***
William’s knees and elbows were raw and oozing blood by the time he was twelve feet up the narrow flue, but the injuries, to which he had become well-accustomed, did not cause him nearly as much anxiety as the thought of having the raw wounds scrubbed with brine afterward. The darkness and heat of the chimney, as well as the rough sackcloth climbing cap that was pulled over his face, all contributed to omnipresent feelings of terror, panic and claustrophobia against which he had to struggle with all his might. Doing his best to fight the fear, he wedged his knees in tighter against the jagged, nodular bricks of the flue and scrubbed his soot brush harder above his head, his arms burning from exertion.
It was as he finished this particular section that he heard the cry: a bloodcurdling scream of sheer terror. He recognized the voice immediately: David.
‘Oh blimey,’ he gasped, a sudden wash of icy fright flooding through him. ‘Poor Davy, I ‘ope he’s not stuck!’
Mr Goode’s booming voice echoed up the chimney. ‘Ignore that! You keep working you little rat, or there’ll be some brimstone flame an’ smoke coming up after you! I’ll go see what that rascal David is playing at. You finish your bleedin’ job, William, an’ then you come down an’ wait for me!’
‘Yes sir,’ William shouted into the darkness, the shrillness of his voice in the tiny space buzzing in his ear drums.
William continued scraping and scrubbing with a frantic haste. Chunks of soot fell around him like black hail, and David’s screams and yells did not abate; indeed, they became even more panicked and hysterical, reverberating through the house in a nightmarish racket, broken here and there by the gravelly cursing of Mr Goode. William knew that something was dreadfully wrong, and he redoubled his efforts to finish his job in case he was needed to help free his trapped friend.
After a few more minutes he was done, so he shimmied down the flue with anxious haste, emerging from the opening of the fireplace in a billowing cloud of soot and dust. Pulling off his climbing cap, he was met by Michael, whose usual tone of calm indifference had been raised in pitch to a tremulous note of panic.
‘Will,’ Michael blurted out as he grabbed his friend’s arm, ‘come quickly! Davy’s stuck an’ you’re the only lad small enough to go up after ‘im! Come ‘ere, climb on my back, I’ll piggyback you there. Come on, we ‘ave to hurry!’
The ocean-swaying world began to materialize through the light-blind haze as Michael piggy-backed William through the corridors of the townhouse, passing by sombre portraits and imposing sculptures, the echoes of Michael’s footsteps bouncing off the impossibly high ceilings as they ran.
‘Mikey,’ William gasped, struggling to get his dark-accustomed eyes used to the light, ‘what if, what if I don’t get up there in time?’
‘Just don’t think o’ that, Will, don’t think o’ that, all right? You’re going to pull Davy out, an’ he’ll be just fine, he will,’ Michael panted as he sprinted.
With William clinging desperately to his back, Michael raced up a grandiose flight of stairs, breathing hard, before emerging into a dimly lit corridor with plush carpeting underfoot and grim portraits of past lords and ladies, all long-dead, lining the walls. The screams echoed loudly through this passage and lent an eerie vestige of ghostly life to the glaring, oil-painted eyes that watched the two soot-blackened figures running by.
With every step Michael took along the corridor, the screams were amplified in both volume and intensity. Michael, breathing hard and sweating profusely, entered a cavernous room and skidded to a halt on a polished marble floor, where Mr Goode was pacing back and forth in front of the ornate fireplace, cursing and muttering under his breath. The lady of the house stood by, surrounded by a gaggle of her servants, all wringing their hands and chattering in panicked voices.
Despite the grave severity of the situation, William could not help but be stunned by the lady’s striking beauty. Dressed in a long, flowing gown that shimmered in the light of the dawn sunlight that was streaming through the expansive lead-lined windows, she seemed as ethereal as any fairy tale princess. Her hair was a shining hue of russet, and a golden aura shimmered around it against the backlight of the window. Her alabaster skin was as unblemished as the first snows of winter, and her ocean-green eyes sat nestled beneath delicately plucked brows. Her face was drawn with consternation and distress, and this somehow gave her even more of a sylphlike air.
‘I must be looking at an angel,’ William murmured to himself.
Before he could stare for too long, however, he was jerked out of this momentary trance by a bloodcurdling scream that emanated from the statue-lined fireplace.
‘He’s up there!’ Michael yelled, setting William down in front of the fireplace, his voice cracking with urgency.
‘Bleedin’ right that little devil’s up there!’ Mr Goode bellowed, ‘an’ when he gets down, I’ll give ‘im the clobberin’ of his measly little life, I will!’
A crystalline voice slashed through the combined noise of Mr Goode’s raging and the child’s screaming.
‘Sir, you most certainly will not lay a hand upon that poor boy! Not in this house!’
William turned around, quite unaware that his jaw had dropped in disbelief; it was the lady of the house who was admonishing Mr Goode. Mr Goode scrambled with fumbling awkwardness to put back on his mask of magnanimity.
‘M’ lady, it were only a figure of speech, like, an’ I—’
‘Silence!’ she cried, her strident voice bolstered with authoritative power. ‘I will tell you this but once, sir: If you so much as lay one finger upon a single hair of these poor orphans’ heads, I’ll have you arrested and thrown in a cell for the rest of your years. My husband is a magistrate, and he will not be inclined to show the slightest inkling
