Jim Morgan and the King of Thieves (16 page)

“Hanging around, that’s —”

“Spot on?” Jim interjected angrily. Somewhere inside Jim’s eleven year-old mind he knew he should stop talking and just take what Red was giving him with gritted teeth, but Jim had taken quite enough, and in spite of his precarious position. his mouth just kept right on interjecting. “Are you serious? That’s the stupidest joke I’ve ever heard! I’m hanging around because…I’m hanging? Oh, yeah, that’s spot on, Red. Really brilliant! You’re a genius. No, I mean it. A regular court jester!”

As soon as Jim’s mouth shut, he wished it had never opened. Red’s face glowed bright as his hair. The lunks just stood there, wide-eyed, mouths hanging open like big dumb cows. Nobody spoke to Red like that. Nobody.

“Well, that’s some real cheek comin’ from the lil’ cryin’ boy.” Red’s face trembled. “I saw you there, you wanker! Cryin’ there on the
ground, blubberin’ like some loon! I bet — I bet your parents abandoned you ’cause you’re so loony and you cry all the time!”

Red was shouting now, tears threatening in his eyes. It must have been a long time indeed since anyone had made fun of him, and Jim could tell he wasn’t going to let that go easily. “I bet they were never happier in their lives than the day you disappeared.”

The knot swelled back into Jim’s throat with a sudden ache, and his face grew hot and eyes got stingy. “You shut up about my parents! You don’t know anything about them!” Jim tried to keep his voice from shaking and his chin from quivering, but it was no use. Red knew he had the upper hand now.

“I know that any dad or mum in England would want to get rid of such a useless, cryin’ mistake like you.”

The lunks didn’t laugh this time. Red didn’t snap or smile. He was serious and his pals knew it. Jim knew it, too, and as he hung there his little heart broke all over again. The tears ran upside-down and dripped right from his eyes to the ground.

Even the lunks looked away and started to back down the alley. This was no fun anymore, and they’d had their fill. Red lingered for one more satisfying smirk. “See ya’ around, you monkey,” he said, then just left Jim there to hang in upside-down misery.

After a few more moments of sniffling to himself, Jim heard Paul and Peter scamper around the corner. “Wow, that was a close one!” Paul exclaimed.

“We thought you were a goner for sure,” Peter added. “Some angels or something must love you, Jim. That’s how lucky you were, that’s how lucky for sure!”

Paul jumped on top of Peter’s shoulders so they could reach up and undo the tangled knot of vine around Jim’s ankle, dropping him down to the ground with an unpleasant bump.

“Sorry it took so long for us to get back,” Peter said. “But we had to go three more roofs over before we could climb down. But wow! Somebody definitely loves you…” The two brothers noticed Jim’s face. It was certainly red from being hung upside-down, but tears drenched
Jim’s eyes, and he must have looked as though he would never smile again.

“No,” Jim said. “Nobody loves me.” Then he got up and started walking down the street to the old shoe factory. Peter and Paul walked beside him, but Jim never looked their way or opened his mouth to speak. He stared at the tops of his shoes in silence as they scuffed along the dreary, cobblestone walk.

SIXTEEN

hen Jim reached the crumbling hole that led to the cellar beneath the shoe factory, he never even broke his stride. He walked right passed it, eyes still glued to the ground. Better to leave on his own, Jim thought, than to be kicked out by the Ratts.

“Hey, Jim!” Paul called after him. “Where are you going?”

“Come back, Jim!” Peter also called from the hole, but Jim refused to listen. He knew the truth. When Lacey and George got back they would throw him out on his ear for all the trouble he’d caused them.

Jim had no clue where he was going, but he kept walking anyway, as fast as he could, staring straight at the tops of his shoes, and constantly wiping away his tears. Soon his nose began to run, as noses often do after a good cry, and he had to use his sleeve to wipe it since
he had no handkerchief. Then his head began to throb, as heads often do after one’s nose has run and eyes have cried for a long time, and Jim wondered if it were possible for a person to feel more loathsome than he did at that very moment. He had lost his box, and the King of Thieves would pillage his father’s treasure. Maybe Phineus had been right, Jim thought. Maybe Jim had never even deserved the noble name of Morgan.

Eventually, the crying eyes, running nose, throbbing head, and aching heart became too much, and Jim could walk not another step. He stopped right in the middle of the street, looking around for the first time in some hours to see where he was.

Whether by luck or fate, somehow Jim had ended up by the bridge leading back toward his family’s city home. Maybe his feet just remembered the way, or perhaps some cruel spirits somewhere thought it would be good for a laugh to rub the one place Jim desperately wanted to go, but had no hope of reaching, into his face. Either way, the mere thought of his home and his father felt like a punch in Jim’s stomach, and he could now add an aching midsection to his list of emotionally induced maladies.

Without a clue of what to do or where to go next, Jim stepped onto the bridge. It was quiet save for the soft sound of the flowing water beneath the walk - until a sharp caw broke the silence, a raven’s caw.

Jim saw him at the other end of the bridge, and in that moment, all of Jim’s worries and pains, from his aching heart to his running nose, froze solid with fear. As when James had first gone to his London home, here now, on the bridge, stood the dark pirate, the raven still perched upon his black-cloaked shoulder, haunting the street like a shadow that had decided to step off a wall. His black hat was still pulled down low over his face, and his sword hilt still protruded from beneath the edges of his greatcoat.

Jim stood petrified. This form of a pirate, this shadow pirate, terrified him as much—no, more—than even the memories of Bartholomew Cromier. But this time, unlike at his home, there were no bushes or corners behind which to hide. The pirate stepped across the other end
of the bridge. Jim held his breath. Perhaps the shadow would miss him and keep walking. But the shadow stopped and turned his head toward the far end of the bridge – to look right at Jim.

Jim trembled from head to foot, icy fear now cracking and splitting from the heat of a deeper surge of terror. He and the shadow pirate stood still at each side of the bridge, staring at each other for a long moment, until the shadow pirate stalked onto the bridge, heading straight for Jim.

There was no mistaking it now, Jim knew. The shadow had been seeking him at his house, and now it had found him on the bridge. The freeze of fear that imprisoned Jim to his spot finally shattered, and from somewhere inside himself, Jim found the strength to run.

He had no idea where he was going, but he whipped around corners, dashed through alleys, and tore down streets that had no names. Jim looked over his shoulder, sure he would find the shadow just behind him, but instead, when he turned a blind corner, he ran right into a set of open arms.

“Get off, get off, let me go!” Jim cried, twisting and turning. But much to Jim’s surprise, the arms never fought back. Rather they let him go, leaving Jim to fall rather unceremoniously into a pile on the sidewalk.

“Jim!” a familiar, sweet voice said. “Whatever are you doing?”

Jim looked up to find Lacey staring down at him, wearing a gentle look not too unlike the one she wore the first time they had met.

“I - I was just…” Jim looked around. There was no trace of the dark pirate anywhere. The fear trickled out of Jim, slowly replaced with the miserable pride he had been feeling before his incident on the bridge.

“I was just leaving,” Jim finally managed, getting to his feet and starting to walk off again.

“Leaving?” Lacey asked with a snort. “It’ll be night soon, and being out here like this will only get you sick.”

Jim, having been crying for some time, then terrified out of wits, and now just miserable again, was in no mood for any kindness or
sweetness to spoil his ugly gloom. He walked over to a large rain barrel that had leaked into the street and stared down into the puddle, refusing to meet Lacey’s eyes.

“Good,” he said and folded his arms. “I hope I do get sick. So sick that I —”

“Don’t you even say that, Jim Morgan!” Lacey scolded sharply. Jim could picture her eyes changing the way they had before, flashing like lightning in a storm, and, for some reason, that made him almost want to smile. “You should be ashamed of yourself, just running out on us like this!”

“Running out on you?” Jim nearly shouted. He finally looked up at Lacey, who, as he had guessed, was now sporting a very cross look indeed. “You and George were just going to kick me out of the clan anyway after today. Admit it!”

“Kick you out?” George said over Jim’s other shoulder, his smiling face suddenly appearing as well in the reflection on the puddle of water. “Why in blazes would we kick you out? You just started!”

“Why? Why!?” Jim shook his head, throwing his hands up in the air. “Isn’t it obvious? I’m useless, absolutely useless. I couldn’t get my own breakfast. I couldn’t even take one lousy apple without spilling a hundred others. I almost got us caught by Butterstreet. I couldn’t run two blocks without nearly passing out. And then I almost got myself killed trying to jump across the rooftops. Red was right, I’m just a big mistake… and it’s no wonder…” Jim felt his throat and eyes burn again as the last words made their way out. “It’s no wonder I was the biggest disappointment my father ever had!” he blurted, and more tears erupted as he did.

“Oh, Jim.” Lacey put her hand on Jim’s back, any crossness fleeing her eyes, which filled up with kindness once more. “I’m sure that’s not true.”

“It is,” Jim said, sniffling and trying to stop crying. “I heard people say so with my own two ears.”

“But did you hear your father say so?” George asked.

“Well, no,” Jim admitted.

“Then how do you know for a fact that it’s true?”

“Well,” Jim said. He had never thought of that before. “I guess they could be wrong…”

“And besides,” said Peter, who sidled up to Lacey. “It’s not exactly like Big Red speaks the gospel truth, if you know what I mean.”

“He’s a dunderhead, Jim!” Paul chipped in as he too appeared as a reflection in the puddle beside his brother George. “He’s the one pickpocket on the street I’d hand over to Butterstreet meself!”

“Now that’s something we can all agree on,” Lacey said. “Big Red is a brute!”

“He used to wet the bed at St. Anne’s orphanage, that’s what I heard,” Peter said.

“Probably still does,” George added, and for the first time that day, Jim smiled and laughed a slobbery laugh beneath his running nose and tear-stained cheeks.

“You probably still do too, George,” Paul said with a laugh.

“I never wet the bed, Paul, that was Peter!”

“IT WAS NOT!”

Lacey and Jim laughed again, and when Jim looked down, he saw five faces staring back up at him from the puddle instead of just his one, and for a reason other than fear, the aches and pains inside him drifted away.

Together the clan walked back to the hole, laughing and joking the entire way, though Jim kept one ear out for the sharp call of a raven, or any sign of a shadow stepping out from a wall. Jim knew his situation was still dire. The box that held his father’s secret was in the clutches of the King of Thieves, who somehow knew something about the treasure no less, a shadowy pirate was apparently chasing him around London, and he was sleeping in a cellar beneath an old shoe factory with a gang of thieves. But even the cellar, Jim surmised, was a safer place than any other from the dangers that surrounded him of late.

SEVENTEEN