bunched myself up like a coiled spring, and leaped on her as soon as she was beside me. With the impetus of my jump from the ground I knocked her down and we rolled over and over, hitting and scratching. I felt her claw-like fingers at my mouth and tasted blood. Then I got hold of the rope of the plait of hair and pulled as hard as I could. She gave a shriek of pain and instinctively leaned back towards the pull. In a minute I had scrambled atop her, and I sat heavily on her bony little chest and felt, for the first time, a rush of pity at how thin and light she was.
‘D’you give up?’ I demanded tersely, using the words Richard so often said to me when he won in our half-playful, half-painful rompings.
‘Aye,’ she said. She spoke without a trace of a sneer, and I got up at once and put out a hand to pull her to her feet. She took it, without thinking, and then stood up, surprised to find herself handfast with me, apparently shaking on a bargain.
‘So you won’t tease Richard any more,’ I said, going directly to my one objective. She smiled a slow grudging smile that showed a couple of blackened teeth.
‘All right,’ she said slowly, the easy Sussex drawl reminding me of Dench and of his kindness to me. ‘We’ll leave him be.’
We dropped hands then, awkwardly, as if we had forgotten how we had come to be standing as close as friends. But she saw my mouth and said, ‘You’re bleeding’ in an indifferent voice. And I was careful to match her tone and say, ‘Am I?’ as if I did not care at all.
‘Come to the Fenny,’ she offered, and all of us walked deeper into the wood to the bank of the River Fenny for a drink and a splash of cold water on our hurts. And this time I walked neither alone in the front, nor encircled, but side by side with different children who came up to me and told me their names. I realized that I had not only won Richard’s safety, I had found some friends.
There were three Smith children: Henry, a stocky eight-year-old, his sister Jilly, and their little brother, who came with them, trotting to keep up with the pace of the older children. He was four. They called him Little ’Un. He had not been expected to live and had been christened Henry like his brother. But his survival, thus far, meant there were two Henrys in the house, so the little boy had lost his name.
It did not matter, Clary told me, her voice dry. They did not expect him to survive the next winter. He coughed blood all the time like his mother had done. She had died after his birth and they had delayed her funeral a week so he could be put in her coffin and they could bury two for the cost of one. But Little ’Un had clung on.
I stared at him. His skin was as pale as skimmed milk, a bluish pallor. When he felt my eyes on him, he gave me a smile of such sweetness that it was like a little candle in a dark corner.
‘You can call me Little ’Un,’ he said, his breath rapid and light.
‘You can call me Julia,’ I said, looking at his thin face and huge eyes with a sense of hopelessness so intense that it felt like pain.
‘I’m Jane Carter,’ said another girl, pushing forward. ‘And this is my sister Em’ly. We’ve got another sister, but she’s at home with Baby. And we’ve got two brothers. And one of them is simple.’
I nodded, trying to take in the rush of information.
‘They’re out snaring rabbits,’ she said defiantly. I noticed the quick exchange of looks among the others to see how I would react to the news of poaching.
‘I hope they’re lucky,’ I said and I told the truth. ‘With six of you to feed you’ll need the meat.’
Jane nodded at the self-evident fact. ‘We poach pheasants too,’ she said. ‘And hare, and grouse.’
It was an open challenge.
‘Good,’ I said. ‘I wish you luck with it.’
They nodded at that, as though I had passed some crucial test, and two cobbler’s children, fair-headed twins, came either side of me and put their little cold hands in mine.
Clary and I glanced at the sun coming higher over the woods, and started on a jog-trot for home without a word exchanged between us. She set a quick pace for a scrawny girl, and the other children trailed away behind us; only Matthew Merry and Ted Tyacke kept up. I tried to control my breath so she would not hear me pant. But then I could tell by the way she was slackening that she was tiring too.
The track to Acre ran uphill. It was stony and bad going for a child with holes in her boots like mine, but worse for barefoot children like the three of them. I pounded on determinedly, my tight coat squeezing me mercilessly across my chest and under my arms. When I reached the top, I was panting for breath, but I got there first.
‘W-W-Well done,’ said Matthew, his stammer worse with no breath left in his skinny frame to say the words. ‘You’re a f-f-fast runner.’
‘My cousin Richard is faster than me,’ I said, dropping to the ground while we waited for Clary and Ted and then the string of little children.
Matthew spat on the ground like a rude grown-up. ‘We d-d-don’t care for him,’ he said dismissively.
I was about to fire up in defence of Richard, but something told me he might be better served by me keeping my peace. ‘He’s nice,’ I said, keeping my voice light. ‘He’s my best friend.’
Matthew nodded, unimpressed. ‘We don’t have best friends in Acre any more,’ he said.
‘Why not?’ I asked.
Clary slumped down beside me, and Ted beside her. She lay on her back on the damp ground and squinted up at the bright sky with the sharp winter sun blazing coldly down on us.
‘They die,’ she said coolly. ‘Last winter my best friend Rachel died. She had got ill.’
‘And my friend Michael,’ offered Ted.
‘And my friend, I’ve f-f-forgotten her name,’ Matthew said.
‘Sally,’ Clary volunteered.
I sat in silence, taking this in.
‘Sally died away from Acre,’ Clary said with a hint of extra resentment. ‘The parish overseer took all the children he could get from their parents to work in the workshops. That’s why we’re the oldest in the village.’
I nodded. ‘I heard about it,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t understand what had happened. Who took the children?’
Ted looked at me as if I were ignorant indeed. ‘In the north,’ he said, his voice hard. ‘Even further away than London. They need children to work there in great barns, with great engines. They order paupers from all the parishes in the country and the parish overseer takes the children whose parents are on poor relief. They took all the big children they could the last time they came. None of them have come back, but we heard that Sal died. She was always sickly.’
I hesitated. I had nearly said again, ‘I am sorry.’ But the stealing of Acre’s children was too great a grief for an easily spoken apology.
‘Th-Th-They didn’t take me!’ Matthew said with pride.
Clary smiled at him, as tender
