‘Let’s walk,’ I said, and we stepped out into the stars and I pulled the scarlet-lined hood of my new cape up over my head.
I had one hand tucked inside the furry recesses of my muff, and James Fortescue had the other under his arm, warm against his cloak. It was a brilliant night, as bright as only a winter night can be. The stars were as thick as meadow flowers across a purple-black sky, and the moon had that hazy halo which always means frost. Our footsteps clattered on the paving stones and we walked uphill from the Assembly Rooms with an easy, even pace, close together to get through the throng of dancers coming out and calling goodnight to each other. The chairmen shouted for people crossing the road to make way for them, and a linkboy ran up to us with a torch in his hand and said to James, ‘Light your way, sir?’
‘Starlight is enough tonight,’ James said gently, and he reached inside his cape seeking a coin.
I was looking at the lad’s feet. He had shoes, but they were gone at the soles, tied on with rags. Above the ragged tongue of leather his bare ankles were blue with cold, scarred with old flea-bites. His breeches stopped between knee and calf – a dirty pair of rags which had once been velvet. His jacket was a man’s coat folded over and over at the cuffs so that his skinny wrists showed and his hands were free. He was one of the scum of Bath that float on the rising tide of wealth in the city. He was one of the many that survive on a little luck, a little thieving and a little beggary. I had seen poverty in Acre, but country poverty is nothing compared to the degradation that the poor suffered in this most elegant of towns. One might throw a penny into an outstretched bowl at the market, or give to a special collection in church, but it was possible to spend all one’s days among the wealthy and the beautiful and to see no hardship at all. The city councillors kept it well hidden, fearing to shock their wealthy patrons. And we – the ones with the money and the leisure and the Christian compassion – we liked the streets to be clean and clear of paupers.
‘Here you are,’ James said kindly and the little lad looked up at him and smiled. He must have been about fourteen, but he was so slight and so thin that he looked younger. But there was something about his face which struck me, that square forehead and the deep-set eyes.
As I stared at him, the singing noise of Wideacre fell upon me like a waterfall and drowned out the street sounds and the street sights. All I could see was his pale peaked face and all I could hear was a voice saying, ‘Take him home! Take him home!’ in a tone of such longing and grief that you would have thought it was his mother calling for him.
‘I am going to take you home,’ I said, making it sound like the most simple thing in the world. ‘I am going to take you home.’
His sharp face turned up towards me, yellowy pale in the light from the torch. ‘To Acre?’ he asked.
And then I knew him for one of the lost children of Acre who had been taken for the mills in the north and never returned. ‘Yes,’ I said, and I smiled at him, though I could have wept. ‘Yes,’ I said again. ‘I am Julia Lacey. It is all coming right in Acre now, and there will be work for you if you will let me send you home. I am Clary Dench’s friend, and Matthew Merry’s, and Ted Tyacke’s. They are all working for wages in Acre now, and Ralph Megson has come home and is managing the estate.’
He thrust his torch at James and grabbed both my hands in his bare dirty grip. ‘Is that right?’ he said urgently. ‘Are they working in the village again? Can I really get home? Won’t they send me back here if I go home?’
‘No,’ I said firmly. ‘I am part heir to the estate. I am Julia Lacey, and what I say is done in Wideacre. There will be work for you, and I shall pay for your journey home. I shall write ahead and tell them that you are coming, and there will be a place for you to live and a job for you to do. I can promise you that, and I do promise it.’
He shook both my hands at once then as if we might suddenly dance together in the cold streets of night-time Bath. ‘I can hardly believe it!’ he said, and he was grinning and shaking my hands, and tossing his head as if to try to wake from a dream of good luck. ‘I can’t believe I should meet you like this!’
‘How did you recognize him?’ James asked quietly.
I turned towards him. I had quite forgotten he was there. He had thrust the torch in a bracket on the railings and was leaning against them, watching the two of us. ‘I don’t know. I just guessed, I suppose,’ I said with the lie I had learned from Dr Phillips who had taught me to disbelieve my own senses. Then I hesitated. I had trusted James Fortescue with the truth about my dreams and my seeings. ‘No, that’s not true,’ I said simply. ‘It was the sight. I knew I had to take him home; but I did not know why. I did not know who he was. But now I come to look at him, he does look Sussex-bred to me.’
‘I’m Jimmy Dart,’ he said. ‘My ma was in service at Havering Hall and when she got big with me, they sent her away. She stayed in Acre and worked for Wideacre. But when I was five or six, she run off, and they took me on the parish. They put me in the workhouse. When Mr Blithe came around for paupers, they sent me and the others. We worked for him in his mill. Cruel work that was. Then he could get no more cotton and he shut the mill and we all had to leave. They wouldn’t take us on the parish, because we hadn’t been born and bred there, and they wouldn’t take us back on Wideacre. Julie heard that paupers could get into Bath, but we had no money for the journey. It was winter an’ all. Cold, and we had no shoes. We walked. A long walk, and little Sally died on the way. Just curled up in a field and wouldn’t walk no more. We stayed with her till she was cold and stiff and then we left her. Didn’t know what else we could do. Julie cried then. She said it was the last time she ever would cry. Then we got to Bath, and I had a fight with a boy and won it, so I got his torch.’
‘He gave it to you?’ I asked.
‘I killed him,’ Jimmy said, off-handedly. ‘In the fight. I choked him. It wasn’t much, he was only a little boy. But I got his torch, so I could start earning us money. I’ve done it for a long time now.’
I put a hand out to steady myself on the railings. ‘You killed him?’ I asked faintly.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We got the place where he used to sleep as well after that. We stay there now.’
I said nothing. Jimmy looked me over in the silence, taking in the handsome pelisse with the rich gold fringe and the fur muff.
‘You couldn’t give me a penny, could you?’ he asked. ‘Then I could buy some gin for Julie. She’d like that. It’s better than bread for us if we can buy gin.’
I was about to say no, that I could not bear them to buy gin, that they should have food and clothing and a passage to Wideacre, but that they must not drink gin, never drink again. But James Fortescue stepped forward and put a hand under my elbow. ‘Yes, you shall have some money at once,’ he said gently. ‘Is this Julie from Wideacre too?’
Oh, aye,’ Jimmy said, watching the movement of James’s hand in his pocket, and watching him bring out a shilling glinting as bright as a knife in the moonlight. ‘We stayed together, us Wideacre paupers. Not little Sal who died, and not George who threw himself in the river last winter when he was drunk, but the rest of us live down by the Fish Quay.’
James handed over the shilling. ‘Would the rest of them like to go home?’ he asked. ‘To Wideacre, if it could be arranged?’
A smile spread over Jimmy’s face like the sun rising over the downs. Oh, aye,’ he said, ‘I reckon they would.’
‘I’ll come and see you all,’ I said with sudden decision. Whatever they had done, however they now lived, they were Acre children who should have been raised on Acre. The little girl who had died in the field and the youth who had jumped into the river were in cold water and hard earth far from their homes. And that was the fault of the Laceys. The Laceys, and the squires, and the world which works the way we like it, with very many poor people, and very few rich. ‘I’ll come and see you, and I’ll write to Acre tonight,’ I promised.
‘You’ll never find it on your own
,’ Jimmy said. ‘I’ll meet you down at the Fish Quay in the morning if you like.’ He nodded at James. ‘You’d best come with her,’ he said. ‘Some of them are rough.’
‘I’ll be there,’ James said grimly. ‘We’ll come at about nine o’clock.’
Jimmy nodded, and picked up his torch. ‘I can go straight home now,’ he said, stowing the coins carefully inside the ragged jacket and turning to leave. Then he paused. ‘You will come, won’t you?’ he said, suddenly doubting.
I put a hand on his shoulder, I could feel the sharp shoulder and collar-bone through the thin jacket. ‘I promise,’ I said. ‘You could always come to me. We are lodging with Mrs Gibson at number twelve Gay Street. You can always find me there. But I shall come to you tomorrow morning.’
He nodded at that. ‘Till tomorrow, then,’ he said, and turned on his heel and melted into the shadows of the elegant streets of Bath, for the very poor – if they are not working – are better invisible.
James took my hand and we walked on in silence. TU call for you at a quarter to nine,’ he said as we reached the doorstep of the lodging-house. I glanced up. Mama’s bedroom shutters were lined with light; she was waiting up for me.
‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘but I could go alone. Jem Dench would go with me.’
James shook his head with a smile, but did not trouble to reply. ‘You knew at once, didn’t you?’ he asked. ‘I saw your eyes go all hazy, and you smiled as if someone was calling your name, and then you said, “I’m going to take you home.” You knew him at once, didn’t you?’
‘Yes,’ I said simply.
‘It’s a great gift,’ he said. ‘You are a lucky woman.’ He paused then as a thought struck him. ‘Why don’t you cancel your appointment with Phillips tomorrow?’ he suggested. ‘You may find you need to spend some time with the Wideacre children.’
‘I shall,’ I said. I hesitated. ‘I hope he will not mind,’ I said. ‘And then there’s Mama…’
James stepped back a little and looked at me with his head on one side. He was smiling. ‘I should perhaps not suggest this,’ he said mischievously, ‘but until you know more about the situation, do you think it would be very wrong simply to play truant? If your mama is unwell tomorrow, she will not go with you to Dr Phillips. You could tell her afterwards that you had not gone, and explain why.’
‘Mr Fortescue!’ I exclaimed. ‘That would be deceitful and dishonest.’
‘Yes,’ he confessed at once.
‘And very convenient,’ I acknowledged. ‘I shall decide what best to do in the morning. But whether I explain to Mama or not, I shall be ready for you at quarter to nine.’
He bowed and smiled to hear that note of decision in my voice. I put out both hands to him in sudden gratitude for the way he had been with Jimmy and the way he seemed to understand. ‘Goodnight, James,’ I said.
‘Goodnight, Julia,’ he replied.
And then sleepy-faced Meg let me in the front door and I crept upstairs to my bedroom. After writing to Ralph, I tumbled into bed and slept as well as if I were home.
In the morning the Fish Quay was noisy and crowded with women buying for the lodging-houses and restaurants of Bath and occasional eccentric gentlemen, choosing their own catch, who eyed James and me with surprise. It was impossibly busy, with people bidding and shouting, and calling their wares, fishermen crashing great crates down on to the cobbles and fishwives shoving their baskets around and tying muslin squares over the top. But at least it was light there, and it only smelled of old and rotting fish.
The streets beyond it, where Jimmy led us, stank of fish, and vomit, and excrement. The lane was wet with slurry, and little streams of filth formed pools in the gutters where rubbish blocked their path. There was no pavement, there was no paving. The lane was a mud track, heaped with muck and refuse thrown from the windows of the overarching houses on each side. It was as dark as twilight, since the buildings stood so close, and not a breath of wind came down it. As we walked along, me with my skirts bunched in one hand to try to hold the hems clear of the muck, James with one hand firmly under my elbow, we could hear from each house, from each blocked doorway and unglazed uncurtained window, the crying of little babies and the moaning of old and ill men and women, and the ceaseless quarrels of those with breath and energy to be moved to anger rather than silent despair.
Jimmy glanced at James’s dark face. ‘The best we can afford,’ he said defensively. James nodded; he was not surprised.
We had only gone a little way before they started following us. At first people looked at us from doorways and from the windows, but then they fell in behind us, a murmuring crowd who looked like they might heckle or stone or rob us. The grip on my arm tightened and James and Jimmy exchanged a look.
‘Nearly there,’ Jimmy said anxiously. ‘I oughtn’t to have asked you,’
I wanted to say that my place was there. If Wideacre children were living here, then I should know how they were living. But the smell of the street made me keep my mouth shut, and I did not feel brave and determined. I felt sick and I wished very much that I had not come.
‘Here,’ Jimmy said suddenly, and turned abruptly to the side.
It was not a doorway at all, but a basement window. Someone had built a little plank bridge down to it, but that was scarcely needed now; so much rubbish and dirt had been dropped from the street that if you had a strong stomach and stout boots, you could have walked from the lane to the window-sill.
‘Mind you don’t slip,’ James said, and walked ahead of me and put a hand out to me when he was half-way along the plank. We tumbled together into the room and I heard something scurry away at the noise we made. I blinked in the darkness, and then, as my eyes grew accustomed, I could see there were four people in the room.
A girl, about my age, lay sprawled on the floor, an old pelisse under her, a dirty greatcoat over her, a tin mug at her side. Her hair, which might have been copper if it had been washed, was half pinned, half tumbled down. Her eyes were heavy with dark paint around them and crusty with sleep. She was as thin as if she were starving and her cheeks were bright as bright with rouge.
‘This is Julie,’ Jimmy said, and anyone could have heard the love and pride in his voice.
‘Hello,’ I said quietly. ‘I am Julia Lacey.’ As I said it, I realized that we had the same name. She was probably a year younger than me and she had been called after me, in the tradition of Wideacre. She raised herself on her elbow and looked at James Fortescue and then at me without a change of expression. ‘Aye,’ she said, ‘Jimmy told us you’d come. I didn’t believe it.’ She reached for the tin mug and took a gulp from it.
This is Nat,’ Jimmy said.
A boy as black as an African slave got to his feet and came towards us. He was a little taller than Jimmy, but about the same age, I thought. In the darkness of the room I could scarce make out his features; all I could see were his shining eyes, bright blue, looking odd in that blackened face.
‘He’s a sweeper’s lad,’ Jimmy said. ‘He can’t talk because of the soot in his throat. He lost his voice – last winter, it was, wasn’t it, Nat?’ The boy nodded vigorously. A cloud of soot rose from his mop of hair. ‘But he’s getting too big,’ Jimmy said. ‘He can’t get up the chimney, whatever he does. Pretty soon he’ll have no work. Won’t even be able to beg without a voice.’
Nat nodded again, and then turned to a heap of paper on the floor. They were old newspapers, and I thought for a moment that he was going to show us some item of news. But he burrowed among them, and I realized they were his bedding. He came out with some small object cupped in his blackened palm and proffered it to me.
‘It’s his flint,’ Jimmy said in explanation. ‘When they took him from Acre, his ma gave him a flint off the common to remember his home by. D’you know flints like that? Flints like that on the common?’
I held the sharp little stone in my hand and closed my palm on it to keep the tears out of my eyes and out of my voice. ‘Yes, I do
,’ I said. It was white on the outside, like a shell, and dark crimson and shiny inside, a hard little keepsake to carry for years. I gave it carefully back to him. ‘What is his family?’ I asked.
‘He’s the son of Tom Brewer,’ Jimmy said. ‘His pa used to work in the Midhurst breweries until they laid him off because of him living in Acre. Are they still there?’
I glanced at Nat. He looked indifferent, as if he had learned long ago that his family had surrendered him to the greater strength of the legal authorities and that he should surrender to them.
‘They are,’ I said. I remembered the cottage under the falling spire. ‘They have a new cottage in Acre,’ I said. ‘It is being built now. And at home you have two little sisters and a new brother.’
The sooty head nodded, suggesting the news was of interest, but not of vital importance.
A movement in the corner of the room caught my eye.
‘That’s Rosie Dench,’ said Jimmy. ‘She’s sick again.’
I went cautiously towards the heap on the floor, and then I stopped by her. At her head, on a sheet of startling whiteness in that grime-encrusted room, was an exquisite pair of gloves covered in embroidery, with a great full-blown pink rose coiling around the wrist and around the fingers of the glove. The work was some of the finest I had ever seen.
‘What’s this?’ I asked. ‘It’s beautiful.’
‘It’s my work,’ she said hoarsely. She raised her head a little from the cloth under her head. Her face was very pale and her lips red from the sores around them. ‘When the light is a little brighter, I’ll do some more. I gets paid for them; they sell them in Mrs Williams’s millinery shop. They pays me well for them too ‘cause I make ’em up as I sew. I don’t need a pattern drawed for me.’ She stopped to cough and she turned her head away from the spotless cloth and the exquisite glove. She coughed into a corner of the rags that were covering her, and in the gloom I could see that her spittle was dark.