He got me from the workhouse. Been there since I was born…

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  The size. That was what most folks noticed about the workhouse on Cleveland Street. Four stories high, it towered over the other buildings around it. Even if it hadn't, the shape would make it stand out. It was unusually square and solid-looking, as if some giant had started a tower of blocks and got bored, leaving the half-completed pile behind.

  Toby couldn't remember walking through the brick gate for the first time. His mum, according to the headmistress, had staggered in one night and had him right there. No one knew where his dad was or who he was. His mum hadn't told them even when they asked. She'd died not long after Toby had come into the world, giving him her surname: Ragg. And so, in the workhouse he'd stayed.

  Some things about the workhouse weren't so bad, he supposed. Hard to tell how bad or good something was when it was all you knew. Toby didn't think much about it in any case. You didn't come to a workhouse to think. If you did, they'd've called it a think-house.

  But he supposed some things were all right. There was a school here for the kids, like Toby and his friends Sam and Jonathan. He knew how to read and tell time and do basic maths. History or geography sometimes, if work was all caught up and a charity had given some books. The schoolmistress, Miss Stanton, was strict but fair. She'd once told Toby he was good at maths, quiet-like when nobody was listening, and gave him a small smile before she left for the day.

  And the master and mistress didn't make the kids work too much. Not like the stories he'd heard from the older boys and men who'd drifted around, where everyone worked till they slept where they stood or their fingers cracked and bled. Kids at Cleveland Street had an hour or two each day to "play," though that usually just meant milling around in the small yard and trying not to get in a fight.

  It wasn't so bad. Really. He knew of folks who had it worse.

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  But there were moments.

  The first memory Toby really had of the workhouse was when he was about five or six. Sometimes he thought back to it, when he was bored at oakum-picking, tugging ropes down into their fibers. He'd been running in the yard during one of the free hours, chasing a boy whose name he no longer remembered.

  He tripped, skidding across the bricks, weeds staining one of his only two pairs of trousers. The bloody nose and knees from the incident sent him to the infirmary. As the head nurse saw to him, Toby looked around at the sick for the first time. One man caught his eye, muttering in his sleep under sweat-drenched blankets. An arm poked out, and the skin was as dry and shriveled as a raisin in a Christmas cake.

  "What's wrong with him, m'um?" Toby asked the nurse. His question got him a sharp poke in the bloody knee.

  "Never you mind," she said. "What the sick have is their business."

  The man gave a cry, and the nurse quickly finished wrapping Toby's bandage and moved to the other patient. Toby stared, stunned, as whitish-gray, watery-looking shit dribbled over the edge of the bed. Several other nurses ran to help as the man begged for water. Toby darted from the room, feeling his stomach heaving too.

  He later found out it was cholera. A lot of people got it in workhouses. His friend at the time, a boy around his age called Dick Wallis, was taken only a week later when it reached the children's ward. Toby only avoided it, it seemed, because he liked the gin more than the water. Every kid stricken preferred the water.

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  The other memory, Toby tried his best not to recall. He never fully grasped what it meant, but a niggling little feeling told him he didn't want to. This had been a few years after the cholera outbreak, when he was eight. Night had fallen on the workhouse, a long winter night where the cold seeped in through the walls and got in your bones. Those nights were hard; a straw mattress and reused blanket weren't much help against the chill. The gin usually wore off sometime in the night too.

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  Because of the cold, he was awake so late even the rats were quiet. A clock on the wall faintly chimed half past two. He was just wriggling into a fluffy spot in the mattress when he heard muffled snickering and shushing outside in the corridor. It sounded like some of the older boys, the ones Toby and the other kids skirted round in the yard. Being near the door, he squeezed his eyes shut and pretended to be asleep.

  "Squealed like a pig, didn't she?" chuckled one of them.

  "You're in for a lashing from the mistress," said another. Voices indistinguishable in the darkness. "Someone had to've heard."

  "Eh, worth it, though," said a third. "If anything, I did us both a favor! Not like she had a lad on the outside or anything. Who'd want a girl from the workhouse?"

  The satisfaction in the third boy's voice, and the others' laughter, made Toby's skin crawl. Their shadows passed over him, long and lanky, and they settled in for the night at the other end of the ward. Toby wondered, if he could hear, if the girl would be crying.

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  Some of the boys and even the men, it seemed, were sort of stuck. Toby wouldn't say they wanted to stay in the workhouse, exactly. The sick and cripples certainly had no choice in the matter. But among the few able-bodied ones, there was an odd feeling of hopelessness. As if all thought of leaving had long ago been crushed out of them by the stone-breaking yard and the laundry.

  London wasn't kind to the poor. He knew that, just like all the others knew it. Even if a man was lucky enough to leave, sometimes he'd worn himself out from all the work. Then, maybe a week later, he'd be back again. Sometimes the drink brought them back, sometimes bad luck with rents. But always, the world seemed to be against the poor, determined to punish them for being poor. And determined to keep them that way no matter how hard they tried to make their lives better.

  That was why, one day just before Toby turned nine, it seemed like Providence smiled at last when the brightly colored cart rolled up. Pushing for his space at the window, he and the other kids watched as a tall man in a tight blue suit and top hat emerged. He swung a stick as he went into the workhouse gate, and all the kids scrambled downstairs to work out this strange newcomer.

  His words boomed through the ground floor halls. He was speaking with the headmaster. "Yes, signior, I have a need-a for an ass-eest-ant," he said, gesturing wildly with a hand. Toby stared. He'd heard Italian sailors before on the docks and they sounded sort of like this. But this man's words seemed too thick, like he was trying to say things through a mouth of mash. Somehow, Toby didn't think he was a real Italian.

  The master cleared his throat. "Well, Mr..."

  "Pirelli," supplied the man. He bowed with a great twirling of hands. "Adolfo Pirelli, the King of the Barbers and the Barber of Kings."

  "Well, signior...Pirelli...we cater mostly to the ill and crippled. But we do have some able-bodied men here – "

  "No, no," said Pirelli, shaking his head. "I rrrequire someone-a more permanent. Someone-a who can-a travel with-a me as I provide-a my services. Best if-a he comes cheap."

  The master grunted and turned to the crowd of boys. "Usual asking price for a pauper apprentice is five pounds," he said shortly. Pirelli promptly handed over the money, and the master pocketed it. "Your choice, though some of 'em are a little young to be apprenticed."

  "Any-a recommendation?"

  "Well, if you're looking for one with brains, there's perhaps four," grunted the master. He looked toward the boys again. "Sam, Ezekiel, Tom, Toby. Step out so the gentleman can see you."

  Numbly Toby stepped forward with the three other boys. Pirelli approached, and glancing up at him, Toby could tell he definitely wasn't Italian. Too pale. Pirelli stared at them for a while before finally pointing. "That one. His name?"

  "Tobias Ragg," said the master without even looking. "Toby, go fetch your things and meet Signior Pirelli in five minutes."

  It took Toby less than five to get his things. He didn't have many. Just his clothes, an old history book, and a little tin soldier he'd got from a charity lady one Christmas. He scampered back down to Signior Pirelli and, for the first time, walked out the workhouse gate for good.

  He paused to look back at the Cleveland Street workhouse one last time. The one home he knew. Apparently that was too long a time for his new master. Pirelli gave him a shove between the shoulder blades and said roughly, "Get in the carriage, boy." It was an abrupt shift to a dense Irish accent.

  Toby hurried into the carriage as their driver whisked them away. "Boy, get me that bottle," snapped Pirelli. "Pronto." Toby moved as quick as he could for the gin, and it seemed like it was fast enough this time. Pirelli drank for a while before falling into a slumber, and they had just entered the countryside when he started snoring.

  Toby looked up at the stars. So many of them. He rested his chin on his hands at the tiny cart window, yawning. He was out of the workhouse! The shove and short temper of his new master worried him a little. But at least he'd get to actually see places besides London and learn barbering. Maybe it would be all right.

  Maybe.