Alis (11 page)

He smiled, but the other man gave Alis a long stare before gathering up his materials and moving away. It occurred to her suddenly that the names Sally and Alis sounded very much alike, and she shivered.

The heavy wooden door swung shut behind them, and Ethan let out a long breath. Moll served two of the men at the table with more ale and came across the room. Ethan looked at her, frowning. “What’s all this, Moll?”

She sat down at the table with them, brushing some loose strands of hair from her forehead with the back of her wrist. “You’ve seen nothing yet! I went to pay the rent last quarter day and found the lease had been sold. Instead of old Cora with her cap and leather bag—counting on her fingers and never forgetting a copper piece—there was this long-faced Master Bartholomew and a young’un with a quill writing it all down. Now we must abide by strict rules or the place’ll be taken from us. You never know when they’ll turn up either, asking questions and poking about. The good times are gone, I tell you, Ethan. Some drinking houses shut early now. Soon we’ll all have to be abed when the Elders say and go to prayer meetings, I shouldn’t wonder.”

Ethan raised his eyebrows. “The city authorities, they are content with this?”

Moll shrugged. “And why not? It saves them the trouble of keeping order themselves.” She got up. “Well, I must be about my work. You’ll be biding a day or two, Ethan?”

“Maybe, Moll, but I must deliver this young’un to her aunt soon, and maybe I’ll bed down there for a night or so. You’ll keep the horses stabled for me?”

She nodded.

When she had disappeared into the kitchen, Alis seized Ethan’s arm in terror. “We must leave at once. Perhaps they have news from Two Rivers. They will take me back there—to Thomas and Robert.”

“Steady now.” His craggy face had a brooding look. “Our Master Bartholomew has no reason to mistrust that you’re my niece if I say so. Still, you cannot stay here much longer, I agree.”

“I cannot stay at all! Oh, Ethan, I beg of you, let us go now, before it is too late. They may be back at any moment, and there is danger for you, also.”

She could not bear his sitting there still, when they might be safely away. He looked at her without moving. “There is danger in staying here, it is true, but this lad I spoke of—I do not know if he is to be trusted. Maybe he can lead us to your brother, maybe not. I am to meet him by the bridge and cross the river into the southern quarter. It is an ill place. There is more danger for you in going there than staying here, maybe.”

“I do not care! I will come with you. Whatever happens to me, it cannot be worse than going back.” Seeing that he still looked doubtful, she added desperately, “Ethan, how can I stay here alone? Suppose they return while you are gone.”

At that, he pushed back his chair. “Come then. I’ll not leave you behind. Fetch the bundles, while I speak to Moll. She must think you are going to your aunt, so that she may tell our inquisitive Elders as much.”

Alis went quickly up to the tiny room at the top of the house and collected their few possessions. When she came down again, Ethan was waiting for her. He took his bundle and pack, and knelt down to check the fastenings. Still shaky with fright, she said fervently, “You are good to me, Ethan. I am sorry we had so little to give you, Luke and I.”

Ethan shrugged. “I’ve a soft spot for the lad. As for you, I wouldn’t risk myself to save you from marriage, but I’d not leave a girl to the mercy of Masters Robert and Thomas—I have heard too much of their ways.”

He finished securing his belongings and stood up. “Come then. Let us be gone.”

They took up their bundles and went out into the sunlit streets.

T
hey passed along a paved street of fine houses—merchants’ houses, Ethan said—and then crossed the grand main square. Alis would have stopped to gape, but fear of Master Bartholomew drove her on. Leaving the square, they entered a district of tradesmen’s shops—carpenters, boot and harness makers, chandlers, glove makers, taverns and pie shops, places selling lengths of cloth, hat makers, bakeries, apothecaries’ shops. She was dizzy with it all. More houses, of a modest kind, and two rows of what Ethan called charity dwellings—built for the poor by merchants hoping for the Maker’s favor, he said.

“Do the people here worship the Maker?” Alis asked in surprise.

“Your parents would not think so, but there are places of prayer of all kinds, though they do not follow the ways of the Communities. The world has more in it than you have been taught.”

Alis was silent. She was beginning to feel that she knew nothing at all.

When at length they came to the bridge, it was still too early for the boy to be there. Alis leaned on the parapet to watch the choppy water slapping the bank.

“That way is the sea,” Ethan said, pointing. “There was a port here once, but the river’s been silting up for years. Now the seagoing ships unload onto barges downriver, on the coast.”

She savored the smell, a muddy wetness with a tang of fish somewhere. Gulls scooped the air above the water and dived suddenly at invisible prey. Their harsh cries mingled with the voices of boatmen and with the more distant sounds of cargo being unloaded at the dock farther down.

For a little while, Alis was content to be away from the tavern, but as time went on and there was no sign of the boy, she became nervous. Master Bartholomew might, even now, be on their track. The open spaces and the sunlight, which had been such a pleasure at first, now seemed threatening.

It began to grow cooler. People came and went across the river. Still the boy did not come. Ethan said nothing, his face gloomy, but just as they were giving up hope, a ragged child sidled out from behind a couple of passing workmen. He was no more than ten years old, small, and very dirty. He stopped in front of Ethan, saying in a hoarse voice, “Man for Joe?”

Ethan said, “Joel. A tall, fair man called Joel, or Jojo maybe. You know him?”

The boy did not answer but jerked his head in the direction of the bridge and held out his hand. Ethan said, “Where’s the other boy—the one I spoke to this morning? Did he send you?”

The child nodded. Ethan reached into a pocket and produced a single copper coin that he held out. The child looked at it but he did not move to take it.

Ethan said, “You’ll get another one afterward. You understand? When we find Joel.”

Almost before he had finished speaking, the child had snatched the coin and shoved it away inside a tattered shirt that had once been white. Then he set off at a trot across the bridge without looking back. Ethan and Alis followed him.

 

 

On the far side, the boy led them along the embankment, stopping from time to time so that they did not lose sight of him. Blocks of mean-looking houses and shops, separated by alleyways, faced them on the other side of the roadway. On one corner was an inn with a faded sign showing a crudely painted sail and a coil of rope. The boy darted across the road and gestured to them to follow. They turned down one of the alleyways.

Almost at once they lost sight of the river, and there was no more breeze to freshen the air. Ethan looked about him uneasily as they hurried along in the child’s wake. The narrow streets twisted and crisscrossed. Fearfully, Alis wondered whether they would be able to find their way back if they needed to. The late-afternoon sun was already too low to penetrate the narrowest lanes, and in places the upper floors jutted out over the cobbles, making a kind of early twilight that seemed full of shadows. The few people they encountered either ignored them or stared suspiciously. Already they looked out of place—clearly better dressed than the locals, and their bundles showing them to be strangers, too. Ahead of them, the boy was visible only as a blur of limbs and a flutter of tattered shirt. Alis kept close to Ethan as they were drawn deeper into the maze of cobbled lanes. On the corner of a square, a woman with a heavily painted face put her hand on Ethan’s arm and murmured an invitation. He shook her off and they hastened away down yet another narrow passageway in the thickening dusk.

The boy had halted for them at the next turn. Before he could dart off again, Ethan called urgently, “Wait!”

When they came level with him, Ethan held up another copper coin—out of the boy’s reach. “It is getting too late. You must take us back to the bridge. We will come again tomorrow, in the morning, when it is light.”

The child said in his strange, hoarse voice, “T’ain’t far now,” and made as if to go on but just then a man rounded the corner. He glanced at the little group and stopped abruptly, glaring at the boy. “Why you little—didn’t I tell you not to come round here again?”

He made a grab for the boy’s arm, but the child kicked out viciously, freed himself, and was off. With a roar of rage, the man charged after him. In seconds, he was out of sight. They heard the thud of his boots briefly, then there was silence.

They listened intently, but there was no sound of returning footsteps. Alis looked at Ethan nervously. “Do you think he’ll come back—that man, I mean?”

“I doubt it,” Ethan said quietly. “And maybe it’s best that we aren’t here if he does. Alis, we must turn back. I can go no farther without a guide, and besides, it will be dark soon. Come now. We will try again tomorrow.”

She did not protest, for of course he was right, but her heart was heavy. Surely they had been close to finding her brother, and perhaps now they had lost their chance. “Do you know the way?”

“No, but we’ve been heading south. We must go north again, find the river, and cross the bridge. We’ll not go to Moll’s. There are other inns.”

They turned back along a narrow street of crumbling houses. Walls bulged out or leaned at dangerous angles. Missing doors made mouths of blackness. There was no sound of human activity. Fearfully, Alis hurried along in the gloom.

Suddenly, a foot hooked itself round her ankle and she lost her balance. Someone caught her as she fell and a hand covered her mouth. At the same time a ragged figure came between her and Ethan. There was a thud and a groan as Ethan went down. A girl emerged abruptly from a doorway. She was no taller than Alis, but she was holding a knife whose blade glinted in the dull light. The newcomer joined the ragged figure who was kneeling over Ethan.

Panic-stricken, Alis struggled, trying to dig her elbow into her captor’s belly, but he was too strong for her. Still off balance, she could not prevent him dragging her away from where Ethan lay on the ground. Then the hand over her mouth slackened its hold slightly, and she bit hard into the soft flesh at the base of the thumb. With a curse he let go. She seized her chance and fled.

She was between high walls, stumbling on slimy cobbles. At once she was lost. Footsteps behind her urged her on. Left. Right. Back on herself. Right again. And again. She ran in blind terror. Down an opening on the left—too late she saw the blank wall at the end.

Trapped! But no. There was a passageway running along the wall. She turned right out of it. This time she really was in a dead end.

Sobbing for breath, she turned back. The knife girl barred her exit. She turned again. Yet another passageway, and at the far end, the silhouette of a tall youth. She swiveled round: knife girl one way; tall youth the other. Alis stopped. They would kill her, but she must breathe, she
must
breathe.

Her pursuers looked older than she was. Not one of them was out of breath. They watched her as she recovered, cutting off the escape routes but not coming any closer. The girl was nearest: thin, raggedly dressed, with spiky fair hair. The tallest of them was almost a man, with a pocked, battered-looking face and long dark hair tied back with a scrap of cloth. When she met his eye he grinned, revealing broken teeth. She looked away, frightened. A skinny boy, clothed in a colorful array of mismatched items, was performing an elaborate dance on his own on the cobblestones. His feet beat a pattern that ended in a pirouette and began again immediately. He stopped suddenly and stared at her. Then he held out his hand. “Dance?”

She stared back with a sense of nightmare. After a moment he began again, feet pattering lightly on the cobbles. The others continued to watch her in silence.

Someone came into the passageway from the far end, carrying bundles—hers and Ethan’s, Alis realized. The tall youth said at once, “Let’s go. It’s too light still, for ’angin round.”

“What about her?” It was the spiky-haired girl with the knife. Her voice was light and sharp.

“Leave ’er.” It was an instruction.

The dancer left off his routine and said protestingly, “Not safe, not kind.”

“Don’t be a fool, Dancer. She ain’t nothin’ to us.” His pockmarked face was ugly in the half light.

Alis said suddenly in a loud voice, “I’m looking for my brother.” She did not know why she had spoken. She felt giddy with fright. The one called Dancer said sorrowfully, “Not this side of the river. Only derelicts. Shouldn’t come this way. Not safe.”

“He’s called Joel.” Her voice seemed to have a life of its own. It would insist on talking.

The knife girl said spitefully, “Joel! Nobody gives himself a name like that this side of the river.”

“When I was little I called him Jojo.” Why was she telling them this?

They had turned away, but now they swung back and were staring suspiciously at her.

“She’s making it up,” the fair girl said at last. “It can’t be true.”

“What’s ’e do, this brother o’ yours?” the tall youth wanted to know. He seemed to be the leader.

Alis’s voice was shaking. “I don’t know. He came here years ago and now I’ve run away. I’ve got to find him.”

They were looking at each other uneasily. Finally the tall boy nodded. “Bring ’er along. We better be sure. We c’n always get rid of ’er.”

Dancer took her arm. He had a beautiful, heart-shaped face, half-hidden by ragged locks of dark hair. His voice was coaxing. “Come with us. Much safer. Bad place. Worse at night.”