Scrivener's Moon by Philip Reeve Read Free Book Online Page A

the company with lovely songs and play to them upon a balalaika. Pretty soon young Borglum found that the only thing he didn’t like about this new life was the way that all the work of performing and roaring and being gaped and googled at was done by him and his friends, while all the money went to the silky gentleman and his wife and grown-up sons, who styled themselves the proprietors of the troupe. Borglum’s friends often grumbled about it, and he felt sure that they were right, but it was not in Borglum’s nature to be a grumbler.
    So he made himself useful to the silky gentleman; helped him count his money and make up his accounts. From the grown-up sons he learned how the barge’s big old engines ran. And when the silky gentleman and all his family met with a terrible accident it was discovered, amazingly, that he had left the Knuckle Sandwich and all it held to Borglum.
    At this long remove of years it was hard for Borglum to recall the exact details of the accident. “It was a tragic business” was all he’d usually say, if ever anyone asked about it. Sometimes, if they pressed him, he would bare his little yellow teeth and his feldspar eyes would glitter and he’d say, “It involved knives . . .”
     
    By coincidence, “It involves knives” was more or less what people had been saying about Borglum’s carnival that night, as word of its arrival spread excitingly through all the flapping canvas streets and cardboard cul-de-sacs of Tent Town. For too long the workers of London had been forced to make their own entertainment, which mostly meant dog-fights and cock-fights and knife-fights. Now the professionals had arrived! Young men stood in the light of the flaming torches and stared up at the gory paintings on the barge’s sides. Children scampered off to tell their parents what was taking shape. Tired workers coming down from shifts on the new city and drunken young noblemen stumbling home from Quercus’s ball were all revived by the sight of Borglum’s blood-red banners licking at the evening sky. From all over Tent Town, groups of people made their wondering way towards the carnival, drawn by its powerful promises of violence and glamour.
    Amongst them, unnoticed in his drab off-duty clothes, came apprentice Charley Shallow, as eager as anyone to see what the Carnival had in store. He had been out that evening with a girl called Milly Floater, and had decided that this might be a good way to round the night off. From what he’d heard in Tent Town it was meant to be quite horrifying, and he knew that girls, when horrified, liked a protective arm around them, and that one thing might lead to another.
    He was fond of Milly, but as they joined the end of the queue he glanced around to make sure that none of his fellow apprentices was there. Round, good-natured, cheaply dressed Milly was exactly the sort of girl you would expect to see with a boy of Charley Shallow’s sort, and for that reason he did not want to be seen with her. Ronnie Coldharbour and his friends still didn’t like Charley, but they had learned to respect him, and he liked to drop hints to them about all the girls he knew in Tent Town. If they saw that he could do no better for himself than Milly Floater it could dent his reputation badly.
    Sure enough, there was Coldharbour with a couple of the others, a few yards further up the queue. Before he could look back and notice Charley, Charley took Milly’s arm and dragged her into the slipstream of a passing Movement officer and his lady; rich folks from Ludgate Hill who thought that queues were not for them. Hurrying behind these nobles, they quickly reached the front of the crowd, where an entrance painted like a fanged mouth opened into the carnival tent. “Roll up, roll up!” the men who guarded it were shouting, while a girl with green eyes sold tickets in a canvas booth. A pretty girl, thought Charley, as he fumbled for his purse, and then saw as he proffered his bronze