Joshua should have been at the Silver Unicorn helping to straighten up, but Vi had gone on a fool’s errand to find her marquess, and Joshua hadn’t wanted to waste the chance to embark on his own errand. Once she returned, he’d be cleaning for days. He’d followed her out of Seven Dials and set up his thimbles in Covent Garden. There were always a few people willing to risk a coin or two there on a game of thimblerig. He let a few of them find the pebble under his thimbles, and then, when he had a bit of a crowd, he offered double or nothing. A young, well-dressed man took him up on the offer, and Joshua did what he’d practiced a thousand times. He palmed the pebble so no matter which thimble the man picked, he wouldn’t find the pebble. Then Joshua neatly replaced the pebble when he turned over all the thimbles so it would seem to be a fair game.
He might have played longer, took in more coin, but he had other plans. So he pocketed his money and his thimbles and disappeared back into Seven Dials.
Ferryman’s territory was comprised of three streets—well, two and one that was contested by Resurrection Man, anotherarch rogue, and his gang. There were frequent fights over who was allowed to collect taxes from the shops and taverns on that street, and it had become so treacherous that most of those establishments had closed. The Silver Unicorn was located on Clover Lane, a small offshoot of one of Ferryman’s streets. The Black Bear was at the other end of the other street. If Joshua had gone directly, it would have taken him about five minutes to walk from one tavern to the other. But he didn’t go directly. He took a long route through back alleys and inside abandoned buildings, over fences and roofs, and finally into the first-floor window of a room above the Black Bear’s public room.
At this time of day, the tavern was quiet. The owner served coffee and tea in the morning, but there wasn’t much call for that sort of fare in Seven Dials. Business picked up when the fancy came slumming and the locals returned home from their work in the factories and shops outside of Seven Dials.
The quiet of the tavern suited Joshua just fine. If the place had been busy then Lizzie would have been needed downstairs. At this time of day, he expected to find her working upstairs.
Joshua crept out of the room he’d entered and into a corridor. The other doors along the corridor were closed. Most of those rooms were rented by prostitutes, so he wasn’t about to start opening doors. Whores did not like having their sleep disturbed. He was wondering how long he’d have to stand here, and if Lizzie was even around, when a door opened and she stepped out. Joshua slunk back out of instinct, then poked his head out the door again. He waved to her, and she waved back, though she looked over her shoulder in a way that let him know she was concerned.
Joshua ducked back into the room where he’d entered. There were blankets on the floor and a few items of clothing strewn about. Lizzie had told him once this was where she and some of the younger members of Ferryman’s gang slept. The othergang members were no doubt already at their jobs, the legal and illegal. Joshua was glad he had Lizzie to himself for once.
She stepped into the bedchamber and, with a quick look over her shoulder, closed the door behind her. “Ye shouldn’t be ’ere,” she said quietly, but she was smiling.
“Can’t I visit a friend?”
“Not if Ferryman finds out. ’E’d kill both of us.”
Joshua didn’t doubt the truth of that statement. That was the reason Vi had forbidden Joshua from talking to Lizzie, but though he respected his sister and thought most of her decisions sound, he couldn’t give up Lizzie. She was his friend. Secretly, he hoped one day to marry her. He’d made the mistake of telling Vi this one time, and she had acted as though the ceiling was falling down on their heads.
“Marry her? Joshua, the girl will be lucky if she lives to see fourteen.” Vi had jumped up and grasped the back of one of the chairs in their flat. “She’s Ferryman’s dell. You know what that means.”
Joshua did know what that meant. A dell was a woman who hadn’t yet lost her virginity and whom the arch rogue of a gang claimed as his own. Once Ferryman tired of a dell, she became the property of the gang and was passed around to all the members. Lizzie’s parents had died when she was nine or ten, and she’d been snatched from the orphanage by Ferryman, who had an eye for a pretty girl. Lizzie had deep brown eyes and dimples when she smiled. Although she was dirty, too thin, her unwashed hair limp, she was still pretty.
“He hasn’t touched her,” Joshua had said, hunching his shoulders.
“He will,” Vi said with a certainty Joshua didn’t like. “Remember Molly Rogers? She was dead of the pox by age fifteen. God knows what happened to the brats she birthed.” Vi closed her eyes, and for an instant, Joshua saw the pain in them.She didn’t show emotion very often. She said it was because there was so much sadness in the world that if she allowed herself to feel too much of it, she would drown in a lake of her own tears. When he’d been little and cried over something, Joshua sometimes imagined his own tears would create a lake. Since he couldn’t swim, he usually wiped his nose and dried his tears.
“Vi, can’t we do something to help Lizzie?” Joshua had asked, taking advantage of her rare show of emotion.
Vi opened her eyes. “No. I can barely keep you and Georgie safe. I can’t do anything for Lizzie. I’m sorry for her, but there’s nothing I can do.”
Joshua hadn’t been angry with Lizzie. He knew he’d asked the impossible. Vi could no more help Lizzie than she could the one-legged beggar on the corner, the prostitutes sleeping in the room next door, or the children who dwelt in the room where he stood with Lizzie. Those children were undoubtedly wading into the cold Thames right now in search of bits and bobs.
“He won’t find out,” Joshua told Lizzie now. “No one saw me.”
“Good.” She sighed then set down her bucket full of rags and polish and lye. She worked at the Brown Bear cleaning and serving ale to pay for her room and what little she got to eat. If she made anything more than what was needed to cover those expenses, Ferryman took it. No one received special treatment from him, not even the girls he chose as his special companions.
“I have something for you,” Joshua said.
“Ye do?” Her dark brown eyes lit up in a way that made all the effort it had taken to see her worth it.
He reached into his pocket, pushed the thimbles out of the way, and withdrew a tattered red ribbon. He held it out, wishing it was new and clean.
“Oh!” Lizzie’s eyes widened.
“I thought red would look pretty in your hair,” he said.
Lizzie nodded, but she didn’t reach to take the ribbon. Joshua pushed his hand closer to her, but she shook her head. “I can’t take it.”
“Why not?”
“If ’e sees it, ’e’ll ask where it came from.”
“Tell him you found it.”
“Ferryman will say I’m lying and beat me. ’E don’t allow me anything ’e ’asn’t given me.”
