Freaks (6 page)

“'Ang on a minute—” the man began to say, but Sister Moon's firm grip had propelled the pair into the street, slamming the gate behind them.

Moments later, the back door of the house banged open and the bleary and disheveled form of Plumpscuttle appeared.

“Did I just see some people in my yard?” he bellowed. “Some strange folk, uninvited on my personal property? Some scrawny street offal covered in rags and filthy muck?”

“We were just asking them if they knew anyone selling good food,” said Sheba as she climbed out from under the caravan. “We were all feeling a little peckish.”

“Peckish? I could eat that scrawny two-headed sheep raw! Get me five helpings of whatever you're having. And make it quick.” He threw a handful of copper pennies out into the yard, then stomped off into the house.

Mama Rat gave Sheba a thoughtful look as Sister Moon scooped up the pennies and headed off to find a street vendor.

“You, young lady, are beginning to prove immensely useful,” she said.

Dinner was a bowl of Penny Dip: fried sheep heart and liver, mixed with onions and dumplings. To Sheba it tasted exotic and delicious, even if the dumplings were slightly gritty. The others shoveled it in their mouths without expression. This was standard fare, as uninspiring for them as fish soup had been for Sheba at Grunchgirdle's.

They ate outside, sitting cross-legged on the hard ground, as Plumpscuttle was occupying the kitchen table. Every now and then the sound of a wet burp echoed through the window.

“So,” said Gigantus. “What do you make of them mudgrubblers?”

“A bunch of low-life scroungers, if you ask me,” said Monkeyboy. “Surely we're not going to bother looking for their brat? Probably got munched up by those man-eating monster eels in the river.”

“I recall your start to life wasn't that much higher, half-pint,” said Gigantus as he licked the last bit of gravy from his spoon.

“That's got nothing to do with it!” Monkeyboy shouted, spraying everyone with a mouthful of half-chewed sheep guts. “All I'm saying is, what's the point of helping out a load of stinky old mudheads? Don't you know how many people there are in this blooming city? Anyway, it'll only be a few months before they all starve to death, whatever we do. If the cholera doesn't get them first.”

“That little girl,” said Sheba, “happens to be my friend. Her name is Till, and she was very sweet and kind to me. Unlike most people. If there's a way to help her, then I will.”

“Well said, dearie.” Mama Rat gave her a wink. “Those better off should always try and help the less fortunate. That's why I agreed on behalf of you all. And my little babbies will come in useful, looking for that girl.”

“In what way?” Sheba couldn't think how a miniature circus would be any help in finding a missing mudlark.

“Oh, my boys are very good at detecting things. They can go from one end of this city to the other without anyone so much as catching a whiff of them. They've found all sorts of bits and pieces for me over the years. All sorts indeed.”

Sheba wanted to ask more, but a deep voice boomed out from the kitchen.

“When you disgusting bunch of aberrations have finished stuffing your fat faces, there's work to be done! Get off your lazy backsides, and get this place ready for a show!”

Early morning on Bermondsey waterfront, and the tanneries were already pumping streams of thick red fluid into the Thames. A mixture of chemicals, acid, and waste, it let out fumes that could take your eyebrows off at fifty paces. At the tannery doors, a steady stream of pure-pickers had begun to gather. The leather works needed excrement for tanning the hides and each carried a bucket of fresh dog droppings that they had collected from the streets the day before. Boats had begun to row, sail, and steam up the river. And waiting for the tide to ebb were packs of tattered children. Mudlarks, just like Till.

Sheba tugged her hood over her head, hiding her face in its shadows. Her delicate nose was completely swamped by the disgusting aromas. It stank, it was freezing, and she was bored beyond measure. They had been out here since dawn, although it seemed like months of her life had passed by, standing on these muck-spattered cobbles.

When they had first made their way through the morning crowd, she had marveled at the huge amount of people. More than the audiences at Plumpscuttle's shows. More than the people milling outside her window on Brick Lane. She had kept close to Gigantus, one little furry hand clutching his sleeve, as he steamed through the throngs like an icebreaker.
Then
it had seemed marvelous and exhilarating to be out and about in the big city at last, but the novelty had soon worn off.

They had been asking questions of folk on the waterfront for hours. Or rather, Gigantus had been asking questions while the others lurked in the background. Their peculiarities didn't exactly encourage people to speak to them. They were usually too busy staring to even hear the question.

Gigantus, on the other hand, used his huge size to great effect. When he stepped in front of someone it was like being confronted by a small mountain. People stood trembling while he asked about the missing mudlark, then told him every scrap of information they thought could be of any possible value, and very often more besides. He was currently towering over a shivering bargeman who was babbling about some spoons that were hidden under his bedroom floorboards.

Sheba felt useless. She had thought she might be able to sniff something out with her nose, a hint of Till's scent perhaps, but all she could smell were the tanneries and the stinking river. She had also imagined that a missing girl would be big news amongst the people of the riverside. It was becoming obvious that none of them gave a monkey's.

Beneath all the boats and steamers, beneath the oozing brown water and the floating lumps of
stuff
that swirled in it, was the mud that Till had spent her life combing for dubious treasure. In her cape pocket, Sheba ran her fingers over the cracked green marble.
Is she down there now?
she wondered.
Did she get sucked under the cold, clammy mud? Or did someone take her from the river to a different place entirely?

They were upsetting thoughts, but Sheba couldn't help them. Monkeyboy was right: In a city teeming with so many people, what were the chances of finding one insignificant little girl?

Thinking like that won't help
. She decided to concentrate on something else entirely. From deep within her hood, she focused on the river traffic. A splendid three-masted clipper was gliding its way down to the Pool of London, making the tiny skiffs and wherries around it look like ants. Something about its majestic lines and jutting prow stirred a feeling in Sheba, but it was so vague and distant she didn't know what it was, or what it meant. An early memory, perhaps, but fluttering just beyond her reach: another loose thread. It was as if her mind was trying to send her a message about a life she had had before her earliest of memories. Had she ever been on a ship?

Had she ever lived in a white house with a marble floor? Probably not. It was more likely that she was dumped at the doorstep of the workhouse by some poor wretch of a woman, like Till's ma. A starving pauper struck dumb with horror at the hairy child she had given birth to.

Just the thought of it made Sheba's head swim with overpowering emotions. Anger at being abandoned, shame at being so unnatural and hideous, sorrow for whoever had been desperate enough to abandon their own child. Old feelings that were best left deep inside her head. She banished them there now, turning her eyes away from the clipper.

Gigantus finished talking to the bargeman, leaving him to scurry away into the mist, and then stomped over. He looked frustrated.

“Another petty criminal who doesn't actually know anything,” he said. “If we were looking for stolen silverware, we'd have solved this case twenty times over by now.”

Beside Sheba, Monkeyboy peeped out from under his battered bowler. “Letting that lumpy brute ask all the questions isn't getting us anywhere,” he said.

“I suppose you have a better idea?” Gigantus replied through gritted teeth.

“I have, as it happens. Didn't Mama Rat used to know some bloke down on the docks? Fat Albert, or something? Why don't we go and ask him?”

“You might be onto something there, Monkey,” said Mama Rat, thoughtfully. “It was Large 'Arry I used to be acquainted with. I remember he still owes me a favor or two.”

“What are we waiting for, then?” Monkeyboy said.

“Nice to see you take interest, Monkey.” Sister Moon patted the top of his hat.

Monkeyboy shrugged it off with a pout. “Yes, well. Anything's better than standing around here any longer, isn't it?”

Sheba couldn't help but agree.

Sheba had thought the roads and bridges of the city were crowded, but they were nothing compared to the chaos of the wharves.

Piles of lopsided wooden warehouses leant against each other, stretching out into the river on rickety wooden stakes. Boats of every shape and size were crammed so tightly against one another, it seemed as though the smaller ones would burst into clouds of matchsticks at any second. A scribbly mess of ships' masts and wooden cranes blocked the sky, and rope was everywhere in twists and loops, tying everything together like a giant spider's web. And in between it all were hordes of bustling, shouting people. They were loading and unloading ships, hauling crates and boxes in and out of warehouses, on and off carts and barrows. It made Sheba dizzy just to watch them.

The Peculiars scuttled along the dockside, dodging swinging bales of cotton and sweaty rivermen, and all the time following Mama Rat and her cloud of pipe smoke. She didn't stop until she came to a huge wooden warehouse with the words
Pickle Herring Wharf
emblazoned across the front. There she stood for a few minutes, scanning the faces of the scurrying dockmen. Just when Sheba was beginning to think they were looking in the wrong place, Mama Rat clapped her hands together and laughed. She walked briskly over to a stack of crates and coiled rope, where a man was sitting, whittling away at a hunk of wood with a pocketknife.

He looked up, and for a moment his brows raised in surprise. He quickly pulled them back into a frown, but not before getting a good look at the rest of the Peculiars.

“You 'ave fallen in with a strange lot,” he said.

“Nothing wrong with being a bit strange, dearie,” said Mama Rat. “Everyone, meet Large 'Arry. A very old friend of mine.”

“Friends, is it?” said 'Arry. “I 'aven't seen hide nor hair of you for years. I've got customers in Mozambique what are better friends than you.”

“Now, now, 'Arry.” Mama Rat looked hurt. “Don't be like that.”

Sheba stared at the man from beneath her hood. He certainly was large, although not compared to the huge bulk of Gigantus. Most of 'Arry 's size was around his belly, which strained to burst out of his woolen sweater. He had shaggy gray hair and a grizzly beard, turned yellow around his mouth from tobacco smoke. He looked just how she'd imagine an old sea captain to be. He carved off a few more slivers of wood, before Mama Rat's exaggerated pout made him mellow.

“All right, then,” he said. “What is it brings you and your misshapen crew down on the docks? After something, I don't doubt.”

“Just some information,” said Mama Rat. “About a mudlark girl who's gone missing from the river.”

“One of those poor scraps what go rooting about in the filthy mud between the jetties, you mean? I 'aven't heard nothing about that, but then . . .” He paused. “What's this information worth, exactly?”

“It's worth you keeping your face the right shape,” said Gigantus, knuckles cracking. He appeared to be tired of waiting.

“Stop that, Gigantus,” said Mama Rat. “I told you, 'Arry's an old friend. There's no need to scare him.”

“And I been threatened by worse than the likes of you,” 'Arry added. Even so, his hands seemed to shake a little as he went back to his whittling.

“Please, Mr. Large,” Sheba said. She didn't want to draw attention to herself, but she was desperate to find out what he knew. “The girl that's missing is my friend. I have to find out what happened to her. Anything you tell us will help, I'm certain.”

'Arry looked up from his piece of wood, into Sheba's pleading amber eyes. If he noticed the fur on her face, he didn't show it. The frown lines on his brow softened.

“I 'ad a daughter meself, once,” he said. “About your age. She went missing, too. Fell off a jetty and drowned.” He sighed and tucked his knife away. “There was something a few days ago. Not about a girl, but still . . . I was unloading down on St. Saviour's Dock, when some of the lads started talking rubbish about noises in the fog and children going missing at low tide. Now, I don't 'old with all that talk about monsters in the river and suchlike, but I do believe that there was some of them mudlarks what went out and never came back. As far as I 'eard, anyway.”

“What do you think happened to them?” asked Sheba.

Large 'Arry shrugged. “What do
you
think? Sucked down in the mud, I should expect. Who would be so stupid as to go walking around out there? And if the clay didn't get them, there's plenty of other things that might. This city's full of evil, you know. Murderers, thieves, baby farmers chucking kiddies in the river, doctors chopping up grave-robbed bodies . . . things you wouldn't believe. London ain't no kind of a place to be growing up in. Not if you're skint paupers like you lot.”

The old sailor pulled his knife out again and went back to his whittling, signifying the meeting was over. Mama Rat thanked him, and he grunted in a way that might be perceived as affectionate.

The Peculiars began to make their way back through the maze of docks to London Bridge.

Other children are missing, too.
The thought rolled around in Sheba's head like a marble. If that were true, then what had they stumbled into? And where could Till be now?

She was so wrapped up in her thoughts that she didn't notice the shape of a dark figure in the shadow of a warehouse doorway. The light was dim there, dusky enough to hide the long tendrils of matted hair beneath a large hat, the straggly beard, and the strangely curved sword that hung underneath a long coat. It even hid the thick lines of black paint that spread from one side of his face to the other, but not the gleam of his eyes as he watched the Peculiars make their way home.