It was Christmas Eve, and a thin smut of woodsmoke hung over the Potter’s Field, clinging to the dusty black clothes of the mourning party. They stood, two-score children with heads bowed, around a broad trench dug at the edge of the burial grounds, staring at the canvas wrapped bodies of their fellow orphans. As the oldest remaining boys, Henry and Francis stood more or less in the centre, next to the looming clergymen who ran the Cheapside Orphanage. The two boys leaned on their shovels, bone-weary, feeling the cold seep back into their bodies, their sweat chilling then freezing to the wool of their stiff formal coats.

In front of them, affecting a solemn air, Father William droned his way through a sermon about the mysteries of God, and His infinite mercy. His bloated cheeks and and lips affected his delivery; wet and sloppy. Henry barely heard him, his entire attention on the row of small canvas bundles. He gripped the shovel by its long handle until his knuckles turned white, and his nails dug into the pine, leaving small crescent-shaped indentations.

By contrast, Francis hung on every word, his attention rapt and devoid of irony.

After an immeasurable amount of time, the old man stopped, crossed himself, and scattered the open grave with holy water from a small brass basin. He crossed himself again, and moved off. Two by two, the other orphans followed in a line, and headed for home. Henry and Francis remained behind, along with a deacon, inky haired and avian featured, set to watch over them as they worked.

As soon as they were alone, the priest found a stunted tree to shelter under and lit his long-stemmed pipe. He turned away from the grave, and left the two boys to their labour.

Henry sneered, and hefted his shovel onto his shoulder. “Well, I guess that is all we warrant. Not even a withy box, or a name burned into a plank of wood.”

Francis rolled his shoulders, crossing to the other side of the trench. “I am sure the Brothers did all they could, Henry. You needn’t take such a tone.”

“Tell me that again the next time we’ve a heavy rain, and our friends’re vomited from the clay to feed the crows and the feral dogs.”

“Don’t be disgusting, Henry. We’ve put them deep enough; that won’t happen.”

“We’ll see.” Henry started to shovel the heavy clay back into the trench, tears mixing with the claggy mud on his face. A tiny bead of blood welled on his lower lip, and then vanished into its cracked surface.

As they worked, the silence stretched long and taut. Even the priest became uncomfortable with it, and started to hum one of his favourite hymns under his breath. Francis eventually shattered the reverie. “What are we going to do now? We’ve not long left before we turn sixteen.”

“We need to find trades, Francis. I’d have thought that was obvious.” Henry looked up briefly, and smirked. “I mean, unless you want to join the church and blow hot air for a living instead.”

“I wish you wouldn’t blaspheme so much” he grunted, stabbing at a root-bound clod of earth with the point of his shovel. “But we do need to find work soon, to support Maggie. She’ll be old enough to marry next year.” He finally got the edge of the blade under the mass, and levered the whole thing into the grave with a strained heave. “I’d rather not see her sold to some flabby wool trader, or stevedore.”

Henry grit his teeth at the image, and drove his shovel into his mound of earth like a spear, with such force that his booted feet slithered back in the wet grass. “The solution is the same as it's always been, Fran. If we can find a master, we can buy her out of the orphanage. Our chances are better that way, at least.” He twisted the shovel one way, then the other, then lifted a slab of clay so heavy that the pine shaft creaked with strain. He spared the priest a quick glance, then tipped the lot into the hole with barely a trace of effort. “If you join the church, they’ll seal you off in some remote seminary and neither of us will ever see you again.”

Francis paused, wiping his forehead with the sleeve of his coat. “If we can’t, I suppose we’ll have to try our luck on the streets. I think we’d be fine if we stuck together.”

Henry shook his head, responding to Francis’ dreamy optimism with flat refusal. “It might seem romantic to you, Francis, but this isn’t jumping on a ship for the New World. Without money or a trade, we’d be done for out there. You know that I’ve tried. Do you remember how that went?”

Francis frowned, but dug for a while in silence, visibly struggling as the cold hardened the clay and chapped his hands and face. Henry has no such difficulty. The clay was just as hard where he stood, but he thrust the shovel in and wrenched it free from the earth with a strength that caused Francis to flinch. Francis cleared his throat.

Henry looked at his friend, who in turn looked at their respective piles of earth. Henry’s, nearly depleted; Francis’, barely dented.

Henry just grunted, glanced at the priest to make sure they were still being ignored, and switched places. He kept shovelling at a punishing pace, but slowed when he thought they might be being observed. Steam rose from his woollen coat, mixing with the smog before being carried away.

*

Later that night Henry snuck up to the window outside the Priests dormitory. He could hear them as they muttered to one another, by turns gossiping like washerwomen and grumbling piously. He wedged himself between a grotesque and the roof, curled up like a spider in a crack, and listened in on their conversation. He hopes to hear some useful fragments of information, something they could use to get out of Cheapside, away from the orphanage. Finally, as the cold was beginning to penetrate his bones and make him sleepy, he heard what he had been waiting for.

Henry, watching the flickering shadows of the priests on the far wall, saw one lean in close to another. He spoke, saying “I’ve heard the Guild of Taylors are seeking new blood. One of their men will be at mass tomorrow.”

“Oh aye,” said another, “and who’ll he be wanting, brother? The older boys are all dead, apart from the troublemaker and that know-it-all. The young ‘uns are too small to show potential.”

“Well, nought to be doing. We’ll just have to let him see what we have.”

“God willing, they’ll try and take ‘em both, eh?”

“God willing. But I severely doubt He is. Getting the both of them out would be a miracle beyond our right to hope for. One, though. I think we may manage to rid ourselves of one.”

“Even one would make my soul rest easier. I know we do God’s work, but it is heavy all the same.”

“Have faith. He has a plan, we need only follow His messengers.”

Henry leaned back against the roof tiles, and looked up at the featureless sky, unsure of what the priests meant. He didn’t smile. He should, he knew, because one of them might get the chance to leave. But they’d always talked of this moment like it was something that they would be doing together.

There may have been more for him to hear, but he was far, far too cold to wait and see. He creeped along the eaves until he reached the high window with the open latch. He slipped inside, into the cloister, and wrapped himself around one of the rough oak pillars, preparing to shimmy down. Just as he was about to descend, he heard a door open nearby, and instead climbed further up, jamming himself into the roof-space.

Henry pressed the soles of his feet hard against the rough-daub wall of the orphanage, splinters from the joist at his back digging into his skin. Below him a priest met with another man in the doorway, and they stood muttering to one another. The outsider was tall, wealthy and dangerous looking in his slashed blue doublet and half-cape, a rapier and fighting dagger on his wide leather belt. As the seconds stretched, Henry’s feet started to go numb, his legs weakening from the prolonged strain. He bit his lip, eyes welling as he listened intently for the whisper of slippered feet in the cloister below. His legs steadied, for the moment. Long minutes of waiting passed, punctuated by the flutter of bats whipping past him in search of midges and moths. His calves began to ache, shoulders burn; Henry started to think that he may just have to drop to the floor and try his luck with the adults... but then he heard the swish of heavy wool, the click of a door shutting. Henry waited as the outsider passed below him, and then for the pool of light from the priest’s lantern to disappear.

The boy dropped quietly, bending his knees and absorbing the landing with practised ease. He slipped back through the door the priest had passed through, and then up into the maze of tight corridors and stairs that led to the third-floor dormitory. The rooms were black as pitch, not even a glimmer of moonlight able to penetrate the cheap scraped hide covering the windows, but he knew these narrow hallways well enough. When Henry crept into the dorm room, a steady white light flared up from the corner of the room and he stopped, shielding his eyes with one hand against the sudden glare.

“Henry? Is that you?”

“Francis, put that bloody light out.”

The light winked out, quicker than any oil lamp. Henry stumbled across the room, night-blinded by the flash, and he hit his knee on the corner of one of the empty beds. He cursed, and Francis chuckled before summoning another, gentler Angel-light. The room came alive with long shadows and creepy pools of darkness, but Henry could see well enough to make his way to his and Francis' beds without any further accidents.

“Put that out now,” Henry said. “What if someone sees?”

“Who’s to see?” Francis asked. He gestured into the dark, empty room that stretched beyond the reach of his humble glow. It felt quiet without all the other orphans; abandoned. “It’s just us, and these empty beds, in this empty room, with its mostly-empty fireplace. There’s no one else our age left.”

“One of the priests might come.”

“You don’t think that. You just want to be contrary. Even I’d admit they won’t bother walking up the stairs at this time of night just to look in on us.”

Henry glared at Francis, until he eventually willed the light out and left them sitting in darkness, the only light the soft orange glow from the banked embers in the fireplace.

“Well? Did you find anything out?” asked Francis.

“The head of the Taylors’ guild is coming tomorrow. We might be up for apprenticeships.”

“That's good news, surely?”

“Perhaps. But they may split us up… or worse.”

“Worse?”

“What if they take you, but keep Maggie to be married off to some fat merchant?”

Without Francis around to provide some kind of legal link between them, Henry’s odds of being able to keep Maggie safe dropped to almost nothing.

Francis scoffed, but his eagerness was gone. He leaned back, and rekindled the light in his cupped palms, but this time as barely a candle-flame. Henry pulled his tunic over his head, and inspected the back. A few small holes where the splinters went in, but no blood. Because of what he is, Henry had never been much of a bleeder. He sat on the edge of his cot, and gingerly explored his skin, the knobbles of his vertebrae, and the curved lines of his ribs, easy to find and count.

Francis got out of bed, and sat behind Henry, then carefully pulled out each splinter, the last a piece of wood the size of a sewing needle. He held each sliver up to his meagre light and inspected them, before laying each of them down on the blanket. There was not even a trace of blood on any of them, and Henry’s pain disappeared in an instant, as his wounds closed.

Henry sighed. “And what if they put us to the test?” he asks. He twisted a wood fragment around in his fingers, before throwing it into the fireplace. “We'll be tied to a stake before dinner-time. Or I will, at least. You'll have no choice but to spend the rest of your life all cloistered up with hymns and prayer books and fat, wrinkled old scrotes like Father William.” He wrinkled his nose in disgust, but lightened his tone; “Which, now that I think about it, sounds even worse than being burned at the stake.”

Henry tried to laugh, but his comment earned nothing but a long silence from his friend. He faltered, carefully folded the tunic, and placed it at the foot of his cot. He pressed down against the hay-stuffed mattress to conceal his shaking hands.

Francis stood, and put a hand on Henry's shoulder. “That won't happen, Henry. They hardly ever test children.”

“Hardly ever. But they have, and they will again. We both know that.” Henry turned away, and pulled his long linen night-robe from under the bed. Francis lingered, still reaching out, pained. He dropped his hand to his side, and turned away as Henry drew the night-robe on over his head and got under the heavy woollen blankets. They smelled of mildew and old sweat. Francis got in with him, and they curled up together against the terrible cold that settled in the room, and scribbled frost across the windows. The witch-light faded out until the room is dark again, and Henry lay awake, listening to the distant thrum of the city, his friend’s gentle snoring in his ear.

*

The next morning, Henry woke up thinking of blood. He’d seen the pale, anguished faces of his dying friends, blood bubbling from their lips, and in his dream he reached out to pinch their nostrils shut, covering their gasping mouths until they finally lay still, one after the other. Once he was done, he looked down at his hands, and found them clean.

When he sat up and saw their empty beds, he cried out. His voice was thin and cracked against the rising tide of noise outside the shuttered windows, his breath misting in the morning air.

Francis startled, half getting to his feet from where he was kneeling in prayer at the foot of their bed. The boy was naked, skin blue-white, and trembling from the chill. Behind him were two Angels, one at each shoulder. Shimmering transparent figures like dust-motes in the morning light, their haloed heads almost brushing the ceiling. They were both beautiful, androgenous, clad in shimmering white robes with long feathered wings folded tight against their backs. Their expressions were lean and hungry as they observed the boy’s sacrifice. Their attention snapped to Henry as soon as he moved, and they watched him with catlike intensity.

Henry ignored them as best he could, though honestly they made his skin crawl. Sitting up to get out of bed, he winced as his bare feet touched the ice cold floor-boards, then rubbed the sleep from his eyes with the heels of his hands. “Sorry mate.”

“Are you alright?” Francis struggled to his feet, then stretched and stamped his feet to get feeling back into his limbs. “Bad dreams again?”

Henry shivered. He wrapped the blankets around himself and went over to the little fireplace at one end of the room. Yesterday's fire was still banked up, but barely even embers now. He squatted in front of it, trying to coax it to life with a stick as Francis used his bare hands to crack the ice off of the water in their wash basin. The Angels followed him, gliding soundlessly along the floorboards. The younger children were beginning to wake in the orphanage, and they could hear the squeaks of their small voices below them. Francis’ Angels looked at one another, and then vanished.

“Merry Christmas, I guess,” Francis chuckled as he washed his hands and face in the ice-cold water. “I wonder what we shall get from the priests this year. More of their printed scripture I'm guessing, or a ticket to one of the morality plays.”

Henry snorted, and shook his head. “I could use a new coat, or shoes that don't have holes that show off my toes.”

Francis laughs. “Why, you have fine toes, Henry! And at least you have shoes to wear at all.”

“I brought these shoes with me when my arsehole of an uncle left us here two years ago. If they hadn't been so comically large back then, I'd be barefoot and frostbitten now.”

Francis’ good humour evaporated. He turned to Henry, his expression grave. “God would have provided for you, Henry.”

Henry wheeled on Francis, his face suddenly red. “God has provided nothing but the cold comfort and platitudes of those bloody crows.”

“The roof over your head-”

“Is the work of men, not angels. People paid for this place, and people built it.”

Francis raised his hands in mock surrender. “All right, Henry, cling to your cynicism. How is the fire doing?”

Henry turned away, shame pricking his cheeks as he peered at the fireplace. “Cursed thing is nearly out, and we've not enough kindling. It would help if we were burning wood, not horse shit.”

Francis nodded, as if conceding a point. He muttered under his breath, frowned, and then picked up a shard of ice he’d broken off the wash basin, squeezing it in his hand until his skin turned from pink, to red, to white, until the frozen water cut into his skin and the melt marbled with his blood. He glanced at the banked pile of smouldering horseshit, and muttered a prayer to his Angels as his hand started trembling. The room darkened as his power started to bend and focus the morning sun from the windows, weaving a ribbon of light and directing it into the fireplace. A small twist of smoke rose from the midst of the piled dung, and then a steady flame. It does not roar, but it burns, and immediately Henry’s skin sings from the warmth of it. “Best put some more shit on there before it goes out again.”

“You really are terrifying sometimes, Francis.”

“Says you.” Francis turned back to the wash bowl and starts to clean his underarms with a wet rag and their bar of tallow soap.

Henry ignored him. He stared into the flames instead, trying to see what Francis sees in the beings that Francis and the priests call Angels. It would make things so much easier if Henry could believe that the Angels were forces for good, but he has never been so sure about that. The beings he saw are not benevolent. They are beautiful, but unnatural. They wore the shifting faces of the past, of lost loved ones, responding to need and sacrifice like hungry dogs. To him, they seemed more like the devils of scripture than Angels. But to speak that thought aloud was to invite accusations of witchcraft, and the best scenario would be a hang-man's noose and a baying crowd of punters making bets on how long you'll take to die. The worst was similar, but you'd be on fire, to boot.

As Francis had warned, the magical flames start to gutter as they run out of fuel. They were created by his gift, if that’s what it was, but after that needed to be fed and maintained like any normal flame. Henry shoveled some more of the dung into the fire-place, and coughed at the resulting billows of foul smoke. Their chimney was half-clogged with soot, but the Priests had not seen fit to send one of the small ones up with a brush to clean it. Not since the sickness, anyway.

“Your turn.” Francis left the basin, and went to the long chest where their Sunday clothes are kept. Two sets each of doublets and hose, and stiff-collared linen shirts. All laid out flat so they don’t crease. Henry washed himself as Francis dressed, and then put on his own. The clothes were stiff and uncomfortable, third-hand and cut for a boy narrower in the chest and shoulders. At least the sleeves were long enough, and the hose didn't sag too much at the knees. They both slipped on their clumsy church shoes, too-big ones with brass buckles, ‘charitably’ donated for use only on Sundays. They were sized for adults. Henry stuffed the toes with rags so that his pair stayed on his feet.

They made it to the front of the building early. Few children stood around the courtyard, and even the street outside was not yet filled with the crowds heading to church. The churchmen, however, stood at the corners of the yard like old magpies, snatching up their wards for tardiness, untidy appearance, or any other sin they could dream up. They all wore black, with white lace surplices covering their shoulders, and held long willow switches in their knobbly hands. Henry had been licked with those canes enough times to be wary of wandering too close, so he stuck to the area near to the gates, watching as more children gathered from the three dormitories surrounding the courtyard.

The girls reached the yard last, ushered down by a matronly old woman. Maggie emerged from among the girls as they hustled out the door, dressed in a white woolen smock a bit too big for her, her curly dark hair barely contained by frayed ribbons. She pulled her knitted shawl up over her head, and looked around the yard, smiling when she spotted the boys loitering against the wrought iron fence. She walked over, skirting the groups of younger orphans and staying carefully out of reach of the watching curates. As she neared, she straightened, smoothing out her apron and adjusting the shawl so that it shielded her face from the nearest of the adults. “Henry! Fran! How did you sleep?”

“Well enough, despite Henry’s best efforts.” Francis embraced his sister, but not for too long, as the clergy frowned on displays of affection. They all stood for a moment, awkward, aware that they were being watched.

Henry coughed into his hand to break the silence. “And how did you sleep, Mags?”

Maggie shrugged with one shoulder, and waved a hand vaguely. “Well enough, though it was ghastly cold.”

“It certainly was.” Henry leaned in closer. “I've heard there will be guild-masters at the service today. The Taylors Guild may be looking for apprentices.”

“Oh! That's wonderful news.” Maggie smiled, but her expression was painful.

Henry looked at Francis as if to say 'I told you so.' “Don't worry, Maggie. We'll take care of you, even if we get taken on. Besides,” he grins wickedly “It's not like you'll be snatched away for marriage, not with your skinny face.”

“Hey! Shush, you monster!” Maggie hit him lightly on the arm, and Henry glanced at the nearest deacon, who had started to move towards them through a flock of younger children.

Francis caught the movement as well “Enough you two, we’re attracting attention. Meet you behind the Old Forge after church?”

Maggie subsided, and then nodded. “See you then.”

They all scattered as the priest got closer, trying to blend in with the other children. The deacon got distracted by some boys making a well-endowed snowman, and Henry got chatting with one of the younger boys about football. He kept one eye on Maggie as he discussed the merits of throwing an elbow or a head-butt in with a tackle, and whether it was worth hanging about long enough to kick someone once they were down.

The conversation was broken off by a shrill whistle, and everyone fell into two lines, boys and girls. The clergy took their positions, and they all moved off onto the streets, snaking between ox-carts and other church-goers as they made their way to the chapel.