Mairelon the Magician Read online

  The procession of customers entering the room was not exactly encouraging. Most were working-class men identifiable by their clothes—carters, bricklayers, a butcher, one or two costermongers, a swayer. A nondescript man in a shabby coat slouched in and crept to the far corner of the table as if he expected to be thrown out. Kim sipped at her ale, wondering unhappily whether she should risk attracting attention by asking questions.

  The door opened again, and another collection of solid men in rough-spun wool and grimy linen entered. In their wake came a tall man made even taller by his top hat. He wore a voluminous cape that made it impossible to tell whether he was fat or slim, but the white-gloved hand pressing a handkerchief to his lips was impossible to mistake. Famble-cheats and a top hat, Kim thought disgustedly, in a place like this. He was the one she was waiting for, all right. She straightened, trying to look taller so that he would see her.

  The toff surveyed the room disdainfully, then made his way among the tables and stopped beside Kim. “I trust your presence means you have succeeded, boy,” he said.

  “I done what you asked,” Kim said.

  “Good. I suggest we conduct the remainder of our business in one of the private rooms in back.”

  “You want everyone here knowin’ you got business with me?” Kim asked without moving.

  The toff’s face darkened in anger, but after a moment he shook his head. “No, I suppose not.”

  “Then you’d better set down afore everyone here ends up lookin’ at you,” Kim advised.

  The man’s lips pressed together, but he recognized the wisdom of Kim’s statement. He seated himself on the bench across from her, setting his hat carefully on the table. The publican, a fat man in a dirty apron, came over at once, and the toff accepted, with some reluctance, a mug of beer. As the publican left, the toff leaned forward. “You said you’d done as I asked. You found the bowl, then? You have a list of what is in Mairelon’s wagon?”

  “What would the likes of me be doing makin’ lists?” Kim said sarcastically.

  The man looked startled. “I had anticipated—”

  “You wanted a list, you should of hired a schoolmaster,” Kim informed him. “I can tell you what I saw in that magic-cove’s wagon, but that’s all.”

  The man’s eyes narrowed. “In that case, perhaps five pounds is more than the information is worth to me.”

  “In that case, you ain’t getting no information at all,” Kim said, mimicking his tone.

  “Come, now, I think you are unreasonable. Shall we say, three pounds?”

  Kim spat. “I done what you said, and you never said nothing about no list. Five pounds and that’s flat.”

  “Oh, very well. Did you find the bowl?”

  “I ain’t saying nothin’ until I get what you promised.”

  The toff argued, but Kim remained firm. Eventually he agreed, and unwillingly counted out the five pounds in notes and coin. Kim made a show of re-counting it, her fingers lingering over each coin in spite of herself. She had never had so much money at once in all her life, and every silver shilling and half crown meant another day or week of food and possible safety. She stowed the money safely in the inner pockets of her jacket, feeling highly pleased with both herself and Mairelon. If it hadn’t been for the magician’s urging, she might have passed up an easy mark.

  “Satisfied?” the man said angrily. “All right, then, tell me what you found.”

  Kim smiled inwardly and launched into a detailed and exhaustive description of the interior of the magician’s wagon. She noticed the anticipation on her listener’s face when she talked of the pots and pans in Mairelon’s cupboard, and carefully saved the information that they were all made of iron for the end of the sentence. She got a perverse satisfaction out of seeing the flash of disappointment on the toff’s face.

  The man got more and more impatient as she went along. Finally she mentioned the locked chest. The toff sat up. “Locked?”

  “Yes.” Kim paused. “But I got in.”

  The man leaned forward eagerly. “And?”

  “It looked like that’s where the cove kept his magics. There were a whole bunch of little paper lanterns, and a couple of them little wooden boxes, and a stack of silk—”

  “Yes, yes, boy, but the bowl!”

  “Bowl?” Kim said, feigning innocence.

  “The silver bowl I described to you! Did you find it?”

  “I didn’t see nothin’ like that in Mairelon’s wagon,” Kim said with perfect truth.

  “What!” The toff’s voice was loud enough to make heads turn all along the table. He controlled himself with effort, and when the other customers had turned away, he glared at Kim. “You said you’d do as I asked!”

  “And so I have,” Kim retorted, unperturbed. “Ain’t nobody could of found somethin’ that ain’t never been there.”

  “Not there?” The man sounded stupefied.

  “Use your head, cully,” Kim advised. “If this Mairelon swell had something like that, I would of seen it, wouldn’t I? And I ain’t. So it ain’t there.”

  “You’re certain?”

  Kim nodded.

  The toff glared as though it were her fault. “Not there,” he muttered. “All this time, wasted on the wrong man. Amelia will never let me hear the end of it. Merrill could be anywhere in England by now, anywhere!”

  “That ain’t my lookout,” Kim pointed out. “You want to hear what else he had, or not?”

  “And you,” the toff went on in a venomous whisper, “you knew. That’s why you made me give you your money in advance, isn’t it? You little cheat!”

  On the last word, he lunged across the table. The sudden movement took Kim completely by surprise. He would have had his hands at her throat if a grimy, disreputable-looking man had not half lurched, half fallen against the toff’s back at that moment.

  The unexpected shove knocked the toff heavily into the edge of the table; Kim heard his grunt of pain plainly. She stood and backed away a little, watching with interest. She recognized the grimy man now, he had come into the public house just before the toff’s arrival.

  The grimy man was the first to recover. “Sh-shorry, very shorry,” he said. “The floor jusht, jusht shook me over, thash all.” He waved a hand to demonstrate, and lost his balance again.

  “Get away from me, you idiot!” the toff snarled.

  “Right. Very shorry.” The drunk made ineffectual apologetic motions in the toff’s direction. Since he was still draped halfway over the toff’s shoulder, this succeeded only in knocking over the almost untouched mug of beer in front of them. A wave of brown foam surged across the table, picking up dirt and grease as it went.

  The toff made a valiant effort to spring back out of the way, but with the drunk still leaning helpfully across his shoulder, he didn’t have a chance. The pool of cool, dirty beer swished into his lap, thoroughly drenching his previously immaculate attire. The taproom exploded in laughter.

  The drunk began a tearful apology, which was more a lament for the wasted beer than anything else. Cursing, the toff shoved him aside. He began wiping vainly at his clothes with a pocket handkerchief while the publican escorted the drunk firmly to the door. Kim judged it a good moment for her own departure and slipped quietly out in the drunk’s wake. Her last sight was of the toff, gingerly picking his dripping top hat out of the pool of beer.

  Still chuckling, Kim paused in the lane outside. It was now fully dark, and a yellow fog was rising. Not the best time for running about the London streets, even for as ragged a waif as Kim looked. Still, she hadn’t much choice. She swallowed hard, thinking of the coins in her pockets. If she lost them, she’d have nothing to fall back on if her arrangement with Mairelon fell apart. She started off, hugging the edge of the lane.

  As she passed the corner of the Dog and Bull, a pair of dirty, beer-scented hands grabbed her. One clamped itself over her mouth, the other pinned her arms. Kim threw herself forward, but the man was too strong. She was dragge
d quickly and quietly into a filthy alley beside the public house.

  She kicked backward, hard, and connected. The man made no sound, but his grip loosened, and Kim wrenched one arm free. She bit down on the hand covering her mouth and felt her captor jerk. Then she heard a whisper almost directly in her ear. “Kim! Stop it! It’s Mairelon.”

  Without thinking, Kim struck at the voice with her free hand. Then the words penetrated, and she hesitated. She couldn’t imagine what Mairelon might be doing in this part of town, but magicians were a queer lot, and she’d already decided that Mairelon was one of the queerest of them all. And who else would expect that name to have any weight with her?

  “It really is me, unlikely as it seems,” the whisper said. “If I let go, you won’t make a sound until you’re sure, will you? Nod if you agree.”

  Kim nodded, and the hands released their hold. She turned and found herself confronting the drunk who had caused so much trouble a few minutes before. He no longer seemed drunk in the least, though he still looked and smelled thoroughly unpleasant.

  Kim took a step backward. The man raised a warning hand and she stopped, peering at him. He was the right height for Mairelon, but he had no mustache and his face was half hidden by a layer of greasy dirt. Then he grinned, and Kim’s doubts vanished. Impossible as it seemed, this was Mairelon.

  She smiled back and he doffed his grimy cap and bowed with a stage magician’s flourish. She opened her mouth to ask what he was doing, and at once he held up a warning finger. She stepped closer, wondering even more what was behind his strange behavior.

  The creak of the public house door swinging open filtered into the alley. Mairelon flattened himself into a niche along one wall and motioned to Kim to do the same. She complied, still puzzled. Then she heard the skinny toff’s unmistakable whine.

  “—don’t expect such treatment! You haven’t heard the end of this!”

  “Mebbe,” the gravelly voice of the publican said. “And mebbe not. Evenin’.”

  Kim heard the door shut, then the toff muttering curses under his breath. A moment later came the incongruous sound of a small silver bell, ringing.

  A large shadow passed the mouth of the alley. “There you are, Stuggs!” the toff said pettishly. “Did you catch the boy?”

  “I ain’t seen ’im,” said a deep, slow voice.

  “Not seen him? But he left just a few minutes ago.”

  “I ain’t seen ’im,” the second voice reiterated patiently.

  “You fool! He must have gone the other way.”

  “Couldn’t ’ave. Street’s blocked.”

  “Then he slipped by you in the dark. Idiot! Nothing has gone right tonight, simply nothing! We’ve spent five days tracing the wrong man, my clothes are ruined, and on top of everything else you let the boy escape!”

  “I never seen ’im. If I’d seen ’im, I’d a catched ’im.”

  “Oh, well. Under the circumstances, it hardly matters. But if it bad been Merrill’s wagon, we would have needed the boy. You’re lucky.”

  Something in the man’s voice made Kim shrink back against the wall of the building, trying to become one with the bricks and half-timbering. Why were they so interested in her? Surely five pounds wasn’t worth such trouble to a swell!

  “You want I should look for ’im?” Stuggs’s deep voice said, and Kim held her breath.

  “Weren’t you listening? There’s no need; he didn’t find anything. And I’m not going to stand here smelling like a brewery while you blunder about. Come on.”

  Footsteps clicked against the cobblestones, passing the end of the alley. Gradually they died away, but Kim did not move until she heard the distant rattle of carriage wheels. Then she looked across at Mairelon.

  The magician motioned to her and started off, but instead of heading back out to the lane, he went farther into the alley. Kim followed with some trepidation. The cramped maze of garbage-strewn alleys that twisted through the spaces between the main streets was no place for anyone who didn’t know where he was going.

  Mairelon, however, chose his course without hesitation, and in a few minutes they emerged on a side street two blocks from the Dog and Bull. “You can talk now,” he said.

  FOUR

  Kim was silent for a moment, trying to decide what to ask first. “Why was that skinny toff so wishful to get his dabbers on me?” she said finally, starting with the question which was of the greatest personal interest.

  “I rather think he was afraid you might come and tell me what he’d been doing,” Mairelon replied.

  Kim did a quick review of the conversation they’d overheard. “He thinks you’re this Merrill cove?”

  “Not any more,” Mairelon said cheerfully. He tipped his cap to a heavily rouged, overblown woman in an exceedingly low-cut gown. She eyed his shabby raiment and wrinkled her nose, then hurried past in search of more promising customers.

  “So that’s why you was so set on me gammoning the cull I’d done what he wanted,” Kim said. She looked at Mairelon thoughtfully. “Are you?”

  “Am I what?”

  “Are you Merrill?”

  “‘What’s in a name? that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.’”

  “Huh?” Kim said, thoroughly confused.

  “Not literary, I take it? No, of course not, you wouldn’t be. We shall have to do something about that.”

  “About what?”

  “Teaching you to read.”

  “Read?” Kim’s eyes widened, and she stopped short. “Me?”

  “Why not? It’s bound to be useful. Come along; you don’t want to spend the night standing in the street, do you?”

  Kim nodded and started walking again. It was a moment before the novelty of the idea wore off and she realized that she had been very neatly distracted from her original question. She scowled and kicked a pebble. It skittered over the cobblestones and disappeared into the damp and foggy darkness in the middle of the street.

  Mairelon looked across at her and raised an eyebrow. Kim’s scowl deepened. “You knew all that was going to happen!” she said accusingly.

  “Hardly. I was suspicious, that’s all.”

  “Then what were you doin’ down at the Dog and Bull?”

  “I was looking out for you,” Mairelon said promptly.

  “I don’t need no lookin’ out for,” Kim retorted. She was suddenly tired of all these swells talking her into things without telling her enough about them first. Of course, her own curiosity was at least as much to blame as Mairelon, but that only made her more irritable.

  “I’m inclined to agree,” Mairelon said. He raised his hand and touched his right eye gingerly. “I believe you blacked my eye with that last swing.”

  “Too bad,” Kim said callously. “It wouldn’t of happened if you’d of told me you’d be there.”

  “If I’d told you I was planning to follow you, you would have told me to be off about my own business,” Mairelon pointed out. “Which, as things turned out, wouldn’t have been at all wise, now, would it?”

  “Huh.” Kim couldn’t contradict him, but she wasn’t willing to admit it.

  “Besides, it wouldn’t have been at all the thing to have sent you off into trouble without warning you and without sending along anyone to help in case there was trouble.”

  “Then why didn’t you warn me?”

  “About what? I wasn’t sure anything was going to happen. And would you have listened?”

  “If you would of explained—” Kim started with some heat, then stopped, her brain working rapidly. Mairelon had caught her rifling his wagon; he would have had to be very stupid to give her any explanations without learning more about her first. And however careless he might seem, he was not stupid. The thought crossed her mind that he had been watching to see whether she would tell the skinny toff the whole truth about what she had found in his wagon.

  Curiously, the idea that he had been testing her drained away most of her anger. Caution was a
thing she understood; if she wanted Mairelon’s trust, she would have to earn it. She wasn’t about to admit she knew it, though. “You shouldn’t of gone,” she said grumpily.

  Mairelon gave her a quizzical look. “I couldn’t let you go alone, and there was no other choice. I simply couldn’t send Hunch.”

  Kim stared at Mairelon. Then her mind brought up a picture of Hunch, drooping over the skinny toff’s shoulder and chewing on his mustache while he tried to tip over a beer mug. It was too much for her sense of humor, she burst into laughter. “No, I guess you couldn’t. I bet he didn’t want you goin’ off in them flash togs, neither.”

  “You’re right about that,” Mairelon replied cheerfully. He raised his hand to touch his eye again, and winced. “He’s going to be simply delighted about this, I’m sure.”

  “Not hardly he won’t.”

  “He’ll say it’s what I deserve for going off without him. He may, just possibly, be right,” the magician added thoughtfully.

  “You goin’ to tell him how you got it?” Kim said.

  Mairelon looked at her and blinked; then he grinned. “Oh, I see. I hadn’t thought of that.” The grin widened, giving him a strong resemblance to a mischievous small boy. “Well, such things happen quite frequently in taverns, particularly the less respectable ones. I don’t think there’ll be any need to go into details, do you?”

  Kim shrugged, sternly suppressing a flicker of relief. “It don’t matter to me.”

  “Quite so,” Mairelon said gravely. They walked a block in silence, watching the heavy, wide-wheeled drays clatter by over the cobblestones. Then they turned a corner and the sights and sounds of the Hungerford market washed up to greet them.

  To Kim’s surprise, Mairelon did not go directly to his wagon. Instead, he led Kim around the fringe of the market to a cramped alley. He paused in the shadows, watching the lamplit shops. Though the twists of the buildings hid them from sight, Kim could hear the calls of the costermongers clearly. It was a good place to hide; Kim had used it herself a couple of times. She was surprised that Mairelon knew it.