Frost

by Holly Webb

  “Do you remember the last time the river froze?” her mother asked, and Cassie blinked, trying to look back in time. It was so hard…

  “No…?” she whispered uncertainly.

  “She’s too young!” Will said, laughing. “I remember.”

  “I do too!” Cassie protested, even though she didn’t at all.

  “We took you to walk on the ice,” her mother told her, smiling. “You were only tiny, Cassie, I’m not surprised you don’t remember.”

  “I’ll remember this Frost Fair forever,” Cassie said determinedly.

  “We’re nearly there,” her father promised, feeling her tug on his hand. “Very close – look, do you see, between the houses?”

  Cassie peered forward and saw a mass of golden lights bobbing in the darkness – the fair, stretched out across the frozen river.

  Cassie had seen the river many times before. It was often busy – thronged with small rowing boats ferrying passengers from one bank to the other, or travelling up and down – but she had never seen it like this. A huge crowd swirled about on the ice, talking and laughing and pointing at the sights to be seen.

  Most people were in plain clothes, with warm cloaks and had wooden pattens tied over their shoes to protect against the chill of the ice. Several beggars in ragged clothes were asking for coins. But here and there the light from the lanterns and flaring torches shone on gold-braided coats and silken dresses under fur. The richer people of London, perhaps even courtiers from the king’s palace, were out to see the magic of the frozen city for themselves.

  “Keep close,” Cassie’s mother warned her. “There’s such a crowd, it would be easy to lose you. What shall we do first, then?” she added, smiling at Cassie’s excited face, the way she kept turning round to look at all the different stalls and sideshows. “Would you like to see a puppet show?”

  “They’re playing at ninepins over there!” Will said excitedly, pointing ahead. “And look, a bear!”

  Cassie shuddered. The bear was caged up next to a fenced-off ring. They were going to make it fight later, she supposed. She had never been to see the bears at the Bear Garden out in Southwark, since it wasn’t a fit place to take a child, her mother always said. But she had heard her father’s apprentices at the printers talking about bear-baiting and she thought it sounded desperately cruel.

  “Perhaps we should buy some gingerbread as a treat,” her mother said gently, noticing her worried look. “Look, there’s a stall just there, close to your father’s printing booth. We’ll buy some, and then you can eat it while you watch the puppets.”

  Cassie nodded. She loved gingerbread and they hardly ever had it. She could smell the spices from here. As they waited their turn at the stall, Cassie gazed around at the different sideshows and then she clutched at Will’s arm. “Look! A boat on wheels!”

  “Don’t be silly,” her brother started to say, then he stopped. “Oh.”

  Cassie gave him a triumphant look and then went back to watching the boat being drawn past. It was a small sailing boat, but it was being hauled over the ice by a team of men pulling on ropes. The sails were just flapping a little in the wind and it was laden with a crowd of people, laughing and waving as they slid past.

  “Here.” Her mother put a piece of gingerbread into Cassie’s mittened hands, and Cassie breathed a dark, exciting sniff of it. It smelled exotically warm, the perfect thing to eat out on the frozen river. She nibbled the edge cautiously, and felt the heat of the ginger and cinnamon fill her mouth.

  “Cassie! Will! This way! Come and print your names.” Cassie’s father waved at them from beside the printing press, and Cassie and Will hurried over to stand beside the huge machine. Cassie couldn’t help looking worriedly at the ice underneath it, but there were no cracks. She watched Benjamin, her father’s apprentice, fit the metal type into the frame. Most of the message was already there – he just had to add the letters for her name and then Will’s, further down.

  “There.” He smiled at Cassie. “You want to pull the devil’s tail?”

  Cassie nodded excitedly. She had visited the printworks often, but she was hardly ever allowed to touch the great presses. Her father lifted her up to reach the great metal handle that pulled the weight of the press down on to the type, pressing it down hard into the paper. Then Benjamin rolled the frame out of the press and opened it up, lifting out the sheet of paper and trimming it deftly into smaller cards. He presented them to Will and Cassie with a flourish.

  Cassie stroked the thick linen-rich paper admiringly and smiled at the pretty edging around the card. Her name looked so elegant in the smart black lettering. Cassandra Daunt.

  “It’s beautiful,” she told her father and Benjamin.

  “Be careful – the ink needs a while to dry,” her father pointed out. “Sixpence please, young lady.” Then he laughed at Cassie’s horrified face. “I’m teasing you, sweetheart. Here, that should be dry now. Tuck it away in your pocket and run and see the puppet show.”

  Cassie nodded, her cheeks scarlet – Benjamin was smirking at her and Will rolling his eyes. She put the card away carefully in the little leather pocket hanging at the waist of her dress and turned to look at the crowd around the puppet booth, so that no one would see the tears smarting in her eyes. Why did everyone always have to make fun of her?

  She sniffed crossly and muttered something about going to watch the puppets to her mother.

  “Come back here to the printing booth straight after!” her mother called to her, and Cassie waved to show she’d heard. She walked around the edge of the crowd at the puppet show, wondering how she could get to the front to see what was happening. If she went back and asked, her father or maybe even Benjamin would lift her up on to their shoulders, but she didn’t want to. She was still annoyed with them for laughing and she didn’t want to sound like a little girl begging for favours.

  In the end she spotted a gap in the crowd and went for it, burrowing forward like a mole. Most people let her creep past, though a few did complain that she should wait her turn.

  “Let the little one through,” one old woman told a couple of larger boys in front of her, and Cassie thanked her politely. At last she was almost at the front and able to see the stage set up on the bed of a wagon, the puppets dancing in front of a dark curtain.

  It was the tale of St George and the dragon, with the dragon a great green beast, dangling from several strings so that he could coil and leap around the mailed knight. Cassie squeaked delightedly as the creature seemed to breathe a plume of fire, though she wondered afterwards if perhaps it had only been a puff of silken fabric. It had happened so quickly and cleverly that it was hard to tell.

  St George swung his sword, and the dragon collapsed to the floor of the stage, groaning sadly and then turning his paws upwards in a deathlike pose. The crowd cheered enthusiastically and then started to melt away before the puppeteers could close the curtain and hurry out to pass around a hat for coins.

  Cassie stayed watching, hoping that wasn’t the end and there would be more, but then a young boy in a dark coat came out and held a hat meaningfully under her nose. Reluctantly, she gave him the penny her mother had put into her pocket. She supposed he was one of the puppeteers, perhaps the one who had made the dragon dance about so wildly, and she longed to ask him about it. But he moved on, hurrying after the other people in the crowd and sweet-talking them for pennies.

  Cassie was about to go back to the printer’s booth when a flash of reddish-brown caught her eye, somewhere around the puppeteers’ wagon. At first Cassie thought that it was one of the puppets – maybe it had fallen down below the curtain. She crouched down to look better and saw a sharp, pointed face peering back at her.

  Cassie laughed out loud at the strange little thing gazing at her hungrily with golden-brown eyes. And then suddenly, a strange wave of homesickness rolled over her, as if the ice had melted and the river was sucking her under. Cassie leaned against the wagon wheel, gasping for breath.
r />   Frost!

  She didn’t belong here. Cassie looked around wildly, trying to balance the two lives that both seemed to be in her head at once. She was Cassie, daughter of Christopher Daunt the printer, out exploring the Frost Fair – and she was Cassie, a girl out on a snowy night, following the fox cub she’d been feeding since the summer holidays.

  “Which am I?” she whispered to the little fox – the only part that seemed to belong to both Cassies. But the fox was gone. The puppet-show boy had come stomping back over, grumbling because there was hardly any money in his hat. He had frightened the fox away and now he growled at Cassie.

  “Show’s over. Get gone,” he muttered as he tramped past her and round to the end of the wagon. But Cassie was still too confused to move. She stayed leaning by the wheel, blinking to herself and wondering what to do. Where to go? What had happened to the little fox? There were angry voices behind her and she listened without really meaning to, too bewildered to move away.

  “Is that all you got?” a voice said irritably.

  “I did my best!” the boy snapped. “Can’t help it if half the crowd left before I got out there! We need another boy to pass around the hat – I can’t do everything.”

  “Another boy?” The puppeteer laughed. “I can’t even afford to keep you on takings like this!”

  “You said I could have some money for a pie when we got to the fair,” the boy moaned. “I’m hungry. I haven’t had anything to eat.”

  “A pie? There was bread and cheese aplenty, boy. I’m not giving you money to go off gallivanting, not after yesterday.”

  There was a grumpy silence and then the boy said sulkily, “There wasn’t any bread and cheese left, you ate it all. And I wasn’t gone that long.”

  “All afternoon,” his master hissed. “Half a dozen shows we could have done! It’s good takings at the The Dog and Duck, always. I needed you there and you were off watching the duck-baiting with those tearaway lads. So don’t you go begging me for a pie now, you lazy lump! And don’t you tell me I ate the bread and cheese, I haven’t had a crumb. I’ve been too busy chasing after you!”

  The two lives swirled inside Cassie’s head, making her feel dizzy. The Dog and Duck was a pub close to their flat, where her dad liked to go to watch the football with Grandpa sometimes. And it was a pub over the river that she’d heard her father talk about, in St George’s Fields. His apprentices had gone over there to watch dogs being set on the ducks. St George’s Fields was a swampy, marshy sort of place, where there were ducks aplenty. Much of the land south of the river was like that, Cassie thought vaguely. Her father’s apprentices had been late back too and he’d been angry. But her mother had persuaded him not to dock their wages, reminding him that they were young and they’d learn…

  Cassie squeaked as the pointed foxy face popped up again, looking at her from under a booth advertising a magical phoenix bird, the only one in captivity. She darted after it, sure that somehow Frost would show her the way home. After all, it was following the fox cub that had brought her here, wasn’t it? Cassie squeezed her hands into fists inside her mittens. She didn’t understand what was happening. No one had brought her here. She lived here. But at the same time…

  The fox, Cassie told herself. There’s something special about her, I know there is. I know I’ve seen her before – but then I’m sure I never have… I’ve got to follow the fox. Then perhaps I’ll find out what’s happening. She cast one last worried look back across the ice and the crowd at the printing booth. Then she drew her brown cloak tight around her and darted after the little red-brown shape.

  The fox stayed hidden, creeping between the booths so cleverly that Cassie was almost sure the creature had shown herself on purpose at the puppet show. She was never visible for more than a moment now, just peeping round every so often to see that Cassie was still following.

  Cassie stumbled along on the rough ice, made slippery by so many passing feet, panting a little. Even on the ice she was getting hot under her thick cloak, but she couldn’t slow down – she mustn’t get left behind.

  “Cassie!”

  She froze for a moment but didn’t look back. It was Will’s voice – and there was her father calling too. Of course they would chase after her. Her mother had told her to stay close. Cassie hurried, trying to run in her wooden-soled shoes and the fox cub seemed to speed up too, scurrying between the stalls, her white tail tip bobbing.

  “Cassie, stop! Come back here!” her father roared, and Cassie turned round anxiously. He was so close! He had almost caught her up. She shook her head worriedly. She should do as she was told – why on earth was she running off? She was going to get into trouble, and—

  No.

  She had to catch the fox. She raced on faster and saw the fox streaking away ahead of her.

  “Frost!” Cassie cried. Then she felt her ankle turn underneath her and she gasped and slammed down hard on the ice, hitting her head with a frightened cry.

  “Cassie! Cassie, wake up! What were you doing?”

  “Is she dead?” Will’s voice was scared.

  “No … no. She’s just stunned. She must have hit her head on the ice when she fell.”

  Cassie blinked and stared up at her father’s worried, angry face.

  “There! You see – she’s awake now.” He sounded as though he hadn’t been completely sure she was going to wake up. Looking at him, Cassie thought that might be what was making him so cross.

  “Why were you running away from us?” her father demanded. “You could hear us calling, couldn’t you? Why didn’t you come straight back to the booth like you were told?”

  “My head hurts,” Cassie whispered. It was easier than trying to answer all those questions, especially when she didn’t know the answers. Why had she been running? She knew it was important to go straight back to her mother. What on earth had she been doing?

  Her father huffed, his breath steaming in the cold, and scooped her up in his arms. Cassie huddled into his coat, her eyes half closed. She was starting to feel better but she still didn’t understand why she had been running away.

  As they passed the puppet booth, the memory of a little furry face made her gasp with surprise and her father looked down at her. “Oh, so you’re awake again? Good. You can make your excuses to your mother – she was frantic. What happened, Cassie? Why did you run off?”

  “There was a fox,” Cassie murmured, trying to remember. It didn’t really make sense to her either and she had a feeling that her father wasn’t going to understand.

  “A fox,” he said blankly. “In the city? No, child.”

  “There was,” Cassie insisted as her mother came rushing up to kiss her and cry and tell her off, all at once.

  “She says she saw a fox,” her father explained.

  “But … there aren’t any foxes here.” Cassie’s mother shook her head. “And if there were, even a fox is no excuse for disappearing like that! You had me worried to death!”

  “I did see one.” Cassie wriggled out of her father’s arms and slipped down to stand on the ice. “I know I did.”

  “Cassie, foxes are country beasts,” her father explained. “They don’t come into London.”

  “Perhaps she’s still dazed,” Cassie’s mother said worriedly. “She’s imagining things. I’d better take her home.”

  “Oh, no! No!” Cassie pleaded. “You said we could see the dancing and visit the booths…”

  “You said you would be good and stay close,” her mother snapped, and Cassie looked down at her feet miserably. Her mother was right. Whatever had she been thinking?

  Cassie rolled over in bed then froze, listening. Had her mother heard her stir? She had been up and down the stairs all evening, looking in to the bedroom where Cassie was asleep on a small truckle bed next to the big four-poster. Lucas was asleep in his wooden cradle at the end of the bed too. It seemed as if he or Cassie only had to twitch and their mother was there, fussing.

  But there was no sound
from below now, no creaking on the stairs. Cassie sighed. She wasn’t tired, especially not when she knew that Will was still out enjoying all the sights of the Frost Fair. She had ruined her special treat and all because of a fox – a fox that her mother and father were certain she couldn’t even have seen.

  A sound from outside in the street made her roll over again and then scramble up on to her knees so that she could look out of the window behind her. She pulled the blankets up around her neck like a cloak and peered out into the street. The moon was shining on to the snow, leaving it glowing blue-white. In the street outside the window sat a small dark shape, with pricked ears and a thick white-tipped tail.

  Cassie pressed her fingers against the tiny panes of glass, flinching at the cold. There was definitely a fox out there. She had never seen a real fox before today but she had seen pictures in a book of her mother’s, Aesop’s Fables, and she wasn’t imagining it. She hadn’t imagined it earlier that night either.

  The fox seemed to see her looking. She stood up and moved so that she was under her window, but a little further out into the street. Then it barked at her – that was the sound she had heard before, Cassie realized.

  It was almost as if the fox was calling.

  Cassie stared down at it doubtfully and then scrambled out of bed. She would show her mother! Then perhaps everyone would stop being so cross. Perhaps they would even let her go back to the fair? Feeling hopeful, she dragged on her petticoats and stockings, and then her warm woollen dress. Then she took one last look out of the window before hurrying downstairs. The fox was still there, looking up at her.