Page 113 of Thief Taker

“He’s not coming for you, Kit.” Hartwell’s frustration bordered on resentment. “Leastways, not the way you want. If he comes, it’ll be to drag you to Newgate, not drag you to bed.”

Kit tensed at such overt talk in public. But the people around them, their fellow passengers, were paying them no attention. Nonetheless, he lowered his voice when he said, “I was thinking about my sister, actually.”

“And how you can return to her now that Cole’s dealt with Wessex?” Ned snorted a humourless laugh. “That’s what he wants you to think, Kit. He’s drawing you out, playing on your…your affections. You know he is.”

Did he? It’s what Francis had done, but it didn’t feel like something Elias would do. Not the Elias he knew, at any rate. But then, how much of that man had been real and how much part of his deception? “It’s just, with James in such a state and my father close to death—”

A shout came from the river as the wherry arrived to take them to their ship. A hum of excitement rose among the passengers, charged emotions and anguished goodbyes mounting amid a sudden babble of conversation.

This was it.

Kit’s stomach clenched so hard he thought he might vomit. He hadn’t said goodbye to Elias. Their last words had been in anger, and if he stepped on that boat, he’d never see him again. He tried to swallow but found that he couldn’t. His throat was choked with panic.

“Come on,” Ned said, stooping to lift his valise. It was the only luggage he was taking; Ned Hartwell had not dug deep roots in England.

At his feet sat Kit’s own meagre possessions. Everything else, he was leaving behind. Everyone else…

Hartwell glanced over his shoulder, brow drawn low with impatience. “Kit, come on. Time to go. No looking back.”

With a heavy heart and leaden limbs, he bent and picked up his luggage. He felt like he was carrying a millstone as he followed Hartwell down the steps towards the wherry.

When they finally pulled into the courtyard of the White Horse, Elias was practically on his feet inside the coach. He barely paused to tip the coachman before he darted away through the crowds. He knew these streets well, weaving past hawkers and barkers with a perfunctory wave for those who called out greetings.

By then it was full dark, but the streets were still busy and a bright moon provided more light than the lanterns dotted here and there. As he ran, the city’s clocks began their chime of six. Elias picked up his pace.

The riverside was as crowded as ever and the river stench grew intense as Elias drew closer: tar and rope, fish and bilge water. He ran into a rotted wooden paling by the side of the river and stopped hard, almost winding himself against it. The river stretched out wide before him, choked with more ships than he could count, and a wave of desperation broke over him.

How the hell would he find Kit in all this?

There were sailors here of every nationality, marked out by their wide-legged slops and skin tanned to hide by the sun and wind. Watermen, chandlers, ropemakers, lightermen, merchants, customs men, whores and thieves—the whole world hurried past and around him, and not one of them was Kit.

He grabbed the arm of a passing sailor. “Beg pardon,” he said. “Do you know the Lady Jane?”

His answer was a crude comment about what the sailor would like to do to Lady Jane if he found her. Elias let him go in frustration and started running. To his right the looming forest of ships creaked and groaned in the shifting tide, to his left warehouses, chandlers, taverns, and lodging houses crowded together in a dense, chaotic mass.

“The Lady Jane?” he asked everyone he stopped. “D’you know where she’s moored?”

He got a few vague points down river, but nothing certain, until a small hand tugged at his sleeve. Taking it for a cutpurse, he had the lad by the ear and squirming before he understood what the boy was saying, “I know where she’s moored, sir! The Lady Jane, bound for New York…”

Letting go with a start, he crouched before the lad and grabbed him by his skinny shoulders. “Where? No, don’t matter. Just show me. There’s a guinea in it if you get me there before she sails. And if you’re fooling me, I’ll rip your bloody ears off.”

The lad’s eyes went wide. “Aye, sir, an’ you better run cause the tide’s already turning and she was making sail a half hour past.”

“Bloody hell.” He all but threw the boy ahead of him. “Then run like the devil’s on your arse!” And so they ran, the urchin ducking and weaving through the crowd and Elias shoving people out of the way in his wake.

He felt like they’d run forever, his lungs burning and heart fit to burst. But at last, the lad brought him to Wapping Old Stairs, his skinny chest heaving and a trembling arm pointing out into the Pool of London.

Elias noticed two things at once: the ship’s name, emblazoned on her stern—the Lady Jane—and the indisputable fact that she was under sail and moving.

The lad bent over, sucking in air, and Elias let out all his breath in a hoarse shout. “No!” He ran forward, down a couple of steps towards the water. “Wait!” For a wild moment he considered jumping into a wherry and demanding they row out after her. But that was impossible.

Kit was far beyond his reach. He was gone.

A storm gathered inside his heart, battering his chest and throat. His eyes burned. “No,” he said again, quietly. “Kit…” Then louder: “Kit!” He yelled the name, poured everything into it. “Kit!” He shouted until his throat was raw, great despairing cries that were lost in the incessant noise of the docks, swallowed by the river, by London herself.

His heart was breaking. He’d not understood the phrase until that moment, until it cracked open inside his chest. Kit was gone. Elias had driven him away. They’d never meet again.

His knees threatened to buckle and all that kept him on his feet was pride, a few scraps of it gathered around him in a ragged cloak; if Kit happened to look back from the deck of that ship, Elias didn’t want to be found on his knees.