AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The urchin looked at him as if he had crawled out of the mud. His small, dirt-stained face was a picture of disgust.
“Not for you, I in’t. Why? Wot’s it worth?”
Scuff changed tack instantly. “If you’d lost anyone on it you wouldn’t need to ask that,” he said tartly. “I’d get anything I could for me uncle Bert, but it would just hurt the more if it weren’t Aunt Lou’s at all, an’ he knew it.”
“Yer aunt Lou got drownded?” The urchin’s expression was unreadable. It could well have been his version of embarrassment.
Scuff did not hesitate. “Yeah. Why? You know people who fished stuff out o’ the river what might ’ave come from them?”
“I could see,” the urchin said more carefully.
“Like what?”
The boy gave a shrug. “Combs, pins, bits o’ cloth, but they in’t much. What’s it worth?”
“Help me find a few things, ask a few questions, an’ it’s worth a cup o’ tea and a sandwich,” Scuff answered, watching the child’s face. “Were you here?” he went on. “Did you see it blow up?”
The urchin considered, looked Scuff up and down, and made his decision. “No, but I can take you to someone ’oo were! But it’ll cost yer an ’ot meat pie.” He was pushing his luck, and they both knew it.
Scuff weighed his choices. His decision must be quick, or he would look weak. On the riverbank the weak did not survive.
“We’ll have a pie for lunch,” he gave his verdict. “You’ll get half of it. If what you find is any good, you can have a whole one, and pudding an’ custard for dessert.”
“Done,” the urchin said instantly.
“What’s your name?” Scuff asked him.
“Warren, but they call me Worm.”
“All right, Worm. Start being useful. And don’t think you can play me for a fool. When I was your size, I was on the river just like you are, so I know all about mudlarking.”
Worm looked at him with total disbelief.
Scuff glanced down at Worm’s feet. “You got better boots than I had,” Scuff observed. “You can’t be as daft as you’re acting.”
Worm shrugged. “I’m all right. C’mon then.”
THEY SPENT MOST OF the day searching for information about the imaginary Aunt Lou, and mementos that did not exist. But along the way Scuff began to learn the things he had wanted to know about what had changed recently: who was afraid of whom, who was richer, who owed money, who had found things and sold them, because they had information about where they’d fetch up that other people didn’t. He had names now, specific debts paid off, people who had gone to ground, even if not yet the reason why.
Scuff treated Worm to a jolly good pie for supper, and the pudding with custard.
Early the next morning they began again. Worm was now fully expecting to be well fed, and Scuff had been forced to borrow money from Hester. He had managed to avoid telling her what he needed it for, but he didn’t think that would last long.
By the middle of the day Scuff had stopped trying to base it all on Aunt Lou’s lost bracelet or pendant, and Worm knew perfectly well that they were trying to get information about the disaster itself.
“Yer reckon as it weren’t the feller as they’ve got in prison, then?” he said, skipping a couple of steps to keep up with Scuff’s longer strides.
“Yeah, I reckon not,” Scuff agreed, actually rather relieved it wasn’t the accused, even if he didn’t know how to explain it further. A good explanation eluded him; his mind was so burning with the truth.
Worm was quiet for several minutes as they climbed up a long row of steps and across the uneven planks of a wharf. Scuff did not look down at the tide through the missing slats, but he could hear it suck and squelch beneath them.
“Why’d you care?” Worm said at length as they went back up onto the stone dock again and passed a horse and cart standing patiently waiting to be loaded. Scuff wondered if horses were as bored as they looked. “ ’E were a bad one anyway. Even I know that.”
“I don’t care about ’is being a bad one,” Scuff said with deep conviction. “You shouldn’t ’ang someone for something as they didn’t do. ’Ow’d you take it if they done you for something you didn’t do?” The moment he had said it he wondered if perhaps it was a bad question.
“I’d be cross as hell,” Worm admitted. “Unless it were about right for summink I ’ad done? Mebbe!”
“An’ what if it wasn’t?”
