IGMS - Issue 16 Page 5

  "Mr. Whisk?"

  "Yes?"

  "You're hired, on one condition."

  "Which is . . .?"

  "That I don't get gored."

  "No promises, sir. Determining the purity of a soul is a bit outside of my expertise."

  "You can conjure black holes, but can't convince a unicorn to overlook a few past transgressions?"

  "Black holes are much less complicated than immortal souls, sir. But I'm certain you two will get along grandly, seeing you both have histories of judging the worth of others."

  "There is a fine line between irony and mockery, Mr. Whisk."

  "I know. I once was that line."

  "Of course you were."

  Mudlarks

  by Kat Otis

  Artwork by James Owen

  The river Thames collects the rubbish and sewage of London's residents. Mudlarks are poor children who survive by scavenging for that rubbish in the mud at the river's edge. They work in crews, each with its own territory, each with its own leader.

  Jennet trotted down the Temple Stairs and wondered if she had mistimed her arrival. The Thames was retreating towards the sea so most of the stone steps lay exposed to the afternoon sun, but she couldn't see any of the riverbed beyond the end of the stairs. One of the watermen - a gruff, heavy-handed man named Edward Averell - sat in his boat at the bottom of the stairs, so the river couldn't be too shallow yet.

  When she reached the last of the exposed steps, she carefully slipped her right foot into the water and greeted the river. The Thames answered her, telling her everything she needed to know for her crew to safely scavenge on its riverbed. The tide would turn in two hours; at the moment the Thames ran knee-high over its riverbed for almost a rod's length from the river wall, before becoming much deeper; the current was stronger than usual today because of storms further inland.

  Jennet pulled her foot back out of the water, severing her link with the river. She waved to her second-in-command, who waited with the rest of her crew at the top of the Temple Stairs. "Reade!"

  Reade waved back before he began shepherding the crew down to the river. One of the younger girls - Bess - came careening down the steps at a speed which made Jennet wince. If Bess slipped and broke something, she could end up crippled. But Bess made it all the way down without trouble and stopped at the edge of the water, barely reining in her eagerness.

  "No more than a rod away from the wall," Jennet said. "Remember that today!"

  "I will," Bess promised, like she always did, then leapt into the water and began splashing around.

  While Bess played, Reade set the rest of the crew to work on the other side of the stairs, scouring the riverbed for anything of value. The new girl - Jennet had dubbed her Kensal because she was new-come to London from Kensal Green - hesitated for a long time at the bottom of the stairs. Reade finally had to push Kensal off the stones and he rolled his eyes at Jennet before he followed Kensal out onto the riverbed.

  Jennet shared some of Reade's impatience. After a fortnight, Kensal really ought to be over her fear of the river. It wasn't as if the girl hadn't understood Jennet's rules when she joined the crew - those who wanted to be fed had to work whenever the river was shallow. Only the two youngest boys were allowed to stay on the stairs; they were far too little to go into the water, so they were in charge of guarding the others' finds.

  Jennet shifted to the side of the stairs, taking up a position where she was out of the way of the watermen's customers but could still keep an eye on everything. Bess's antics had already began to attract attention from passersby. Mudlarks scouring the riverbed were one thing, but a child playing in the river was quite another. A few people stopped and leaned over the top of the river wall to watch her. Bess called out to them for money and one actually tossed down a coin - as far from her as they could.

  Bess made an abortive dive for the coin and flopped into the water on her belly, prompting laughter from the growing party at the top of the river wall. She made a game of searching for the coin, though to all appearances she was increasingly frantic. Even Master Averell laughed at her when she came up with a face-full of mud. Only Jennet knew that Bess could have brought up that coin at any moment - finding things in the mud was Bess's special talent, the way speaking with the river was Jennet's.

  Eventually Bess went down into the water and didn't come up for several long breaths. The laughter from her audience began to die down - more because the entertainment was over than because they actually cared whether or not yet another mudlark drowned - and a dark-haired man in black robes started to leave. Then Bess popped up out of the water again, clutching the coin in one hand and thrusting it up into the air in a gesture of victory.

  That brought a smattering of applause from the audience. Even Jennet clapped her hands a few times - though for the coin, not the performance. When Bess waded over to the bottom of the stairs to hand over the coin, Jennet saw that it was a penny and exchanged a grin with the younger girl. That was a large enough bribe to appease Master Averell for a full sennight.

  "Do it again, lass!"

  Jennet glanced up to see a Scotsman lean over the wall and fling something as hard as it could. Her eyes tracked the silver coin as it spun through the air and then finally fell into the river, well away from the wall. The younger girl was after it in a heartbeat and Jennet's heart leapt up into her throat. "Bess, stop!"

  Bess did stop, but much further out than Jennet wanted. Jennet shook her head. Sometimes that girl didn't even have the sense the Lord God gave to sheep! She'd warned Bess time and time again not to stray too far into the river - the ever-shifting sandbars and strong currents were as treacherous as a priest faking miracles with his talent - but one flash of silver and all thought flew straight out of the girl's head.

  The crowd made disappointed sounds, but Jennet tried to ignore them. Instead, she stepped down onto one of the still-submerged steps so that the river could speak to her again. It warned her that coin had fallen right where the current began to grow dangerously strong, which meant the coin wasn't quite out of reach. Not for her.

  Jennet drew in a deep breath and flung herself out into the water, curling up so that she hit the water like a lead cannonball, sinking straight to the riverbed. The instant her feet touched mud, her hands were out and searching for the coin; she didn't have much time. Her hand closed on something flat and round and she immediately pushed herself up and towards the shore, pumping her arms and legs almost before she broke the surface of the river. She could feel the greedy current tugging at her, but she'd been too strong and too fast. This time.

  The crowd cheered for her as she clambered back up onto the stairs, and some of the men cat-called as her dripping wet clothing revealed she had the beginning of womanly curves, but Jennet forgot all about them as soon as she saw the coin in her hand. A shilling. A whole shilling. The Scotsman must have been drunk. She made the coin vanish into her clothing before Master Averell could notice and try to steal it from her. She was definitely going to feed her crew well tomorrow; she could even get them red meat instead of fish.

  Bess continued her games until the tide had retreated enough to fully expose a good part of the riverbed. Then Jennet set her to searching through the mud on her side of the stairs. Bess's talent made her as effective as all the rest of the crew, combined. If only there had been a way to bottle Bess's talent and share it, they'd be richer than any other crew on the Thames. Maybe a Cunning Man would know how to do such a thing - no one knew more about talents than the Cunning Men - but not even a fistful of shillings would be enough to convince one to help a mudlark. He'd probably denounce Bess as a witch, just for spite.

  While her crew worked, Jennet studied the watermen plying their trade and their customers being ferried up and down the river, looking for potential customers of her own. Most of the men who came to the Temple Stairs were visiting the Worshipful Company of Cunning Men, in the Middle Temple, and there was always the occasional visitor who hoped to f
ind something diabolical instead of mere men with special talents. As if the good King James would have really granted a royal license to a company full of Devil-worshippers! But those same men were easy marks and would buy rubbish if she hawked it properly. One old apothecary came time and time again - and was always sent away with a flea in his ear, near as Jennet could tell; he would pay outrageous prices, especially for the odd things that Bess sometimes found.

  Eventually the Thames reached its lowest ebb. Then the current reversed as the tide changed and water from the sea poured back into the river. When the sun began to slip below the horizon, Jennet called her crew off the riverbed; they couldn't afford to be caught out past the curfew which started at eight of the clock. She collected their last finds and most of her crew scattered, headed back to their families. Only a handful of orphans lived with her in a little bolthole near St. Bride's Church. Jennet ran through their names in her mind out of habit, checking to make sure they'd all come off the river: Reade, the twins, Bess and Kensal . . .

  That was when she realized Kensal was missing.

  Jennet left Reade in charge of the twins, with orders to search the surrounding alleys and get back to St. Bride's before curfew. Then she went back down the Temple Stairs with Bess in tow, fearing the worst. The Thames seemed a little less welcoming than it had only hours earlier and Jennet went into the water with Bess, afraid the smaller girl would drown if she went in alone.

  Jennet kept a firm grip on Bess's arm as she stood there, waist-deep in water. The river was uncooperative, speaking only of the great merchantmen and ships-of-the-line moored on the other side of London Bridge. It steadfastly refused to tell her anything about Kensal and left her to guess where its current would have deposited Kensal's body - assuming Kensal hadn't been swept straight out to sea.

  Bess might still have better luck. The larger the object, the further away it could be and Bess would still find it. She ought to be able to sense a body - even one small girl's body - all the way to London Bridge. The current swirling against the bridge's arches washed a lot of salvage up onto the shore at the adjacent Old Swan Stairs. That was their best hope for finding Kensal.

  Bess finally shook her head and Jennet's heart sank. "I can't find her."

  "We should check again at the Blackfriars Stairs." It was near enough to St. Bride's that there ought to be time to reach it before dark, but far enough away that it would give Bess a bit more of the riverbed to search.

  "If . . . if the Thames really took her, I don't think we're going to find her," Bess said.

  "She's part of my crew, we keep looking," Jennet said, firmly enough to end the discussion. She hadn't lost anyone to the Thames in four years; it frightened her that Kensal could vanish into the river without any of the other mudlarks even noticing. A little part of her wondered if this wasn't the Lord God's way of reminding her that arrogance was a sin, that she'd taken the gift He gave her for granted. But divine intervention was for kings and saints, not for mudlarks. She should have kept a closer eye on the new girl instead of giving all her attention to the Cunning Men's customers. It was as plain and simple as that.

  They ran through the cobbled streets, weaving their way through the crowds, and found themselves at the Blackfriars Stairs just as church bells began to toll quarter 'til eight. Jennet kept her hands on Bess's shoulders the whole time they were on the submerged steps, to keep her from slipping off into the rising river.

  After a long silence, Bess shook her head. "Nothing."

  Jennet had half-expected the answer, but that didn't make it any easier to hear. Wordlessly, she tugged the other girl out of the water and they headed back up the stairs.

  "She might be upriver," Bess said, hesitantly. "The tide was rising when we came out."

  "We don't have time to go that way," Jennet said. She'd done all that she could - she really had, even if she couldn't quite make herself believe it. Already they were cutting it far closer to curfew than she liked. Respectable citizens of the city might be allowed out after dark, but if the watch caught her it'd be the gaol for sure and maybe even a hanging if they decided she'd stolen the shilling; any theft over a sixpence in value was a hanging offense.

  When they reached the top of the stairs, they began to run again. The crowd on the street was thinning out, which helped some, and they only just made it to the churchyard before the bells of St. Bride's announced eight of the clock and the beginning of curfew. They hurried through the crowded warren of back alleys and tenements to their bolthole - a little triangular nook formed by two buildings meeting at a sharp angle, with a rickety staircase running above them. Jennet had seen a few even odder spaces over in Cheapside, but not many.

  Reade had already settled the twins down, but both their heads popped up when Jennet shifted the loose board that served as their door and slipped into the crowded space. She shook her head and - for the twins - that was that. But Reade hovered by her side, waiting until Bess lay down for the night and they could pretend to speak without anyone listening.

  "We didn't find anything, but she had to have come up off the river," Reade said. "I was watching out for her, I swear."

  Jennet's spirits lifted a little but she battered them back down and forced herself to be practical. "You probably mistook someone else for her." Kensal had an extremely ordinary face, the kind that always made a body think she was someone else, which was how she had wormed her way into the crew - no one had realized that the little girl wasn't one of them until the first time she balked at the edge of the water. Jennet wondered if ordinariness was somehow Kensal's talent, but the girl hadn't been willing to confess to having one. A boy with talent was a potential apprentice for the Cunning Men; a girl ran the risk of being branded a witch, as if a pact with the devil was the only way she could have a talent.

  "I'm almost certain she was the first one out," Reade said.

  That would be just like Kensal. And if she'd been out well before any of the others, alone at the top of the Temple Stairs . . . "You think someone took her?" Jennet didn't think anyone would really want Kensal, but she wasn't so innocent that she couldn't imagine why someone might snatch a young girl off the streets.

  "I don't think she just went off by herself."

  Jennet considered that for a moment, then shook her head. There was nothing that could be done now, no matter what had happened. But the morning was a different matter. "You should go visit the cobs tomorrow." There were no greater gossips than the men who carried spring water from the Great Conduit in Cheapside to various tradesmen and merchants' houses. They knew almost everything that happened in London.

  "But what about low tide?"

  "This is important," Jennet said. "It's a different kind of work. Besides, it's my crew, my rules. Anyone doesn't like it can find another crew." As if any of them would do that. Other crews lost mudlarks to the river. Hers didn't. Not even Kensal, if Reade was to be believed, though Jennet refused to let herself get too hopeful.

  Reade chewed that over for a moment, then nodded. "I'll go at first light."

  The crew noticed Reade's absence, but nobody complained which was probably for the best. Jannet realized she'd been hoping Kensal would just turn up in the morning, none the worse for wear. It didn't happen. Then she was angry at herself for being such a fool. It left her in such a foul mood that Master Averell had cuffed her for disrespect and banished her down onto the riverbed, away from the stairs. Even the Thames, swirling gently around her bare feet as if in apology for the night before, wasn't enough to soothe her.

  Reade showed up about the same time the sun finally cleared the horizon, full of news but none of it useful. She couldn't care less if the widow who ran the Sun Tavern was having an affair with a Cunning Man, or if yet another apothecary was meddling with alchemy. If Kensal had gotten caught up in something like that then the moon was made of green cheese. Jennet was so angry she kicked the river wall. Afterwards, the pain in her foot kept her distracted, and she wondered if she'd broken a t
oe or something else similarly foolish. But by the time the Thames had refilled its bed, the pain had receded and Jennet managed to walk up the stairs without limping.

  Normally Jennet wouldn't let anyone help her sell the crew's finds, but today she couldn't get Kensal off her mind and she knew that she wasn't up to bargaining. So she gave the driftwood to the twins, to run back home, and left Reade with everything else, save only a shell that seemed to have a crucifix imprinted on it. Then she sent her crew off to fend for themselves for a few hours. Everyone would meet at the Cheapside Cross at one of the clock, when the tide would be at its highest; that gave them plenty of time to enjoy a leisurely meal at her expense before they returned to the riverside for the evening's low tide.

  Jennet was tempted to take Bess towards Westminster, to see if the younger girl sensed anything in the mud up there, but she knew they'd never make it up the river and back again in time to meet up with the rest of the crew. And Reade swore that Kensal had come up out of the river. So instead she decided to search through the alleys, lanes and yards of the Temple, in hopes of finding some clue Reade had missed. Bess insisted on coming with her, but thankfully no one ever noticed children - even slightly wet ones - so long as they trotted along and looked like they were running errands for a master.

  When the bells of the Temple Church pealed half past noon, Jennet finally admitted to herself that she wasn't finding any more useful information than Reade had. She was about to give up and head towards Cheapside when she rounded a corner and nearly ran headlong into a pair of men having a quiet, but heated, argument.

  The men turned their glares on her and Jennet skipped backwards a step, ready to run. Then she recognized the older man - Master Rawlins, her favorite mark from the Temple Stairs. She didn't know his black-haired companion, but she could guess why they were so upset. They must have been coming away from yet another fruitless visit to the Cunning Men.