hour or so, the Beggarmaster seemed to grow bored with the sport. By then, Gord had told him details of his whole existence. Surprisingly, the fat man had seemed to relish parts of it, especially the story of how he’d gotten rid of his foster mother’s body and the episode when Gord had wet his pants in fear of Snaggle. The session was ended with a handclap that brought a one-eyed man scurrying into the main chamber of the weird “palace.”
“This little rat is now your pupil, Furgo,” said the fat man. “Send him to me if he needs correction. Otherwise, I wish never to see him again unless he becomes one of my money-earning operatives.”
With the one bright eye that bulged out of his lean and leathery face, Furgo peered intently at Gord for a moment. Then he took him firmly by the shoulder and led him behind an arras, where a short passage led from the grand salon to a dozen rickety rooms that constituted the remainder of the first storey of the building. In one of these rooms his new instructor seated the boy on a stool while he looked him over closely.
“Not bad, not bad,” Furgo chuckled as he examined Gord’s bleary eyes, his runny nose, and the “pox sores” Gord had created for his escape from workhouse labor. “Pretty sharp for an untrained boy-and such a stupid-looking one at that!” he said as he steered Gord out of the seat and over to a flight of creaking steps that wound upward.
“Where are you taking me?” Gord asked the thin beggar timorously.
Furgo prodded the frightened boy with a finger, urging him up the steps. “Never mind, laddy-boy, never mind. You are Furgo’s charge now. You just do as you’re told, and you’ve nothing to fear-save my anger, or Master Theobald’s….”
They proceeded to mount the stairs until they came to the top floor, several levels above the ground. The place consisted of one large, open area and a warren composed of many cubicles. Furgo led Gord to a cubicle in the middle of the maze and told him to remember its location. This was to be his home until he was told differently. Whenever he wasn’t receiving instruction, he was to be in his cubicle. Failure meant punishment-or death, depending on the Beggarmaster’s whim. The one-eyed man didn’t have to explain to Gord that the outcome would most likely be nasty either way, given the propensities of the lord of this place. Gord merely nodded to convey his complete understanding.
Furgo then led him to the kitchen in the cellar. There the greasy cook, whom Furgo referred to as Batcrap, gave him some boiled vegetables and broth-not very tasty, but more nourishment than Gord had taken at one sitting in a long time. His gulping and slobbering over the mess made both Furgo and Batcrap laugh loudly. Both agreed that Gord was likely to do okay here if he was as quick to learn and obey as he was to wolf down the chow. That made Gord grin in agreement-whereupon Batcrap smacked him on the ear and chided him, in a gruff but pleasant tone, for insolence to his betters.
Emboldened by the good feeling in his belly and the comradely buffet, Gord asked: “Where’s everybody? This huge mansion has plenty of room for lots more than us!”
“Us? So it’s
Gord didn’t know what to do or say at that point, so he shrunk into himself and tried to be invisible. Furgo noticed the effort, and apparently appreciated it.
“That’s the ticket!” said the one-eyed beggar as he clipped the boy across the back of his head. “You keep practicing that, and you’ll be a good addition to our group.” Then recalling what Gord’s original question was, Furgo grinned and told him: “There are dozens of others who stay in this… mansion.” At that word, he and Batcrap both guffawed at Gord’s use of such a lofty word to describe the decaying place. “They’ll be comin’ in between dusk and dark, turnin’ over their earnings, then gettin’ fed and doin’ their trainin’ before sleep time. You’ll meet ’em all soon enough-don’t fret about that. Come on now, laddy-boy. This day is all over for you.”
After being escorted back to his room and kicked in the rear by the departing Furgo, Gord lay down with a sigh upon the heap of dirty straw and old rags that was his pallet. Not bad at all, he thought. After all, he wasn’t dead. There was no muscle-wrenching toil to be done now. His belly was full. The rags and straw were as good a bed as he’d ever known. He shut his eyes and, although it could not have been more than midafternoon at the latest, fell asleep instantly.
He dreamed of fat, bald ogres and trolls dressed as guards, but they didn’t trouble his slumber at all. In his dreams, Gord was always able to break out of their grasp, steal what they had, and slip away.
Chapter 4
Pain was the only sensation that could penetrate his brain. It was at least a sign that he was alive, and Gord accepted it as such. How long he could hold his position he did net know, but he was determined not to admit defeat and to persevere until Furgo said he could stop. That there were several others undergoing the same torture was indeed consolation to Gord. Perhaps if one of them broke first, he would follow, but until then he was determined to endure.
What the youth was suffering was simply training. Training to be a contortionist, to be able to assume the guise of a maimed and hopeless cripple. Part of the education necessary to field a corps of beggars each so pitiful and pathetic that the hardest-hearted passerby would have ruth and drop a drab or two into one’s bowl.
Each morning Gord began the day with exercises, calisthenics that kept his young body lean and supple. If he did well, he was then allowed to break his fast with the dozens of other apprentice and journeyman beggars quartered in the Beggarmaster’s building. Failure to please meant no food, at best, but Gord preferred not to think about that. Following the meal came lessons in the secret sign of the beggars-a means of communication that was supposedly unknown to the uninitiated, an amalgam of the Thieves’ Cant and the secret speech of the Merchants’ Guild that had been perverted to the ends of the lowly Beggars’ Union. Thereafter came more physical training and then mental disciplines once again-usually memory training and then lessons in assessing people. Gord was quick to learn, and the lessons gladdened his heart. The skills and knowledge he was gaining were tools that would enable him to break out of the prison of the Slum, the Old City, and become something far greater than a successful beggar, let alone a beggar’s apprentice. The actual goal was a secret, one kept closely among the chosen of the Beggarmaster-and Gord had earned his way into that select group! As he fought with body and mind to keep the pain from getting the best of him, Gord began to silently recall what he had learned and experienced in days recently gone by….
Those who dwelt with the Beggarmaster were unlike other members of the Beggars’ Union. The latter simply paid a tithe to the master in return for a select location and the promise of aid when in trouble. But those indentured to the Beggarmaster had to turn over every iron drab, bronze zee, or food scrap they garnered. After two months of service, and general instruction inside Theobald’s “mansion,” Gord had been sent out with a group of other apprentices and journeymen under the watchful eyes of a pair of master beggars. Since he did well in his efforts to swell the Beggarmaster’s coffers, he was allowed to go on more of these field trips, and he soon developed a well-deserved reputation as a good scavenger. Whether he went out in morning or evening, to New City or Old, Gord had managed to come back with more coins and food than any of the others. Of course, sometimes he had had to resort to theft when soulful pleading for alms had failed to net what he felt would be an acceptable take. Early in his “career,” Gord had been beaten once for failure, and he vowed to himself that such would never happen again.
Continued success brought the reward of being initiated into the Beggarmaster’s inner circle. Each initiate swore an oath never to reveal, on penalty of death, the secret of the circle. When Gord was accepted as a member, he learned that the master was dissatisfied with his alliance with the Thieves’ Guild. The arrangement between the groups was simple: Each beggar kept his or her eyes open for any likely prospects, signaling a mark to a nearby thief or bringing back word about potential targets for burglary or robbery. In return, a thief always gave to a beggar he encountered on the street, and a successful escapade by a thief meant a tithe from the Thieves’ Guild to the Beggars’ Union. However, this tithe was only one-tenth of that portion of the take paid by the thieves to their guild. Thus, if one hundred silver nobles were lifted from someone’s strongbox, the thief would pay the customary one- tenth share to the guild, and of these ten coins the Beggarmaster got one. This was insufficient-Master of Beggars Theobald would have it all!
