Brightling (8 page)

Sparrow shrugged. ‘I don't know.'

‘Thought you were an orphan,' Connie said. ‘Orphanages and homes give out names like Jane and Ann. Not Sparrow.'

‘Then someone called her it
before
she were an orphan, stupid,' Agnes said, tying her long brown hair back over her shoulder. ‘Someone with some imagination.'

Had it been her mother? Sparrow wondered, as she had done so many times. Her father? She hoped so.

Agnes, Connie and Dolly sat down in the first section of the room.

‘We've drawn the short straws,' Dolly said, making a disgusted face at the awful stench.

‘As usual,' Agnes said, glancing at Sparrow. ‘Why isn't it the new girl?'

‘Here we go,' Connie said, ignoring Agnes's comment. ‘Masks on!' Giggling, the three girls tied scarves over the lower part of their faces.

‘Blimey, what a life,' Agnes said in a muffled voice. She pushed the pot of phosphorus further away. ‘It's rotting my guts, that stuff is.'

‘I'm glad I'm not working at that table,' Sparrow whispered to Glori.

‘Miss Minter changes us around from week to week,' Glori said. ‘I've been here longest, I've had more poison than the others.'

‘Is it really poison?' Sparrow asked.

‘Maybe not,' Glori said vaguely.

The smell was still awful but less so in the other half of the room. Here there was some simple hand machinery for making the wooden matchsticks – weird-looking tools, glue and wood. Sparrow wondered what it was all for. She wasn't sure she wanted to make matches, but then what else was she to do?

She wished Scaramouch were with her. Everything was better when he was close by.

‘Come on, let me show you what's what,' Glori said. She pointed to a pile of small wood pieces. ‘That's the matchwood,' she said, ‘brought up from the joiners round the corner.'

‘So the joiners know you make matches?' Sparrow asked.

‘No – Mr Abraham thinks we burn it to keep warm!' Beattie called over her shoulder.

‘This is the cutter,' Glori said. ‘See?' She cranked the handle on a conical machine and the wheel rotated. Thin lengths, each three inches long, popped out at the other end. ‘Ta dah! Firesticks – they'll turn into matches.'

Sparrow picked one up and rolled it round in her fingers. ‘We only used tinderboxes in the Home,' she said. ‘Matches were too expensive – and dangerous. Don't they ever explode?'

Connie and Agnes giggled. ‘All the time!' someone shouted.

‘Watch it! Hold your noses! I'm dipping!' Connie called out as she took the lid off a jar of phosphorus and a white mist swirled up into the air. Sparrow watched it linger there like a heavy cloud above the table. The air was suddenly filled with the sharp, tangy smell of phosphorus.

‘What is
dipping,
exactly?' Sparrow asked and quickly learned it meant dipping the end of the sticks into the jar until a little pale-yellow blob stuck to its end.

‘Lucky us. Miss Minter has put you on boxes with me,' Glori said. ‘Here.'

She led Sparrow to the other table, where Kate and Billie and little Hettie were just settling down to their work.

‘Sit by me!' Hettie cried to Sparrow.

‘We all hate dipping,' Kate said. ‘I'm back on it tomorrow.' She put a scarf over her rich, red hair and swept it out of the way.

‘Me too,' Hettie said. ‘But Miss Minter would be poor if we didn't help her, wouldn't she?'

‘Wouldn't she just,' Billie said.

‘Gives me toothache,' Kate added.

‘Gives us all toothache,' Glori said. ‘But it's that or –' she motioned over her shoulder with a thumb – ‘out we go!'

13

14

‘Are you watching me?' Glori asked, pausing with a half-made box in her hands. ‘Or are you away with the fairies?'

Sparrow shook herself out of her dream. She was thinking about Scaramouch. She pictured him falling off the roof or being attacked by big Stollenback cats  …  Didn't he like it here? Was he going to go off on his own? What had that look meant, that flick of his tail?

‘Sorry. I just wish Scaramouch had come down here too, that's all.'

‘Ah, he'll be fine. Now, watch, this is what you do.' Glori scored and folded a strip of cardboard. ‘This makes the outer bit, the case. Glue here. And here.' She stuck on a strip of rough striking paper to the glued card. ‘Then we make the tray like this.' She again folded and glued some soft card to make the inside box. Then she counted out twenty matches that already had their blobs of phosphorus on them and laid them neatly in the tray and slipped it into the outer case and closed it.

‘Done!'

‘Amazing!' Sparrow said. ‘A real box of matches.'

‘Now watch this!' Glori worked twenty times faster and completed a box in seconds. ‘There!'

‘Goodness!' Sparrow cried. ‘You're so fast!'

Glori gave Sparrow a friendly punch and laughed. ‘I've been doing it since I was knee high – this, and stealing pies!'

‘You've always been knee high,' Billie said.

Glori groaned. ‘I can't help it if I don't hardly ever grow,' she said. ‘I'm sixteen, or maybe seventeen by now, and look at me,' she said to Sparrow. ‘Scrawny and thin and not much bigger than a twelve year old!'

‘Your feet reach the ground, though,' Sparrow teased her. ‘You're perfect.'

The others giggled.

‘Now you try making one, Sparrow,' Glori said. ‘Go slowly – they gotta be perfect. You can decorate the cover then, 'cos we have to make them special or they're no better than the other match-girls' boxes.'

The work wasn't hard and it was the sort of fiddly thing Sparrow was good at.

‘So you've only just got out of that old Home?' Kate asked her. ‘What's it like being free?'

Sparrow shrugged. ‘It's good,' she said. ‘I think.' Was she free? She felt almost as trapped here as she had in the orphanage.

‘My father left me outside a tavern,' Kate said. ‘Two Drunken Dogs, it was called. Wish it hadn't been called that. I remember his face as he pressed a penny in my hand. I remember thinking, why's he looking at me so sad? It was 'cos he knew he weren't coming back, that's why. Wish he'd just said it. I waited two days. Right worried, I was, thinking he'd got lost or hurt, and I stuck to that doorstep 'cos I thought if I left it, he'd never find me. Then I just kept seeing his eyes, that last look, and I knew he'd gone for good. He were sorry, I knew he were. He couldn't afford me after Ma died. Wish he'd said, though. I wouldn't have done that to a  …  oh no, to a
dog!
'

A couple of the girls giggled nervously.

‘At least you knew him, at least you've a face to remember,' Sparrow said. ‘I've only got Miss Knip's ugly mug to keep in mind and no one would want to remember that!'

They laughed. But just a moment later, Hettie's round face crumpled and she started to cry. ‘Cari never said goodbye. She never gave
me
a penny,' she wailed. ‘I miss her. Why won't my sister come back?'

‘Oh don't cry, Hettie,' Sparrow said, hugging her. ‘What happened to your sister?'

‘She must've not wanted me,' Hettie sobbed, ‘like your dad, Kate. Just the day before she went, she told me I was an awful nuisance and a – a pest!'

Kate glanced round at the others with an embarrassed look. ‘Oh no, Het, don't think that,' she said. ‘Carina loved you.'

‘What happened?' Sparrow asked her again.

‘Perhaps you shouldn't ask,' Billie said. ‘It upsets her.'

‘Cari went out selling, selling matches,' Hettie went on. ‘It were wet. I remember the rain running down the window. She had a blue cape on  …  pretty. And she never came back.' Hettie looked at Glori. ‘You were with her, Glori! Don't you know nothing?'

Glori looked embarrassed now. She shook her head. ‘Ah, Hettie, don't you fret. I bet she's got a grand place to stay. Probably working as a maid right now in a lah-di-dah house somewhere in Sto'back with a white cap and everything. Don't you worry about her.'

‘But why'd she go?' Hettie cried. ‘We were always together. We walked all the way from the other side of Dragon Mountain together. I miss her bad, I do.' She dabbed her eyes. ‘Why didn't she tell me?'

Sparrow saw a conspiratorial look pass between the three girls; they knew something, she was sure. Something they were keeping from Hettie  …  and from her.

‘Didn't she give you no message, Glori, for me, or a –'

‘Now look, you've glued the wrong bit!' Glori interrupted her. She snatched the box from her little hands. ‘Silly little pumpkin.'

‘Sorry,' Hettie said. She inched closer to Sparrow. ‘I'm so clumsy. Cari said so too.'

Sparrow patted her arm gently. ‘No, no,' she said. ‘Of course you aren't.'

Now she wanted to know what had happened to Cari as badly as Hettie did.

By lunchtime Sparrow had made sixteen matchboxes while the others had each completed over one hundred.

‘Don't worry,' Glori told her. ‘You'll soon speed up.'

If I stay, Sparrow thought. But to leave was going to be hard, she could see that, and where would she go? And the girls were so friendly  … 

The only thing she didn't like was the constant bite in the air from the horrible phosphorus that made her eyes water and her throat tight. She pitied the girls whose job it was to dip the matches – and it would be her job too, one day soon. Each time one of them lifted the lid from a jar, the phosphorus mixture exuded a white vapour that spiralled upwards like a ghostly figure.

And she didn't think she liked Miss Minter much either.

They stopped at one o'clock and went upstairs to eat. Violet had been out shopping for lunch and the table was covered in fresh fruit and cheese, long loaves of bread and plates of ham.

Sparrow was starving, but her first thought was for Scaramouch.

He had come inside out of the rain that had just started to fall and was sitting by the missing pane of glass, staring out at the rooftops. Sparrow, catching sight of him from behind, thought he looked miserable. His whiskers drooped and his fur lacked its usual sparkle and lustre. Sparrow gathered him into her arms and pushed her face against his, reassured as she breathed in his musky scent that she knew so well.

‘Have you missed me?' she asked him. ‘Of course you have! Are you all right? You were so tired and weary yesterday, poor thing. Are you OK?'

All morning she had been thinking about him. She relied on his sixth sense to tell her what to do, and she would leave if he wanted her to, but she hoped that he wanted to stay; at least for a while, at least until she had a plan. She just couldn't face being alone again and on the streets, scratching around for a crumb to eat.

‘What do you think, Scaramouch, dear?' she whispered to him. ‘Can we stay here?'

Scaramouch purred and then slipped out of her arms and out through the broken window onto the roof. He sat there, out of reach, watching her with his great big clever eyes.

‘But I can't leave – not yet,' she whispered to him. ‘I just need to think it out. Please, dear puss-cat, don't sit out there!'

Three grey pigeons settled on the roof near him and started strutting up and down, cooing and billing. Scaramouch might have been a chimney stack for all the interest they showed him or he them.

‘Don't your cat catch birds?' Glori asked, joining her.

‘
Doesn't!
' Miss Minter corrected her from her place beside the hearth. ‘Correct English, Gloriana, please!'

‘Sorry, miss.
Doesn't
he catch birds?'

‘Never. Only things like mice,' Sparrow said.

‘Maybe he don't – doesn't – like feathers? Perhaps they tickle his tonsils?'

Sparrow laughed.

‘Or is it 'cos you's a bird?' Glori said. ‘He don't want to eat
you!
'

Miss Minter called out, ‘Will he not come inside, Sparrow, angel?' She was eating cherries from a silver bowl while the girls washed their hands and prepared themselves for lunch. ‘Is he your very special friend, Sparrow?'

‘He is. He will come in, he's just  …  he likes his freedom.'

‘We all like our freedom,' Miss Minter said, ‘but sadly we cannot all have it. Now Sparrow, leave the window and come and join us. Violet, move over, please.'

Violet glowered darkly as she vacated her seat beside Miss Minter.

‘How did you get on with your chores this morning, Sparrow?'

‘I got on well,' Sparrow said. She had taken Violet's chair because Miss Minter had told her to, and now she could see that Violet was cross. She didn't want to sit next to Miss Minter – Violet would be welcome to the favoured spot if only she knew.

Sparrow changed the subject. ‘I keep looking at Dragon Mountain,' she said, ‘hoping I'll see a spitfyre. Have they always lived up there?'

‘Yes,' Glori said, sitting down at her side. ‘A long, long time ago there were dragons there but now it's a spitfyre school.'

‘
Academy!
' Violet corrected her.

‘Years ago there was some big upset,' Glori continued, ignoring Violet. ‘I don't know exactly what it was, something to do with the Director and his daughter  …  what was her name? Something odd –'

‘What?' asked Hettie. ‘Was it something romantic?'

Miss Minter shuddered. ‘I loathe romantic, feeble, wet girls' names,' she said. She stared up at the distant castle on the mountaintop. ‘Don't tell me, was it something like Esmeralda? Or Cinderella?'

The girls laughed.

‘Oh yes, I think I remember  … ' Kate said.

Miss Minter leaned towards her, her eyes suddenly sharp and penetrating. ‘Do you? Say it then, say it! I dare you to say it!'

‘No!' Kate cried. ‘I don't remember it.' She gasped, looking shocked. ‘I don't remember it at all.'

‘I remember the story!' Dolly cried. ‘The Director did something terrible and was put in prison!'

‘He'd locked up hundreds of grubbins,' Beattie said. ‘That's what he did.'

‘
Grubbins?
' Sparrow asked. ‘Is that the same as mole-men? Those little men that dig up precious metals and –'

‘That's it,' Glori said. ‘And it turned out the Director was using the spitfyres to catch grubbins. He'd got hundreds of the poor things locked up in the dungeons.'

‘And one of the students took over when the Director went to prison,' Billie said. ‘He had a funny name  …  something to do with the weather  … '

‘
Stormy
,' Miss Minter said in a thundery voice.

‘Oh yes, that's it,' Glori said, warming to her tale.

‘Maybe it was really Stormy that was bad,' Dolly said. ‘Maybe he hatched a plan to bring down the Director, set him up, just so he could take over. I've heard of that sort of thing happening.'

Miss Minter flashed her a cold look. ‘Now you are a little closer to the truth,' she said.

‘And the maid was involved somehow too,' Agnes went on. ‘What did she  … ?'

‘She married Stormy,' Miss Minter said lightly. There was a loud
crack
and she slipped a broken cherry stone from her lips and dropped it with a
ping
into the bowl. ‘I don't know my own strength,' she said, smiling, ‘do I? Yes, Stormy is a wicked man who allows a maid-of-all-work to sleep between fine linen sheets on a down-filled mattress and give people orders and –'

‘And live like a queen!' Glori finished for her.

‘Lucky beggar,' Violet said.

‘Wish I could do that. I'd love a big bed with a feather mattress,' Connie said. ‘I dream of one.'

‘From a maid to a queen!'

Miss Minter coughed suddenly.

‘Are you all right, miss?' Glori dashed to Miss Minter's side. ‘You didn't swaller a pip did yous?'

‘It's swall
ow
.
Swallow
!' Miss Minter snapped. ‘Pronounce it properly, can't you?'

‘Sorry.' Glori shrivelled beneath Miss Minter's harsh tone. She glanced worriedly at the other girls, who all looked scared. ‘Sorry, I forgot. Sorry, Miss Minter.'

Billie poured Miss Minter a glass of pop-apple wine and pushed it over the table towards her.

‘Thank you, Billie,' Miss Minter said. She smoothed her hair then placed a well-manicured hand on her chest to calm her breathing. ‘I'm just angry. Angry that such things could take place. A maid! I ask you! None of you would ever think of doing anything like that to me – of getting rid of me, and taking my place here  …  Would you?' She stared round at them angrily; her cheeks were a hot pink. ‘Speak now and let's hear what you have to say!'

‘No, no, no!' the girls cried.

‘Never ever, miss,' Glori said.

Miss Minter sipped her wine. ‘I remember the scandal well,' she said, calmer now and looking out towards the mountain. ‘I'm much older than all of you, though I know I don't look it. I lived through it. Don't believe all you hear, girls. I never thought that the Director was evil. Or his daughter. And the Director was not a grubbin!' she said forcefully. ‘Impossible! I think you are more right than you know about Stormy, Dolly. Clever girl. It was Stormy who was the bad one.'

Sparrow felt a shiver ripple up her spine: no one had mentioned that the Director was a grubbin  …  where did Miss Minter get that idea? And why was she so angry?