Frost Fair

by Edith Layton

“But this…Spanish Will…” Arthur said hesitantly. “I hear he’s a rough sort of man, Maldon. Surely not the type to understand the workings of a man like Uncle’s mind?”

  “Can you, who were so close to him?” Lucian asked. “You were the last to see Uncle, after all. What the devil do you think he was thinking, going to such a place, so late at night?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve thought about little else,” Arthur said unhappily. “He was excited, very much so, I told you that, and that was odd in him. He couldn’t wait to be away that night. I wish I knew why.”

  “What did you talk about that night? Anything that might give us a hint as to his intentions?”

  Arthur’s pleasant face looked troubled. “We spoke of such things as men talk about at dinner, Maldon. We dined together, in my rooms. He was always taking me to his club. I thought it high time I invited him to my house.”

  Lucian laughed. “Quite the little maid of all work, are you? I didn’t know you could cook, much less serve, in your rooms.”

  “I can’t,” Arthur said, growing ruddy-faced. “I had my man go out and bring in dinner from my favorite restaurant. He served. Uncle quite liked it, finished every bit. He’s fond of game pie, kidneys… Lord! I can’t stop saying ‘is,’ when I know it should be ‘was.’ This is hard to take in. Very hard.”

  “Yes,” Lucian said, “understood. But did he say anything at all to the point?”

  “Stop badgering the boy,” his mother said angrily. “If he knew anything, he’d have told us, wouldn’t he?”

  “Would he?” Lucian asked silkily, looking at his brother.

  It hardly seemed possible that Arthur could look more uncomfortable, but he did. “Well, but… Gads, Maldon, how you know such things is beyond me… I suppose I’ve always been an open book to you,” Arthur said reluctantly, “but it’s a thing I’d rather not discuss in front of Mama.”

  As his mother sputtered, Lucian said, “which means, of course, that now you’ve mentioned it, you must tell all. Well done, Arthur.”

  “Don’t blame him,” the dowager said. “He, at least, has my best interests at heart!”

  “Whilst I, of course, am plotting your imminent demise. Go on, Arthur,” Lucian said with a sigh.

  “Well, but he was talking about his coming marriage,” Arthur said, blushing. “I mean to say, the intimate side of it, that is. Asking my opinion, and such…”

  “What?” the dowager thundered, as Lucian chuckled.

  “Oh lord!” Lucian said wiping his eyes. “The lamb leading the bland. Whatever could he have been thinking, asking advice on sexual matters from such a man of the world as you?”

  “You think he would have done better to ask someone as debauched as you?” his mother shouted so loudly her companion winced. Her sons didn’t seem to notice.

  “Well, were I inexperienced, I would have done,” Lucian said, laughing.

  “Of course you would have…” his mother said, and then, because she was not a fool, however prejudiced she was, she allowed herself a grin as well.

  “Not about that,” Arthur protested. “He never mentioned that part of marriage at all. I mean, he just spoke of how he knew how odd it looked to be marrying someone so much younger than he was, and so he asked me—as a younger man—what I thought might please a ‘younger gel’ as he put it.”

  “And you said?” Lucian asked. “Behold me fascinated, what do the younger set expect these days?”

  “As if you didn’t know!” his mother shot back. “Your latest opera dancer, the one you’ve set up in your new townhouse, she’s all of twenty, isn’t she?”

  “To the day,” Lucian said calmly. “But far older in experience, I promise you. Still, you astonish me Mama.”

  “And you revolt me, Lucian,” she said angrily. “You’d a different one just last month!”

  “Had you been hoping I’d marry that one, then?” Lucian asked sweetly. “I do wish you’d said something sooner, Mama. She’s gone to Lord Barrymore’s protection by now, and is quite happy there, I hear, so it’s much too late now for me. Odd, I hadn’t thought you’d met.”

  “Yes, jest about it, I expect no less,” his mother sneered.

  “The truth then? How refreshing. It’s simply that I tend to become bored easily,” Lucian said lazily, “and I never have matrimony in mind, so be easy Mama. But it’s comforting to know someone cares, and takes especial note of my adventures. So, speaking of matrimony, what did you tell him, Arthur?”

  Arthur shifted in his seat. He lowered his eyes. “I told him that as I had no lady of my own as yet, I couldn’t say. But that love and honesty, I should think, would always carry the day. I said a lady like Louisa was of an age and temperament to know what to expect from him, especially since she’d already pledged herself to him, and so he shouldn’t get himself into a pother about it. I told him it would all work out most happily.”

  “As the nun told the virgin,” Lucian sighed.

  “I suppose you thought Arthur should discuss nasty details?” his mama cried. “He didn’t expect that sort of advice, and Arthur was very right not to attempt it.”

  “Oh, certainly. But, on that head, there is one little thing,” Lucian said casually, though his hard gray eyes glittered like sunlight on ice as he watched his mother and brother closely. “A tiny thing, but significant, I think. And so does the runner. You see, Spanish Will thinks the fact that Uncle was found on the doorstep of an attractive widow significant. Yes. The fishmonger is supposedly a comely young widow.”

  His mother gasped. Arthur looked amazed.

  His mother recovered first. “Never,” she said emphatically, shaking her head, “he didn’t even like females. We all know he was marrying Louisa because she could give him an heir, and only that. So he himself said.”

  “Speaking of which,” Lucian said, looking around the room, “where is the lovely Louisa?”

  “Too overcome to attend us, she sent word,” Arthur said.

  “Too overcome to face his family’s apparent glee,” Lucian mused, “because now she gets naught. No wedding, no inheritance, nothing to show for all her troubles but a stack of wedding invitations, and a disappointed caterer. And Uncle was warm in the pocket. I suppose it all goes to you now, Arthur, does it?”

  “I hadn’t even thought…” Arthur said, biting his lip.

  “I should think it would!” his mother said triumphantly. “You don’t need it, Lucian. Arthur was his favorite, all know that, and it’s only right. Although I regret his passing, better it should have happened now than next week.”

  “What a difference a week makes,” Lucian sighed. “Poor Louisa. So near, and yet so far.”

  “Have you seen the widow?” Arthur asked. “I mean, the one whose doorstep—the one where Uncle was discovered.”

  Lucian looked startled. “I?” he asked.

  “Yes, you,” his mother said furiously. “She has no connection to my brother, we all know that. But even so, and still and all, someone from the family ought have a look at her.”

  “Go then, with my blessings,” Lucian said, appalled. “I will do much for the Name, Mama, and well you know it. I will seek my uncle and identify his dead body, chat with a runner, and beggar myself by posting a too-generous reward, and do all sorts of unseemly things because my uncle was fool enough to get himself killed in an unseemly position in an unsavory place. And I have done. But now you expect me to interview a fishmonger? My dear!” he said with heartfelt amazement, the twin thin arcs of his brows rising as he sank back in his chair as though shot through the heart.

  There was a grudging silence. “And so what do you intend to do now?” his mother finally asked.

  “Exactly what the runner told me, of course,” Lucian said serenely. “Wait for him to tell me what he’s discovered. Why, what did you expect? Do you wish me to interview such a person? Go down to Bishopsgate and discuss my uncle with a fishmonger?”

  Arthur remained still. Even his mother was silent.


  Lucian smiled.

  Chapter Four

  Mrs. Maggie Pushkin woke, sat bolt upright and threw back her coverlet. She stepped from her bed and went straight to the window. It was still snowing. Neither of her serving girls had come to light the fire in her hearth yet and the floor was so cold it made her feet ache. But she couldn’t go back to sleep. It wasn’t just that it was Monday morning. She’d seen the face of the dead man in her mind’s eye the moment she’d opened her own. Not surprising, since it had kept her up so long last night. His, and the hard, handsome, implacable face of the Bow Street runner, Spanish Will.

  She hugged herself and shivered. She’d had a day and night to think about it, and now she was as frightened as she was angry. Leaving a dead man on her doorstep had been an act of cruelty. But in the night she’d had time to worry and now she wondered if it was worse—something personal. Could it have been a warning? She couldn’t for the life of her think of anyone who’d have such a grudge against her. For the life of her—exactly, she thought, grimacing. Not knowing her enemy didn’t mean it was impossible she had one.

  The runner was one, for a certainty. He’d even said it.

  “I’d deny it too,” he’d told her after she swore she’d never known the dead man, never seen him before, never wanted to see him again, and would he please remove the body from her steps. She’d stood in her dressing gown, clutching it closed around her, holding her self control just as tightly together, trying so hard not to shake or shiver.

  “But look, my girl,” he’d said, his voice growing deeper, almost tender, loverlike, his dark eyes glowing like they were promising something delicious, instead of death and disgrace. “You’re the most likely to have done it, and that’s that. A man dead on your doorstep, naked as a babe—or a grown man in pursuit of pleasure? You’re a pretty little package, I can’t blame him. Nor will I blame you if you tell me what happened. Be honest with me, and I’ll try to see it goes the easier for you.”

  “I do not know him,” she’d said, biting off each word. “I am no man’s mistress, and no man’s joy. Find yourself a killer someplace else. And don’t come back to plague me unless you have good reason, or I’ll pay all my coins to get all the Magistrates in London after you. I did not do this thing. Now remove him—and yourself. Or must I call the Watch to do it?”

  He’d stood looking down at her as she glared up at him. Neither blinked. Then he sighed. “You’re saying his being here is a coincidence? I don’t believe in coincidence, Mrs. Pushkin, that I do not. But there’s no more I can do now. I’ll take him, and find his name, and then I’ll find his killer. Think on what I said. And if you change your mind, you know where Bow Street is. I’ll be going—for now, and with him, to be sure. But never fear, not all the coins in London will keep me from coming back, do I think it needful. And I suspect I will.”

  She’d not dared speak. She’d nodded, spun on her heel and marched inside her shop, slamming the door so hard behind her that ice from the eaves fell on the dead man. She’d stood by the big front window, still as a statue, vibrating slightly, such a fine tremor that only the wisps of her wiry orange hair shivering like cat’s whiskers showed it, watching as Spanish Will picked out four eager men from the watching crowd in front of her shop. They’d covered over the obscene blue corpse, hoisted it, and then marched it away down the street.

  Maggie’s rough freckled hands closed to little fists now. The runner thought she was a murderer. They hanged women for murder, they hanged men and women in pairs and three and fours every week on Tyburn Hill, for murder, for robbery, for stealing anything from hams to handkerchiefs. They hanged them at thirteen and thirty and seventy years of age, man, woman and child. They were hanged for a hundred crimes, because it was grand spectacle as well as justice. All London came to see and cheer and make merry at the hangings.

  No more than the runner did she believe in coincidence. No. Someone had left the corpse there for her to find—or for the law to find for her. She thought hard. She had competitors, she had people who’d tried to cheat her, those she’d sent away with a flea in their ear for rudeness, for petty theft, for trying to make free with her person, of course, what living woman didn’t? But she couldn’t think of an enemy. Then again, she had friends, and anyone with friends must have enemies. And she had a thriving business she would leave and…

  No! she thought now, looking wildly around her room. Her room. Her house. Her shop. Not after all her hard work and sacrifice. This was hers, and no random cadaver and eager runner or unseen enemy was going to bilk her of it. She’d worked too hard.

  Her parents had married her off, at sixteen, to a man sixteen plus sixteen and half again over again, so that she could have a better life than they could offer, or any young lout they knew could provide her. It was necessary. They married off their girls and sent their boys to sea. Her father was going to be transported. Her mother knew it was death knocking, not just aggravation roiling her guts. They wed her to a hard-mouthed thick-set man with little breeding or humor, but a fair amount of money and a fine business. A man shopping for a healthy young creature to provide him with work and children, and nothing else. To be fair, he didn’t think women were capable of much else. Or men either.

  He was a decent enough husband, all told. He never had to raise his callused hand to her, because his voice was enough to terrify legions, and certainly enough to keep his young wife in line. He didn’t drink or gamble or womanize. Or talk to her, or make conversation or friends, either. He lived to work. And wanted only the one thing that work couldn’t give him.

  She did her share, uncomplaining. Because complaining wouldn’t help. He taught her to choose fish at the market, how to gut and slice and scale them too. She pushed his heavy barrow over the cobblestones through the streets of London, helping shout his wares, wrapping fish, taking coins, making change. She worked nights as well, concealing her distaste during those clumsy minutes three times a week, when he devoted himself to getting himself his fondest dream.

  She worked hard. But brought no children forth. After a year, he began taking her to physicians, quacks and midwives. But her own Grandma had been a midwife and so she thought she already knew the answer. He’d been married before. And had no children. It wasn’t a thing a man wanted to hear or know. So she listened to all the advice, drank all the potions, used all the salves and said all the prayers, and grew as tired of trying to beget as she did of trying to help him be rid of his fish every day.

  It was a thing the one expensive doctor he finally took her to said that gave her the idea.

  “Does she get ample food, and rest?” the physician at his awe-inspiring address asked, the physician whose usual lady patients never stirred from their couches, except to rise and dance. “She’s healthy otherwise, you see, no structural disorder. But females are delicate creatures and need adequate nourishment, and ample rest in order to produce young, you see.”

  Bernard Pushkin nodded, paid his fee, and grumbled all the way home, feeling cheated for paying good coin for such nonsense.

  “You know,” Maggie told him in their marriage bed later, musing, as though she hadn’t rehearsed the thing days and nights, “about what that physician said? The one that cost the earth? I wonder if there isn’t something in it? I’m so tired every night I could cry, though I’d never tell him, of course. Do you think that might be it?”

  He bridled. “My Ma had seven of us and worked like a horse all her days.”

  “But that was your Ma, and that was then,” she said softly. “Now, if we were to get a shop, I could sell from there. A nice shop, in a good location, somewhere between the nobs and regular folk. That way I’d work and have my rest, even so. I have a way with words—and people, you know that. It might be the thing for both things we want…”

  He’d snarled, turned on his side and gone to sleep.

  But they began looking at shops. She’d been wildly excited, dreaming of the West End of town, of living far from the river, farther from
her own home than she’d ever walked. She eventually got him to move away from his meager rooms in Billingsgate, at least, if not West, then North. It was a lovely house, the first such she’d ever known. It had once been a gentleman’s townhouse, before the nobility had deserted the district.

  They used the front room for their shop, the big bow window on the street level where the gentleman had once sat in powdered periwig, looking out haughtily at his fine neighbors, was filled with fish. Fine fish, fresh fish, laying on ice like gems on velvet, or hanging from the ceiling, their scales catching the sunlight and twinkling like diamonds. Or at least so Bernard Pushkin scoffed and said his young wife thought. But so she did. The back room was used for deliveries, work and storage. Blocks of ice stacked in sawdust kept that side of the house like January even in summer. The other side across the hall, with a kitchen and sitting rooms, was blocked off from the shop. They used the upstairs for their sleeping quarters.

  She could scarcely believe she lived in such sumptuousness. Bernard Pushkin often reminded her of that too. With all it was, it wasn’t far enough from the stews for her, but farther than he’d imagined himself going. He’d a fondness for her, perhaps in some part of his mind he already knew she was the only child he’d ever have. She turned a pretty profit for him too. She did have taking ways.

  But he wouldn’t give up the pushcart, and died behind it one afternoon of an apoplexy brought on by a shouting match with a surly footman who questioned the age of his oysters. Leaving Maggie alone, with only his fortune, his shop and his thriving business.

  Which no one, she vowed now as she stood by the window, no one, not any man, alive or dead, was going to take from her. No matter what. Not even if she had to go out and find the murderer herself. She turned from the window and marched to her wardrobe, and dressed so hurriedly she shocked poor Alice when she went out the door just as Alice was coming in.

  “Gawd!” Alice panted, her hand on her newly grown and ample breasts. “Missus! You scared me half to death! I was coming to light the fire. I got hot water for you too, never say you washed in cold?”