‘I am very much afraid,’ the butler stammered, ‘the horrible child is telling the truth.’

‘I believe it too, Olbert, Master Clodius has always been slightly suspect, despite his blood, like Master Rippit before him. But it is no matter, true or false. No one shall hear of it.’

‘If only it could be so.’

‘She shall be sent out, Olbert. Three hundred yards?’

‘In this weather?’

‘Why not?’

‘Yes, Claar, call her three hundred yards, no five hundred! Start her at five hundred, and if she comes back, let it be a mile, two even; give her a lead as long as the Thames, and lose the end of it. Atlantic her! Whoever is her anchor, make that anchor small and weedy, a thing of no weight or character, a feather of a person.’

‘Well spoken, Olbert, there’s your spirit back. What a character!’

‘I’m not frightened of you,’ I cried, ‘either of you.’

‘Be frightened of the heaps then, Five Hundred.’

‘I want go back to Filching.’

‘Then cut your line,’ said Piggott, ‘and walk there yourself.’

‘Out you must go, Five Hundred Iremonger,’ said the butler, ringing a bell. ‘You are dumped.’

‘No!’ I cried. ‘You cannot do this. You cannot!’

‘Have,’ said the butler.

‘You will be lost, deary, you’re big enough, and lord knows loud enough here, but out there you will seem neither big nor loud. You’ll be a grain of sand out there. Lost under a sudden wave.’

A knock at the door.

‘Ah, here you are,’ said the butler.

‘Mr Sturridge,’ said two body Iremongers, nodding. ‘This Iremonger is to be sent out into it. Five hundred yards.’

‘Five hundred, sir?’

‘That is what I said. And now. By the noon bell.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Let me go!’ I cried.

They didn’t.

The body Iremongers passed me quickly on to two heavy, stinking Iremongers who I hadn’t known before, these were Iremongers in soiled leather aprons, and they in their turn marched me upstairs to two black doors. The doors were opened and a foul stench rushed at us, and clothed us in itself, and all seemed fogged over and very, very close. I was shoved out. Into a courtyard. The air was cold but thick, my skin was suddenly so sticky. Never get clean, I thought, I’ll never be clean again. I looked up there, high up there between dark rain clouds, was just a little, a very little, sky.

‘I’m outside!’ I said. ‘Outside. That’s something. That’s something, isn’t it?’

‘There’s worse places than the darkest house cellars,’ said one Iremonger. ‘Didn’t you know?’

‘Shut it,’ said another. ‘Not to talk. Strictly not.’

It was very noisy in that courtyard, strange sounds coming from beyond the wall, out of sight for the moment, the heaps smashing against each other. The wall in front was very high and thick, with glass on its top and wire and sharp things.