A Very Unusual Pursuit by Catherine Jinks Read Free Book Online

with it, Emma! It were them lads as took it!’ Birdie thrust the lace collar under Emma’s nose. ‘And now I’m bringing it back!’
    ‘Why? What’s wrong with it?’ the slop-seller asked.
    Birdie’s jaw dropped.
    ‘Did Jem give it to you ?’ Emma went on, with a twinkle in her eye. ‘He’s proper smitten, that lad.’
    ‘Y-you mean – you mean – he bought it?’ Birdie stammered.
    ‘ And beat me down on the price. But I’ll not hold it against him.’ Leaning down, Emma put her mouth to Birdie’s ear. ‘You should take it, love, in all good conscience. Don’t turn up yer nose at a gift o’ the heart. Them tokens’ll stop coming to you soon enough! And Jem Barbary’s got the makings, beneath all his bluster . . .’
    As she talked, Emma gently guided the scrap of lace back into Birdie’s basket. Birdie, meanwhile, stood stiff and mute, so angry that she could hardly breathe. She felt like hitting someone. But mixed in with the anger was a kernel of fear. Could Sarah Pickles really be so desperate to recruit her? Had Sarah’s three missing pickpockets left a gap so large that she was willing to use a thinly veiled threat to secure Birdie’s services – even at the risk of offending Alfred?
    I can’t tell Mr Bunce, she thought, on her way past a coal-merchant’s shop. He’ll give Sarah what for, and then she’ll get back at him secretly. She’ll do worse’n plant stolen goods on him . . .
    Not that the collar was stolen. But it could have been; that was the point. Sarah’s warning was clear enough. She was saying that she could force Birdie to thieve for her. A well-placed scrap of silk, planted by a deft hand, could put Birdie in danger of arrest – even imprisonment – unless Sarah stepped in to help.
    I’ll have to be on me guard, Birdie decided. I’ll have to make sure she don’t take advantage of me or Mr Bunce. I’ve faced down bogles; I can deal with an old toad like Sal. Why, if it comes to that, I’ll tell police she killed her missing boys!
    Turning into her own street, Birdie paused for an instant, scanning every shadow for a trace of Jem or Charlie. Though she couldn’t see them, that didn’t mean they weren’t out there, watching her.
    Just in case they were, she tossed the lace collar into a puddle of mud and marched away with her chin in the air.

7
    LOW TIDE
    A dozen young scavengers worked regularly around the coal wharf at Shadwell. From the banks of the River Thames they picked up iron, coal and copper, wood and canvas, old lengths of rope and lumps of fat. Sometimes they found coins or antiquities. If they were lucky, their labours earned them a shilling a day. Each.
    Even after pooling their funds, they hadn’t been able to collect more than four shillings to pay Alfred for killing the sewer-bogle that appeared to be stalking mudlarks along the river flats. Luckily, Bill Crabbe, the tosher, had come to their rescue. Bill had seen the sewer-bogle. Though he’d caught only a glimpse of it, he was keen to make sure that he didn’t see it again.
    ‘Ah’ve three children work the sewers, and didn’t raise ’em to fill the belly of no grindylow,’ he told Alfred, as they stood gazing down at the river. ‘So ah went to t’other toshers hereabouts, and we stumped up half a crown between us. For there’ll be no peace without this thing is nobbled – and right quick, besides.’
    Bill was a small man, very thin and yellow, with a bad cough. Despite the heat of the day, he was well wrapped in a tattered oilskin coat over a wool vest and flannel shirt. He had met Alfred and Birdie at a well-known riverside public house, and from there had guided them to the site of ‘the little lad’s doom’, as he called it. This was a patch of mud near the very end of Wapping High Street. It was a strange place, busy yet desolate, flanked by a wall of warehouses on one side and a forest of ships’ masts on the other. Empty boats littered the mud flats, which smelled very bad