Mairelon the Magician Read online

  Kim heard a scratching sound behind her and tensed. Mairelon smiled and turned, his shoulders brushing flakes of paint off the building on his right. A moment later, Hunch appeared from an even skinnier opening near the back of the alley.

  “Well timed, Hunch!” Mairelon said in a low voice. “You brought everything?”

  “Right ’ere,” Hunch said, lifting a large canvas bag in one hand and scowling as if he wished he could disassociate himself from such undignified proceedings.

  “Good!” Mairelon stripped off his cap and dropped it, then pulled off his tattered jacket. He wiped his face and hands on the shreds of lining, which seemed relatively clean, then dropped the jacket on top of the cap and begin pulling off his heavy workman’s boots.

  “Master Richard!” Hunch’s voice was not loud, but it expressed volumes of scandalized disapproval.

  Mairelon paused and looked up. “What is it?”

  “You ain’t never going to just—” Hunch stopped and looked at Kim. “Not with ’er standing there!”

  “Oh, is that all that’s bothering you?” Mairelon looked at Kim and grinned. “Turn your back, child; you’re offending Hunch’s proprieties.”

  Kim flushed, as much from surprise as embarrassment, and turned away. “I ain’t no child,” she muttered under her breath.

  “Under the circumstances, that’s so much the worse,” Mairelon replied cheerfully.

  Kim snorted. She could hear various scraping and rustling noises behind her, and Hunch muttering through his mustache. She frowned, certain that at least some of the mutterings were derogatory comments directed at her. She couldn’t quite hear them, and after a moment she was glad. If she knew what Hunch was saying, she would have had to answer in kind, and she couldn’t see arguing with someone while her back was turned. It was too much of a disadvantage.

  The rustlings stopped, and Mairelon said, “There, that’s better. You can turn around now.”

  Kim did, and blinked. Mairelon still smelled faintly of beer, but otherwise he was once more the well-dressed stage magician she had first seen. Top hat, cape, mustache—mustache? “How’d you do that?” Kim demanded.

  “The mustache?” Mairelon said. “Spirit gum and horsehair. It isn’t crooked, is it?”

  “Not as I can see,” Kim replied.

  “Good! I was wondering; it’s a bit tricky to do without a mirror. Still, it only has to last until we get back to the wagon.”

  “What about them things you was wearing?” Hunch demanded. “You ’adn’t ought to be leaving them ’ere.”

  “No, I suppose not,” Mairelon said, nudging the little pile of dirty, beer-scented clothing he had been wearing. He glanced at Hunch’s face and turned to Kim. “Can you get rid of them?”

  “I could pitch them in the river,” Kim offered, eyeing the clothes almost as dubiously as Hunch.

  “No, no, sell them somewhere or give them away. Preferably not in this market.”

  “Huh. You don’t expect much,” Kim muttered, but she picked up the clothes and wadded them into a compact bundle. The boots were in fairly good shape; she might actually be able to turn a few shillings on them.

  “We’ll see you at the wagon in an hour or so, then,” Mairelon said. He smiled as he followed Hunch out the back of the alley.

  Kim whistled softly through her teeth as she finished making up the bundle. The secondhand clothes dealers on Petticoat Lane ought to fit Mairelon’s requirements. Tom Correy would be the best; he was sure to take the clothes in order to get the boots. He’d think Kim had stolen them, so he wouldn’t pay much, but he wouldn’t ask questions, either. It evened out.

  She swung the bundle to her back and hesitated. Mairelon had sounded casual enough, but he’d nonetheless been taking fairly extreme precautions against being seen. Maybe she should do the same. She slipped easily through the crack at the back of the alley and worked her way among the courtyards to the street.

  She was turning to head for Petticoat Lane when she remembered the money she’d collected in the Dog and Bull. Tom was a good fellow, but some of his customers weren’t. She didn’t want to lose her five pounds before she’d even gotten used to the idea of having them.

  Changing direction, she circled the market until she came to the hidey-hole where she spent most of her nights. It was little more than a few rotting boards leaning against a tenement, but it provided privacy and a minimum of shelter. Kim wormed her way inside, then set about redistributing her newfound wealth. She buried a few shillings in the corner of the hidey-hole and slipped a few more into her shoes.

  After some consideration, she tore a strip of cloth from the bottom of the shirt Mairelon had been wearing and bound the rest of the coins tightly around her bare waist. She pulled her own shirt down over the resulting lumpy wrap and belted her breeches. She studied the effect, then smiled and patted her belt with a sense of satisfaction. In the dark, and with her jacket over the top of everything, even old Mother Tibb would have been hard put to notice anything unusual.

  She rebundled the clothes and set off. Near Holborn Hill she swung herself onto the rear end of a farmer’s wagon that was heading in the right direction. She hunched down behind the hay, clinging to the backboard and hoping she would not be noticed. Her luck held; not only did the wagon continue east, but the driver did not see her until she jumped off. She darted into the gloom, pursued by his angry cries. He’d settle down once he realized that all she’d stolen was a ride.

  Petticoat Lane was only a few minutes’ walk. Tom’s shop was closed, but Kim had expected as much. She slid around to the rear of the building and rapped at the weathered oak door. She had to repeat her knock before a stocky, grizzled man opened the door and peered out at her. “’Oo’s that?”

  “Kim. I got somethin’ for Tom.”

  “Ah. Inside, then.” The man stepped back and Kim lifted her bundle and followed him in.

  The back room of Tom’s secondhand shop was a mess, as usual. Clothes were piled carelessly in every corner and stacked on top of the single chair. Kim saw everything from a laborer’s homespun smock to a tattered but undeniably silk cravat.

  Four men were seated on crates around the rickety table in the center of the room. The tin cups and the reek of gin made it clear what they had been doing before Kim’s arrival; just at the moment they were staring at her. Two of them were as unknown to Kim as the doorkeeper. The third was Tom’s brother-in-law Jack Stower, a dirty dish if Kim had ever seen one. He’d never had much use for her, either.

  The last person at the table was a grey-haired man with squinty eyes, wearing a dark grey coat and a linen cravat. Kim stiffened. “Dan Laverham!” she blurted. What was that flash cull doing in Tom’s back room? For all he carried himself like Quality, he could call up half the canting crew from Covent Garden to the Tower of London if he had a need for them.

  “Kim, dear boy, how good to see you,” the grey-haired man replied. His eyes raked her apparel, and she was suddenly very, very glad she had hidden her money so carefully before setting out. Dan would think nothing of ordering his men to strip her of her hard-won gains, if he knew of them.

  “Been a long time,” Kim offered, keeping her tone noncommittal. Dan was a bad one to offend. He was smart and smooth, and he’d hold on to a grudge until the moon turned blue. She suspected that he was the one who’d turned stag and peached on Mother Tibb to the constables, though he was too clever to have acted openly.

  “That it has,” Dan said, leaning back on his crate as though he sat in a tall, straight-backed chair. “And to what do I owe the good fortune of your arrival?”

  “Say ’e’s got sommat for Tom,” the doorkeeper said.

  “Then, my dear, go and fetch him,” Dan replied. The doorkeeper grunted and clumped up the stairs. Dan looked at Kim. “Do join us,” he said, and waved at the table.

  Kim shook her head. “I ain’t got time,” she lied.

  Jack Stower shifted so that his crate creaked alarmingly. “Think you’re t
oo good to have a drop of Blue Ruin with your friends, eh?” he mumbled.

  It was on the tip of Kim’s tongue to retort that he, at least, was no friend of hers, but caution restrained her. Gin made Jack’s uncertain temper positively explosive, and she doubted that the other men would intervene if Jack started something. She tried to make her voice placating as she said, “It ain’t that. I got to meet a man down by the docks in less’n an hour, and I ain’t going to finish with Tom in time as it is.”

  Jack started to reply angrily, but Dan put a hand on his arm and he subsided at once. “An appointment on the docks?” Dan said. “That’s a bit out of your usual way, isn’t it?”

  Kim shrugged, wishing the doorkeeper would come back with Tom. “I go where the pay is.”

  “Not always, my dear, or you would have accepted my generous offer,” Dan said, watching her with bright, penetrating eyes.

  “I like bein’ on my own,” Kim said shortly. And she strongly disliked the idea of falling into Dan’s clutches. He’d have her forking purses off the market crowds during the day without regard for her scruples, and once he discovered her sex she’d spend her nights in the stews. Kim had no illusions about that sort of life. Let alone she had no taste for it, she’d be lucky not to end swinging from the nubbing cheat as Mother Tibb had.

  “Well, let it pass,” Dan said, waving a hand. “But tell me, what has lured you to Tom Correy’s establishment tonight?”

  “Bilking old Tom out of a tog and kicks, I’d say,” Jack muttered.

  “Quietly, my dear.” Dan’s voice was velvet-smooth. Jack shot him a glance of mingled fear and resentment, but he did not speak again. Dan gave Kim a look of polite inquiry.

  “I got business with Tom,” Kim told him.

  “Really.” Dan’s eyes shifted to the bundled clothes dangling from Kim’s right hand, then back to her face. “Not back on the sharping lay by any chance, are you, dear boy?”

  “No, nor I ain’t goin’ to be, neither.”

  “I can give you a better price than Tom, if you’ve any trinkets to dispose of,” the man persisted.

  Kim suppressed a scowl. Dan had been trying to get a handle on her for a long time. He was obviously hoping that greed would get the better of her sense. She shook her head. “I ain’t got nothin’ in your line, Dan.”

  “Pity. You’re quite sure—”

  The creaking of the stairs interrupted as Tom Correy came down them, followed closely by the doorkeeper. Tom scowled at the gin drinkers, but his face lit up when he saw Kim. “Kim, lad! Where’ve you been keeping yourself?”

  “Around,” Kim said with deliberate vagueness. She didn’t grudge Tom the knowledge, but there were too many interested and not entirely friendly ears present to overhear.

  “You come for another coat?”

  “What’d I say?” Jack muttered.

  “Quiet, you,” Tom said without looking. “It’s my shop and I’ll run it my way, see? And the boy looks like he could do with a jacket.”

  “I ain’t after one,” Kim said hastily.

  Jack snorted and gulped at his cup. Tom looked at her. “What, then?”

  “I got some stuff for you to look at. Here.” Kim crouched and undid the bundle.

  “Where’d you come by this?” Tom said, studying the untidy pile with disfavor.

  “Got it off a bingo-boy up by Spitalfields,” Kim said glibly. “What’ll you give me for ’em?”

  Tom knelt and examined the clothes more closely. “They ain’t much.”

  “Those’re good boots,” Kim pointed out quickly. “Some people would give three shillings just for the boots.”

  “Three shillings? You must think I’m as lushy as that lot,” Tom said, waving towards the table. “I’ll give you a bender for the whole pile.”

  “Sixpence ain’t enough,” Kim said stubbornly. “Two shillings ninepence.”

  Dan and his cohorts soon lost interest in the bargaining and began a muttered conversation of their own, punctuated by frequent passage of the gin bottle. Kim watched them warily from the corner of her eye while she dickered. Jack was thoroughly castaway, and one or two of the others looked at least a little lushy. Dan, however, was being careful not to get the malt above water; though he passed the bottle and refilled cups with a comradely air, he himself drank little. And several times, Kim saw him watching her.

  By the time she had finished her bargaining and collected one-and-sixpence from Tom, Kim was worried. She bade Tom a cordial goodbye and the drinkers a polite one, then stepped out into the cool, damp night. As the door closed behind her, she took a deep breath to clear the gin fumes from her head. The fog had thickened; the streetlamp by the shopfront was a dim smear of yellow light, blurred by the veil of moisture in the air.

  Whistling softly, Kim started down Petticoat Lane. Half a block from Tom’s, she cut sharply to the left. She hunted along the backs of the shops until she found one with a drainpipe she could climb, then shinnied up it. She crept to the front of the building and lay flat, peering down at the street.

  A moment later a man came skulking down the street from the direction of Tom’s shop. She couldn’t make out his face in the foggy darkness, but his silhouette was stocky and he moved like the man who had been keeping the door for Dan and his friends. He hurried by, heading toward the docks.

  Kim stayed where she was for a while, considering. Dan had sent the doorkeeper after her, but why? She could think of no answer. Finally she slid down the drainpipe and started back toward the City. Her mood was thoughtful, and she made sure she took a circuitous route. Whatever the reason for Dan’s renewed interest in her, she was sure she wouldn’t like it when she found out what it was. She was glad she’d accepted Mairelon’s offer. With any luck at all, she’d be out of London long before Dan could find her.

  FIVE

  It was near midnight when Kim arrived back at Mairelon’s wagon and rapped softly at the door. To her surprise, it swung open instantly. Mairelon stood just inside, dressed in evening clothes fine enough for gentry. His right eye seemed puffy, but showed no signs of discoloration. Kim looked more closely and saw streaks of stage makeup, all but invisible in the dim light. “It’s me,” she said to cover her sudden, irrational feeling of guilt.

  “Ah, Kim,” Mairelon said with no perceptible change in his worried expression. “I’m glad you’re back.”

  “Not so’s you’d notice,” Kim muttered as she entered the wagon. “I got rid of them flash togs, right enough.”

  “Good,” Mairelon said absently, still frowning at the door.

  Kim looked around for some hint as to the cause of Mairelon’s abstraction. She saw no sign of the droopy assistant, and on impulse asked, “Where’s Hunch?”

  Mairelon picked up a top hat from the grey tile that topped the row of cabinets by the door. “I was just going to find that out.”

  “You mean he’s run missing?”

  “I sent him on an … errand. He should have been back an hour ago.”

  Kim sighed. “It’s your lay. Where do we start lookin’?”

  “We don’t start anywhere. You’re going to stay here and keep an eye on things, in case he gets back before I do.”

  “I ain’t fond of sittin’ and waitin’,” Kim objected. “And if you’re that nattered about it, maybe you ought to take along some help.”

  “I’m afraid you’d be rather out of place where I’m—” Mairelon broke off in mid-sentence, and his head turned toward the door. A moment later it swung open and Hunch climbed into the wagon. He looked at Mairelon, and a disapproving frown settled over his face. Mairelon grinned like a schoolboy caught in a prank and tossed his top hat back onto the shelf.

  Hunch snorted. “You ain’t queering me none, Master Richard. You was a-going to go looking for me.”

  “It seemed like a good idea.”

  “You ’adn’t ought to of done it,” Hunch said severely.

  “Yes, well, I didn’t. What took so long?”

  Hunch
looked at Mairelon sharply, but allowed himself to be drawn away from his scolding. “Couple of sharpers tried to follow me, and I ’ad to lose ’em afore I come back.”

  “What?” Mairelon looked up in the act of seating himself on top of the chest that had caused Kim so much trouble. “How many?”

  “Two as I noticed.”

  “Anyone we know?”

  Hunch shook his head. “I ’adn’t seen neither of ’em afore.”

  “Mmm-hm. I suppose they could have been some of Shoreham’s.”

  “That’s as may be,” Hunch said. He sounded both skeptical and disapproving. Mairelon looked up. Hunch gave a warning jerk of his head in Kim’s direction.

  “What? Oh, yes, of course,” Mairelon said. “Did you get what you went for?”

  “Aye.”

  “Well, let’s have it, man!”

  Hunch shot another look in Kim’s direction, then reached stiffly into one of his pockets. He pulled out a folded paper sealed with a great blob of crimson wax and handed it to Mairelon.

  Mairelon held it up to the light, edgewise. “The seal hasn’t been tampered—oh, Lord.”

  “What is it?” Hunch said anxiously.

  “Shoreham’s done it again,” Mairelon replied in annoyance. He turned slightly, so that his back was to Kim, and muttered something under his breath.

  There was a bright flash of blue-white light that left Kim’s eyes momentarily dazzled. When her sight cleared, Mairelon was squinting at a fine dust of ashes that drifted from the folded paper. “I do wish he’d stop using that Egyptian Light-Lock,” he complained. “I never manage to get my eyes shut in time.”

  Hunch grunted. Kim realized that he had turned his head away before Mairelon broke the seal, and so escaped the temporary blindness. She glared first at him and then at Mairelon. One of them might have warned her what to expect.

  Mairelon shook the letter open and began to read. A moment later he straightened with an exclamation. “Tomorrow!”

  “What’s that?” Hunch said.