felt weak as we marched down the
corridor. Some of the other prisoners spit on us as we passed. The
guards quickly clubbed the bars, busting knuckles on occasion. We
didn’t even have compassion from those facing a similar fate. Tom
never spoke a word though he walked directly behind me. Somehow I
felt as though he was still staring at me as he had been in our
cell. I could not understand the dramatic change in his mood.

The guards opened up a final barred door and
led our parade through. We arrived in a small room resembling what
I supposed must be a courtroom, though I’d never been inside one. A
high desk sat directly in front of the wooden banister where the
guards lined us up. I noticed a gavel sitting upon it and assumed
this must be the judge’s bench.

The bailiff announced the judge by name,
upon which a small man ascended to the bench from a door in the
side of the room. The man had a hawkish nose and beady eyes which
examined us boys through a pair of wire rimmed spectacles. A
powdered white wig sat upon his head like an octopus with its coils
hanging across his shoulders down onto his chest. He leaned forward
over his bench in order to catch a good view then addressed the
bailiff in an apathetic tone.

“Let’s get on with it, Charles,” he
said.

The bailiff read off a list of charges,
which I only half listened to as the judge’s sneering look bored
into my skull. I vaguely heard the words
pick pocket
and
thievery
among the jumble of legal terms, but was too scared
to make sense of any of it.