Song of the Sea Maid Read Free

friend of mine, also a fine gentleman. If you honour that name, you will go far in life. So, child, welcome to your new abode. All who enter here are fortunate base-born objects. Those who have been saved from the streets, alleys and rubbish heaps of London, the abandoned vagabonds of the poor. Here you will be provided with shelter and sustenance. And furthermore, a virtuous education to make you useful – on the land, on the sea or in the home – instead of falling into rough ways and becoming swindlers and cutpurses, or else molls and jades, ending your portion shackled in a coffle of prisoners shuffling through the streets to be transported on ships to foreign lands or to break your necks on the gibbet. Is that what you want, child?’
    I have listened to each word and surmise I understood perhaps one quarter. But I know what the gibbet is and shake my head.
    ‘I do not want to hang, sir.’
    ‘Quite. But there are fates worse than death, Dawnay Price. If you were not the luckiest wretch alive to be found by my good friend and brought to this sanctuary, it is likely you would have ended up in the hell they call the workhouse, that den of disease where the weak go to die in misery. You are fortunate that I have saved you from such a fate and you will work hard for me every day you pass here, Dawnay Price, to thank me for my charity. Here you will learn a trade and your catechism. We will prepare you for a life of service to society, where instead of fouling the streets with your poverty, you will be reformed. All children come into the world unblemished. It is the cruel world itself that stains the child and turns it to roguery. We are here to save the child, turn it from sin and render it beneficial to the public. Do you understand me?’
    I have been looking at the feather on the table. Beside it is paper and a pot of black liquid. On the paper are words, black words. Beneath it is a board stretched with cream-coloured paper with dark stains on it. On a side table behind the founder there are more pots and feathers too, stacked in a vase. What can they possibly be for? I have never seen such curious and lovely things.
    I ask, ‘What does the feather do?’ I feel a sharp cuff to the back of my head. I forget myself and try to sink, this time tripping forward and almost knocking the founder’s knees with my head.
    ‘It is a fool!’ he cries and I am swiftly removed from this handsome room.
    In the months that follow, I become accustomed to our rigid routine. After breakfast, we spend the morning in the schoolroom on the ground floor. Our schoolmaster is a young man I discover is Matron’s nephew, who also looks to the welfare of all boys in this institution, as Matron does with us girls. We are put to school in a trifling manner, with reading and arithmetic. Once I learn my letters, I can read my brother’s note and I know then that Matron was right. But I am grateful to him for his kindly deception. I look it over often and if I squint hard and long enough, I believe I can see the words he spoke writ on the paper and it comforts me. At the very least, his hands have touched the paper I touch. At times I weep over it for so long that my eyes smart afterwards and my head aches like a beating drum. I hide the note from the others in a crack in the dormitory wall behind my cot.
    I consider my brother often, or the fact of him. After all, he claims all my infant memories. I call him up into my fancy and recall his features or a kind word. I picture him aboard ship, a resourceful sailor I imagine, considering how he kept us thriving in those early days. Perhaps he was drowned at sea or caught the yellow fever in some distant port. If he lived, I hope he resides in a warm place, with victuals and drink and some portion of love or friendship. I want that at least for the one who fed me, who told me to run those many moons ago. He was a boy of a free and merry turn and I loved him.
    Every Sunday, we gather in the