The Lost Heir (The Gryphon Chronicles, Book 1) (3 page)

But considering the advantages this new talent suddenly gave him as one of London’s most notorious boy-thieves, he was not about to ask too many questions. All he knew was that his never-ending struggle to survive as an orphan on the streets of Queen Victoria’s London had suddenly grown a whole lot easier.

With that, he dodged off into the colorful chaos of the endless market, and nobody paid him any mind.

Everywhere, from stalls and shops, barrows and hand-carts, the hawkers, hucksters, and peddlers sought to move their wares. There were bone-grubbers and lamplighters; floozies, flower-girls, and fortune-tellers; quacks proclaiming the amazing health benefits of potions they’d invented. Dilapidated gentlemen sold castoffs from the gentry, while a lady offered a litter of baby weasels that she said would grow into excellent pest removers, and help to eat the beetles in your house.

There were broomstick menders and candlestick makers; dealers in bonnets, braces, and bootlaces; secondhand sellers of every kind of useless junk imaginable.

More importantly, there was food, all sorts of glorious food. Vendors in open stalls were selling anything you could want to eat.

If you had the money.

Jake did not, nor did his many acquaintances running around the place—assorted ragtag orphans, beggar children, and junior pickpockets hard at work, ducking low as they wove through the crowd, grabbing whatever edibles opportunity granted and disappearing again before anyone noticed.

All the while, beneath the soaring steel beams of the market’s great roof, the costermongers’ familiar chants resounded:

“’Hoy, turrr-nips! Cabbages! Cabbages and turnips!”

“Sweet pears, eight a penny! Who’ll buy my pears?”

“Cheery cherries, sound and round!”

“
Pine
apples from the glasshouse! Luxury for your table, madam? Favorite of the gentry!”

“Get your oranges ’ere, sweet and juicy!”

“War-nuts, roasted war-nuts!” a Cockney woman yelled out in a hoarse singsong.

Beside her, the dairymaids were selling milk straight from their stinky cow. Farther on, the baked potato man was doing a lively business. The butcher’s stall displayed a row of little headless carcasses hung upside down: rabbits, pigeons, chickens for the stewpot.

“Sheep’s feet! Get your trotters here, hot or cold!”

“Jellied eels! Pickled whelks!” The snail shells clattered as the fisherman turned them over with a large metal scoop. These, of course, were not as popular as London fish and chips wrapped in brown paper. With a bit of vinegar squirted on top, it was a meal fit for a king, or a savvy young prince of the rookery like himself.

Jake strode on, protecting the pie under his jacket. He arranged his grubby red scarf over it to help hide it.

Meanwhile, curious entertainment punctuated the end of every aisle he passed. A bamboo-flute player of Asian origins piped an exotic tune. Farther down, some ne’er-do-well was mesmerizing his dupes with sleight-of-hand tricks. And beyond him, a blind beggar sang soulful hymns, thanking the people when he heard the shillings drop into his hat.

The acrobat family was throwing each other around beneath the rotunda. Closer by, a strolling actress past her prime was chilling her audience with a dramatic reading of the last dying speeches of notorious criminals recently gone to the gallows.

But if there was a warning for Jake in the moral of her tale, it was lost on him as he went by at top speed, trying to look natural.

Cool-nerved as ever, he headed for the market’s northern exit in order to avoid his mustachioed nemesis, Constable Flanagan.

“Spice cakes! Gingerbread here! Fresh-baked crumpets! Get ’em while they’re hot!”

“Penny pies! Plum duff! Who’ll try my puddings?”

“Pippins ‘ere!” a familiar, high-pitched voice yelled out in the crowd. “Shiny apples, red or green! Now’s your chance, pick ‘em out cheap!—Jake? Hoy! Jakey!”

He froze. Blast it, the carrot-head had seen him! He mouthed a silent curse. It was just his luck she’d spotted him now; she’d catch him red-handed.

“Jake! Where are you goin’?” she called. Nosy! He never could decide if Dani O’Dell was all right or the bane of his existence.

He could hear her coming up closer behind him. Hesitating, he did not turn around at once, debating with himself. What to do, what to do.

If he greeted her, she’d notice him acting suspicious and would realize he’d broken his promise not to steal. But if he tried to ignore her, that would only raise her Irish temper; she’d yell the louder, and all the world would turn and look, and Flanagan would be on him in a trice. It seemed he had no choice.

Bracing himself, Jake slowly turned around and tried to look innocent, like any respectable citizen.

It didn’t work.

Dani O’Dell was ten years old, with chestnut hair, smart green eyes, and a smattering of freckles, and though he would not have admitted it under torture, she was the only soul in this rotten old world that he trusted, along with maybe her stupid dog.

As usual, her tiny brown Norwich terrier, Teddy, poked his head out of the old canvas sack Dani wore strapped across her back. Teddy yipped eagerly when he saw Jake—and smelled mincemeat pie somewhere close.

But Dani’s eyes narrowed, homing in at once on the round shape underneath his coat. She set her wheelbarrow down and folded her arms across her chest. “What are you up to, Jake Reed?”

“Huh, what?”

“What’re ye hidin’ under your coat?” she demanded.

As if she were his mother.

Jake knew from experience it was no use lying to her. With her drunken, superstitious Da and her tribe of wild, brawling, elder brothers, Dani O’Dell was the only honest one in her family. Long before her Ma had died and left her in charge, she had learned to smell a lie a mile away.

The thought of her rowdy teenage brothers and how they were of no help to her at all, but treated her like their maid and snatched any food away she tried to bring home, well, that and the ragged sight of her, just as hungry and desperate as he, made Jake relent all of a sudden.

The mincemeat pie was big enough to share, after all, and really, he was so proud of his accomplishment, stealing it by magic, that he could not resist a chance to boast. “Oh, nothing. Just this.” He opened his coat, quick, sly, and secretive, and flashed a cocky smile.

Her green eyes widened like the starboard lanterns on a ship; her freckles turned to dark dots as her face went pale. She reached out and shut his jacket with a frightened glance around. “You promised!” she whispered angrily. “You can’t just steal for a livin,’ Jake Reed! The magistrate’s already given ye two chances!”

She launched into one of her grand rants, but oddly enough, Jake didn’t mind her scolding. In a strange way, it comforted him somehow. It showed that at least somebody out there cared if he lived or died.

“You think one night in the Clink was bad?” she cried. “That was only to teach you a lesson, ye daftling! They catch you thievin’ again, they’re gonna hang ye!”

“But I didn’t
steal
it, eh?” He couldn’t wipe the grin off his face. “It just floated over to me, like. If something comes over and puts itself in your hands, that’s not the same as stealin’.”

“Mother Mary!” Dani made the sign of the cross. “I told ye not to trifle with them powers! It could be the work o’ the devil!”

He scoffed. “It’s not the work of the devil, you nit. It’s just a bit o’ fun. Now you want a slice or not?”

Dani O’Dell fell silent, arguing with herself, Jake supposed. With her conscience. She tried to be the conscience of them both.

Her little brown dog, of course, had no such scruples. Teddy leaned eagerly over her shoulder, his black nose twitching at top speed to sniff out the hidden food.

Dani still hadn’t given him an answer, buying time as she tried to fight temptation. “Now you’ll get the headache,” she reproached him with a sullen look.

Jake shrugged. It was true. He had learned by trial and error that each time he exercised his inexplicable new abilities, it soon left him with a splitting headache, feeling weak and wobbly, drained.

He was already starting to feel that way now.

All the more reason to get to a safe place fast. Somewhere he could gorge himself in peace without worrying about Harris the Pieman seeing him, or that blasted Constable Flanagan.
Right.
“You comin’ or not?”

She lifted her chin bravely. “I’ll have no truck with stolen goods. It ain’t respectable.”

He snorted. “Suit yourself.” Stubborn carrot-head. Scowling and rather insulted that she turned up her nose at his offering, Jake turned away, but then he suddenly felt a small tug on his sleeve.

“Mister Jake!”

He glanced down at the little orphan boy in dirty overalls who had just run over to them. “Aye, what is it, Petey?” he mumbled, suffering an odd twinge from his not-quite-dead conscience.

He hoped the little fellow hadn’t seen him stealing.

Petey was only six years old and quite looked up to him. Jake didn’t want to set a bad example. (And he really didn’t want to have to share.)

He eyed his young colleague in question.

“There’s some people over there lookin’ for you, Jake!” Petey informed him. “Thought you’d want to know.”

“Lookin’ for me?” he echoed in surprise. “Who?”

“Don’t know, sir! But they don’t seem right. See ’em? Over there, by the flower girl.”

“Probably Constable Flanagan,” Dani remarked, folding her arms across her chest like a know-it-all.

“No, miss. Not the bobbies. Them blokes over there,” Petey said. “They’ve been askin’ all the kids if anyone’s seen you.”

Jake and Dani both peered in the direction that Peter’s grubby finger pointed. Jake furrowed his brow.

He noticed the strangers at once because they looked so out of place. A tall, elegant gentleman in a black top hat was speaking to the children, shielding his nose from the offending smells around him with a handkerchief. The stranger wore a long, fine coat and carried a fancy walking stick in his hand. Around him were a trio of bruisers, including a bald-headed muscleman that must have been six-and-a-half feet tall.

Dani glanced at Jake in worry, then looked at Petey. “What do they want with ‘im?”

The small boy shrugged. “Did one of ‘em used to be your ‘prentice master, Jake? That coal-factory owner or one of them others that used to beat you?”

Jake shook his head with an ominous feeling. He didn’t like the look of this at all. “I’ve never seen them before,” he murmured, already backing away. “I’d better get out of here. Tell ‘em I went that way.” He pointed to the left but intended to go to the right.

“Will do, Jake!” Pete said cheerfully, and then ran off to carry out his orders.

Jake turned to Dani, gesturing to her to bend down with him behind her wheeled cart. She did. He angled the potpie furtively out of his coat. “Hide this for me. Bring it you-know-where. I’m going to find out what this toff wants, then I’ll meet you there, and we’ll share it.”

“Jake!” she protested in a whisper. “I ain’t taking yer contraband! I could get in trouble! Then who’ll take care of Teddy?”

“Well, I can’t get caught with it!” he shot back in a whisper. “If they catch
me
with it, I’ll be sent to Newgate!”

“Ha! So you admit I was right and you were wrong!”

“Just take it,” he ordered.

She huffed and fumed, but finally did him the favor, secreting the precious pie away behind the canvas drape concealing the lower shelf of her apple-cart. “One of these days, Jake Reed, you’re goin’ to get me killed. Go on, get out of here,” she urged, nodding toward the exit. “And be careful. I don’t like the look o’ them people.”

“Me, neither.” Jake nodded in farewell, then he stayed low as he crept away from her cart.

When it seemed safe, he stood up and continued moving stealthily toward the end of the aisle. Who the blazes was after him now? he wondered. He did not intend to stick around and find out.

More worried than he had let on, he pulled the brim of his drab cap lower to shade his eyes and turned up the collar of his threadbare coat to help conceal his face.

Hands in pockets, he wove nimbly through the crowd.

Confident that he could get away with ease as he had so many times, he paused to peer back around the corner at the strangers.

Suddenly, the gentleman in the long coat spotted him. Quite without meaning to, Jake locked eyes with him. The stranger started forward with a look of shocked recognition. “Jacob?” he yelled.

Jake’s eyes widened.
He knows me?

But if twelve years of life had taught him anything, it was that anytime someone called him ‘Jacob’ rather than just plain Jake, it spelled trouble.

“There! There he is, Oxley!” The gentleman pointed, nudging his bald giant. “Bring that boy to me. Go!”

In the next moment, the mighty muscleman was charging at him like a bull, his two helpers following. Shoppers went flying out of their way as the black-clad strangers plowed through the crowd.

Jake stared at them, motionless for a second from pure shock. “Blimey,” he breathed.

Then he ran for his life.

CHAPTER TWO

A Family Resemblance

Abandoning all attempt at stealth, Jake tore off through the market. He leaped a barrel, ducked behind a stack of clucking crated chickens, then sprinted past the tulip lady.

“Stop that boy! Stop, thief!”

He glared over his shoulder as Harris the Pieman joined the fox-hunt. Rushing out of his stall, he pointed after Jake. “Constable Flanagan! It’s that blasted Reed boy again!”

The next thing he knew, the bobbies were blowing their whistles fiercely, on the chase. Jake cursed, inspired by the thought of Newgate Prison to move with even greater speed. He zipped around stalls, dodged under display stands, spooked the donkey hitched to the tea-cart as he vaulted a row of hay bales, and scrambled on.

Racing out into the wide, open square around the market, he finally found a bit of luck. Dani’s wild elder brothers were loitering out on the benches with their gang and their dollymop girls—as bad grownup troublemakers as he was the junior sort.