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Chapter One: Sleight of Hand and Foot Chapter One SLEIGHT OF HAND AND FOOT
It was a crisp autumn morning and Tom Morgan was sitting on a stool on the roadside just outside Fermian’s Café on Rue Notre-Dame—which had once been known as Oxford Street—the sun shining brightly and adding a welcome warmth to the cool air. Cabs, motor cars, and buses rattled over the cobbles in either direction, and the branches of the cork trees, brought there by the French thirty years earlier, swayed gently overhead, casting flickering silhouettes on the smooth gray stone of the buildings across the street.
The scent of coffee and freshly baked pastries drifted tantalizingly—agonizingly—from the open doors of Fermian’s, accompanied by the gentle sounds of a jazz record on the gramophone by the bar and the chink of cups and saucers.
Just a few doors down the street, Tom could see Maxine and Bernie unfolding a portable table.
“Magic ball trick!” Maxine began to call out to passersby. “Stop and see a magic ball trick! Guess which cup it’s under and double your money!”
A thickset man with a dark beard appeared beside Tom and gave one of the legs of his stool a nudge with the toe of a hobnail boot.
“How much for a shine?” he asked.
Tom glanced warily up at the man’s face, scanning his features to check whether he knew him. There was always a risk that he could be a policeman, a workhouse agent, or worst of all, a previous mark. But the tanned face behind the dark beard wasn’t one Tom recognized, so he relaxed and looked down at the boots, which were badly scuffed and well worn. Tom puffed his cheeks and then sucked his teeth in ponderous thought. “Quite a bit of work to do there, mister,” he said at last. “But I should be able to get them up to scratch for three francs.”
“See what you can do for two,” said the man, and he tossed the coins into the upturned hat lying by Tom’s feet.
“Right you are, sir,” said Tom, and slapped a polishing cloth on the box in front of him, just as his old friend and mentor Morris used to do. The man rested his left boot on it. Tom flipped open a toolbox beside the stool and lifted out a dog-eared copy of The Count of Monte Cristo, underneath which he kept every item a shoeshiner could ever need, and got to work.
The man pulled a newspaper from his coat pocket and began to read, humming along absently to the music coming from Fermian’s. Tom let his mind wander as he scrubbed the dirt from the cracks in the leather. Then he reached into the toolbox and withdrew two tins of polish. “Which color you after, mister?” he asked.
The man pulled back a corner of the paper and looked down. “The darker one,” he said, then went back to reading, leaving Tom staring up at a front-page headline: TREASURE FOR THE AGES GOES ON TOUR followed by the subheading THE ANCIENT BURIAL HOARD OF SARGON THE GREAT OF MESOPOTAMIA BEGINS WORLD TOUR. Intrigued, Tom scanned the opening lines of the article while unscrewing the lid of the polish and dabbing a cloth into the oily glop within.
The long-lost treasure of the twenty-fourth and twenty-third century BC Mesopotamian ruler, Sargon the Great, discovered just three years ago by archaeologists from the University of New Avignon, begins its world tour tomorrow with a grand opening at the British Museum. The treasure is on loan from its permanent home at the Metropolitan Museum of New Avignon for nine months and will travel to seven different museums around the world. Tickets to the London exhibition have been sold out for more than a year.
The hoard, one of the largest ever discovered at a single burial site, is of significant historical importance as the runes and hieroglyphs that adorn many of the items reveal new information about Mesopotamian society, culture, and politics that had been previously unknown to historians.
He turned back to the boots, massaging the oily polish into the leather and then beginning to buff it with a brush.
Somewhere down the road an exhaust backfired and a blue van rumbled past. The word “Guttknot” was etched in white on the flaking paint. Tom ducked his head low and tucked his arms in, trying to make himself as small as possible. After a few moments he risked a glance through the legs of passing pedestrians, but he couldn’t see the van. Then he realized he couldn’t hear it either. His hand paused its brushing. Was that a vehicle door closing? A sound followed that froze him. It was the clip, clip, clip of a metal-tipped staff striking the paving stones in time with its owner’s steps. Tom snapped his head up to see Cyril Borthwick, a workhouse agent, wandering toward them.
The shiny brass buckles of Borthwick’s uniform glinted in the morning sunshine, as did the silver globe on the top of his staff. Borthwick wasn’t a particularly tall man, but he was strong looking, with thick forearms, powerful shoulders, and a bull neck. A huge dark moustache drooped down below his jawline, and bushy whiskers spread across the edges of his cheeks and up to a ring of hair that circled a perfectly smooth crown.
Tom gave a shrill whistle. Maxine glanced up at Tom and then across to Borthwick. After a quick look of understanding, she gathered up her ball and cups, picked up the foldaway table, and grabbed Bernie by his jacket collar before dashing down a side alley.
“Nearly done, mister,” said Tom, attempting a grin that felt as thin as paper. He was a rat caught in a trap. He had to think fast.
Tom kept his head down and concentrated on buffing the boots. They were now shining brilliantly, but still he kept the polishing cloth gliding back and forth as the shrill tapping of Borthwick’s staff grew louder.
The bearded man looked up from his paper. “Can I help?” he asked gruffly.
“Good morning,” said Borthwick. He offered a grin, but it was little more than a baring of his teeth. One of his top front ones was missing. “Cyril Borthwick. I am a constable of this parish.”
Tom’s jaw tightened. A constable. That might be his official title, but Tom knew what Borthwick really was. A child-snatcher. A slaver. A killer. His eyes darted around, his mind whirring as he tried to judge the best moment to make a break for it.
The bearded man eyed Borthwick up and down and then gazed at the ornate silver globe at the top of the mace.
“A church constable, I presume? Not an actual officer of the law?”
Borthwick’s face stiffened, but then another toothy smile filled the small void beneath his moustache. “Indeed so. But to my parishioners, I am one and the same. A protector, a servant, a hand that keeps the peace and upholds the law.”
“Uh-huh. And how may I help you, Mr. Borthwick? I am neither of this parish, nor, I believe, in contravention of any of its by-laws.”
“Oh, my dear sir, it is not you for whom I stop. Indeed, I welcome you to our little corner of this great city and wish you well on this fine day.” Borthwick indicated Tom with the tip of his staff. “It’s this lad here I want. As one of the guardians of this community, I have been charged by the church elders, and their parishioners, to help the young and helpless in our community find new opportunities and purpose in their lives. The young and helpless like this lad here.”
The bearded man peered down at Tom. “He doesn’t look helpless to me. Making a way for himself in the world.”
“Ah, but he’s homeless and vulnerable.”
The bearded man folded his paper away and looked down at Tom. “You homeless, lad?”
Tom was about to answer, but Borthwick spoke first. “With respect, sir, I am quite au fait—”
“Nonsense. He’s performing a trade,” interrupted the bearded man. “A good little job. Practical. You’re still allowed to practice trades, aren’t you, Mr. Borthwick?”
“Yes, yes, indeed you are,” said Borthwick, beginning to get flustered. “But my job is to clean up the streets—”
“Ah, I see. So that’s it. The boy’s an eyesore that your parishioners don’t want on their picturesque streets?”
Borthwick’s tongue flicked in and out. “No, I didn’t say that. I’m here to offer him an opportunity. A roof over his head, regular meals, and a job that helps serve our society.”
The bearded man barked a laugh. “Oh, so that’s how they’re selling workhouse slavery now, is it?” He turned so that he was facing Borthwick square on, moving between Tom and the workhouse agent, his long coat sweeping around to obscure the boy from sight. Tom looked up to see that the man had crossed his hands behind his back. The forefinger of one hand extended and started to jab toward an alleyway that ran down the side of Fermian’s.
“Do you know what the true blight on this city is, Mr. Borthwick?” said the man, now stabbing the forefinger of his other hand into Borthwick’s fleshy abdomen. “It’s people like you, hiding under the guise of social justice when...”
As quickly and as quietly as he could, Tom wrapped his hat around the coins and then crammed them into his pocket and grabbed the toolbox just as the bearded man cried, “Take your hands off me, sir!”
He looked up to see the two men scuffling.
“You will move along!” roared Borthwick. “That boy is coming with me!”
The bearded man staggered backward, then regained his balance by grabbing Borthwick’s lapels, tugging them down, and forcing the agent into a crouch. As he did so, he spun to stare at Tom. “Get going, boy!” he hissed through gritted teeth. “Or it’ll be the workhouse for you!”
Tom was up and off, sprinting down the alleyway that curved around the back of Fermian’s and into a network of dank and narrow lanes beyond. Behind him he could hear Borthwick roaring and then footsteps running his way. Tom glanced back to see two other snatchers had emerged from the van and were pursuing him.
He bent his head and ran harder, ducking right and then right again down narrow alleys until he burst back onto Rue Notre-Dame. His best chance of escape was in the chaos of the busiest streets. He zigzagged, sidestepped, and pirouetted his way through the crowds, reaching up and plucking a flat cap from a passerby and jamming it onto his head. He skipped past a stall selling flowers, grabbing one of the handles and spinning the stall on its wheels. He could hear one of his pursuers swearing as he collided with the stall and was sent tumbling to the ground.
As they approached Bond Street metro station Tom saw a gaggle of smartly dressed schoolchildren marching in neat lines down the steps to the entrance. He slipped in behind them and delicately swapped the flat cap he had stolen with the spiffy blue cap belonging to a boy at the rear of the line. It was done so quickly and so smoothly that the boy didn’t notice. Tom jostled in between the children, slipping a scarf from the shoulders of one and draping it around his neck, then merged among their number as they passed through the ticket barriers.
Reaching the platform, Tom began to gently drift away among the milling throng of commuters waiting for the train, his new hat pulled down over his eyes, the scarf wrapped tight around his face. Just behind them, he saw his other pursuer push his way onto the platform and shove his way through the crowd. An expression of triumph on his gnarled features, the snatcher reached out and grabbed ahold of the boy in the flat cap, a look of utter bemusement falling across his features when he realized the child was in school uniform—a look which then turned to panic as the children’s teacher began to beat him away with an umbrella.
Tom, grinning, slunk back into the crowd.
