On nights when the rain hammered against the weak roof and the biting wind howled through the cracks in the walls, the two girls would curl up in one bed to stay warm.
"Nights like this, miss," Becky shivered, "doesn't seem like it'll ever be summer again."
"Nights like this," Sara repeated through chilly lips. "I don't believe that there was ever a night like this!" She put her arms around Becky and hugged her tightly.
"Not even for the prisoners in the Bastille, miss?" Becky blinked and pulled the threadbare blanket closer around them. They had piled all their bedclothes on Sara's creaky mattress, since her tiny room had less holes.
"I suppose they must have felt like this, too," Sara said thoughtfully. "And…"
"Yes, miss?" Becky asked when Sara had been silent for a minute or two. Sara sat up, seeming to have forgotten the cold.
"There was a night like this," she said decisively. "Once, long ago."
Becky drew the blankets up to her neck, looking up at Sara with wide eyes.
"It was a night," Sara told her, "on a ship, a pirate ship, sailing round Cape Horn. It was crewed by a band of evil men and captained by the cruellest corsair of the seas – the Flying Dutchman!"
Becky fluttered in awed excitement.
"It was on a night such as this that he committed his most terrible deed. A storm was raging and the ship was tossed over the white-tipped waves as if it weighed nothing. The sails tore against the fury of the wind and the crew were terrified of a force far greater than any that they could command. But the captain – ah, the captain!"
Sara paused, sure of her audience. Her eyes were alive and almost glowing in the darkness; she looked like a sorceress.
"The captain leapt up to the prow of his ship. The wind around him screamed with wrathful passion, but he cared nothing for that! He threw back his head and laughed, revelling in the roar of Heaven. Then he cursed God, long and loud, shrieking his hatred to the skies."
Gasping, Becky let the blanket fall from her grip and she hugged Sara's thin pillow to her chest.
"And then there was the most tremendous crash!" Sara flung her arms out wide. "It was as if the sky had fallen down to silence the Flying Dutchman. When it ended, the storm had gone and so had all life on that ship. The Flying Dutchman had become accursed. Both captain and crew still live a wretched half-life, damned to sail the oceans forever more…"
She stopped. Becky was kneeling on the bed, utterly enchanted. Sara looked at her for a moment and then continued slowly: "…They say it's bad luck to see them. The most terrible luck in the world."
They snuggled down again, even more tired, but against all the odds they were a little warmer.
"Maybe…maybe they sailed up the Thames one day, miss," Becky murmured sleepily.
"They put into port once every seven years," Sara whispered. "Maybe."
They fell asleep soon afterwards, and if either of them dreamt of the Flying Dutchman, she never told the other.