“I’m glad to see you are feeling strong enough to stand up,” she said in a cheerful voice as she entered the room and stopped beside him.
He turned to her and quietly asked, “Where is this place?”
“You mean this house?”
He nodded.
So it was as she’d thought, he wasn’t familiar with the area. It was no wonder he was asking. There was nothing but barren tree lines or empty flat lands as far as the eye could see in any direction. “You’re in Mammoth House, which is about a half day’s ride from Grimsfield. Do you know where that is?”
He shook his head.
“Do you remember how you got here?”
“Walked,” he said, turning his attention back out the window.
“From where?”
He shrugged. “The road mostly.”
She couldn’t say he wasn’t answering her questions,though they weren’t telling her much. “How did you get onto the road?”
“A man left me standing on it.”
That didn’t sound good. “Can you tell me more about how that came about or tell me about the man?”
“I was minding my ownself, wasn’t stealing anything or causing trouble to anyone. Just looking at the meat pies cooling in the window of a bread shop. A man grabbed me from behind, put ’is hand over me mouth, and tossed me inside a wagon as if I were a sack of coal. And ’e locked the door so we couldn’t get out.”
“That’s terrifying,” Loretta said and shivered. She didn’t want to alarm Farley and show how horrified she was about what had happened to him. “What man? Do you know who he was?”
Farley turned toward her again. His big brown eyes had narrowed with anger. “No. But ’e was big and strong. Lifted me right off me feet, he did.”
“Did anyone try to help you?”
“Won’t nobody ’elp a kid like me. I ’elped my ownself. I bit ’is ’and ’ard as I could. Tried to box his ears. I wasn’t going with ’im without a fight.”
Loretta understood his fury. She was angry, too. Anyone would be under the circumstances. “That’s dreadful. But you didn’t get away?”
“’E was too strong.”
“You saidwecouldn’t get out. Was someone with you? Your parents? Your mama?” she asked cautiously, hoping to trigger that softness in him that she’d only seen when he was dreaming of his mother.
Farley shook his head and his expression relaxed a little. His tone evened out as he said, “Got no parents. Got no one but me. Other boys were in the wagon—just like me.” He struck a thin, limber thumb to his chest. “The big oafthat took me stole them all right off the street and locked us inside. People watched, but no one cared.”
Still trying to comprehend his story of being abducted, she asked, “You didn’t know the man or the other boys?”
Farley coughed into his handkerchief a few times before saying, “Didn’t know him from any other devil or cur that walks the streets.”
Loretta blinked at his language but held the reprimand that wanted to spring forth. Since this was the first time Farley had opened up and was talking about himself, she wanted to be careful and not say anything that would cause him to go quiet.
She remained very still with her hands folded in front of her and kept her voice even as she asked, “Where was the shop you were standing in front of when the man grabbed you?”
“Near St. James Park.”
“So you were in London when you were taken?”
He nodded again. His eyes had softened and watered when he looked up at her and said, “’Ow am I going to get back?”
At present, she didn’t know. She hadn’t given much thought to him leaving, only staying at Mammoth House.
