Tom Appleby Convict Boy Page 3

  Tom had some knowledge of chimney sweeping from home. They’d had their chimney swept a time or two that he remembered. The smallest of the boys was always sent up the kitchen chimney, which was usually the narrowest in the house, with fat and grease mixed with its soot. Tom had never paid much attention, never thought what it must be like for the boys, there in the heat and darkness of the chimney.

  Now, it seemed, he was about to find out.

  Master Jack gave another too-friendly grin to the cook. ‘Any chance of a pint o’ porter, missus? Me throat’s that parched.’

  ‘No,’ said the cook.

  Jack shrugged, as though he hadn’t really expected it, and spread his sacks to catch the soot that Will scraped down. They made their way to the parlour. The room was dark except for the candle the cook carried. The sparse light gleamed on brocade and polished furniture.

  Big Bill was moaning, an almost unconscious moan as though his body dreaded what was to come. Master Jack pinched his ear, hard. ‘You stoppen that!’ he hissed.

  Big Bill paid no attention, his eyes fixed on the wide parlour fireplace. But he stopped moaning. Master Jack handed him the chimney brush as Bill fitted his lanky shape into the hearth and began to edge upwards. Again the boys waited while Jack fixed the bags for the soot, then the cook led the way out of the parlour and up the stairs.

  This room was a bedroom. The fireplace was wide but the room was cold.

  ‘Now ye turn,’ said Master Jack to Tom. ‘An easy one fer yer first go. Let’s see what thou can do.’ He shrugged a shoulder at Jem. ‘’E’ll show yer the first time. After that it’s up to you.’

  Tom closed his eyes for a second, frantically weighing his choices. If he dodged out the door he could run so far that Jack couldn’t find him, find a printer perhaps who’d apprentice him to the trade in spite of his lack of years. Even now he had no thought of begging for help. He’d learnt already that most were too concerned with their own lives to help another.

  Jack seemed to guess what he was thinking. ‘Try to run and I’ll strip the hide off yer back,’ he said to Tom, then added to Jem, ‘Take yer shirt off.’

  Jem obeyed wordlessly, his eyes on Tom.

  Tom gazed at Jem’s back. It was a mess of red and pink and raised white scars.

  ‘That’s what ’appens to boys that don’t obey their masters,’ said Jack with satisfaction. ‘And then the Black Man gets ’em too.’ He grinned at Tom’s look of bewilderment. ‘Ye don’t know the Black Man? Lives in chimleys, ’e does, and ’e sucks the blood out of bad boys and spits their bones all down the chimley. Now, up with youse.’

  Jem went first, wedging his way up with the ease of long practice. Tom followed more slowly.

  The first minute was the worst, trying to find a way to balance with his back against one wall and his feet against the other. Then suddenly the pattern fell into place. It was like walking, Tom decided, but sideways.

  One step, two steps, inch your body up. Another step, and another, and move your back again. The sharp edges of the soot and brick and the thin, ragged ledges of mortar bit into his skin. His feet yelled with pain.

  The chimney brush was pushed up after him. ‘Ye’ll need to pull that after ye,’ said Jack. ‘Or ye’ll have to do it all again.’

  Up, up, up…the soot fell as Jem dislodged it above him. Tom closed his eyes. There was no need to keep them open: there was no light with which to see.

  Up, up…up…Suddenly one of his feet inched into nothingness. Tom almost fell, but caught himself in time.

  ‘Should’ve warned ye,’ said Jem. It was the first time Tom had heard him speak since they’d entered the chimney. His voice echoed strangely in the darkness of the chimney. ‘It branches ’ere.’

  ‘Branches?’

  ‘Two chimneys meet. Twist around a way. That’s it. Ye needs take care when they branch. Sweeps ’ave been lost afore this.’

  ‘Lost?’ asked Tom.

  ‘Wander the chimneys forevermore,’ said Jem gleefully. ‘Till the rats eat ’em. Then their ghosts wander instead. Hear ’em howling, sometimes, the ghosts.’

  Tom gulped. ‘Will we meet rats?’

  ‘Here? Nah. Only old chimleys where ye meet rats. Big as a dog sometimes, they are. Meet rats like that and ye’ll never see the light again.’

  ‘What about the Black Man?’

  ‘Never seen ’im. Not yet anyways.’ Jem’s rush of information stopped as suddenly as it had begun. Again the boys moved upwards, stopping to use their scrapers on the ledges or where the soot had baked too hard for the brushes to shift.

  How far had they gone? Tom wondered desperately. Surely they were near the top now? He couldn’t breathe, his legs were agony, his back felt like another step would break it.

  And suddenly, out of nowhere, a blackness descended over his soul, and he hated Pa with all his heart—Pa who had printed the pamphlet that had led to his death, Pa who had left him all alone, left him to the chimneys and the bitter taste of soot…

  Then all at once there was light above, the red gleam of a star, and not the solid blackness of Jem’s body. Tom could smell the air now, the stale smoke-laden air of London that smelt fresh after the bitter fug inside the chimney.

  A dirty hand reached down and helped him out. ‘Ye did well enough for the first,’ said Jem grudgingly. ‘All the way up too and no screaming. Sometimes the master ’as to light a fire under the new ones to get ’em to go up. That’s what ’e did with Dick. Lit a fire till ’is heels blistered. Dick moved up all right then.’

  Tom stared around. They were on the slope of a roof, wedged between the tiles and the chimney. The stars looked cold and clean above them. Below, rooftops gleamed, with here and there the yellow glow of a window lit by candles or a lamp. ‘Which one is Dick?’ asked Tom.

  ‘Nah, Dick’s dead. Got stuck up a chimley, ’e did. Couldn’t get ‘im out. Some fool lit a fire to try to smoke ’im out afore Master could get the ropes to pull ’im, an’ he died of the smoke. That’s why the master went to fetch you when ’e sold the soot, to take Dick’s place.’

  ‘Where does he sell the soot?’

  ‘To farmers.’1 Jem spat on his hands as though to clean them. ‘Come on. We’d better get on down or Master’ll ’ave our hides.’

  The next chimney Tom did on his own, dragging the giant brush behind him, or pushing it in front of him when the way was too blocked for his body to push past, hearing the soot fall with soft thuds into the bags below. He was almost beyond pain and fear—or tiredness or hunger—now. There was just the dim consciousness that he was still alive, that his body could still put one foot after another, drag his back up another inch at a time.

  The cook was waiting for them in the kitchen. She thrust a mug of porter at Master Jack, then handed each of the boys a bun.

  ‘Eat it quick,’ muttered Jem. ‘The master don’t like to see us eat. If’n we grow too big we don’t fit in the chimleys.’

  It hurt his lips to eat, but Tom ate it anyway. Everything hurt, but that dim voice inside that said he lived also told him to eat.

  There was cheese inside the bun, and apple, and the top was sticky with something sweet. But Tom’s body was only aware that it was food.

  Going home was worse. They had to carry the sacks of soot, Little Will with one and the others each with two, weighing them down till they were bent almost double, and Tom thought again of Pa’s body contorted in the stocks.

  Master Jack’s face was whiter than ever and his swigs at the bottle more frequent. Finally they slipped the bags from their backs at the bottom of the cellar stairs.

  ‘That’s the lot, then,’ said Master Jack in relief.

  Tom wondered if he would call them up the stairs for supper, or breakfast, or whatever meal was due now. But he simply staggered up the stairs. Tom heard the bolt shoved roughly in the door.

  ‘Over ’ere,’ said someone. Tom tried to place the voice. It was Jem.

  Tom staggered over to the others on the m
ound of sacks and sank down. Until that day he had never slept with others before, but he knew that without their body warmth within minutes his body would be too chilled to sleep. There were fewer sacks now, too. Master Jack must have sold his load of soot the day he’d bought Tom at the workhouse and come home with his bags empty.

  Now some of them were full of soot again. Tom guessed that as the week went by there’d be even fewer sacks to lie on.

  Something scuttled so close to him he felt the air move against his skin. ‘What was that?’ he cried.

  ‘Just a rat.’ It was Jem’s voice, already half asleep. ‘Don’t give it no mind. We’re bigger’n it is. Might give ye a nip if ye roll off by yerself, but.’

  Tom shrank back into the huddle of the others. I’m a rat now, he thought. Living in cellars and chimneys, eating scraps and frightened of anyone who’s bigger than me—like Master Jack. But I won’t be frightened. I refuse. If I hadn’t been frightened Pa might still be alive. There might be a way out of this, too.

  He tried to imagine the courage cloak again, all red and warm about him. It helped a bit, though not much. Finally Tom slept.

  chapter eight

  London, 1785

  The days passed, unseen by the boys in the cellar. They were creatures of the night, locked in till dusk in case the light spoilt their night vision, starved to keep them small, worked throughout the night, then brought back to sleep among the soot, their nights broken by Bill’s coughs or moans.

  Tom learnt to scrape off the oil crust that stuck to the chimneys’ edges, as well as brush the soot away. He learnt how to mortar crumbling chimneys, how to leap down from chimney tops onto sloping roofs without falling to his death. He learnt how to shove his brush at the rats, or lash out with his fist. The rats’ eyes gleamed, their teeth were sharp, but if you refused to be frightened they ran away.

  Once Master Jack set him to putting out a chimney fire that had burnt for two days, creeping up the baking walls with rags wrapped round his face and feet and hands, and a ragged hat upon his head, poking at the burning soot with his brush till it fell in smouldering embers all about him, down into the fireplace below.

  The burning soot left sores on his face and arms, but the cook was pleased and gave him a whole plum pudding. Master Jack took most of it, but Tom still got a hefty slice and the others got crumbs of it too.

  Then one morning Master Jack kept Big Bill back when the others crept down the cellar stairs to sleep. When Tom woke the boy was gone.

  ‘Where is he?’ Tom hissed to Jem as they trod up the cellar stairs.

  Jem shrugged. ‘Worked ’is seven year, ’e ’as,’ he muttered. ‘Master got rid of ’im. ’Im and ’is cough and ’is moaning. Getting too big for the chimleys Bill was, anyways.’

  ‘But where has he gone?’

  ‘Workhouse, mebbe.’ Jem spoke as though it was no concern of his where the boy he’d shared his life with had gone.

  That night it was a larger house—two fireplaces in the kitchen alone. Master Jack sent Will to the kitchens, as usual, and Jem and Tom to the chimneys on the floors above.

  It was the most complex set of chimneys Tom had encountered yet. His chimney took the smoke from two fireplaces on the first floor and then another four on the floor above, and two above that as well.

  Tom found it hard to keep the way straight in his mind, up there in the soot and darkness, the eight chimney tunnels leading into each other. Twice he lost the way and tried to climb where there was no way out. It was difficult to tell which way truly led out when the chimneys were so clogged up with soot, and he felt the panic of every chimney sweep deep in his mind, that somehow he would wander there in the sharp-edged darkness forever, till the last glimmer of his life dissolved.

  But finally there was fresh air above him. Tom jumped down from the chimney, hoping as he did each time that he wouldn’t slip on the mossy tiles and crash to his death, then he made his way down the ladder that leant against the roof, his brushes on his shoulder, and crept back into the scullery, trying to practise a smile. If you smiled right at a cook, and muttered ‘Yes’m’ when she told you to mind her clean floors, most times she’d give you a bite to eat. Last week it had even been plum cake, all moist and rich, and the day before a bit of cheese.

  There was no sign of Master Jack or Will in the scullery, or kitchen either. A tired scullery maid nodded her head to the servants’ stairs. ‘They be up there,’ she said with a yawn.

  Tom hesitated. ‘Would you have a crust of bread, miss?’ he asked hopefully. ‘I’m that famished.’

  The housemaid stared. ‘Cook said I was to see ye didn’t filch nothing.’

  ‘Maybe she didn’t mean food,’ pleaded Tom.

  The girl looked at him a moment more. ‘I’ve a brother ye age,’ she said suddenly. ‘Haven’t seen ’im since last year. He’s not going to be a sweep though. Got a job with the farmer, ’e has, like our dad. Here.’ She moved to the meat safe in the middle of the room and took out a dish of mutton, the cold meat congealing in its fat. She put a fresh loaf and a dish of butter next to it. ‘I’ll keep an eye out for cook ’n’ your master,’ she whispered. ‘Eat it quickly while ye can.’

  Tom stared at the meat. It was the first he’d seen in over a month. He grasped the bone and began to tear off the meat with his teeth, ignoring the pain from the soot sores on his lips and tongue.

  ‘Not like that!’ hissed the girl. ‘Oh, well, never mind, I’ll say the cat got at it! Here.’ She cut him a slab of bread and piled on the butter.

  Tom ate till he could eat no more. The girl looked at him sympathetically. ‘Thought you looked half-starved,’ she began, when a bellow at the door interrupted them.

  ‘Tom! Where is that boy? Tom!’

  Tom ran for the door and up the servants’ stairs. Master Jack gave him a careless cuff about the ear.

  ‘That Jem’s got hisself stuck,’ he said shortly. ‘’Alf the world can hear ’im screaming.’

  Tom listened. Now he could hear Jem too, a muffled scream far above them deep inside the chimney. ‘Why can’t he get out?’ he asked.

  Master Jack shrugged. ‘Got hisself wedged in a corner, see, where one chimley meets another.’

  Tom nodded. Bends were the most difficult of all, especially as you grew taller. You could get your head through and bend your body around the curve. But legs didn’t bend except in one direction, and once you were stuck you could go neither forward nor back.

  ‘Up ye go after ’im,’ said Master Jack. ‘See if ye can pull ’im down.’

  Tom wedged himself into the chimney and edged himself upwards. It was easy going now that Jem had swept the way clear before him. Up, up…suddenly the chimney branched and twisted where another joined it. And Tom felt Jem’s feet touch his head in the darkness.

  ‘Jem?’

  ‘Who else did ye think it’d be?’ Jem’s voice was high and shrill. He sounded younger.

  ‘I’m going to pull your legs downwards.’

  No answer. Tom took the silence for a yes. He grasped one of the calloused feet and pulled.

  Jem screamed as his body was pulled against the ledge of the chimney. But he still stayed stuck.

  Tom pulled again, managing to grasp both feet this time.

  Still no movement.

  ‘Tom?’

  ‘What?’

  Jem’s voice was pleading. ‘Don’t let ’em break me back. Please don’t let ’em break me back.’

  ‘I won’t,’ promised Tom, though both boys knew that it would be Master Jack who decided. He pulled again. Nothing happened except the quick-drawn scream of pain.

  ‘It’s no use!’ Master Jack’s voice boomed up the chimney. ‘Come on down, lad. We’ll try a rope on ‘im next.’

  Tom slithered down. Master Jack was already gathering the ropes. Little Will watched him expressionlessly.

  ‘’Ere.’ Master Jack passed Tom the rope. ‘Tie that round ’is feet and come back down. We’ll pull together.’


  ‘Won’t it hurt him?’ ventured Tom.

  Master Jack grunted. ‘Mebbe. Mebbe not.’

  Tom stared at him. The food helped him think more clearly. That must be what Jem had meant, up there in the chimney. If they pulled his legs with too much force and he was hopelessly jammed, his back might break. He’d die, or at best be crippled; a life of begging if he was lucky, a slow death if he wasn’t.

  Master Jack muttered under his breath as he untangled the ropes. ‘No pain in heaven. Boy’d be lucky to end it like this. To think of it, no pain.’ His face was even whiter today, and sometimes he gave a moan like Bill’s.

  Tom tried to think. Chimney sweeps were cheap—Master Jack could buy another for what the customer would give him for this one chimney. But the customer would give Jack nothing if the chimney was blocked by the body of a dead or dying chimney sweep.

  That’s all Jem would be, Tom thought bitterly. A blockage in the chimney, so the smoke couldn’t escape.

  ‘Please,’ he said quickly. ‘Can I try something else?’

  Jack stared. ‘What?’

  ‘If I climbed onto the roof and down the chimney I might be able to scrape some of the soot off the ledge where Jem is caught. That might make the hole bigger and he could get out.’

  Master Jack considered. ‘Worth a try,’ he said grudgingly, obviously comparing the time wasted trying to get Jem out with the time he’d have to take buying another boy. He made a decision. ‘Look lively then,’ he ordered. ‘And thee,’ he said to Will, who was staring vacantly about him as though this was no concern of his. ‘Stop staring like a lovesick pigeon and start sweeping up the mess ’ere.’

  Tom ran, the soot scraper in his hand. Down the stairs again, out to the yard, up the ladder. For a moment he hesitated, wondering which was the right chimney. Finally he edged over to the nearest, hauled up the ladder so he could climb it, and called down. ‘Jem! Can you hear me?’