Midnight is a Place by Joan Aiken Page A

be nearly five kilometers home and almost all uphill," he said to Anna-Marie. "Can you walk as far as that?"
    "Not in these shoes," she said positively. "They are grown too small for me and they are not comfortable at all—
du tout, du tout!
"
    "Then we had best inquire our way to the tax office and find Mr. Oakapple. He will be there for quite a while yet. Besides, I think it may rain."
    All memory of the bright morning had vanished. The day was dark and lowering. The town of Blastburn, not a cheerful place at the best of times, in this murky light seemed suitable only as a dwelling place for trolls or hobgoblins. Gas flares had been lit in the cobbled streets, and the foot passengers came and went out of a thick obscurity half smoke, half dark.
    "Can you tell me the way to the tax office?" Lucas asked one man.
    "Nay, it's noan a place I'd be fain to visit," he said unhelpfully, and walked on.
    But another said he thought it was near the Town Hall—"Down along t'Micklegate, past t'prison, go left when ye see t'workus, ower along by t'insane asylum, alongside t'stocks and t'ducking stool, cross t'Market Square into Brass Gate and ye canna miss it."
    He gestured down the wide busy road on which they stood.
    However it was plain that, after going some distance in the deepening fog, they must have taken a wrong turn, for instead of arriving at the Market Square, they found themselves among narrow, mean streets where a carriage could not possibly have passed; even on foot it was hard enough not to slip into the filthy gutter than ran down the middle of the way.
    "I do not like the air here," said Anna-Marie, wrinkling her nose. "This place smells of cheese that has gone bad."
    It smelled worse than that among the decaying little houses with squalid heaps of rubbish outside each door, and Lucas began to be anxious for Anna-Marie; he hoped that she might not pick up some noxious disease in this slum. He would have liked to ask the way again, but hesitated; they were receiving unfriendly glances from the shawled women on doorsteps, the men in clogs who stood lounging at corners.
    But they were certainly lost; each turning seemed only to plunge them deeper into the heart of the maze.
    At last Lucas perceived someone whose face seemed vaguely familiar—for a moment he could not think why, but he knew he had seen her recently—at all events she looked kindly enough, though sad. He started toward her, firmly gripping the hand of Anna-Marie, who showed a disposition to loiter and gaze about her.
    Before he reached the woman he was approaching, however, she had been accosted by a friend. They stood deep in talk while Lucas hesitated, feeling it would be impolite to interrupt, yet impatient to learn his direction before it should be too late, before Mr. Oakapple had finished his business at the tax office and started for home.
    The two women were talking in low voices.
    "Eh, I'm reel sorry not to oblige thee, Bess, I'd take in the liddle 'un, and gladly, wi'out a thought, if it were only me. But it's my owd man, he's a tippler, as tha knaws, and when he's a drop taken, he says there are ower many mouths to feed a'ready—he'd break ivery bone in my body if I took on another—"
    "Never fret, Annie lass. I knaw tha would if tha could. I'd take the bairn wi' me on the ship, but they tells as how bairns dies quick as windflowers on those transports. I'm afeared even for Sue, that she'll never see Van Diemen's Land."
    "Eh, Bess, woman, 'tis a long way—"the second woman sighed. Then, plainly glad to change the subject, she gave her friend a nudge and said, "Reckon the lad yonder wishes to speak to thee."
    The first woman turned, pushing back her shawl with a familiar gesture, and now that he was close enough to recognize her, Lucas would have liked to back away. He felt ashamed to trouble her. For she was Mrs. Braithwaite, the woman he had seen mourning by the roadside on the previous evening. Her face was still pale