by Renee Duke
“Great. Are they here now?”
“Yes. They arrived a few minutes ago. I’m sure you’ll hear them as soon as we go inside. They’re an exuberant bunch.”
They were indeed. Down in the lunch room, thirty children between the ages of eight and twelve had divested themselves of daypacks and other encumbrances. As they milled around, jabbering excitedly, the harassed adults in charge of them tried to keep order. Some children had smudges of fake dirt on their faces and all of them had name tags attached to Victorian-style clothing.
“I guess we’d better get changed too,” said Paige.
“You won’t look as good as these guys,” warned Mr. Marchand. He nodded toward the summer care group, whose period attire was in reasonably good condition. “My insatiable craving for realism demands that you be in really scruffy outfits.”
“That’s okay.”
Mr. Marchand felt her forehead. “Feels like the same kid. Looks like the same kid.” He sniffed the top of her head. “Even smells like the same kid. Just doesn’t sound like the same kid.” He turned to Trish and Uncle Gareth. “For years, the mere suggestion that she put on authentic historical costume has been tantamount to a declaration of war. Now, all of a sudden, she’s little Miss Co-operative. Why do you suppose that is?” he added, giving his daughter a suspicious look.
“I’m a late bloomer,” she told him nonchalantly. “It took a while for the Wolverton and Hollingsworth history genes to kick in.”
“And now they have?”
“Yep. Now they have.”
Mr. Marchand shrugged. “I guess that’s as good a reason as any.”
“Why are you being so co-operative about all this?” Dane asked his sister when she emerged from a nearby washroom in a cloth bonnet, a long-sleeved beige coloured blouse, a short jacket with a tie in front, a long skirt, and a pair of boots that were almost as scuffed-up as the ones he and Jack were wearing. The outfit was clean, however, and not as tattered and torn as her father had led her to believe.
“I hear opportunity knocking,” she replied, giving an approving nod to the boys’ cloth caps, checked shirts, suede vests, and patched knickerbockers.
“Opportunity for what?”
“What do you think? I’ve got the medallion on under all this.”
Although this special piece of jewellery had initially been put into Dane’s keeping, they took turns wearing it. Today happened to be Paige’s day.
“According to Grantie, we can use it to visit four more time periods,” she went on. “Going round this place pretending to be Victorian kids is okay, but as soon as we get a minute to ourselves we can say the connecting rhyme and go meet some real Victorian kids. And we’ll be less conspicuous in this get-up than in our T-shirts and shorts.”
“We’ll stick out a bit if we wind up back in the fifteenth century again,” Dane pointed out. “Or in the time of Boadicea.”
“We won’t,” said Jack, his face lighting up in anticipation. “We met up with the princes because we were portraying them for Uncle Alan’s documentary. Right now we’re doing something Victorian. If there was a Keeper Piece anywhere around here during that era, the medallion will take us to the kids who have it.”
The medallion had been in the children’s Great-Great-Great-Aunt Rosetta’s family for as long as anyone could remember. It was part of a set of ancient Armenian artefacts known as Keeper Pieces, so named because they had all been made from a solid gold statue called the Keeper of Time. Believed to have been owned by some kind of sorcerer, it was reputed to have mystical powers. The five-petal rose projecting from the medallion’s surface symbolized the sorcerer’s young ward, Varteni, whose name meant ‘rose tree’. After the girl was enslaved by Roman invaders, the statue had been melted down and the rose-decorated Keeper Pieces scattered around the world.
The children had learned all this from their great uncle, Edmond Hollingsworth. An expert on the Middle East, he had not told them anything about the medallion’s time travel capabilities, or that young offshoots of the Wolverton family had been using it for generations. He had told them the medallion was supposed to help Varteni in some way, but if that meant its users were supposed to find her and rescue her from slavery, that had apparently not yet happened. According to Grantie Etta, it had been making connections to other children in trouble for several centuries now, and they thought it was likely to go on doing so until it found Varteni.
Having been presented with the idea, Dane found he, too, was keen to take a new time trip. “Sounds good. We’ll just have to wait for a chance.”
The first part of the group’s Victorian experience was the Victorian Lesson, which took place upstairs in one of the original Ragged School classrooms. Before it began, it was explained that Victorian schools had been very strict, and were only concerned with imparting the ‘Three Rs’ (reading, ’riting and ’rithmetic) and instilling good moral values. The teachers had never heard of child psychology and brooked no nonsense from their pupils.
Thus warned, even the most boisterous members of the summer care group were feeling a bit subdued by the time they came under the tutelage of the actress playing Miss Perkins.
Clad in an ankle length skirt and high-collared, long-sleeved blouse, this formidable-looking woman immediately started barking orders. Among the first of these was a command to form two lines for entering the classroom, in which boys sat on one side and girls the other.
No brightly coloured posters or bulletin board sets adorned the classroom’s walls. There weren’t any computers or learning centres either. The only teaching aids in evidence were an abacus, some blackboards, a large map, and the cane Miss Perkins carried. Now outlawed, it would once have been used on pupils who were inattentive, or rash enough to be rude to her, or break any of her rules.
There were quite a few rules. Miss Perkins’s recital of them ended with, “Sit up straight. No backs touching benches.”
The benches referred to were attached to sloped wooden desks.
“Wouldn’t want my back touching this thing,” muttered Paige’s seatmate, whose name tag read Marissa. “It’s ever so hard.”
“No talking,” snapped Miss Perkins. “And no slouching, either, or it will be the backboard for you.”
The backboard was a corrective device to enforce good posture. It had a wide part that supported the back, and two narrow ends that a sloucher was forced to hook his or her arms over. Another corrective device, a set of finger stocks, kept fidgety fingers imprisoned within wooden blocks tied together behind the fidgeter’s back.
Actual lessons began after Miss Perkins inspected everyone’s hands to ensure they were clean enough to touch textbooks and other items belonging to the school.
Young children, and even older ones who didn’t know the alphabet, had learned it by repeating the names of letters the teacher pointed to on a blackboard. As Miss Perkins did this, the children chanted in response. She then set them to copying out letters on slate boards.
“Paper was very expensive,” Trish explained to Mr. Marchand. “Copybooks like the one over there were reserved for more advanced pupils. A good hand was difficult to achieve with a straight pen that had to be dipped into ink all the time. Children were always getting into trouble for making splotches.”
“Most people did have beautiful copperplate handwriting back then though,” Mr. Marchand commented.
“My great-grandfather and his siblings certainly did,” agreed Uncle Gareth. “The result, my grandfather told me, of the at least thrice daily rapping of their knuckles. Standards had started to slip by his own time. He had a right chicken scratch.”
A severe look from Miss Perkins quelled all three of them. Even adults were not allowed to disrupt this teacher’s class.
Proceeding with the lesson, she made everyone recite a string of geographical facts about the British Empire. Victorian teachers expected all children to learn at the same pace, in the same way. Those who could not were punished for being lazy. One indignit
y such pupils suffered was being made to stand in front of the class wearing a pointed hat called a dunce cap. Trish whispered that Dr. Barnardo had not allowed them in his schools, but since many Victorian teachers had used them, Miss Perkins did too. She grimly fitted one to the head of a boy named Kieran and called upon two more children to demonstrate the backboard and fingerstocks.
Later on the group was made to do a series of exercise drills, an activity Jack, for one, did not enjoy at all.
At the end of this abbreviated school day, Miss Perkins clapped her hands and congratulated everyone for getting through the class.
“Too right,” said a girl named Jamila. “Victorian schools weren’t much fun.”
“Children didn’t expect to have fun in school,” Miss Perkins responded, primly. “They were there to learn.”
“Which they desperately wanted to do,” Trish added. “Getting an education was the only way for poor children to better themselves. Even so, they weren’t always as meek and studious as in some of the pictures you saw in the entrance area. In the early days, classes were often quite rowdy.”
“You’re kidding,” said Dane. “What with canes, and dunce caps, and those finger things, I’d have thought they’d have gone out of their way to behave. I know I would.”
“Really?” said his father. “Hmm. Maybe I should get some. Do you sell them?”
Trish laughed. “The East End kids were pretty tough. They had to be. Life was hard. Most of them worked for a living and the only jobs open to them were, at best, tedious, and at worst, backbreaking, or dangerous. Even day-to-day chores were labour-intensive. We’re going up to the kitchen now. Some of the things you’ll see there were an improvement over the way people had to do things before, but they still involved a lot more time and effort than people would be willing to put in now.”
As they were filing out, Uncle Gareth motioned for Jack, Dane, and Paige to stop beside one of the blackboards. The decimal monetary system Great Britain had been using since the 1970s had not existed in Victorian times. The blackboard showed what various coins had amounted to before decimalization, such as four farthings being equal to a penny, twelve pennies being equal to a shilling, and twenty shillings being equal to a pound.
“That brings back memories,” said Uncle Gareth. “It also reminds me that I’ve got something for you three.” He reached into his pocket. “Here.”
He handed each of them three large copper coins and a small silver coin.
“Victorian pennies,” said Jack. “And silver threepennies, too.”
“That’s right. You’d have felt positively rich with one of those back in the days of this school. They’re far more elegant-looking than the chunky, twelve-sided brass ones that followed them. Not that I cared about that as a young child. I just knew one bumpy thing, and one big brown thing, would get me a choc ice when the ice cream man came by.”
“You were around before decimal money?” Paige gasped.
“Yes, I was, you cheeky little madam. But my thrupennies were as described. Silver ones were rare. Usually only got them in the Christmas pud.”
“I shouldn’t imagine the kids who came here ever got Christmas pud,” said Jack.
“No,” Trish confirmed as she came up behind them, “but they were fed quite handsomely at Christmas time. Dr. Barnardo used to throw a party down the road at the Edinburgh Castle. That was a pub he bought and turned into a mission hall and coffee house. The kids wouldn’t have got turkey and all the trimmings, but even meat, bread, potatoes, veg, and gravy would have seemed like a veritable feast to them. They also appreciated the meals they got here at the school. Dr. Barnardo knew children couldn’t learn properly if they were hungry. By eighteen-eighty-eight, this place was serving breakfast on a daily basis. Dinner, too, during the winter. Breakfast cost half a penny and dinner a whole penny. Children who couldn’t afford that got them for free. So did children who weren’t very strong. They were often built up with a free holiday in the country as well. And all the children went on the annual outing to Epping Forest, which was a real treat for city children.”
“Sounds like Dr. Barnardo did a lot for kids,” said Dane.
Trish nodded. “He was much loved. He died in nineteen-oh-five, and so many people wanted to pay their respects, his funeral procession brought London traffic to a standstill.”
After checking their various pockets for holes, the children slipped their coins into safe ones and followed Trish to a room that had been turned into a recreation of a Victorian kitchen. The summer care group was already there, sitting on a large carpet, and once they, too, were seated, a museum volunteer showed the young visitors a carpet beater—a household tool for literally beating the dust out of carpets. She also showed them a toasting fork for holding bread or crumpets over an open flame, a ceramic hot water bottle, some hair curlers she declared must have been torture to wear, and a host of other items people had once used in their daily lives.
She then called their attention to a tin washtub. “One job that really took a lot out of you back then was washing. After boiling up the water, you had to scrub clothes clean by hand and squeeze out as much water as possible with this mangle here. Staggering outside with a basketful of wet wash, you pinned it to a clothesline with these funny-looking wooden pegs and went back in to start on the next lot.”
At various points during the talk, children were asked to demonstrate things. As the others watched, a girl named Aruba tried to get the wrinkles out of a shirt with a heavy flat iron.
“Now might be a good time for us to slip out,” Paige whispered to her brother and cousin. “Our own time hardly moves when we’re in the past, and everyone’s so into this, they’ll never miss us.”
Dane and Jack nodded in assent and started to edge toward the door.
The corridor outside was deserted.
Paige and Dane waited while Jack put some travel bands on his wrists. He was a poor traveller and the remedy he used for regular forms of transportation also helped ease the queasy feeling they all got from time transfers. He then stood between the other two and they all joined hands.
Pulling the medallion out with her free hand, Paige solemnly recited the rhyme that opened their door into the past.
“Ancient portal, hear this plea,
Open for thy golden key.
Feel its power,
Know its might,
Put the Mists of Time to flight.”
A mist was exactly what surrounded them. When it dissipated, they were standing in the same spot they had been in in their own time.
But this was not their own time. The door to the room they had just left was ajar. A quick peek revealed that it was no longer a recreated Victorian kitchen, but a classroom jam-packed with girls aged between eight and ten. Some were reading aloud from battered books while others scribbled on slates, practiced sewing, or listened attentively to the teacher, a grim-faced middle-aged woman who made Miss Perkins seem quite easy-going.
“Trish said they were rowdy,” Dane whispered. “This bunch looks really docile.”
“And really poor,” said Paige, slipping the medallion back under her blouse. “I can’t envision any of them having anything as valuable as a Keeper Piece.”
“One of them must.”
“Not necessarily,” Jack mused. “The medallion’s connection range is quite wide. Don’t you remember how far we had to go the last time we used it? We materialized in Westminster Abbey and had to go all the way to Greenwich Palace to find the Keeper Piece. The one we’ve connected to in this time might just be in this general area, not the school itself.”
“Then let’s go find it,” said Paige.
Chapter Three
“Whew. It must be summer here as well,” Jack observed as soon as they got outside. “It’s really hot.”
“Warm, Jack,” Paige teased. “Merely warm.”
Jack made a face at her before turning his attention to the building behind them. Its outward appearance was not much c
hanged, but instead of a sign across the top reading, ‘Ragged School Museum’, there were two longer signs, one below the top floor windows saying, East End Juvenile Mission, and another, lower down, saying, Sunday & Weekday Bible Schools.
Paige nodded toward the sign. “Look at that. It’s just like it was in one of those drawings we saw in the museum.”
“A drawing made in eighteen-seventy-nine,” said Jack, who never forgot anything he read or was told. “That means we’re now sometime between then and eighteen-ninety-six.”
“Why eighteen-ninety-six?” asked Dane.
“That’s when they got the bell. It’s not up there yet.”
“‘When’ doesn’t matter much at the moment,” said Paige. “It’s more important to figure out where and who—as in, where is the nearest Keeper Piece, and who has it?”
“It might be in one of those houses over there.” Dane pointed to some rows of dilapidated terraced houses across from the school.
“Doesn’t look like too affluent a neighbourhood. I’m thinking we’re going to have to walk a bit. Which way should we go?”
“Left,” said Dane.
“Right,” said Jack.
Paige rolled her eyes. “The deciding vote’s mine then. We’ll go right.”
“Why?” demanded Dane.
“Because you’re my brother. Disagreeing with you is in my job description. Besides, Jack here’s a genius. He must have some well thought out reason for wanting to go that way.”
“Do you?” Dane asked him.
“Not really. It just feels like the way we should go.”
“Okay.”
When they came to the end of the school buildings, they turned left because Jack felt they should. That choice of direction soon led to the Regent’s Canal, where horses trudged along the towpath pulling iron-bottomed narrow boats laden with coal, timber, sugar, and other commodities. Some of the boats were decorated with rose patterns and pictures of castles, giving them an elegance that seemed out of keeping with the rough manner of the men handling them. Most were shouting at one another and cuffing idle apprentices.
