The Convicts Read online

  I turned and ran away. Consumed with shame, with hate, I couldn't bear to face the man a moment longer. I retreated to the parlor, scampering down the hall like one of the cockroaches I had startled there. I heard Mr. Goodfellow's laugh, and then his voice telling my mother, “I'll expect to hear from you directly.” The door closed, and I heard his fine leather boots taking him down through the fog.

  My mother followed me into the parlor. I was looking at the few little things we owned, but I was really seeing those that were gone. The sword that my father had accepted from a surrendering Frenchman; where was that? His medals were gone, and his best braided hat. His charts and his tools and his pilot books; all of them were gone. For the first time I wondered about the pennies that had gone to the toll-booth, and exactly where they had come from. And then I thought about my school tuition, and I groaned. Why had I never seen what was happening? My father, in selling nearly everything he owned, had sold himself along with his sailorly things.

  “It's worth any price to spare you from going to sea,” said my mother, as though she had read my mind. “I never should have married a sailor, and I won't have one for a son. You're to be a gentleman, Tom.”

  I saw what despair had been brought to that end, and I vowed to set things straight. I inarched to the hail. I began pulling on my shoes, my good gleaming shoes that might have cost my father his sextant.

  “Where am you going?” asked Mother.

  1 bent over to tie the laces. Frayed and knotted, they seemed shamefully shabby in such fine shoes, the money I'd been given to buy laces had bought me a Chelsea bun.

  “Tell me where” she said. “Are you going to sea? Tom, you're not running away to sea, are you?” Mother took my arm. “There's no future there; only death waits on the sea.”

  “Let Me go/’ I said, pulling easily from her grasp. “I have to settle accounts.”

  I didn't Know what I would do or where I would go. But I was certain that I couldn't leave my father in a debt's prison. I took my coat from its hook. Then—I didn't know why—I—put it back and took my father's instead. Perhaps I thought his coat would make me a man. Perhaps I wanted hhn to hold me, and since his real arms Weren't there to do itj I would have to wrap myself in the woolen ones that stnelled so Much of him.

  I put on the coat; I opened the door.

  Mother tried to slam it shut. “Tom, don't go,” she said.

  “Mother, please.” I moved her aside and stepped out to theporeh.

  “No son of mine will ever go to sea,” she said. “Tom, if you walk away now I have no son.”

  “Please don't worry” I told her. I kissed her on the cheek, then hurried off before I could change my mind, before my courage deserted me. I ran into the fog, and her cries came with me.

  “I have no son,” she shouted in her madwoman's screech. “Do you hear me? I have no son!”

  I ran as fast and far as I could. I rail though my ribs felt stitched together, though my lungs wheezed. From street to street, through a churchyard and a field, I ran on and on. I passed ghostly houses, ghostly trees, coughing globs of phlegm, thick and yellow, as though it were bits of the fog I was retching from my body.

  I knew London only from the Surrey side, as a panorama of spires and domes along the curve of the Thames. To come at it from the north, so blindly that I couldn't see more than thirty paces, left me hopelessly confused.

  The streets twisted and turned and stopped altogether. Along them milled people and carts and carriages, more and more as I went along, until sometimes the street was choked from side to side. All slowly appeared and slowly faded, as though I'd come to a city full of phantoms, a drowned Atlantis in the watery fog. From the gloom and the shadows, an endless assortment of odd-looking hawkers reached out tb sell me their wares. I was offered pocket glasses and seashells, birds’ nests and coal, sponges, spoons, and a clarinet. I stumbled through a market full of street-sellers, each shouting about the thing he was selling, in such a babble of “Fish!” and “Potatoes!” and “Whelks!” and “Hot eels!” that it made not the slightest sense.

  But the smells of the food were strong and enticing. I stopped in the middle of the crowd and felt through the pockets of my father's coat, hoping to find a farthing. But all I brought out was a fistful of pencils with their sharpened ends jammed into a little tin cup. I stared at them for a moment, until I suddenly felt tearscome to my eyes. A picture formed, clear as a suraiy cfay, of my father pausing on these same steets, hawking his pencils to raise the pennies that sent me toschool.

  For a minute or more I stood in the swirling crowd, neirly weeing at the sadness of it, knowing that if Mr: Goodfellow suddenly emerged beside me, I would thrust those pencils through his coat, through his bre&st; and pierce his black heart. Then a hand reached out and stole the pencils. Another, perhaps the same, stole the cup.

  That was nearly the end for me. I would have gone straight home if Ihad known which way to walk. But the crowd had turned me around so that I didn't know east from west, or scarcely up from down. I tried to stop a peddler and ask him for directions, but he only went rattling along with his little cart and his tiny donkey, crying out, “Buy, buy^ buy! Buy a bonnet, buy a bootlace!”

  I set off through another maze of streets, past another row of shops. Then I arrived suddenly at a set of stairs, and at their bottom was the muddy bank of the Thames. I had blundered right past the City

  I sat on the stone step. Cold and hungry, desperately alone, I decided to wait for the fog to thin. I pulled my collars tight, linked my hands inside my cuffs, and watched an old man trudging through the mud below me.

  He was gray and grizzled; he was blind. His eyes were wrapped with a black cloth tied behind his head, its long tails drooping to his shoulders. On his back hung a tattered bag that was clotted with mud at the bottom, as though he had set it down and picked it up a hundred thousand times. He carried a farooked stick that he poked deep in the rifiuA I heard the squelching, sucking sound it made each time he pulled it out

  I was used to seeing mud larks combing the riversides for their bits of bone and glass and iron, for anything they could sell. But always they'd been children; I had never seen an old, blind man at the game.

  He was a master at it. He stepped and poked, stepped and poked, like a huge and ragged heron. His feet were bare, his trousers rolled to his knees, and his long coat scraped on the mud, smoothing behind him each puckered mound left by his stick.

  Suddenly he bent down. The bag fell from his shoulders. His hands went into the mud, to his wrists, to his elbows. He dug like a dog, splashing the mud across his legs and his coat. He pulled out a black blob that grew smaller and smaller as he shook the mud away, until he was left with a little disk—a coin that he put between his teeth and bit, hard, on one side. Then into his sack it went, and up he got to start again.

  I envied him then, as old and blind as he was. I took off my shoes, fumbling with the tangled laces. I peeled away my socks and stuffed them inside. I tied the laces together and hung the shoes around my neck, then started down the steps.

  The stone was bitterly cold, the mud even colder. It felt thick as treacle, and bottomless; my foot vanished into it. Each step was a struggle, and I managed only half a dozen before the mud gripped me like glue. I nearly fell forward, crying out as I tried to catch my balance.

  The blind man's head went up. “Who's there?” he asked, his voice a croak, an ugly “grawk” that made him seem more birdlike than ever.

  He scared me with his quickness and his tattered clothes, the way his head swung round to listen. Surrounded by the fog, with the river flowing by, I was in the loneliest place of all. Hie city existed only as a hum of noise, a jumble of gray shapes piled atop the weed-covered stones and steps. The river was a band of darkness fading into yellow. It was creeping toward me, I saw, as I stood there with my breath bated. It came licking over the mud, around the shallow domes that cockles had made. It stretched out twisting fingers that darted toward me with ama
zing speed, through the hollows and ripples.

  The water scared me more than the blind man did. I imagined myself stuck where I was, fixed to the mud like a bug on fresh paint, as the river rose and covered me. I saw myself underwater, swaying to and fro with the current, my arms writhing over my head.

  My fear got the better of me. I decided that nothing that might be hidden in the mud was worth the effort it took just to stand there, with water oozing at my feet. Desperate to reach the bank again, I turned a clumsy half circle, and there was the blind man in front of me. With the mud so thick, I couldn't run. I tried to move quietly, but the black goo kissed at my shins and my ankles. My shoes, swinging on their laces, thumped against my coat.

  “Who's there?” the blind man said again. “This is my bit of river. What's in it is mine.”

  His face was turned right toward me now. His stick went into the mud, his knee rose, and he swung around as slick as an eel. He came squelching toward me, oozing along the riverbank.

  I took mother step, suddenly terrified that the fog might thicken and hide the stairs that led to safety. I tried to struggle forward, but only fell backhand the blind man came closer.

  I used my hands to lift my feet, hauling on the rolled bundles of my trouser legs. I pulled up and stepped forward, then shouted in surprise and pain as I trod upon a thing as sharp as a knife. I tottered sideways and collapsed.

  “Get off my river,” said the blind man in his croaking voice. He stepped along through the mud.

  My ankle was twisted painfully. I felt along the bones, along skin that was now gritty, down to my ankle. Then I felt the thing I'd stood on, something hard and sharp, and it very nearly filled my fist as I pulled it out

  I could scarcely believe what I saw. Only half enclosed by my fingers, stained by a sheen of mud, was a diamond. It might have been the largest diamond the world had ever known. It caught the yellow light of the fog and turned it to a deep and amber glow. My heart leapt to see it.

  And then the blind man was upon me.

  The blind man bowled me down. I fell flat on my back, and he sprang on my chest, straddling it with his knees. We wrestled in the mud of the riverbank as the water rose toward us. The blind man's fingers gripped my leg and then my arm.

  “What did you take?” he croaked. “Give it to me! It's mine.”

  I tried to squirm out from under him. I kicked with both legs and punched with one arm, but I held on to the diamond as tightly as I could.

  “You dew!,” he said. “You thief.”

  I put all my strength into one hard push. I bucked up against the blind man, tipping him sideways. He lost his grip on my arm, but he didn't fall away. His hands flew straight to my throat. He-found my shoes hanging there, then the laces round my neck, and he twisted those tight in a moment.

  The string cut against me, the little knots biting into sinews, closing off my throat. I looked up at the blind man's face, at a mouth of rotten teeth snarling below the bandage. I saw my own hand flailing at his shoulder, as though it belonged to someone else. I thought the fog was turning red, that bright stars and blotches of black were floating through it. But I still held on to my diamond.

  The blind man twisted the shoes round and round. I couldn't breathe in and couldn't breathe out; I couldn't fight back anymore. The rising river touched my feet, then rushed into the hollowed mud all along my body. It chilled my legs, my spine, and shoulders all at once, and it turned my fear to utter terror.

  Everything I could see turned to red and gray and then to black. I felt my hands fall to my sides. Then I heard a snapping sound that seemed loud as a gunshot. I was sure that a vessel had burst in my body, and I was almost glad that my end had come.

  But the blind man cried out the most terrible oaths. I saw the world brighten, and felt my breaths rushing in and out, my lungs pumping like a blacksmith's bellows. I saw the blind man clearly again, ugly and mud-spotted. In his hands were my shoes, the broken ends of the laces dangling. Too knotted, too frayed, they had snapped in the middle.

  I raised the diamond in my hand. I brought it up as swiftly and powerfully as I could, and I clouted the blind man on the back of his head. Black spit flew from his mouth.

  I hit him again, and again after that. With each blow, the blind man grunted and swore. Then I hit him once more, and he toppled sideways. The water was halfway over my ribs, and it floated me out from die hollow, out from the grip of the mud. I feared that it would float me completely away, down past the city and out to the sea. I struggled like a flounder toward the stairs, then used the stones to haul myself upright

  I looked back then, expecting to see the blind man facedown in the water. But already he was on his hands and knees, groping for his stick and his bag. His head was lifted, the bandage flapping, and I sensed that he knew exactly where I was.

  I turned and ran. I mounted the stairs and dashed down the streets. At every corner I turned in a different direction, hoping to find a busy street or a marketplace. I wanted a crowd to hide among, or at the very least a poor parish Charlie who might save me, I would have to hope I didn't scare the wits from him, for I must have looked a horror. I had no shoes, no socks, a coat that was clotted with mud. But the streets seemed empty.

  Chilled to the bone, I stopped at last in a narrow alley, below a lamp that east a halo in the fog. I drew the diamond from my pocket aid saw it gleam and sparkle. I knew that I held in the span of my fingers a wealth greater than Mr. Goodftllow's entire fortune. I held my father's freedom from prison, the relief forever of all his worries. I held his own ship, if that was what he wanted, a mansion for us in the country, my own curricle, and a pacer for Sunday rides. Footmen ani butlers and scullery maids danced across the faces of that diamond. Right then, in its glow, I learned the meaning of greed.

  But a sound pulled me out of my wild dreams. Not far away, somewhere in the fog, I thought I heard the blind man's stick tapping at the stones. I stayed where I was, pressed between the lamppost and the wall. The man had ears but not eyes, and I hoped he would pass me by.

  The tops and creaks came closer.

  Then out of the fog came a horse. It stepped along with an unusual gait, as though in a slowed-down canter. Its shoulders rolling, its head bobbing high, it was the strangest horse I'd ever seen. A straw hat was tied over its ears, and a glistening blanket covered its back. But strangest of all, it had a wooden leg.

  I laughed to see it, from sheer relief. The wooden leg—at its left front—hit the stones with a thump. The three good hoofs pattered after it, then the wooden leg swung forward and tapped again.

  The blanket was a coat for the horse, a ragamuffin's coat made of patches of leather and silk and tartan. It was hung every inch with shells and bones, with bits of tin and curls of copper wire. A steam came off it from the horse's sweat, and whispering rustles and jingles. Behind the horse appeared a wagon, and then its driver—a bone grubber, he looked—sitting on a rickety seat. He wore the top hat and mourning coat of a grubber, both slick and bright with grease.

  The horse saw me first. It shimmied away with a funny, strangled cry. Then the driver looked straight at me, and his hand went up toward his heart. His hat fell off. It bounced on his knee, on the wagon wheel, and landed right before me, spinning on its brim. Underneath the hat, he wore a dark cloth wrapped like a hood round his head.

  “By jabers!” he said. “Are you toying to give me apoplexy, boy?” He shook his head. “Come out from there, young nasty-man.”

  I slid from behind the post, holding my diamond in a coat pocket.

  “You're wet. And you're muddy,” said the bone grubber. “What are you up to, boy?”

  “Nothing, sir,” I said.

  “Wal-Ker” he said, an expression I'd heard from many lips, but never from a grubber's.

  “You're on the tidy dodge, ain't you?” he said. “You're appeaim’ to the mercies of the ladies, that's what you're doing. You're on the touch, ain't you?”

  “No, sir”I didn't even know
wlmt he meant

  “Walker!” he said again. “I know your type.”

  He seemed gruff but harmless, a bear of a man who looked even bigger in a coat too small. It stretched across his shoulders and bulged at his arms, as though the stitching could pop at any moment.

  “Wfell, ain't you going to pick up me hat?” he said. “Seeing as you knocked it from me head.”

  I stooped down and got it.

  “What's your name?”

  “Tom Tin, sir,” I said, holding up the hat. It was so foul and greasy that it stuck to my fingers.

  “I'm Worms,” he said. “And it ain't Mister Worms neither. Just Worms is all.”

  He reached down and took the hat. He secured it on his head, twisting its brim until it fell into place. “Well, Tom Tin,” he asked. “Have you a penny in your pocket?”

  “No, sir,” I said. “Not a penny.” Only a diamond, I thought. Only a king's fortune.

  “Have you eaten today?”

  I shook my head.

  “Ohhhh,” he groaned. “I should be killed for my kindness. But come up, boy, and I'll feed you.”

  At any other time I would have turned away from the fellow without a word. Filthy, likely homeless, he was too far beneath me to waste the time of day upon. But I was desperate to leave the haunts of the blind man, and more famished than I'd known. I climbed up into his wagon, amused to think that I, so rich, could eat the scraps of one so poor. One day, I thought, I would reward him for his act, just to see the delight on his ugly old face. I would seek him out when I'd sold my diamond, and give him a new topper, a new horse with the proper number of legs. Then, one far-off day, I would sit in the finest club with the finest fellows, and oh, how they would laugh to hear I had once dined with a ragpicker.

  I settled beside him on the seat. All die things he had found were arranged in boxes behind it. There were bones of all sizes. There were white rags and colored rags, a box of broken pottery, another of bits of tin. There was a box of horse manure and a box of dog droppings, and a small box, quite ornate, that was fidl of the ragged tips of old cigars. Together, it all made a stench that I couldn't believe.