The Whipping Boy (6 page)

A pair of highwaymen were training pistols on Captain Nips. Jemmy hardly had to peer out. The voice was familiar.

It was Hold-Your-Nose Billy. And Cutwater.

Jemmy felt a surge of the creeps.

Run for it? he wondered. Instead, he began to burrow out of sight under the loose heap of potatoes. "Remember," he whispered to the prince, "it's me they're after, not you. Tell 'em we split up. Tell 'em I swam the river."

Prince Brat merely looked at him.

The voices outside boomed.

"Stand and deliver, I said!"

"And I heard you," exclaimed Captain Nips. "Deliver what? Potatoes? Scurvy rascals! Help yourselves."

"Hang your potatoes!" roared Hold-Your-Nose Billy. "Deliver us some information and you can be off. We're after two runaway apprentices."

"Apprentice highwaymen?" Captain Nips scoffed.

"Our affair. Girl with a bear said she saw 'em streakin' for the river. You carryin' passengers?"

Jemmy pulled the iron kettle over his head.

A coach door was yanked open, and Jemmy could hear Cutwater's muffled cackle.

"Got one! The whipping boy, it is! Where's your master, eh?"

Jemmy held his breath. He had no reason to believe that the prince wouldn't betray him again.

There came a stiff pause.

And then Prince Brat said, "Swam the river."

By then Hold-Your-Nose Billy had ripped open the opposite coach door. Even through the kettle Jemmy imagined he could smell garlic.

"Swimmed the river! Faw! He'd need scales and fins."

Hardly a moment later, the kettle was grabbed off and Jemmy's head stood exposed.

"Here's the potato we're after!" Hold-Your-Nose Billy roared gleefully.

Jemmy and the prince were yanked out of the coach, and the big outlaw shouted to Captain Nips, "Throw me down your horsewhip, and drive on!"

Hanging on to each boy by the scruff of the neck, the highwaymen scrambled out of sight below the embankment.

Hold-Your-Nose Billy looked angry enough to throttle Jemmy on the spot.

"Tricked me, did you!" he bellowed. "Flummoxed me with your fancy quill-scratchin'!"

The game's up, Jemmy thought. He's tumbled that the ransom note ain't worth scat. But, trying to look as innocent as possible, he replied, "Sir?"

"A gold sack or two would have satisfied me and Cutwater," snarled the hairy outlaw. "Greedy ain't our middle name. But you! Raising the ante to a great cartload! Reckoned to slow us down, didn't you? It would be easier to drag around a dead horse! If we ain't lightfooted, we're caught. That was your scheme!"

What a pair of fools, Jemmy thought. That hadn't been his scheme at all! "You've got it all wrong" he declared. "I swear it!"

"Aye, enough plunder to burden us directly to the gallows, eh?" Hold-Your-Nose Billy continued. "Well, here's a whipping you won't never forget!"

He snapped Captain Nip's whip in the air to get the feel of it.

"Here's the whipping boy," Cutwater put in. "You said it'll go powerful worse for us if we thrash the prince himself."

Hold-Your-Nose Billy nodded sharply. Cutwater upturned the prince, holding him by the ankles in the air. "Go to it, Billy."

Jemmy finally found his voice. "Lay down the whip," he commanded with a princely air. "Don't you have an ounce of sense between you?"

"Hold your gab!"

"Simpletons! You can just fill your pockets with plunder and be lightfooted as ever," Jemmy declared.

"Nobody flummoxes Hold-Your-Nose Billy and gets away with it!"

The whip snapped across the prince's back.

Jemmy held his breath. He knew what it felt like. He saw that Prince Brat had set his jaws, just as Jemmy had always done—and not a sound escaped his lips.

"Harder!" Cutwater advised. "You didn't raise a peep out of him."

The big man let fly again.

"He must have a hide like an elephant," said Cutwater. "He don't feel a thing."

"He'll feel this!" Hold-Your-Nose Billy thundered, and the leather whistled through the air. The prince's jacket was being shredded.

"Bawl out!" Jemmy shouted. He'd dreamed of seeing the prince whipped, but now that it was happening he found no satisfaction in it. "Holler and cry out! I won't tell anyone!"

But Prince Brat only girded himself for the next blow.

From the top of the embankment came an outraged voice. Betsy and her dancing bear stood there.

"Ruffian!" she cried out. "What are you doing to that poor boy?"

"No business of yours," snarled Cutwater.

"Stop it!"

But Hold-Your-Nose Billy raised the whip again. The next thing Jemmy knew, the girl had slipped the rope from around the bear's neck.

"Sic 'em, Petunia! Go get 'em!"

The bear came snarling down the embankment.

Rising on its hind legs, it bared its teeth and bellowed out a thunderclap of a roar.

Cutwater dropped the prince and was off like a greyhound. Hold-Your-Nose Billy, his eyes round as snowballs, went charging off into the river. He raised a great splash, and if he didn't know how to swim, he learned—instantly.

Jemmy had reared back, but now Betsy gave a whistle and the bear stopped in its tracks.

"Good boy, Petunia! That'll do, darlin'." She slipped the rope back around the bear's neck. Then she bent over the prince. "The lowdown bullies! Laying stripes on a boy's back!"

With the bear sniffing him, Prince Brat didn't move a muscle. "Rein in your beast," he whispered stiffly.

"Oh, don't be afraid of Petunia. Gentle as a kitten, he is. Here, let me tend to your poor hide."

"No."

"Give us a look."

"Thank you, no!" the prince exclaimed.

"Lumme! Ain't you the brave one! Must sting something dreadful."

Jemmy watched the prince slowly raise himself off the mud flat. He felt a growing amazement. Prince Brat a brave one? It didn't seem possible. But gaw! There was a cast-iron streak of pluck in him.

The prince moved his arms and shoulders. He winced, but then began to brush himself off.

"Steady on your legs?" Jemmy asked.

"Steady."

"You should have yelled and bellowed. That's what they wanted to hear."

"And humble myself?" muttered the prince. "
You
never did."

Jemmy gazed at him for a thoughtful moment. Then he indicated the two highwaymen. Cutwater had vanished, and Hold-Your-Nose Billy was trying to keep from drowning. "Let's be on our way. They're sure to be back after us."

"Not if you travel with me," said Betsy. "Me and Petunia."

Jemmy found the horsewhip where Hold-Your-Nose Billy had dropped it. Betsy and the bear had already started up the embankment, and the boys followed.

"Lawks," whispered Jemmy. "Ain't we a puckered sight, the both of us! Torn up and scruffy. At least, no one'll take you for a prince."

Not far off lay the coach on its side.

"Hanged if I caught sight of that steep rise off to the side of the road," explained Captain Nips. "Tipped us over, as you see."

"Either your horses need spectacles," said Betsy, "or you do."

Together with Petunia, they lifted and pushed and righted the coach. They piled in and were off.

Betsy and her dancing bear rode inside with the prince. Jemmy decided to sit with Captain Nips to watch for road hazards.

They reached the city without further incident, except for being stopped by soldiers. The king's men were clearly looking for the vanished prince, but when a bear poked its head out the door window, the soldiers stepped back and quickly waved the coach on.

As soon as the wheels rattled on cobbled streets, Jemmy felt an immense sense of relief. This was his turf, the city, and he knew more places to hide than a rat.

Approaching the waterside fairgrounds, he saw prisoners in chains being marched aboard a convict ship. It lay in sharp contrast to the festive stalls and banners of the fair.

Captain Nips eased the coach between a seller of live fowl and a juggler tossing colored balls into the bright noonday air.

"Thanks for the jolly ride, hot-potato man," said Betsy. "Come along, Petunia. Let's fetch us a crowd and earn a copper or two."

Jemmy collected his battered birdcage.

"Don't rush off, lad," said Captain Nips, hauling out a canvas load of firewood from under the seat. "Ain't I been listening to your stomach rumbling-bumbling for the last hour? Do me the kindness of filling the kettle at the pump. Soon as the potatoes are boiled up, we'll feast, eh?"

Anxious as he was to be on his way, Jemmy hesitated. He
was
powerful hungry.

Then Captain Nips laid a coin in his hand. "And while you're at it, stop off at the cow lady, the both of you, and get yourselves a couple of mugs to drink."

Jemmy picked up the handle of the kettle. But almost at once Prince Brat snatched it out of his hands. "I'll do that."

"You?" Jemmy replied. "It's servant's work."

"Then who'd take me for a prince, toting water?" He smiled. He laughed. "I've never been allowed to carry anything! Not in my entire life."

Jemmy led the way. He'd never regarded fetching and carrying as a privilege. Princes and such-like were hard to fathom! But the sound of merriment lingered in his head. He'd never before heard Prince Brat laugh.

They dodged acrobats and a stilt walker and a harp player. Through the hubbub came a great squeaky voice.

"Jemmy! Rat-catchin' Jemmy!"

Turning, Jemmy spied a tall boy wearing a checked cap. It was Smudge tending a sawdust pit squared off by a board fence—a dog-and-rat pit. Beside him stood a stack of rat-filled cages and a black terrier leashed to a post.

"By gigs, it
is
you, Jemmy!" said Smudge. "Reckon you call the king by his first name these days."

"Hello, Smudge. You give up mudlarking?"

"I've come up in the world, ain't I? Same as you, Jemmy. How do you like me dog? Best rat-fighter you ever saw."

With a practiced eye, Jemmy surveyed the cages. "But those rats look tame enough to eat off your hand."