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A Novel
by Allison Epstein
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"You're late, my boy," he calls to the person he assumes is Dodger. "You know I don't like it when you're late."
"And when have I ever changed how I live to suit what you like, Fagin?" a woman calls back.
"Nan!" Charley cries in delight. He wolfs down the sausage almost without chewing and launches himself toward the door, where Nancy Reed stands with a felt hat jammed over her unbrushed hair and what seems to be half the mud of London on the hem of her skirt. She smiles as Charley seizes her round the waist in a crushing hug, but Jacob can see the distance between her smile and her eyes, and he knows she didn't come for company. His nerves, newly loosened, wind themselves again.
"Once or twice, my dear," he answers her, "if memory serves. That carrying-on in the street had nothing to do with you, I hope? Unbecoming for a lady, causing commotion."
Nan snorts and pushes Charley off, swatting him good-naturedly on the back of the head. She sweeps the hat off her own and thumps it businesslike against her thigh, dislodging a cloud of dust. He has half a mind to tell her his home isn't a barnyard for all and sundry to knock their dirt free in, but he's under no delusions about the state of the house. With the water pump a fifteen-minute walk away and the line for it usually twice that, no one in Saffron Hill can afford to have standards.
"You know I never cause a commotion unless I want one," she says. "Was Toby again, the heavy-fingered idiot. Expect he'll crash in here before long, sweating like a pig from outrunning the law."
Jacob sighs. So it was one of his after all. Toby Crackit is twenty-one now and only an occasional visitor to Bell Court, preferring to spend his evenings at the gin-palaces or buried up to his hips in some girl or other. Even so, Jacob's known Toby since the lad was six, and his strongly held principles of us and them make it clear what side of the equation Toby falls on. "That one will find himself collared before the year's out if he isn't careful."
"You taught him everything he needs to know," Nan says. "If he didn't learn, that's his funeral. But I didn't come here to talk about Toby."
Over the years, Jacob and the children who stay with him have developed an unspoken language. All it takes is one look as sharp as the toasting-fork, and then Charley scurries upstairs murmuring his regards to Nan—though not, Jacob notes, before snatching another sausage, leaving a trail of grease in his wake. Jacob doesn't like animals, never has, but some days he thinks taking in a pack of stray cats would at least have been neater.
He waits until the door at the landing bangs shut before gesturing at one of the chairs. "Tea?"
She sits. "How many times have you used the leaves?"
"For you, Queen of Saffron Hill? Fresh."
"You spoil me, Fagin."
He drifts toward the hob, removing the kettle, pinching out tea leaves with unnecessary ceremony. When he turns back, the distance between her eyes and her smile remains the same, for all the lightness in her voice. He leaves the tea to steep in the pot and returns with two mismatched cups, the chipped one done up in pale blue chinoiserie and the intact one with a bloom of roses. They were both part of fine sets at one point, though their quality didn't survive the loss of their mates.
"Now," he says. "Talk to me, Nan. I assume it's Bill."
Nan gnaws her lower lip, confirming it.
"Right then. What is it this time?"
"He's frightening me, Fagin," Nan says quietly.
What Jacob thinks, but doesn't say, is that if Nan is only just now becoming frightened of Bill Sikes, she hasn't been paying attention for a very long while. To give her time to collect herself, he returns to the teapot, pours two cups, nudges one toward her. She stares into it the way he's seen suicides stare at the Thames.
"He wants Charley," she says finally.
Jacob doesn't know what he expected her to say, but this isn't it. "What on earth for?"
Excerpted from Fagin the Thief by Allison Epstein. Copyright © 2025 by Allison Epstein. Excerpted by permission of Doubleday. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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