“Ere, you,” said the first softly. “You got to get up, like. Ere.”
She dragged him up by his throbbing arm. He cried out, shivering, and got to his hands and knees, then stood unsteadily.
“There.” She grinned up at him. She was half-black, like him. But so small. Maybe six, seven years old at most. Her hair was filthy, her face streaked with pale grime. The other girl was younger even, with long tousled brown hair, like a mouse, and she worked a knuckle into one nostril, rooting around, sizing him up, but said nothing.
“Me name’s Gilly,” said the older one, finally, and grinned. “This ere is Jooj. An you can quit yer gawpin, you look a bloody sight worsern us.”
His head felt gluey, hot. He tried to say something but only swayed.
They led him by the hands, one holding to each, drawing him forward like a reluctant goer at a fair. Into the gloom and damp shadows of Wapping. The river, reeking, was somewhere near. Gilly and Jooj would stop sometimes to let him rest, gasping up against a slimy wall, and they’d peer up at him in interest, those two small girls, or else sometimes they’d stop to pick a bit of metal or a button out of the open gutters, wiping it on their shirtfronts to clean it, pocketing it someplace in their rags.
At a peeling warehouse, its walls leaning unsteadily and creaking in the fog, he was ushered inside, and up a rickety staircase, and on the upper floor beneath a wall of broken windows he saw a small crowd of children turn to look him over.
“Bleedin hell, Gilly,” a tall boy said. He got up, came over. He was younger than Charlie but nearly of a height. “What’s he, now? Ye can’t just drag any damn cockle in off the stones, like. What’s Mr. Plumb to say?”
Gilly grinned up. “I got Plumb in me pocket.”
“Sure ye do,” said the boy.
“But, Millard,” said Jooj, the littler one, in a tiny high-pitched voice. “You’s always sayin we needs a lookout. He’s right perfect.”
The tall boy got close to Charlie, looking him over like a cut of meat. “Do he got a name?”
“Aye,” said Gilly. “Rupert.”
“He ain’t no Rupert. Is you name Rupert?”
Charlie, clutching his pained chest, sank down to the floor. He grimaced.
“What’s a matter with him? S’e cut up, like?”
“Aw, Rupert’s just a bit faint, he is. Needs some pottage.”
“Jesus almighty he ain’t a Rupert, Gilly. Lookit him. Aw. E’s bleedin.”
Charlie clenched his teeth, glared in pain up at the squabbling kids. “Charlie,” he whispered. “My name … is Charlie.”
Millard grinned at the two girls. He was missing all his front teeth. “Told youse,” he said.
“Hullo, Charlie,” said Gilly, crouching down. “Don’t pay Millard no mind, he’s just a bitta worrier, he is. He’ll come around.”
A moment later Jooj appeared at his elbow, holding a battered tin bowl. Inside was a cold lump of porridge, a spoon sticking out of it.
“Go on, eat,” said Gilly, taking it from the little one. “It ain’t poisoned.”
He ate, and slept again, and woke feeling somewhat better. The sharp pain in his chest and arms was subsiding. The warehouse was darker, the cracked panes glinting like frost. Millard was sitting beside him, holding his knees to his chest.
“I thought maybe you was dead.” He grinned. “Ere. Eat this. It’s like to help.”
He gave Charlie a greasy waxed paper and inside it were three pale balls of dough, still warm. They tasted sweet; Charlie chewed them slowly, turning them from cheek to cheek, swallowing with difficulty. Gradually he felt more clearheaded, sharper, wakeful.
“There ye go,” said the boy. “Ye thirsty?”
He had a tin cup he passed across and Charlie drank it and was surprised to see it was stout. Bitter, thick, filling. He ran a hand over his mouth.
“We got a job what needs doin,” said Millard. “Ere’s your opportunity to make a right use of yourself. Come on, then.”
He led Charlie back down the ruined steps to the warehouse below. The child thieves were gathered there, four dim bull’s-eye lanterns bobbing among them. Gilly came up, studying his face, nodding at whatever it was she saw there.
“Ready?” said Millard.
Gilly shrugged. “Aye,” she said. She was looking with interest at Charlie. “Feelin better? Right. Good. We need your peepers. Can ye whistle?”
“Whistle?” he said.