by Sally Rippin
‘Please let there be something more,’ she said to herself, her teeth chattering, ‘some copper nails or a piece of driftwood.’
Grace looked across the river at a forest of masts. It was the same view she saw every day. Sails of every size billowed beneath the winter clouds. Barges filled with coal and iron held anchor, ready to be unloaded on the shore. Longboats cut slowly through the water carrying fruit and meat to distant parts of London, and busy workboats ferried people up and down the river.
Ouch! Grace gasped when she felt a sharp pain in the bottom of her foot. She bent down and searched around in the mud until she touched something that felt like metal – cold and smooth. She pulled it up. Grace wiped it clean with a corner of her dress and turned it over in her hand, unable to believe it was real. It was an iron hammer, with no rust on its head, and no chips in its sturdy wooden handle. It was the most valuable thing she had ever found – worth as much on the street as a silver watch, she was sure.
‘A hammer – a fine hammer,’ she whispered. ‘Uncle Ord will be so pleased.’
‘Oi! What you find?’ Someone shouted at Grace and she quickly dropped her hands beneath the water.
A figure waded towards her through the fog. It was Joe Bean. He was no older than Grace, but he was the leader of a gang of mudlarks that lived under Blackfriar’s Bridge. Grace had always been good at staying out of their way; she kept her head down so she wouldn’t be noticed, or she worked in the parts of the river where Joe and his boys didn’t often go. They were thieves, and they didn’t think twice about stealing from the barges and from the other mudlarks who worked on their own. If any of the mudlarks ever had money from things they’d sold, Joe Bean would try to take it from them. And Grace knew that if he saw the hammer, he would snatch it from her and take it straight to the marine shop to sell for himself.
‘I got nothing!’ Grace shouted back.
‘I saw something in your hand just then – something shiny. Give me a look what you got!’
Grace’s heart pounded; she couldn’t let Joe see her prize. With a hammer like this to sell, maybe Uncle Ord would be happy with her, instead of angry. He would be proud that she was clever enough to find something so valuable. They could keep the coal Grace had found and light a fire in the hearth – she imagined warming her numb toes and heating up a cinnamon bun on the end of a toasting fork. There’d be enough food for a week!
Grace waded into the shallows, but Joe Bean was close now. ‘Well?’ he said. ‘Don’t make me call the boys to look you over.’
Grace shook her head, too nervous to speak. She held the hammer with one hand behind her back. She had never stood up to Joe Bean before, but then she had never found anything as precious as a hammer.
Joe moved towards her. ‘Show me!’
‘No.’ Grace’s voice quavered.
Joe grabbed her arm and tried to pull it from behind her back. Grace fell back into the river, dropping her kettle into the mud. Water splashed up around them as they struggled.
‘No!’ she shouted.
Joe Bean had his hand on the hammer. It was slipping from her grasp. Grace gritted her teeth and with all her strength, she wrenched it from him. Joe fell back into the water and Grace held the hammer high over him.
‘I said no, Joe Bean! The hammer is mine! You go away and leave me alone!’ Her voice trembled as Joe crawled like a crab through the mud, his eyes wide with surprise. The sharp iron claws on the hammer’s head glinted.
Grace picked up her kettle and ran, knocking straight into a group of sailors clambering out of a rowboat onto shore.
‘Where are you off to in such a hurry?’ one of them said. ‘A handful of rags like you?’ She could smell whiskey on his breath.
The other sailors laughed at her.
Grace picked herself up and pushed her way past. When she turned around, Joe Bean was lost in the crowd somewhere behind them. Grace hurried higher onto the shore where the crowd thickened, pushing past mudlarks and boatmen, coal whippers, and costermongers selling dried fish and oysters. She breathed a sigh of relief, shoving her way through groups of people waiting for workboats and others lining up to buy fresh fish from the colliers to sell at the market.
Grace gripped the hammer tight and headed home, slowly now and limping. Her foot stung against the cold cobblestones as she dodged the open drains of sewage and the piles of garbage that lined the narrow crowded streets. She stopped to inspect her wound. The cut wasn’t deep – only bloody.
Grace shivered. It was when she got out of the water that she most felt the cold. The wind cut straight through her. It doesn’t matter this time, though, she thought. I’m safe from Joe Bean and I still have my hammer.
In Chatham Square a line of fishmongers stood at a long scaling table. They ran their knives down the backs of freshly caught fish, cutting out the guts and tossing them to the ground, staining the cobblestones a purplish red. The smell of fish filled the air. The women sang as they worked, their arms moving in time to the rhythm of their song.
Grace stopped to listen. She liked singing, never mind who was doing it; sailors or fishmongers or butchers selling ham hocks, even her drunken uncle and his sailor friends. The only thing Uncle Ord had ever told her about her mother was that she liked to sing. I wish I could remember the songs, Grace often thought. I wish I could remember her voice.
Grace kept walking, humming the fish-mongers’ tune. She had never known her father, and her mother had died when she was very small. When Grace tried to remember her mother, she could recall the feeling of warm arms around her; but the memory wasn’t enough to keep her alive without a roof over her head in the long cold winters. Uncle Ord always reminded her of that. ‘You’re lucky to have me, Grace! You’d be on the street without your uncle to take care of things. You are an orphan after all!’ He said the word as though it were a curse word – the very worst thing you could be.
Uncle Ord had lost his wife and his only son to an illness called consumption, and he missed them a lot. He’d lost his sister too – Grace’s mother – and that was how he got stuck with Grace. She knew that every day, just by being alive, she reminded him that his son was not.
Grace climbed the steps that ran up by Blackfriar’s Bridge and crossed into Water Lane, hobbling to keep weight off her foot. Her wet skirt slapped against her legs, stinging her skin. The fog was in the streets too, hanging like low-slung spider webs. Crowds of people pushing carts ready for the night markets were coming down in the opposite direction.
Two of the girls who lived next door came running up behind Grace, giggling together. Grace pressed back against the stone wall as they shoved their noisy way past her. She wished she had a sister, or a friend to share things with. It never mattered how hungry they were, or how cold, the girls were always playing and laughing with each other.
Ma Honeywell, their mother, stopped when she saw Grace and gave her cheek a playful pinch. She had eleven children, most of them girls, though she could never find half of them.
‘Hello, luv,’ she said, smiling. ‘How was business today?’
Ma Honeywell always asked the same question, only today Grace could give her a different answer. ‘Good,’ she said, smiling back. ‘Very good! My uncle will be happy!’
‘That’d be a sight for sore eyes. You better get home, luv, and give him what you got!’ Ma Honeywell patted Grace’s arm, then turned and walked on. She was on her way to the alehouse, where she would drink so much gin that later she wouldn’t remember who Grace was at all.
Grace continued up the steps, imagining what it would be like when Uncle Ord saw the hammer. ‘Well done, Grace,’ he would say. She could almost feel the heat from the fire and taste the toasted cinnamon bun.
‘Uncle Ord!’ she called, as she pushed in the door of their lodgings.
Her uncle was sitting in his chair in front of the empty hearth with his sore leg up on the table.
Uncle Ord used to be a sailor until his leg was caught in a loop of rope tha
t lifted him into the air and snapped his knee-bone. ‘I was hanging upside down like a side of ham in a butcher’s shop!’ he told Johnny Dugs, the rag shop man. Uncle Ord and Johnny Dugs laughed as if it were a joke, but Grace knew that it was not. Uncle Ord couldn’t be a sailor after that. He wasn’t good for anything, he said, but ‘selling the rubbish from the bottom of that stinking river.’
Grace tipped out the contents of her kettle. Wet coal tumbled across the table beside Uncle Ord’s leg. Without turning around to look at her, he growled, ‘Is that all?’
Grace carefully placed the hammer on the table beside the coal. Uncle Ord picked it up and swung around to her, his eyes hard.
‘Where’d you find this?’ he snarled. ‘You little thief!’
Grace jumped back. ‘I never stole it. I stood on it,’ she stammered.
She lifted her foot to show him the cut. But Uncle Ord didn’t look, he smacked his hand down onto the table, making Grace jump.
‘You bring the runners to this house and they put me in chains, I’ll kill you!’
‘I never stole it, Uncle!’ Grace protested, but she could tell he wasn’t listening. ‘I never stole nothing! It was Joe Bean tried to steal from me. There won’t be no runners coming for you.’
Uncle Ord stroked the sharp claws of the hammer with his tobacco-stained fingers.
‘They hanged a boy smaller than you down at the Newgate gallows yesterday. He stole a pair of boots worth a lot less than this here hammer. He was so small they had to weigh him down with stones so he’d drop right when he stepped off the platform.’
Grace shuddered. She had never wanted to see a hanging, but most people didn’t feel that way – they flocked to see an execution as if it were a circus show. Even her uncle’s stories frightened her.
‘Please, Uncle, I found the hammer in the river, I swear.’ Grace could feel her eyes welling with tears. She wiped them away; if Uncle Ord saw her cry he would curse her and say she was a useless girl.
‘A thief and a liar,’ he said. ‘Get out of my sight and give me some peace.’
Grace went back out the front door and sat on the step.
Uncle Ord isn’t proud of me for finding the hammer, she thought. He’s angry at me for bringing something so valuable home.
For the first time, Grace realised that it didn’t matter what she brought her uncle – she could carry half a barge into the house – it wouldn’t make him happy. Nothing Grace found in the river could bring back his son, or fix his sore leg and make him a sailor again.
Grace picked at the mud drying on her knees and ankles. She should have let Joe Bean take the hammer – what difference did it make? When it was time for her to get back in the mud tomorrow she knew she would have to face Joe Bean and he would be very angry. She wouldn’t have the hammer and she wouldn’t have any money for him either. And the other boys from the gang were sure to be with him this time.
Grace sighed. She tore off a strip from the hem of her dress and, using it as a rag, she cleaned the dirt from her wound. She tied the rag tightly around her foot to make a bandage.
‘There now,’ she said. ‘Let’s go to Fleet Street and see the horses.’ Just thinking about horses helped Grace forget her troubles.
Here’s a sneak peek at Meet Letty
THE coachman dumped the old chest in the street. Letty’s heart felt as if it was being jolted around too. The chest held all her sister’s things, and so many dreams. It was going to Australia.
Letty’s sister Lavinia hopped down from the coach in a swirl of skirts. She had read in the newspapers that there weren’t enough young women in Australia. She often told Letty that she didn’t like their small, mouldy house, where she was always tripping over little brothers and sisters. So Lavinia had made up her mind to leave, and Letty and Papa had come to Gravesend to say goodbye.
‘After today, I won’t be costing you another penny,’ Lavinia said. ‘I’m going where I’ll be wanted. And appreciated.’
‘I want you,’ said Letty. Letty could not imagine life without her sister. Lavinia was like a pink flower in their grey town. She took up lots of room in their family, with her wide, swishing dresses and definite opinions. She was Letty’s older sister, the one who had bossed her around and brought her up in the years after their mother died. Their baby stepbrother, Charlie, and their little sisters, Fanny and Florence, were adorable, but they weren’t the same.
Now Lavinia ignored her. Letty hurt inside. Lavinia meant so much to Letty, but Letty was not enough to keep her here.
Papa and the girls lifted the chest by its brass handles. They struggled in a lopsided triangle across the dock and into the Customs House.
‘That’s it?’ said the Customs Officer, looking in the chest.
Papa pretended not to hear. Letty knew he was still angry with Lavinia for spending all her money on what was in it.
‘Yes!’ snapped Lavinia.
The chest held a few pieces of good linen, and a new outfit, bought with the emigration payment from the government. The chest wasn’t exactly full, but Letty and Lavinia were very proud of it. It was a hope chest – where a girl stored things for when she would be married and have a home of her own.
‘Here’s your tin, then.’ The Customs man pushed a metal plate, cup and spoons towards Lavinia. ‘Here’s your blanket and your pillow. And here’s a bag to keep them in. Your ship’s leaving with the tide.’ He pointed to the forest of masts out the window.
Papa, Lavinia and Letty lumped the chest along the docks. A wooden ship loomed over the nearest jetty. Letty thought it was as long as three houses, but much, much taller. The ship’s name was painted on the front in gold letters: The Duchess.
‘Right!’ Lavinia put down her end of the chest and dusted her hands. ‘I’ll be back in a few minutes.’
‘Where are you going?’ Papa wanted to know.
‘Ladies’ business,’ said Lavinia, over her shoulder. She hurried back to shore.
Letty stood close to Papa on the wooden jetty. Families bustled past, loaded with luggage and children. Letty could hardly believe that Papa and her stepmother were letting Lavinia go by herself.
‘The tide’s going to turn soon.’ Papa fiddled impatiently with his watch chain. He didn’t have a watch, but he liked people to think he did. ‘It’s time for boarding the ship. What’s keeping your sister?’
‘I don’t know,’ whispered Letty. She could hardly speak. The ship’s shadow swallowed her words, just as it would soon swallow her sister. She might never see Lavinia again.
‘Where has she run off to now?’ grumbled Papa. ‘I’ll have to go and look for her. You be a good child now, Letty, and stay right by the chest. Don’t leave it for anything.’
The water slapped the sides of the jetty. The big ship creaked. Letty sat on the hope chest. It was big and solid. She traced the brass studs on the lid with her fingers: R.P. 1671. It was almost two hundred years since ‘R.P.’ had owned the chest. The leather covering was cracked and the brass had lost its shine. But the things inside it were new and pretty. They were precious. Letty had helped Lavinia sew the pillowcases and petticoats. Letty guarded the chest as if she were guarding Lavinia’s love.
Letty’s hair blew in her eyes. It was true what Lavinia said about their house, she thought. It hadn’t been easy to keep the hope chest’s white linen away from chimney soot and little Charlie’s sticky fingers. One night, Letty had even tripped over him and burnt her hair in the lamp. Lavinia had to cut part of it off. It was so ugly.
If I were as pretty as Lavinia, Letty thought, and people noticed me the way they notice her, maybe I would be brave and leave home too. Letty tucked the short bits of hair into her bonnet and tightened the strings.
‘A-hoy there!’ a boy sang out. ‘Miss!’
‘Me?’ said Letty.
‘Yes, you with the blinkin’ big box.’
Two sailors stood over Letty. ‘Is that to go on the Duchess?’ the older one asked. His skin was brown as wood and
weathered as the jetty boards.
Letty nodded.
‘Hop off then, and we’ll take it aboard,’ he said.
Letty looked up and down the jetty. Where were Papa and Lavinia? The sailors stood with their thumbs hooked into the rope that tied up their trousers.
‘Please, not yet,’ she said.
‘Now or never, miss.’ The younger one wasn’t much more than a boy, maybe fourteen, like Letty’s older brother had been when he went away to work. He had gingery hair and freckles all over his hands. His elbows poked out of holes in his shirt.
Letty didn’t know what to say. She was afraid that if she stopped the chest going to Australia, Lavinia and Papa would both be angry with her. She got off the lid.
The sailors lifted the chest onto their shoulders. Letty searched the dock and the shore with her eyes. She thought she could see Lavinia’s pink dress, but it was too far away.
The sailors went up the gangplank, onto the ship. What should she do? She felt as if her boots were glued to the dock.
‘Be a good child and stay right by that chest,’ Papa had said. That was what she should do. Letty dashed after it. She dodged under the arm of a man with a list and scurried onto the gangplank. The plank felt as if it was disappearing under her. Letty grabbed at the rope.
‘Easy does it,’ said the young sailor, gripping her arm with his freckly fingers.
‘Oh!’ Letty moved away from the sailor’s hand. She tried to stand with her feet neatly together, like a little lady, as Stepmama had taught them. But the ship’s deck felt crooked and she buckled at the knees.
‘Where is the chest?’ she asked.
The sailor pointed to the middle of the deck. ‘Goin’ in the hatch.’
She saw passengers’ boxes being lowered on ropes, down a square hole. ‘I have to go with it,’ she told him.