Page 43 of The Return of the Rake

“Evening, Tommy!” Honeywell called cheerfully. “I’ve brought you some bacon,” he added, waving the brown paper parcel.

A lad sprang up from beside the fire, stiff with apprehension.

“I’ve brought a friend to meet you,” Honeywell added, giving Tommy a reassuring smile.

They emerged into a small clearing, and King looked around him. The young man, who was painfully thin and small for his years, had built a ramshackle shelter which had probably suited him nicely during the summer months, but looked unlikely to be in the slightest bit waterproof.

“Who’s he?” Tommy demanded, shooting King a look that was part defiance, part terror.

“This is Jasper King,” the reverend replied with a smile. “Might we sit down and have a little chat with you, do you think?” he added, gesturing to the large log that Tommy had been perched upon and a stump upon the opposite side.

Tommy was riveted, however, staring at King with wide eyes, and made no answer.

The reverend carried on as if he had been invited to make himself comfortable and sat down on the log beside where the lad stood quivering with some powerful emotion.

King moved cautiously, aware the boy looked like he might bolt at any second and found himself unwillingly filled with compassion for the wretched creature.

He had lived like this himself often enough, when it was safer to disappear than to go home. There had been many nights spent sleeping rough in the woods, or on the beach when the weather was fine. He recognised too the wary look in the lad’s eyes, the desperation for a kind word mingled with the expectation of a blow.

“Evening, Tommy,” King said, his voice low as he sat down on the tree stump. “You’ve made a fine camp here, better than I ever managed.”

“You’re Jasper King?” the boy demanded suddenly, his fists clenching, but King saw the flare of hope in his eyes, the flicker of some dream not quite extinguished despite his circumstances.

“I am,” he said, knowing what came next before the boy opened his mouth.

“And… And are you my—”

“I’m not your father, Tommy. If I had been, I would have married your ma and never seen you sleeping in the woods if I could have helped it. I give you my word of honour, before this man of God. Do you believe me?”

Whatever energy had been singing through the boy’s slender frame dissipated at King’s words, a sneer curved his lips, and he sat back down again, glaring sullenly.

“’Course. Ma said it were you, but Ma was a liar all her life. I remember that much. Besides, I ain’t the get of no fine gent, am I? Even if I were, it’s not like he’d come and claim me.”

“No, lad. No fine gent is your father, and neither am I a fine gent, no more than whoever was your pa, but I would like to help you, if you reckon you’d let me?”

King realised as the words left his mouth that they were true. Damn the old man, but he knew King better than he knew himself and he saw the echo of his past in this child’s eyes, and he’d save him from a harsh fate if he could. If the boy would let him, which was by no means certain. King had been all fierce pride himself, desperately needing and wanting someone to care for him but furiously shunning anything that smacked of charity.

“Help me how?” the boy said, narrowing his eyes. “They say you’re a criminal. A London crime lord. That true?” he demanded, the light of admiration shining in his eyes now.

King hesitated, glancing at the reverend for advice as to how to go on, but the reverend kept his attention on the fire and was clearly not of a mind to give him any help whatsoever.

“It’s true enough,” he said gruffly.

“Do you want me for a job?” the lad said, excited now, his eyes glittering with anticipation of his new life of crime.

“I do not,” King said, his voice harder than it might have been, but wishing his wretched past did not inspire such admiration in the young man.

Crushed, the lad hung his head.

“Listen to me, Tommy, and listen good,” King said sternly. “I’ve made my way in London and I’m fortunate to be alive. In my line of work, you’ve got to be fast and clever and ruthless, and care for none but yourself, and I’m sick to death of it. It’s no life, I promise you, and it will see you dancing at the end of a rope soon enough. I was lucky, damned lucky, and I intend to keep being lucky by getting out. I’m leaving the rookeries, leaving that life. I want to help those poor devils living in the muck and the filth and get some of them out too. For there are good people there, decent people who just want to earn their crust and have a roof over their heads, just like you do. But I don’t want no young ruffian, no troublemaker who’ll stick a knife in my back the moment I turn it. I’ve got enough of those, and I’ll deal with them the same way I always do.”

“Will you—?” Instead of speaking the words, Tommy drew a finger silently across his throat.

“No,” King said dryly. “I’ve better ways than that. Only stupid men and cowards think murder is the answer to their problems. I’m not stupid, nor am I a coward. What about you, lad?”

“I ain’t no coward,” he said stoutly, but his expression darkened, his skinny arms folding across his chest. “I’ve got no learning, though.”

“Learning isn’t the same as nous,” King said, smiling as the boy frowned. “Learning you can get at any age, nous you’ve got or you don’t.”