The Castaways (20 page)

He carried me straight into London, and what a pleasure it was—despite the stench of the rancid fat and dog droppings that he’d gathered—to ride the body snatcher’s wagon instead of Mr. Goodfellow’s elegant carriage. Worms listened to the story of my adventures, adding excited exclamations of “Fancy that!” or “Mercy me!” When he’d heard the
end of it he insisted on taking me right where I wanted to go—right to the door of Mr. Goodfellow’s building.

“I’ll come up if you like, Tom,” he said, as he drew the wagon to a stop. “Fancy toffs like him, they don’t give me no fears. I wouldn’t lift me hat to none of them.”

I thanked him, but refused. “I have to go myself,” I said.

“’Course you do.”

When I stood on the street below him, Worms looked down and smiled. “You’ve made me happy, Tom Tin,” he said. “When I seen you in that shroud I thought you’d come to a bad end. But you’ve turned from a boy to a man, I see, and it’s all from me kindness, ain’t it? It’s from that leg up I gave you.”

I had nearly forgotten that he had put two pennies in my hand long ago, to start me on my way. I
did
remember that I’d laughed at him, behind his back, because he was so poor and filthy while I owned the wealth of the Jolly Stone. I’d imagined telling my rich friends how a bone grubber had given me food. Now I regretted that very much. I would rather spend the rest of my days with the likes of Worms than with men like Mr. Goodfellow.

He tipped his hat to me. “God bless you, Tom Tin,” he said, and clucked softly at Peggy. I watched him rumble away, into the twisting lanes of old London. Then I gathered myself to face Mr. Goodfellow.

I marched up the stairs and through his office. The clerks looked up from their ledgers, aghast at the sight of a boy in rags in a place as fine as that. Silbury came sweeping out from some dark corner and fell in beside me.

“What do you think you’re doing, boy?” he said. “Where are you off to?” His shoes twinkled as he scampered along. “Answer me, blast you!”

I stopped. He trotted past, then turned about. “Oh, it’s you,” he said. “It’s Tom Tin.”

“I’ve come to see Mr. Goodfellow,” said I.

“Well, you can’t.” He held up a small hand, so clean that it shone. “He’s not seeing anyone, boy. He hasn’t moved from his office in three days.”

“Then I’ll have no trouble finding him, will I?” With a push I was past. Silbury fell aside, and a gasp came up from the clerks.

“Stop!” he cried. “If you don’t, I shall call for Mr. Roberts.”

“Start calling,” I said without slowing.

He shouted the name through the halls as I strode along. I came to the doors of Mr. Goodfellow’s office, turned the handle, and threw them open. They banged against the walls with a blow that set the gas lamps fluttering.

Mr. Goodfellow was not at his high desk. He was seated instead in a three-wheeled chair that someone had pushed to the windows to give him a view. His back was toward me, but in a fashion that was almost pathetic to see, he shifted the chair until he faced me.

A red blanket was drawn over his knees and his lap, and in the middle of it lay the Jolly Stone.

He had aged a year in the week gone by. His face was haggard and drawn, his hair all limp and gray. There was a smell of sweat about him instead of perfume, and one of his hands had a tremor in it.

“I saw you coming,” he said, cradling the Stone in his fingers. “A bone grubber’s wagon, no less. My, wouldn’t your father be proud? I believe you’ve outdone him, my boy.”

The window toward the river was open, letting in the sounds of ships and sailors. The air, not yet tainted by fog, gave to the curtains the same tremble of Mr. Goodfellow’s hand. I could have gone to the chair and tipped him out of it, through his window and down to the street. But I saw that the diamond was already working its evil, and I liked that his end would come more slowly.

“Damn your eyes, Tom Tin,” he said. “The Stone has a curse in it, doesn’t it?”

“So it seems,” I said.

He looked down at the Jolly Stone. The colors flashed up from it, glinting in his eyes. “I’ve lost two thousand guineas already. Three hundred a day since it came to my hands. It robs wealth, doesn’t it? That’s the curse of the thing.”

He laughed a hollow laugh. “Well, thank God it robs years as well; I shan’t die penniless, Tom. I’ll still have more money
than you’ll
ever see.”

I climbed up to his desk. The pardons were laid upon it, along with the note that gave me his ship. They were weighed down by a money purse made of silk from the Orient.

“Take them, Tom,” said Mr. Goodfellow. “And the wretched ship as well. I’ve thirty other ships, you know; the one means nothing to me. You’ll find it in Limehouse Reach, provisioned and ready for sea.”

I looked toward the door, expecting Mr. Roberts to appear any moment.

“Don’t worry; there’s no trick,” said Mr. Goodfellow. “I’m giving you your freedom, Tom. For the rest of your life you’ll be in my debt.”

“I owe nothing to you,” said I. “You
stole
my freedom, Mr. Goodfellow. You don’t give it to me; you only return it.”

“You ungrateful little swine.” He turned the diamond in his hands, round and round like a ball of flames. “Who do you think propped you up all your life, Tom? It was I who kept your father solvent, so that you might cling to your mother’s apron strings. Well, you’ll have to stand on your own feet now, my boy, and you’ll find the world hard enough. That ship will be your prison, and one day your scaffold too, I’m sure. You were never meant to amount to much, Tom Tin.”

He delivered these words with great bitterness, and they made me flush through and through. So he had never believed I’d bettered myself. He had never wanted me in his business.

“Where can I find Calliope?” I asked.

“I’ve no idea,” said he. “Nor do I care.”

“Do you know where Midgely is?”

“I don’t even know
what
a Midgely is.” Mr. Goodfellow coughed horribly, then spat into a handkerchief. “Curse you, Tom. I’m dying already.”

I put the papers in my shirt. I stepped down from the desk and walked in front of it just as Mr. Roberts came rushing into the office in his glittering uniform.

Mr. Goodfellow shouted from his chair. “Get out!” he cried. His voice, once fierce, had a quaver in it. “If I want you, Mr. Roberts, I shall call for you,” he said.

“But, sir, the boy’s a convict. Silbury said—”

“Silbury’s a fool.” Mr. Goodfellow could still manage a glare that would melt stone. “The boy has a pardon—from Wellington, no less. Now get out and leave us alone.”

Mr. Roberts backed out of the office. I took one more look at Mr. Goodfellow in his chair, then turned to leave as well. I was halfway to the door when he called my name.

“Tom, wait,” he said.

I turned back.

He had his eyes cast down. His trembling fingers sent
ripples through the red blanket. “I keep thinking of camels and the eyes of needles,” he said quietly. “Tom, I’m scared of dying.”

I came as close as I ever could to feeling pity for the man. He looked old and weak and sad.

“If you want me to beg, Tom, I will,” he said. “Tell me; is there any way to rid myself of the curse?”

I wanted to tell him that there wasn’t. But I saw him shivering below his blanket, feeling the cold from the open window and the gathering fog. Yellow tendrils were tangling now round the tallest buildings, round the dome of St. Paul’s and the lofty monument to the fire.

“There
is
a way, isn’t there?” he said. “I see how you hesitate, Tom. Please, if you’ve learned an ounce of benevolence, tell me. How do I destroy the curse?”

I had to smile to myself, and not for any gloating over the withered man before me. Benevolence was exactly what I’d learned in my travels. Gone was the selfish, coddled boy, and in his place was one who truly cared for the welfare of others. Strange as it seemed, it was all because of Mr. Goodfellow’s mean spirit.

“Tell me, tell me!” He reached up his grayed hands, the wonderful Jolly Stone shining between them. “How do I rid myself of the curse?”

“By ridding yourself of the diamond,” I said.

“Is there no other way?”

I only shook my head. I watched him cradle the Stone to his breast like a baby, and turned again to leave him. But in the doorway I heard the creak of his chair, and the soft thump of his blanket falling to the floor. I looked back to see him
standing unsteadily at the window, his arm cocked back, the Jolly Stone in his fist, about to be hurled out to the river.

“No!” I shouted.

He threw the Stone as far as he could. It went up in an arc through the window. For an instant I saw it suspended above all the grand buildings of London, right atop the dome of St. Paul’s, as though crucified on the cathedral’s tall cross. It glistened and glowed, then started to fall. Faster and faster it plummeted down, and made only a tiny splash in the river.

I didn’t tell Mr. Goodfellow that the Stone had to be touched and coveted by another for the curse to pass on. I didn’t want him to spend his last days searching for it. The Jolly Stone was better off where it was, lost in the mud of the Pool. There it might lie for all time.

Oh, I supposed a dredger might find it one day, or a mud lark might stumble upon it in a very distant year when the great river faded to a trickle. But in all likelihood the Stone had run its course, and the curse would end with Mr. Goodfellow. He had bestowed upon himself the most terrible fate of all, if little King George had told the truth.
“Those who go to their graves with the Stone unclaimed will walk the earth forever.”

I took one more look round his office, and without another word I went through his door and down to the street.

I went off in search of Midgely

I begged a ride on a lightering barge, along the Pool to the rusted ladder where I was sure that Calliope had borne away a frightened, shouting Midgely.

“Watch your footing!” shrieked the bargeman’s wife, a husky woman.

Despite her warning I nearly came to ruin. The rungs were wet from the tide, slick with weeds, and only a timely prod from the woman’s barge pole saved me from a dunking in the foul water. But I found my balance and climbed to the next rung, with the bargeman laughing behind me.

“You landsmen are like cats,” he said. “All in a panic when you get your feet wet.”

I ignored him. I made my way to the top of the ladder,
then down a narrow lane between two buildings. I came out in a vast space, looking up at the buildings of London and the fog that was swallowing the spires and chimneys and roofs. The new London Bridge was being built upstream from the old one, and so both river and shore were a beehive of workers. There were bricklayers with their barrows and hods, stonemasons chiseling madly, all manner of tradesmen hammering, digging, and cursing. If a building wasn’t being put up, it was being torn down—like the Fishmongers’ Hall, with a new one rising from the ruins of the old.

I walked to my right and turned down the first lane that I came to, only to lose myself in a maze of old warehouses. Suddenly it seemed an impossible task that lay before me, to find one little blind boy in a city that housed nearly two million souls.

Up and down I wandered; back and forth I went. I bumped into dead ends, retraced my path, and wandered round again. When I found myself back at the river, at the top of stone steps going steeply to the water, I sat down in despair.

I saw before me years and years of wandering, of searching every street, peering into every face. It was a terrible thought, for I now hated the city and longed to escape it. But I could never leave without knowing what had happened to Midgely.

I looked down a canyon between the warehouses, to row after row of rooftops. I looked the other way, up another canyon that seemed identical. I might have sat there forever, looking one way and then the other, if a little scrap of white hadn’t caught my eye. It fluttered from a splintered window
frame, such a useless bit of cloth that it wouldn’t have meant a thing to anyone but me. Yet I knew it at once.

I got up and tore it away. I held it tightly. It was a shred of cloth that I had ripped from my own shirt long ago, one of the five lots that had been drawn in a derelict boat to see who would live and who would die.

So Midgely had hung on to those lots all this time. He must have hauled them from his pocket as Calliope hauled
him
along this very lane, and snagged one here in the hope that I would find it.

I found a second lot nearly right away, but try as I might I couldn’t find a third. I went half a mile in every direction I could. I searched the ground and the walls for squirts of tobacco juice. But there was no sign that Calliope King had ever passed this way.

The fog, already, had blotted out the sun, giving evening’s darkness to the day. The thought of that yellow custard pouring into these narrow spaces frightened me, and I looked up to see it oozing from the rooftops.

And there was the third lot, dangling from a bent nail well above my head. I had walked right beneath it half a dozen times.

I imagined Calliope snatching Midgely to her shoulder, hoisting him up so that she might move more quickly. I kept going along, and soon found a fourth bit of cloth hanging from the upper hinge of a green-painted door.

Here, Midge had chosen the piece that I’d marked with a knot, the one that had ruled on who would die. I took it to mean that Calliope had carried him through the doorway.

I went after them, into a deep-shadowed stillness, where the only light came through narrow windows thick with dust.

“Midgely!” I called, and a thousand pigeons rose from the floor and the rafters.

The building was one large room full of coils of rope and cable. At the front, where I’d come in, it soared to the height of a ship’s topgallant, and fishing nets hung from the ceiling. At the back was a second floor, a loft that was reached by a ladder. There was a stack of paint cans, and a mountain of cork floats.