The brawny men hurled their combined weight against the door, which burst inward in a shower of splinters. The lead constable immediately swore, coughing and retching violently as the stench from within the room was released.
‘Jesus bleedin’ Christ!’ he cursed as he lit his small lantern. ‘Escombe, take this lamp and poke around in there. There’s a croaker in the room for sure.’
‘Oh blimey, me poor Judy!’ the prostitute wailed.
Escombe pulled out a handkerchief, covering his nose and mouth before gingerly entering the dwelling, brandishing the glowing lantern like a sword against the darkness before him. The room was a mess of ragged clothes, broken crockery and scattered items of half-eaten food, and in the corner sat a chamber pot overflowing with human waste.
‘My God,’ he muttered under his breath, trying to hold back the bitter bile that was creeping up the back of his throat.
It didn’t take long to figure out where the awful stench was coming from: there, half-naked and sprawled across the bed, was the decaying corpse of Judy. Her cold skin was a blueish-grey tone, a sure sign that she had fallen victim to cholera.
‘That’s that then,’ Escombe sighed, his shoulders slumping, ‘this ‘ere dirty puzzle won’t be servicing no more blokes from the look of ‘er. Another victim of the epidemic. We’d best get the coroner over ‘ere.’ As he was about to turn and leave the room, however, something stirred under the bedclothes, causing him to spring back with sudden fright. ‘Bloody ‘ell!’ he roared. ‘There’s a, a, cat or some’fing in ‘ere! It just bloody moved, gave me the fright of me bleedin’ life, it did!’
‘Just give it a sound clobberin’ wiff the ol’ billy then, put the poor ‘fing ou’ of its misery.’
‘Aye, I’ll do that,’ Escombe growled, raising his truncheon above his head, ready to strike as he pulled back the stained bed covers with cautious fingers.
‘Crikey!’ he exclaimed, dropping his truncheon. ‘It’s no bleedin’ cat, it’s a little lad!’
‘Step back Escombe!’ the other constable yelled. ‘He might be infected!’
Big grey eyes, set beneath attractively angular eyebrows, shone out from under a greasy, tangled mop of blonde hair, the bright orbs regarding the officer with an unsettling mix of terror and curiosity. The boy was thin almost to the point of malnourishment, and seemed small for his age. His face would have been cute if it had not been so wan, and his cheeks not been so sunken. Although the child remained motionless as he clung to his mother’s lifeless arm, it was clear that, as weak as he was, the light of life burned with resilient strength in his eyes.
‘I ‘fink he’d be dead by now if he were infected,’ Escombe muttered. ‘He looks right as rain, though, he does.’ Escombe’s eyes softened at the sight of the tiny child, and he offered him a hand. ‘Come ‘ere lad,’ he said gently. ‘We’re not going to ‘urt you. Are you feelin’ poorly?’
The boy shook his head.
‘Just very ‘ungry an’ thirsty, sir,’ he answered in a croaky, barely audible voice. ‘And I’m very sad that me mum doesn’t want to wake up.’
Escombe shook his head sadly.
‘I’m sorry lad, but your mum, well, she’s not going to wake up. You’ll ‘ave to come with us to the parish ‘ouse, see? Some good folk will look after you there. What’s your name then, and ‘ow old are you?’
‘My name’s William Gisborne, sir. I just turned four years old, I did.’
***
March 1839
‘Get your lazy arses out of bed, you filthy little scoundrels!’ the raspy voice boomed, reverberating its wrath against the damp stone walls of the pitch-black cellar. ‘I don’t employ you whoresons to be layin’ about in ‘ere, gobblin’ up my food an’ pissin’ in my pans! Now ‘urry up an’ get your worthless arses movin’!’
‘All right, all right,’ grumbled Michael, who at the age of eight was the oldest of the chimney sweeps. Not only was he older than the others, he was also of a more robust build and taller stature than the rest of them, his size artificially broadening the gulf of years that separated him from the other boys. He scratched vigorously at his nit-riddled scalp through his shock of bright red hair, and then rubbed at his small, green eyes before muttering a complaint. ‘It’s only bleedin’ four in the morning, it is.’
‘Who was that?!’ the voice bellowed, raised now by an octave or two and smouldering with volatile rage. ‘Which one of you lil’ gutter rats dared talk back to me?! I’ll bleedin’ skin you alive, I will! Now ‘urry up an’ get moving! Wake up now, bloody well wake up I say!’ shouted Mr Goode, a chubby, boxy-figured man, in whose thick-jowled face bulgy green eyes gleamed malevolently, set in fleshy lids beneath caterpillar brows. Above these sat a tangle of greasy, thinning auburn hair, the bald spot in the middle of which was routinely concealed with a tatty bowler hat. He shuffled around the room, grunting with pain from his gouty foot, kicking the little forms in their blackened soot sacks to rouse them from their slumber.
‘Up, up, all of you filthy rats! Up, move! Get on with it!’
William was still adrift in the liminal zone between dreams and consciousness when a punt from Mr Goode’s steel-capped boot caught him in the ribs. The sharp, jarring pain quickly ripped him from the warm cotton of the semi-dream, dumping him into the damp frigidity of reality. He coughed weakly and wiggled himself out of the coal sack that served as his bed.
He had put on some weight over the last two years, but was still thin and shorter than his peers. His face, however, was no longer as haggard as it had once been, and now he sported a set of chubby, peachy cheeks, and he would have been a
