Frank did not come back that night. I suspected that he had returned to the streets of London to help search for Pedro. I wished I could join him. Charlie was straining at the leash too; only his sense of duty to me stopped him from going. By common consent, neither of us talked about it as we sat by the fire. My mind was too vividly imagining what might be happening to Pedro. I felt sick with anxiety.
‘Well, little brother, I think you’d better turn in for the night,’ Charlie said with an attempt at light-heartedness. ‘I’ll wake you if Frank returns with any news.’
Glumly, I did as I was told. It made no sense to sit up staring at the coals. I eventually fell asleep sometime after the Abbey bells tolled midnight. Immediately, Pedro appeared in my dreams – or should I say my nightmares. He was flying up to the sky on his harness, wings fluttering behind him, waving to me. I waved back. Then a sword appeared out of nowhere and sliced through the rope that held him. Pedro plummeted to the floor, screaming.
‘Are you all right?’ Charlie was standing beside me in his nightshirt, holding a candle.
‘Y-yes. What’s the matter?’ I couldn’t remember where I was for a moment, thinking myself back in the Sparrow’s Nest. Memory returned. ‘Is Frank here yet?’
‘No. It’s just that you screamed.’
I slumped back on my pillow. ‘Sorry. I was having a nightmare – about Pedro.’
Charlie nodded. ‘I’m not surprised. I couldn’t sleep for thinking of him. I’ll get you a glass of water. Try and get some rest.’
He came back with the glass and placed it on the bedside table.
‘Drink this. You can’t do any more than you’ve already done for Pedro.’ He sat on the bed beside me. ‘Try not to fret, little brother. I’ll stay here until you’re asleep. Don’t worry: you’re safe with us.’
The water helped – more because of Charlie’s kindness thinking of it than because I was thirsty – but it couldn’t dull the acute ache of homesickness for Drury Lane and my fear for Pedro. Where was he now?
The following day, Charlie went out early to see if the newspapers carried any more stories about Pedro. There was a short piece on the front page – an appeal by Mr Sharp and Mr Equiano for any information leading to the discovery of the African Ariel – but nothing else.
‘I’m going to send a message to Milly,’ Charlie told me over breakfast in the great dining room. ‘I want to find out what the Movement’s decided to do.’
As he left, I smoothed the page out and stared at the bald words before me – ‘the African’, ‘former slave’, ‘missing’ – Pedro had been reduced to a paragraph. It said nothing about my friend, his talents, his quick laugh. The real boy had disappeared too as far as the public were concerned, becoming just an interesting story about a runaway slave. I took out the pottery medallion and looked at the man depicted on its face. It struck me then that, despite Mr Wedgwood’s best efforts, this African also seemed a caricature – a clumsy representative of thousands of suffering individuals whose stories would probably never be known.
‘Morning, Hengrave.’ Richmond plumped himself down on the bench beside me, slopping porridge on my newspaper. ‘Oops! So sorry about that. What’s that you’re fondling?’
‘None of your business,’ I said sharply, hiding the medallion under the table.
‘Something you’re not supposed to have, I don’t doubt. A picture of your girlfriend – or your boyfriend perhaps?’ Fatty Ingels pushed his way on to the bench on the other side of me, squeezing me between them.
‘Very funny, I don’t think,’ I said, trying to get up.
Four or five other boys came to sit around us, all grinning at me. I didn’t know them, but I recognized Richmond’s set – all sons of plantation owners who knew each other from the West Indies. It seemed that Richmond had succeeded in finding himself a place in the school pecking order: at the head of a group of fellow bullies who liked persecuting runty shadows from rival boarding houses, namely yours truly.
‘I hear you and your brother are upset over the disappearance of a certain negro,’ said Richmond loudly, spraying me with porridge from his mouth.
‘What makes you think that?’ I asked as calmly as I could muster.
‘Oh, Ingels here heard the commotion in the lodge yesterday when the news broke. Had your sister in a fit of the vapours, he said, screaming and crying like a baby. Now I know where you get it from.’
‘You leave my sister out of this,’ I said, standing and making to leave. Richmond gave a nod to his friends and they rose as one to follow me. If life in Covent Garden has taught me one thing, it is to recognize a gang when I see it. I started to stride quickly, heading towards the Lower Form classroom where I hoped they dare not pursue me.
‘You know, Hengrave, I really am interested in seeing what you were looking at,’ said Richmond, catching me up and taking my arm. I shook him off and broke into a run. I could hear the thunder of feet behind me. I took a sharp left, then a right, trying to lose them, but they were on my scent like a pack of hounds. What should I do? At home, I would’ve known every alleyway, every house, and would’ve given them the slip easily; here I was on foreign territory. I ducked round the corner of a building and saw a door immediately ahead of me at the end of a narrow passage. I ran straight for it, but it was locked. I turned back. My enemies were massed in front of me, blocking my exit. I was trapped.