Chapter 14

Lizzie huddled up on the train seat with her head pressed against the cold glass of the window. Last time she’d made this journey, all her friends had been here. Soon they would be waking up, and word would go round about what she had done. Lizzie flinched as she thought how hurt they’d all be, especially Malachy.

They were a gang; they worked together. She knew she should have told them about her plan to save Amelia. But if she had, they’d be here now, heading into all sorts of danger. No. Fitzy’s Circus had suffered enough because of her. She’d make this journey on her own.

The train made its fitful journey out of Edinburgh. Stop followed stop, and more passengers squeezed on board at every station. The carriage windows steamed up and Lizzie had to rub a hole in the mist so she could watch for the mill.

She needn’t have worried about missing it. As the grim shape of the mill came into view, the train slowed down, then came to a screeching halt and a few passengers piled out.

Breathing fresh air again at last, Lizzie went and stood on the footbridge over the tracks and looked out across the town. All around, the cramped cottages and packed boarding houses were emptying people out onto the street. Everyone, it seemed, was heading to work at the same place.

No need to ask anyone the way. Lizzie just climbed back down and followed the flow of people down a cobbled, mud-strewn road. At the end of the road, the mill loomed like a forbidding castle.

A shrill whistle pierced the air – the sound she’d heard in her vision. Lizzie jumped. Everyone else quickened their pace, moving like weary cattle towards the mill gates. That must be the signal for the work day to begin, Lizzie realized.

What to do now? Amelia was inside there, somewhere. She might be inside that tall tower, or under the sloping, colossal vault of the roof. Lizzie rubbed her bleary eyes and tried to think clearly. She had to get inside.

The easiest thing to do was just let herself be borne on the human river, tramping with the rest of the people up the path, through the gates and into the factory. Surely nobody would be surprised at a new mill girl arriving for her first day at work? Lizzie decided she could bluff her way through.

The main doors were already open. The din of working machinery was worse than the sound of the steam trains. Beyond, a tile-floored hallway waited, where people were hanging up coats. Lizzie didn’t have a coat, so she shuffled to one side and waited to see what would happen next.

A friendly-looking girl tapped her on the shoulder. She was about Lizzie’s age, with crow-black hair and sharp bony features, as if she’d missed a few too many meals for her own good.

The girl smiled and shouted above the noise ‘I’m Fiona! First day?’

Lizzie nodded. ‘I’m Liz.’

Fiona cupped her hand to her ear. ‘Eh?’

‘Liz!’ yelled Lizzie.

‘I’m deaf as a post,’ Fiona explained. ‘From the machines. Anyhow, you needn’t fret. I’ve been here ages. I’ll show you where to go.’

She led Lizzie by the hand into the factory itself.

Nothing could have prepared Lizzie for this. It was like a church, but a church built to the Devil instead of to God. Heat blasted you as soon as you walked in, making your eyes feel like dried-out baps. The noise shook you to the very bones, rattling your teeth against your skull, threatening to shake them loose, and the whole place stank of oil, scorched metal and hot wool.

All down the length of the place, to the left and right, gigantic machines stood. Some were like huge engines, with wheels spinning and pistons pumping. Some were frames that clattered and clacked, champing like monstrous jaws, steadily vomiting out cloth. And all were tethered in place by bolts that could have restrained a giant.

The air was filled with dust and fibres. Lizzie took a breath and began to cough. Many of the workers had tied scarves round their mouths, she saw.

‘Which machine are you workin’?’ Fiona shouted.

Lizzie panicked. She had no idea what to say. ‘I don’t know yet!’ she blurted.

‘Don’t worry, pet. We’d best take you to see Dimmock. He’s the boss.’

Dimmock turned out to be a small, balding man with a jutting lower jaw, which gave him a surly look, and little piggy eyes behind round glasses. He looked Lizzie up and down and pinched the flesh of her arm as if she were a heifer he was buying at the market.

‘Show us your fingers,’ he demanded.

Lizzie did.

‘Look nimble enough. Set her up on the spinning mule,’ he told Fiona. ‘She’ll do for a piecer.’

‘Can I have a word with Mister MacDonald first?’ Lizzie said quickly.

‘You? Speak to him?’ Dimmock laughed in her face. ‘Plannin’ to ask for a raise, were ye? Get to work!’

‘But I—’

‘Waste one more second of my time, girl, and I’ll whip you to the bone.’

Fiona dragged her away. ‘He means it,’ she warned. ‘He’s whipped girls and boys till the flesh came away. Come on, let me show you what you’ve got to do.’

Lizzie was led to a spinning mule, a machine that spun fibres into yarn. One half of it rolled continually away from the other half on metal wheels and then back again, stretching dozens and dozens of fine threads between the two sides. Little children scurried back and forth under the machine, grabbing up fistfuls of fibres that had fallen out, then scrabbling back just in time. The wheels rolling back and forth seemed about to crush them at any second.

Lizzie stared dumbstruck at the thing.

‘Watch it like a hawk,’ Fiona said, ‘and mend any broken threads you see. You’ve got to be quick. If you’re slower than a count of ten, the spindle can jam and you’ll hold the whole work up.’

‘Mend them how? Tie them in a knot?’

‘Heavens, no! Rub the fibres together. Like this.’

Quick as a pickpocket, Fiona snatched up two broken halves of a thread. A quick rub between finger and thumb, and the thread was whole again. It had taken all of three seconds.

‘Fast in, fast out, see? But mind your hair and your fingers! Those spindles will wind whatever gets caught in ’em and they won’t stop for all your screaming.’

Lizzie stared. ‘You’re kidding me.’

Fiona shook her head. ‘Just last week a girl got a patch of her scalp torn away. Big as your palm, it was. She’ll no’ forget to tie her hair back again, what’s left of it.’

‘Does that happen a lot?’

‘Och, no. Most people only lose fingers.’

Lizzie shuddered and set to work.

Clackety-clack, clackety-clack, sang the machines. Minute after minute, hour after hour, nothing happened to relieve the boredom. Lizzie stood braced to snatch up any broken threads and mend them. The first time she’d managed it, it had been a thrill. After the twentieth time, she was aching and bored, but she didn’t dare take her eyes off the machine.

Her nose and throat burned from the dust and fibres. How could the workers stand it? Obviously they had no choice. The pittance they were paid was better than the workhouse.

The morning seemed to stretch on for ever. Lizzie began to glance away from the spinning mule, hoping to catch sight of Amelia – the threads would just have to take care of themselves.

‘You! Yes, you! Do you call that working?’ Dimmock came striding over and Lizzie hastily went back to work, hoping he wasn’t talking about her.

He wasn’t. A small boy three rows down screamed as Dimmock hoisted him up by the scruff of the neck. The overseer carried him across the factory floor and plunged him into a cistern of ice-cold water. The boy struggled as Dimmock held him under. Just when Lizzie thought the boy would drown, Dimmock let him up, then flung him onto the floor. The boy lay there, gasping, retching up water.

‘That’ll wake you up,’ Dimmock sneered. ‘If I catch you slacking again, it’ll be the whip!’

With the boy’s howls ringing in her ears, Lizzie picked up her pace. She was starving, she realized. She’d run to the train station without eating anything, and after her sleepless night, she felt hungry and dead on her feet. Maybe there would be a break for lunch. The thought excited her. She could sneak away into the building and look for Amelia!

But lunch, when it finally came, was oat cakes and milk on a trolley. Nobody was allowed to leave.

‘You eat standing up at your work,’ Fiona told her. ‘Boss’s orders.’

Lizzie was so hungry she munched the dry oat cakes without a word of complaint. Fiona chatted away in the meantime, asking how she was getting along. ‘You’ll get used to it,’ she assured her. ‘You’re not soft. I can tell.’

‘What happens to the soft ones?’

Fiona shrugged. ‘They toughen up. Or they get kicked out and take to begging.’

‘Have you been working here long?’

‘Since I was eight. I’m thirteen now.’

Trying to sound casual, Lizzie asked, ‘Don’t suppose you’ve seen a little girl? About so high, long blond hair.’

‘I couldn’t say,’ Fiona said, shrugging again. ‘There’s so many wee ’uns at the mill they all blend into one.’

‘Back to work!’ Dimmock was hollering. ‘What you’ve not bit off, you can’t keep! Back to work!’

Even after the oat cakes, Lizzie’s stomach was still grumbling. She tried not to think about what Ma Sullivan would be serving in the tea tent right about now…

* * *

The afternoon passed much as the morning did. A girl on one of the weaving looms had begun to sing a song that went ‘poverty, poverty knock’, fitting the words to the rhythm of her machine. But Dimmock had whipped her in front of everyone, lashing at her arms and back until she was forced to her knees, and there was no more singing after that.

Lizzie felt numb as a wooden toy. The work never changed. Hour followed monotonous hour. She picked up broken threads, rubbed them together, let them go, then did it all over again.

Around three o’clock the light through the tall windows began to fade. ‘Spark the lamps!’ came Dimmock’s shout, and oil lamps were lit all around the factory.

It was growing late, and Lizzie still hadn’t had a chance to look for Amelia. What if the girl was hidden in some other part of the mill? MacDonald could be cutting her throat while Lizzie wasted her time slaving over a spinning mule. She worried so much that she missed a broken thread, and the spindle had to be stopped.

Dimmock bore down on her. ‘Idling, were ye?’

‘I’m sorry, sir!’ she stammered.

‘I’m wanting another scavenger,’ he barked. ‘Down on the floor with you. Get under the machinery with them other kids and gather up all the scraps of wool. Understand?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Lizzie trembled with a mix of excitement – and fear. Scavenging sounded like a dangerous job, but it meant she could finally look around. This was her chance to find Amelia!