Fudge Ripple and Trail Mix with Butterscotch, Whipped Cream and a Brownie!
Story: Timeless { backstory | index }
Title: Foxholt Alley
Rating: PG (cursing/some violence)
Challenge: Fudge Ripple #10: fear, Trail Mix #25: in the mud
Toppings/Extras: whipped cream, brownie, butterscotch
Wordcount: 5,881
Summary: Details of Isaac Prowse’s escape from the Foxholt Alley Orphanage.
Notes: BROWNIE! For the BtS Challenge. It happened so long ago that it’s got next to no connection to the story, but it was really good fun.
Most nights in the Foxholt Alley Orphanage, all that could be heard was the heavy, not-quite-regular ticking of the bad-tempered grandfather clock that dominated one corner. There were dark shadows cast across the room, and the tin roof occasionally gave a creak. The main room was central to the building, and then all around the top of it were the Dorms. A thin, banister-lined landing that looked down into the main room ran alongside a wall studded with doors. One of these doors was, on that particular night, ajar.
Five shadowy figures crawled along the corridor, their hazy silhouettes darting between each of the curved rails of the banister. When the leader of the five children reached the top of the stairs, he stopped quickly, causing a muffled pile-up behind him. Squinting, the first boy peered down the staircase. Every step was made from ancient, warped wood-they each creaked in their own key, and loudly at that.
“Are we goin’ or are we goin’?” hissed the boy behind him. This boy was Charlie Buckett, a wary-looking boy with a lot of age in his young eyes. The leader of this daring escape plot, Jack Hewitt, sighed and glanced down the steps again. His ears were straining to senselessness, listening out for the heavy footfalls of Matron, which every single one of the five boys expected at any moment... or even worse, Master.
“Go slow,” Jack hissed.
Behind Charlie was a redhead who had always been called only Dill, and behind him crouched eight-year-old Isaac Prowse. The final member of their party-hiccupping with fear and nervousness-was a wide-eyed youngster called Phillip Ferguson, who had become known as Fergie to the boys of the orphanage. They all sat, pupils expanded massively to try and catch the few strands of light that straggled through the heavy curtains, gazing down at the stone floor and at the door.
After a few more moments of hesitation, Jack wriggled a bare foot down onto the first step and hesitantly pressed down. There was a slow, drawn-out squeak, but it was quiet. Still-it may as well have been an earthquake to the five quivering boys. Jack frowned. His boots-knotted together at the laces-were slung around his neck for later. Pressing his weight onto his foot slowly, he reached with his next foot to the next step.
This is going to take all night, Isaac thought worriedly, glancing behind him. The doors went on forever, line after line of rooms filled with metal cots. In each of those uncomfortable beds lay an equally uncomfortable boy, dreaming about their parents or just dreaming of iced buns and liquorice. Isaac remembered Jack’s encouraging words: It’s goin’ to be great, lads... we’re goin’ to be free! Jack was one of the eldest in the orphanage at twelve, and apparently had been planning this escape for some time. Isaac hoped that the older boy would really be able to help.
It was weeks before Jack’s thirteenth birthday. And once he reached thirteen...
Well, none of the boys were sure what happened at thirteen, but they weren’t seen again. Their things were packed into a cardboard suitcase and they were hurried out of the door and onto the Grey Cart. Most boys seemed to agree that it went to some sort of plantation-but there were always the stories that the younger ones told about being sold into slavery or, worse, certain death.
Grimly, the five of them traversed the creaky steps. When Jack touched his bare foot to the cold stone at the bottom, relief spooled through him. The five shadows then edged through the sparsely-furnished central room of the orphanage, clustered closely together. Through a rickety wooden arch they could see, vaguely sketched out in nighttime hues, the large dining room filled with benches-and at the other end, the kitchen where Cook lived. Or, at least to their young minds, she seemed to.
The next step was simple: the window.
For weeks they had been collecting wood-chippings from the floor of the carpenter’s where the five of them were worked, creating chunky low-class furniture for pubs and such, stashing a day’s worth inside of their shorts and other useful bits and pieces. They had glued it together using spit and flour, and had spent many nights trying to prevent it from falling apart, stashing it in each of their pillows in turn. It had then been a simple matter of, when the Master ordered the shutting of all of the windows that night, wedging one of the windows open along the crack at the side-the colour of the wood chippings (as well as Jack quickly pulling the curtains across) disguised it well enough, although the boys had all been nervous about their ploy being discovered.
By some miracle it hadn’t been, and the boys all looked at each other-glowing in triumph-as they realised this. Jack peeled the damp, unstable wedge from the side of the window and caught it with his fingers. A waft of cold night air curled into the room and they shivered and delighted in it. It meant only liberty to the five boys gathered there that night. Jack threw the window open and they stared out across the scrubby lawn of the orphanage. The only obstacle they had left was the tall wall that surrounded the grounds, but it was overgrown with vines and they didn’t foresee a problem getting over it. Every other child to escape the orphanage-who had become word-of-mouth legends within it-had managed to.
“Who’s ‘at?” a terrible voice suddenly crowed from somewhere in the vicinity of the upstairs landing. Isaac Prowse felt his blood run cold from horror and nightmarish fear. Jack didn’t wait: he dove through the window without a second thought. Behind him tumbled Charlie and Dill. The stunted young Fergie had stiffened with fear, but Isaac grabbed a hold of him by his starched collar and threw him out of the window before leaping through it himself. He hit the grass with a bit of a tumble, but was on his feet and running in an instant, propelled forth by his raging fear. Matron was awake.
Five elfish forms raced through the black garden, the cloudy sky indifferent to their plight and shaking hands, bare feet plunging the dew-damp grass. Strands of fog touched their faces lovingly, welcoming them back into the open, back to freedom. Isaac flicked hair from his face as he ran wildly; he overtook Fergie and Dill and threw himself at the vine-swathed wall. He could hear the ripping and creaking of the thick plants as Jack and Charlie scaled it quickly above him-a shower of torn leaves scattered over his unruly chestnut hair. Lamplight suddenly blazed from the porch.
“Isaac Prowse!” Matron shouted towards them in her awful, monster voice. She was a half-fantastical creature of the orphanage, inspiring fear and nightmares in the youngest boys. “I see you!” She was puffing towards them, her great stout figure stumping over the slick grass, the sleeves of her nightdress rolled up to her thick, ruddy elbows. Somewhere behind her Isaac caught another masculine figure, Master, snapping a cane into one hand. Isaac climbed faster, feet scrambling. “Charlie! Phillip Ferguson!”
Jack had reached the top of the wall-and he was over it, launching himself into the black, mist-choked streets of London. Charlie was next, tumbling down. Isaac reached the top the same time as Dill, and hesitated suddenly as he heard an awful shout of pain and deep, gut-wrenching fear. One of Matron’s meaty fists was wrapped tightly around Fergie’s skinny ankle, and she gave an almighty tug, tearing him from the wall, splitting his fingernails. He was shouting and struggling-but for the runt of the litter, the fight for freedom was over.
“Get back ‘ere!” roared the Matron in eye-popping anger. “We’ll ‘ave the watchmen after yer-nothin’ will keep yer safe!”
“Come on!” hissed Dill, clambering over the lip of the stately wall and jumping. Isaac just about saw his shadowy form hit the cobbles, and then he ran. He couldn’t lose the others. Isaac took one more glance back at Fergie and then leapt from the wall too, landing in a jarring mess on the hard, uneven stones. His ankle joints were screaming, but there was nothing he could do. He heard Fergie begin to cry noisily as he took off.
Isaac was quick, and he had caught up with the others in no time. Jack was at the head, leading them down narrow alleys and twisting roads. It was clear that he didn’t know where he was going. The rolls of mist from the Thames continued to billow in the frigid breezes of the night.
“Fergie?” he panted across to Charlie, who was somewhere alongside him. He could hear his bare feet slapping against the ground. His own voice sounded small and hopeless.
“Keep runnin’,” Charlie replied in a gasp.
Keep running, keep running, keep running. They ran all right. London was black but not lifeless. The occasional cab would clip-clop past, and sometimes lights spilled from homes or taverns. The four shadows that had been darting like pixies not so long ago were now empty of energy and slowed down, feet raw, faces stinging in the cold, lungs fiery with exertion. Isaac felt as though he would keel over. Jack wiped the sweat pouring down his brow and sat down on the pavement, thrusting his feet into his boots.
”We’ll keep movin’, we’ll keep movin’,” he was muttering.
The rest of the boys did the same thing. One of Charlie’s feet was bleeding profusely from a shard of glass that he had skidded on, but he thrust it into his boot without complaint-just a slight wince. Isaac rubbed his hands together and pulled his thin jerkin tighter over his shoulders. He had stuffed an old muffin hat down his shirt and now he pulled it out and rammed it over his head to try and trap some heat. The mist, which for so long had crept through their windows to tempt them to freedom, was now sucking the very life out of them. Their sweat ran bitterly cold down their skin, and Isaac put his fingers close to his eyes after breathing on them. The knuckles had gone purple already, and the fingers were the colour of cauliflower.
Before long they were on their feet again. The four of them kept their eyes down and paced down the street, now too tired to run. They were edgy, but willing to go at a walk. They avoided the gazes of the prostitutes that began to become more and more prominent on the streets they traversed. They were headed for the town’s centre.
“So, Isaac... you’ve lived on the streets before, right?” Charlie asked, tugging at his thin shirt to air out the sweat-slicked skin beneath.
“Yeah,” Isaac replied, a little uncertainly. “With my two big brothers...”
His heart leapt as he thought of them. Jude and Mick! Surely, surely, he could find them. He’d been with them when he had been snatched up by one of the London guards for causing trouble (personally, he didn’t count pickpocketing as troublemaking) and thrown into the Foxholt Alley Orphanage. It was a place for kiddies that seemed criminally inclined or the children of criminals who had been executed, and had always been a sad and desperate place. He had only been there for two years, but he had hated it.
He had been in an orphanage before that, once, too-but his brothers had broken him out. In all honesty, he was disappointed-and a little worried-that his brothers hadn’t arrived this time. Two years, from the age of six to eight, he had been stuck in that hellish place. One of its more manic inmates had nearly burned the place to the ground about eight months ago, which could have resulted in the death of all the boys sleeping peacefully inside.
They had to get out.
The four of them walked quietly towards the closer town centre. There were horses tied up outside of travelling inns and drinking out of flowerpot-like water-holes constructed of stone. Even at this inanely early hour, people continued to move about, although not in such great numbers. A lot of the pubs and inns had closed for the night, and the ones left open were generally not known for their gentility or generosity.
“C’mon,” Isaac said gruffly, heading towards one called the Piper that he vaguely remembered-he thought so, anyway, although the name may have changed. Something about the whitewashed facade of it struck a memory up in him, something about the bottle-bottom windows glowing yellowish from the lanterns within and the sound of discussion wafting through the door.
The tired, wide-awake boys scurried inside and instantly went to crouch by the fire, dirty knees around their ears as they tried to leech warmth from the glowing heath. It was little more than embers so late in the night, but they were thankful for the warmth within the place. The barmaid kept on eyeing them shiftily, but they tried to ignore her-until they couldn’t any more.
“You boys in ‘ere to cause trouble?” she barked to them over the bar and across the room. Some of the patrons, most of them drunken into stupors but some of them still light on their feet, glanced their way disinterestedly.
“No, ma’am!” earnestly chorused four sets of chattering teeth. She squinted at them.
“I think yer best be movin’ on soon,” she said heavily, and then strode away across the bar to tend to various slumped patrons. Isaac couldn’t help but notice how she lifted their dead hands and pulled coins out from beneath them, pocketing them for herself. She was a curvy, tired-looking woman of late twenties as far as Isaac could make out-although she spoke sharply, she didn’t seem particularly angry. Just exhausted.
Isaac excused himself from his friends and made his way to the bar. The stools were high, and he stood on tiptoes to make himself look taller across the wooden surface, just about managing to rest a forearm across the top.
“’Scuse me, miss,” he said, trying to sound polite. “D’yer know any Jude or Mick Prowse?”
“’Oo?”
“Jude or Mick... Micah?”
“Nah,” she shook her head and leaned away from him, her great bosom receding over the counter. “Never ‘eard of ‘em, kid.”
Trying to hide his disappointment, Isaac clambered on top of one of the bar stools with some difficulty. By the fire, his three friends were watching him with some degree of awe.
“They’re my brothers,” he continued, a little desperately. “Jude’s eldest, he’s tall an’ really strong. And Mick’s got a big scar on his arm, ‘is left one... they did some work in the knacker’s yard, last time I saw ‘em...?”
“Listen, whelp, I don’t know ‘em.”
“Are you sure?”
She stared at him, as if in disbelief. There was bleariness in her eyes and it was clear that she had been working a long shift. Glancing away from him, she wiped a small spillage on the counter around with her finger for a few moments, and sighed.
“I’m sure,” she said slowly. “Look, you and yer little friends can stay ‘til we close up, but no longer, right?”
Isaac trailed back to his friends after thanking her somewhat half-heartedly. Still: this was only the first pub they had encountered. There were bound to be other places where he could ask after them-and he was sure that they were looking for him too, which meant that it would be doubly easier for them to be reunited. He sat amongst his worn-out comrades and mumbled that they were allowed to stay until the place closed, which they all knew would not be long. They took advantage of the safety to sleep like a pile of puppies, heads resting on shoulders and little-boy breaths mingling.
Although tired, Isaac’s sleep was restless, and it felt jarring and brain-crushing when he was shaken into wakefulness by the gentle nudging of a boot against his arm.
”Out,” the barmaid said. The place was dark, and she held the only lantern that gave them any light. The place had been scrubbed and cleaned and emptied of the dribbling, unconscious men. Isaac groggily wondered how on earth the barmaid had managed it-she was no waif-thin slip of a girl, but neither was she heavily set. The boys tumbled into the street after a half-sympathetic look from the barmaid, and then they were left to fend for themselves again.
Suddenly, the uncomfortable sleep on the floor of the Piper seemed like luxury as the cold stabbed at them hard. Jack, their informally elected leader, rubbed his eyes and glanced up and down the cold street.
“Let’s find somewhere to kip, then,” he said gruffly, and-shoving his hands deep into the pockets of his already tatty shorts, led them all up the street.
-----
Their awakening was rude and sudden-the mad crashing of a shire horse’s steady hooves and the trundle of the cart it pulled. It started three of the four boys into instant wakefulness, making them scramble and jump. Dill, who was always a heavy sleeper, tumbled forwards onto the pavement and began to show signs of life a few minutes later.
“We gettin’ out of the city or what?” asked Charlie as they prodded Dill with their boots until he woke fully.
“We can look for my brothers first, right?” Isaac asked.
Jack shrugged.
“Don’t see why not,” he said, scratching at an arm, “But we ain’t ‘anging about.” As they finally hauled Dill up and began walking through the early-morning London swathes of gentle rain-like mist, hunger became a pressing matter. Charlie was limping a little from the cut on his foot but insisted that it didn’t bother him-Charlie was of that species of boy that was bothered by nothing that did not kill him.
Gingerly, Isaac tagged along with the others. Every joint in his body ached, and he could feel the bruises that had bloomed at his hips. His neck felt as though it would never move again-it was bolted into place with steely shards of pain. Somehow he had managed to forget how difficult it was to sleep on solid stone... but when he was younger, he had always had blankets as far as he could remember.
Which wasn’t very far at all.
“So it’s stealin’ or beggin’,” Charlie said thoughtfully as they arrived on Helenslea Street. The four bedraggled boys wandered down past a general bustling and opening of shutters: smart-dressed men hurried and pink-armed women were sweeping orange leaves from their doorsteps.
“Beggin’ ain’t gonna work,” Isaac snorted.
“An’ we got to hide,” Dill said dozily. He cracked his small knuckles loudly. “They’ll be lookin’ for us, you know. The orphanage.”
“Why would they?” Isaac asked. “Less mouths to feed.”
“They get a grant from the government per ‘ead,” Jack suddenly spoke up. The other boys stared at him-he was a well of knowledge, to them. At twelve years old, he already seemed older and wiser than they could ever be. “Most of it they keep to themselves o’ course, bloody bastards.”
-----
Usually, they would have chosen Charlie to be the first to sell his soul to thievery: he was light on his feet and scared of nothing. But the ragged glass-cut on his foot was clotted and disgusting and he was finding it quite a trouble to walk, let alone run, although he refused to let them help him. Jack insisted that he was too big, and Dill was always a bit on the dim side, so Isaac became elected via the process of elimination.
I used to steal before, didn’t I? he thought to himself as he walked towards the Hackney market square. Being a Thursday, it would not be the busiest of days, but there were always stalls. From his place at the roadside he watched as a large cart loaded with live chickens bumped by with much squawking and a littering of feathers.
Glancing over his shoulder, he watched his three comrades sitting on a decorative stone wall leading up to a large businesslike building. They waved vaguely. Charlie looked sour-he had wanted to do this. Dill was smiling. Jack was tilting his head and watching him as though he were some sort of fascinating experiment.
Hackney market was as rowdy as always, with people arguing over prices and jostling for space. New tables were slammed down every few minutes-it was early in the morning and stalls were rising like settlements. As always in the autumn, there was the constant risk of rain, meaning that large tops of canvas on stilts had been erected over various stalls.
Pushing his way through, frowning bad-naturedly at the people who shoved at him or tutted for him to get out of the way, Isaac knew that he had to go back with something to show for his thieving. The three boys were going to look after him, to help him find his brothers. He wanted their respect. Their comradeship. Their strength.
The moment he approached any stall with any sort of food laid out, he was being watched by an eagle-eyed holder. Lone urchins were never seen as good news.
“Gerrout o’ ‘ere, boy!” the stallholders would grumble, waving their meaty arms. Rows of gleaming apples, straining at their skins with their vitality, winked at him from beneath their glaring faces. Long coils of sausages and slabs of cheese. Even the rows of glistening fish started to look appealing after a while. “I tol’ you, go!”
“I’m ‘ere for my ma!” Isaac shouted back moodily, before running for it as the man behind this particular stall rose to his burly legs. Pushing his way through the crowd, he suddenly found his collar grabbed.
“Why are you runnin’, boy?” demanded a tall, hook-nosed man in a scruffy half-uniform. One of the city watchmen. “Stolen something?”
“No!” Isaac protested. Not yet!
Eventually he was freed, after having his wretchedly empty pockets frisked. He was relocated to the very edge of the market and told to keep out of trouble. As soon as the watchman let go of him, Isaac reeled away from him, glaring indignantly.
He waited for the watchman to make some distance between them before shouting after him: “Yer socks don’t match!”
Once this was done, he scampered around a group of women and plunged back into the fringe of the market, before darting his way back to the centre. Suspicious eyes blinked at him from every direction. People saw a scrawny, scruffy kid pawing around the stalls and instantly they saw trouble. And perhaps they were right. Isaac hated that they were right.
There was no way he was going to manage to push his way into a food stall. They were crowded and their stallholders knew what to look for. The air was full of voices and movement and occasionally the hollering of some bull calf for sale, longing for its mother. Goats were tied up to some stalls and stood chewing in slow ennui, eyes half-lidded, seeming to be willing the day away.
Women with babies strapped to their backs with thick lengths of cloth barged importantly through the bartering men, and the sky was grey and soft. The sun lay invisible behind the ceiling of whitish grey-the occasional darker contour showed where one cloud ended and another begun.
Isaac made a plan.
-----
“Sodding ‘ell, ‘Zac, cheers a lot,” Charlie said distastefully as he pulled out the jewellery from the small bag that Isaac had taken with him. The pearls gleamed in the weak sunlight. “We can’t eat this!” With disgust, he threw it back into the cloth bag.
“We could sell them,” Isaac said, “And then buy food...”
“Sell ‘em to who?” Charlie barked. “These are cheap shite anyway, not real pearls or anythin’. What’re we meant to do with all this, you total pillock?”
Before Isaac could bite back with a reply, Jack spoke-
“Leave off, Charlie,” he said warily. “At least ‘e did somethin’ useful. You got one bad attitude, you know that?”
Charlie just spat and turned his face away.
“I’ll ‘ave a go next,” Dill said with a smile. “I’m sure I’ll do better than magpie ‘ere.”
“You won’t,” Charlie snorted. “You’re dumb as a dog-ape.”
This resulted in a slight scuffle between the two boys. As the playfully shouted and punched, Jack took the bag of jewellery out of Isaac’s hands and looked into it for a few moments.
“We’ll find someone who’ll give us somethin’ for these,” he said confidently, and tied it to his belt. “C’mon, squirt. You two, shut it with yer scrappin’.”
“’E called me stupid!” Dill protested, grinning as he hit Charlie again.
“Quit rabbitin’.”
Isaac padded alongside them, feeling miserable. Even Jack called him squirt. With Fergie gone, he was the smallest out of all of them, and he knew that he wasn’t going to enjoy it much. He sighed.
“I want to go to Twickenham Knacker’s Yard and find my brothers,” Isaac finally said, hesitantly.
“After some grub,” Jack yawned, stretching his thin arms.
-----
Even with his injury, Charlie had turned out to be a better thief than Isaac. Eating on the go, the boys stuffed bread down their throat as they made their way-on foot-to the Twickenham area of London. More and more people were hitting the winding streets now that the morning was progressing, and the four ragtag boys found themselves pushing this way and that and dodging around horses and cabs on their way.
Some diluted yet unbreakable sense of direction led Isaac almost directly to the Twickenham Knacker’s Yard and before long they stood at the gates. The gates were all, and the entire yard surrounded by a red-brick wall-tall enough to obscure view, and too steep and bare to climb. They stared into the forbidding, stone-flattened yard through the iron-wrought bars.
“Your brothers’re knackermen?” Dill asked with a sudden giggle.
“I already tol’ you,” Isaac responded, irritated.
“Grim,” Charlie commented, craning his neck to see further around the place.
It was indeed grim. It was a place designed in every way to be washed out with constant buckets of water. There were small drainage holes in the wall that they stood by which would take the water out onto the road: a distinct irony red could be detected staining the masonry there. Isaac sighed. He knew that it wasn’t a glamorous job, but it was all that his brothers could do when their parents died.
A cart suddenly clopped lazily into the centre of the courtyard. One man sat atop it, and behind him sprawled the recently deceased corpse of a horse. It was dark brown, and it was easy to discern that it was dead: the lusty ripple that could be found in the gleaming fur of a living horse was gone, and so was the boundless energy that could be detected from a mere look. This was not a horse at rest: it was a horse long gone.
“Eugh!” Dill grinned widely. “Dead horse!”
The man had leapt off of his cart, and now glanced over towards the four kids. He scratched at his hair beneath a large floppy-brimmed hat and squinted towards them.
“After some knuckle bones, are yer, boys?” he called over.
“No,” Isaac called back. “D’you know a Jude and Mick Prowse?”
The knackerman abandoned the cart and the body of the horse and ambled uncertainly towards them. He could not afford to waste much time: every single part of the dead animal was to be utilised, and they would have to begin their autopsy before it became to stiffened by death.
“Who?”
“Jude and Mick Prowse.”
The man seemed about to state the negative, but then hesitated suddenly.
“I recker-nise the names,” he finally said. “But they ain’t here no more.”
“Do you know where they are?” Isaac asked desperately, folding his grubby hands around the bars.
“No idea, lad,” the knackerman said, turning away. “Sorry.”
“If they come back, will you say Isaac was ‘ere?” he begged.
“Sure,” the knackerman replied as he walked away. “But they won’t be back.”
To Isaac’s ears, this was a little ominous-but there was no time for more questioning. He turned away from the gate with hope still wavering weak in his young heart. The wind was growing churlish and starting to pluck at their thin clothing. Overhead, clouds gathered stormily and began chewing up the sky. It would almost certainly rain within the hour.
“Well, that was ‘elpful,” Charlie said bluntly.
“Shut the bloody ‘ell up, will you?” Isaac snapped.
“Ooh, look what the little magpie’s twittin’ at me!”
“Both of you, stop it,” Jack said wearily. He rubbed at his eyes and sighed. He didn’t like being in charge any more. The three children that paddled in his wake were rabbling, squabbling kids, and suddenly they were more of a burden than anything else. But he knew that he couldn’t do it alone. His jaw set. “We’re gettin’ yer into work. Even if it means yer suckin’ the pus from a dead dog’s arse, you will work.”
-----
Ultimately it was Jack who worked-doing nothing more important than delivering letters. He became a runner for the Foreign Office, who looked upon him kindly when he proved himself to be light on his feet and showed them his three starving, shivering ‘brothers’ of the street. Usually he had to dodge his way from south London to the ships on the Thames before they left.
In the meantime, many things happened, but the most important to Isaac’s own development was that he grew. And he really, really grew. Jack, Charlie and Dill didn’t grow much-they weren’t eating much. Neither was Isaac, but for a reason fused to his genetics he became bigger and bigger nonetheless. His brothers had both been big, burly men, and over the period of a few months Isaac underwent an almost magical metamorphoses. He grew taller than both Charlie and Dill, not to mention a whole lot broader.
He learned how to fight, to cheat, to steal. He learned that the streets of London were not a place of honour where the best man won-it was a big writhing scrap where the biggest, hardest bastard won. He bought his first set of throwing knives when he was thirteen, with money he’d made by plugging himself into the criminal underworld.
They lost Dill along the way-he died someplace cold and hard. They never really knew why.
Jack grew ambitious yet honest, and he was soon allowed to progress from the boyish position of runner to one of the servants of the governmental building. They lost him in a way, too: Jack vanished inside the plush halls of government and they didn’t hear much from him ever again. Their paths diverged.
It wasn’t abandonment: the truth was that Isaac and Charlie didn’t need Jack any more. By the time they both hit sixteen they were both brawny, streetwise creatures of the London underworld that didn’t need help with anything. They may as well have been spawned by the night fog. As kids they had done just little things: being lookouts, or spies, or clambering into small places to unlock doors. But they grew and grew, and as they grew they became enfolded further into the murk of London’s organised crime.
In all honesty, though, Isaac Prowse never had much interest in crime. Some people sought it intentionally-found glee in the unscrupulousness of its takings. To Isaac, the colour of the underground was the dull colour of money. There was nothing else there. He tried to forge a few weak connections to help him locate his brothers, but they became more indistinct every year-they faded away bit by bit, from their spade-like hands to their twinkling eyes. They became nothing but ghosts.
Years ticked by swiftly, but not regularly: sometimes it was quick, sometimes it was slow. It reminded him of the old grandfather clock in Foxholt Alley Orphanage...
He was twenty-four when Charlie lay dying. As his oldest friend and comrade, Isaac felt a desperate distress at his loss. It had not been an accident, and it had been to do with the company they kept. Charlie had been far more involved in crime than Isaac ever had: he was tough, good old Charlie, hard to the bone. Nothing stopped him.
Until he was stabbed twelve times with a bayonet.
Isaac decided that he would leave the criminal world, although he didn’t know what he was going to do next. He was a little old for an apprenticeship, and had a local reputation for using his fists more than his sense-which was not a fair reputation, but one that stuck. Isaac was a perceptive young man, but of course, such a side of him could never flourish under such conditions. He used his skills as a knife-thrower to entertain people, but it was scant money and before long he had lost his lodgings and was on the streets once more.
It was one of the darkest times of his life. He strode through London with his head down-he knew that he was fairly safe from most of the London criminals (a reputation travels far and wide), but the days felt blue and the nights felt black. Somewhere behind him started an even rattling. He glanced over his shoulder and noticed that it was a fairly plush closed carriage, curtains drawn, its colour a deep maroon. Gold-leaf decorated its side, but not in an overtly flowery way: in fact, the entire design-although clearly wealthy-was rather... svelte.
He continued to walk. As the carriage drew closer to him, it slowed down, crawling alongside him. Isaac frowned. It was never a good thing for something unexpected to happen, especially at this time of night. He tugged at his jerkin and brushed a strand of his chestnut hair out of his eyes. Eventually he stopped walking, and the driver of the carriage obligingly halted too.
The door opened silently.
”Can I ‘elp you?” Isaac asked, peering inside a little tentatively.
The teenage Edward Ashdown, only seventeen yet already as ruthless and as astute as his father before him, was perched within. Although young, he was immaculately dressed, in a shining velvet frock coat and a perfectly powdered wig. The painted pomp of the court was written all over his slightly condescending, serene expression.
“Actually, Mr Prowse, I believe that it is I that can be of service to you.”
“You know my name?”
“I know all the names,” Ashdown said in his soft, refined voice, patting the seat next to him. “Please, do sit. I have heard so much about you. I know that we will be good friends.”
“Do you?” Isaac asked, bewildered. “Will we?”
Ashdown treated him to a pale, vampiric smile.
“Oh, yes.”