Lily and the Shining Dragons (22 page)

‘Oh, a likeness, I’m sure,’ she told Maisie firmly, wrapping an arm round her friend’s bony shoulder. Really she had no idea, but she knew Maisie dreamed about that locket all week, and the hour on Sunday when she got to hold it was her most special time, and Rose couldn’t spoil it for her.

‘Maybe of my mother. Or perhaps it was hers, and she had my father’s picture in it. Yes, that would have been it. I bet he was handsome,’Maisie said dreamily.

‘Mmmm,’ Rose murmured diplomatically. Maisie wasn’t ugly, exactly, but she was very skinny, and no one looked beautiful with their hair cropped short in case of lice. It was hard to imagine either of her parents as handsome.

All Rose’s friends spent Sundays in a dream world, where they were the long-lost daughters of dukes who would one day sweep them away in a coach-and-four to reclaim their rightful inheritance.

Strangely though, unlike all the other girls, Rose did not dream. She had no Relic to hang her dreams on, but that wasn’t the main reason. Quite a few of the others didn’t either, and it didn’t hold them back at all. Rose just wanted to get out of St Bridget’s as soon as she possibly could. It wasn’t that it was a bad place – the schoolmistress read them lots of improving books about children who weren’t lucky enough to have aHome. They lived on the streets, and always went from Bad to Worse in ways that were never very clearly explained. Girls at St Bridget’s were fed, even though there was never enough food to actually feel full, only just enough to keep them going. They had clothes, even a set of Sunday best for church, and the yearly photograph. The important thing was, they were trained for domestic service, so that when they were old enough they could earn their own living. If Rose dreamed at all, that was what she dreamed of. She didn’t want to be a lady in a big house. She’d settle for being allowed to clean one, and be paid for it. And perhaps have an afternoon off, once a month, although she had no idea what she would do.

Occasionally, girls who’d left St Bridget’s came back to show themselves off. They told giggly tales of being admired by the second footman, and they had smart outfits that hadn’t been worn by six other girls before them, like Rose’s black Sunday dress and coat. She knew because the other girls’ names had been sewn in at the top. Two of them even had surnames, which was very grand. Rose was only Rose, and that was because the yellow rose in Miss Lockwood’s tiny garden had started to flower on the day she’d been brought to St Bridget’s by the vicar. He’d found her in the churchyard, sitting on the war memorial in a fishbasket, and howling. If Rose had been given to dreaming like the others, she might have thought that it meant her father had been a brave soldier, killed in a heroic charge, and that her dying mother couldn’t look after her and had left her on the war memorial, hoping that someone would care for a poor soldier’s child. As it was, she’d decided her family probably had something to do with fish.

Rose hated fish. Although of course in an orphanage, you ate what there was, and anyone else’s if you got half a chance. She knew no grand lady was going to sweep into the orphanage and claim her as a long-lost daughter. It must have been a bad year for fish, that was all. It didn’t bother her, and just made her all the more determined to make a life for herself outside.

‘What do you think they were like?’ Maisie asked pleadingly. Rose was good at storytelling. Somehow her stories lit up the dark corners of the orphanage where they hid to tell them.

Rose sighed. She was tired, but Maisie looked so hopeful. She settled herself as comfortably as she could under the shelf, tucking her dress under her feet to keep warm. The storeroom was damp and chilly, and smelled of wet cleaning cloths. She stared dreamily at the side of the tin bath, glistening in the shadows. ‘You were two, weren’t you, when you came to St Bridget’s?’ she murmured. ‘So you were old enough to be running about everywhere… Yes. It was a Sunday, and your parents had taken you to the park to sail your boat in the fountain.’

‘A boat!’ Maisie agreed blissfully.

‘Yes, with white sails, and ropes so you could make the sails work, just like real ones.’ Rose was remembering the illustrations from
Morally Instructive Tales for the Nursery
, which was one of the books in the schoolroom. The two little boys who owned the boat in the original story fought about who got to sail it first, which obviously meant that one of them drowned in the fountain. Most of the books in the schoolroom had endings like that. Rose quite enjoyed working out the exact point when the characters were beyond hope. It was usually when they’d lied to get more jam.

‘You were wearing your best pink coat, but your mother didn’t mind if you got it wet.’ Rose’s voice became rather doubtful here. She hadn’t been able to resist putting in the pink coat but really, it was too silly…

Suddenly she realised that Maisie was gazing longingly at the side of the tin bath. ‘Yes, look, it’s got flower-shaped buttons! Are they roses, Rose?’

Rose gulped. ‘I’m not sure,’ she murmured, staring wide-eyed at the picture flickering on the metal. ‘Daisies, I think…’ Had she done that? She knew her stories were good – she was always being bothered for them, so they must be – but none of them had ever come with pictures. Pictures that
moved
. A tiny, plump, pretty Maisie was jumping and clapping as a nattily dressed gentleman blew her boat across a sparkling fountain.
White trousers!
Rose’s matter-of-fact side thought disgustedly.
Has this family no sense?

‘Oh, the picture’s fading! No, no, bring it back, Rose! I want to see my mother!’Maisie wailed.

‘Ssssh! We aren’t meant to be here, Maisie, we’ll be caught.’

Maisie wasn’t listening. ‘Oh, Rose, it was so pretty!
I
was so pretty! I want to see it again—’

‘Girls!’A sharp voice cut her off. ‘What are you doing in here? Come out at once!’

Rose jumped and hit her head on the shelf. The picture promptly disappeared altogether, and Maisie burst into tears.

‘Come out of there! Who is that? Rose? And you, Maisie! What on earth are you doing?’

Rose struggled out, trying not to cry herself. Her head really
hurt
, a horrible sharp throbbing that made her feel sick. Of all the stupid things to do! This was what happened when you started making pictures on baths. Miss Lockwood looked irritable. ‘Maisie, you know you’re not supposed to take that out of my office,’ she snapped, reaching down and seizing the locket. The flimsy chain broke, and Maisie howled even louder, tugging at the trailing end.

Rose could tell that Miss Lockwood was horrified. She really hadn’t meant to snap the locket, and she knew how Maisie treasured it. But she couldn’t draw back now. ‘Silly girl! Now you’ve broken it. Well, it’s just what you deserve.’ Red in the face, she stuffed it into the little hanging pocket she wore on her belt, and swept out. ‘Go to bed at once! There will be no supper for either of you!’ she announced grandly at the door.

‘Well, that’s no great loss,’ Rose muttered, putting an arm round Maisie, who was crying in great heaving gulps.

‘She – broke – my – locket!’

‘Yes,’ Rose admitted gently. ‘Yes, she did. But I’m sure we can mend it. Next Sunday. I’ll help, Maisie, I promise. And I don’t think she meant to. I think she was sorry, Maisie. She could have made us stand in the schoolroom with books on our heads all evening, like she did to Florence last week. No supper’s not that bad. It would only be bread and milk.’

‘It might not be,’ sniffed Maisie, who seemed determined to look on the black side of things. ‘It might be cake.’

Rose took her hand as they trailed dismally back to their dormitory. ‘Maisie, it’s
always
bread and milk! The last time we had cake was for the coronation, nearly three years ago!’ Rose sighed. She couldn’t help feeling cross with Maisie for getting her into trouble, but not
very
cross. After all, she’d been tempting fate with the windows anyway. Maisie was so tiny and fragile that Rose always felt sorry for her. ‘Do you want me to tell you a story?’ she asked resignedly, as they changed into their nightclothes.

‘Will you make the pictures come again?’ Maisie asked, her eyes lighting up.

‘I don’t know,’ Rose told her honestly. ‘It’s never happened before. And there might be trouble if we get caught, I’m sure it’s not allowed.’

‘It isn’t in the Rules,’ Maisie said, pouting. ‘I know it isn’t.’

Miss Lockwood read the Rules on Sundays before church, so they’d heard them that morning. Rose had to admit that Maisie was right, she didn’t remember a rule about making pictures on baths. Which was odd – it must mean that it wasn’t a very common thing to do, because the Rules covered
everything
. Even the exact length of an orphan’s fingernails.

‘It just feels like something that wouldn’t be allowed…’ Rose said.
Which is why it’s such fun
, part of her wanted to add. ‘Oh, all right. But I think it needs something shiny for it to work.’ She looked round thoughtfully. The dormitory was long and narrow, high up in the attics of the old house. Everything was very clean, but shiny was in short supply. There was hardly room for the girls to move between the narrow, grey-blanketed beds, let alone space for polished furniture.

Maisie followed her, craning her neck to peer into corners. ‘My boots are shiny!’ she suggested brightly.

Rose was about to say they couldn’t be, then realised that Maisie was right. All the girls’ shoes were made and mended by the boys from St Bartholomew’s orphanage over the wall. They had a cobblers’ workshop where the girls had a laundry, so that they could be trained up for a useful trade. Maisie’s boots had just come back from being mended, and they were black and shiny, even if they’d been patched so often that there was nothing left of the original boot. If she could make pictures on a bath, why not a boot?

The two girls sat huddled together under Rose’s blankets, staring at the polished leather. ‘It’ll be a lot smaller, if it even works,’ Rose warned.

‘I don’t mind.’ Maisie didn’t take her eyes off the boot. ‘I want to see what happened.’

‘It isn’t really what happened…’ Rose reminded her. ‘Just a story I’m making up, you know that, don’t you?’

‘Yes, yes.’ Maisie flapped her hand at Rose irritably, but Rose didn’t think she was really listening. ‘Show me!’

Long after Maisie had cried herself to sleep that night – heartbroken by the flickering image of her tiny self running through the park and crying for her mother – and the other girls had come chattering to bed, Rose lay awake.

Had she made it all up? It had seemed so real, somehow.
What if I’ve turned into a fortune-teller?
Rose worried to herself. She didn’t
believe
in fortune-tellers. But of course she’d invented it – she’d put in that pink coat, from the little girls she’d seen out of the window. So if it wasn’t real, why had it upset Maisie so much? Why had she believed it more than all Rose’s other stories?
The pictures
, Rose told herself.
The pictures made it seem too real. I wanted to believe it, too. I’m not doing that again.

Next to her, Maisie’s breath was still catching as she slept, her thin shoulders shuddering, as if she were dreaming it all over again, the lost child that she believed was her, running round the glittering fountain to fetch her boat, then turning back and seeing only other children’s parents.

Rose didn’t know how she’d done it. This had never happened when she told stories before today. She hadn’t done anything differently, not that she could think of. But she must never, ever let it happen again. It was too strong. Rose was sure she’d made it up – or almost sure – but now Maisie had seen it, for her it was real. She would remember it for ever.

Although
, Rose thought, as she eventually closed her eyes,
if it were true, the boat would be in Miss Lockwood’s office, with the other Relics…
So it couldn’t be. It was just a story. But her stories had never frightened her before.