A Very Singular Guild

by Catherine Jinks

  ‘Ah! Here’s Mrs Spraggs,’ the warder suddenly observed. He stepped out of his office to greet a tall woman in a grey gown, whose brown hair was parted in the middle and drawn back severely under a starched white cap. She had a long face, a square jaw, and small, dark, chilly eyes that seemed to weigh up everything they focused on. A set of keys jingled at her waist.

  As the warder introduced her to Alfred and Mr Harewood, Ned’s gaze drifted towards the huge courtyard framed in the doorway behind her. This green space was divided by straight gravel paths and dotted with drooping ash trees, so that it looked more like a public garden than a prison exercise yard.

  ‘And who’s this?’ Mrs Scraggs inquired, peering at Ned – who stiffened.

  ‘That’s Ned Roach,’ Alfred told her. ‘He works with me.’

  Mrs Spraggs nodded slowly. ‘You must mind what I tell you, Ned Roach,’ she warned. ‘Don’t stray from the path I set, nor speak to none o’ the prisoners. We follow the silent system, here, and if they talk, they’ll be punished.’

  Ned swallowed, speechless. Alfred growled, ‘He’s a good lad, ma’am, and may be trusted anywhere.’

  ‘I’m sure that Ned may be trusted, Mr Bunce. But our prisoners, on the whole, cannot,’ Mrs Spraggs replied. Her voice was as cold as her eyes. ‘Happily, we’ll be passing through no busy places to reach the laundry, which is well away from our dormitories and workrooms. If you’ll follow me, gentlemen, I’ll take you there.’ Without further ado, she swung around and set off, heading in an easterly direction down the path that ringed the octagonal courtyard.

  Alfred and Mr Harewood exchanged a doubtful glance, as the warder said to them, in a very low voice, ‘She’s a trifle abrupt in her manner, but she knows what she’s about. By gad, she does! You’re in safe hands, gentlemen.’

  ‘I can see that,’ Mr Harewood muttered, with a crooked smile. Alfred simply gave a grunt. Then they both followed the matron past a series of doors and windows, with Ned trailing along behind them.

  He was acutely conscious of being watched. Nearly a dozen buildings ringed the courtyard, many of them multi-storeyed, and he sensed that the worst of the prison was concealed behind their bland, symmetrical facades. He felt as if hundreds of eyes were fixed on his scurrying figure – and was greatly relieved when they finally plunged into one of the more modest, single-storeyed structures.

  ‘Can you tell me about the missing girls, Mrs Spraggs?’ Alfred suddenly asked, his voice echoing off the stuccoed walls of a long passage lined with doors. Some of these doors stood open, revealing rooms stacked from floor to ceiling with box-shaped pigeonholes – each of which contained a bundle of clothes, a pair of shoes, and a bonnet. If the clothes had been identical, Ned would have assumed that they were uniforms. But since they were all very different, he realised that they must be the inmates’ own garments, stored until their owners were released.

  He shivered as Mrs Spraggs answered Alfred’s question.

  ‘Clara Birks was eight years old. She was serving a three-month sentence for stealing a pair of shoes. Mercy Radbourne was a year older, sentenced to twelve months for picking pockets. Georgina Dugby was twelve, but stunted. She was in for six months – theft of four silk handkerchiefs.’ Mrs Spraggs came to an iron gate and unlocked it, talking all the while. ‘Laundry work is popular, so it’s mostly women and older girls in the laundry. But they need young ’uns to fetch and fold – and to crawl into the hot closet.’ After locking the gate behind Ned, she turned to Alfred and said, ‘The boggart’s in the closet flue, Mr Bunce. There’s no doubt o’ that. Each girl went in there to pick up fallen garments, and not one of ’em was ever seen again.’

  Ned didn’t ask what a ‘hot closet’ was – he didn’t want to sound stupid. He just followed the others silently into a large, triangular yard bounded by the prison wall on two sides. Tucked into a corner of this yard was a squat building with two wings. One contained the washroom, Mrs Spraggs said; the other contained the laundry.

  This hardly needed explaining, since the yard was full of sheets flapping on laundry lines. A girl in a blue-and-white spotted dress was hanging out rows of flannel drawers.

  ‘Maud!’ Mrs Spraggs addressed the woman sharply. ‘Come here!’

  Maud spun around and curtseyed. She was about sixteen years old, with a pink nose, flaxen hair and almost invisible eyelashes. As she scuttled over to Mrs Spraggs, the matron said, ‘Maud is a witness. She saw Clara go into the hot closet, and heard her scream. Is there anything you wish to ask her, Mr Bunce?’

  ‘Nay,’ mumbled Alfred, who couldn’t even meet the girl’s eye. Mr Harewood looked just as uncomfortable; his face was red, and he kept adjusting his collar.

  ‘Very well.’ Mrs Spraggs dismissed Maud, then ushered her guests into the laundry. It was large and steam-filled, with wooden troughs ranged around the walls. A giant mangle in the centre of the room was being turned by a woman in a spotted uniform and white calico cap. Other women, identically dressed, were standing on wooden grates, sloshing clothes about in troughs or scrubbing flannels against ridged boards. Scattered around their feet were baskets full of wet towels and dry blankets.

  Ned noticed a large boiler, a stove for sad-irons, and a curious cupboard made up of eight long, thin doors, each bearing a steel handle.

  ‘That is our hot closet,’ Mrs Spraggs announced, striding towards the cupboard without acknowledging the other women in the room. Ned tried to do the same, but it was hard. The women kept stealing glances at him – and at Alfred – and especially at Mr Harewood, who looked very large and handsome in that dingy, bedraggled place, despite his black eye.

  Ned thought he heard a smothered giggle.

  ‘Who was that?’ Mrs Spraggs whirled around, enveloping the room in a ferocious stare.

  ‘I did not give anyone permission to speak!’ A deathly silence fell. The washerwomen scrubbed away furiously, their eyes on their suds. Creak-creak-creak went the mangle.

  After a brief, tense pause, Mrs Spraggs turned back to Alfred. ‘This is the hot closet,’ she said with eerie calm, before seizing a handle and dragging one of the skinny doors out of the wall. As she did so, a cloud of steam engulfed her. But when the steam cleared, Ned saw that the door was connected to a kind of upright frame, or ladder, of which there were eight all told, lined up in a small room like books on a shelf. Each could be pulled out separately, and each was laden with damp petticoats.

  ‘You see how the closet is heated,’ Miss Spraggs continued, pointing to a hot-water pipe that coiled around the walls of the little room. ‘The steam escapes through a flue in the ceiling.’ Her gaze fell on Ned, who was peering into the closet. ‘I wouldn’t get any closer, if I were you,’ she added drily.

  At the same instant, Alfred pulled Ned back out of harm’s way – though not before Ned had caught a glimpse of the gaping void above the row of drying frames.

  ‘If a garment falls to the floor, someone must be sent in to retrieve it,’ said Mrs Spraggs. ‘We thought Georgina must have climbed the horse and escaped up the flue, under cover of all that steam—’

  ‘But she didn’t,’ Alfred finished. He was squinting into the closet. ‘Aye,’ he muttered, ‘this feels like a bogle’s lair to me.’

  It didn’t feel like one to Ned. He hadn’t been overwhelmed by any creeping sense of dread and despair. Then it occurred to him that he’d been so full of dread and despair since arriving at the prison that he wasn’t well placed to judge.

  ‘This ain’t going to be easy, Mr Bunce,’ he murmured.

  ‘I know it,’ Alfred replied, his gaze drifting down to the sopping wet floor.

  Then, without warning, a pair of newcomers appeared on the laundry threshold. One of them was a warder, jingling a set of keys.

  The other was Erasmus Gilfoyle.

  18

  TESTING

  ‘Pardon me, Mrs Spraggs, but this gentleman was inquiring after the other gentlemen. So Mr Crimp told me to bring him in here,’ the warder announ
ced.

  Beside him, Mr Gilfoyle looked like a startled rabbit. Sweaty and breathless, the naturalist kept darting nervous glances at all the silent women labouring away at their troughs. ‘I’m – I’m so sorry to intrude,’ he stammered, ‘but I thought you might need this, Mr Bunce . . .’ And he held up a canvas-wrapped, stick-shaped bundle.

  Before Alfred could answer, Mr Harewood exclaimed, ‘Is that the new spear, Razzy?’

  ‘It is. Yes.’

  ‘Bravo!’ Catching the matron’s eye, Mr Harewood added, ‘Oh – er, this is Mrs Spraggs, the Principal Matron. Mrs Spraggs, this is Mr Gilfoyle.’

  Ned heard a muffled snigger as the matron nodded briskly at Mr Gilfoyle, who bowed back. But if Mrs Spraggs was aware of the snigger, she didn’t show it. Instead she turned to Alfred and said, ‘Do you want this room cleared, Mr Bunce?’

  Alfred nodded.

  ‘I thought so.’ Suddenly the matron raised her formidable voice. ‘All inmates form a line! On the double! Leave everything where it is!’

  Though none of them uttered a word of protest, the prisoners resented having to leave. This much was obvious from their disgruntled expressions. As Ned watched them line up, their arms still red and soapy, he could almost hear what they were thinking. Bloomin’ old haybag. Hatchet-faced cow.

  Even after they’d marched out, escorted by Mrs Spraggs, the steamy air felt thick with suppressed anger.

  ‘Thank heavens,’ Mr Harewood remarked, once the last, shuffling figure had gone. ‘Now we may speak freely.’

  ‘What a dreadful place!’ Mr Gilfoyle was pale with distress. ‘Such very young women! I had no idea—’

  ‘Is that spear blessed and greased, Mr Gilfoyle?’ Alfred interrupted curtly. ‘Can we use it now?’

  ‘I believe so,’ the naturalist replied. He went on to explain that, at Mr Harewood’s request, he had collected the finished spear from a Board of Works stonemason that very morning. He had then delivered the spear to Miss Eames’s house, where Mrs Heppinstall had been entertaining a helpful clergyman. Finally, once the spearhead had been consecrated, Mr Gilfoyle had carried it to his own residence. ‘I mixed a herbal paste last night, after the show,’ he revealed, ‘so it took me no time at all to add the finishing touches.’

  ‘Well done, old boy.’ Mr Harewood was rubbing his hands together. ‘We’ll be able to test it here – eh, Mr Bunce?’

  ‘Aye,’ Alfred rumbled. He took the spear and examined it, while the others clustered around him. Unwrapped, it looked rather disappointing. Its shaft was roughly sanded, its head crudely chiselled. But it was sharp and well-balanced, and covered in a smelly coat of brown grease that had a very toxic appearance.

  ‘Where’s the bogle?’ Mr Gilfoyle murmured. ‘Does anyone know?’

  ‘In there.’ Mr Harewood jerked his chin at the hot closet.

  ‘Dear me,’ said Mr Gilfoyle. ‘How are you going to work inside that?’

  ‘We ain’t.’ Alfred spoke flatly. ‘We cannot use salt in here – it’s too wet. And I’ll not put Ned in that closet. ’Twould be like throwing him into the bogle’s mouth.’

  Everyone considered the cluttered space beneath the flue. Mr Harewood began to nod thoughtfully.

  ‘If we was to take one o’ them blankets,’ Ned finally suggested, thinking aloud, ‘and lay it flat on the floor out here, and trace a circle on it—’

  ‘The damp’s in the air, lad. That salt won’t stay dry for more’n a minute.’ Alfred raised his eyes to the beams overhead. ‘I bin thinking about the roof.’

  ‘The roof?’ Mr Gilfoyle echoed, aghast.

  ‘The pitch is low enough. And there’s chimneys to hide behind.’ Turning to Ned, Alfred said gravely, ‘’Tis a dry day, with no wind to speak of. If there’s steam, it won’t linger. I’m persuaded it’ll be safer on the roof than it is in here.’

  Ned swallowed. He glanced at the ceiling.

  ‘If you baulk, lad, I’ll not hold it against you,’ Alfred went on. ‘But I’ll tie us to the roof with ropes. And if the bogle takes its time, we shan’t wait about. Not this late in the day—’

  ‘All right.’ Ned cut him off. ‘I’ll do it.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ asked Mr Harewood, frowning. ‘It seems rather unwise . . .’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ Ned repeated stubbornly. He had a duty to Alfred, who deserved – and required – a brave apprentice. Besides, he trusted Alfred. If Alfred said that the roof was safe, then it probably was.

  Only after he’d scrambled up onto its slippery slates, and felt an arctic chill on his cheek, did Ned begin to wonder.

  ‘You don’t think it’ll snow, Mr Bunce?’ he quavered, squinting up at the sky.

  ‘If it does, we’ll stop,’ the bogler answered grimly. ‘Hush, now, and stand still. For I must tie this rope around yer middle . . .’

  The roof had a very low pitch, as Alfred had promised. It was also quite close to the ground, and easily reached by the ladder that Mrs Spraggs had provided. The chimneystack was large enough for Alfred to crouch behind, and sturdy enough to tie a rope to. Thanks to the encroaching walls of the prison, there was only one stretch of gutter to fall from. And, as a final touch, Alfred had placed a row of laundry baskets beneath this gutter, to ensure a soft landing if something went wrong.

  But with the grey walls looming over him, and the dark sky pressing down on him, Ned felt a bit queasy. Mebbe it’s the bogle, he thought, as he edged his way along the roof towards Alfred’s ring of salt. The ring had been laid near the washroom chimneystack, instead of the one built above the laundry – and Alfred had also tied Ned’s rope to a washroom chimneypot.

  Not that Ned was expected to jump off the roof. If something went wrong, Alfred wanted Ned to stand and fight.

  ‘I’ll be testing this ’un,’ Alfred had explained, holding up the new spear. ‘If it don’t work, you’ve nowt to fear, lad – for you’ll have Mother May’s blasting rod. You must hold fast and defend yerself, as you did in Water Lane. I know you can do it. I seen you do it. But I’m hoping you’ll not have to.’

  Ned wasn’t so sure. He didn’t entirely trust the new spear. And he didn’t know how well he would use the old one, either, with his chilled fingers and unsteady foothold. As he positioned himself inside the magic circle (which was keeping its shape quite nicely, despite the slant of the roof), he couldn’t help wishing that he was Jem. For someone as spry as Jem, the roof would have presented no problems.

  All Ned could do was take off his shoes and hope.

  Turning his back on Alfred, he clasped Mother May’s spear to his chest and braced himself. Reflected in his mirror was a bank of chimneys. Smoke and steam mingled above the chimneypots, behind which Alfred was hunkered down, spear in hand. Beyond the chimneypots lay the prison wall, which drew Ned’s eye northwards, towards a distant wedge of exercise yard. Trapped by a high wire fence, dozens of hunched figures were circling the flagstones, round and round, with their heads down and their feet dragging. They looked bone-tired, freezing cold, and utterly miserable. Yet Ned would gladly have changed places with any one of them as he cleared his throat, took a deep breath, and launched into a nursery rhyme.

  Simple Simon met a pieman

  Going to the fair.

  Says Simple Simon to the pieman,

  ‘Let me taste yer ware.’

  His voice didn’t seem very loud; it was whisked away by a fitful breeze. Somewhere beneath him, inside the laundry, Mr Harewood and Mr Gilfoyle were anxiously waiting. Mrs Spraggs had retreated back into the depths of the prison. The warder had returned to his post. Apart from the prisoners trudging around the exercise yard, there wasn’t another soul to be seen.

  Ned felt very lonely – and very exposed. His coat wasn’t thick enough to keep him warm. As he chanted away, his breath emerged in filmy white clouds.

  Says the pieman to Simple Simon,

  ‘Show me first yer penny.’

  Says Simple Simon to the pieman,

  ‘Indeed I have not any.’


  All at once Ned spotted a gush of steam issuing from a flue behind him – and knew instantly that the bogle was on its way. Sure enough, instead of dissipating, the steam grew thicker. It seemed to bubble out of the flue and roll across the slates like foam. And it was followed by something that briefly plugged the mouth of the flue; something big but not black.

  To Ned’s amazement, this bogle was the colour of salt, bleached and stringy and hairless. Though it seemed to have no eyes at all, its mouth was as big as a manhole cover – and its long snout twitched like a pig’s as it tested the air. When Ned saw this, he felt grateful that the wind was blowing from the east instead of the west. Otherwise the bogle might have smelled Alfred.

  Simple Simon went a-fishing

  For to catch a whale.

  All the water he had got

  Were in his mother’s pail.

  Ned watched the bogle haul itself out of the flue behind a veil of steam. One arm popped out, then another, then another. They lashed about, as boneless as whips, before attaching themselves to the roof with suckers. Then the bogle slithered down the chimney and began to slide across the slates towards Ned – who suddenly spied Alfred in his mirror. The bogler was edging into view, a dark shape at the very edge of the frame. He braced himself, aimed his spear, and flashed a warning glance at Ned.

  Simple Simon went to look

  If plums grew on a thistle—

  ‘NOW!’ yelled Alfred.

  Ned hurled himself towards the washroom chimney. There was a sharp hiss, like steam from a kettle, but no ‘pop’. No ‘bang’. Ned almost lost his footing, but managed to grab a chimneypot just as Alfred cried, ‘Ned!’

  Looking around, Ned saw that the bogle was still alive. It had rounded on Alfred, its writhing arms raised. Alfred’s spear sprouted grotesquely from its head, which was collapsing like a blister. Grey steam spurted from its wound.

  Ned didn’t stop to think. He moved instead, lunging forward. But the rope tied around his waist wasn’t long enough; it brought him up short. He lost his balance, threw his own spear, and flailed about frantically as he stumbled towards the edge of the roof. Luckily, his spear found its mark.