by J M Hemmings
‘M’ lady, it were only a figure of speech, like, an’ I—’
‘Silence!’ she cried, her strident voice bolstered with authoritative power. ‘I will tell you this but once, sir: If you so much as lay one finger upon a single hair of these poor orphans’ heads, I’ll have you arrested and thrown in a cell for the rest of your years. My husband is a magistrate, and he will not be inclined to show the slightest inkling of mercy towards a low, violent ruffian such as yourself. Now hurry up and get the poor boy out of there!’
‘Of course, m’ lady,’ Mr Goode replied coldly, only barely managing to suppress his volcanic rage. ‘Michael, get William up into the flue now, there’s a good lad.’
‘You’re going to ‘ave to buff it, Will,’ Michael said with a worried look in his eyes. ‘It’s the only way you’ll fit into that tiny space.’
‘Hurry up and strip down for God’s sake, you little fool!’ Mr Goode shouted, momentarily losing his grip on the tenuous hold with which he kept his temper at bay.
Another painful scream resounded down the chimney. This one, though, sounded a lot weaker than the previous one, and William needed no further encouragement to remove his ragged trousers and shirt.
‘Cor blimey,’ one of the servants exclaimed upon seeing his naked body, every inch of which was blackened with soot. ‘This poor little urchin’s as black as Hades, he is!’
‘He certainly is, Judith,’ the lady replied disapprovingly. ‘Sir, when did you last give these poor children a bath? It is my understanding that they were entrusted to you in the knowledge that you would care for them and feed, clothe and educate them as adequately as possible. Seeing the state of this poor orphan’s complete lack of cleanliness, and the fact that I can count each and every one of his ribs, so prominently are they displayed through his skin, indicates to me that you care not a jot for this boy’s well-being.’
‘I, er, I, hum, try my best to, er, properly, care for these scu-, rat-, um, er, children, within me extremely modest means, m’lady,’ Mr Goode stammered, greasy sweat oozing from the enlarged pores all over his face. ‘It’s just that I, er, well it’s um—’
‘Enough sir,’ responded the woman with a haughty disdain. ‘It is clear to me that your greed and self-interest trump any supposed concerns you have for their welfare. Now be silent! Your muttering and stuttering only serve to shame you further.’
‘Yes m’lady,’ Mr Goode murmured, uncharacteristically meek.
William, meanwhile, had managed to climb a good way up the flue. As tiny as his shoulders were, they could barely fit inside the narrow space, and a wave of claustrophobia was beginning to wash its rapidly rising tide over him. A wail and a low, terrified moan echoed through the cramped space above him, and the resignation and defeat he heard in that sound spurred him on to push through the paralysing barrier of fear.
‘I’m coming for you, Davy,’ he shouted as he clambered up the tunnel, forcing his way through this dark, suffocating hell. ‘I’m coming for you!’
He scrambled and pulled as hard as he could, with blood running freely down his shins and forearms from the frantic effort.
‘Come on Will,’ came a shout of encouragement from Michael below. ‘You can get ‘im out, you can!’
Another moan echoed in a phantasmagorical tone through the cloying dark, this one even weaker than the last one.
‘Davy, can you ‘ear me?’ William gasped, redoubling his efforts to ascend the flue. ‘Just tell me a word, so that I know you can ‘ear me!
In response there was only a whimpering wail that trailed off into a soft gurgle. The vocalisation sounded as if it were just above him, and the knowledge that he was almost upon David gave William one final burst of energy.
‘I’m nearly there, Davy, nearly there!’
At that moment, William’s hand touched something slick which made him slip a little, and his heart leaped into his mouth as he almost lost his grip on the bricks.
Blood.
He knew then that Davy must be close, and that he must have been struggling with a frightful effort. As he was almost upon the tiny boy, though, William heard a whisper that chilled his bones.
‘Mummy,’ the child whispered. ‘I can see you! I’ve missed you so much, mummy…’
‘It’s me Will, not your mum!’ William shouted. ‘I’m ‘ere Davy, I’m ‘ere, just let me grab your leg, come on!’
His words were met with an eerie silence. In just a few more seconds he reached the boy and felt his fingertips brush against his friend’s foot, which was wet with blood. Driven by urgency, he gripped Davy’s feet and pulled with all his might. His friend did not make a sound, though, despite the immense pain that Williams exertions must have been inflicting upon him.
‘Come on Davy, push! ‘Elp me ‘ere an’ push!’
No movement came from above. William panted and groaned, his jaw clenched tight as he heaved and pulled at David’s minuscule feet. Then, without warning, the limp mass above him popped out of the space in which it had been wedged, and the two bodies slid with alarming acceleration down the flue. William screamed in fright as he tried to slow his descent. In desperation he pressed hard against the bricks, which tore at his elbows and knees with the ferocity of a mechanical sander, until after a few seconds of fiery agony, his plummeting descent was slowed to a semi-controlled slide.
Despite his attempts to slow his fall, though, he hit the bend near the bottom of the flue with an impact so hard that it knocked the wind out of him and dazed his senses. Through his semi-stupor he felt Michael’s hands gripping his legs and pulling him out of the fireplace, and in a state of half-consciousness, as if mired fast in the wispy cobwebs of a dream, he could feel himself being carried somewhere. But also, through the haze, he was able to discern tribulations of sorrow and loss, and with a sinking heart he realised that his effort had been in vain.
William’s years since the passing of his mother had been filled with death and sadness, and he had seen many of the orphans wither away and pass into the Otherworld, consumed and made shadows by the ravages of malnutrition, overwork and disease. Even after he had been purchased from the parish house by Mr Goode, he had watched Pip, the oldest climbing boy at the time and a strapping young adolescent, succumb to the ravenous hunger of the cancer that had devoured him utterly. David’s death, however, was the first death of a close friend he had experienced in his short years. He and David had slept beneath the same coal sack since the young boy had arrived at Mr Goode’s, and in the rare moments that they were not scrambling up and down chimneys, the two of them had played together, inventing imaginary games in which they were soldiers going off to war, to win glory and renown on the battlefields of Europe. Many times, they had laughed together at the antics of the twins, and at Michael’s hilariously accurate impressions of Mr Goode – only put on, of course, when their cruel master was not in the cellar. David had been a young boy possessed of an indefatigable optimism, and had retained, despite his unfortunate circumstances, a joie de vivre that could neither be crushed nor blotted out, even with the gruelling toil of their work and the suffocating filth of their home and work environments.
Yet here the boy now lay, limp, pallid and lifeless before this ostentatiously decorated fireplace, his body a once-living sculpture that now mirrored the icy stillness of the marble figures that lined the halls. Michael was hugging the little corpse tightly and weeping freely, as were the twins, and amongst the adults there was not a dry eye in the room save for Mr Goode’s, whose distended orbs were now red with rage.
‘This little filth!’ he spat, ‘it was ‘is bleedin’ laziness that got ‘im ended up like this! Now I’ve got to go through the bleedin’ ‘assle of gettin’ another one of these devils ‘an trainin’ ‘im up!’
The lady of the house, her eyes rimmed with tears, walked slowly up to the raging Mr Goode. Her dignity and grandeur added an undeniable physical prowess to her stance, and she locked her eyes into his with the ferocious tenacity of viper fangs.
‘Your attitude towards these poor children is absolutely appalling,’ she hissed through gritted teeth, only barely managing to retain an air of composure through her anger and disgust. ‘And I will be relieving you of the apparent burden of their stewardship with immediate effect.’
Mr Goode stopped in his tracks, his eyes bulging with disbelief, and a throbbing vein of rage threatening to burst through the skin of his temple.
‘Wh-, what?! You, you can’t do that!’ he spluttered through his wrath. ‘I paid good bleedin’ coin for these ‘ere brats, I did!’
‘And I will compensate you in full for your financial loss,’ she replied coldly. ‘But I will also have my husband ensure that you are never, ever again permitted to have children in your care. You, sir, must find another vocation, one that does not involve the care of children in any manner. Now please, gather together your equipment and vacate these premises immediately!’
‘B-, b-, but me boys, you can’t—’
‘I said now, sir!’ she hissed with a scalding force. ‘Albert,’ she said, motioning to the butler, who was standing motionless and silent in the corner, ‘please escort this gentleman off the premises and make arrangements to financially compensate him for his loss.’
The butler nodded and walked over to Mr Goode, who he took by the arm and hauled unceremoniously out of the room.
‘Beatrice,’ the lady said to one of the female servants, ‘please prepare a bath so that these poor boys may cleanse themselves.’
She then turned to another servant.
‘Mary-Anne, please measure up each boy and go out and purchase some more respectable-looking clothes for them so that we may dispose of these dreadful rags in which they are currently attired.’
Now with Mr Goode gone, and nobody but the boys and the lady in the room, the tears started to flow liberally from the children’s eyes. The woman knew that it was not her place to comfort them so she quietly slipped out, leaving them alone with their grief and sorrow, and the still-warm body of their deceased friend. William stared for a while at David’s lifeless form, and then he too started weeping. It began with a sniffling and sobbing at first, but then it progressed to a screaming out of hoarse, guttural cries that were wrenched from the deepest core of his being. And soon all of them had joined in this chorus of primal, unadulterated grieving, and it continued for a many long, sombre moments in the indifferent light of the morning sun.
***
After the boys had been bathed – the first cleansing they had had in months – and had eaten their fill of the roast dinner, which was the first wholesome meal most of them had had in years, the lady of the house entered the servants’ dining room, followed by a portly, impeccably dressed old man, who wore spectacles and sported a pair of mammoth mutton-chop sideburns that burst from his jowls like twin silver hedgerows.
‘Boys,’ the woman said, ‘this is my cousin, Sir Gordon MacTaggart, visiting from the Highlands of Scotland. He has recently purchased a country estate there, and while he was initially intending to enlist some local farm lads to serve as stable hands, I have convinced him to take you boys on, should you wish to undertake this endeavour, of course.’
‘Ye lads are no’ afraid ay a wee bit ay ‘ard toil, are ye?’ MacTaggart asked in his gruff but kindly voice.
‘Gordon,’ the lady replied with a smile, ‘these poor children have been scurrying up and down flues from dawn till dusk for the past few years. I am rather confident that they harbour no aversion to physical labour.’ She then turned to William and his friends. ‘Now boys,’ she continued, ‘if you wish to go with Sir MacTaggart and work on his stud farm, you’ll have to wake up before dawn and labour until sunset, but in exchange you will be provided with a bed and a hot meal every day, and in the evenings one of the more learned servants will instruct you in the arts of literacy and basic scholarship. Do you accept these terms?’
Despite his grief at Davy’s loss, Michael could hardly contain his glee.
‘We, yes, my lady and uh, Sir MacTaggart, sir, why yes, we absolutely do!’
The other boys buzzed excitedly in agreement.
‘Excellent,’ she said, smiling. ‘You will travel with him this very afternoon then.’
William stepped forward, and with his bottom lip trembling and his cheeks flushed with red, he spoke to the lady.
‘Thank you so much for your kindness, m’ lady. You remind me of me’ dear mummy who went to live with the angels in heaven when I was four years old.’
Tears glistened in the lady’s eyes, and she ruffled William’s now-clean hair.
‘It was the least I could do, young man. I hope that you boys enjoy working for Gordon; he is an honest and honourable man. Now, however, I must take my leave of you. Perhaps I will see you again when I come to visit Gordon in the Highlands.’
‘Please do, me lady!’ William blurted out, unable to contain his enthusiasm.
She laughed, the bell-like sound filling the room with its effervescent joy.
‘I certainly will, my boy. Farewell and good luck.’
Half an hour later the boys were in a carriage, another first-time experience for all of them, heading out of the madness and mayhem of London towards a new life in the Scottish Highlands.
10
WILLIAM
August 1852. A forest in Aberdeenshire, Scotland
It was as William’s mare dipped her head to drink from the stream that he saw her. He had just dismounted and was on his knees, cupping his hands, when he glanced up and noticed the girl and her horse. His fingers froze in mid-movement the instant his eyes took in the breathtaking sight before him, so unexpectedly captivating was she; the late afternoon sun blazed through the trees to anoint her with a golden aura; an epiphanous vision of an angelic being descended to this mortal realm. In a single gasp all of the air left his lungs; he decided there and then, with utter certainty, that she was the most exquisite creature he had ever laid eyes on.
She looked to be of an age with him; perhaps a year or two younger. The sartorial finery of her riding dress – a rich hue of scarlet, with velvet hems and a velvet collar, and bright white buttons and piping – along with the spotless white of her gloves, and the elaborate cut of her ostentatious riding hat, marked her as a member of the aristocratic class. Her dark chestnut hair, though, was unbound, and tumbled loosely about her shoulders.
Far more striking than her garb, though, was her face, particularly her eyes. Deep-set and large and rimmed with dark eyelashes, they practically glowed in their sockets, their hazel, gold-flecked hue like a deeply burnished metal. Above them sat two bold eyebrows, almost straight in shape with only the most subtle hint of a curvature to them. Her cheeks were pleasantly full, but not to the point of chubbiness, and her small mouth seemed as if it were ever on the verge of breaking into a radiant smile. A nose that was both long and delicate was set in the centre of this astoundingly symmetrical set of features. Below her ears, there was a gentle curve to her jaw that seemed, to William’s awestruck eyes, to invite the lightest brush of trembling fingertips, and the milky white neck below it looked like a delectable surface onto which to plant many soft kisses.
Her beauty, and the elegant finery in which she was attired, made him feel rather self-conscious about his own garb, for he was clothed in simple workman’s gear: oft-patched mud-brown trousers, dirty black shoes, a grey waistcoat – also tatty – and a grimy white shirt, the sleeves of which were rolled up to his elbows. A cloth workman’s cap sat above his shaggy, unkempt hair, which was a dirty tone of blonde, a good few shades darker than the near-platinum hue it had been well over a decade prior. Only a few echoes of the child he had once been remained in the man’s body his soul now inhabited; the large grey eyes still shone with boyish mischief and a ferocious zest for life, but around them the once-soft facial features had hardened into more angular protuberances; his long, well-proportioned nose was perched below two dark, sharply angled eyebrows that gave the eyes beneath them a hawk-li
ke cast, while his strong jaw was dusted liberally with five days’ worth of dark stubble. An almost tangible amicability was present in the arrangement of his features; he would have made a great salesman on the basis of his cheerfully attractive looks alone. His full lips, forming a smallish mouth, seemed ever on the edge of breaking into a smile.
While neither tall nor muscular in build, William’s shoulders had broadened with the onset of manhood, and he had about him the wiry look of one built for feats of athletic endurance. Still, for all his handsomeness it was plain that he was little more than a lowly labourer, and the jellyfish stings of self-conscious embarrassment wrapped their burning tentacles around his limbs as he stared at the beautiful woman before him.
The girl returned his gaze from atop her saddle, and burnished radiance blazed in her light amber eyes; it was a look that William had not once experienced in all of his nineteen years, a look that shone like molten metal glowing in a crucible. Breaking this gaze of intensity, she then smiled; half shyly, half coquettishly, and at the edges of her rosebud-lips two deep, pleasantly angled smile-creases appeared; sudden sinkholes in unblemished alabaster skin.
Entranced by her comeliness, William felt as if every drop of blood had instantaneously left his head. He saw in her the look of the lady who had rescued him and his friends from Mr Goode thirteen years prior – they looked as if they could have been sisters, so striking was the resemblance – but the girl on the horse outshone even that woman’s seraphic beauty. His heart thumped with a sonorous pounding, and his legs felt at once limp and weak; two sodden leather belts attempting to prop up his torso.
‘Stable boy,’ the girl called out, ‘would you water my horse with your master’s? I have a pressing urge to, how shall I say, visit the bushes over yonder.’
Only the slightest hint of a Highland accent coloured her speech; she had most likely been schooled in southern England, William surmised.
‘I er, aye, most certainly, m’lady,’ he stammered. Having spent most of his life in Scotland, William had long ago lost his East London accent; a strong Highland brogue had replaced it.