Frost Fair

by Edith Layton

  “It doesn’t matter,” Maggie said. “I couldn’t lay abed. Too much on my mind.”

  “Us too!” Alice agreed eagerly. “I slept with a knife ’neath my pillow and a cleaver at my right hand. Dead men come calling, it’s the only wise thing to do. But you could of asked. I’d have slept on the trundle at your bedside. They’d have to deal with me before they did for you. I’m that fast with a knife. I practiced in the kitchens and didn’t Annie screech for fear I’d slice her ear off, thought she’d wake the dead… Oh, Gawd, what a thing to say, spit three times and send it away! But I’m good—I can skin a fish or a man in a minute. I could protect you, say the word and I’ll do it tonight.”

  “Thank you, no. We’ll have no more dead men come calling.”

  “Never say that, Missus!” Alice shrieked. “Once you say ‘never’ it’s like asking for trouble!”

  “Then say ‘I doubt it,’ Maggie said as she went down the stair. “Come along, there’s things to do.”

  Her staff greeted her in the kitchen. Annie curtsied, and wide-eyed little Davie looked frightened, but that was nothing new.

  “It’s a new day, so let’s forget old fears,” Maggie told them. “It will be all right. And so we may as well go on as if it never happened.”

  “Well, but we’re not afeared,” Alice said. “We’re here to watch after you and each other, see if we don’t.” She looked to the others. They nodded solemn agreement.

  “We’ll help, you’ll see,” Annie vowed.

  “Thank you,” Maggie said, “but I think—I expect,” she added, with a look to Alice, “that it’s all over now.”

  She was touched and grateful. Alice was fifteen, Annie thirteen, little Davie was six or so, or so they guessed. They were little more than children, abandoned and ill-educated. She’d bought Alice’s services to rescue her from a vicious mistress, Annie came from the workhouse, they’d found little Davie wandering the streets, with no memory of anything but that name. She gave them houseroom and board, a trade and wages. But still their loyalty moved her. She sat and had her breakfast quickly and in silence, because she didn’t know what else to say, and didn’t want them guessing how uneasy she was.

  When she was done she put a long apron over her gown, dragged high heavy boots on, pulled on gloves, and then, finally warm enough to brave the shop, addressed her troops.

  “Look sharp and work fast. Everyone will want to know what you know. You’ll have to tell them, but be brief or we’ll never be done. Business will be brisk today. Nothing brings in trade like exciting news, so we’ll be dealing in gossip more than fish.”

  But she dealt in both. They came early and eager. Every customer crowding into the shop knew they’d never get her ear if they didn’t buy something too. Bream, carp and wild surmises; Turbot, sole and speculation. Maggie had to verify the story with every sale. In turn, she had to listen to dozens of variations of how shocked each customer was to have heard the news, down to painstaking details of what they’d been doing when they’d been so shocked.

  “Stunned, I was, stunned!” yet another woman gasped, clutching her forgotten parcel of fillet in one hand as the other thumped her breast for emphasis. “A dead man on that nice Mrs. Pushkin’s doorstep? ‘Never!’ says I, ‘Why she’s a lady, for all she sells fish,’ I tells him. But the Mister, he shakes his head, ‘So ’tis, and none know who the cully is! And him naked as the day he was born.’ Well, I was that shocked, Mrs. Pushkin, I can’t tell you…”

  But she tried, as Maggie looked over her shoulder to see the line of other customers equally eager to tell her about their shock and surprise. She was relieved when Davie came to tell her that she’d a delivery to see to. With a nod to her waiting audience, she left the shop.

  “Oh lass! Such news, poor girl,” the coal carter said when she came to the back door.

  “Yes, Tom, but if you’ve come to hear more, I tell you I’ve nothing more to add,” she said wearily, because the warm sympathy in his voice almost undid her.

  “Just as well. A female alone, with none to look after her? It’s just luck that you’ve nothing more to tell, thank God! When I think of what could have been— Ah, it’s a hard, lonely road you’ve chosen,” he said, his voice tender, cajoling.

  That made her head snap up. Tom was looking at her with something other than sympathy glowing in his bright blue eyes. He stood, legs apart, hands on narrow hips, smiling down at her, showing her all she’d missed, as usual. He was her own age, still looking young as the day they’d met, tall, lanky, the coal dust he was covered with only pointing up his white-toothed smile. Virile and eager, her first love, the answer to her maiden’s prayer that she’d never had a prayer of getting.

  He’d walked out with her once, never seeming to mind her hair and freckles. Still, if a female had it he wouldn’t mind it—at least that’s what they said back then. He’d walked out with dozens of girls. And it seemed to Maggie that he noticed her far more after she’d married, and even more after she’d been widowed. She allowed that might be unfair. What chance had he had, after all? His seeing her that once had made her father see the light. She’d been pledged to Bernard Pushkin soon after.

  “For once, I wish it were lonelier out there,” she told him, ignoring his insinuation, as usual.

  “S’truth you didn’t know the poor cove?”

  “I wish I had done, then maybe I’d know why he was there. Did you hear anything? Does anyone know who he was?”

  “It’s all anyone’s been talking of, but no. Ah, lass, what a fine kettle of fish… Sorry, don’t doubt you’ve heard that all morning too, poor girl,” he said with a warm soft laugh that made her long to rest her head on his wide shoulder, in spite of herself. He saw it, and stepped closer. “If you’d only married me,” he said in low urgent tones. “But your parents were set on the fishmonger, and see what it’s come to? There’s naught we can do about that, that’s yesterday. Today you need a man about the place. I can be that man, Maggie. You know I’ve longed to be. Now maybe you can see the wisdom of it?”

  “Oh certainly. I’m sure your wife does too. And your four children. What can you be thinking of?” she said, stepping back.

  “You know what I’m thinking,” he said fervently. “Same thing all these years. Only now we got an excuse, a fine one. I can sleep here, stay here, protect you, be good to you…”

  “Aye,” she said angrily, “good as you are to poor Eleanor? God save me. She should have been buying beefsteak, not fish, last week to put on that eye you gave her. And not for the first time. You’ll clout her once too often, Tom, and do her a terrible injury yet.”

  “Ah, but she’s dim, Maggie, not quick like you. She makes her own trouble, she vexes me with her stupidity. But you! I’d never have to touch you, except to love you…”

  “Vexes you? I’d do that too, Tom, I promise you. You’d have to kill me to quiet me, and there’s truth,” she snapped, glaring up at him. “You don’t know how lucky you are to have married Eleanor and not me. Because if you ever laid a hand on me like you do to her—even once—I’d lay your head open for you.”

  “Like they say you did for that bloke?” he snarled.

  “Oho! Now, here’s the Tom poor Eleanor knows. So. Is that what they’re saying?” she asked, arms crossed on her breast, voice chill as the room.

  “Some,” he said. “But they’re saying everything, aren’t they? Cod’s heads, sapskulls. Maggie, forget what I said. You need a strong man about the place. Who you going to get? Flea, or some other shallow pate? Who else is there? I’ll keep my hands off you. Let me stay.”

  “You won’t, and you know it. And I don’t mean just trying to get into my bed. With all he was and was not, Bernard never raised a hand to me.”

  “Nor could he raise anything else, it would seem,” Tom said, accepting the inevitable. He swung his sack of coal up on his shoulder. “But I don’t have that trouble. I’ve given that cow of mine four kids, and it’d be more if I could stand to get near to
her more often. Think on that, Maggie Luv.”

  I do, idiot that I am, she thought sadly, watching him go. Not you, Tom, half so much as those phantom children. But people were thinking she bashed the dead gent? That was what stayed on her mind as she puttered in the back room, loathe to face customers until she could banish the worry about their gossip from her eyes.

  “Missus?” A gentle voice intruded.

  She looked up. A giant stood in her back doorway. Strong, robust, clad in simple clothing, looking like he stepped out of a child’s tale of Robin Hood. Handsome too, with a genial face and a shy smile, his face as well as his enormous frame had all parts built to a mighty, but proportionate, pleasing scale. She’d met him when she’d first come to this house, and he’d become a friend.

  “Flea!” she said with genuine pleasure. “What can I do for you today?” Here, at least, was one person who wouldn’t spread cruel gossip about her. He couldn’t.

  Street toughs had named him “Flea” for his size, and after a time, it became his only name. Everyone said he’d been a busy, friendly, mischievous boy. But one day he came down with a fever, and by the end of the week they’d thought he’d die. He didn’t. But part of his brain had, or else had been hidden or gone astray. He was never the same, and grew to be a huge man who spoke seldom and moved slowly. When he did speak it seemed as though he was choosing his words carefully, as if he were a normal man who didn’t want to speak too soon and seem a fool. Because he appeared normal in every other way. He wasn’t.

  He was slow, not deliberate. Not an idiot, not a child, but also not a man you could have a conversation with. But he was gentle and kind, polite and obedient. In another age he would have been some nobleman’s valued liege-man, or man at arms. But there were few jobs these days that called for strength, complete obedience and no wit. He’d found one, or rather, his mother had. She’d raised him well and then literally left him to a friend when she died.

  He lived east of Maggie’s shop, in Spitalfields, with “Auntie Jane,” working in her house. He protected the girls there, throwing out those men Auntie Jane told him to, those who got nasty, or didn’t pay. When he wasn’t doing that by night, or errands by day, he wandered London looking for friendly faces. Maggie hated the way he earned his bread, but solaced herself by imagining he didn’t understand the half of it.

  “I suppose you heard about my dead man?” Maggie asked.

  He lowered that massive head and nodded, looking guilty. But so he always looked when things went wrong. He’d look the same if she complained about the snow. “Did you know him?” she asked, on a wild, forlorn surmise.

  He lowered his head further, in deep and painstaking thought. Then he shook it slowly. “No, Missus,” he said.

  “Then why have you come this morning? Auntie want a bit of fish? That would be a surprise. You usually come Fridays.” She hoped he hadn’t brought a dying sparrow or a crippled cat. She had herb lore from her Grandma, and everyone in the neighborhood knew it. Not much, but enough to cure a headache, ease a streaming cold, or pronounce an ankle strained or broken. Flea had brought her wounded creatures before. Some she saved. Some she left out with the rubbish. She tried, for his sake and hers. But today wasn’t a good day for charity.

  “No fish,” he said, and thought a while as she waited, and then said, “Wanted to see you, Missus Maggie. You all right?”

  She was touched. “I’m fine. Thank you for asking and caring.”

  “Wanted to be sure,” he said, and smiled. A glorious child’s smile, free of anything but pleasure. “You need me, you call me,” he said, as he always did, and smiling, left.

  He almost collided with Mrs. Gudge, who shouldered in through the doorway, carrying a huge basket. “Watch it, big ’un,” she said jovially. “Don’t want them flapping all over the floor, do we? Look what I got for you,” she told Maggie proudly, planting her basket on a table. “Not only the best sole y’ever did see, but some nice fresh eels, lively as the grigs they be!” She whipped the wicker top off it, like a master chef displaying some incredible treat.

  Maggie saw the writhing mass in the bottom of the basket and drew back. “I never take live goods, Mrs. Gudge, you know that.”

  “Getting as chicken hearted as the rattlepate that was just here, eh? Glad he didn’t see ’em, he’d have ’em for pets! Nevermind. I knew, but I was wanting to do something extra for you. What with fog all them weeks, and snow now, these here will fetch double worth in any market. Not to worry,” she said, clapping the top back on, “I’ll sell them afore I go many more steps. But how are you keeping? I mean, with all this to-do?”

  “I’m surviving, Mrs. Gudge,” Magie said simply. “If no more dead men show up on my doorsill I’ll be better still. As to that…Mrs. Gudge, you’ve known me so long… Have you heard anything at all? I don’t mean just about the dead man, though I’d like to know more about him, certainly.”

  “I was hoping y’could give me something to dine out on,” Mrs. Gudge laughed.

  “Well, then, I mean to say,” Maggie said, “have you heard, do you know—have I any enemies you know of?”

  “Not a one—what would say it, leastways,” Mrs. Gudge said, frowning fiercely, “save one…that runner, Spanish Will, was asking after you just yesterday. Aye, he come sniffing round me and Mrs. Gow. Run us down at our favorite spa the other night, whilst we was taking the waters,” she said with a huge wink. “Him, and some stone-faced bloke who stood by him like Death waiting for his moment. We sent them straight to your friend, Roger Bell. Bet they got an earful, and Roger an eyefull, eh? Speaking of the devil—Spanish Will talks sweet and looks fine, but watch more than his handsome face, my girl, for it’s reward money he’s after, and truth be damned.”

  “I know. I know all about runners,” Maggie said bitterly.

  “We’ll keep ears and eyes open too,” Mrs. Gudge promised. “Never fret. If no one knows who the dead cove was, he could’ve been a nobody, and accident or no, nobody means no money for no one, and all your worry be for naught. After all, what sort of a man goes naked in the streets, eh? Nobody. So there y’are.”

  They laughed together, and for the first time since she’d got up Saturday morning, Maggie felt fine. Didn’t she have wonderful protectors? she thought. Fishwives and men who were daintier than she was, simpletons and children, no wonder she felt so safe. That made her laugh even harder.

  Mrs. Gudge heard the edge to her laughter. “He were nobody live, he be nobody dead,” she said wisely. “You’ll see, Dearie, I got this feeling about it.”

  *

  By three in the afternoon, Maggie wondered if she’d run out of fish. It would be the first time. “If I’d known what it would do for business, I’d have hired dead men years ago,” she muttered as she hurried to fill another order, after hearing yet another story of how shocked the buyer was.

  “Never say!” Alice gasped, wrapping the flounder her flashing knife had just filleted, and handing it to Maggie.

  “Just jesting,” Maggie said. “Don’t worry. No amount of money is worth this madness.” Or Death, she thought, and didn’t say, and not just to spare Alice’s superstitious sensibilities.

  She was glad when she had to go into the back room to see how much stock there was left. She could send to the market for more, she thought when she saw her depleted stores, or maybe it would be better for all to just close shop early and give the girls and everyone’s tongues a rest. But that might start more talk. She stripped off her icy gloves and wiped her cold, damp hands, considering the matter.

  “Missus?” Davie quavered, from her side. “Gent’s here to talk to you.”

  “I’ll be right back,” she said absently. “He’ll just have to wait. Everyone wants to talk with me today, Davie.”

  “But not perhaps, with the same urgency as I,” a deep voice said in cultured accents.

  She stopped, and looked up—and up. A tall gaunt gentleman stood in her doorway. He’d obviously followed Davie in from the shop.
It was also obvious such a man had never set foot in a fish shop before. Although, Maggie thought numbly, gazing at him, just such a man might have once lived in this house, before it had fallen on hard times. That fellow would have worn velvet and silk, plumes and high-heeled shoes with silver buckles. This one wore a greatcoat open to show a blue superfine jacket over white linen, a gold waistcoat, and canary inexpressibles. His boots shone like black mirrors. He was quality top to toe. His face seemed to have more bones than most men’s, and his eyes were gray and cold as sleet.

  She’d never seen such a complete gentleman, at least not from so close. Because he was staring at her, and if that wasn’t enough, he lifted a quizzing glass from his pocket and stared even harder. It made her lift her chin and stare back.

  Lucian was so shocked he was temporarily speechless. This was the fishwife? He’d been expecting someone like Mrs. Gow or Mrs. Gudge. He’d been ready to duck a big red ham-sized fist for his insolence. Those little hands she was wiping were red, all right, but they were small and fragile. She was some thirty years younger than he’d imagined, easily forty pounds lighter, and trying to look directly at her was as hard as looking into the setting sun.

  The runner had been right. She was severely red. Orange flaming red, her hair shouted. The countless freckles on her otherwise white face were blazing too. Beneath them, there was a pretty enough face, with small regular features, and a pair of blue-green eyes trying to cool off the vision she presented. To no avail.

  Twenty and something then, with hideous unfashionable hair, a trim little body, a chilly voice that spoke in cultured accents, and eyes that spoke of cold murder. This creature—and Uncle? He might be able to imagine a woman with that sort of famous red-headed temper murdering someone, in fact, it looked as though she wanted to have at him right now. But as to the rest? Uncle was ambivalent about females. Whatever else this woman was, she was also profoundly female, and very attractive, in a bizarre way.