Bargain price

CHAPTER 16

A LYSS THOUGHT Quigly Gaffer the nicest in the band of homeless orphans and runaways of which he was a part, and not just because he was so attentive to her. He was attentive to everybody. He was the least sullen, the least prone to depression, the one who, with his lively, confident attitude, kept everyone’s spirits up when there weren’t enough crusts to go around, when it was cold and wet and they’d been chased out of too many sheltered doorways to count. In other words, Quigly Gaffer gave them hope when life seemed particularly hopeless. And he had suffered as much as anybody.

Walking alongside Alyss that first day in London, he said, “So, Princess, tell us about yourself,” and she voiced her woeful condition with a viciousness that surprised her.

“I saw my father, the King of Wonderland, murdered. My mother, the queen, is dead. Both of them were killed by my aunt. But it wouldn’t matter even if they were alive, because I’ll never make it home.”

“I saw my folks murdered, same as you,” said Quigly. “We were driving along in our coach when a couple of thieves decided they didn’t like the look of us and killed my father with a club to the head. I watched my mother get beaten to death with that selfsame club, all the while begging for mercy. And I would’ve been greeted with the club too if I hadn’t run into the dark and hidden while the thieves were trying to take the rings off Mother’s fingers. So I suppose you and me have something in common, what with our parents being dead, right enough.”

Alyss could think of other things she would have rather had in common with him. She didn’t know it, and this certainly wasn’t how Bibwit Harte would have taught her, but in the person of Quigly Gaffer, Alyss

was learning something that would one day serve her well as a queen.

Lesson number 1b in Bibwit’s carefully planned curriculum: For most of the universe’s inhabitants, life is not all gummy wads and tarty tarts; it is a struggle against hardship, unfairness, corruption, abuse, and adversity in all its guises, where even to survive-let alone survive with dignity-is heroic. To soldier through the days in the wake of failure is the courageous act of many. To rule benevolently, a queen should be able to enter into the feelings of those less fortunate than herself.

“Never mind that dress, I knew from your gab that you ain’t from anywhere round here,” Quigly said. “You don’t have any accent I recognize. I don’t know just what it is.”

“It’s Wonderlandian, I suppose.”

“Right, right. You’re from Wonderland, you say?” Quigly laughed. “Why don’t you tell us about the place, Princess?”

So she did, and the more she talked, the more she felt the cold, impersonal tone she’d used to describe her parents’ deaths fall away till she was almost overcome with sadness and longing for what, so quickly and suddenly, so unexpectedly, had become part of her past. She was sure the Inventors’ Parade wouldn’t seem so boring to her now, if she could only get back to the royal balcony to watch it.

“You see that light?” she said, pointing at one of the gas lamps lining the street. “That was invented in Wonderland, but instead of an open flame it had a glass bulb inside and you only had to flick a switch to turn it on.”

She described Heart Palace, the singing flowers in the royal gardens, the Crystal Continuum. “And I don’t mean to brag,” she said, “but I have a powerful imagination.”

“I’ll say.”

“You think I’m making everything up?”

Quigly didn’t answer. Alyss saw a lone dandelion poking out of some mud. She stared hard at the flower and imagined it singing. It seemed to require more effort than it would have done in Wonderland, and it took longer. But then the dandelion’s petals moved and from the bud at its center came a thin little voice.

“La la la la, la la la la, la la la la, laaaaaaah.”

That was all Alyss could manage, but Quigly was impressed. He’d heard about magicians who could “throw” their voices, making it sound as if a person or object across a room were talking when it would be the magician himself standing right next to you.

“Nice trick.”

“It’s not a trick.” And then, sadly, just remembering, the exiled princess added, “It’s my birthday.” “Happy birthday, ma’am.”

Alyss felt her eyes water, sorrow weighing her down.

“Aw, no crying on birthdays,” Quigly said. “You oughta meet some of my friends. They’ll cheer you right up.”

So they walked to a blind alley in the shadow of London Bridge, where a ragtag group of children

ranging in age from five to twelve lounged around on old crates.

“Hear ye, hear ye,” Quigly announced. “I bring a newcomer into our ranks.”

The children looked at Alyss, uninterested. They had seen newcomers before. Fact was, the makeup of the group was always changing, some boy or girl entering into it one day, sharing their bread for weeks or months and then going off, never to be seen again, no one ever knowing if they’d been arrested for stealing, stuck in a home, murdered, or what.

Quigly introduced everyone to Alyss. “The big one’s Charlie Turnbull. The one next to him with the mole on his nose is Andrew MacLean-he’s an orphan too. That one there is Otis Oglethorpe-a runaway, but his mother’s dead. And in the ladies, we’ve got Francine Forge, Esther Wilkes, and Margaret Blemin-all of them orphans. Everyone, may I present you with Princess Alice of Wonderland. She’s come to us through a puddle of water, and I suggest you be on your best behavior in front of royalty.”

“Puddle of water?” Charlie Turnbull guffawed. “Princess of Wonderland?”

Quigly didn’t bother to explain. He dug in a heap of what looked like rags and held up a pair of trousers, a blouse, and a man’s coat for Alyss’ approval. “These should fit you right enough.”

Where was she supposed to change out of her wet things?

“Sorry, Princess,” said Quigly. “No private rooms for you here in the alleys of London.”

She stripped, trying to act as if taking off her clothes in front of everybody wasn’t unusual. The blouse fit her well enough, but the trousers and coat were too large. She added her birthday dress to the pile of clothes and blankets for anyone who might want it once it was dry. She slipped her feet into a pair of boots Quigly had rummaged up for her, discarding her Wonderland birthday shoes.

“Righty right, let’s see what we’ve got,” Quigly said to the others.

They pulled various coins and foodstuffs out of their pockets-a few pence, a mostly empty wallet, cheese, sausages, a chicken leg. Otis Oglethorpe produced a loaf of bread he’d been hiding under his coat and Charlie Turnbull brought out half a meat pie from under his hat.

“What about you?” Otis asked Quigly. “What’ve you brought?” “I brought the princess right enough.”

“We can’t eat her,” said Charlie Turnbull. “And that’s another mouth eating what could’ve been going into our bellies.”

“I’ll make it up tomorrow, when me and the princess’ll bring plenty for all of you, don’t worry.” Charlie glared at Alyss. Meeting Quigly’s friends wasn’t in the least cheering.

The food was divided evenly into eight portions. The cheese and sausage did not taste like their counterparts in Wonderland, the cheese somehow soggy, the sausage flavorless. The meat pie, Alyss thought, tasted like a stuffed old stocking.

After eating, Andrew, Francine, and Margaret-the youngest of the orphans-crowded together on the clothes heap and snuggled down to sleep. Charlie made a bed for himself by pushing three crates together and covering them with an old quilt. Otis simply went to bed on the hard ground, using his coat as a blanket. Esther Wilkes dozed off sitting up, leaning back against a wall, her legs sticking out straight

in front of her into the alley.

Alyss couldn’t sleep. She tried counting gwynooks. One gwynook, two gwynook, three gwynook. It didn’t help.

“Restless, Princess?” Quigly asked, and offered to keep her company for a bit. “We scatter about during the day,” he explained, “to beg, borrow, or steal, as the case may be. Francine, Andrew, and Margaret work as a team. Two of them get a bloke’s attention while the third picks his pockets. Some days one or another of us’ll make the rounds of the shops, looking for stale food they might want to throw away. But every night we meet here and share what we’ve got. I don’t know if it’s easier on us to make our way together, and Charlie doesn’t always give up everything he gets in a day-he doesn’t know I know, so don’t tell him-but it feels better to most of them to be in a group. It can get lonely with no proper

family.”

“I’m sure it can,” said Alyss.

“Well now.” Quigly curled up on the ground, using his hands as a pillow. “Gotta get some sleep. I made a promise to the others and tomorrow’s gonna be something big, I can tell you. I got plans for us-you and me. G’night, Princess.”

“Good night, Quigly Gaffer.”

It wasn’t long before Alyss was alone with the steady, rhythmic breathing of the slumbering street urchins. Francine mumbled in her sleep and buried her face in the crook of Andrew’s arm. Charlie started to snore. Alyss turned her face to the sky, to the limitless expanse that, ever since she could remember, had served as a reminder of the wondrous possibilities open to her. Four gwynook, five gwynook, six. Now, starless and close, the sky just seemed empty. Seven gwynook, eight gwynook, nine gwynook, ten…

The last to fall asleep, Alyss was the last to wake, still rubbing the crust from her eyes when Quigly presented her with a white flower whose roots were tangled in a mud ball he cupped in his hands.

“You think you can do that trick again?”

It took her a second to understand: the singing flower. “It’s not a trick.” “Yeah, but you think you can do it again?”

“I don’t know…I suppose.” “Do it.”

It took longer than it did the previous day, required even more effort and concentration, but at last the flower chirped into song.

“Yeay-hoo!” Quigly celebrated, prancing around the alley. “Where are the others?” Alyss asked.

“Already gone about their daily business, Princess. And it’s time we went about ours.”

He chose a busy corner. All Alyss had to do, he said, was sit on an upturned crate and make the flower sing when he gave her the wink.

“What’s this, ladies and gents?” he cried, raising his voice to the Londoners hurrying past. “Why, the world’s only singing flower, that’s what it is! The lass of the flower here has come all the way from Africa with as rare a flower as ever you saw! Oh, it looks like any common flower, I’ll grant you that! But it is

by no means common, I tell you! It sings! Who’s for a bit of singing? Come on now!”

When enough curious people had gathered to watch, Quigly gave Alyss the wink and she made the flower sing. It wasn’t for more than a few bars, but it was enough. The crowd thought it a wonderful feat of magic. Quigly made the rounds of the audience, convincing each and every person to drop a few pennies into his hat.

“Spare a few, ladies and gents, for it’s not everyone that’s witnessed the amazing singing flower from

Africa. Come now, the passage from Africa ain’t cheap.”

Alyss managed four more performances, one every hour, each draining her more than the last. She had to stop for the day. But by then, they had earned more money than Quigly had ever seen in one place. They headed back to the alley to meet up with the others, who emptied their pockets-a tinkling of pennies, a broken watch, cheese, a salami, a few boiled potatoes.

“And what’ve you two brought us?” Charlie asked.

“Not much, I’d say,” said Quigly, dumping the coins from his pockets.

The others couldn’t believe it. Where had Quigly and Alyss gotten so much money? Quigly wouldn’t say;

he wanted to keep Alyss’ talent to himself.

“But tomorrow’ll bring us the same,” he said. “Me and the princess got us a workable scheme now, that’s all any of you need to know. Charlie, Otis-you come with me. Let’s buy a feast we won’t soon forget. Who wants what now?”

When the others had gone to bed, Alyss told Quigly that they didn’t have to stand on a street corner all day to earn money.

“I’ll imagine however much we need,” she said.

“I’ll be happy to spend whatever money you come by, Princess, no matter how you come by it.” So Alyss tried to imagine a pile of the different coins she’d seen that day. She tried to imagine them

weighing down the pockets of her coat. But she was still fatigued from her exertions with the flower, and before she could bring a single coin into existence, Quigly started laughing at her.

“Your face!” he said. He tried to imitate her expression, her face scrunched in dogged effort.

Alyss wasn’t amused. “Never mind then,” she said. “I’m not imagining a pile of money for you, ever.” “Aw, Princess, c’mon now. I wasn’t teasing you. We all look funny sometimes. Some of us look funny all

the time. You go ahead and imagine what you will.”

But Quigly couldn’t stop himself from laughing, so Alyss didn’t attempt to imagine a pile of money again that night or any night thereafter. We’ll do things the hard way since that’s how he wants it.

They spent their days on street corners, she making the flower sing while he collected money from the

audience. But every new day seemed to weaken her ability with the flower and her performances became less frequent. The more time Alyss spent in this wet dreary city, the less she believed in her imagination.

It’s not as strong as Mother thought. Probably never was.

At least twice a day, between flower performances, she tried to imagine Hatter’s whereabouts. Inevitably, she saw nothing. Imagination’s eye? She hadn’t had enough training. Eventually, she had the strength and will to bring about only one flower performance a day, so Quigly made sure it’d be when they could attract the largest audience-at dusk, the streets especially crowded with people on their way home from work.

Every night, after the meals afforded by Alyss’ performances, Andrew, Margaret, and Francine would ask her to tell them about Wonderland.

“Please, please, please,” they’d say.

Imagining themselves in the bright, crystal world Alyss described, with heart palaces, walrus-butlers, frog-messengers, and giant, pipe-smoking caterpillars, they were able to escape for a short while from the poverty and squalor and daily scrounging of their own lives. Otis, Quigly, and Esther didn’t enter into Alyss’ tales of Wonderland as fully as the younger orphans, but they enjoyed her stories enough to listen to them in wistful silence. Charlie Turnbull, on the other hand, made it clear he didn’t believe a word she said.

“Nothing but bleeding nonsense,” he’d say.

She told Andrew, Francine, and Margaret all about Hatter Madigan and how awful it was to have lost her bodyguard because he was so accomplished at fighting. If she’d had the Milliner by her side, she said, she would never have met Quigly or any of them. To show what a man like Hatter could do, she described the injured card soldiers writhing on the floor of Heart Palace, hands pressed against their wounds and blood pulsing out between worrying fingers.

“Do you really know a man who can fight so many people?” Margaret asked. “I do.”

“It’s a lie,” said Charlie.

“But it’s Dodge Anders who’s going to be the greatest guardsman Wonderland’s ever had,” Alyss went on. “He’s handsome and brave and kind and intelligent. He’ll grow up to be almost as good a fighter as Hatter. I help him practice his swordsman drills sometimes. I hold shields with different colors on them and when I call out a color he has to jab his sword at it while I shake and move the shield and make it as hard as I can for him. He’s my best friend and…no…I mean, was.” With a look around the alley: “He was my best friend.”

“Go on, Alyss,” Andrew said after she’d been silent for a time.

“No,” said Alyss, her voice hushed. “I don’t want to talk about Wonderland anymore.”

Then came the day her imagination failed altogether. It was dusk, the usual time when Quigly, ever the showman, rounded up a crowd of Londoners curious to see the singing African flower. Quigly gave Alyss the wink and she envisioned the flower petals opening and closing like lips, the bud gathering its

voice and singing a few bars, a lullaby maybe, or-

But nothing happened. She strained, groaned. Some of the onlookers thought she was going to be sick. Sing, flower!

Seconds passed. A full minute. Alyss began to sweat through her dirty, ragged clothes. Sing, flower, sing!

With grumblings and curses, the crowd started to disperse.

“She needs encouragement is all!” Quigly cried, upending his hat and begging for money. “Two pennies apiece and I guarantee that African flower’ll sing like you never heard!”

No one threw money into the hat. One gentleman threatened to call for a policeman. That was all Quigly had to hear; he grabbed Alyss’ hand and they ran off, leaving the flower and crate behind.

“I’m sorry,” Alyss said, once they were safe and had stopped to catch their breath. “What happened?”

“I don’t know,” she said. It scared her. It was like losing her hearing or her sight. “Maybe the longer I’m away from Wonderland…maybe the less my imagination works.”

“Hmm,” Quigly said, unbelieving. “I’m sorry, Quigly.”

“I’m sorry too, Princess.”

It was the first time she’d ever seen him angry. She had failed him. She had failed Francine, Margaret, Andrew, Esther, Otis, and Charlie. She had never before failed anyone who was counting on her, and she didn’t like the way it made her feel.

In silence, she and Quigly walked back to the alley to meet up with the other orphans. Along the way, they stopped in at the Kettle o’ Fish and the Grizzled Seaman pubs, hoping for a little charity. All they got was a bag of crusts.

“We was thinking of having duck tonight,” Andrew said, running up to her as she and Quigly turned into the alley. “With orange sauce and stuffing. Me and Francine and Margaret and Otis never had duck before.”

Having reached the end of the alley, Quigly flashed Alyss a look, summoned a lighthearted tone, and declared duck to be perfectly awful. “You ain’t missing much, I can tell you. It ain’t a coincidence ‘duck’ rhymes with ‘yuck.’ But I suppose this is as good a time as any to tell you…looks like we’re back to the old ways for a time, each of us having to get what we can get during the day and bringing it here to

share.”

“What’re you saying?” Charlie asked.

By way of answer, Quigly turned out his empty pockets, pale linen tongues of poverty. “So…what we got?”

“I’ve got nothing!” Charlie said. “What I stole I ate for breakfast and I got nothing else ’cause I thought

we’d eat just like we been doing.” It was the same with the others.

“Well, at least we have these crusts,” Alyss said.

“A hearty food if ever there was one,” replied Quigly, trying not to sound too disheartened. He divided the crusts into eight portions, claiming he was full before he finished eating his share. But Alyss could see that his bright, cheerful manner was forced, even a little sarcastic.

She stayed awake after the others had gone to bed. I have to think of something. Why can’t I make the flower sing? Because my imagination was nothing special after all, that’s why. So think of something. I will. I will I will I will I will.

“I know how we can get as much food as we’re used to having,” she told Quigly in the morning, “but we need Charlie, Otis, and Esther to help.”

“Whatever you say, Princess.”

He wasn’t very enthusiastic, didn’t seem as though he much wanted to talk to her. He’ll be happy afterwards, once our stomachs are full.

She dressed in the finest coat she could dig out of the alley’s heap of clothes and blankets, and she used her own saliva to wash the dirt from her face and hands. With the stub of a pencil, she wrote out a list of meats on a small square of paper, then she led the others to a butcher’s shop that she and Quigly had often passed.

“Stay hidden behind the carriage here and wait for my signal,” she told them, and entered the shop. “And what can I do for you today, young lady?” The butcher was a large, beefy man with a ruddy face.

He wore a bloodstained apron.

“I’m supposed to get these for my mother.” She handed him the list of meats. “Hmm. Seems like a lot for you to carry.”

“Our carriage is outside but the driver is off on another errand.”

She gave him her biggest smile and he couldn’t help but believe her. Mere circumstances could not disguise the warm look of a princess.

“Let’s see. It says here, one eight-pound rump joint…”

He walked through an opening into the back of the shop and she waved for Quigly and the others to hurry inside. They grabbed the chickens hanging in the window, the sausages and hams, Alyss helping load them up when their arms were too full to reach for more.

“Hey!”

The butcher dropped the joint and scrambled from behind the counter. The orphans bolted out of the shop, scattering in different directions.

“There y’are!”

A passing bobby caught Alyss by the collar of her coat. She slipped out of it, her dirty street urchin’s clothes visible for all to see, but she only got a few steps farther before he caught her again.

“Let me go!” she said, imagining a tuttle-bird flying in the man’s face or biting the hand that held her, neither of which happened.

Quigly had paused at the end of the street and was looking at her, a chicken under each arm, his pockets stuffed with sausages. Maybe he’d come to her rescue? Maybe he’d risk his own safety and do something clever to free her and they’d both get away?

But no. He turned and sprinted around the corner, out of sight.

Alyss never found out if she was the only one of the orphans who’d been caught that day (she was), but even before she’d been roughly escorted to the Charing Cross Foundling Hospital, where she would live until she was adopted by the Liddells, and even before she realized that she would never see Quigly Gaffer again, she had started to think that maybe it wasn’t worthwhile getting attached to people. All they ever did was betray you. They betrayed you by leaving.

Alyss tried not to hear when a warden at Charing Cross opened the door to a large room with cots lined up in two rows against the walls, children screaming and yelling and fighting, and said, “Welcome to your new home.”