"Yes, Charlie, I know that, but I ain't givin' up hope yet. I still think he could be valuable to the band in the way o' beggin', I do," says I.
Charlie sighs and we continue on.
"We're gettin' right close to Shanky turf here, y'know," I says, lookin' around for signs o' the scum.
"I know," says Charlie, "but we're here now. Good day to you, Mrs. Little!"
I'm shocked to see Charlie bowing low to a woman sitting on her front steps, with an infant on her huge left breast, who is sucking, quite happily and quite loudly, away.
"Ah, and if it ain't Rooster Charlie Brewster, his own-self, God's gift to the streets o' Cheapside," says this woman, two hundred and fifty pounds if she's an ounce. "And I see you got yerself a brat. Ain't surprised at that, I ain't."
"Ah, well, Missus, that we do, and he's sore in need o' that product that you can so amply provide."
"Get on wi' you, Charlie. I can't afford to take in unpayin' clients, and I know you ain't got a pot to piss in nor a window to throw it out of," says the woman. "My girls 'ere, Thelma on the right and Betty on the left, are me sole support in this hard world. Can't expect me to give it away, now, can you?"
"Please, Missus," I pipes up. "'E's gonna die if he don't get some."
"Now, now, dearie, you save that guff for your marks or your nobs, not for me."
"Give me the coin," says Charlie to me.
Surprised, I hand it over. "That's gang money, Charlie, I don't expect you to—"
"We wouldn'a got it 'cept for the kid," says Charlie, flipping the coin in the air and catching it right in front of the woman's nose. "So, what, Mrs. Little, would be the charge to put this wee one on one o' your girls for a bit?"
"The charge, Charlie, is one shillin' a week."
My heart sinks. One shilling. A king's ransom to us.
Charlie nods gravely. I think he brought me and Jesse up here so we could see the desperation of our situation. "But what will one ha'penny buy right now?" he asks, holding up the coin.
"Oh, give it over, and give 'im over, too," says Mrs. Little, taking the coin and taking Jesse as I hand him to her.
She pulls down the right shoulder of her shirt, exposing the breast named Thelma, and Jesse clamps right on, his little hands pumping away.
"Oh, he's a greedy one, he is," says Mrs. Little.
"Charlie, I'm gonna love you forever," says I, my eyes filmy with tears, and I means it.
"Awright, that's it. That's one ha'penny's worth an' more," says Mrs. Little, and Jesse's mouth come off her with a loud pop!
She hands him back to me and I thank her and I hold him to me.
"Pat 'is back to burp 'im, dearie, or he'll spit up all that good pap you just paid for," says Mrs. Little, and I do it and he does burp. I can smell his breath and I reflect—today, into his mouth I have put bread, sausage, water, spit, and a good deal of Mrs. Little's bounty, and still his baby breath smells as sweet as any flowers. I hold him to me as we leave Mrs. Little.
"So you see, that's the way of it," says Charlie, his arm around my shoulders. "We can't do a shilling a week, and unless you can figure another way..."
I know the truth of what he's saying, but I will not accept it, not yet I won't, now that Jesse's got a full belly and is good for another day, at least. Then I look up the street and see the hated gates of Newgate Prison. There are some black-clad people outside the gate, and it seems they are being refused entrance to the place.
"What's that about, Charlie?" I ask.
He looks over and says, "Quakers. Do-gooders. Prolly the turnkey won't let 'em in 'cause they make trouble."
"Come on, Charlie, let's go over there," I say, and head up the street. Charlie sighs and follows.
There are five of them. Four men and one woman, a young woman of about twenty-one. They are all dressed in that plain Quaker garb—black suits on the men, a black dress on the woman, white starched collars on all. They seem angry at being denied admittance.
I take Jesse up to the woman and say, "Please, Mum, I got this here baby and he's gonna die if he don't get milk regular and I can't give it to him, but there's a woman up the street who can for a shillin' a week. Oh, please, Miss, I know you Quakers do good all over the world. Can't you do good for this one poor little tyke what don't ask for much and—"
"Come, Elizabeth," says one of the men. "You, girl, get away, please."
"Aw, Miss, I know you're tryin' to help those poor wretches in the prison there, but why not help this poor little wretch out here, only one shillin' a week and you're sure to go straight to Heaven for it, I know you will, I—"
"Be off, girl, we are on important work here," says another of the men, severely.
"What could be more important than baby Jesse here?" I wail, tears pouring out of my eyes. "Look at 'im, he's a good baby, he's—"
"Elizabeth."
"One moment, please, Friend Fry," says the young woman. "I will speak with the girl." She stoops down to talk to me, eye to eye. "How came you by this baby?"
"I found 'im in a rubbish bin, Miss. No one else wanted 'im, but I did and I'm tryin' to keep 'im alive, but I can't without milk, I can't..."
She seems to be considering this and I look over at the prison and I say, "I can get in there anytime you want, Miss, really, I can. Me and me pals have always gotten in there. And ... and ... if you need messages passed back and forth, I can do it and ... and I can read and write, and if you want to pass a message to one what can't read, then I can read it for 'im, and if you need word from some cove inside what can't write, then you can give me a piece o' paper and I can write down what that cove had to say and bring it out to you, and—"
"All right, child, enough," says the young woman, rising. "Where is this wet nurse of yours?"
"Right up the street there, Miss. Her name's Mrs. Little, and bless you, Miss, bless you."
We walk, an unlikely parade of Quakers and urchins, up the street, and the young woman confronts Mrs. Little.
"My name is Elizabeth Gurney. Will you feed that baby for one shilling a week as this child states?"
"I will," says Mrs. Little.
"Good. Then do it," says Elizabeth Gurney, opening her purse. "And you," she says to me, "how may we contact you when we need your services?"
And so began my time as messenger for the Quakers, or Society of Friends, as they preferred to be called. It was easy for us to worm our way into the prison. Heck, we had always done it ... Well, the others done it, but I always held back 'cause I couldn't stand to see the poor condemned criminals in there, waiting their turns to be hanged. Oh, it warn't the criminal part that bothered me—after all, I was a criminal, too—no, it was the hanging business that got me. Y'see, I've always had this fear, this dread that bein' hanged was gonna be my fate at the end of it all—and given my way of life and all that, it wasn't such an out-of-the-way suspicion. But I felt that it was my duty, since I was the one what brought Jesse into our midst, and so I had to go down into those dank tombs and do what was asked of me.
"And such horrors did I see there that I cannot relate them to you, my sisters, for fear of destroying the sweetness of your sleep."
Anyway, with Mrs. Little and her Thelma and Betty, and my chewed-up bits of food to get Jesse fully weaned, the little lad prospered. He became the darling of the kip, the pride of the gang, and the joy of all, for he was just the best baby—he seldom cried and never complained. When his teeth started coming in and hurt him in doing so, Charlie went out to see the Dodger and came back with a bottle of Mother's Little Helper, and we rubbed it on Jesse's sore gums and it fixed him right up—made him sleep good, too, with a little smile on his face.
"And I know that you loved the baby, too, Hughie, from the way you played with him and rode him around on your shoulders. You was big, Hughie, and you could be rough, but none could have been gentler with Jesse."
But, no, it was not to last, for October turned into November and November into December and Christmas was around the corner and the land was turnin' to the cold, and one night when Jesse was between Charlie and me in bed in the kip, the rags and straw all pulled up, but not doing much good, Charlie said what I feared but didn't want to hear. "You know, Jesse ain't gonna make it through the winter. It's just gonna get too cold. He'll start shiverin' one night, catch the chill, and be dead in the mornin', and we'll just have to take him down to the Thames and float 'im off."
I sniffle and gather Jesse to me and say it ain't gonna be so, but I know what Charlie says is true. We ain't gonna be able to keep Jesse warm enough, what with the gang going from blacksmith's hearth to Saint Paul's basement crypt to any of the other dodges we did to keep ourselves alive through the cruel winter.
I'm thinking mightily on this problem, but I come up with nothing.
"What's that, Helen? Why not take him to an orphanage? Oh, Sisters, there were no orphanages, or none where a street kid could be dropped off. Don't you think we might have gone to one if we could? Nay, it was live hard and die young for such as us, make no mistake about that."
The wind come across the Thames real cold on this particular day, and I set out to get Jesse a blanket—if I could find one—to hold off the inevitable a while longer, and so I went back up onto my perch above the little family that lived so happily down below to see if they could spare a blanket, as they had once spared a diaper, and when I got there, I was met with a great shock.
As I looked over the edge, I saw a black crepe ribbon on the door, and even as I looked, the door opened and people came out—first, the young husband, then the wife, who was being held up by an older man and woman, and then others, bearing a small white coffin. I knew they were going to Saint Paul's, and all would come back, except for the coffin and the child held inside it.
I sat there for a while, looking down. There was wash on the line in the cold December air—the young woman's mother must have come to her daughter in her time of grief to help where she could, and what she could do was cook and console and do the laundry and hang it up outside. What else could she do, except the homey things that might bring some comfort to the bereaved girl?
I looked at the wash flapping in the breeze. I looked at the black crepe ribbon. I thought about the young family I had so admired, so envied, so loved.
Then I went down and stole the baby's blanket.
Chapter 47
It was a nice blanket. It was a light blue, with pink needlework along the edges and tiny white flowers in the center and...
"Do you want me to go on? I told you I was a criminal, didn't I? Yes, so you should not have been so shocked at my action. And I might have had some other use for the blanket in mind. Maybe I had a plan forming in my head—did you think that might have been possible, oh, you who are so quick to condemn me? Shall I go on? All right, then..."
I kept an eye on the young man and young woman who had lost their baby. He went out each day to work and his wife resumed her chores, she did, but she did it without joy. She no longer sang, and sometimes, when she thought no one was around, she'd sit down on her steps and cry, rocking back and forth in her grief.