It was not the bucket speaking, this new voice came from somewhere else, from the stool, there was someone sitting on my aunt’s stool, a small very dirty girl in a threadbare dress, very thin and pale, great smudges beneath her eyes, some poor starveling, some mudlark heaved from the heaps. I had never seen this urchin before and yet there was something, like the bucket, that seemed so familiar to me. The dishevelled girl had a large head and a thin body, like an afterthought, trailing from it. But the head was very solid and prominent, a round head, quite shiny, were she an object, something like a … and then she said it, she said her name, ‘Alice Higgs.’

And then I fainted away.

15

A CORSET AND A SHIP’S LANTERN

Lucy Pennant’s narrative continued

‘Good morning, Mrs Piggott,’ I said to the figure sitting on the chair beside my bed.

‘Is that what you call it, Iremonger?’ replied the housekeeper as she approached. ‘I should call it rather a very bad morning, for you. I should call it the worst of mornings, for you. Where have you been?’

‘Upstairs,’ I said, ‘cleaning the firegra—’

Before I could finish my sentence the white bony hand of Mrs Piggott struck me hard across the face.

‘No,’ she said, ‘I won’t have that. That won’t do at all. Where have you been?’

‘Upstairs, Mrs Piggott.’

‘That much is certain. Where upstairs?’

‘Please, miss, doing the firegra—’

Again the hand struck.

‘I’ll ask one more time, and take very good care with your answer. I am a loving person, I am warm and lively, I thrill with emotion, and that emotion can be over-stoked, and I can become very hot, I can bubble over, you should not want that, should you, my dear?’

‘No, Mrs Piggott, I shouldn’t.’

‘And so, Iremonger – I shall not call you Firegrates now, not since your firegrates have been inspected and found wanting, some have not even been touched, but a moment yet before we consider that – where, pray tell me, and what? Out with it!’

All the other Iremongers in the dormitory were awake now, and all sitting up, watching, taking it in, smelling some blood.

‘Mrs Piggott …’ I said.

‘Go on.’

‘The truth is …’

‘Go on.’

‘I got lost.’

‘You’ve never been lost before, why were you lost this time?’

‘There was a noise, a terrible noise, a clanking, a hissing, a great clattering, and I ran from it.’

‘That’s a Gathering!’ she cried. ‘You’ve seen a Gathering! They’ve been looking everywhere for a Gathering, they knew there was one, they need to stop it before it gets too big.’

‘A Gathering, Mrs Piggott?’ I asked.