Beggar’s Alley always stank of rot and smoke, but that night it seemed worse, as though the whole lane knew what had happened. The house was little more than a sagging hut of timber and broken slate; its windows patched with rags. Inside, the air was still. Too still.
Sharpe was eight years old, but already broad in the shoulders and wore the tell-tale signs of a hard life on the streets. He stood at the foot of the bed, staring at the shape of his mother beneath the threadbare blanket. A jug lay empty on the floor, tipped on its side, its last drops of sour ale soaking into the floorboards.
She had not risen all day. When he finally shook her, she did not stir.
His three younger brothers huddled in the corner, wide-eyed and silent. Greg, no more than six, clutched a cracked toy soldier. Tom, a boy of four, sucked his thumb whilst rocking back and forth. The youngest was little Briar, hardly old enough to understand, though he cried as if he did.
Sharpe swallowed hard, his throat tight. He wanted to cry too, but something inside him turned hard instead. He pulled the blanket over her face, jaw clenched so tight it hurt. “She’s gone,” he said, his deep voice not yet grown but already carrying weight. “She ain’t gettin’ up again.”
The boys whimpered, and Tom asked, “What do we do now?”
Sharpe didn’t answer right away. He looked around the room, the broken chair, the empty larder, the cracks in the walls where the cold would come. He thought of the men in the Alley, the way they leered at his mother when she stumbled through the streets with her jug. He thought of the fights he’d already had to keep scraps from being stolen. Finally, he squared his shoulders. “We do what we’ve always done. We fight; we steal if we have to. But more importantly, we stick together.”
Greg’s lip trembled. “But who’ll look after us?”
Sharpe’s eyes, already colder than any child’s should be fixed upon them. “I will. I am the oldest, that means it’s on me.”
The words hung heavy in the air. At eight years old, Sharpe had become a father, mother and protector in one. The burden was too big, but he shouldered it anyway. Outside, the Beggar’s Alley went on as it always had, shouts in the dark and the clatter of bottles on the pavement. Inside, four boys huddled together, one hardening into the man he would become.
It was in that moment, Sharpe’s path was set. To fight and survive, all born of a promise made in a sagging hut over his mother’s shrouded body.
