Wild Boy (18 page)

T
he full moon shone through cracks in the dirty clouds, dappling the docks with light. A stray cat bolted behind a heap of nets, but otherwise the wharf was empty. Boats creaked eerily against their tethers.

Heart pounding, Wild Boy raced after Clarissa, weaving between stacks of crates, darting around a mound of slimy nets, and then hiding behind a cart that was filled with props from the circus. “Hey,” he whispered. “What are we doing here?”

Clarissa ignored him as she searched for something in the cart. A trombone fell from the side, and Wild Boy just managed to catch it before it clattered to the ground.

He swore at her, but she wasn’t listening. She hadn’t even told him what she was looking for —
“Something we need”
was all she’d say — and he wasn’t asking again. He knew she wouldn’t tell him, just as she’d not said how she knew Mary Somerset, that name in Doctor Griffin’s book. She enjoyed being in charge.

Wild Boy leaned around the side of the cart, checking that they hadn’t been seen. From here he could see straight into the iron-roofed warehouse where the traveling fair had camped. Everyone was there — the showmen, the circus crew, the performers and stall holders — all making last-minute preparations before riding to Bartholomew Fair in the heart of London.

And there, among the vans, was his old freak show. Sir Oswald was still fixing up the caravan, hanging on to the side with one arm as he connected a new pipe to those that already snaked around the wooden walls.

Augustus Finch leaned against the van. The scars were shiny across the showman’s face, and his badger-streak hair hung wild about his eyes. He still struggled to stand on his wounded foot, which pleased Wild Boy to see.

“Serves the old goat right,” he muttered.

He realized that he wasn’t scared of Finch anymore. So much had happened since he’d fled that caravan. He had bigger fears to face now.

Clarissa came up beside him. She was looking into the warehouse too, and she had seen her mother.

Mary Everett looked even more frightening than Finch, with fresh white makeup smeared across her face and staining her greasy red hair. The powder crumbled from her cheeks, as she leaned on her crutch and roared orders at a couple of porters fixing a wagon wheel.

“Let’s go,” Clarissa said.

Wild Boy grabbed her arm. He had to say something. Clarissa still had a chance to get out of this. Her mother might beat her, but bruises and broken bones heal. “Clarissa,” he said, “you don’t have to run. The circus will hide you if you go back. Your mother would —”

“She ain’t my mother,” Clarissa said. “Least, not no more. I’ll never go back.”

She slung a sack over her shoulder, stuffed with a few items she’d stolen from the cart. “We waiting for Sir Oswald?” she asked.

Wild Boy couldn’t help feeling relieved. He didn’t want to go on alone. But from now on, it was just him and Clarissa. He didn’t know where they were headed, only that it would be dangerous. Sir Oswald had risked enough to help them already. “It’s just us,” he said.

They looked at each other for a moment. Neither spoke, and neither smiled. But Wild Boy wanted to do both. He opened his mouth to say something, but Clarissa sprung up and set off toward the street at the end of the wharf. “Mary Somerset,” she called. “This way.”

“Hey!” Wild Boy said. “Won’t we be seen?”

She’d been waiting for that question. She rustled in her sack and brought out a pair of purple clown shoes and a single lump of coal. Her eyes twinkled in the moonlight.

“I got a plan,” she said.

“Run for your lives, it’s the Wild Boy of London!”

Wild Boy waddled uneasily along the cobbled street, placing each step carefully to avoid tripping over the elongated clown shoes. If he hadn’t been so scared he’d have felt ridiculous.

But he had to admit this was a good plan. There must have been a hundred people staring at him right then, and all they could see of him were his green eyes staring through holes in the sack. Across the front, Clarissa had scrawled a monstrous charcoal face with jagged fangs and the words
WILD BOY
sootily beneath. She wasn’t wearing much of a disguise herself — just a cloth cap to hide her flame-colored hair.

“Run for your lives!” she yelled. “The Wild Boy of London will eat you up!”

They were crossing London Bridge, headed for the north bank of the city. Workers chiseled blocks of stone under the glare of the gas lamps that lined the parapets, repairing the bridge. Around them the night rang with the clip-clops of horses and cries of costermongers selling rat poison, razor blades, garter clips, and grease remover.

Most people were too busy to care about a boy in costume, but one of the stonecutters swaggered over and blew a kiss at Wild Boy’s sack face.

“Haw, haw!” he guffawed. “The Wild Boy’s a softy! I thought he growled like a wolf.”

Clarissa’s fingers dug into Wild Boy’s arm. “Hear them, Wild Boy of London?
Growl.
”

“Grrr,” Wild Boy said.

“Growl
louder
!”

“I said
grrr,
didn’t I?”

He knew she was enjoying this — not just his disguise, but being in charge. Whoever Mary Somerset was, he hoped she was close. He wasn’t used to wearing any shoes at all, let alone clumsy clown boots like these.

A stone hit Wild Boy from behind. A gang of boys sat on the edge of the bridge, throwing rubble at passersby. One of them spotted him and raced over, determined to look under his sack.

Wild Boy tried to stay calm, to fight his fear and think. He stepped back, ready to attack. He’d kick the boy in the face, he decided, and hope no one saw the hairy foot that shot from under his disguise.

But just as he came close, Clarissa snatched the boy’s arm.

“Can you swim?” she asked him.

“Eh?” the boy grunted. “Why’d you wanna know that?”

“Because if you touch my friend, I’ll throw you in the river.”

They eyeballed each other — a battle of wills. The boy was from the streets, but Clarissa was tougher, and he could tell. She let go of his arm, and he turned and scampered away.

Clarissa burst out laughing. “Did you see that?”

“Clarissa,” Wild Boy said. “Look!”

The boy had run back to his friends. He pointed at Clarissa, and the whole gang leaped from the parapet and barged their way closer.

The smile slipped from Clarissa’s face. “Can we fight that many?” she said.

“I’m in a sack, remember? We gotta get out of here.”

“Hold my arm!”

Wild Boy gripped her tightly as she led him through the crowds. They reached the end of the bridge and she pulled him into a side street, away from the danger of the gang. “They’re gone,” she said, sighing in relief. “This is the way anyway. Come on.”

They entered a maze of dark lanes and courtyards. Shabby buildings scowled at them as they passed. Wild Boy heard steamboat bells close by on the Thames. Even through the sack, he could smell the river’s turgid water.

He wasn’t surprised that Clarissa knew her way around here. They weren’t far from West Smithfield, where Bartholomew Fair was held each year. He guessed that she used to sneak from the fairground and explore these streets, and he found himself wishing he’d known her better back then. He’d never really thought he could be friends with anyone. But maybe he’d been wrong.

“All right,” Clarissa said, “we’re here.”

Wild Boy peered eagerly through the holes in the sack. They had stopped in the middle of a particularly squalid street near the riverbank. On one side stood rickety wooden houses. On the other was a decrepit stone church with a wild, overgrown graveyard. A crooked gas lamp cast a queasy glow over its rusty iron gate.

“Mary Somerset,” Clarissa said.

“Where?”

She turned him around, so his gaze fell again on the church. “There.”

Wild Boy stared up at the church’s tower as a bat dipped in and out of the moonlight. Finally he understood. “
Saint
Mary Somerset,” he said.

It wasn’t a person. It was a church.

T
he graveyard gates were twelve feet tall, wet with rain, and armed at the top with razor-sharp spikes. Clarissa was up and over them in seconds — a jump, a flip, and a perfect landing on the other side. She grinned at Wild Boy between the bars.

“Bet you can’t get through.”

Wild Boy checked again that the street was empty, and then tugged off his sack disguise and kicked his clown shoes into a puddle. He brushed back the hair on his face and grinned at Clarissa. “Bet I can,” he said.

Pulling the gate on its chain, he stepped sideways through the gap. Clarissa muttered something about cheating, but he pretended not to hear as he peered through the misty moonlight at Saint Mary Somerset church. The building, once perhaps beautiful, was now almost completely blackened by grime. The only signs of its original color were four pinnacles of white stone that rose from the top of the tower, like skeleton fingers reaching into the night.

Clarissa peered warily around the dark graveyard. “Do you think the killer’s here?”

Wild Boy crouched and examined the gravel path that led to the church. He couldn’t see any signs of footprints, or other clues to suggest anyone had been here since it had last rained. But he was sure this church was important. He brought the Doctor’s notebook from his pocket and reread the words from the torn-out page.
The machine . . . burned . . . Mary Somerset.

“The machine what changes you,” he said.

“What?” Clarissa said.

“Nothing.”

Clarissa trudged to a wooden hut off the path, unlocked the door with her picks, and stole a lantern she saw inside. She struck the flint and handed Wild Boy the light. Now that she’d led them here, she was happy to let him take charge. “So what are we looking for?”

Wild Boy wished he had an answer. His big eyes searched the outside of the church for clues to make sense of the words in the Doctor’s book. The building was derelict, but it didn’t look like it had suffered any fires recently. Nor did any of these gravestones, or the —

He closed his eyes and groaned. What an idiot he’d been! “Of course!” he said. “The graves.”

That middle word in the book wasn’t
burned.

It was
buried.

“We gotta check them graves,” he said.

They set off through the graveyard that ran along the side of the church. Moldering headstones rose at odd angles from long, straggly grass. Wild Boy’s lantern cast a shaky glow over ivy-covered headstones, broken-faced angels, and sacred promises carved in stone —
We will never forget you.
. . .
I will fear no evil. . . . I will rise again. . . .

He had never been in a graveyard before, and he didn’t like it. He thought he saw something move behind one of the stone tombs. He turned, but there was no one there — just the wind rustling the long grass.

“Over here!” Clarissa called.

He rushed to where she stood beneath the sprawling arms of a yew tree. The grass here reached halfway up his legs, and the headstones — small and cheaply cut — were stained with patches of glistening slime.

Wild Boy held the lantern over one of the graves. At the top of the headstone, he could just see a faint letter scratched beneath the mold.

“Another
G,
” Clarissa said. “It’s them again, the Gentlemen.”

Wild Boy rubbed away a patch of the mold to reveal the name on the headstone.

“Never heard of him,” Clarissa said.

Yes, you have,
Wild Boy thought. She just didn’t remember. He opened the Doctor’s notebook and flicked to the page. “Here. This is him. . . .”