At four years old, Charity was growing more independent—and more belligerent. When her hair was clean, it was the same shade of blond as Mercy’s. But most of the time, the layer of dust and soot turned the autumn gold to winter gray. As with baby Paul, Charity’s energy and attitude were preferable to the listlessness of some of the neighborhood children, who were either too hungry or too sick to make trouble.

Like Clara.

Mercy tried to shove aside her thoughts of the girl. She’d done what she could but had failed. After she’d carried the lifeless body home, Clara’s mother hadn’t been surprised and hadn’t shed a tear.

Was death so common a visitor in these parts that people expected it, maybe even welcomed it as the only true savior from their pain? Or had they, like her, closed off their hearts to the pain in order to continue on?

Charity stomped her foot again in the nearest puddle, sending a spray of mud so high that some of it splattered Mercy’s face.

Dirty was too mild a word in describing the puddles. After the recent downpours, the kennels had overflowed into the streets. Added to that, piles of trash remained from the winter months, along with the rotting privy that served the several hundred people who lived in the old houses surrounding the stone courtyard.

The sour reek of human waste and rotting garbage was ever present. And now that the days were becoming warmer, the stench was growing. By summer it would be an enormous, invisible beast that twisted and slithered through every corridor, suffocating them with its noxious fumes.

“Charity Wilkins, I daresay,” Mercy said in her sternest voice as she wiped her sleeve across her cheek. “Twiggy will set you sniveling once she gets home from work after I tell her you’ve been naughty.”

“Mum’s already home.” Charity pointed past the line behind them to the courtyard entrance.

Sure enough, their mum stood with several other women who worked with her at the rag factory. Somehow, in spite of the long hours, Twiggy always managed to look pretty. Maybe it was her long thick hair, or her smooth skin, or her curvy figure.

Mercy glanced at the patch of sky visible above the crowded rooftops. She couldn’t see the sun behind the clouds to tell what time of day it was, but certainly it was too early for Twiggy and the others to be home from work.

When Mercy had last heard St. Matthew’s church bell toll, she figured she had plenty of time to make beef broth from the bones she’d found earlier in the trash behind the butcher shop. With the onion and the biscuit pieces she’d hoarded, she hoped to surprise Twiggy with the fine meal when she arrived home from the factory, tired as always.