From Rags to Kisses by Shana Galen

II

“I like it up here,”Aidan said. They’d climbed to the top of one of the roofs and his gaze roved over what he could see of London. This roof was higher than some others, and he could make out St. Paul’s in the distance as well as the trestles of London Bridge. Jenny sat beside him, and she gave him a grin.

“Which ‘alf do ye want?” she asked.

“Hmm.” He considered. This was a game they often played. It didn’t have a name, but he thought of it as Emperors of All They Surveyed. He pointed and made a slicing motion with his arm. “I’ll take this half.”

“Ye always take the Tower.”

“I can’t let it fall into the wrong hands. I left you Vauxhall Gardens, and there’s plenty of entertainment there.”

“We should go,” she said. “To celebrate.”

He glanced at her. “Celebrate what?”

“It’s spring again.” She gestured to some trees in the distance. They were beginning to bud with green. “We’ve been friends for a year now.”

Aidan didn’t quite know that he wanted to celebrate the fact that he’d been an orphan for a year. But it was a year he’d survived. He supposed that was something to honor.

“Wot would ye buy if ye ‘ad all the blunt in the world?” she asked as the shadows grew longer and the sun dipped below St. Paul’s spire.

He was hungry—he was always hungry at thirteen—and he began listing all the food he could think of. The food his mother had made him when she was alive. “Meat pies and hot cross buns and apple tart and buttered turnip mash and—”

She waved a hand. “All ye ever think about is stuffing yer potato ‘ole.”

Aidan didn’t understand how she couldn’t think about food. They’d split a rotten apple this morning and had nothing else the entire day. Hunger seemed to gnaw at him like a beast with insomnia living in his belly. But Aidan had learned that the more he thought about food, the worse it was. Jenny was right to move the topic away from all the food they didn’t have. “Very well, what would you buy?”

“I’d buy me a ticket.”

“A ticket? To Vauxhall Gardens?”

“Maybe. Or maybe I’d buy me a ticket to that big museum. The one with all the dead people.”

He had to translate that. “The British Museum and the mummies?”

She looked at him. “ ‘Ave ye been?”

He shook his head. “No, but I read about it in the papers, and we learned about the Egyptians at school.”

“I wish I could go to school,” she said.

Aidan rolled his eyes. They’d had this conversation before, and Aidan had assured her she would hate school. “You’d have to sit still all day,” he reminded her. “No talking, hands folded before you. And you’d have to wear a dress.”

“I like dresses,” she said, which was obviously a lie. He’d never seen her wear one.

Aidan thought harder. “You’d have to be inside all day.”

Jenny sighed, and he knew he’d made his point. He couldn’t picture her in school. She was like a bird who would die if caged. She loved her freedom. But he hated to think of her despondent. “I taught you how to read a little,” he said. “And do simple sums. Once you know that, you can teach yourself the rest, anyway.”

“I suppose yer right, but if I ‘ad some schooling, maybe I’d know wot this was.” She pulled a small silver piece from her pocket and held it out to him. Aidan took it and immediately placed the opening on his pinky finger. It fit just over the tip like a small cover.

“It feels too heavy for silver,” he said.

“It’s pewter,” she said. “Not as valuable.”

“The scrollwork is nice.” He admired the vines teched on the outside of the metal. “Is it a thimble?”

She shook her head. “Too long and thin. I thought it might be the top part of a long case.”

Aidan nodded. It would have been a small case to hold small items. It looked like the sort of thing a lady might own, but his mother had not been a lady. “Where did you find it?”

She shrugged. “Around.”

He gave her a long look.

“All right then. One of the mudlarks gave it to me.”

Aidan jumped up and almost lost his balance. Jenny quickly pulled him back down.

“Ye’ll fall off, ye will, and then wot will I do!”

“I wouldn’t fall off if you didn’t lie to me. No one gives away anything for free.” If he’d learned anything in a year, he’d learned that.

She sighed and held out her hand. He dropped the pewter piece back into it. “I shouldn’t ‘ave done it, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself. Billy said he thought it was a ‘undred years old.”

Aidan snorted. “Not likely.”

“They do find old things. Billy showed me an old coin once.”

“Billy would tell you anything if he thought he might get the chance to kiss you or feel under your shirt.” Heat flashed through him at the thought of anyone touching Jenny. Not that Aidan wanted to kiss her or touch her. He didn’t think about her that way. He’d really only started to look at girls differently. Just started to notice that Jenny didn’t look as much like a boy as she used to now that she was fourteen. But he told himself to stop noticing. Jenny was his friend, like a sister to him. But when he thought of Billy kissing her, Aidan felt more jealous than the urge to protect.

“Fat chance of that,” she said with a laugh. “ ‘e smells like a sewer.”

Aidan wondered if he smelled any better. “Then how did you get that pewter bauble?” he asked. Billy might have a soft spot for a pretty girl—and Jenny with her blue-gray eyes and black hair was indisputably pretty—but he had a boss who oversaw his work, and he couldn’t come home empty-handed unless he wanted a beating. But one of the other boys might give him one of their finds if...

Aidan’s belly rumbled. “You didn’t.”

“It was all I ‘ad besides the apple,” she said.

“You told me the baker was out of day-old bread!”

“No, I didn’t. Ye assumed that.”

It was true. When they’d met up—he with the apple and she without the bread—he’d immediately said how disappointed he was that the baker was out of the bread he’d give them in exchange for lugging sacks of flour or sweeping his shop floor. “You didn’t correct me.”

“I’m correcting ye now.”

“You traded our food for”—he gestured to the useless piece of pewter—“this!”

She stood up and swiped at her face. If Aidan didn’t know her better, he’d think she was crying. “Ye don’t understand,” she said. And then with an agility Aidan could only dream about, she’d jumped to another roof and then another, and he was left in the burnt orange of the setting sun alone.

He went after her a half hour later. There were only two places she could be. One was her parents’ house. She sometimes stopped in to see if her ma had any food or coin. But what her ma earned on her back, she spent on gin. And if she didn’t spend it, Jenny’s father took it and disappeared for days. But she wouldn’t go home with the pewter trinket. Aidan knew exactly where she’d take it. He made his way through Spitalfields, careful not to attract the attention of any of a number of groups of boys and men looking for an easy target. Aidan didn’t have any coin, but they’d beat him for the fun of it or to take his shoes or his coat. And Aidan didn’t relish going without.

It took almost an hour of sneaking through shadows and taking detours before he reached the abandoned building. It was one of any number of abandoned buildings in the area, but this one was almost always empty. It was so decrepit, the wooden beams so rotten, that only the most desperate slept here. One side had caved in, and Aidan climbed in through a window on the side still standing. The building creaked and groaned when he stepped on the floor, and it always made him nervous. The whole place could fall at any moment. The stairway had already collapsed as had part of the first floor. Water dripped in a continual plop plop, and it smelled as though something died.

“Jenny!” he hissed.

No answer.

“Are you here? I’m sorry. Jenny!”

Still no answer. Aidan clenched his fists and plucked up his bravery and walked carefully across the uneven floorboards. He reached a door wedged half open and squeezed through. It might have been his imagination, but he’d been able to fit through it easier the last time he’d been here. Inside, he moved along one wall, trusting his sense of touch more than anything as it was pitch black, until he felt where the floor took a steep shift down. Aidan moved to his hands and knees and peered into the hole in the floor. “Jenny?”

“Wot?” came the response. A moment later a small flickering light illuminated the hole in the floor and what might have once been a cellar underneath. Using the light, he wriggled into the hole, holding onto the edge until his feet dangled just a foot or two from the floor. Then he let go and turned to face Jenny. She didn’t say anything, just retreated into a small antechamber in the back. Aidan had speculated it might have been a wine cellar at one time as it had any number of shelves lining the small space. But the wine was gone, and Jenny had made use of the shelves to store her treasures. Aidan’s gaze roved over one shelf that held a scrap of lace, a broken mirror, and a ladies’ brush for cosmetics. Another shelf held part of an earring, whose jewel made of paste glittered in the candlelight. There were other bits and bobs, nothing of any real value, just trinkets that interested her. Aidan noted that she’d placed the new find on the last shelf.

“Listen, I’m sorry I got upset.”

She shrugged. “Yer ‘ungry. I shouldn’t ‘ave traded the bread.”

He wanted to say, no, she shouldn’t have traded the bread, but how could he ask her to deny herself the only beauty in the world she possessed? These useless pieces of rubbish were beautiful treasures to her. They gave her a comfort he couldn’t understand, and if that was something she needed, how could he take it away?

“I’m not so hungry anymore,” he said and glanced at her.

A slow smile spread over her face. “Liar.”

He settled back against a wall of the cellar and slid down to sit, hands wrapped around his knees. “Maybe you can help me forget.”

“How?”

But she knew how. Whenever she was sad or he missed his mother, they’d come here and she’d pretend she was a famous explorer who had unearthed these priceless objects. She’d make up stories about her adventures and the pieces she’d found. “This is my newest find,” she said, picking up the pewter piece. “I found it while exploring the jungles of Greece.”

He didn’t bother to tell her that Greece didn’t have jungles. He just let her talk about how it was the cap to a bottle that held a magical potion, a gift from the gods of Olympus. After a while, she blew out the candle and came to sit beside him. He lay down, his head in her lap, and she stroked his hair and made up more stories about fabulous places they’d never go. And a long time

later, she lay down too, and he wrapped his arms around her, and he thought he was almost happy.