Page 89 of An Artful Dodge
“Stop!” came the voice again. “Or we’ll shoot!”
“Kick!” Art shouted at me. Silence was pointless now. The report of a gunshot snapped, then echoed through the tunnel.
We wouldn’t make it.
“’Old your breath!” Art said again.
I gasped for what air I could and shut my eyes, letting him swim ahead, pulling me forward to the Thames. Below the water, we were invisible.
A second gunshot rang out, but it was muted by the water.
It’s a different world below the surface, I thought. My eyes remained closed, and I felt Art’s hand with a firm grasp on my coat, and we moved through the water in bursts driven by his strong kicks and my lesser ones.
Suddenly the water changed again, like the prow of a small boat pressing along the right side of my body. I clawed my way up to the surface, with Art’s hand still clenching my coat.
We’d reached the Thames.
“Turn on your back! Suck breath into your belly,” he shouted, and I heard the note of relief in his voice.
I did as he said, and to my surprise, the water stopped rushing at me or past me. It carried me, fast, and Art and I let it bear us east on the tide until we reached a dock where James lay flat, a long plank extended out over the water for us.
Art grasped it and hauled me forward until my hands reached it too. I was so cold I barely felt the wood against my palm, but I hung on for bloody life and James pulled us out of the flow and toward the pilings. I grasped the post and found cross bars and notches for my feet, pulling myself over the top, where I flopped down, panting, my cold cheek against the river-rotted plank.
Art clambered up after me and rolled onto his side, retching.
“Hullo, water rats,” James said, a wry note in his voice. But a moment later, he cursed. “Merde. Stay down. They’re looking for us.”
A bull’s-eye lantern appeared, arrowing light across the water. I bent my forehead to the planks, and through a crack between them, I saw glints on the wavelets below.
At last it was dark again, the boat gone, and I turned my face toward James. Blood trickled over his forehead.
“What happened to your head?”
“Hit it on the dock.”
“How’s your leg?” I asked.
“Fine,” he said, but shortly. He was in pain.
“Y’need a doctor,” Art said. “I know one no’ far from here. But first.” He withdrew a flask—was there anything he didn’t have inside that bag?—and offered it to me. I took a swig, letting the spirit burn down my insides, and handed it to James, who drank and returned it to Art, who, meanwhile, had taken out something wrapped tightly in oilskin, tied closed with a length of twine.
He unwrapped a pistol and handed it to me. “You know how to shoot i’?”
The metal was ice-cold but dry, heavy against my palm. I nodded, checking the chamber the way Amelia had shown us. There was no bullet. I thought about what Art said about not killing people, and my heart sank. This gun was only for show.
“Bullet’s in the second chamber,” Art said as he stood. “First one’s empty for safety.”
Art took James’s left arm over his shoulders, and I hooked myself under James’s right. The difference in our heights made us a clumsy trio, but we shuffled up the pier and into Whitechapel. James made no jest of it, which told me how badly he was hurt. We stopped often, each time longer. When we reached an alley and Art pointed toward a door, I stepped behind, following them through damp muck underfoot that almost made me slip. “Is this the doctor?” I asked.
“He won’ make it to the doctor,” Art said. “I’ll bring the doctor here. This is a friend. She gets to her shop early.” He knocked quietly, three raps. Then three more.
“Who is it?” came a woman’s voice.
“It’s me.”
The lock slid and the door opened to reveal one of the most beautiful girls I’d ever seen. Her golden hair fell in a long braid over her wrapper, and her bright eyes darted over us. “Come in then,” she said and stepped aside, beckoning us through the open door.
Something about her gesture, the ready kindness of it, turned my heart over.
