Ambergate

by Patricia Elliott

  Mistress Crumplin was snoring by the fire. She had poured herself a large glass of neat slowfire and drunk three-quarters of it.

  “I knows I can rely on you, Scuff, my dear,” she said as she settled herself. “Like the old days, ain’t it? Now, if you’re a good girl all will be well for you, but if you ain’t—well, Mistress Slyde ain’t one to be reckoned with, I’m warnin’ you.”

  I didn’t hear a squeak or sigh from the children. They would have returned from the neighboring building, where I remembered spinning flax all day. It was as if ghosts inhabited the house above me. But I knew they must be there, for there were so many dishes to wash, and they were so shiny I’m sure they had been licked clean by the children, as we used to do. The pans, on the other hand, were encrusted with ancient food, even rust and mold. But I was not surprised; I knew Mistress Crumplin’s slovenliness of old.

  I must bear this for tonight, I thought. Tomorrow I’ll escape…

  Dog was winding the standing clock in the hall. She came back with the key after a while and made a great display of helping me, though I think she was more eager to talk. “I’ve not said nothin’ to Mistress Crumplin about harborin’ a criminal here, Scuff.”

  “You don’t believe I’m truly a criminal, Dog, do you?”

  “Whether I do or don’t, that don’t matter. You help me in the house and that, do my work for me, and I’ll help you. I’ll not say nothin’ if you work hard. But if I find myself gettin’ weary, then I shall complain. And I might complain to you, then again I might complain to Mistress Slyde.”

  “You know I am a hard worker, Dog.”

  “You’ve escaped them so far, Scuff; you must be lucky, eh? But what if the Militia come knockin’ on our door?”

  “Why should they think I’m in the Capital?” I asked, but my mouth was dry.

  “If they see your arm—Number 102—that’s a giveaway” She snatched my wrist, and I drew it away at once.

  “They can’t check everyone,” I said. “There are too many in the Capital. I believe they think I’m dead.” I looked at her. Could I trust her? What if they offered a reward for information?

  She gave a hollow laugh. “You might as well be dead workin’ here! I tell you, Scuff”—she gave a quick glance at the snoring housekeeper and lowered her voice—“that Slyde, she’s a right bossy cow, and the pay’s nothin’ neither. As for you, poor little orphan girl”—she looked mocksad at me—“bein’ reclaimed, you won’t get nothin’ to pay your way.”

  A bell rang impatiently somewhere above us. Dog gave me a shove toward the door. “That’ll be Slyde wantin’ help with the girls, third floor. Her husband sees to the boys at night, top floor.”

  “Husband?”

  She pulled a face. “Twin of her, he is. You wouldn’t want to meet either of ‘em in your worst nightmare.”

  The narrow stairs were in darkness, but I needed no candle to feel my way up. Time moved backward. It was as if I’d never left that smell of mildewed walls, old food, and unwashed bodies. Beneath my feet, the bare boards creaked in the same mournful way. I could hear the solemn tick-tock of the tall hall clock below me, the slow echoing tick of death-watch beetles in the narrow walls around me, the scratching of mice behind the skirting.

  A terrible weight of oppression and helplessness descended on me. I was back, and there was no escape.

  It was a tall house, and the girls’ dormitory on the third floor was the first lighted room I came to. In the yellow glow of the oil lamps, Mistress Slyde was walking around the two long rows of low iron bedsteads, her shadow, an elongated stick figure, jerking along the walls. In the beds lay two dozen or more little girls; in some, two or three shared together. Though the shutterless windows were open to the night, there was a smell of sickness and stale urine in the cold room.

  As I came in, their heads turned toward me, and a thin murmur arose, abruptly cut off when Mistress Slyde beat her long ruler on the floor. The children’s hands fluttered on the sparse coverlets like so many trapped birds; their faces were wan and full of fear.

  I stepped past the filthy prayer mats and quickly bowed my head to the wooden Eagle head that was fixed to the near wall. “You wanted me, Mistress Slyde?”

  She pointed with her ruler to an empty bed by the door. “You will sleep there, 102. You can get the children up in the morning, six of the clock. Make sure they say their prayers, lest any should die before evening. They must strip their beds and fasten their clothes properly before breakfast.” She came closer and frowned down at me. “You will keep good order, 102. Report to me any misdemeanors, and the child responsible will be punished. So will you, if I hear too much noise. Understood?”

  I nodded dumbly. The children gazed at me, their eyes dull. Someone was whimpering very quietly.

  “From seven in the morning until six in the evening they work in the factory close by, spinning flax. You will remember the place, no doubt.”

  I bit my lip, and again I nodded.

  “You will clear the breakfast dishes when they have left, and do their laundry. I will give you further instructions then. Any questions?”

  The order of the day hadn’t changed since I’d been there. Without thinking I blurted out, “Do they still get no time to play?”

  “One day a year is for play, that is plenty,” snapped Mistress Slyde. She gave me an angry, measuring look. “There is no time for such trifles. Play only encourages bad behavior.” She looked around at the rows of beds.

  “Speaking of bad behavior, where is the child who was silent at Devotion tonight?”

  No one made a sound. Even the coughing and snuffling stopped.

  “Where is she?” Mistress Slyde began to go slowly from bed to bed, tapping the ruler against her lanky flank as she stared down at each child. She watched their eyes.

  “I thought so! You again!” In triumph she wrenched the coverlet off a cowering child in a threadbare nightgown, and nodded at me brusquely. “Ring for Crumplin and Doggett. I need more help with this.”

  The little girl clasped her arms about her thin chest in a feeble attempt to protect herself; her eyes were terrified, enormous in her starving face. I could see the red bites of bedbugs on her forearms and bare feet. She began to wheeze: there was a sound like the crackle of parchment in her chest.

  I went to the door and picked up the bell with a heavy heart. Mistress Crumplin and Dog arrived after some long moments, during which no one moved or breathed, and the child’s crackling went on and on.

  I was sure Mistress Slyde would hit the little girl with the ruler. I felt sick.

  “This ungodly child must be pressed,” said Mistress Slyde. “We must press the wickedness out of her.”

  Mistress Crumplin and Doggett went forward eagerly enough. They knew what she meant; it had happened before.

  Mistress Crumplin’s face was red, her lace cap awry, but Mistress Slyde did not notice; she was too intent on the child’s punishment. She had begun to breathe heavily. A hand clasped her amulet. She bowed to the Eagle and muttered something.

  The three of them moved very swiftly.

  They went to the spare iron bedstead by the door and tugged off the filthy bedding, all but the horsehair mattress. They lifted the bedstead and carried it over to the little girl’s bed, where they set it down over her like a prison. The base, with the mattress sagging through, almost touched her frightened face. Then they fetched the bedding—the dirty sheets and coverlets—and draped it so that it all hung down over the sides.

  I could see her no more, but I heard the crump, crump in her chest.

  I thought of the bedbugs running in the darkness around her, crawling on her face, her hair. “Oh, please,” I cried, and started forward. “She’ll suffocate!”

  They ignored me. Instead, they heaved themselves up and sat on the top of the bedstead. They began to drum the heels of their boots against the iron bars. Their combined weight made the bed sink right down on the one beneath.

  Its mattress mu
st be pressing against the little girl’s face and body, I thought. She won’t be able to move in the darkness and din.

  Mistress Slyde’s mouth was a hard line; her eyes had the gleam of madness in the oil-light. I could not bear to look at Mistress Crumplin and Doggett, so complicit in her cruelty.

  I could do nothing, and I hated myself for it. I stood, twisting my hands together, and watched helplessly while the terrible rhythm of their beating heels went on and on and on.

  At last it was over. The two women and Dog had extinguished the oil lamps and left, leaving me with the candle stub.

  “Help me!” I whispered to the children. “We must lift the bed off.”

  No one moved. Frightened eyes gazed at me. I could hear no sound from the lower bed.

  “Quickly!”

  The panic in my voice roused them at last.

  It took several of the strongest and biggest girls to help me lift that iron monster off the little child below. Her lips and closed eyelids were tinged blue, but she was breathing, for I could hear the crumple in her chest.

  We wrapped her in a blanket and carried her to the window, where the night air was blowing in, damp but mild. I began to rock her in my arms; I held my warm cheek against hers. “Wake up,” I breathed. “You’re safe now.”

  And then I began to sing softly to her, an old nursery rhyme I think it was, about the “lily-white boys” who are the sweeps’ climbing-boys. She opened her eyes, and suddenly smiled, as if she’d gone to heaven.

  And so I continued singing, and when I looked around they were all creeping closer to crouch in a circle around me—all the little girls. The smallest one laid her head on my arm.

  “Will you sing to us every night?” she asked at the end of the song.

  What could I say? I was too choked up to answer; I tried to smile.

  “Tell us a story,” whispered the little child in my arms. “Make it about me.”

  I thought awhile. Then a story came into my head that the woman in the cellar would tell to me, and this was the bareness of it, without any of the whys and wherefores I put in.

  “Once there was a great city, where the people were very unhappy because they worked so hard and didn’t have enough to eat. They’d heard of a gate that stood at the entrance to a land of plenty, where everyone had all the food they wanted and were happy forever. The gate was like a tree, with beautiful golden branches from which amber stones hung like fruit.

  “One day they found it, as you do if you look hard enough for something. They began to pass through—all the mothers and fathers and little children—and then they shut the amber gate carefully behind them.

  “But one little orphan girl hadn’t passed through. She was the last, too small to keep up. She could hear the footsteps of the people fading away beyond the gate, and she wept bitterly. Then she saw that she was small enough to squeeze between the golden branches.”

  “So she reached the land of plenty too?” said the child I held.

  “She did, indeed,” I said.

  “And that little girl is me,” she said, smiling.

  I sang them another song, then I tucked them all into bed. The little girl touched my hand when I came to her. “There was once an amber gate in the Capital, you know—like the one in your story—but it’s lost.”

  “Perhaps one day it will be found again too,” I whispered. I stroked the hair from her face. “What is your name?”

  “I don’t have one.”

  “No more do I.”

  She clutched my fingers. “Will the Eagle forgive me for not saying my prayers? He frightens me. The words stop in my mouth.”

  I looked over at the dark head jutting from the wall. “He’s the Almighty,” I said, at a loss. I kept my voice low in case He should hear. “He’s made by man to look frightening to make sure we’re good.”

  I had to bend my head to hear what she said.

  “When I look in His face, there is no love there.”

  29

  Next morning, after a breakfast of thin oatmeal, Mistress Slyde marched the children out in a sickly troop to the clothing factory. I collected the wet sheets from the beds and took them in a basket down to the kitchen, where Doggett eyed the soaking, stinking pile with satisfaction.

  “That was my job before you came,” she remarked.

  I had nothing to say to her.

  I mixed boiling water with vinegar in a vast pan and put the lot in to soak, pushing them well down beneath the surface with a wooden prod. The kitchen was full of steam. Doggett lounged on the table, swinging her heels while she watched me.

  “Where is Mistress Crumplin?” I asked at last, irritated by her idleness.

  “Gone to market,” said Doggett. She winked at me through the steam. “Had a hard time of it, gettin’ her up this mornin’.”

  I stared at her. “You’re not frightened of her anymore, are you, Dog? You were once.”

  “Tell you what, Scuff, I despise her now. Why, Miss Jennet was a far finer housekeeper and kept me to the mark. I respected her.”

  “You should go back to Murkmere, Dog,” I said. “Aggie was fond of you, I do believe it.” I added, “Maybe you will find your heart again there.”

  She didn’t meet my eyes. “Mebbe I will,” she muttered, then, “What about you? Will you stay here awhile?”

  I stirred the sheets. “I think so. The children…”

  She shook her head. “If you makes ‘em love you, you won’t be doin’ ‘em no favors.”

  “I can at least protect them!”

  She climbed off the table and came over to me, fiddling with the ties of her apron. “I know what you must think of me. We do things here we’d not do in better places. If I don’t do what that cow wants, I’ll be out on my ear with not a scathin’ to my name.”

  “But if we don’t stand up to her, nothing will ever get better,” I said. “We could do it together.”

  “And both be thrown out into the streets? I’m not riskin’ my position, I’m tellin’ you. As for the children, you stop thinkin’ of them as human after a while. The drudgery makes you hate ‘em in the end. They’re such pathetic scraps and there’s always more where they come from, like insects.”

  “I was like them once,” I said quietly.

  Doggett stared at me and had opened her mouth to speak when a knocking sounded above us. She frowned.

  “Tradesman. Always comin’ to the front door instead of goin’ ’round the back. I’ll go up.”

  I caught her arm. “It may be soldiers, Dog!”

  “Nah, why should they think you’re here—you said it yourself.”

  She had gone. I stood in the middle of the kitchen, chewing my lip.

  But it was Shadow she brought back down with her, Shadow with Mister Plush in his arms, like a baleful velvet cushion.

  “This rapscallion says he wants you.” She glared at him suspiciously.

  Shadow was unabashed, but I could see he was in a state of agitation that had nothing to do with her. He was jittering about from foot to foot, brimful of something, ready to burst with it.

  I looked at him bitterly. “I know him, Dog. He must have followed me here last night. I thought of him as a friend, till he helped in the selling of me.”

  “Mr. Butley made me, Miss!” said Shadow earnestly, his most innocent expression on his face. “He threatened me with the ship’s lash if I didn’t. If he finds out I’m here, I’ll get it, sure enough. That’s why I must be quick.”

  Doggett brought her face down to his. “Spit it out then, you little varmint. Stop clutterin’ up our kitchen.”

  “There are two men lookin’ for you, Miss Scuff!”

  Immediately a cold hand seized hold of my heart.

  “Men?”

  “I’ve come to warn you. They came at first light this morning and asked to see the skipper, Mr. Butley. He told ‘em he’d seen the number on your arm. It’s you they’re lookin’ for, certain sure. They said immediate about searchin’ the Orphans�
� Homes—I was there, listenin’ in. I knew you were here, ‘cos I’d followed you, but I said nothing. My lips was stuck fast together. I said I knew nothin’, that you was a good woman and a good cook. That whatever you’d done couldn’t ‘ave been so very wicked.” He looked at me expectantly.

  “Thank you, Shadow,” I said faintly.

  “I wanted to protect you, see? You must leave now, hide someplace.” He looked up at me, wide-eyed through his matted hair. The cat in his arms stared at me too, unblinking. “You are my friend, Miss. I said so, didn’t I?”

  “And you’re mine, Shadow.” He stuck out his hand and I did the same, and we clapped our palms together in our old salute, much to the cat’s displeasure. Then Dog bustled them both away before I had a chance to say goodbye.

  She rushed back down again, seconds later, to find me staring abstractedly at nothing. “What are you doin’ dreamin’?” she shouted at me. “Move yourself! Get out of here!”

  I started, and stared at her. “But it was you who told the soldiers at Murkmere about me. Why are you protecting me now?”

  She had the grace to look ashamed. “I didn’t do nothin’ the second time, and I said nothin’ when the first lot came back after you’d gone. Anyhow, now I’m givin’ you the chance to go, and I won’t tell, honest. This time I’m not thinkin’ of me own advantage. You’re a good girl, Scuff, and always have been, so go. You’ve more wit in you than you had—you’ll survive.”

  And then the knocking came again.

  They didn’t bother with waiting to see Mistress Slyde. They allowed Dog upstairs to fetch my bag, but made her give it to them. They took me straight out then, leaving Dog gabbling by the front door. “She’s innocent of everythin’, a good girl!”

  The clock behind us chimed a doleful midday as the two men marched me out of the dark hall into the drizzle. I didn’t look at their faces, but I did notice they were not armed. Why should they be? They were big, strong. They didn’t hurt me; they had no cause, for I walked docilely between them and didn’t protest. There was no use. We didn’t go far: through the crowded back street behind the warehouses on the river—the long one that is called the Cut—past the stalls of fishmongers and butchers. The men, dressed in the dark jerkins and breeches that many soldiers wear when not on ceremonial duty, stuck either side of me, and I made no move to escape. There were no thoughts in my head, only a dreadful feeling that my doom had finally caught me up and there was nothing I could do about it.