Thief of Shadows (Maiden Lane #4)(30)

And that was a daunting task indeed.

Chapter Six

As the Harlequin lay on the ground, his life’s blood running into the channel in the middle of the street, a strange man approached. The man wore a cape that hid most of his form, but still one could see that he walked on a goat’s cloven hooves. The man sat down beside the dying Harlequin and took a white clay pipe from his pocket. He lit the pipe and looked at the Harlequin. “Now, Harlequin,” said he, “would you like to revenge yourself on your enemies…?”

—from The Legend of the Harlequin Ghost of St. Giles

Winter Makepeace leaped the gap between building roofs and landed lightly. He slid backward a bit on the steeply pitched second roof, his boots scraping on the shingles, but he caught himself with the ease of long practice.

Tonight he was the Ghost of St. Giles.

He heard a faint gasp on the street below as he passed, but he didn’t stop to look. He was taking a risk, for the sun had not yet set, and he preferred to do his Ghostly activities under cover of night, but he wasn’t going to lose another child. Earlier this evening, the residents of the home had barely sat down to supper when word had come that a child was in need of their help. A harlot had succumbed to one of the many diseases that plagued her profession, leaving behind a child of only three.

Sadly, this was a common tale in St. Giles—and the reason for the home’s existence. Winter could not count the times that he had sent a servant or gone himself to find an orphaned or abandoned child and bring him or her back to the home. What was different in this case was the fact that someone had beaten the home’s emissary to the child the last two times they had been sent out.

Winter very much feared that someone—someone organized—was stealing orphaned children off the streets of St. Giles.

Winter ran along the peak of a house and jumped down to its lower neighbor. The buildings of St. Giles had not been properly planned. Tenements, shops, warehouses, and workshops had all been built, higgledy-piggledy, cheek by jowl, sometimes literally one on top of another. It made for a confusing warren of buildings to the outsider, but Winter could traverse St. Giles with his eyes closed.

And by rooftop at that.

Naturally, he’d sent Tommy out to fetch the child back to the home, but Winter hoped to reach the child before Tommy. He’d excused himself from the supper table, saying his leg was bothering him again, hurriedly donned the costume of the Ghost, and set out from his bedroom window under the eves.

Now he glanced down and saw that he was over Chapel Alley. The chandler shop owner who’d reported the orphan had said that the child’s mother had lived in a room just off Phoenix Street, only a stone’s throw away. Winter leaped to a balcony below, ran along the rail, and used the corner of the brick building for fingerholds as he climbed down to the alley.

By the alley wall, a girl of about ten had watched his descent with wide eyes, clutching a basket to her bosom. A few wilted posies at the bottom of the basket were obviously leftover from her day of hawking flowers.

“Where does Nelly Broom live?” Winter asked the girl, giving the name of the dead whore.

The girl pointed to a crooked house at the end of the alley. “Second floor, back o’ th’ ’ouse, but she died this morn.”

“I know.” Winter nodded his thanks. “I’ve come for the child.”

“Best pick up your feet, then,” the flower girl said.

Winter paused to look back at her. “Why’s that?”

She shrugged. “The lassie snatchers ’ave gone in already.”

Winter turned and ran. Lassie snatchers? Was that the organized group of kidnappers working in St. Giles—and were they so well known then that a little girl had a name for them?

He shoved open the outer door to the house the girl had pointed to. Inside, a narrow staircase directly faced the outer door. Winter ran up it on the balls of his feet, careful not to alert his quarry.

The stairs let out into a tiny landing with a single door. Winter opened it, surprising a family at their evening meal. Three children crowded their mother’s skirts, mealy bread crusts clutched in their hands. The father, a gaunt fellow with a full head of red hair, pointed a thumb over his shoulder to where Winter could see another door. Winter nodded silently at the man and swept past. The door led into a smaller room that had obviously been divided off from the main room. Two bedraggled women cowered together in a corner. Across from them, the window stood open.

Winter didn’t have to ask. He strode to the window and leaned out. The drop to the street was at least twenty feet, but a narrow ledge ran directly below the window. Winter swung his leg over and, gripping the top of the window, stood on the ledge. About a yard above him, he could see a man’s legs disappearing over the eves. Winter grasped the crumbling edge of the eves and hauled himself up. On the roof stood a man and a youth, and in the youth’s arms, a child, so frightened it wasn’t even crying.

The man gave a yell at the sight of Winter coming over the eves. “Th’ Ghost! ’Tis th’ Ghost come to drag us to ’ell!”

“Leg it!” cried the youth, and they turned.

But Winter was on them already, the blood pumping in his veins, righteous rage nearly blinding him. He grasped the man’s coat, pulling him backward. The man threw a frantic punch that Winter absorbed on his shoulder before laying the man flat with a blow to the jaw.