Chapter 16

Maisie had changed since Lizzie had seen her last, just a few days before. Her eyes were wild, her hair in disarray. She held onto Amelia like a prize.

Would she really throw Amelia into the machine? Lizzie prayed not – but there was no telling what this woman was capable of.

‘It was you all along,’ Lizzie said. ‘Why? Why would you want to hurt an innocent little girl?’

‘I’ve not hurt her,’ Maisie said. ‘God willing, I won’t have to.’

‘Then why take her?’

‘Because of him!’ Maisie pointed angrily at Alexander MacDonald. He had caught sight of them and was sprinting back down the hall towards them.

‘Stay back!’ ordered Maisie.

‘Best do as she says,’ Lizzie warned.

MacDonald staggered to a halt, only yards away from Maisie. Amelia jerked towards him, but Maisie’s iron fingers gripped her so tightly she moaned with pain.

‘Now you see her, eh, MacDonald?’ Maisie said bitterly. ‘You’ve walked past her a dozen times and never spared her a glance. Just another mill brat like all the others. But now you see she’s your own flesh and blood, suddenly you care!’

MacDonald spoke very slowly and carefully. ‘Maisie, in the name of mercy, let her go. She’s only a child. Please, I beg you!’

‘Mercy!’ Maisie let out a wild laugh. ‘When I came to work in your mill at the age of eight, did you show me mercy then?’ She brandished her mutilated finger. ‘I slaved on your machines, day after dreary day! No mercy, even when the spinning mule tore my finger off!’ She glared at Lizzie. ‘They docked my pay, you know. I bled on the cloth. A whole bolt was ruined.’

‘Maisie,’ Lizzie begged, ‘you can’t make Amelia suffer just because you did.’

‘Did? Did? I’m still here! Oh, I thought I’d left this rotten place behind me, the day I finally scraped together enough money to move on. I found a position I could be proud of. Nursemaid in service to Alexander MacDonald himself! Until he threw me out. You saw. You were there.’

‘There was nowhere else you could go … ?’ Lizzie said. ‘So you came back here.’ She felt genuinely sorry for Maisie, but the woman stared at her with a face full of hate, as if Lizzie’s pity made her sick.

‘Aye, I came back. Where else could I do honest work without a reference? I hoped things might have changed for the better, but of course they hadn’t. His sort only care about money. They don’t give a damn for the people who toil here, no better than slaves! So I had to make him care. I had to make him see!’

Lizzie looked from Maisie to Amelia and back. ‘So that’s why you took Amelia. To show MacDonald how bad this place really was.’

Maisie gave a triumphant nod. ‘The likes of me don’t matter to him. He’d never improve conditions just for our sake. But if it were someone he loved…’

‘I’m sorry I fired you.’ MacDonald fell to his knees. ‘Let her go, and I’ll give you anything you want.’

‘Ha!’

‘Your old job back. All the money in my safe … even more!’

Maisie laughed. ‘You’re a blind old fool! This isn’t about the money. It’s about change. Nobody should have to work in conditions like these. Especially not little children!’

MacDonald looked around at the silent workers. ‘Very well. I’ll make reforms. I swear it before all of you.’ He held out his hand. ‘You can let her go now.’

A long moment passed and Lizzie held her breath, waiting for Amelia to go running into her uncle’s arms.

But Maisie shook her head sadly and gripped the little girl all the tighter. ‘Ach, you’d swear that black is white if it got you your niece back. I’m no’ stupid, sir. I know I’ll be bundled off to the police the second I let Amelia go.’

Amelia looked at her uncle now, wide-eyed. ‘Don’t be angry with Maisie, Uncle Ally. We were only playing hide and seek. And it was such a good hiding place, wasn’t it? It took you days to find me!’

Maisie pulled Amelia into a firm embrace. ‘That’s right, my elf.’ She kissed the top of the girl’s head. ‘You were very brave. We were going to send your Uncle Ally a letter, saying that you would come back if he made the mill better for its workers. But then Lizzie Brown had to go and ruin it all.’

‘I was trying to save her!’ Lizzie yelled.

‘Save her? You’ve doomed her.’ Maisie shook her head and began to cry, great hitching sobs of total despair. ‘Everything’s ruined. I’ll never leave this place alive. Somehow I always knew I’d die here…’

Lizzie made up her mind to rush her. The woman was half-mad with grief and rage, so if she was quick, she could grab Amelia and pull her out of Maisie’s reach.

Too late. Maisie started pulling Amelia towards the stairwell.

Alexander MacDonald bellowed, ‘Men! Get her! Ten guineas for the man who does!’

A group of burly mill workers immediately ran towards Maisie. Howling, she dragged Amelia up the stairs to an upper landing. As the men closed in on her, she backed into a pedestal where one of the tall whale-oil lamps stood.

‘Get back!’ she screeched. ‘Traitors. Rogues!’

One of the men lunged for her and Maisie fell back, knocking the pedestal over. The lamp fell with a crash, rolling down the stairs and leaking burning oil as it went. With cries of alarm, the men all fled from its path.

‘Oh God,’ Lizzie gasped as it tumbled past. ‘Someone fetch a bucket of water, now!’

But it was already too late for that. The shattered remains of the lamp came to rest at the bottom of the stairs, but the burning oil spread out like a carpet.

The bare wooden floorboards blackened and charred. Flames licked up the side of a stack of rolled cloth, and it caught fire instantly. It might as well have been a stacked bonfire ready for Guy Fawkes Night, Lizzie saw with horror. This place was a tinderbox just waiting to go up.

By the time the first buckets of water arrived, the fire was already burning out of control. A whole corner of the factory floor was alight and workers had already begun to make their way towards the exits, abandoning their machines to their fate.

Lizzie started towards the stairs where Maisie and Amelia had gone. A thick curtain of smoke hid them from sight. She backed off, coughing.

‘Damp down the cloth!’ MacDonald yelled. ‘Dimmock, shut the machines down, for God’s sake!’

But within minutes, the whole main factory floor was dense with black smoke and leaping flames. The glowing tongues licked at the support beams in the ceiling.

MacDonald and Lizzie joined a bucket chain. They flung water into the inferno, but it was clear the fire had taken hold and couldn’t be quenched. The machines were burning now. Yarn sizzled and glowed like the fuses on dynamite sticks. A metallic groan and crash announced a boiler had collapsed.

Lizzie coughed and wiped her streaming eyes. ‘You’ve got to get your people out of here!’

‘I’m not going anywhere without Amelia!’

‘I’ll get her,’ Lizzie said. ‘You get everyone else out.’

‘But she’s my niece!’

‘Think! Maisie doesn’t hate me like she hates you!’ Lizzie yelled. ‘We’ve got things in common – she might listen to me!’

MacDonald nodded. ‘You’re right. God go with you, Miss Brown. Everybody out!’

The cry went up from person to person throughout the building: ‘Everybody out!’ A stampede of workers and supervisors began as people grappled their way to the exits. Someone flung a stool through a window, shattering it, and workers on the upper floors came charging down the stairs, holding wet cloth over their mouths and noses, coughing hard.

Lizzie looked back up the stairs. That was where she had to go. The factory might be burning down, but Amelia was still up there…