The Whatnot (5 page)

She didn't wait to see more. Whirling, she ran from the window and down the stairs. The treads flew by beneath her feet. She didn't like the faery butler. Usually she hated him. But he was the only thing she had left of England and home, and she wasn't going to let him die. She reached the beam-and-plaster passageway. She crashed through the front door.

“Stop!” she shouted, leaping out into the clearing. “Stop, leave him be!”

Twelve pairs of black eyes turned to stare at her. She froze. The faery butler lifted his head. A flicker of green, almost like surprise, passed behind his clockwork eye. Then the lady in the fish-bone dress strode up to Hettie and looked her in the face. She was only a bit taller than Hettie, and she resembled a pompous little child.

“English.” It was a statement, spoken with a faint, precise accent that no English person would ever use.

“Yes,” Hettie said, her boldness fading a little. Her hands went to her nightgown, and she looked down, suddenly shy.

“Are you an accomplice to this faery?”

“I— No. But I don't want you to hurt him. What are you going to do with him?”

“This faery”—the lady said, waving a hand in the butler's direction—“has been found guilty of murdering one of His Majesty the Sly King's most valued servants. He will be put to death, of course. Drowned in a bog, I think.”

“Oh,” breathed Hettie.

“And you?”

“Yes, miss.”

“Who
are
you?” The lady punctuated the
are
with one sharply raised eyebrow.

“I'm not anybody.”

“Yes, I can see that, but what sort of nobody? You are the strangest-looking faery I've ever seen. And no hair, or I'd think you simply a particularly ugly human.”

Hettie knew better than to tell her she was a changeling. The daughter of a human mother and a faery father. Something in-between. English people didn't like changelings, but she had always been told faeries liked them even less.

“Oh, I
am
a faery, miss. Only . . . See, I come from England and I've lived there my whole life, and—well, I s'pose I picked up a bit of their looks.”

Twelve pairs of eyes met across her head. There was a long pause in which the frosty air seemed to fill up and become heavy with all sorts of unspoken words and laughter.

Then the lady in the fish-bone dress let out a high, musical laugh that set everyone else to laughing, too, and the horse-people laughed, and the old woman laughed, and even the silver bells seem to tinkle with their own merry notes.

“She is so exquisitely funny,” the faery lady said.

“Ex-
quisitely
,” one of the horse-people mimicked, and that set them all to laughing again.

The fish-bone lady's mouth twitched. Her eyes went a little blacker, and her brows seemed to become even sharper. Then she laughed again, too, louder than anyone.

“John?” she said, turning to a horse-person with white hair and white skin that glittered as if with frost. “John, let her ride upon you. We shall take her with us.”

“What?” The creature named John looked perfectly horrified. “That
thing
? On
me
?”

“Oh, no, I—” Panic gripped Hettie. It wrapped around her throat, made her breath escape in little gasps. “Please, I mustn't—”

They were all staring at her, all those black eyes, sparks of amusement in their depths, sparks of malice. She couldn't go with them
.
She couldn't be taken away from these woods, or the cottage. This was where the door had opened and where she had arrived, and this was where Bartholomew would find her when he came for her.
But what will he do if I'm not here?

The thought made her sick.

“Please, miss,” she said, taking a step toward the faery lady. “Please don't make me leave.”

The faery lady did not even look at her. “You must. You will be my Whatnot. Or I will snip out your tongue. Don't be tiresome.”

Hettie closed her mouth with a plop.

“Now,” said the faery lady, whirling away. “Vizalia? Send a dispatch to the King. One of his Belusites has been killed. The wrongdoer has been dealt with. Nothing was found. You needn't say anything of my little bauble.”

And the next thing Hettie knew, she was on the back of a white horse with hair like wisps of snowy wind. Everything was confusion, stomping hooves and whispering cloaks. Her steed began to gallop, away into the woods.
The faery butler.
Hettie looked frantically at the other riders.
Where is he? He isn't here!
With a little shiver, she glanced back over her shoulder.

Three figures had stayed behind in front of the cottage. The faery butler was on the ground, kneeling, his chin on his chest. Two horse-people stood over him, their faces strangely thin and hungry. And just before the company went over a rise and the cottage was lost from view, Hettie saw the horse-people begin to change again and their teeth grow long as needles and their eyes glow red as they looked down on the faery butler. Then Hettie was over the hill, riding away into the shadows and the snow.

CHAPTER V

Mr. Millipede and the Faery

P
IKEY was able to avoid the chemist and the chemist's wife and almost everyone else for two long, cold nights. His luck ran out on the third, as he was returning from Fleet Street. He was slinking down the alley, past the shop door, soft as a shadow, and then the nails in his boots clanked against the stones and the sound echoed all the way up to the chimneys.

He winced.

“Oy! Whozat? Pikey?”

Orange light flickered around the door.

“Yeh.” Pikey's voice was rough as bark. He dashed toward the hole under the shop, his hand tight around the gem in his pocket. “Yeh, it's me, Jem.”

The bolt scraped. Pikey pulled in his feet and lay still.

“Oy!” the chemist said again, when he found the alley empty. He had a deep voice, but it was sloppy and wet now, and Pikey knew Jeremiah Jackinpots had been in his bottles again. Jem wasn't a bad man. Pikey liked him more than most folks. But he was slow-brained and weak, and gin did nothing to improve his wits.

“So quick into yer mouse hole, boy?” Pikey heard Jem take a few heavy steps toward the hole. Then a hacking spit. “No words for me? No talk? What 'ave the oil of earthworm prices gone to? Has the war started yet?”

Pikey remained perfectly still. “I don't know,” he lied. “I didn't hear. Weren't no one around to tell me nuthin'.” He
had
heard. The town crier had been on Fleet Street as always, reading the news and the prices to the illiterates that flocked around him. Pikey had been there, too, poking his head between the dirty waistcoats. He went every day to Fleet Street to listen and make sure the herb-and-root sellers didn't cheat Jem when they came to the shop. It was why Jem let him stay in the hole, why the aid ladies hadn't come by in their black bonnets and hoop skirts and taken Pikey to the workhouse. He hoped Jem would forgive him, just this once.
Just one more day.

“I'm dreadful tired, Jem,” Pikey called. “I'll tell it all in the morning, promise my boots, I will.”

Jem grunted. There was the clink of a bottle and the smack of lips. Then grumbling as he staggered back toward the shop. The door banged. The alley became silent again.

Pushing himself as far into the hole as he could, Pikey wound himself into a ball, all arms and legs and rank-smelling wool. He was pressing his luck. He knew he was. Tonight Jeremiah Jackinpots was too sullen and too drunk, but he wouldn't be in the morning. In the morning Pikey had to be gone.

Sell the gemstone, get an eye patch, leave the city. I'll go southward. Away from the war. Away from leadfaces and cities and bleemin' faeries.

He had been repeating it like a spell the last three days, hour after hour until he fell asleep. Though it
had
changed a bit since that first morning. Then it had been more like,
Buy a caramel apple. Then buy lemonade and ginger-rocks, and six—no,
seven
meat pies. Then go back to the caramel apples and buy the whole lot.

He would still get that caramel apple. But he was more practical now.

He shivered and stuffed his blanket down the front of his jacket to keep out the chill. His hole was set inside the foundations of the shop, flat on the dirt. Four feet long. Half that high. Above him, through the floorboards, he could hear Jem and his wife snapping at each other. He had to pull in his knees and bend his neck to fit, and the winter could come right in at the door.

But it didn't matter. He was leaving. Things would only get worse in London once the fighting started in the North. And anyway he didn't
want
to stay here, in a hole in Spitalfields. Someday he wanted to be somewhere else, somewhere green perhaps, with plums and pies and the voices he had dreamed about, the loud, happy voices.

Pikey fell asleep, and dreamed of them all over again.

 

The next morning, he made himself a badly sagging patch out of one of his socks and tied it over his bad eye. Then, pushing the gem deep into the one pocket that still had all its stitches, he wriggled out of his hole.

The foot with only two socks instead of three noticed its diminished state almost at once. It went numb, then unfeeling. Pikey felt sure it did so out of spite. But better a frozen foot than holding a hand over his eye all day like a simpleton, and so he ignored it and hurried up the alley toward Bell Lane.

The chemist's door creaked as he passed it. The bolt scraped, then the hinges. Pikey knew who it was before she even stepped into the alley. Not Jeremiah, this time. Worse.

“What you got there, laddy?” Missus Jackinpots could coo like a dove to her little one, but to everyone else she was worse than a crow.

“Nuthin'.” Pikey's hand tightened around the gem in his pocket. He took a few more hurried steps, his frozen foot jarring against the ground.

“Jem says he's seen not hide nor hair of you for almost three days. Where's the news? What are the prices at? You know the deal, and you oughta keep it. Prices and news six times a week, else there's no point keeping
you.
”

Pikey turned a little, his glance skipping over Missus Jackinpots for the briefest instant. She was a small, buxom woman with a stained, flowered handkerchief tied over hair like stringy black joint oil. There were smudges under her eyes. Pikey looked at the ground.

Missus Jackinpots didn't. She eyed him steadily, hands on hips. “Jem's too soft, he is. I'd have 'ad you out from under our shop the moment we found you, and off to the workhouse, make no mistake.”

You didn't find me,
Pikey thought. Anger rushed up suddenly, hot behind his ribs.
I lived here before you did. The old chemist
let
me stay here. It's my
right. He gritted his teeth.

“What's the matter? Goblin ate your tongue? Look at me, boy!”

“Old Marty said I could stay here,” Pikey said. His voice was dull and sullen. “And so did Jem.” He focused on a sickly thread of grass pressing up between two cobbles. He didn't want to look at the hard, flat face staring at him, the smudges under her eyes.

“You call him
Mister
Jackinpots,” she hissed, taking a step toward him. “Or sir. It's his place now. Old Marty's dead. He's dead, and don't you forget it.”

Blood, dripping between the stones.

Pikey stumbled toward Bell Lane, but Missus Jackinpots lunged forward, blocking his escape.

“Come on, ma'am, lemme go,” he said. “I ain't got nothing.”

Missus Jackinpots was looking at his pocket. “Oh, you've got something. What're you hiding, boy? Bloody
roses
, if you're keeping things from me, I swear I'll—” Suddenly she froze, and such a rage came over her face that Pikey felt his own anger evaporate. He took a step back, startled.

“That eye patch,” she said slowly. “Let me see that. That ain't yours. It's my Jem's sock, it is. On your filthy
face
! I knitted that! My own hands knitted that and you've been
pinching
—”

Pikey shoved past her and pelted into Bell Lane, ignoring her screams as they bounced up the houses behind him. He didn't stop running until he was halfway to Ludgate. Then he stooped down under the window of a tailor's shop and felt in his pocket for the gem. His hand closed around it and he let out a sigh.

Away from the war. Away from leadfaces and faeries. Away from horrid people like Missus Jackinpots.

He was going to do it. He was going to get out of here and he was never coming back.

The walk from Spitalfields to anywhere respectable was a long one. He trudged for miles, out of the slums and along the slow, greenish river toward the wide streets and straight-backed houses of St. James's. One hand he kept under his arm, trying to stop his fingers from cracking off. The other stayed in his pocket, clamped tight around the gem.

Every time he thought of it there he felt a little thrill, a pleasure at its weight. It would turn into so many shillings and sovereigns for him. A whole stack of them. He would sell it and fill his pockets, and then he would leave London behind him once and for all.

An hour later he was in the part of the city that folks called Mayfair, on a big, noisy street full of shops and carriages. He walked along, darting around bicycles and the frozen brooms of the mechanical street sweepers. The horses and gas trolleys meant that the air was somewhat less icy than in the more old-fashioned parts of the city, but it was still cold enough to make Pikey's teeth chatter. A squadron of soldiers marched by, real grown-up ones in splendid red-and-blue uniforms. They stomped in formation, and a whistle at their head played a jaunty tune. Pikey watched them as they passed.

He stopped in front of a tall, gray-stone shop. The sign above the door read,
Jeffreyhue H. Millipede, Jeweler
, but to Pikey it was only a lot of flourishes and lines. A plate-glass window spanned the shop's front, so clean you might smack flat into it before you even knew it was there. And behind it was a wall of jewels. Row upon row of winking, glittering stones, pinned to the swaths of black velvet like so many brilliant insects. There were diamond necklaces and iridescent combs. There were strands of pearls, opals curled in silver, emeralds green as the verdigris on the old clock tower in Rot-Apple Street. They all looked so huge and polished. Pikey was suddenly afraid his own gem might not be good enough, that his dirty fingers had smudged it and that when he took it from his pocket it would look dull and flat, plain as a river stone.

No
, he told himself firmly. He had come this far and he wasn't going to turn back now. He knew a caramel apple seller on the way out of the city. He could already taste it. He could feel the brown, sticky sweetness dripping over his fingers, warming them as he walked away into the country.

Pikey squared his shoulders and pushed through the cut-glass door into the shop.

A tinkling of golden bells, and one great iron bell to scare him off in case he was a faery, signaled his entrance. Three ladies in enormous feathered hats turned languorously to glance at him. A shopkeeper's assistant did the same, and so did a bald, waistcoated gentleman standing behind a glass table. The table was filled with bulbous red necklaces, and the way the man stood with his large, milk-white hands spread over it made him look rather sinister.

Pikey felt his heart flutter as they looked at him, but he didn't hesitate. He marched toward the waistcoated gentleman, who he thought looked the most important, and said, “G'day, guvn'or. I have something for you. Are you the swanbolly?”

Pikey tried making his voice as deep and rough as he could, the way the men in Spitalfields did when they wanted something their way. Then he looked the man in the eye and waited, hoping he had done a good job of it.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Are you the swanbolly?” Pikey asked again, and this time his voice slipped up a bit and squeaked.

The man sniffed. “No, I'm quite sure that I am not. And if you do not state your business within three ticks, I'll have you dragged to the workhouse. What is it you want?”

Pikey almost bolted at that. Almost. But he was so close to getting away, away from wars and faery hunters and horrid people like Missus Jackinpots. He wasn't going to give up now.

Forcing down his fear, he said, “I do have business, guvn'or. I got something to sell to you.” And then he opened his hand and held up the gem for all to see. It came to light, pale gray and glimmering. Beautiful as ever.

The gentleman leaned in. The three ladies did as well, and they smelled like such a draft of pomegranates and cold soap and powdered petals that for an instant Pikey thought he might sneeze. Then Mr. Millipede (because that was who the gentleman was) plucked the gem from Pikey's hand. He pulled a mechanical monocle from a little drawer behind the counter and fitted it to his eye. The monocle clicked as it focused, the lenses swiveling and realigning. The ladies stepped back, whispering among themselves.

Mr. Millipede stared through the lenses for several seconds. His tongue darted out, running over his lips. Then he took the monocle from his eye and snapped it shut.

“Where did you get this?” he asked. His voice was very high and very strained.

The question made Pikey's arms go to gooseflesh. He hadn't really thought that anyone would ask him this. If he had stolen the gem, he would have understood. Then he would have been guilty and he would have invented a whole web of lies and tales to protect himself. But he
hadn't
stolen the gem. He hadn't done anything wrong. He was suddenly aware of how he must look to the gentleman, to the shopkeeper's assistant and the ladies. All muddy and snowy and pathetically hungry. His heart pounded. He hoped they couldn't see it beating against the filthy wool of his jacket.

“Someone gave it to me,” he said. “As a gift.”

Mr. Millipede arched an eyebrow. “A gift. Of course. Well, you must be quite the wonderful boy to get such a fine gift. Do follow me, and let's do business.”

That was more like it. It
was
quite a fine gem, after all, and if Mr. Millipede was too good to pay for it, Pikey could always bring it to a different jeweler.

Pikey followed the gentleman, stalking past the three ladies with as much dignity as he could gather. They turned their heads to watch him pass, the feathers in their hats fluttering.

“This way, if you please,” Mr. Millipede said, ushering Pikey down a corridor, past a great brass speaking machine. “To the money room.” They stopped at a door at the end of the corridor. The jeweler unlocked it and gave a little bow as it creaked open.

Pikey peered in. The room was dark and square and very small. One grimy window looked out from high up in the wall. The floor was a jumble of old crates and chairs and portraits wrapped in string and wax paper.