Another Twist in the Tale

by Catherine Bruton

  “Rescuin’ you, tha’s what we’se doin’!” A beaming smile lit up Baggage’s crumpled features, making it more beautiful than any face Twill had ever seen.

  “But how did you even know…?”

  “The coachman wot they sent for Mr Scapegrace – ’e tipped Bob off,” said Baggage. “He knows everyone, does my Bob. Finger in ev’ry pie – as they says.”

  “Oh, Baggage,” said Twill, her heart so full she thought it might actually burst. “You don’t know how I’ve missed you!”

  “Don’t I such?” said Baggage reprovingly. “When not a day’s gone by I haven’t cried myself to sleep for aching for my little Twill! I told Bob I woultn’t rest till I found you again, an’ now here you are!” She flung her arms around Twill’s neck, and all that Twill longed to do was pour all of the day’s woes and worries into her warm bosom.

  But Baggage pulled away quickly, businesslike now. “But there’s no time to be gettin’ silly – we needs to get you away. Once Madam knows youse gone there’s no telling what she’ll do.”

  “Madam…” Twill recalled with a start. “Angel – she has Angel!”

  “Don’t you fret. The Sisters be rescuin’ the little Angel,” said Baggage. “I wos to get you, Bob’s helpin’ with the boys and the young man the girls call Dodger was dealin’ with the wicked old man. We’re all to meet back at the Cripples.”

  The old printing press had been deemed too dangerous to return to for fear its location might have been compromised, so it was decided that the raiders of the Benevolent would reconvene back at the public house known as the Three Cripples, where a chamber behind the pump room, hidden from view by a false wall, was to be the headquarters of the counter-attack conspiracy.

  Twill and Baggage made their way through the slums of Hatton Garden, into the area they called the Rookery. In daytime this slum was home to the traders who purchased “secondhand” (ahem!) silk handkerchiefs and pocket watches from the pickpockets, and these gaudy flags could be seen everywhere, dangling from pegs outside windows or flaunting from doorposts. At early morn and at the setting in of dusk, this emporium of petty larceny was visited by the silent merchants or “fences” who traffic with stolen goods in dark back parlours and go as strangely as they come. But by night the place was more sinister still – strange figures hung in the shadows, the skeletons of crumbling buildings loomed like flayed corpses and strange noises permeated the air – thuds and screams rising up from within the hovels and dank cellars as if the whole area was populated by poltergeists.

  Twill was used to this by now, and Baggage was too fired up with rescuing zeal to be disconcerted as they hurried towards the notorious drinking den known as the Three Cripples – an establishment as dilapidated as its name appeared to suggest, but from which came the sound of raucous laughter, the out-of-tune twang of a piano being played with extraordinary gusto, and a cacophony of voices raised in song, with just one sweet note soaring high above the rest.

  As they pushed open the door to the public house, the sound swelled and Twill saw an old man at the piano who looked no younger than one hundred and fifty years old. He had but one leg and one eye – when the general prejudice runs in favour of two – but this did not stop him from banging on the pedals of the old pianola as he belted out the notes of the song.

  And next to him stood a girl who delivered the single sweet chord that ran below the rousing chorus of the rest. The singer – whose name was Bet, and who readers may recall as the erstwhile friend of one Nancy (heroine of the tale of Oliver Twist) – sang of lost friends and a love worth dying for, sentiments that lent such sweet melancholy to her voice that one might have guessed that she too recalled that good fallen woman who had given everything to protect young Oliver.

  But now was no time for sentiment. Baggage caught the eye of the publican – the same stout and pragmatic gentleman who had been custodian of the establishment since the days of the villainous Mr William Sikes – and he rose discreetly, indicating that the girls should follow. He led them past the snug and into a corridor that appeared to house only a shelf of barrels but, with a gentle tap in the right spot, revolved creakily to reveal an aperture – a door into a secret room behind the wall.

  What purpose the publican had for such a room may only be surmised, but if the government will place exorbitant taxes upon the importing of liquor then perhaps they should not be surprised if barrels of such stuff find their way into the country by other means – and such contraband must be stored somewhere! For today, however, the room was to serve as hiding place for smuggled boys, some of whom were already secreted away in there.

  “Lawks a-mercy – why are they blue?” demanded Baggage.

  “Long story!” said Chelsea, who had returned just before Twill and Baggage.

  “’Tis the old devil’s black soul staining the very air!” said a voice from the doorway. Dodger – returned from the fray – was looking very much the worse for wear. His jacket was torn and bloodstained, his nose plastered in the same red gore, and his beloved top hat nowhere to be seen. But worse than his appearance was the expression on his face. He looked crushed, broken, unmendable.

  “What is it?” asked Twill, rushing over to him. “Dodger, what happened?”

  “Why, ’e’s like a very serpent! One minute I ’ave him in my grasp, then he some’ow slips away an’…” He looked at Twill desperately. “Angel!”

  Twill’s heart lurched in her chest. “What of Angel?”

  “I ’ad him right under the sluice gate,” said the Artful, each word paining him to tell. “Woultn’t ’ave minded if it ’ad fallen on his neck like a guillotine – cut that scrawny devil’s throat once an’ for all. But the fat lady had Angel and she was screaming and I … I let him go – I had to – to save her.” He looked at Twill in desperation. “Only I was too slow – an’ now they’ve got ’er still.”

  “So it was all for nothing!”

  “Not for nothing – no! Look at all the boys we set free!” said Bob the butcher’s boy, who had just appeared through the secret doorway with a basket of rolls and currant buns, which he began distributing to the hungry escapees.

  “An’ you too, my Twill,” said Baggage, her dear old face filled with love, and unable to take her eyes off her darling. “Oh, you are a sight to make the ’eart sing. An’ I do declare you is even more beautiful than you wos – even dressed as a boy – ain’t she?”

  Here she turned to Bob and Dodger as the two male arbiters of beauty in the room. Bob looked awkward and muttered something about “beauty and beholders … an’ some prefers a more comfortable face…” while Dodger’s cheeks coloured to the shade of his bloody nose as he declared that he’d “never given the matter much thought – too busy for wenches and women and … and…” before changing the subject altogether and declaring loudly, “We needs to stop ’em!”

  “Yes!” said Twill. “We have to save Angel – and poor dear Mr Brownlow too! For I fear he is in mortal danger. But how ever it is to be done?”

  “Don’t you fret!” came a voice from behind, and they all turned to see an unexpected figure standing in the doorway, who declared, “Mr Scapegrace is on the case!”

  There was a stunned silence as the assembled company stared at this most unlikely of visitors: young Miss Anna Dropsy.

  “He told me to bring you this!” said Dropsy, no longer looking mealy-mouthed but proudly heroic, as she withdrew from her cloak a piece of parchment, which she handed to Twill.

  “But – I don’t understand. I saw him at Mr Brownlow’s.”

  Twill was still trying to make sense of events that were moving at dizzying speed. “He seemed so…” She recalled the cold-eyed stare of her erstwhile tutor with a shudder.

  “Well, ’e couldn’t rightly let Madam suspect he wos on our side, no!” said Baggage. “An’ the dear old man’s been in love wiv the mistress since she wos a Butterfly.”

  “Madam Manzoni was a Butterfly?” Twill and Dodger both exclaimed in unison
.

  “But ’e loves you wiv a father’s love,” said Bob.

  “An’ a parent’s devotion is strongest in the world!” declared Baggage.

  “Madam’s mistake wos to fink his loyalty to ’er would be stronger than any other attachment,” said Bob, for it seemed the Black Jack gang were all in on this latest plot turn. “But ’e would do anything to save you, young Twill – anything.”

  Twill was still confused.

  “Them documents wot he drafted for Mr Brownlow to sign,” Anna Dropsy went on, “Mr Scapegrace crafted the wording so clever – an’ your Madam trusts ’im so deep she don’t bother to check.”

  “Check what exactly?”

  “Before Brownlow signed ’is fortune over to them rascals, ’e signed over power of attorney to his ward,” said Baggage cheerfully.

  “Dear little Oliver Twist!” Anna Dropsy beamed at Twill.

  “I see!” said Twill, though she wasn’t sure she did. “But – um – what does that actually mean?”

  “And what do we do now?” demanded Dodger.

  “Well, the lawyery old fella – your Mr Scapegrace – ’e says they’ll be goin’ to the Farthingale and Shillingsworth Bank tomorrow,” explained Anna Dropsy, screwing up her face as she recited the instructions she had carefully memorised. “To withdraw the funds, ’e says.”

  “So soon!” exclaimed Twill.

  “An’ only Oliver can stop ’em,” added Anna.

  With dawning comprehension, Twill saw the plan her tutor had in mind – a plan to save Mr Brownlow and keep Oliver’s inheritance from the hands of the villains – and it was nothing short of brilliant. Recalling the blinking gaze of Mr Scapegrace she made a mental note to commend him later on his superb acting skills.

  But then something occurred to her.

  “What about Angel?”

  “Tha’s the bit we needs to figure out!” said Dodger.

  “Leave that to us!” said Chelsea. “She’s one of the Sassy Sisters. We will bring our girl home!”

  That night was an uneasy one. Desperately tired as Twill was, there was so much playing on her mind that she could never have slept were it not for Baggage, whose warm comforting presence acted on her like a sleeping draught. For a long time they sat side by side, propped up against barrels of contraband rum and surrounded by the slumbering figures of blue boys and Sassy Sisters. Bob had fallen asleep with his mouth open and was emitting a series of low snorting noises, whilst Dodger slept bolt upright with what looked like one eye open, his head twitching every now and then as if he were still fighting old Fagin in his sleep.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t live up to your high hopes of me!” whispered Twill, her eyelids drooping as the soft wings of sleep crept across her brow. “You wanted me to be a ladies’ maid and here I am – a lawbreaker and a fraud.”

  “An’ I couldn’t be prouder!” Baggage replied – the last words Twill heard before she finally drifted off to sleep.

  Chapter 33

  In which the tale Twists and Turns

  The next morning the counter-conspirators dined on bacon and eggs provided by the publican of the Three Cripples – who himself bore an ancient grudge against Mr Fagin for the role the villain had played in the downfall of Miss Nancy. Then they went over the plan once again – Twill struggling to get her head around the codicils and caveats and chattels and culpas and contingencies of Mr Scapegrace’s documentation. She wasn’t at all sure she understood the legal niceties of the plan – nor was she convinced that the plot would work at all – but it was the only chance they had. She had to try.

  So Twill was got up once more in her “Oliver togs” as the Sassy Sisters had taken to calling them, whereupon Mr Jack Dawkins told her she looked “regular daft in that get-up”, and yet was for some reason unable to look her directly in the eye. Then she and Dodger made their way down the Strand to Trafalgar Square, to the headquarters of Farthingale and Shillingsworth Bank. The sun was shining as they stood before the imposing building – a regular wedding cake confection in white Bath stone, adorned with a plasterwork frieze that appeared to depict two merchants standing before a young judge holding a pair of weighing scales in one a hand and a knife in the other.

  “I wonder what story it’s supposed to represent,” thought Twill, making a mental note to ask Mr Scapegrace when all this was over. “If the plans works!” she added silently to herself.

  For if the plan did not work, she too might find herself facing a judge before nightfall – and locked up in Newgate by morning! For was she not impersonating a very well-known young man who was heir to a very large fortune? And had she not duped a very well-known philanthropist and benefactor to the city? And had she not persuaded that well-known old man to sign over power of attorney under false pretences? If she was found out, the law was not likely to look kindly on her – or any of her party. For what judge would find in favour of the vagabond imposters over the respected beadle and his cohort?

  “You can do this!” Dodger had appeared by her side as Twill stood, staring up at the giant marble portico.

  She turned and beheld Dodger, who managed to meet her eye for the first time in nearly two days. “What if I can’t?”

  “A’ course you can! First moment I met you, I says to meself – there’s a regular rum ’un – a girl wot can keep pace with the Dodger!”

  “I can outpace you, actually!”

  “If you says so!” Dodger shrugged. “But it’s not often I comes across a girl wot can match me. Not since – well, not since dear old Nancy.” His face softened as he spoke. “You reminds me of ’er, as it ’appens – same lion heart and stubbornness. She was the only one wot could ever outsmart old Fagin – and not cos she was faster or cleverer but cos she cared more an’ anyone else ’bout what was right and wrong. And that’s you, right enough.”

  Twill was momentarily lost for words. She was accustomed to Dodger’s insults but this serious Dodger who spoke softly – well, he rather bamboozled her.

  So it was with this dubious encouragement that Twill made her way up the white stone steps, pushed open the heavy mahogany door and found herself in a high-ceilinged vestibule with austere oak panelling and marble fretwork that stretched up to a domed roof on which carved cherubs frolicked. On the walls loomed portraits of severe-looking men – ancient Shillingsworths and Farthingales stretching back many generations, some bewigged, some bearded, some powdered but all sharing the same grim expression, frowning down upon those with the temerity to cross the marble chessboard floor into the hallowed halls of the bank.

  A light porter stood at the doorway, nose raised in the air, a disdainful expression on his face.

  “I am here,” Twill informed him, her chin up and her shoulders back so as not to betray her nerves, “to meet with the managers, Messrs Farthingale and Shillingsworth.”

  “I’m afraid they are engaged with other clients and cannot be disturbed,” said the porter, who was a very light porter indeed, having hair so pale it was almost white, and eyelashes so luminescent his milky grey eyes looked bare and unfringed.

  “Trust me,” said Twill. “My business is of such import that they will not object to the intrusion.”

  “Indeed?” snuffled the porter, eyeing her with a mixture of suspicion and deference.

  “My name,” she declared, fingers crossed behind her back, “is Oliver Twist!”

  This seemed to have an effect on the light porter, who sniffed loudly and then, speaking through his nose as if he was suffering from a heavy cold, conceded. “I shall enquire. Come with me.”

  Led by this young man, Twill made her way past rows of stooping grey bank clerks, sitting at desks writing in large leather-bound ledgers. Though she was trembling inside, she tried to carry herself as she supposed a young man of means might do in such a setting, holding her head high, and pulling her shoulders back. But when through the glass windows of the office of Messrs Farthingale and Shillingsworth Twill saw that the clients with whom they were conducti
ng business were none other than Bumble and Barrabas and the formidable Madam Manzoni, she had to swallow an instinct to run as fast as she could in the opposite direction, and instead tried to compose her face into the angelic expression she had seen in the portraits of young Master Twist.

  “Wait here, please, Master Twist,” said the light porter, pronouncing her name with dubious tones.

  Twill stood back as the porter knocked on the door and entered. From her vantage point, she could see the twin figures of Messrs Farthingale and Shillingsworth sat behind twin mahogany desks. These two men, though they were not related by blood, had spent so many hours of their life together, bent over the same figures, counting the same neat piles of coins, and dreaming the same dreams of pounds, shillings and pence, that they had come to resemble each other as owners sometimes do their dogs. Both were grey-haired, both had a slight stoop of the shoulders, and both had a superabundance of wrinkles, as if they had spent so long buried in ledgers that the lines of figures had become mapped over their faces. Both wore well-cut frock-coats, which hung a little limply off their sloping shoulders, and both had a single monocle – but whereas Mr Farthingale’s was gold and hung from a chain around his neck, Mr Shillingsworth’s was of tortoiseshell and perched on a small handle, like a pair of opera glasses.

  Neither looked up when the light porter entered, but Mr Farthingale – or it might have been Shillingsworth – intoned dryly, “What is it?”

  “Sir, I have a young gentleman most urgently requests to see you.”

  “We are busy,” declared Mr Shillingsworth – or was it Farthingale?

  “The young gentleman in question is most insistent,” said the porter. “Said you would not object to the intrusion.”

  “Who is this young gentleman?” said one of the, grey bank managers.

  The light porter’s answer seemed to have a singular effect on all the inhabitants of the room. “Why, sir, he says his name is – Oliver Twist.”