The governor and Frobisher exchanged looks, then the governor said, ‘Will is dead. He died during the night.’

‘Dead?’ Gus repeated. It was too much to take in.

‘Yes!’ Frobisher said. ‘And it is all your fault. If you had not encouraged him to attempt such a foolish escape, if you had not taken him out in the night air, when you knew already that his lungs were affected …’

‘It’s not! It’s not!’ Gus hurled himself across the room and beat at Frobisher’s chest with his fists. ‘It’s you! You made him do things! He hated it and when he refused you sent him to the oakum room.’

‘What? How dare you accuse me?’ Frobisher fended him off and the governor grabbed his arms and held him still.

‘What do you mean, boy, by “made him do things”?’ he demanded. ‘What “things”?’

‘I don’t know.’ Gus was weeping now. ‘He wouldn’t tell me. Bad things, horrible things …’

‘Governor! Will you let this ragamuffin make such accusations against me?’ Frobisher exclaimed breathlessly. ‘He doesn’t even know what he is saying.’

‘No, he clearly does not, but he cannot be allowed to attack the good name of one of my staff,’ the governor said. He turned Gus to face him. ‘Do you not understand that by making such wild accusations you are only getting yourself into deeper trouble?’

‘It’s true!’ Gus sobbed. ‘It’s true!’

‘This has got to stop,’ Frobisher said. ‘Let me deal with him, governor.’

‘We shall both deal with him,’ the governor said grimly. He gave Gus a shake. ‘Get your breeches down, boy, and get over the back of that chair.’

They both laid into him, until he was sobbing and screaming, begging them to stop. Finally they let him up, his face wet with tears and snot and burning with the humiliation of what had been done to him.

‘It’s oakum picking for you until I decide you have learned your lesson,’ the governor said. ‘And don’t dare repeat accusations like that again, to anyone. Now get out!’

Shortly afterwards, in the oakum picking room, Gus sat automatically pulling at the unyielding strands of rope. He was conscious only of the throbbing of his wounds. Two thoughts hammered in his head in rhythm with the throbbing: Will was dead; and, whatever happened, he would never let them do that to him again.

Five

‘Afternoon off! You’ll get an afternoon off when I think you’ve earned it, miss. And not a moment before.’

‘It’s just that my brother is at the Industrial School and I haven’t seen him since I left the workhouse. I really want to make sure he’s all right.’

‘Well, you’ll just have to work extra hard to earn the time off, won’t you.’