Free Lina at the Games by Sally Rippin Page B

that every day, just by being alive, she reminded him that his son was not.
    Grace climbed the steps that ran up by Blackfriar’s Bridge and crossed into Water Lane, hobbling to keep weight off her foot. Her wet skirt slapped against her legs, stinging her skin. The fog was in the streets too, hanging like low-slung spider webs. Crowds of people pushing carts ready for the night markets were coming down in the opposite direction.
    Two of the girls who lived next door came running up behind Grace, giggling together. Grace pressed back against the stone wall as they shoved their noisy way past her. She wished she had a sister, or a friend to share things with. It never mattered how hungry they were, or how cold, the girls were always playing and laughing with each other.
    Ma Honeywell, their mother, stopped when she saw Grace and gave her cheek a playful pinch. She had eleven children, most of them girls, though she could never find half of them.
    â€˜Hello, luv,’ she said, smiling. ‘How was business today?’
    Ma Honeywell always asked the same question, only today Grace could give her a different answer. ‘Good,’ she said, smiling back. ‘Very good! My uncle will be happy!’
    â€˜That’d be a sight for sore eyes. You better get home, luv, and give him what you got!’ Ma Honeywell patted Grace’s arm, then turned and walked on. She was on her way to the alehouse, where she would drink so much gin that later she wouldn’t remember who Grace was at all.
    Grace continued up the steps, imagining what it would be like when Uncle Ord saw the hammer. ‘Well done, Grace,’ he would say. She could almost feel the heat from the fire and taste the toasted cinnamon bun.
    â€˜Uncle Ord!’ she called, as she pushed in the door of their lodgings.
    Her uncle was sitting in his chair in front of the empty hearth with his sore leg up on the table.
    Uncle Ord used to be a sailor until his leg was caught in a loop of rope that lifted him into the air and snapped his knee-bone. ‘I was hanging upside down like a side of ham in a butcher’s shop!’ he told Johnny Dugs, the rag shop man. Uncle Ord and Johnny Dugs laughed as if it were a joke, but Grace knew that it was not. Uncle Ord couldn’t be a sailor after that. He wasn’t good for anything, he said, but ‘selling the rubbish from the bottom of that stinking river.’
    Grace tipped out the contents of her kettle. Wet coal tumbled across the table beside Uncle Ord’s leg. Without turning around to look at her, he growled, ‘Is that all?’
    Grace carefully placed the hammer on the table beside the coal. Uncle Ord picked it up and swung around to her, his eyes hard.
    â€˜Where’d you find this?’ he snarled. ‘You little thief!’
    Grace jumped back. ‘I never stole it. I stood on it,’ she stammered.
    She lifted her foot to show him the cut. But Uncle Ord didn’t look, he smacked his hand down onto the table, making Grace jump.
    â€˜You bring the runners to this house and they put me in chains, I’ll kill you!’
    â€˜I never stole it, Uncle!’ Grace protested, but she could tell he wasn’t listening. ‘I never stole nothing! It was Joe Bean tried to steal from me. There won’t be no runners coming for you.’
    Uncle Ord stroked the sharp claws of the hammer with his tobacco-stained fingers.
    â€˜They hanged a boy smaller than you down at the Newgate gallows yesterday. He stole a pair of boots worth a lot less than this here hammer. He was so small they had to weigh him down with stones so he’d drop right when he stepped off the platform.’
    Grace shuddered. She had never wanted to see a hanging, but most people didn’t feel that way – they flocked to see an execution as if it were a circus show. Even her uncle’s stories frightened her.
    â€˜Please, Uncle, I found the hammer in the river, I swear.’