The Devil and His Boy by Anthony Horowitz Read Free Book Online Page A

clear. To hell with you! To hell with you all!
    Then the boy turned and a moment later he had gone.

paul’s walk
    The following morning, Mistress Quickly and the innkeeper said their goodbyes. There was a cart making the short journey from Enfield to London and they had arranged for Tom to be given a ride.
    “You look after yourself, young rakehell!” the innkeeper boomed. “And when you get to London, make sure you head for St Paul’s.”
    “Where’s that?” Tom asked.
    “St Paul’s Cathedral. You can’t miss it. Ask for Paul’s Walk. That’s the best place to find work.”
    “Goodbye!” Mistress Quickly cried. “It was lovely beating you!”
    The cart set off and although Tom had slept well the night before, he found his eyes closing once again and soon he had drifted back into sleep.
    He was woken by the sound of a bell tolling. He sat up and blinked. The cart was rumbling past a priory with a cluster of neat houses lying in its shadow and at first Tom thought he was still in the countryside. Behind him there were fields and gently sloping hills. But when he twisted round and looked ahead, more and more houses and shops sprang up and a moment later he knew that they had plunged into the city itself.
    London!
    It was the noise that struck him first. There were people everywhere, shouting and shoving as they tried to reach the market stalls. At the same time, the stall-owners and shopkeepers were shouting back at them, each one of them trying to make themselves heard. “What do you lack? What do you lack?” – this from the shopkeepers, standing in their doorways. “Sweep! Chimney sweep!” “Ripe apples red!” “Fine Seville oranges” – at every street corner there was someone with something to sell. Horses stamped and stumbled in the mud. Cartwheels creaked and rattled. Dogs barked and cows bellowed their protest as they were driven to market. In workshops open to the street, half-naked metalworkers smashed down with their hammers and yelled instructions to their hurrying apprentices. Carpenters in leather aprons sawed and chiselled. A group of sailors wove past, half-drunk already, singing and laughing. So much noise! Tom pressed his hands to his ears and tried to stop his head from spinning.
    And then there was the smell. Vegetables and spices in the market. Fruit – fresh and rotting. Great hunks of cheese. Kegs of rich, ruby wine. The smell of people, sweating and dirty. The smell of animals. And, of course, the worst smell of all, coming from an open drain that ran down the centre of the road, a foul-coloured stream that never stopped flowing, carrying all the sewage of London to who could say where!
    Tom climbed out of the cart, marvelling at all the people around him. Colourful signs hung in the air, advertising the shops below. A black horse, a white rose, a yellow snake. Higher up, the inhabitants had stretched lines from one side of the street to the other so that they could hang out their clothes which fluttered like misshapen flags against the blue sky. A woman in expensive clothes hurried past, pressing a scent-bottle to her nose and trying not to look at anything. In the distance a group of boys were throwing mud-balls and laughing at a man with dark skin and foreign-looking clothes; presumably a visitor.
    “Dirty postcard?” A man with a broken nose, several broken teeth and a badly twisted neck had suddenly stepped in front of Tom. “Want to buy a dirty postcard?” he asked.
    “No…”
    “Each one’s engraved! And you won’t find a filthier sonnet!”
    “No thank you!”
    The innkeeper had advised Tom to go to St Paul’s Cathedral and that at least was easy to find. The driver of the cart pointed the way and Tom followed a narrow, curving lane until it suddenly opened into a great square where a priest, dressed in black and white, was addressing a crowd of a hundred people. The cathedral stood behind them; a mountain of bricks and stone, of soaring windows and towers.