Wild Boy Read online

  “Wonder what he’s got under there?” Wild Boy said.

  “Nice fat pocketbook, that’s what,” replied Clarissa.

  They grinned at each other, and then scowled, remembering they were enemies.

  “He’s getting closer,” Clarissa said.

  The man looked like he was in a rush. Sweat dripped from beneath the brim of his top hat, and he was muttering under his breath. He stopped and looked over his shoulder, and his arm tightened around whatever he was protecting under his cloak.

  “See that?” Clarissa whispered. “Definitely something under there.”

  She was trying to look calm, but Wild Boy could tell by the way her tongue dashed anxiously over her broken front tooth that she was as nervous as he was. Something about the man didn’t seem right, although he couldn’t work out what. He wanted to warn Clarissa, to tell her they should find someone else. But he reminded himself how badly he needed the money.

  “Here he comes,” Clarissa said.

  The man came closer. . . .

  “Now,” Wild Boy whispered.

  Clarissa’s hand shot under the man’s cloak, delving for a pocketbook. He was just inches away on the other side of the banner, so close that Wild Boy could see the sweat glisten on his bushy whiskers. For a thrilling second he thought Clarissa was going to pull this off. . . .

  Then the man stepped back and screamed. One hand seized Clarissa’s wrist, while the other lashed out, wielding a clasp knife. Unable to see his attacker, he slashed wildly at the banner. Veins bulged in his forehead, as he yelled a strange warning. “You’ll never get the machine! You can kill me, but you’ll never get the machine!”

  “Get off me!” Clarissa cried. “Get him off me!”

  Wild Boy struggled to pull her from the man’s grip. The knife slashed his coat sleeve, but he held on and pulled harder. Finally he tore Clarissa free and they tumbled back between the caravans. When they looked up again, the man had turned and fled for the park gates.

  All around the path, curious heads turned. Without a word, Wild Boy and Clarissa sprang up and pelted away into the backstage area of the circus. They hid behind the stable hut, breathing hard.

  Clarissa slammed a hand against the stable wall. “Why didn’t you tell me he had a knife? He was crazy, a lunatic! And what was he saying?”

  “Something about a machine,” Wild Boy wheezed. “What did he have under his cloak?”

  “Nothing! Just this.”

  She thrust a scrap of paper at his face.

  It looked like a letter. Wild Boy reached out to take it, but she snatched it back.

  “It’s your fault,” she said. “I ain’t got nothing now!”

  She glanced toward the circus tent, and Wild Boy saw a fear in her eyes that he recognized. Clarissa, too, was scared to go back.

  “Well,” he said, “maybe we can find another —”

  “Shut up, freak! I should never have listened to you.” She shoved him in the chest and ran off toward the circus. “You owe me double now.”

  Wild Boy didn’t bother yelling a reply. He had bigger problems than Clarissa Everett. Like her, he’d gotten nothing. And so he had to return to Finch. By now the showman would have passed out from drinking. But come the morning . . .

  “I ain’t scared of him,” he muttered unconvincingly. “I’ll punch out his teeth. Give him another scar on that ugly . . .”

  He turned. Someone was watching him.

  A dark figure stood in the shadows at the end of the stable, hidden by a sagging black hood and a leather cloak that draped to the ground. Wild Boy couldn’t see anything under the cloak — no hands, no face, not even any boots through the holes in its tattered, muddy trail.

  But he was certain the figure was staring at him.

  He knew that drunks often sneaked behind the caravans for free looks at the freaks, but this person didn’t seem like he’d been boozing. The figure stood perfectly silent and perfectly still, except where his leather shroud rustled and creaked in the wind.

  Gathering his nerve, Wild Boy edged closer. “Hey!” he said. “Hey, you! Get a good look, did you?”

  Still the figure didn’t move. Then, from under the hood came a voice that caused Wild Boy to step back in fright. It was deep and menacing, but also strangely distant, like the growl of an animal far away.

  “Where is it?” the voice said.

  “Eh?”

  “Where is the machine?”

  “Machine?” Wild Boy replied. Wasn’t that what the man he and Clarissa just robbed had yelled? You’ll never get the machine. . . .

  A cry rang out behind him. He whirled around, but it was just someone at the fair. Quickly he turned back.

  But the hooded man had vanished.

  “Bloomin’ idiot!” Wild Boy yelled.

  He tried to sound tough but something about that figure had sent a chill through every hair on his body, an even deeper fear than anything he’d experienced that night. Whoever it had been, he was glad the person was gone.

  He pulled his long coat tighter around him and trudged back toward the freak shows. He looked forward to the fair moving on, and getting out of this wretched place. So far, Greenwich wasn’t going well at all.

  Wild Boy woke to the call of a crow.

  The beady-eyed bird sat in the caravan doorway, considering him with a curious, tilted gaze. What was that hairy creature curled up on the floor?

  The crow flapped away as Wild Boy rose with a groan from the sacks. Everything hurt from the beatings he’d taken last night — his arm, his back, his jaw. His body felt like one big bruise. He rubbed his coat sleeve and felt the slash where the man’s knife had struck. It still didn’t make sense to him. The man had gone crazy, screaming about some machine. And then, moments later, that hooded figure had said the same thing. . . .

  But he had to forget about it. He had a bigger problem that morning in the shape of Augustus Finch. He prayed that the showman had been too drunk last night to remember their fight.

  He brushed back the hair on his face and peered nervously through the van door. Outside, the clouds had cleared and the morning sun streamed into the park. A dawn chorus of curses and threats rang out as showmen rushed around the path, setting up stalls, laying tables, readying themselves for the new day’s trade. Fairground children scavenged in the mud for empty bottles to sell, while farther down the path the circus porters huddled around fires, cooking bacon and heating coffee. The smells mingled in the morning breeze with the lingering odors of the previous night — spilled beer, stale sweat, and pipe smoke.

  Beside the van, Sir Oswald had laid breakfast on top of his clothes chest — bread with hot drippings — as well as a bowl of clean water for Wild Boy to wash. Wild Boy couldn’t help smiling as he watched his friend make more improvements to their van — climbing the side with just his powerful arms, screwing a new pipe to those that already crossed the roof, and then scrambling nimbly down to connect the other end to the wheel axle. He looked focused on the work, as if it were all part of some grand plan rather than just his way of keeping busy.

  Sir Oswald finally saw him and flashed the sort of grin you didn’t see often in a fairground. A friendly one. “I am glad you returned last night,” he said.

  Wild Boy wasn’t remotely glad of the fact himself. He’d just had nowhere else to go. He tore a chunk of bread from the loaf and nibbled the crust, scanning the fairground anxiously. “You seen Finch?” he asked.

  “Fear not,” Sir Oswald replied. “Mr. Finch is visiting the licensor.”

  Relief washed through Wild Boy. On the last day of every fair, each showman had to secure a licence to trade at the next site. The next fair, Bartholomew Fair in the center of London, was the biggest of the season, so there would be a long queue at the licensor’s tent. With luck, Finch wouldn’t return until moments before today’s first show.

  “Better do your chores,” Sir Oswald said. “Don’t want to upset him even further.” He leaned closer and chuckled. “Too
k him all night to wash that toilet muck off his face.”

  Wild Boy couldn’t bring himself to laugh. Although he was safe for now, he knew that Finch wouldn’t forget about last night. Sir Oswald was right, though; there was no point in making things worse. Besides, a few chores might take his mind off things.

  He did the same jobs every morning. First he cleaned the caravan floor of whatever mess the punters had made the day before — mud, booze, and sometimes blood. Then he set up the stage with the crates stored under the van, propped up Finch’s bed, and hung the banners. Finally he fed and groomed the horses and collected firewood for the stove.

  But, that day, he couldn’t shake a feeling of dread. As he brushed the horses, he glimpsed a dark shape move between the vans. And then again between the trees as he collected firewood from the corner of the park. With a shudder, he remembered the figure that had watched him last night — the mysterious hooded man.

  He spotted another stick jutting from a hedge and yanked the end. Just as it slid out, he froze.

  Footsteps squelched through the grass. Someone was creeping up behind him.

  Wild Boy didn’t move. He didn’t know if it was Finch or the hooded man, only that he had to fight. His grip tightened around the stick. He had to time this perfectly. . . .

  He whirled around, waving the stick like a sword. “Get back or I’ll smash your skull!” he cried.

  Clarissa Everett sprang away, just dodging the swipe. Her freckles burned bright red. “Touch me with that thing and I’ll break your arms,” she said.

  “Break my arms and I’ll break yours too!”

  He wished immediately that he’d said something else. It wasn’t the best line he could have used before a fight. But Clarissa’s fists unclenched.

  “I ain’t come to fight,” she said. “If I had, I’d have won by now anyhow.”

  The wind brushed her hair from her face, and Wild Boy spotted a dark bruise staining her pale cheek. She must have seen him look, because she turned her head. “Got it practicing,” she explained. “I got a proper circus job, remember, not one in a freak show.”

  Wild Boy suspected she was lying. More likely the bruise was from her mother. Everyone knew that Clarissa and Mary Everett, the circus owner, didn’t get on. But he reminded himself that it was none of his business, and that he hated her anyway, so he shrugged like he didn’t care.

  “What do you want, then?” he said.

  Clarissa looked around the trees, as if she too feared they were being watched. Then she brought a crumpled slip of paper from her pocket. “Look,” she said.

  It was the letter from last night. Wild Boy couldn’t believe it — why had she kept hold of evidence of their crime? Unless . . . Was she setting him up for the police? He stepped back and raised his voice. “I got no idea what that is,” he said.

  Clarissa looked baffled. “Are you crazy? It’s the letter we pinched last night. Look at it, will you.”

  Wild Boy stepped farther away. “I never saw you last night, and I never pinched nothing in my whole life!”

  Clarissa realized what he suspected. She came closer and thrust the letter furiously at his face. “I ain’t no bloody snitch! This is important. It’s about murder.”

  Wild Boy was about to shout again, but . . . Did she say murder?

  The page trembled in Clarissa’s hands. “I’ll read it to you,” she said.

  “I can read it myself,” Wild Boy said, snatching it from her.

  It wasn’t easy. The letter was flecked with mud from last night, and the writing was badly smudged. But he finally made sense of what it said.

  A gust of wind rustled the trees, and the branches groaned.

  “It says murder,” Clarissa whispered.

  “I saw what it says!” Wild Boy said.

  “It was warning someone,” Clarissa said. “But they never got it cos we stole it first.”

  “You stole it.”

  “It was both of us! What are we going to do about it?”

  “Eh? We ain’t gonna do nothing about it!”

  “You could find out who it was written for.”

  “Me?”

  “I asked about you. That friend of yours, the posh bloke with no legs, he said you see things that other people don’t.”

  Wild Boy swore under his breath. “He ain’t my friend!” he said. He was furious at Sir Oswald — why had he spoken to Clarissa? “And he shouldn’t have been blabbing a bunch of lies,” he said.

  “They ain’t lies. I saw it last night. You knew that man was rich just from looking at him. And you knew that family wasn’t.”

  “I seen them before, I said.”

  “You’re a freak and a liar!”

  She snatched the letter back and they stood for a moment in silence. Wild Boy tried to think of a good insult, but really he didn’t want to fight. He wanted to look at that letter again. The truth was he’d already seen one or two intriguing clues on it, and he was keen to know more. . . .

  But whatever this was about, he had to stay out of it. “It’s none of my business,” he insisted. “I got other stuff to worry about. You do an’ all, with your mother.”

  Clarissa’s freckles flared again. “You shut your head about her!” she snapped. “Ain’t nothing wrong with my mother.”

  She threw the letter at Wild Boy. “You keep it, then. But if someone does get killed, then it’s all your fault!” She stormed away, then stopped and turned. “I know why you watch people, you know. It’s because you wish you were normal like them. Well, you never will be because you’re an ugly bloody freak!”

  Wild Boy hurled the stick at her, but missed. He sighed — neither of them had dealt with that well, although what did he expect? They were enemies, after all. But as he picked up the letter from the ground, he couldn’t resist another glance.

  The machine . . . he read.

  What was all this about?

  Another gust of wind rustled the trees, and crows swooped like witches around the high branches. And then something else moved behind one of the trunks — something black and ragged, and much bigger than a crow. . . .

  Wild Boy whirled around, his heart thumping. “Who is that?” he yelled.

  He rushed to the tree. But no one was there.

  “Master Wild!”

  Sir Oswald called from beyond the glade, one hand pressed into the grass, the other waving urgent signals. “The show’s starting! Hurry!”

  That was a call Wild Boy had never thought he’d be glad to hear. For the first time ever, he realized he was eager to get back inside the van. He stuffed the letter into his pocket and ran full pelt to the fair.

  It was the busiest day of the season so far. The road from London Bridge to Greenwich was so crowded with coaches that whip-fights broke out among the drivers. Their passengers poured through the park gates, dancing and singing in a heaving, steaming mass. The drinking tents ran out of beer, the circus sold out for each show, and queues trailed from every caravan and stall that lined the path.

  Wild Boy usually hated busy days, when there was less time to spy on the fair. But today he was glad of the crowds. With so many punters, there was no chance for Augustus Finch to seek revenge for last night. But Finch hadn’t forgotten. With each painful step on his wounded foot, he cast a vicious glare at Wild Boy. It was his signal that, soon enough, harm would be done.

  But that afternoon, Wild Boy’s mind was on something else — the letter. Over and over he told himself to get rid of it, but he kept sneaking looks. He must have read it a dozen times that day, and it still sent a chill down his back.

  Murder — it was a dark business, even for a fairground. And Clarissa was right — the warning had never been received. She was right about something else too: Wild Boy could tell who the letter was meant for. In fact, he thought he already knew. He kept thinking about what Clarissa had said, how it would be his fault if the person was killed. Deep down he knew she was right. If he could do something to stop it, then he had to try. But
that wasn’t the only reason that he’d decided to deliver the letter. It was a mystery, and he was curious to find out more.

  That evening, the wind had settled and a cool mist drifted across the fairground. Wild Boy’s pulse raced as he sneaked behind the caravans and around the side of the circus tent, dodging signs warning CIRCUS CREW ONLY! and NO FREAKS PAST HERE!

  It was dangerous just being here. Wherever the fair traveled, freaks and their showmen always camped apart from the circus crew. It had been that way ever since the circus’s star acrobat ran off with a heavily tattooed performer called the Painted Lady. That acrobat was Clarissa’s father.

  That was before Wild Boy’s time there, but he knew the story. Clarissa’s father had been one of the best acrobats in England, and so had her mother. The three of them used to perform together, thrilling crowds in their red-and-gold costumes. Wild Boy had heard that those were happy times for the circus. But when Clarissa’s father ran off, he left Mary Everett a bitter, broken woman. One night she walked drunk on the tightrope, fell, and broke her leg. She never performed again. Instead she became the ringmaster. And she had developed a hatred of freaks that bordered on obsession.

  Wild Boy dreaded to think how she’d react if she caught him sneaking around her show. But if he wanted to deliver this letter, that was where he had to go.

  He peeked around the side of one of the circus’s dressing vans. Close by, the big top strained in the wind against its thick tethers. From inside, he heard Mary Everett cry Laaaadies and geeentlemen. The last show of the day was underway.

  He breathed in, steeling himself. Then he dashed for the side of the big top. He heard someone cry out, and he threw himself to the ground, sliding through the mud and under the canvas wall.

  The crowd roared, and for a dreadful moment, Wild Boy feared he’d burst right into the ring. He rolled over, wiping muddy hair from his eyes. Then he saw a jumble of wooden beams above his head and knew he’d ended up in the right place — beneath the scaffold that supported the audience’s seats.

  “So far so good,” he muttered.

  He reached up and began to climb the beams. Between the audience’s backs, he could just see down into the sawdust ring, where Mary Everett stood in the spluttering glare of a gas chandelier. The ringmaster leaned on a wooden crutch, bellowing at the crowd like a mad pirate. “Here’s another act! Pay attention, will you!”