A Different Day, A Different Destiny (The Snipesville Chronicles)

by Laing, Annette

  “Can’t I see my wife and baby?” mumbled Weaver as the three of them tramped upstairs.

  “No,” said the Master, who Brandon now thought of as the jailer. “It’s against regulations.” He opened a door into a room packed with narrow beds, most of which were already occupied.

  “You’re lucky,” said the Master, jerking his head toward two empty beds. He left without another word, closing the door firmly behind him.

  Brandon threw himself onto a bed but promptly jumped up again, crying out in pain. Peeking under the mattress, he found that the bed was made from iron bars, topped with a thin straw mattress. Brandon carefully reclined on it, feeling the bars poking through the mattress and bedcovers, and laid his head on the hard thin pillow. The room was freezing, and although he knew he would miss the additional padding, he slipped himself under the coarse grey blanket and thin sheet. Everything felt rough, sore, and generally miserable. Which was pretty much how Brandon felt about himself. He was in a prison for poor people. Now what, he wondered?

  Chapter 7: Life in the City

  Hannah finally glimpsed the thicket of smoky chimneys that was the skyline of Dundee, and not a moment too soon. By this time, she could think of nothing but food. Her stomach felt like it was trying to eat itself. Early that morning, she had struggled to persuade herself to get up from the comfortable straw of the stone barn in which she had spent the night, until she realized that it was too tempting to lie there and die of starvation. Now she was standing on a hillside in the tiny village of Ferryport-on-Craig. Dundee lay only a mile and a half away. The problem was that between Hannah and Dundee lay the broad estuary of the River Tay, and she had no money to pay for the ferry. Desperately, she wondered if she could swim across. Then she had a better idea. Why not beg? And why hadn’t she thought of this before? She had always been good at school fundraisers, selling junk like wrapping paper and bad candy …

  With a burst of enthusiasm, Hannah approached the first man she saw, and asked him for money. He told her that begging was a sin, and that she should go home to her mother. If only, she thought bitterly. Next, she wandered up to an older woman who was beating a rug outside her cottage, and said brightly, “Hi, got any spare change?”

  “Eh?” The woman squinted at her.

  Hannah rubbed her fingers together to demonstrate. “Change? Like, money left over from spending a shilling? You got any?”

  The woman held up her rug beater threateningly and advanced on Hannah. “Away with you! Rob me, would you, you besom?”

  Hannah ran. Clearly, her sales pitch needed some work.

  Finally, she knocked at the door of the minister’s house next to the church, and told her tale of woe. It worked. The minister’s wife took pity on her, gave her a penny for the ferry, and even handed her a chunk of bread to eat. Hannah demolished the bread on the doorstep.

  Within an hour, Hannah was hunkered down in a tiny boat, watching the green fields behind grow smaller and smaller. Turning to look the other way, she watched nervously as Dundee grew ever nearer. The city—and it was a city, not a village as she had hoped-- crouched ominously at the foot of a very steep hill. The closer Hannah got to Dundee, the worse it looked: Plumes of smoke poured from dozens of factory chimneys, and a brown fog hung over the whole place.

  At the dock, seagulls squawked and circled overhead. Hannah carefully climbed the scary stone steps that jutted from the harbor wall, then set off aimlessly down the dockside. Grey stone buildings fronted the harbor, facing dozens of sailing ships that lay at anchor, their garishly-painted prows pointing over the street, and their billowing sails drawn up to the rigging. Among the ships were steamers, with great paddle wheels on either side, but even these modern ships had sails to serve them when their engines ran out of coal or the winds were good.

  Hannah was overwhelmed by the deafening din of the city: Horses’ hooves and massive wagon wheels clattered on the cobbles; a man walked by pushing a handcart with squeaky wheels; four dockworkers in shirt-sleeves and broadbrimmed hats shouted and cursed each other as they pulled an enormous barrel with thick ropes; a herd of cattle waiting to board a ship lowed in their iron pen; and the constant screech of seagulls ripped the air. Everywhere Hannah stepped, her feet squelched in foul-smelling muddy stuff. Judging by the stench it gave, much of it was poo. Worse, it smelled like people poo. But that couldn’t be right, could it?

  On the dockside, construction workers were building what looked like the entrance to a castle: One massive stone archway, flanked by two smaller arches, was already complete. When Hannah paused to inspect this odd structure, she leaned against a huge cloth-wrapped bale. Trickling out of it was a fiber, but it wasn’t cotton. Curious, she pulled out a tangle of prickly golden threads, and sniffed at them, inhaling their musty scent. One of the construction workers had propped a clay bottle of drink on another bale, and he was watching her with amusement.

  “It’s jute,” he said. “It comes all the way from India.”

  Hannah nodded, and then asked, “Why are you guys building a castle? Is there a war?”

  The man burst out laughing. “A castle? Nah, nah, lass, this isn’t a castle. This is the Royal Arch, to celebrate Her Majesty’s visit to Dundee.”

  Hannah was thrilled, because maybe her stay in Dundee would have an upside. A royal visit! She would see Queen Victoria! “She’s coming here? When?”

  “Four years ago.” He laughed.

  “Very funny,” Hannah said sarcastically. “Hey, can you tell me where I could find some lady called Jessie who lives in a castle? In a vault?”

  He laughed again. “Eh, lass, you’re fankled, you’re muddled… I think you’re wanting Castle Lane, for it’s by a close called The Vault. I don’t know your Jessie, but I’m sure you’ll find her there. Oh, and take her a bow and arrow, will you? She’ll need it, living in a castle.”

  “Ha. Ha. Ha,” said Hannah unsmilingly.

  He grinned at her, and then pointed a finger at the city that rose behind them. “Och, just go up yon hill,” (he pronounced it “hull”) “That’s Castle Street, and carry on till you get to the High Street, then turn left. You’ll find the Vault next to the Pillars, that’s what we ca’ the Town House, that’s yon great big building with pillars in the front. You canna miss it.”

  Following his directions took Hannah steeply uphill on slippery stone cobbles, and past long rows of grey stone buildings. Everything in Dundee seemed to be grey or brown or black, from the sky to the ground.

  And it was a busy place: Lady shoppers in bonnets held up their long skirts to keep them out of the muck; A couple of rich-looking gentlemen carrying walking canes were discussing warehouses as they passed Hannah by. As it started to rain, a grand-looking horse-drawn carriage halted. The coachman jumped down and pulled the hood over the pale young woman and little boy seated inside.

  Most of the people Hannah saw looked poor. Men and women shuffled past on foot, holding their heads down as the rain fell. The women draped heavy woolen plaid shawls around their shoulders or over their heads, the men wore caps, and all of them clomped along in heavy worn-out shoes.

  Ahead to the right, Hannah spied a massive stone church with a huge square tower, and facing it, McNaughtan’s Royal Hotel. Most impressive of all was the Town House, a huge building with a spire and classical columns. Hannah almost missed it, having mistaken it for a church. Seven arches opened into a covered walkway, where two elegantly-dressed gentlemen in tall hats quietly discussed business, standing close together so nobody could hear what they were saying. Poor men loitered under the archways, and three bare-footed boys kicked around a large pebble. They almost knocked down a gentleman: When he yelled at them, they swore back at him.

  Hannah’s hope that she might be headed to the fancy part of town evaporated when she spotted the street called The Vault. Reluctantly, she entered the narrow dark alleyway. All sorts of revolting filth was strewn across it. A dead cat lay on the cobbles, and Hannah hurried past it. She emerged into a
small courtyard, in which lay an evil-smelling heap that looked and smelled like dung and rotting meat. Holding her hand to her nose to try to shut out the disgusting stink, she bolted through another archway into a short tunnel. As she emerged, a sign on the wall announced that she had arrived in Castle Lane.

  Castle Lane wasn’t actually a lane, but a triangular courtyard. The ramshackle tall buildings that surrounded it on three sides met each other at crazy angles. Strings of drying laundry hung haphazardly on washing lines that ran from windows. Window panes were thickly begrimed with soot. Stone, smoke, chimneys, filthy windows, and hideous smells: This was Hannah’s first impression of Dundee in 1851.

  Bells tolled, and Hannah guessed that they came from the large church nearby. But then several men and women in millworkers’ costume dashed past her, and she realized that it was a factory bell she had heard chiming, just like the one in New Lanark. When a bunch of young women came running from a doorway that sat between a liquor store and a pub, Hannah took off after them, yelling, “Hey, I have a question!”

  One woman turned her head only long enough to yell back, “Eh, well, come on and ask me, but I canna be late for my work!”

  Hannah ran alongside her. “I’m looking for an old woman called Jessie… She works at a mill, or something?”

  “Is that right?” puffed the young woman. “Maybe it’ll be Jessie Gordon you’re wanting. That’s my mother. Go in the door you saw me come out, and up tae the third landing.”

  Hannah stopped, winded, as the woman disappeared around the corner. Gordon? That name sounded familiar.

  Entering the dark tenement stairwell, Hannah was followed by a woman smoking a short white clay tobacco pipe, and carrying on her back an enormous basket filled to the brim with fresh fish. Hannah and the fisherwoman exchanged no words, but their footsteps echoed as they walked up the stone steps. On the third floor, Hannah knocked on a door, hoping it was the right one. Almost immediately, it flung open, letting a blast of light into the gloom of the landing.

  A short stout woman with graying brown hair knotted into a bun filled the doorway, her arms akimbo. To Hannah’s alarm, she started yelling. “Did I not tell you I don’t want your rotten stinking fish again….” Then she stopped short, looked Hannah up and down, and said, “You’re not the fishwife.” She looked past Hannah to the terrified fisherwoman, who was already rapidly disappearing down the stairs, and shook her fist. “Aye, be gone with you, and dinna darken my door again or I’ll give you a right kick up the erse!” She returned her attention to Hannah, and barked, “Anyways, who are you?”

  Hannah shrank away from her, and hoped desperately that she’d knocked on the wrong door. She began to gabble. “Mrs. Gordon? I’m Hannah… er … Dow? Your sister, Abby Nicolson, she is your sister, yeah? She told me to come ask you for help finding a job and maybe I could stay with you, but if that’s not cool with you, hey…”

  Suddenly, the woman gave a brilliant smile, and reached out a hand to beckon Hannah inside. “Och, why did you not say? I’m old Jessie, indeed. Come away in the house, Hannah, and have a seat before the fire.”

  The “house” turned out to be two tiny rooms, the first of which was like Mrs. Nicolson’s, only smaller. It had a single curtained-off bed and a tiny fireplace, in which a pot and a kettle sat on either side of the coals. Glimpsing the second room, Hannah spotted two more beds, lying side-by-side. The low ceiling was stained with smoke and cracked in places, exposing wooden ribs through the plaster. The apartment smelled strongly of too many people packed in too small a space, as well as coal smoke and reeking tallow candles. Hannah caught a whiff of the suffocating stench of raw sewage blended with cold damp mist that wafted in from the courtyard through the broken window panes that were stuffed with rags in a losing effort to keep out the cold. The windows that were not broken were filthy. Damp and mold were flaking dark red paint off the walls. The only covering on the stone floors was a thin old rug in front of the fireplace.

  It was all Hannah could do not to flee in disgust. Instead, she sat down across from Jessie, and tried to pull her chair as close as she could to the tiny guttering fire.

  “So how come you live here instead of with your sister?” Hannah asked, amazed that anyone would choose Dundee over New Lanark.

  Jessie sighed. “Aye, well…My man, Bobby, he’s been dead and buried these past three years. It were him that brought me to Dundee. Oh, I was greeting and wailing for days after I saw this place, it was that grim. But it’s getting better, bit by bit. My man was an overseer in the weaving shed at Suttie’s… That’s Sutherland’s Mill… and he saw to it that all the girls got jobs in the factory. So we get by. I’ve five daughters and a grandson to cook and wash for, mind. But Mina’s getting married soon, and I’ve no doubt I’ll have Mary, Mem, and Betty off my hands by and by, so I dinna mind taking you in as a lodger. It will be a bit tight until Mina goes, but, ach, we’ll manage.”

  Hannah looked around. “So where’s your grandson? Does he work in the mill, too?”

  “Ach, no, John’s but seven years old. And how would I ken where he is? He’s only home for dinner and tea, and between times, he’s roaming the streets. You know how laddies are.”

  Hannah did not know how “laddies” were. In her experience, “laddies” stayed home, watched TV, played computer games, went to school, and belonged to soccer teams. They lived under the stern gaze of grown-ups, or parked in front of a screen. They did not wander the streets at all. Looking around the room, Hannah wasn’t so surprised that John was expected to make himself scarce. How did all these people fit in here?

  “Can your girls find work for me?” Hannah asked abruptly.

  Jessie narrowed her eyes thoughtfully. “You’re a cotton spinner, are you?”

  “No, well, not yet… I’m a piecer.”

  “Aye,” said Jessie. “But you’re a cotton worker all the same. You’ll have to learn the jute to work in Suttie’s Mill. Jute is what sacks are made with. It’s brown and coarse, not like cotton at all. Dinna mind, they’ll soon learn you. You’ll make three shillings a week, and I’ll need two shillings an’ sixpence for your room and board.”

  Hannah resentfully agreed to the arrangement. What else could she do?

  Sharing a bed with three of Jessie’s teenage daughters was hardly comfortable: Hannah was kicked awake several times, and she fell out of bed twice. Still, it was better than sleeping under a hedge, and her bedmates kept her warm. She was embarrassed about smelling bad from her journey, but everyone else smelled like they could have used a bath, too. The tin tub that hung outside the building was borrowed by a different family every night, and judging from the smell in the bedroom, it had been a few days since the Gordons had had their turn.

  There was another reason for the stinkiness that night: The chamberpot was full, almost to the brim. Hannah shook Mem awake to ask her what to do about it. Mem mumbled, “Och, just chuck it oot the window.” Hannah pulled a face as she picked up the pot, quickly pushed open the window, and flung the chamberpot’s contents into the night. Almost immediately, shouting and cursing wafted up from the courtyard. She peered nervously through the window: She had splashed two drunken women and a man who were staggering home from the pub. Before they could spot her, she ducked back inside.

  Early the next morning, after a breakfast of thick oatmeal, Hannah and the Gordon girls hurried with the crowds of workers headed for the jute mills through Dundee’s dingy, narrow, and smelly streets and alleys. Hannah shivered in the thick cold mist, and tried not to slip: A few streets were cobblestoned, but most were muddy tracks, and she quickly learned that it was impossible to avoid stepping in filth.

  Jessie’s eldest daughter Mina, a young woman in her mid-twenties who was as short and plump as her mother, took Hannah to apply for work. In the office of Sutherland’s Mill, two clerks stood at their tall desks, scribbling with ink pens. Mina loudly cleared her throat. One of the men stopped writing, and, after a deliberate pause, looked up sourly. “
Yes?”

  “This here’s my cousin and she needs a job,” Mina said, jerking her head at Hannah.

  “Indeed,” said the clerk skeptically. “And what can she do?”

  “She’s a piecer, and a good one,” Mina said emphatically. Hannah, standing next to her, tried not to giggle at Mina’s brazen fibs.

  The man looked at Mina’s determined broad face, and decided that it was easier not to argue with her. “Very well, but she’ll work here on probation, mind. Name?”

  Hannah was coached by Maggie O’Leary, a skinny little Irish girl of her own age, and it didn’t take her long to learn to piece the jute as the machine spun it into rough string. But jute made her hands more sore and itchy than ever.

  Mr. Mitchell, the spinning room gaffer, was a short burly man who looked like a pug dog, and who sweated profusely in the heat of the mill. He constantly flitted among the machines yelling at workers, and stopping occasionally to cuff someone about the head, especially the children who worked as scavengers. Maggie told Hannah that his nickname was Tom the Devil, or, as she pronounced it, Tam the Deil.

  “He’s a menace,” Maggie yelled to Hannah over the noise, as she helped Hannah fix a handful of threads. “He has all the girls greeting, and some of the boys, too. He’s always giving someone a swearing or a skelping, and they say he broke a girl’s arm last year. Don’t give him reason to look at you.” Suddenly, her eyes widened, and she whispered “Oh, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” before putting her head down and busying herself with the piecing. When Hannah looked up, Mr. Mitchell was standing uncomfortably close to her. Worse, he was smiling at her. It was very creepy.

  He said to Hannah, “You’re new.”

  Afraid to say the wrong thing, she nodded.

  Suddenly, his smile turned into a scowl, and he wagged a finger in her face. “Aye, well, I just saw you talking. The rule is silence. You just watch your lip, lassie, or I’ll be after you.”