‘We need to leave,’ said Tig. ‘Euphonia predicted there’s going to be a fire. An awful one. And all her predictions have come true so far. They’ve been leading up to this. We’re all in danger.’ Tig looked to Albion. ‘Your workers are in danger.’
‘Nice try,’ said Albion. ‘You’re not going anywhere until the machine starts speaking.’
Tig leaned close to Euphonia’s face and whispered, ‘Please tell them. Tell them it isn’t safe here.’ Perhaps it was impossible for Euphonia to speak here, outside the walls of the Royale. It was Cold Annie who made the machine work, and Tig had no way of knowing whether Annie could leave the theatre. ‘Or tell me what to do. I don’t know what to do.’
‘It doesn’t work, Snell. You’ve got no proof. These children know nothing. You’ve cheated me,’ Albion accused him. ‘I want my money back.’
‘Absolutely not!’ said Snell. ‘Our agreement was that I would get you the machine. It’s not my fault if you can’t work it.’
‘No?’ Albion was getting louder and louder. ‘I’ll show you what I think of your machine.’
Albion grabbed Tig by the shoulder of her dress and threw her aside. He pulled back the hatchet and brought it down, CRACK, on Euphonia’s wooden surface. He swung it back, and hit it a second time. CRACK.
On the third strike, the blade slipped. It skimmed over the corner of Euphonia, splintering off a chunk of the wood, which flew through the air and crashed right through the fragile glass tube of the oil lamp.
It happened so fast. The flame and the spilled oil touched the cotton fluff floating everywhere, and it caught fire. Tig screamed and instinctively fell to the ground as a hot wave tore through the air. For a moment she was blinded with the light of it.
‘My mill!’ shouted Albion to Snell. ‘You’ll pay for this!’
Tig gasped as she was roughly pushed aside by Albion. He raced from the room, between the carding machines and straight out of the door. Snell turned to Tig, shock and anger etched into his face, but he said nothing, just turned and fled.
Tig ran to Nelson and flung her arms around him. ‘I’m so glad you’re safe!’
Nelson squeezed her back. ‘Don’t worry. I was about to escape!’
They smiled at each other briefly before glancing behind them, where the fire was growing and starting to race up the walls, fuelled by a million tiny scraps of cotton in the air and in every crevice of the brickwork. Cotton was so flammable. The whole place would go up in smoke in minutes.
‘Gus! Come on!’ she shouted.
They ran from the room and saw Albion fumble with the keys by the door of the loading bay.
‘Unlock it! Quick!’ Snell hopped frantically from foot to foot, glancing back over his shoulder to see the flames creeping through the carding room towards them.
‘Where are you going?’ shouted Tig. ‘Your workers! The fire!’
The door opened and Snell and Albion tumbled through them to the safety of the street beyond.
Wait.
That was one of Euphonia’s predictions – so much fuel, black smoke, your friend must run.
Two hundred souls. There were two hundred people in this burning building.
Your friend must run.
‘Run to the fire station,’ Tig said to Nelson. ‘Raise the alarm. I need to warn the workers.’
Nelson nodded. ‘Be careful.’
‘What about me?’ said Gus.
‘I don’t care,’ said Tig. ‘Just try not to die!’
‘I’m coming with you.’
She ran through the warehouse towards the stairs and Gus followed behind. The looms above still hammered out their steady rhythm, completely unaware of the danger.
‘We’ll be quicker if we split up!’
Gus’s shout was almost swallowed up by roaring machinery but Tig understood. They emerged, breathless, into the weaving room.
‘Fire!’ she shouted at the top of her lungs, but no one could hear her.
Gus ran down the nearest row, tapping the shoulders of the weavers. Tig took the next row and grabbed the little boy who was piecing cotton thread. She pulled him close and shouted into his ear. ‘Fire! Everybody out! Run!’
The little boy’s eyes went wide and he turned tail and raced down towards the doors, waving his arms frantically over his head. The woman a few machines down saw him, and within a moment, she too was running. Tig darted to the next row. ‘Fire! Fire!’
She left them to spread the message as she returned to the stairs and ran up. As she reached the top there was a groan and the clattering noise dimmed, voices rising up in its place. Good. Someone had turned off the engine that drove the machines, and people were shouting to each other to get out.
On the next floor she repeated the process, grabbing the nearest worker, a stout woman of middle age, and screaming into her ear. The woman ran off, flapping her hands to the other women and girls on the row.
Tig went up to the top floor, breathless and hot. Perhaps it was the exertion, or perhaps the fire was already catching up with her. Gus met her on the stairs, his longer legs overtaking her. This top floor was lace makers – no heavy machinery here, just a group of some twenty or so women with their heads down over their delicate needlework.
‘Fire!’ Tig gasped.
The women looked up, startled.
‘There’s a fire in the warehouse. You need to get out now. Run! Please!’
‘This way, follow me,’ shouted Gus, and led the charge back down.
A surge of women came towards her, jostling each other as they pushed through the narrow opening and flooded down the stairs, mixing with the last of the people on the floor below. With the loading bay now well and truly ablaze, the only way out was back through the weaving floor of the mill. It was filling up already with black smoke – the worker bees were being smoked out of their hive. Tig pulled the collar of her dress up over her mouth and nose. It was hard going through the centre of the mill, with so many things to trip over and lots of noise, but at last she was out.
From the street she could see that the fire was spreading incredibly fast. Flames billowed out of the windows of the staircase where she had been standing only moments before.
Smoke and people poured out of the building, and a bubble of empty space had formed around the mill as carriages held back their horses and pedestrians watched from the other side of the street. Tig had done all she could. She only hoped everyone had got out in time. And where was Gus? He was a traitorous little worm but he had, in the end, been very brave, and she couldn’t stand to see him harmed.
She rounded the building, dodging through the gathering crowd to get back home. She had to warn Eliza, and find Faber.
As she passed the edge of the building, through the narrow ginnel between the back of the mill and the back of the theatre, she saw her worst fears confirmed. The flames had crossed the gap.
The Royale was burning.
Set Piece
The back door of the workshop was no longer accessible. Tig raced round to the front of the building and saw with some relief that Gus was there, a little way ahead of her.
‘Gus! The theatre’s on fire!’ she shouted. ‘You get Eliza out. I’m going for the professor.’
He dashed up the stairs and into the lobby. ‘Fire! Mrs Lincoln, fire!’
Tig entered the lobby as Eliza and Gus were on their way out.
‘The whole back wall is on fire,’ Tig panted. ‘I’m going for Faber.’
Eliza snatched her dress and held her back. ‘No, Tig, it’s too dangerous!’
‘I have to! The back door is covered with flames. Faber will never be able to find his way through all the stagehands’ passages in the dark and smoke.’
‘Tig!’ Eliza’s looked terrified but Tig pulled herself away and started running.
Euphonia said Faber was going to die. Was this how it happened? Maybe she should turn back, and save herself. But her legs kept pushing her onwards. She entered the auditorium and raced down
the centre aisle. Smoke was coming through here too, drawn upwards into the dome in the ceiling.
She hoisted herself up onto the stage. ‘Professor Faber!’ she shouted.
He wasn’t a bad man, not really. When she left him earlier, she had been so sure she would never help him again. His cowardice was unforgiveable. But now, thinking of him all alone in the burning theatre, she saw him differently. Not bad. Just scared and lonely.
Tig let out a scream of frustration and looked up into the cavernous flies above the stage.
Up there, beyond the rising smoke, stood the bluish shape of Cold Annie. The ghost walked along the beam towards the Green Room and vanished.
Tig ran to the side of the stage where the Green Room was, but the exit was inaccessible. The backdrop cloth was burning, the fire eating away at the fabric until it hung in flaming rags, blocking her path.
She couldn’t bring him out that way. She looked up to where Annie had stood moments earlier. There was only one other route into Faber’s rooms.
At the opposite side of the stage, she climbed the metal ladder up to the beams in the flies. She had to move fast, for now the smoke was being pulled up high above her head.
She ducked through the railings and out onto the same girder she had almost fallen from the day Faber arrived. She crawled across the beam on hands and knees. ‘Professor Faber! Come up! Up the ladder! You have to come up!’
Nothing. He mustn’t be able to hear her over the flames! Or was he… no. It was the noise. Had to be the noise.
Fire was loud. Surprisingly loud. Tig reached the end of the beam and stepped lightly across the catwalk. She grabbed the top of the ladder and descended a few steps down into the Green Room. And there he was, huddled in the corner, his knees to his chest. His bedclothes had been stuffed under the door, perhaps to keep the smoke out.
‘Professor!’
He looked up, and a mixture of relief and shock covered his face.
‘You came back for me.’
‘Come on! Up the ladder!’
‘I can’t go up there. I’ll fall.’
‘There’s no other choice,’ she said. ‘Come on.’
She held out her hand and Faber took it, getting shakily to his feet. Tig guided him to the ladder, ‘You go first!’
Her heart was beating harder than it ever had before, but the fear was dull and distant – for once her mind was clear and calm. She knew what to do. She was going to get Faber to safety.
At the top Tig could see the smoke had got thicker. They needed to get out, fast. ‘We have to go across,’ she shouted to him. ‘It’s the only way down.’
Faber didn’t say anything. She pushed him gently towards the beam.
‘You can do it. It’s wide enough to crawl along. Keep your eyes on the end of the beam and just keep moving.’
He nodded.
‘Go!’
He lowered himself unsteadily to his knees and cautiously put one hand out onto the beam, as if he didn’t know whether it would hold his weight.
They inched across, one agonizing second at a time, the girder growing warm beneath their hands. ‘Keep going, keep going, nearly there,’ Tig kept repeating, though she wasn’t sure if he could hear her.
The roof had caught fire now. One of the wooden bars that held the coloured mediums over the gaslights cracked and fell to the stage like a flaming torch. Tig glanced out over the auditorium – it was filled with yellow light and odd shadows as the flames felt their way around the building. Her precious Royale. Gone.
She pulled the collar of her dress up over her mouth and nose but she could still taste the smoke, gritty and hot and bitter.
An eternity later Faber reached the other end.
‘That’s it, there’s a ladder under the railing,’ said Tig. ‘Just turn yourself around and feel for the rungs with your feet.’
Faber turned, and as he did so he looked down. He almost swooned, fear painted all over his face, but he caught himself, and down he went. Tig hurried after him, jumping the last four rungs down to the floor.
How long had they been inside, now? How much longer did they have?
‘We’ll jump down and go up through the seats!’ she shouted, but before they reached the edge of the stage there was an unearthly crash. The front edge of the dress circle had collapsed, showering the first few rows with brick and plaster. They couldn’t risk going beneath it in case the whole thing tumbled down. Another exit was blocked. The fall caused a chain reaction and the topmost royal box crumbled, dropping chairs through to the lower level.
The circle breaks. The chamber falls.
She grabbed Faber by the hand. ‘Follow me. And don’t let go.’
Darting behind the red velvet curtains, she pushed open the narrow door and shoved through into the stagehands’ short cut.
‘Eight steps,’ she said. ‘Keep your head low.’
The passageway was so narrow, completely dark and suffocatingly hot. It wasn’t really big enough for an adult. It was lucky that Faber was so thin. If they got stuck…
Thin tendrils of smoke followed them into the space and stung Tig’s eyes and throat. She fumbled to find the catch with one hand and then – relief – the door swung open.
‘We’ve done it,’ said Tig, suddenly fighting back tears. ‘We’re going to be fine. Just keep going.’
Ahead of them again, as though urging them on, was Annie’s shape, the only light in the darkness. But at the end of the corridor, instead of going into the lobby, the ghost turned sharply and vanished into the Minshull Gallery.
Tig sent her silent thanks to the ghost and then led Faber along the corridor, her legs remembering where to hop down the steps that she couldn’t see. Faber was right behind her, stumbling, but still following. They rounded the corner and spilled out through the stalls doors into the beautiful, cool, clean air of the foyer.
In sheer relief she threw her arms around Faber’s neck, and after a moment’s hesitation, he hugged her back.
As they came down the steps, Eliza rushed over to meet them. Someone had given her a red shawl to cover her bare shoulders and it flapped behind her like a warning flag as she ran.
The widow wears red.
‘Where’s Nelson?’ she said. ‘He went back in to shut off the gas supply. You didn’t see him?’
Tig shook her head.
‘He’s been in there too long,’ said Eliza. ‘It shouldn’t take that long to reach the stopcock.’
The stopcock. Of course! If the fire reached the gas lines, there would be a huge explosion. On a busy city street, that could mean untold numbers of casualties. Nelson had put himself in danger to keep everyone else safe.
The stopcock was downstairs by Eliza’s apartment. Down the stairs in the Minshull Gallery – that must have been why Annie headed that way.
‘I’m going back for him,’ said Tig.
‘You can’t.’ Eliza held Tig’s wrist tight. ‘The fire is out of control now.’
‘I can’t just leave him in there!’ Tears started to spill down Tig’s face and she wiped them away angrily. She didn’t have time for tears.
‘I’ll go,’ said Faber. He took off his jacket and handed it to Tig.
‘But Euphonia said—’
He rolled up his sleeves. His face was grim, but his eyes were blazing. ‘You came back for me. You did the right thing. Now it’s my turn.’
‘Euphonia said you’d die,’ said Tig. ‘She didn’t say that about me. Maybe if I go…’
‘What was it you said? If I’m going to die, better to die as a hero.’ He took out his handkerchief and began tying it round his face as a makeshift mask. ‘Where is it?’
‘Through the lobby,’ said Eliza, wrapping her arms around Tig’s heaving shoulders, both comforting her and holding her back. ‘Turn right into the Minshull Gallery. Straight down the stairs.’
Faber nodded. ‘Get everybody further back in case it…’ He paused, closed his eyes for a second, and took a deep breath. ‘In case
it explodes.’
Faber ran up the steps and back into the Royale.
The Tragic Hero
Tig waited with Eliza halfway down the street, just in sight of the front steps of the Royale. Mill workers, street sweepers and afternoon shoppers alike craned their necks to get a view of the fire. Tig rested her head on Eliza’s shoulder as they both watched their whole world burn.
Nelson. He’d suffered so much, and none of it was his fault. And Professor Faber – frustrating, grumpy, unpleasant Faber, who had refused and refused to try and stop Euphonia’s predictions – had in the end stepped up and done the right thing.
Everything happened exactly as Euphonia had said it would. She must be ashes by now. Had she known she was going to burn?
Hearing a shout, Tig looked up.
The doors of the Royale had opened. Smoke pooled out and the shape of a man emerged from the fog. Faber staggered, but Tig saw that he was holding something in his arms. Nelson.
She ran full pelt towards them. Men from the crowd came forward too, and met Faber halfway up the stairs, lifting Nelson out of his arms. Faber leaned heavily against the pillars, wheezing, and then slumped over entirely and collapsed, sprawled out on the stone steps.
‘Move them!’ shouted Tig. ‘Get them away from the building.’
‘I’ve got him,’ said a burly man in worker’s cords, taking up Nelson and cradling him as though he were no more than a baby.
‘Take them both over to my shop,’ said Mr Becker, running towards them. ‘The chemist. Matilde! Matilde, go for Doctor Ball!’
‘I did it,’ came a little voice from Nelson. ‘The gas… I turned it off.’ He coughed and Tig could finally breathe.
‘All right, good lad, no talking now,’ said the man who was carrying him. ‘Let’s get you safe.’
She turned to Faber who wasn’t stirring at all.
‘Mind out, love,’ said a man. He put his hands under Faber’s armpits and another man picked up his feet. They lifted him together, his head lolling back.
The Incredible Talking Machine Page 17