Jim Morgan and the King of Thieves

by James Matlack Raney

  He was almost to the door when a lamp in one of the windows flicked to life. James’s exhaustion momentarily fled, his eyes went wide, and his heart pounded.

  Aunt Margarita appeared in the light of the lamp, as carefree and at ease as if she had just come from the country on a shopping trip to London.

  James clenched his fists and gritted his teeth. The traitorous woman must have gotten here ahead of him by carriage. He was just about to launch himself through the window and let the treacherous witch have it when, to her side, stepped the old man in the red wig and the pale captain with the jet-black hair. James’s anger spun immediately into fear. Instead of leaping through the window, he dove beneath the bushes under the sill to hide.

  James crouched in the dirt, breathing as shallowly as possible, praying his hammering heart did not sound nearly as loud as it felt. When he was finally sure he had escaped detection, James crawled under the cover of bushes to the side of the house and around the corner. It was sweaty and prickly work, a thorn from a rose bush leaving a nice, long scratch down the side of James’s face, but eventually he made it beneath an open window. Judging from the smells wafting out, James figured it was an open window to the kitchen. He breathed in the warm scent of fresh-baked bread and oil-basted chicken, his belly rumbling again at the thought of just one taste.

  When he could stand the tempting, delicious smells no longer, James risked a quick peek through the window. But just as soon as his view had crested the sill he suppressed a surprised gasp, throwing himself back down into the dirt. James had seen old Phineus and Molly the housemaid settling down at a servant’s table for dinner. Fortunately for James, though, they had been looking at each other and not out the window, and he had gone unseen yet again.

  James sat amongst the bushes for a long moment. He wanted to leap up and demand that Phineus give him some blasted dinner before he absolutely starved to death, but he had no idea if Phineus and the others had been in on Aunt Margarita’s traitorous plans. So instead he listened very carefully as they began to speak.

  “It’s all so horrible, I don’t even want to talk about it anymore!” said Molly, her voice as thick and warbly as though she had just finished sobbing.

  “I must admit,” Phineus said, sounding more tired and aged than ever before. “This has all left me rather shaken. Lord Morgan was a great student as a boy when I taught him so long ago. He was an even better man.”

  Molly sniffled and choked back more tears. “He was always so kind to me and Mildred, especially about the holidays. Always makin’ sure there was money for gifts and food. And now, for that witch, Margarita Morgan, to have the Cromiers over so soon, as if nothing had ever happened at all! They were in league, I tell you!” Molly whispered a little too loudly. “Her and the old Count and his son, Bartholomew, that pale creature. Have you ever seen a man look so close to death and still be walking and breathing? The most deadly man in his majesty’s navy, they say, and the most merciless!”

  Bartholomew Cromier. James pictured the dark-haired man with his terrible sword in hand, cold, blue eyes fixed on James as he came to take his life.

  “Hush, Molly!” Phineus snapped, and James envisioned the old man peering out from beneath his bushy eyebrows for listening ears.

  “You can’t hush the truth, Phineus! I couldn’t stand her or her little tyrant, God rest him.”

  “Molly! Don’t speak ill of the dead. No matter what else he may have been, he was still just a boy.”

  So they thought he was dead, James realized. Well they were all in for a surprise weren’t they?

  “He was old enough to know how to behave!” Molly’s biting tone pricked the fresh wounds on James’s insides. “I have two boys of my own and they are as kind and sweet as the saints and angels. But that one, ooh, if I weren’t a Christian woman I would swear that that little monster never saw the pearly gates and took a nose dive straight down to you know where!”

  “Molly!” Phineus said, gasping. A pit formed in James’s stomach and a knot in constricted his throat at the same time. Did they really hate him so much? Why did they love his father so and hate him with such fury?

  “While I don’t share your vituperative spirit, Molly, I must admit, the boy hadn’t been nearly the flower of honor that his father had been,” Phineus said with a sigh. “No discipline, no motivation, no desire for the greater deeds in life.

  “You know, there were rumors,” Phineus said, his voice growing distant. “That Lord Morgan had found a great treasure at sea. I was never sure whether or not to believe them, of course. But I knew that whatever his secrets, Lord Morgan had hoped to pass them on to his son one day. And while he didn’t say as much, the look in Lord Lindsay’s eyes when he saw what his son had become made me almost sure that such hopes were forever dashed, and that James was the greatest disappointment his father ever had. Perhaps it was a blessing that they both died before that spoiled boy turned into an even worse man.”

  The words turned James’s insides to ice. He sat there, frozen in place on the ground. Every word that Phineus spoke stung, but none so much as to hear that his father, the great lord and famous captain, had thought that his own son was his deepest shame.

  Finally the servants went quiet and all James heard was the sound of silverware clinking on dishes.

  James sat there in the dirt. His own father, he thought, along with everyone else he had ever known, hated his guts and thought him unworthy to inherit neither title nor treasure. Worse, the only person who had seemed to like James, his Aunt Margarita, was the very one who would have let him die. James’s throat felt suddenly tight and his nose stung.

  For a moment, James thought of leaping up and revealing himself to those treacherous commoners – and how would they feel then, having said all that rubbish about him? But with the Cromiers lurking about, just waiting to get their hands on him, James gritted his teeth and instead crawled back toward the street.

  No matter what anyone else said, James still had his box, and that meant he still had hope of getting his life back into some sort of order, even if everyone in the world hated him. He would come back, he thought angrily. He would find his father’s treasure and march up the street triumphantly with his own private army in tow. He would laugh as they locked Aunt Margarita and her cohorts in irons. Only then he would he think about forgiving the servants for their beastly words…perhaps.

  James crawled toward the corner of the house and was about to make a sprint for the far side of the street, when he ducked back behind the bushes. A man had stepped from the shadows and into the setting sun’s reach. He was obviously a man of the sea, the long great cloak of a ship’s captain draped over his shoulders, weathered and cracked like a worn-out saddle and as black as pitch, his upturned collar was buckled to the front, and his dark tricorn hat was pulled low, hiding his face. All the more strange and unnerving to James, a black raven sat perched upon the man’s shoulder, gazing intently over the street with dark eyes.

  A breeze blew up the street and tugged at the man’s coat. From beneath the flapping lapel, James caught the glint of a cutlass handle at the man’s side. The man stood still as a statue, staring at the Morgan house as though he could burn it down with his eyes. James wasn’t sure why, but the mere sight of the man terrified him. It terrified him like the thoughts of Bartholomew Cromier coming to get him.

  James forgot all about his painful feet and his desire for his warm bed. He crawled back the other way, heading toward the street on the backside of his house. The moment his feet touched the cobblestone road he ran as far and as fast as he could. Night was coming. It was obvious to James that no place his family owned was safe and his only hope was to make it to the palace on his own and find the king. The king would make things right. Perhaps he could even find a way to open the magically locked box. Then James could find the treasure. Then he could get revenge.

  TEN

  ames ran just a few blocks from the house before what little strength he had failed him,
then he all but sleepwalked the rest of the way toward the palace, the servants’ condemning words still ringing in his ears, anger burning in his heart, and a thick knot lodging itself once more in his throat. James harrumphed and hocked as best he could to dislodge the knot, but it refused to budge. Fortunately for James, the palace appeared around the next corner, and the need to create a plan distracted him for a few blessed moments.

  It had suddenly occurred to James that the King of England had never met him in person (though James had often imagined him doing so, and at his greatest pleasure no less) nor had anyone in the king’s court ever seen James’s face. This would be a problem, James imagined, considering the fact that he practically looked, and smelled, like a gypsy, and it was doubtful that anyone would simply take his word that he was the Lord Morgan’s dead son come back to life – and could he please have an appointment with the king, if you’d be so kind? Westminster Palace wasn’t exactly a barbershop after all, it did have guards who carried particularly sharp swords and rather intimidating muskets.

  As he came to stand before Westminster Palace, within a stone throw of the entranceway, James cursed his bad luck once more for Phineus’s failure to teach him any strategy, though in his heart he knew it was he who’d ignored the old man. James pulled the box out of his pocket, nervously gripping it, trying to put together the first words he would say to the guard at the gate, and then to the king.

  While James pondered all of this, he lost track of where he was walking, as people who ponder and walk at the same time often do, and unfortunately (or fortunately, as what happened next affected the entire course of James’s adventure) ran smack into the back of a burly boy and a couple of his lunkish friends.

  “Oy!” the burly boy exclaimed, whirling on James. He was big for his age, freckles running wild over his cheeks and nose, a homespun cap atop his head, and out from underneath the hat’s edges sprouting the curly puffs of the brightest red hair James had ever seen. “Watch where you’re walkin’, mate!”

  “Maybe you should watch where you’re standing!” James snapped back with apparent agitation. He was very busy thinking of how best to approach the palace gates, and he really had no time for stupid, redheaded street ruffians. However, James immediately regretted his quick temper, for these young men were hardly James’s frightened house servants, and quite disinclined to quail before James’s sharp tongue. The red-haired tough’s mates surrounded James, firm jaws and the set looks of boys who had been in enough fights to always be ready for the next one.

  “Well, well, well chums,” the red-haired boy, who was obviously the leader of the pack, crowed to his friends. He looked James over, an unimpressed smirk on his lips. “What sort of strange bird do we have here? By his plumes and his cheeks I’d say he was as dandy as Gentle Jack, but from the smell of him by gawd I’d say he was a jumpin’ gypsy!”

  The other boys, who were apparently Red’s yes men, chimed in one at a time.

  “Sure has some pretty locks — a dandy, all right, a dandy!”

  “Apply some fresh powder to your hands this morning, darlin’? Plumes and cheeks, plumes and cheeks, look at ’im!”

  “Ho’ever — smells like cabbage — could be a gypsy.”

  Big Red snapped his fingers, and his yes men shut their traps, but they continued to leer at James. Their confidence soared along with James’ ever-whitening cheeks. It must be understood that James had never really been forced to stand up for himself. Some servant or another had always been about whenever James had been in London before, and he’d never thought twice about his snide comments made from the safety of Aunt Margarita’s carriage. But now, facing four boys far more well put together for a row and far more eager for one than James himself, and having nothing but his clothes and the cool London air between himself and them, the world suddenly felt a mite bit more unpredictable.

  “Well, fellows.” James felt it wise to turn to his vast knowledge of their “street talk” than to tell them what he really thought. “I think there’s hardly call for a tussle over a bit of a bump, wouldn’t you say?”

  “No, I wouldn’t…fellow.” Big Red’s lips curled his sneer one more tick in the direction of wicked, as though he smelled a hint of fear just over the nearly overwhelming scent of cabbage lingering all over James.

  “No, we don’t know, do we?”

  “Do we fellow? Do we? Fell-o-o-w?

  “Fellow, fellow, fell-OW”

  Red snapped his fingers again and again his boys stopped yakking, mustering the biggest, dumbest grins they could. But to James, and to all other young boys who have been a bit on the smallish side, such big dumb smiles looked nothing but. Rather they appeared to James as cruel and bloodthirsty. Red, on the other hand, wasn’t smiling. He was staring - staring hard at the box in James’s hands. The look crossing his face was one that James should have recognized: the face of a little boy who suddenly wanted something that wasn’t his.

  “So, fell-ow.” Red walked in a close circle around James, puffing out his chest, his voice dripping with disrespect. “I’m thinkin’ you’re right about not needin’ any sort of tussle or nothin’ for such a lil’ bump.”

  “You are?” James wasn’t so sure about that. “That’s quite civil of you, thank you.”

  “Oh, you’ll find I’m all about civilness, my good fell-ow.” Red’s gang giggled.

  “Ah, of course,” James said. “That would be ‘civil-ity,’ but I appreciate it nonetheless.”

  Red’s friend’s giggled even harder now.

  “I think we can get over all of this with a simple tradin’ of goods.” Red stopped circling, coming face to face with James, crossing his arms over his chest. “You gimme that box, and I’ll let you off the old hook and call us square.”

  James may have been selfish and naïve, but stupid he was not. He saw what was coming and his grip tightened on his precious box. Whatever happened, he wouldn’t lose it – he couldn’t lose it. The box held all that was left of who James was, and it was his only way of getting everything he lost back again. James once more regretted tossing down the swords of his fencing lessons and shrugging at the old master’s attempts to teach him a few tricks of wrestling. Those lapses in attention, it seemed, were about to prove costly.

  “It’s mine,” James said as hotly as he could. Sweat slicked his palms and flickering fear twinged in his stomach.

  “A tussle it is then!” Red smiled with glee and snapped his fingers. The gang of yes men seized James by his arms while Red grabbed the box.

  James did his best. He could not be faulted for lack of effort. He kicked and squirmed, twisted and thrashed in the bigger boys’ grip, he may have even bitten an arm or hand or two and certainly exercised his knowledge of foul words, but it was no use in the end, for something happened that all the old servants predicted would happen to James for a long, long time.

  Big Red hauled back and planted his fist right into James’s face.

  James fell back through the gang of boys and landed flat on his seat with a thud. His face lit up with pain like a candle and his eyes flew wide as tea saucers. He gingerly raised his hand to his lip. The flesh was already tender and swollen, and when James pulled his hand away red blood ran down his fingertips. “You, you s-s-truck me,” James said, eyes watering and chin quivering.

  “I…I…s-s-ure…did,” Red mocked, his band of lunks joining in.

  “How…how…did it f-f-feel?”

  “Is b-b-aby gonna c-c-ry?”

  “Can’t even fend for himself…he’s a dandy all right, an absolute dandy!”

  James sat there, throat tightening and face flashing with heat. No one came to pick him up. No one stood up for him or stepped forward to mete out justice. No one reminded the boys that he was a lord and they were commoners, and no one came to admonish them that stealing was wrong. Instead, the thieves heaped derision on poor James - and he just sat there and took it because he had no idea what else to do.

  “Thanks for the trade, my
good fell-ow!” Red said. He snapped his fingers again and he and his little band strutted off down the street.

  James sat there silently for a moment, and then he did the last thing that any self-respecting boy would do in the middle of the street: he balled his eyes out. It was hard to blame him really, after all he’d been through, but the crying wasn’t solving any of his growing list of problems.

  “Tears won’ get your treasure back, m’boy,” a beggar who had sat by and watched the entire awful incident advised. “I know, I’ve cried a river full meself and still my tin cup stays as empty as me belly.”

  James stared incredulously at the beggar, wanting to ask why he bloody well hadn’t spoke up before now. But the man was right after all. So James jumped up and chased after the hoodlum gang.

  Fortunately, Big Red was just that: big and sporting hair bright as a firework, so finding him was hardly the issue, what to do after the fact was a bit more prickly. James had nothing even resembling a plan, but he was so desperate to retrieve his box that he pursued the boys down the crowded streets of London, through alleys and over bridges, until the streets grew unrecognizable, and the light in the air approached true night.

  James finally caught up with them and, lacking any better ideas, closed his eyes, lowered his shoulder, and ploughed headlong into Red’s back. He had hoped to knock the big lug over, but having never rammed anyone before, James lacked the momentum to weight ratio and suddenly found himself in the exact same situation as only a few minutes before.

  “Oy!” Red whirled about. “Watch where you’re — you?” This was certainly a surprise to Red, and his band echoed his sentiment.

  “You?”

  “You?”

  “Cabbage — it’s him all right.”

  “I need that box back,” James said, this time without the snide tone or dismissive gaze. All he had were tears and bloody lips. But Red wasn’t a forgiving sort of boy (he’d also had a rough childhood, you see, with a missing father and poor mother and all the rest), so once more he snapped his fingers, and again the gang seized James in their arms. Red pulled back for another doozy of a haymaker.