“Here, take this,” I said, holding out a still soft roll of bread.
The forge was burning bright and with a fury that demanded bent knees, but the two of us still stood. Maybe a more optimistic man would have called that something like hope.
The boy turned from where he was billowing life into an already saturated fire and stared at the small offering in my hand. Though he closed his mouth and licked his lips, he did not bolt for it.
Aye, just like another boy I once knew. You stared at me as if I were a venomous sea urchin offering you poison.
Billy’s voice was louder lately. Probably the reason I stuffed the bread into my pocket last night in the first place. I was too hard, too molded by an unforgiving sea and world to do it of my own volition. No, it was Billy's incessant talking that led me to do this now.
You’ll be telling yourself to the ends of the earth and back, but it ain’t going to make it any more true.
When the boy didn’t move, I let out a frustrated growl and shook my hand.
“Take it before I throw it into the fire, and it’s wasted,” I snapped.
The boy didn’t argue any more. Hunger winning over anything else. I tried to position the hammer I was working on between the stone locking mechanism that allowed me to forge with one hand, but it was hard not to notice the way the boy inhaled the bread as if it were the first meal he’d had in weeks.
“The gaoler doesn’t feed you?” I asked, bringing down my hammer, which sent sparks across the room.
“I’m not supposed to complain,” the boy said around a full mouth.
I raised an eyebrow and continued working.
“I’ll speak to Edmonds. You are no good to me if you can’t lift a sword,” I said.
The boy swallowed and rubbed at his throat, which was likely too dry to get the bread down comfortably.
“Please don’t, sir, it’s not that I’m not grateful. I am, but the Gaoler–he says if I die he’ll just replace me cause there ain’t no shortage of thieving orphans in London,” he said. “It’s better in the forge than it was before, sir, better than the round room.”
His cadence quickened as desperation set in, and the memory of the rotunda where they kept the majority of prisoners flashed into his small mind. A place where prisoners took what they wanted, and no one asked when, in the morning, there were less people than before.
I heard their screams at night from Oscar and I’s cell. It wasn’t hard to imagine the terror that clawed its way out of the boy and into his voice.
I tilted my head to the hammer. “Heat it.”
He obeyed without hesitation as if following orders was all he’d ever known. His shaggy hair was littered with dirt and grease as he took the axe from my stand. The fire loomed ever-present, filling the air with a cackling smoke that filled both our lungs like a promise of painful death.
“How old are you?” I asked and immediately cursed myself.
Bread was one thing. Questions were unacceptable.
The boy turned, setting the hammer back in its notch, moving to the side quickly so I could begin work again. As I brought down metal to metal, I thought maybe he wouldn’t answer, and I’d be spared from my own foolishness, but a fool only ever meets a fool’s end.
“Nine, sir, I think.” he shrugged. “I ain’t never had anyone to tell me, but when I got caught stealing, they told me I was about that age, but maybe I’m older now. Hard to say.”
Fuck me and fuck my questions.
“Why were you on the streets instead of the orphanage?” I asked, sweat dripping down my brow and onto my work.
“Figured my chances were better out on the streets than with Mrs. Crump, and even though I’m in here, I still say it was the right choice, sir,” he said.
Next time Oliver Bailey deigned to visit Oscar, I would be passing along a name for consideration. Any human who was deemed a lesser evil than Newgate deserved a fucking noose around their neck.
I didn’t tighten the rope around my neck anymore, but hours later, when I sat before Edmonds with dinner of roast and potatoes, I damn well jumped off the gallows.
“I can’t do my job with a starving boy, Edmonds. I want him fed the same as you feed me, or I’ll go back to my cell and be back to whatever was distasteful to you before,” I said.
Edmonds, who had said nothing at all as I ate, tilted his head as he met my eyes.
