Relax. Fear nothing.
He needed to shift his arms over his head. Slowly. Exhaling as much as he could, he gently snaked an elbow up along his belly. One arm slipped free, and then the other.
His fingers roved blindly overhead, looking for anchorage. There. He found a thick seam between mortar and stone.
Flexing his wrists, Cormac fisted his hands and ground them onto the chimney walls, just beneath the protruding stone. Mortar crumbled, falling into his eyes. The old masonry scored his knuckles, and wet warmth trickled along his arms. He ignored the pain, focusing only on what he had to do.
He exhaled again, making his body as compact as possible. Then he pushed.
His body crept an inch at a time, and then jolted suddenly, as though sprung from a trap, and Cormac plummeted down the chimney, falling hard to the bottom. He landed on the metal grate; it smashed just below his ribs, momentarily stealing his breath. Still, he rolled off, jumping at once to his feet. “Aidan? Marjorie?” He spotted Marjorie's feet, splayed on the floor, poking from behind a small divan.
“Ree?” Cormac ran to her, his heart in his throat. He tenderly gathered her head in his hands, shuddering at the large lump on the back of her skull.
She'd been hit. Someone had hit his Marjorie. Rage boiled hot and sour in his gut.
He gently threaded his fingers through her hair, and breathed a sigh of relief when they came back dry. No blood was good, and a lump was better, or so he'd been told, since it meant she'd not be bleeding inside her skull.
“Ree?” At the sound of his voice, Marjorie's eyes fluttered open. “Ree, lass? What happened? Where's Aidan?”
“Aidan… “ Clutching at Cormac's sleeves, she looked around frantically. Tears spilled down her cheeks.
“Did Aidan hit you?” His eyes swept the room, taking in an overturned chair, a displaced rug. “I'll kill him.”
“No,” she said quickly. “A man. Two men. They took him. They took Aidan.” As though on cue, a burly workman sauntered into the room, sizing up the two children twined on the floor.
“What's this, then?”
Cormac sprang to his feet, his hand going instinctively to his side, where a grown man might sheath his sword.
“Who are you?” he asked in a booming voice, standing as tall as his ten years would allow.
The man narrowed his eyes, assessing Cormac. After a moment, he said, “I'm the master sweep. You two run along, then.” A handful of chimney boys drifted in behind him, their eyes dazed and cheeks blackened with soot. “We've work to do here.”
“Was it you?” Cormac demanded. “Did you take him?”
Marjorie grabbed Cormac's arm, shaking her head. “That's not the one,” she whispered hoarsely.
“Took who?” The man glanced from Cormac to the spill of ash on the hearthstones. A look dawned on his face. “Oh, good Christ help us, 'twas the bloody yeoman. To the carts,” he shouted to the boys.
Terror quickly infused their blank eyes, and the sweeps scrambled at once from the room.
“Who?” Marjorie cried.
“Who's the yeoman?” Cormac demanded.
The master sweep went to peer out the window. “Sometimes the men come; they gather the sweeps.”
“Gather them?” Marjorie said slowly, as though repeating foreign speech.
Cormac pulled Marjorie to her feet, setting his hand at her back. “Where'd they take Aidan?”
“They take the boys to Barbados.” Distracted, the man hurried to the door. “Or the Americas. Wherever their plantation is.”
“Plantation?”
At Cormac's question, the man paused in the doorway. “You wee fool,” he said in a voice thick with disdain.
“What do you think happens to lads too poor to be claimed? To lads who need to beg for their supper? The boogies come and snatch you away.”