Black Wreath Read Online Free PDF Page B

here, your honour.’
    Harry prevailed on his mother to let James stay for that night, but as soon as it was light, James rose and left, walking out into the still sleeping city. He felt a wave of hopelessness wash over him as he walked down the hill towards the river with no particular purpose in mind. How could his father have abandoned him so utterly? How could he have had the heart to attend his funeral service and accept the condolences of his friends and acquaintances as if his son were really dead? There could be no way back now; there was nowhere else for James to go. This was life now – this grey morning, these streets and whatever happened in them.
    In the days that followed James learned the life of a streetboy, prowling around the city from need to need. Hunger drove him towards the markets, hoping for a discarded hunk of bread or a stray piece of fruit. He earned the curses of the market women and, often, a hail of stones from the other boys who haunted the streets and whose territory he was encroaching on. Sometimes a milk woman might take pity on him and give him a ladle of milk, or a baker might toss him a loaf that was on its way to becoming a brick. He learned to live with constant hunger, and sleep with half an eye open. The nights were dangerous, as anyone sleeping in an exposed place was liable to attack by passing footpads or beggars, and James sought out the shelter of the Phoenix Park. Even here he had to be careful, as many criminals also found its seclusion irresistible. Under cover of darkness, he would move slowly from tree to tree until he found a spot where he could hear no voices or nothing that sounded like human footsteps in the undergrowth. Only when he had had sat for a long time in silence did he eventually allow sleep to take hold.
    He often went to see Harry at his pitch. Sometimes, Harry would lend him his spudd, polish and wig and let him tout for customers. Some of his first customers complained that he wasn’t quick enough and one or two clouted him about his ears for sloppy work, but he soon improved, and the pennies he got allowed him to buy bread and fruit. There was one brutish client James would not forget quickly. The man was well dressed, a nobleman of some kind, with straggly black hair and narrow eyes and a look of permanent disdain etched on his features. He looked like someone born to be cruel. He thrusthis boot into James’s lap as if he meant to injure him and, as he worked, James could feel the man’s merciless eyes boring into him. The boots were of the best leather and didn’t need much work, but the man was quick to find fault.
    ‘Call yourself a shoeblack, you dirty little caffler. I’ll blacken your eye for you!’ He pulled his boot away and walked off, throwing a coin over his shoulder as he left, causing it to land right in the middle of a filthy puddle.
    James felt himself sinking in this life. Every day he seemed to be filthier, more degraded. What would Master Naughton think of him now? He must find of way of getting back to the school, or he would live and die on the streets like so many of the beggar boys he saw every day. But how? When your life was changed for the worse, there didn’t seem to be an easy way to change it back again. He was thinking these dark thoughts one morning as he stood on the quays watching the murky waters, when he became aware of a sudden commotion in the streets that led down to the river. He heard drums, whistles, and rhythmic chanting, and then suddenly they appeared, a long line of men bearing sticks and knives, including some men James recognised from his days with the dancing master. They were dressed in their work clothes: tailors, weavers, buckle-makers, farriers, but their faces seemed to belong to different men: they were hard and angry, set to a common purpose. These were the Liberty Boys, James realised, one of the city’s most feared gangs, fired up now and spoiling for a fight.
    ‘Up the Liberty Boys!’ some