A Grand Plan for Thievin(The Protégé )
Goddardo has a grand plan, and his nephew Roto is along for the ride. Written for the Iron Age Media writing prompt: The Protégé.
10-steps down Myron Street, swing left at the first barbers and 13-steps later you’re in the Riverside inn, 14-steps you’re in the river. These directions are not so much for finding the place, as for finding your way out after a dozen tankards of rum. So necessary is this advice, the innkeeper has the reverse pinned to the back of the door, scribbled in giant bold letters for the wary patron staggering home past midnight, with bold red letters reading “do not turn right”.
This dreary little inn, big enough for twelve and half full sized men or twenty four and two halves half sized men, where the cities lowly rabble gather for their nightly bout of intoxication, is the ideal place for a thief to lay his plans, with the jeering too loud for anyone to hear you, and the patrons too drunk to remember if they did.
Goddardo sits down at his table, tankard in hand. The salt in the rum stings his lips while a ginger cat weaves around his ankles. Roto, his nephew slips between the crowd and plants himself next to Goddardo.
“Uncle! I gots some’in to tell ya”.
“Shh”
A smile creeps across Goddardo’s face as he slams down his tankard.
“You’re old uncle has a plan”
he throws his arms up then straightens his cuffs.
“I know exactly how we’re going to do it”. He leans towards Roto and whispers. “Take the old blighter right in his own home”.
He leans back, tapping his feet giddily and reaching for his rum to find a grey cat with its head stuck in his tankard. He yanks it out and the drunken feline staggers across the table, spots another unguarded tankard and staggers towards it.
“Uncle, I gots to say somein”
“Shh.. now listen up, and you’ll learn from your old uncle the importance of good scoutin. Bradlo Brindisi, miserly old fool, wide as he is tall, waddles as he walks recently foreclosed on the home for retired cats and kicked them all out into the street. But here’s the clincher, he made a fortune selling off the building and I dear boy, just so happen to know his cleaner. She told me that he don’t trust no bank with his money. Imagine that. So instead, he hides it next to his bed in a small brown cabinet, where he can count it every morning”.
“But uncle”
“No! I won’t here until the end, let it all sink in first like a fine cabernet sauvignon on the tongue… Picture this”
The two of them are squashed together in a dark and cramped little box on the back of a cart, clattering and wobbling down the cobbled streets tossing Goddardo and Roto into one another, with a brown and white cat crushed into the corner and a chilly wind blowing through the cracks.
“You see Roto, Brindisi lives next door to the wine merchant. He pays him a visit at nine thirty each night to buy his midnight drink. This, presents us with a chance to slip into his home and make off with his silver”.
“So why the box uncle?”
“I just so happen to know the man who delivers the merchant’s shipment. Each night he drops off two crates and the merchant wheels them inside, just before old Brindisi arrives” The cart rattles to a stop and they hear the delivery man chattering to the merchant.
“Uncle?”
“shh”
“meow”
The box bounces over the cobbles before the ride becomes smooth and the chilly wind becomes a gentle warm breeze as the merchant dumps the box into his store room.
“The wine merchant never empties the boxes on the night. He always waits until morning, so we’ll be safe here for as long as we need”
“But how do we get out? They nail these crates shut don’t they?”
“Ahh, young Roto. Listen and learn. I happen to know the man who makes these crates and I convinced him to place inside, a catch, that when pulled will open up the side and allow us to slip out”.
Goddardo reaches up and tugs on a little leather strap wedged between the panels. The strap snaps in his hand.
Goddardo stares over his tankard at Roto.
“You sure you can trust this box man uncle?” A fluffy black cat, vaguely resembling a bearskin hat with eyes, leaps onto Roto’s lap and paws at his tankard of rum and cream which he holds in the air out of its reach.
“I know what I’m doing alright, it’ll work. Listen to your uncle”.
Goddardo yanks the leather strap and this time the side falls away from the box kicking up a cloud of dust into the storeroom. They clamour out into the darkness, merely a sliver of warm light cutting in through the slightly cracked doorway at the end of the room. Goddardo hurries up, noticing that Roto is still finding his feet.
“No dillying”.
Roto hurries and stands by the door. They peek through into the shop. The walls are stacked with more wine than Roto could ever imagine. Dark bottles protruding from every shelf; shimmering in the light of two dozen candles. The shopkeeper walks past the door, a tall bony looking man with a moustache wider than his face. A silver cat with black spots is sat on the store counter, and the owner rushes to shoo it away only for Brindisi to burst through the door with three other cats rushing in around his ankles and darting away from the shopkeeper who trips over his own feet trying to catch them.
“That’s our cue. Brindisi always takes about half an hour to choose the exact same wine”.
Goddardo watches while the merchant greets Brindisi. When the shopkeeper circles to the other side of the counter, Goddardo waits for him to point up at the wine racks. He pushes open the door with a faint creak. One last check, to make sure they haven’t been seen and he tiptoes across the room and up the stairs with Roto right behind him.
Goddardo hurries into the bedroom and throws open the window. He climbs out onto the ledge as a spot of rain plops onto his cheek.
“Its alright, we won’t slip as long as we’re careful, that’s why thieves only steal good shoes… Now, toss me the grappling hook”.
“A hook?” Roto asks, “an where is we gonna get one o’ those from?”.
“Ah, young Roto, you see I just so happen to know a man who sells them down in market square”
“And you’s is gonna buy one?”
“No, you’re going rob one.”
Rotto reaches into a big black sack and pulls out a grappling hook. He tosses it to Goddardo who doesn’t even wobble, before leaping up onto the roof. Roto follows him out balancing on the ledge, staring down into the street. The thought of slipping makes him woozy, until Goddardo reaches down and shakes his shoulder?
“Boy, stop daydreaming”.
Roto swallows his unease and climbs onto the roof, where Goddardo is stood swinging the hook in circles. He tosses it to the other side of the alleyway and it hooks onto the chimney beside a speckled brown cat with bent whiskers and only one ear which is paying them no heed while licking its paw.
“What are we doing with this?” asks Roto. Goddardo smiles as he ties the line around the wine merchants chimney.
“Old on, we’re gonna walk across the rope?” Goddardo removes his glasses and tosses them onto the table as a grey cat missing half its fur pats at his hand. “Ow are you gon walk across a rope with yer knees, you can ardly walk upstairs we-out wobblin”.
“I’ve been practicing” he shakes his legs in the air.
“An even then, how we gettin in through the roof?
Goddardo’s face lights up. The grey cat mithers around Goddardo, brushing against his arm as he lifts his rum from the table. The cat looks at his face, making awkward eye contact as it pats at his shoulder.
“You’re going to like this part” He leans away from the cat as it stretches its paws up to his beard. “I had a brilliant idea”. The cat pulls his beard.
Shambling across Brindisi’s roof, they stop at an odd patch of tiles.
“You see, I happen to know the roofer who fixed his roof after a large animal fell through it and straight into Brindisi’s guest room”.
“An animal? What sort o’ animal?”
“An ogre, if you can believe it”. Goddardo shoves his hand under the tiles and a whole section lifts away at once, revealing a gaping hole straight down into Brindisi’s house. The two of them jump down.
Roto squints and takes a sip of his rum and cream, licking the foam off of his top lip.
“So, we get the silver, then we clime back through the roof.”
“No no no, we have another way out.” Roto looks at Goddardo puzzled. “In order to hide our tracks, the roofer is going to climb up onto the roof and patch up the hole for good. Nobody will even know we were there.” They pause for a minute as Roto twists his face at Goddardo.
“Why not jus, do it once we get out?”
“He has an appointment at ten-to-ten.”
The two of them creep onto the landing. In the living room below them, asleep in front of the fire, snoring on a thick fur rug, is brindisis bulldog. They move silently, so not to wake it. They never step on a creaky floorboard, lean on a creaky handrail, or make even the slightest of sounds in this old house, never once making any noise, not even a peep, loud enough to wake the dog. Unfortunately, dogs work on smell. Brindisis bulldog slavers its way up the stairs and cuts them off just before the bedroom. Goddardo seems brave at first.
“Go on, shoo”. Then the drooling hound charges at them. They rush into a nearby room and Goddardo slams the door closed pressing his back against it, while the dog on the other side barks and claws at the wood.
“So what we gun do?” quizzes Roto.
“Stop asking questions would be a good start”. Suddenly the door begins to hit Goddardo on the back of the head as the barking deepens and the hinges creak.
“I said stop asking questions!”
“Why does your plans always get us into a mess.”
“This isn’t a mess. You have dog-go-away? I’ll open the door, you toss it out.”
“What? That’s for emergencies?”
“What do you call this?”
“Its not an emergency, we’s just stuck. Besides, why is I always got to fix these messes. You’s and your plans get us in them”. Goddardo glares at Roto. “Get your own dog-go-away”.
Goddardo slumps his head onto his hand and sighs.
“Fine, I’ll get some just in case”
“Gud”.
The two of them are silent, Goddardo has given up defending his rum as three hissing cats jostle to get their head in the tankard.
“So when you get the silver, what den?” Goddardo’s face lights up.
“Well boy, I happen to know a lady who works in the town hall and she gave me a map of the old sewers”.
They barge through an old wooden door, knocking it off its hinges and charging straight into a dead end. An old wine cellar, walls of mouldy old stone, and puddles pooling where the floor has started to sink. Goddardo trots into the middle of the room with Roto in tow and stops before a huge, leaky, crumbling wall.
“Just behind this wall, is the sewer. I just so happen to know”
“How many people you know exactly?”
“Well, this one has a boat. We’ll follow the sewer all the way to the end and our friend, ahem, my friend will meet us there and carry us to the docks. Home free. Rich men. All done.”
“So how we getting through?” Goddardo pulls a small chisel from his coat, he stabs it between the bricks. He pries a single brick out and the whole wall begins to crack. A surge of sewage bursts into the room, a monsoon of liquid mud, a calamitous crescendo of crap washes past them and fills the basement.
Goddardo rubs his forehead, his bushy grey eyebrows wiggling as he does.
“Good grief boy, can you not listen to your old uncle? This is why we scout. We scout to get the good information so we can make a good plan and your old uncle has the good information, and this plan will work, no monsoon of crap. I’ve been robbin since before you was a toddlin boy, and your old uncle knows what he’s doing” Roto hangs his head and sags his shoulders.
“I dint mean nuffin by it uncle”. Goddardo slouches. He looks over at his tankard, with three unconscious cats lying on their back, flicking their tails.
“Oh, well… Never mind your old uncle. I think I’ve talked enough. What was it you was so excited to tell me when you came in?”
Rotos face lights up.
“Well uncle”. He takes a large brown bag from his jacket and dumps it on the table, it falls over and silver coins spill out. Goddardo puts his glasses back on and grabs a piece of silver.
“Where did you get all of this?” Roto lifts his chin, levels his shoulders and puffs out his chest.
“Well, uncle. I was scoutin just like you told me, at Brindisi’s place”. Goddardo stares at him. “He left the backdoor unlocked”.
Entertaining
"Its alright, we won’t slip as long as we’re careful, that’s why thieves only steal good shoes…" - great line. I also like how you handled the jumping back/forth between two scenes. That can be confusing in fiction sometimes, but you telegraphed what was going on well enough that I understood instantly what was happening. Also, a great twist at the end. Good stuff all 'round.