Another Twist in the Tale

by Catherine Bruton

  But Baggage had also told her never to return. And Twill knew there was no way she could. She had run away from Madam Manzoni – and to return would invite who knew what dire punishments upon her head.

  So Twill threw herself into her new line of work. She and the Sisters took to the streets each day, in pairs or small groups, varying their locations to avoid detection, doing their bit to even out the inequities of wealth in the capital. And Twill soon came to know all the sights of London – the bewigged lawyers of Lincoln’s Inn; the opera crowd in Covent Garden; the surgeons of St Bart’s; and the meat-mongers of Smithfield Market. And she came to love the life of a ragamuffin adventurer. It wasn’t quite the same as venturing to the Indies, or sailing the China Seas, rounding the Cape or trekking through the plains of Africa, but it was a long way from Camberwell Grove.

  She had also found a new family of sorts. The Sassy Sisters were a funny, assorted bunch – a bit like the Butterflies in some ways, although younger on average and more ragged in appearance. But the main difference lay in their freedom. The Sisters worked for themselves – and for each other. They served no master or mistress. What they stole was theirs if they chose to keep it, though they all chose to share. From the tiniest mite like Angel to big bruisers like Sloane – even the twins, Piccadilly and Trafalgar, who sometimes spoke to each other in their own secret language that no one else understood – they all shared. And they were beholden to no one.

  And yet Twill still missed the Black Jack with a yawning ache. The Butterflies, the boudoir, lessons with Mr Scapegrace, even the sound of the young gentlemen throwing away their fortunes and carousing raucously all hours of the day and night. Most of all she missed her Baggage. Missed her as it might feel to miss your heart if it was no longer beating in your chest, or your leg if it had been eaten by a shark. But she had promised not to return and she was determined to keep her promise.

  And perhaps Twill might have settled in and made a life for herself with the Sisters had it not been for the Child Catchers. For each day since that first sighting of the Chief Child Catcher, Twill heard more and more tales of orphaned wretches snatched from the streets. Each time one of the girls took her out, they told her to be on her guard against the Old Bill, the magistrates – but most of all the Child Catchers. For though it was boys they targeted, Chelsea said you could never be too careful.

  “There might be cases of mistaken id-en-tity,” she said, glancing at Fleet – who did indeed look more like a boy than a young lady. “An’ anyways, who knows when they might start targeting girls!”

  Dodger was an erratic but frequent visitor to the Sassy Sisters, turning up sometimes every day, sometimes not for days on end. And if some of the Sisters observed that his visits had been more frequent since the arrival of Miss Twill Jones, none had the temerity to say this out loud.

  It was maybe three or four months after her arrival at the Sisterhood – the time had flown so fast she couldn’t remember rightly any more – when Dodger arrived on the doorstep of Price’s Printing Press at barely five o’clock in the morning. It was Twill who answered the door, still bleary-eyed from sleep, to find Dodger shrouded in mist with a dark look on his face. “Come on, South o’ th’ River,” he commanded in a low whisper. “Youse comin’ with me!”

  Twill knew him well enough by now not to enquire further. She tiptoed back to the rag mattress she shared with little Angel, tucking the blanket over the small girl’s sleeping form and pulling a thin shawl over her own shoulders, before making her way out into the grey London dawn.

  “Where are we going?” she whispered, closing the door quietly so as not to disturb the sleeping girls.

  “I need to check up on somefing,” said Dodger. “New intelligence ’as come in – of a most alarmin’ nature.”

  “Intelligence from who?”

  “One of my men in the field!” said Dodger, pulling Twill into a nook near White Horse Alley. They were just off Field Lane, in the area known as the Rookery – one of the worst slums in London, where squalid dwellings bred disease and crime and misery faster than the rats that fed on them.

  A whistle emitted from nearby – one sharp blast and two longs ones.

  Dodger put two fingers between his lips and copied the whistle – one short blast, two long ones – and in an instant a small boy appeared, like a miniature ghost from the morning mist, and stood before them. He was wearing the same drab uniform as the urchin who had opened the gate to the Brownlow Benevolent Home for Unfortunate Boys, but his was stained bluey-black, as was his skin and his hair. In fact, the plum-coloured state of his whole appearance gave him the look of a bruise.

  “All right, Dodger!” he said, looking round shiftily. “Who’s the gal?”

  “Miss Twill Jones, meet Tommy Tickle,” said Dodger. “Late inhabitant of the Benevolent Home and erstwhile street urchin and pocket-dipper of the first order.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” said Twill, extending a hand.

  “Likewise, miss!” said Tommy Tickle, shaking hers most vigorously with a small, mottled-blue paw. “Any lady friend of Dodger is a friend of ours. ’E’s got good taste in the fillies, ’as Dodger!”

  “I am not his ‘lady friend’!” protested Twill. “I’m not even sure I would call us friends.”

  “Give it time,” said Dodger, winking at Tommy Tickle in a manner that enraged Twill and caused young Master Tickle to emit a gurgling chuckle.

  “Mr Tickle here lately absconded from the Benevolent,” said Dodger. “Made a break for it last night, ditn’t you, Tom?”

  “I did, Dodge. None too easy it was neither. Tighter than old Newgate Prison, the place is now. Plenty o’ new boys comin’ in but none’s seein’ the light of day again.”

  “You done well to get out yisself, young Tickle.”

  “You know me, Dodge!” said Master Tickle proudly. “I coutn’t stay there no longer. Not ’ow things are nowadays.”

  “Things aren’t what they were?” asked Twill.

  “No, miss! Since the old devil Barrabas takes over runnin’ the place it’s all changed,” said Tommy, shaking his head lamentably. “The food’s worse for one. No better ’an workhouse fare – gruel twice a day an’ a portion a’ bread and butter on Sundays, if we’s lucky.”

  “You’ll be wanting this then,” said Dodger, producing from his pocket a somewhat musty-looking sausage and a quarter loaf, which Tommy Tickle grabbed eagerly.

  “I for one don’t miss the schoolin’ – readin’ and writin’ an’ that,” said Tommy, through a mouthful of sausage and bread. “But there’s ’em who does.”

  “No lessons at all now?” said Twill.

  Tommy Tickle shook his head. Twill noticed that even his flaxen locks were tinged with the same distinctive blue colour, and she recalled the same violet tone she had spotted on the boy who had opened the gates to Bumble all those weeks ago. “The Old Devil – that’s Mr Barrabas, miss – ’e says we got to pay our way now, see. Says we can’t scrounge off society forever. Gotta prove ourselves profitable citizens.”

  “Profitable? Why, what do they have you do?” asked Twill.

  “Come wi’ me, miss!” said young Mr Tickle, his face looking bluer than ever as the weak morning light struggled its way through the layers of smog that hung over the city. “I’ll show you.”

  Chapter 18

  In which Twill sees evidence of man’s inhumanity to man

  Round the back of the austere grey walls of the Benevolent, down an alley, through a small courtyard and ducking through a rickety old fence, the trio came to a small weeded area where, by contorting into a crevasse in the brickwork they could peer through a tiny window into a basement below. Tommy crawled down first then indicated that Twill should follow.

  “Come an’ look. It’ll do your eyes a mischief though, be warned.”

  Twill shuffled on her belly, levering her body on her elbows so that she was able to peer through the tiny pane of grimy glass. Her eyes had to adjust to the gloom, and to
the bleary pane and the steam that seemed to fill the basement into which she was looking, but as they did, her blood ran cold.

  She beheld a damp cellar, in the centre of which were huge vats of bubbling black liquid, emitting the clouds of purple and grey smoke that filled the room. Among this sea of violet fug, small figures scurried like rats. Children. Some of these ragged creatures stood with giant ladles, stirring the hell-broth liquid, cloths tied tight around their faces, though this did not prevent them coughing as they breathed in the noxious fumes. Some were employed feeding shovelfuls of coal into giant furnaces, which burned in one corner of the room. Others were bent under the burden of buckets sloshing with the black tar-like substance, which they carried from the vats to the smelting pots to the long tables. On these were laid out ceramic jars into which yet more children decanted the liquid. Others sealed lids on to the pots with wax while still more were sticking on labels with glue. Even through the mist, Twill could see that many of these small figures bore the scars of their encounters with the scalding infusion.

  This whole scene was presided over by a bent-looking figure in a hood with a hat pulled low over his brow, and a kerchief obscuring all but his eyes, who barked at the mites to “Move faster, my dears … keep up the pace … hurry, hurry, hurry, my dears. We don’t have all day, you know!”, while rubbing his hands together at the sight of the crates of jars stacking up higher and higher by the cellar door.

  “What is this place?” said Twill in a horrified whisper.

  “An underground blacking factory is what it is!” said Tommy. “Nobody knows it’s ’ere save Mr Barrabas hisself and the Child Catchers.”

  Twill glanced at Dodger, who was uncharacteristically silent, staring into the pit with a grim expression on his face.

  “The Old Devil!” murmured Dodger, his eyes still fixed on the scene in front of him, and most particularly on the bent and masked figure in the centre.

  “The blacking?” said Twill, covering her mouth with her hand – for the noxious fumes seeped out through the tiny pane of glass, making her lungs feel tight and burning. “It’s – horrible!”

  “I’s meant for shinin’ the posh gents’ trotter cases – that’s shoes, to you an’ me,” said Tommy knowledgeably. “But the stuff gets in your lungs, in your eyes, your skin. Look at me – I’m the colour of a bobby’s jacket. Ain’t never gonna see my white skin never again. Some of the lads ’ave started coughin’ summat terrible. An’ blue blood it is they cough up, miss!”

  Twill surveyed the purplish hue of Tommy, who, besides looking distinctly undernourished, had a smell of sickness about him that reminded Twill of a time when a former Butterfly named Birdy had contracted an infection of the lungs, resulting in her dismissal from the Black Jack.

  “An’ some’s got burns from the scaldin’ liquid,” Tommy went on. “Little Joe nearly lost an eye last week when the cauldron started spittin’.”

  Dodger growled beneath his breath and Twill could see his eyes were ablaze.

  “But this is awful!” said Twill. “Why don’t the boys just leave?”

  But the question was merely rhetorical. For presiding over the scene was the looming figure of the Old Devil, or Mr Barrabas, or whatever his name was. Crooked and bent, he moved through the dusky gloom pointing a shrivelled finger or slamming his stick and wheedling, cajoling the boys to keep going.

  “Such nice work, my pretty ones,” Twill heard him croon. “You make Mr Brownlow so proud!”

  And as he spoke he pulled down the kerchief for a second and she caught sight of the long skeletal face, the rascally smile beneath a pair of thick red eyebrows.

  “Satan himself!” exclaimed Dodger, the look of intense fury in his eyes now magnified a thousand-fold. “Returned from the hot place below where he belongs!”

  “Do you know him?” asked Twill.

  “Curse the day I set eyes on his demon face again,” said Dodger. “I know ’im all too well.”

  Chapter 19

  In which an old adversary returns from the shadow of the gallows

  Yes, reader, you too have guessed the truth. You too know this devilish old man all too well. He might now go by the name of Mr Barrabas and the boys might call him the Old Devil, but the man whose return coincided so neatly with the transformation of the Benevolent Home for Unfortunate Boys from heaven to hell was none other than the notorious Mr Fagin.

  How so? I hear you ask. How can this be? I hear you shudder. And I echo your gasp, I share your wonderment. For wasn’t Mr Fagin – former ringleader of the gang of child-thieves to whom Dodger belonged and who had kidnapped young Oliver from the streets – wasn’t he sentenced to hang at the end of the story of young Master Twist? Wasn’t he last seen about to mount the gallows outside Newgate Prison? In truth, dear reader, you must forgive the gaps in this narrative, for indeed nobody knows how Fagin managed to escape hanging or who helped orchestrate the plot to break him free from prison and make him “disappear”. There was talk – of course! Some said he paid off the bellman from St Sepulchre-without-Newgate – the church that overlooked the gallows’ square. Some talked of a secret underground passageway through which old Fagin was smuggled at midnight. Some said another unfortunate soul dressed in his clothes swung from the gallows the next morning to entertain the crowds who gathered to watch the spectacle.

  But this is all rumour and speculation, for nobody knows for certain how he absconded, nor where he escaped to. Nobody – not even the spinner of this narrative – can tell where he has been for the past few years, nor what he has been up to. Some say he’s been off in the Indies, some say China – others says Essex. Whatever the truth, Mr Fagin has returned, with a clean new name, and, what’s more, he seems indeed to have inveigled his way into the running of the Benevolent Home which, as Twill had lately witnessed, he now ran in a more nefarious manner even than the den of thieves to which Dodger himself had once belonged. The only difference now was that Mr Fagin did so with the cover of respectability and enjoying the full protection of the law.

  All this Master Tommy conveyed to Twill in somewhat garbled form, while Dodger continued to stare in blazing silence.

  “So the Child Catchers are in on it too?” asked Twill, still horrified by the sight of the dozens of blue-stained urchins working in the basement hell, presided over by the devil himself.

  “Course they are!” said Tommy, who was enjoying the superiority that his inside knowledge gave him. “Big Bumble – the Chief Child Catcher – ’e takes a cut, see. Ev’ry kid they brings in, they gets a fee. Ev’ry barrel of blacking, they makes a profit! An’ thanks to Commissioner Bumble, old Barrabas has turned it into big business. Crates an’ crates of that stuff are smuggled out ev’ry night under cover of darkness, an’ the profits go straight into Barrabas’ and Bumble’s pockets.”

  Twill felt a shiver go through her from her grubby golden locks to the hand-me-down boots she wore on her feet. “And no one can stop them?”

  “Fagin is a cat with nine lives – a born-again devil!” Dodger’s voice was darker than Twill had ever heard it. His eyes were bright with anger, and some other emotion that Twill couldn’t quite put her finger on.

  “And you’re quite sure that it’s really Mr Fagin?”

  “In the flesh – returned from hell to make London in its likeness,” said Dodger, his hands balled into fists at his side. “’E stole my childhood, but I’ll be dammed if I let him do that – an’ worse – to them boys in there. Not if I can ’elp it.”

  “Only how can we ’elp it, Dodge?” asked Tommy.

  “I ’aven’t quite figured that out yet,” said Dodger. “But Fagin was once like a father to me, an’ ’e taught me to be as cunnin’ as he hisself. So I’ll think of summat to bring about his ruin. Or die trying!”

  Chapter 20

  In which Twill forms a plan and the value of a good education is evident

  “Sumfing oughta be done!” Chelsea declared. They were back at the printing press now, where Tommy h
ad been fed and fussed over by the Sassy Sisterhood and was now being subjected to a bath – a fate he apparently considered worse torture than the blacking factory, from the sounds of the screams he emitted throughout the process, and a procedure which, it should be noted, had no discernible effect on the colour of his skin.

  “We need to tell Mr Brownlow what’s going on,” said Twill. “Surely he’ll put a stop to it.”

  “Old Brownlow’s sick, they say,” said Trafalgar, who worked the patch from Nelson’s Column to Big Ben. “That’s what the right honourables up near Downing Street is sayin’.”

  “He had one of them strokes, I ’eard,” said Fleet, whose expertise lay in robbing the physicians – and their patients – in the vicinity of St Bartholomew’s Hospital. “That’s the word on the streets near Bart’s. Right after young Oliver went away, he got sick. Robbed him of speech and understanding. Won’t never recover, the docs say.”

  “Then Oliver Twist – somebody needs to tell Oliver,” said Twill

  “That lily-livered boy don’t ’ave the gammon to take on old Fagin!” said Dodger with a bitter smile. Since their return from the Benevolent Blacking Factory he had seemed to have a black cloud enveloping him. “You forget that Master Twist an’ I wos once acquainted, an’ ’e’s not made of the same mettle as the likes of you an’ me.”

  “Anyway, he’s a kid – wha’s he going to do?” said Chelsea.

  “He’s heir to the Brownlow fortune!” said Twill. “Mr Scapegrace explained that stuff to me, about heirs to fortunes, and power of attorney—”

  “Power of what?” demanded Sloane, who worked the Inns of Court and prided herself on her command of legal vocabulary – and her ability to rob judges blind.