The Convicts by Iain Lawrence Read Free Book Online

closer. “We need the Daikey,” he said, and turned his bucket head toward the door.
    As thoughat his command, footsteps rang on the brick.
    They grewlouder mid closer. Every boy in the chamber turned to watch. Even the candles seemed to brighten, nod-ding their flames toward the entrance.
    A hope came to me—a silly, childish hope-nthat my father would storm through that black hole and carry me away. I gripped my coat, the dead boy's coat, to stop my hands from shaking.
    A shadow slid along the walk It leapt around the corner and soared to the height of the chamber. It was the shadow of a humpbacked ogre. But through the entrance came only a tousle-headed boy with a stick on his shoulder and a bundle hanging from its end, resting on his back. I knew the bundle at once; it had belonged to the blind man.
    The boy heaved the stick sideways from his shoulder. The bundle landed with a thump; the stick slipped from its knot and clattered on the brick among the scattered bones.
    “Found this at the river,” he said. “I did, or my name ain't Jack Skerritt. It was jammed in the stones at the Tower Stairs.”
    I knew that place, and it wasn't where I'd wrestled with the blind man. If I had fled up the Tower Stairs I would have come to the Great Tower Hill and the Tower itself, not the maze of alleys where I had met old Worms.
    But as Jack knelt down to open his bundle, a sudden dread came over me. If he had found it at the Tower Stairs, then the tide must have taken it there. And if the tide had done that, had it taken the blind man too? I heard his grunts and saw, again, the spittle flying from his mouth. Had I hit him hard enough to kill him? He had been groping for his stick and bag when I'd last looked back at him. But maybe he hadn't made it far and had finally collapsed in the mud. The dark river might have carried him and his bundle away.
    I would be found out. I was sure of it then. Sooner or later it would happen, and no one would believe my story. A judge would look down from a bench and ask what sort of monster would kill a helpless old blind man. There was no doubt that I would hang for what I had done.
    Jack was picking at the string that tied the bundle, telling the storyof his wonderful find, how he had thought at first that he had stumbled on a dead body. “Looked like a floater” he said. “But this is better. Just you wait and see.”
    Bending hichead, he bit into the string, then stopped. “By jabers, I found these, too” He turned out his feet, looking down at them, and I saw that he was wearing my shoes. “Tliak of the boy what had them. A little chickabiddy boy he must hive been, dancing in these fancy shoes. Wouldn't I have liked to wing his neck?”
    “Didn't you, then?” asked Boggis, standing above him.
    “No. They was tangled up in the bag and the stick,” said Jack, “Good shoes. A touch too small, but I fixed it, see”
    He turned his leg a bit farther, and! saw that he had sliced the toes open to make room for his feet. For some reason, that hurt me more than anything. After all my perils and my troubles, to see my fine shoes cut open for the big stupid feet of an urchin made a moan rise in my throat. Jack turned to look at me.
    “Christmas!” he said. “Is that the Smasher?”
    “Poz!” cried Penny. “Ain't you got eyes, Jack Skerritt?”
    “A spirit or a person?”
    The giant answered. “No one knows.”
    “Ill tell you soon enough.” Jack looked down at his stick, then up at the lamps. “Do you think a spirit burns?”
    There was one breath from all the boys. Water dripped and plopped, and the shadows moved as Jack Skerritt stood and took a laaip from the wall. The flame leapt in yellow wriggles.
    “Take it, Boggis,” he said, holding out the lamp. “Go on. Take it, Gaskin.”
    The giant's lips cracked open. His grunting breaths made the flame shiver and shrink, as though even a lamp cowered before him.
    “Take it,” whispered Jack, and the giant did. He carried it