Printer's Devil (9780316167826) (36 page)

“And I pray our souls be cleansed,” someone was declaring close by, “and our hands stayed by the fear of the Wrath of God.”
It was a shabby-looking man with a few broken teeth, holding out his hands and orating to the pushing crowds around him. “Bless
you,” he kept saying, and holding out a crumpled felt hat in which a couple of coins lay. “The Lord,” he said when he saw
us, “is ever merciful to the righteous, my boys, and fearful to the wicked. A penny from a pauper is more dear to God than
all the riches of a nobleman. A camel may more easily pass through a needle’s eye
than a wealthy man enter heaven.”

He must have wondered what lay behind the meaningful glance Nick and I exchanged as we squeezed our way past.

All around us, on posts and hoardings, were multiple copies of a new and arresting poster, which had kept Mr. Cramplock and
myself busy for the entirety of an autumn evening last week.

“You know what Mr. Spintwice says?” said Nick. “There’s no such thing as justice.”

Spintwice had, I knew, made no secret of his scorn at the eagerness of people to gather in a big crowd and watch a man being
hanged. “What’s he mean, then?”

“I think he means,” said Nick, “nobody can ever be satisfied. You can’t set things right once they’ve gone wrong, not without
turning back time and starting
again. Like — hanging someone — it doesn’t undo the crime. People want blood, but when they’ve got it they’re no better off,
are they?”

The roaring was getting louder as the anticipation mounted. People were becoming aware that it was nearly the appointed time.

“Do you want to stay and watch?” I asked.

“Not really.”

“Let’s go,” I said, and we began pushing back the way we’d come. I had to keep tugging at Lash’s lead to drag him away from
half-chewed apples and discarded bits of pie which people had dropped on the ground.

As we emerged out of the crush, a woman came up to us to try and sell us sweets.

“Sugared oranges,” she cooed, “and cherries and ginger. Treats, my dears, come off the boat from the East Indies.” We peered
into her tray and saw little squares and diamonds of sugared fruit, some of it wrapped in rice paper. A heavy, spicy smell
was wafting up from the sugar-caked board. Nick reached in and took a square of ginger.

“I want to get you this,” he said, fishing in his pocket for a grubby coin.

The woman moved off, and he handed me the sweet. I unwrapped the thin crinkly paper it was wrapped in and popped the chunk
of ginger into my mouth. Just as I was about to throw the paper away, I
noticed some blue markings on it.

“Hang on,” I said with my mouth full. Folding out the sticky little sheet, I found it had a printed inscription in faint blue.
I stared at it. Slowly, the pale characters sank into my brain.

I looked around. “Where’s the woman?” I asked. We tried to call her back, but she’d blended into the excited crowd, and the
people were milling too densely for us to catch her.

We turned and set off again, staying close together. The throng was too intent on what it had come to see; no one paid a scrap
of attention to the pair of children, remarkably alike, one of them hanging onto a longlimbed dog, and each of them glancing
back and forward occasionally to make sure the other was still there — as though, it having taken so many years for them to
find one another, they were now determined not to let the other go.

Up the street, a gate in the prison wall swung open, and a broadly built figure was led up the wooden steps to the back of
the cart. Above our heads, the bells of St. Sepulchre’s began the solemn sequence that preceded the striking of two. Gradually,
starting from the front, the jeers of the crowd fell silent, and the silence spread all the way along the street, up the hill,
as far as the cathedral.

The chanting grew gradually louder. I was frightened. I was being swung around, by my feet, by two big grim-faced girls who
held onto my ankles with a grip far tighter and more cruel than necessary. Their faces, the only still points in a whirl of
figures and furniture, broke into sadistic grins as I stared at them. I was already dizzy and was beginning to feel sick,
my short filthy hair feeling the breeze as my head just missed the wall or the edge of a desk by a matter of inches. I kept
my arms pulled in tight against my chest to stop them from smashing into something and, with clenched fists, I silently begged
them to stop. Round and round I went, faster and faster; the girls couldn’t possibly keep control of my whirling body for
much longer, and I knew if they didn’t stop I was going to hurt myself badly. A few times I tried to shout at them to stop,
but they were making too much noise for my voice to be heard; and anyway, I
knew from experience that crying out only made them whirl you more violently and gleefully.

As suddenly as the game had started, it was all over. The lookout’s warning — “Mrs. Muggerage!” — was taken up by the rest
of the girls, until it was simply a general loud hissing sound throughout the room; the girls let go of me and dispersed to
the four corners, leaving me spinning on my back, my hair grinding into the filth of the floor, my limbs sprawling.

A terrible silence descended. A huge figure was standing in the doorway. Only gradually did I realize who it was, though at
the back of my head was the troubling sense that something was wrong; that this couldn’t really be happening. I struggled
to sit up, the room continued to spin, and I felt the awful, inescapable sensation of my breakfast trying to escape. As the
walls and floor whirled around my head, I brought up a great splattering stomachload of acidic, watery porridge.

A choir of angels couldn’t have been more innocent than that roomful of children pretended to be right then. Whether Mrs.
Muggerage was fooled, I never knew — if she was, I couldn’t understand how — but there was only one child in the room who
wasn’t sitting bolt upright, with her hands by her sides, looking wide-eyed and morally horrified at what she could see in
the middle of the floor. And that was me. Just who else had been involved, it was impossible to tell; but plainly I had
been at the center of things, because there I was on the tiles, propped up on one arm, retching.

“Mog Winter,” said Mrs. Muggerage, in a tone of grim pleasure at the prospect of being able to mete out some punishment. Her
black boots echoing on the bare floor, she walked slowly over to me. There were a few seconds’ grace as I wiped my mouth and
lifted my dizzy head to look up at her. She stood above me, a woman of awesome bulk and power, a grimy cloth in her hand.
She was blocking out most of the light, but gazing up at her shadowy outline, I could tell her expression was without compassion,
even slightly sneering with revulsion at my sickness. Then she grasped me by the collar and yanked me to my feet with a single,
violent motion. I hung there from her fist like a marionette, weakened, close to tears.

“Mog Winter,” she said again. “I coulda guessed. Before I walked in, I coulda guessed.”

She turned around, slowly, holding me out to exhibit me to the rest of the children. There was complete silence as they stared
at me. I registered the faces of my chief tormentors among the group, and they were looking at me with disdain, as though
they were genuinely as disgusted with me as Mrs. Muggerage was.

“What have you got to say fer yourself?” she snarled at me.

“This ain’t right!” I said, struggling. “You’re not meant to be here.”

“No good,” Mrs. Muggerage was saying, “can ever come to those what misbehaves. Lord knows if we don’t try hard enough, girls
and boys, to make it plain. Lord knows if I don’t teach the same lesson day after day. No good will ever come to those what
can’t behave. And Lord knows if, day after day, some dreadful boy or girl don’t completely ignore the lesson, so’s I’m ‘bliged
to teach it all over again.
Well
.”

That
“well”
was calculated to send a shiver of fear into every young heart in the room. Although only a single word, it was stretched
so it lasted as long as a whole sentence, and it contained more misery in its elongated syllable than any complete sentence
you could possibly think of.

She dropped me. Because she’d been holding me up with my feet off the ground, I had to put my hands out to break my fall,
and as I tumbled to the floor again my palms went straight into the pool of vile porridge I’d left beneath me, smearing it
further and sending it splashing up my arms and across my cheek. Without intending it, but unable to prevent myself, I swore
— using a word I’d heard the other children use several times a day. The moment I heard myself say it, I knew my fate was
sealed.