From the Journal of Ned Stumble…

Molly | Timmy | Ben | Jean-Pierre | Mysterion

September 21, 1919

So many weeks of running. So many weeks of hiding. So many weeks of starving. But I’m here. I’m here!…

It’s hard to believe that just two months ago I was still in Merthyr Tydfil, that rat-infested coal-dust-hill of a town. Those people! Mortimer Guest, stort of stature, long on repugnance; Stradling Vayne, that spoiled brat (Badger in the Bag, indeed!); Lordling Michael Crawford, a do-nothing aristocratic sod destined to get all the credit for none of the work; and poor, poor Fenella Conway, may her soul rest in eternal peace. My father framed for treachery, and I, I expected to act just like him (though he never acted that way at all). All this two days ago, and now I’m here in the city of promise, London, standing at the doorstep of my hero. Well, not really standing because I’m writing this in an alley around the corner and I’m sitting. But I’ve seen the doorway. So much to sort out…

Like the day I watched my father get hanged.

I didn’t expect so many people to show up to the square for the hanging, so I had to push my way through huge crowd to get to the front so I could see. It seemed like half the population of Merthyr Tydfil was here.

I overheard someone behind me say to his companion, “The last time they hanged someone in the square, I was that boy’s age there.” The voice belonged to a wrinkled man with white hair. He was pointing at me. I’m twelve, but I’m short, so I look younger.

The day before, some men had quickly erected the gallows. Steps went up to a platform about the height of a grown man, big enough for three men to stand on. A post rose from the platform another ten feet with a piece of wood coming off it, like an upside-down “L” and the rope hung down from that.

Up on the platform, a man in a black stovepipe hat shouted out to the crowd: “On this 31st day of July, in the year of our Lord, nineteen-hundred and twelve, a man convicted of treason by a jury of his peers is to be hung in the town square of Merthyr Tydfil, Wales, by the order of the King himself. This man, Peter Stumble, stands convicted of the crime of treason.”

Somewhere someone was beating a military drum in steady time.

The stovepipe-hat-man continued: “Bring the prisoner forward!”

From out of nowhere appeared two coppers dragging my father towards the gallows. He tried to break away, but it was no use. They were too strong for him.

I was glad my mother was no longer alive to see this. I have no idea what she loved about the bastard. After she died, trying to bring what would have been my younger sister into the world, the last strands of civility in our household snapped. My father never stopped drinking except to hit me. The only thing I loved about him was that I’d now be free of him for good. My back was still stinging from the last encounter I had with him, two weeks ago, right before he passed out and got arrested for the final time.

It was probably stupid of me to have made my way to the front because now my father could see me. Now that he had caught sight of me, he stopped struggling and wouldn’t take his eyes off mine. I stared him down.

His story was all anyone could talk about over the past fortnight, ever since he had been picked up. I never knew what he did when he wasn’t home (which was most of the time) except that he worked in the blast furnaces of the Dowlais Iron Works (which was the death of three of my father’s friends in the last year alone). Apparently, when he was out, he was planning something with a group of men. The King was scheduled to visit our town in a year’s time, and my father was hard at work plotting his assassination.

Luckily for Britons everywhere, my father was caught, though his co-conspirators have not yet been found.

The way he was caught was very lucky, too. He was in the alley next to the bookstore on Broad Street talking to one of his fellow traitors when someone overheard my father telling his confederate some detail or another about how they would kill the King.

My father had come home drunk as usual and was passed out in his chair with his head on the table after having taken out his rotten day on my back. I was asleep when the door of our house smashed open and what seemed like twenty coppers burst into the place. He didn’t even wake up. It wasn’t the first time I saw my father hauled away, but it would prove to be the last.

By this time the two policemen were walking my father up the stairs to the gallows. He was covered in grime. His black hair was a wild mess. He hadn’t taken his eyes off me the whole time. The man with the stovepipe hat asked him if he had any last words as the noose was slipped around his neck.

“I’ve been framed,” he said, staring at me, as if somehow I had set him up.

I held his gaze until they covered his head with a black bag.

There was a loud CRACK when the trap door below his feet swung away, then a crunch as he dropped and the rope broke his neck, and then the creak of the slightly swinging rope from which his limp body hung.

He was gone.

The crowd broke up quickly and before I knew it I was alone, staring up at the figure that used to be my father.

Sleep. It still astounds me that when one is truly exhausted, one can fall asleep anywhere. Even a smelly, wet, dirty alley. Waking up I see that the black bricks weren’t painted after all and now the ash has added yet another hopeless stain to my garments.

Somehow my journal didn’t slip into the sludgy puddle next to me. So, to pick up where I left off…

I was startled by a tap on the shoulder.

“Ned? Ned Stumble?” said a man’s voice.

I turned around to see a broad-shouldered man, not too tall, maybe 50 years old. He had a long scar on his face, from his left eyebrow down to his lip. I recognized him from the papers. The man was opening the new school. Mortimer Guest.

“I’m terribly sorry about your father,” he said, a look of concern on his face.

I didn’t say anything.

“Perhaps you’ve heard, young man, that in the fall the school I’ve been building finally opens.”

I nodded my head.

He crouched next to me. Our faces were eye to eye. His hand was on my shoulder.

“I’d like you to live there and be one of my students.”

I wasn’t sure what to say.

“Don’t answer now. I know you have a lot on your mind, young man. But we have a home for you with the best education in Wales, if you want it.”

I was stunned by this offer of generosity. I just stared at him in amazement.

“If you want to take me up on my offer, all you have to do is show up at the gates of the school.”

He winked at me, then stood up and walked away. I just stood there in the empty cobblestone square looking after him, my father hanging from the gallows behind me.

I must have walked for hours because my father was hanged at high noon and now the sun was setting. I was up at Goat Mill Road when, to my surprise, I saw a frog hopping across the street. I couldn’t understand how a frog would have gotten up here, so far from the water (or why), but there it was. I crouched down to get a better look at it and it stopped hopping for a moment, just staring back at me.

There was no one on the street at all and we sat like that for a while.

I wondered if it would hop to my left. The moment that thought entered my head, the frog hopped to the left. One hop. Not taking its eyes off mine. How about right? Yes. Immediately. One hop. Staring right at me as if it had read my mind. Well, that’s queer, I thought.

I looked around, wondering where else the frog might go and when I looked back, it was gone, hopped off to somewhere wetter, I imagined.

It was starting to get cold, so I began the long walk back to my empty house, thinking about Mr. Guest’s generous offer and the fact that my father was now gone forever.

Later…

Of course, that relationship ended badly. Let’s hope my next mentor is a bit less of an ass.

I stood up and to the best of my ability dusted myself off, grateful that in my sleep I didn’t roll over into the dirty puddle next to me. The alley was only just around the corner from Thornton the Great’s house. I had expected the greatest stage magician of our day to live in a much posher neighborhood, but it was said that his parents were gypsies who left him at an orphanage, so perhaps he was simply more comfortable living with the lower classes.

It was still dark out and there was a chill in the air. No one was around at all. I still hadn’t made up my mind whether it was too early to knock on the great man’s door, but I didn’t want to attract attention to myself once it was light out. I could only imagine how wretched I looked. In my state, any constable would take me in simply for walking up to the door of such a great personage as the great Thornton the Great. So, under cover of darkness, I drummed up some courage and made my way to his house.

This was the moment I had been waiting for the past three years. I reminded myself that if I was turned away I’d be no worse off than I was now. I certainly couldn’t go back to Merthyr Tydfil anyway. So I may as well give it a go. I took deep breaths as I walked, hoping they might calm me down. I practiced what I would say as I walked: Hello. My name is Ned Stumble. I have been an admirer of yours since I was twelve…

The house was a four-story granite structure lodged between two other similar buildings. The entire block had the same look. Built during Queen Victoria’s reign, I was sure. The door was one of those thick wooden numbers with fading green paint. Walking up the four steps from the sidewalk, the door seemed enormous in front of me and standing before it, I realized that it was, in fact, quite oversized. The giant brass doorknob was green with age. In the center of the door loomed a knocker with the face of a lion. In my state of intimidation and anxiety it almost seemed that this lion was looking at me through its dull eyes. The knocker itself hung from its mouth.

Rap! Rap! Rap! The sound of the knocker against the metal plate was deafening. I jumped back, not meaning to have knocked so loudly. I waited what seemed a very long time, but could hear no sound from inside.

Just a few more seconds, I thought. But I couldn’t hear any movement at all from beyond the door. I decided to count to ten. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine…

Of course, I thought. To be expected. I tried to swallow my disappointment. What was I thinking? That Thornton the Great would somehow be expecting me? He probably wasn’t even awake yet and if he was, he’d be the one to call the constable to take away the pathetic wretch at his door. Who knew how many would-be apprentices came to his door every day expecting him to somehow adopt them? Dozens, I was sure.

I turned to walk away when I heard a deep creaking noise behind me and was hit with the most foul stench. As I turned around, I saw, standing in the now-open doorway, a giant ogre of a man dressed in a tuxedo that was much too small.

“Mr. Stumble,” he said, “the master has been expecting you.”