Sweep

by Jonathan Auxier

  Her first thought was that the Sweep had tumbled from the roof in his sleep. He usually tied a rope around his waist to prevent this, but perhaps he had forgotten. But somehow she knew that the hat was no accident.

  He had left it for her.

  The girl knelt and took the hat in her small hands. The brim was warm to the touch. She smelled the sweet aroma of kindling. When she leaned close, she saw that there was something inside the crown.

  She reached inside and removed a small clump made of ash or coal or soot—she could not tell which. It was about the size of her fist. The outside was crumbly, but it would not break when she squeezed it. And it was very warm.

  Imagine discovering that the only person you have ever known and loved was now gone without a word. Not a note. Not a message. Only a strange lump of flickering char.

  The girl’s first emotion was anger. She very nearly threw the char over the edge of the roof. But something within her checked this impulse, and she clasped the clump to her breast. She held it so tight that it could have turned into a diamond.

  Without the Sweep, the girl had nothing to do and nowhere to go. And so she waited on the roof, hoping the Sweep would return. She clung to the piece of char, her only inheritance. Even in the bitterest cold, it kept her warm.

  Indeed, it was the thing that kept her alive.

  THE CLEAN SWEEP

  Nan woke from a dead sleep to the bells of St. Florian’s Church. She’d heard once that St. Florian was the patron saint of chimney sweeps. She thought if that were true, then he shouldn’t make his bells ring so early. Nan rubbed soot from her eyes. She had been dreaming of Before. It was a thing she tried not to remember—but the dreams wouldn’t let her forget.

  “Get a move on, you lot!” a voice yelled from upstairs.

  The boys were on their feet in a flash. No time for yawning or stretching. They stampeded up the wooden steps, pushing against one another to get to the kitchen before the bell finished its five o’clock toll.

  Nan sprang up and started to run with them.

  But then she stopped, feeling her coat. “My char!”

  It must have fallen from her pocket when she got up. This happened a lot. No matter how tightly she held on to it in the night, by morning it would find a way to slip from her grip—almost as if it had a mind of its own. Nan dug through the scattered coals along the east wall. It was like finding a needle in a needlestack. Finally she uncovered it—warm and familiar. It was where she usually located it, right beneath the window that looked out toward St. Florian’s churchyard.

  Nan paused for a moment, looking more closely at the char in the early light. She noticed two small divots in the face, equal in size. They looked for all the world like a pair of eyes.

  “Step lively, Cinderella!” Roger called from the top of the stairs. “You know what happens when that bell strikes midnight.” He shut the door. Nan heard the lock click behind him.

  Nan cursed Roger under her breath and stuffed the char in her pocket. The bells continued ringing as she clambered into the coal bin’s chimney, which connected to the kitchen hearth above it.

  By the time Nan reached the main floor, the boys were already seated along the table, slurping up bowls of hot gruel. Porridge was thick and filling and needed to be eaten with a spoon, but gruel was different. It was mostly water. You could drink it straight from the bowl. This was the only food they could expect today.

  Nan squeezed between Whittles and Newt and reached for her waiting bowl—

  Whap!

  A wooden spoon came down on her hand. She shrieked, clutching her fingers.

  “You’re late, missy,” Mrs. Trundle said, looming over her. Trundle was a widow, and Nan always thought her late husband was probably glad to be rid of her. The woman was mean as a weasel in winter. Her apron was splattered gray and smelled awful. She kept a giant iron pot perched on her hip like an infant. The inside of the pot was caked with brown muck that had once been food. “That last bell was well rung by the time you sat down.” She jabbed the end of her gruel-covered spoon at Nan. “You know the rule: Stragglers starve.”

  Nan clutched her throbbing hand. “Sorry, ma’am.” She sucked the bits of gruel from her knuckle and forced herself not to cry. In five years she had not once let herself cry in this home. She knew Crudd would enjoy it too much.

  Trundle snatched Nan’s bowl and poured the uneaten gruel back into the pot. “Never you fear. It’ll be waitin’ for you tomorrow.”

  For as long as Nan had lived in the house, she had never once seen that gruel pot cleaned. Every morning a few more ingredients were added. It was impossible to tell where one batch ended and another began.

  A door creaked behind her. “Brooms up!” She and the other climbers all leaped to attention as Wilkie Crudd stepped into the room.

  “Mister Crudd,” Mrs. Trundle said in an almost girlish voice. “Good morning to you.” She bent her knees in something like a curtsy.

  “It’s not good yet,” Crudd replied. “That will depend entirely on whether these imps do their jobs.” He talked the way Nan imagined a ship’s captain might talk.

  “I got your boots, sir,” Roger said. “Shined ’em up real good.”

  “Used his tongue and everything,” Whittles muttered.

  Shilling-Tom started to laugh, but a look from Crudd cut him short.

  Crudd took his seat at the head of the table. Roger rushed to meet him with his boots. They really were shiny.

  Wilkie Crudd had built a reputation as “the Clean Sweep.” Instead of the blacks of a proper sweep, he wore a green velvet jacket with gold piping. His shirt and breeches were spotless white. Even his brush was clean. This was not vanity but calculation: He knew that wealthy customers preferred to work with someone who looked like them—so they could forget just how filthy the job really was.

  Nan couldn’t see it, but she knew from the way housemaids talked that Crudd was quite handsome. The widow Trundle was the latest in a long line of romantic conquests. Every few months, Crudd brought in a new woman to cook and keep house. Nan was fairly certain these women worked for nothing—perhaps in the hope that Crudd might see their value and make an offer of marriage. He never did.

  Mrs. Trundle set a covered plate in front of him. “I’ve fixed up a special breakfast for you, sir.” With a flourish, she removed the cover. Delicious, hot smells assaulted Nan’s nose. “Roast pheasant with bread sauce. Your favorite.”

  Crudd pushed the steaming plate away without even looking at it. “None for me, Missus Trundle. I’ll be eating my fill on the job—three weddings.”

  Weddings were a tidy business for chimney sweeps. Everyone knew that paying a sweep to attend your wedding guaranteed years of happiness. And no sweep was in such high demand as the Clean Sweep. “Days are getting shorter since autumn’s begun. I shouldn’t plan to be home before dark.”

  “Too busy kissing the brides for luck, eh, sir?” Roger said, helping Crudd don his overcoat.

  Nan saw Mrs. Trundle wince slightly, as if she’d just pricked her finger.

  Crudd glanced at the table, specifically at the empty space in front of Nan. “We seem to be a bowl short.” He gave Trundle an inquiring look.

  “The girl was late for breakfast,” the woman said. “And she knows my rule.”

  “Your rule, not mine,” he said. “I’ve a business to run. I can’t have my best climber start the day on an empty stomach.” This was not so much a compliment as a slap aimed at Roger.

  “Of course,” Trundle said. “Only there’s none left in the pot.” A dirty lie.

  “Let her have my breakfast, then.” Crudd nodded toward the pheasant.

  “But, Wilkie!” the woman protested. “The bird alone cost half a shilling.”

  “Psssh,” Shilling-Tom muttered. “That ain’t so fancy. I could buy two.”

  “Don’t worry yourself about the cost.” Crudd walked to the front door and took up his broom. “Only the best for my best.”

  N
an could feel both Trundle and Roger glaring at her. She kept her eyes on Crudd, who was watching her with an expectant smile. “Well?”

  She breathed in the smell of the food. It nearly made her knees buckle. She lowered her head. “I’m not hungry.”

  FIRST CLIMB

  Nan walked briskly through Tower Hamlets. Shabby houses lined the narrow street. The granite setts were cold against her bare feet, and she could just make out her breath as she turned down Whitechapel toward the heart of London. She kept one hand on her brush and the other buried deep in her pocket, clutching her char to ward off the early-autumn chill. She thought again about the “eyes” she had seen in its face. Surely it was just a trick of the light?

  The smell of warm rolls filled her nostrils as she passed Hob’s Bakery on the corner. She felt a violent stab in her gut. She wondered if it had been a mistake to turn down Crudd’s offer of the pheasant, but then she told herself that a bit of hunger was preferable to taking part in Crudd’s little game.

  She and Roger were the oldest climbers on the team. For years Crudd had been promising to make one of them apprentice when they came of age. And that day was fast approaching. Being an apprentice meant less work and actual pay. Being passed over meant the streets.

  Crudd wielded this promise as both carrot and stick. He would alternately praise one of them and ignore the other. Lately he had been unusually kind to Nan. And for good reason. Roger didn’t care a whit for hard work. If a corner could be cut, he’d cut it twice . . . and leave someone else with the blame. On a given day, Nan cleared twice as many chimneys with half as many complaints. Her sootbag was always full to bursting. Shilling-Tom and Whittles both said she was a sure thing. Still, when it came to Wilkie Crudd, there was no such thing as a sure thing.

  Nan hated climbing for Wilkie Crudd, but what other choice did she have? She had learned quickly that no person would hire a six-year-old girl without a proper master, and so she had been forced to indenture herself. For all she knew, the Sweep had left her at Crudd’s house for that very reason.

  Nan found the others at the Matchstick on Pudding Lane. The Matchstick was a giant stone torch built to commemorate the Great Fire of London, when a baker’s chimney caught fire near that spot and burned the whole city down. For a farthing you could take the stairs up and look out from the viewing platform. Folks said you could see clear to America from up there. Nan wouldn’t know—she’d never had a farthing to spare. Sweeps and climbers used the Matchstick as an informal place of business, probably to remind folks of what would happen if they didn’t clean their chimneys.

  Whittles was sitting on a low wall, carving a stick into what looked to be a smaller stick. Shilling-Tom was window-shopping outside a haberdashery. Newt was trailing behind Roger, peppering him with questions about climbing. Up to this point, Newt had only had to fill ash pails and haul ropes. Today was his first climb.

  “But what if I get stuck?” he was asking as Nan approached.

  “No ‘what if’ about it. You will get stuck.” Roger was chewing something that looked suspiciously like a pheasant leg. He must have swiped it when Trundle wasn’t looking. “And once you’re stuck, there’s only three ways out. Up, down, or in the arms of angels.”

  “That means dead,” Newt said sagely.

  “If I had to guess, I’d say you’ll be buried by May Day. If you’re lucky, you’ll just fall and break your neck. But there are worse ways to go. Much worse.”

  “Like what?” Newt sounded nervous.

  Roger sucked the last bits of meat from the knuckle. The smell made Nan’s stomach tremble. “There’s soot wart,” he said. “That’s a disease that eats your guts from the inside till there’s nothing left. But even soot wart don’t hold a candle to getting stuck. You’re climbing along, easy as pie, and then suddenly, before you know it, your knees are up to your chin and you’re wedged in there like a cork.”

  “But if you’re stuck, can’t they get you out again?”

  “They can try. Easiest way is to open the chimney cap and toss a few bricks down. That might knock you loose enough, and you’ll fall the rest of the way.”

  Newt’s eyes widened. “Doesn’t that hurt?”

  “Not as much as the next way. If bricks don’t work, Crudd’ll send up another climber with a silver hat pin to jab you in the heels hard as he can.” He poked the end of his pheasant bone into Newt’s face. “Once you feel that, you can bet you’ll work yourself free.” He tossed the bone into the street, where two dogs promptly began to fight over it. “But sometimes that don’t work, neither. And then it’s time for . . . the Devil’s Nudge.”

  Nan rolled her eyes. Of course Roger would tell him about the nudge. “Just ignore him,” she said to Newt.

  Newt kept his eyes on the older boy. “Wh-wh-what’s the Devil’s Nudge?”

  “Can’t tell you.” Roger licked his fingers. “It’s too horrible. Let’s just say that if Crudd uses the Devil’s Nudge, you’d better hurry and say your last prayers, ’cause soon you’ll be screaming all the way to potter’s field.”

  “Leave him alone, Roger,” Nan said. “You’re scaring him.”

  “I’m telling him the way things are,” Roger said. He folded his arms. “Name one thing I said that ain’t true.”

  Nan grit her teeth. She remembered her first climb. Even all these years later, she still felt a whisper of that old terror every time she stepped into a hearth. “You’re small,” she said to Newt. “You’ll be fine.”

  “But what if I get stuck?” He wiped his nose to reveal a smear of pink skin beneath the grime. “What if they have to . . . nudge me?”

  Nan set down her broom and knelt. She looked Newt dead in the eye. “I’m not going to tell you it’s easy or that you shouldn’t be scared. But being scared’s not the whole story of it. There’s another reason we climb—one that makes all that danger worth it. It’s the view. There’s nothing in the world like it.” She took off her hat and put it over Newt’s eyes. The way the Sweep had done with her before her very first climb.

  “Imagine it,” she whispered. “You go up that long, dark flue, coal sack over your eyes and mouth, legs and arms scraped and aching. But then you reach the top, feel that cool air on your skin. You take the bag off and what do you see . . . ?”

  She pulled the hat away. The boy blinked. “What do I see?”

  Nan smiled. “Everything.”

  Newt’s eyes shone as if he could really see everything. He turned toward her. “Will you go up with me?”

  Nan pulled back from him. “Me?”

  “Aw,” Roger said in a mocking voice. “Looks like Nan’s got herself a pet.”

  She wiped her hands on her coat, as if they were dirty. Which they were. “I’m afraid training is Roger’s job.” She fit her hat—the Sweep’s hat—back on her head.

  “Just for my first climb!” Newt grabbed at her arm. “After that I’ll be brave—I promise I will!”

  “Brave’s got nothing to do with it,” called Whittles. “Nan Sparrow climbs alone. Always has. Always will.”

  This was true. Nan didn’t need dead weight slowing her down. “You’re a climber now.” She gave Newt a not unkind shrug. “You can’t depend on folks to protect you from the world. Because someday there won’t be anyone but you to do it. Not Roger, not Crudd, not me—”

  “What’s that mean, not you?” Newt said. “Are you leaving?”

  “Not if I can help it,” Nan said. “I got soot in my veins.” But that was the problem: She couldn’t help it. Things were changing. She was changing. Nan was nearly twelve now. She had seen girls her age who had graduated from the workhouses, seen the way they had grown plump and awkward. “Blossomed,” people called it. She tried to imagine one of those girls wriggling up a chimney flue. It was impossible.

  Church bells across London struck the hour. “Speaking of . . .” She stood with her brush. “It’s time we all got to work.”

  The little boy stared up at her. His tiny chin quive
red. “What’s the point of seeing everything if there’s no one to see it with?”

  Nan didn’t have an answer for this, so she just took up her sootbag and walked away.

  NAN’S SONG

  Nan tried not to think about Newt climbing into his first flue. The others had learned not to work chimneys with Roger. And now Newt would learn.

  She knew her best chance at getting something to eat would be to find a job near a wealthy home in the West End. The servants in nice homes could be counted on to give you a bit of food once you’d finished the job. She supposed she was a reminder of where most of them had come from. Seeing her made them grateful not to be her.

  The sun was just coming up now. The first fallen leaves of autumn were scattered across the dewy streets. All along the city, she could hear the chorus of climbers shouting their trade.

  Sweep!

  Sweep O!

  Sweep for your soot!

  Of course, Nan had her own way of getting work. It was the way the Sweep had taught her.

  She saw a cluster of children on the steps of St. Paul’s. They were all crowded around a filthy boy who had an enormous bag at his bare feet. Perched on his shoulder was a little white rat with horrible red eyes. “No pushing, gentlemen!” said the boy in a loud voice. “There’s treasure enough for all. Whatever your need, Toby Squall’s Emporium has just the thing.”

  “Does it have a kick in the backside?” Nan muttered.

  The boy somehow heard her. He waved his cap, revealing a head of wild orange curls. “Hullo, Smudge!” He was always calling her that. She hated it even more than Cinderella. “Care to browse the emporium?”

  The “emporium” was what Toby called his junk bag. It was rumored that Toby’s bag was magical and bottomless. On any given day, he could be seen hawking buttons, candle ends, playing cards, string, pocketknives, snails, cutlery, eye patches, wishbones, and even once a set of false teeth. He proudly described himself as an entrepreneur. Nan called him a pest.

  Toby Squall was a mudlark. He spent his days wading along the banks of the Thames searching for rubbish and things he could repair and sell. Most mudlarks found only junk. But Toby had an eye for treasure—if there was a good bootlace or hairpin in the river, you could bet he would find it.