Free Chains by A. J. Hartley Page B

name sound like an accusation, and there was a contemptuous curl to his lip as he gazed down upon his notebook.
    â€œYes, sir,” I said.
    â€œFrom Seventh Street?”
    â€œYes, sir,” I responded, my unease driving the next words out of me. “Is there a problem with my work?”
    â€œSeventh Street is Mr. Morlak’s gang, is it not?”
    This was Sir William.
    Unable to say more, I just nodded, eyes lowered.
    â€œThere’s no need to be afraid, child,” said Sir William.
    He spoke so gently, with such apparent warmth and kindness, that I looked up in astonishment to find him smiling at me.
    â€œMorlak,” he mused, glancing at the bull-headed foreman. “What do you think?”
    The foreman leaned over the catwalk and spat expressively into the river. “He’ll try to chisel you,” he said. “Especially if he thinks she’s worth keeping.”
    He sounded doubtful that anyone might, and Sir William read the confusion in my face.
    â€œDo you always work as hard as you have done here?” he asked. “I see you up there scampering about like a red-tailed civet: quite fearless! And you never miss a bit, do you? Mr. Harkson here has to send your fellows back up time after time to repaint the parts they miss as soon as the chain turns, but not you, eh, Miss Sutonga? Never you.”
    â€œI try to give satisfaction, sir,” I said.
    â€œI see that indeed,” he answered, opening his umbrella as the rain intensified and using it to shade us both. He stepped so close I almost touched his great round belly. Harkson scowled at being left out in the weather and spat again.
    â€œHow would you feel about coming to work for me?” said Sir William.
    Again, I looked up into his pink, bewhiskered face with the kind of confusion that was almost alarm.
    â€œI thought that I was,” I said.
    â€œSubcontracted to me through Mr. Morlak, yes,” said Sir William, starting to walk the creaking catwalk toward the city side so that I was obliged to move with him. “But I have workers of my own who are paid as individuals, men and women who receive a weekly wage in their own right. They work regular hours. They get sick time, even holidays. They can live where they like, but they have first refusal of the rather excellent houses my own company has built beside the Dock Street fish market. Perhaps you know them?”
    I stared at him.
    Yes, I knew them. They were real brick houses with painted wooden trim and slate roofs and little squares of garden by the front doors where flowering bushes grew. They had fireplaces, and running water, and the streets outside were plumbed for gaslight. More pointedly, they were not the squalid tents of the riverside camp or the derelict weavers’ shed on Seventh Street where I normally lived with the gang.
    I generally tried not to speculate on impossible things. My hopes for the future rarely went beyond food for my belly, my own fierce privacy, and a roof over my head. Longer term health, wealth, and happiness were the stuff of novels and of my most secret of fantasies. In those idle dreams I might have allowed myself to imagine a day when, as a result of skill earned from exacting repetition day after long, dangerous day, I came to live in one of those neat brick houses …
    Sir William waited for my answer. I only nodded.
    He seemed pleased by this. “Well then, follow me.”
    The steady drumming of the rain on the umbrella was hypnotic. As we walked, I risked a glance up at him and found him gazing at the work site which had, by this time, become a little town in its own right. Tents, shelters, cabins, and sheds had sprouted along the south bank of the river at the other end of the bridge, the whole impromptu settlement thick with noise and smoke and a steady, sour stink at all hours. The work crew had to be fed and clothed, their tools maintained, their boots and aprons mended. Every morning new