Frost Fair

by Edith Layton

  “I didn’t know you were privy to our latest news,” Will said smoothly, though he shot a look at Lucian, “but no, I’m not looking for anyone. I’m only here to make sure your brother doesn’t land under any more coaches today.”

  “Hardly any fear of that, at least here,” Lucian said, flustered. He only dimly recalled his conversation with Arthur, and now wondered if Will was angry he’d shared the information. “But I did run into Mr. Corby and his friend here today. Are you here alone, Arthur? I mean, apart from Mama’s footman?”

  “I’m alone. Entirely. I’ve sent him back to Mama. If you can brave the world alone, Lucian, so can I,” Arthur said, sounding a little hurt. He paused, staring pointedly at Maggie.

  Although Maggie remembered him from the night of the masquerade, she realized he didn’t recognize her because he’d never seen her face, or natural hair. She looked up at the viscount to see how he’d introduce her. He smiled down at her in turn. And then disengaged himself, and bowed.

  “I’ve had a lovely time,” he told her lightly. “Pray excuse me,” he told Will, “but I think I’ll go along with my brother now. I’m safe enough with him—as he will be with me. They’ll hardly attempt the two of us together and I don’t think he should be alone now that evening is coming on. That is, if it’s all right with you?”

  He made it seem like he was under some sort of arrest, Maggie thought. He made it seem like he could hardly wait to leave. And so she supposed he couldn’t. Because after Will nodded, the viscount bowed again. Then he was gone, his arm slung over his brother’s shoulders, head bent so he could speak quietly and constantly to him as they walked away. So constantly, that after one last suspicious glance at Maggie, Arthur wouldn’t, or couldn’t, look back again.

  “Well,” Maggie said, feeling flat. Of course, he wouldn’t acknowledge a fishmonger. She knew that. It was just that she didn’t like being reminded of it.

  “Here, take my arm,” Will said. “Don’t need you falling on your nose. It isn’t just because of your trade, you know,” he commented as they walked on. “It’s because it might be difficult for him to explain what he was doing larking about with the woman whose doorstep it was that his uncle died on.”

  “He could have said just exactly what it was he was about,” Maggie said, raising her head.

  Will didn’t argue that. She rather wished he would have.

  The children were as merry as Maggie was subdued. Will called a hackney for them all, touched his hat, and walked off into the growing night. Maggie’s child servants all piled into the coach with her, jabbering, telling her the wonders they’d seen, showing their purchases to her. She smiled and nodded, but was as silent as Flea, who seemed cast into deep sorrow to be leaving the Fair.

  The children rushed out when they got home. They had to change from their good clothes, stow their precious purchases, and then set to help making dinner. Flea left the coach, head down and shoulders slumped. He didn’t hurry, as he usually did, to walk the white puppy before he returned to Aunt Jane and his night’s work. Maggie felt as deflated as he looked, but she marched up to her bedchamber, refusing to let one arrogant nobleman make her precious day go flat. She’d been to the Frost Fair, she’d had two fine gents as escorts there, and nobody could take that from her now.

  But after she’d changed out of her finery and gone down to the kitchen she began to wonder if there was any point in seeking out the company of the viscount and the runner anymore. She stirred the kettle of soup she’d left to warm on the hearth, and pondered. After all, no one suspected her of doing in the gentleman’s uncle now. And though taking tea with ladies and swanning forth with a nobleman and matching wits with a dashing runner had been exhilarating—there was really nothing in it for her anymore. Except for snubs, and insult, of course.

  The cooking soup and kettle boiling on the hob soon made the windows frost over. And so she couldn’t see who began tapping at her back door. Flea had gone to work at Auntie Jane’s. The girls were setting the table, Jack had run down to the corner to pick up a fresh bread, and Davie was playing with the puppy on the floor. Maggie put down her wooden spoon, and then on second thought picked it up and took it with her, as though it could defend her from anyone bent on mischief. But it felt authoritative in her hand. She cracked open the back door.

  The Viscount Maldon stood there. “A word, please,’ he said.

  Maggie blinked, and opened the door wide. He stepped into the warm kitchen, his high beaver hat in his hand now. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It was damnably rude of me to leave you like that, I don’t know what I was thinking—well, but I do. I didn’t know how to explain your presence and so I simply let my brother think you were a friend of Will’s. …No,” he said, looking straight into her astonished eyes, “I suppose I didn’t want him to see I was with you.” He shook his head. “I thought I was above such. I am not. If it makes you feel any better, I believe I will try to be in future.”

  She was taken aback. “But a viscount does not have to acknowledge a fishmonger. We both know that.”

  “That kind of thinking made Corporal Bonaparte the Emperor Napoleon, my dear,” he said with a twisted smile, “One hates to think of tumbrels rolling through Picadilly.” He raised his impressive nose. “That delicious aroma is surely not fish?”

  “Beef soup, my lord. And I’ve roast hen and lamb cutlets. Not that there’s anything wrong with my fish, but we don’t eat it all the time. Would you care to join us for dinner?” She said it automatically. She never expected him to agree.

  “If there’s enough?” he asked.

  He sat and listened to Alice marveling about the fire eaters, and ate his own hot dinner to the accompaniment of Annie chattering about the horse that could count, add and subtract numbers too. He buttered his bread to the sound of Annie bragging about her new “Frost Fairest Beads,” never interrupting to mention how he was defending his boots from the puppy’s jaws under the table. He dined to the accompaniment of Jack’s pleas to return to the Fair tomorrow, as it would surely be the last day.

  “They’re saying that the daft plumber tried to take a barrow of lead across the river, near to Blackfriar’s, for a wager?” Jack said eagerly. “They said he slipped in-between two big pieces of ice and never come to the surface again. Gawd! I wisht I’d seen that. But that means things is melting, can we go again before it does?”

  “So we can sink too?” Maggie laughed.

  “Nah, we ain’t got a load of lead, do we?” Jack said.

  “I feel as though I do,” Lucian said, “after such a dinner! It’s all my fault. I stuffed myself in most gluttonous fashion, but how could I help it? It was delicious, Mrs. Pushkin.”

  After dinner, they sat before the fire, listening to little Davie’s efforts with his new Frost Fair Jew’s harp. “This tea,” Lucian leaned over to ask Maggie, “it is just tea this time? Or have you added something to it again?”

  “No,” Maggie said, confused, “it’s just tea, though my best sort. Why do you ask?”

  “Because I feel so content,” he said, and smiled to see her blush. It was while he was sipping his tea that another visitor came to the door. Lucian left off complimenting Alice on her wise choice of a silver ring with what she vowed was “London’s Greatest Frost Fair, a Natural Miracle” etched in tiny letters on its inner rim to look up at the new visitor.

  “Such domesticity,” Spanish Will said as he took off his coat.

  He stayed, and they all laughed and talked, reliving the great day until it was unmistakably over. Because nothing lasts forever, even such felicity, Maggie thought when she locked up the shop later, bolted the doors, and went to her own bed at last.

  She was right. Because when she went down to the back door the next morning, Flea was there again. But this time, he didn’t rush to the puppy as usual. Instead, he stared at Maggie with haunted eyes and his great shoulders slumped. Then he hung his heavy head, clearly troubled, obviously suffering.

  “Missus,” he
mumbled in a dark voice, “I got to tell you. I said I wouldn’t. I promised I wouldn’t. That’s why I didn’t tell you before. But my Mam told me a bad promise is no promise. I can’t sleep and all, ’cause I was wrong. You’ve been so good to me. Taking in Dog. Taking me to the Fair. Being my friend. Being so nice and all. Auntie Jane will skin me. But I have got to tell you.”

  “What?” Maggie said, waking up fast, because in some small part of her mind, she already knew.

  “The old man,” Flea said mournfully. “The dead man. The one you asked me about? I saw it. I helped.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  They arrived amazingly fast. Spanish Will left Bow Street as soon as Jack got there to tell him to, and they picked up the viscount on the way. Now only a few hours past sunrise, the two men sat in Maggie’s sitting room again. Spanish Will had his incident book out, and his face was as empty of expression as the page he had opened to. The usually immaculate viscount was neatly dressed, but Maggie could see he hadn’t been shaved yet. From his expression, it was clear he’d had more urgent things on his mind after he’d been woken. They all did. She closed the door firmly, and told Jack to be sure no one interrupted them. Then she sat beside Flea again.

  “Tell them,” she said simply.

  He gave her another worried look.

  “It’s all right, remember what I said?”

  Flea nodded and hung his head. He clasped his big hands in his lap, looking guilty as a boy who’d spilled his milk, as he began to tell them how he had helped kill the Baron St. Cloud.

  “The man came to Auntie Jane,” he said.

  “What man?” Will asked him, his pencil poised.

  “The dead man on Missus Maggie’s doorstep,” Flea said sadly. “The naked man. I put him there.”

  “Do you know his name?” Will asked.

  Flea looked confused. He looked at Maggie.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she assured him.

  “Right,” Will said. “Go on.”

  Flea bowed his head again. He went on in a low, slow hesitant voice, picking his simple words with exquisite care. “He came at night. He said hello to Auntie Jane. He said, ‘Good evening.’ He said, ‘You have a girl for me?’ He said, ‘As we agreed?’”

  “So, he had come before?” Will interrupted, schooling himself to keep his voice low and even. He shifted in his chair. The big man spoke so slowly it would be nightfall before he got to the germ of it.

  “Yes,” Flea said. “He came the other week. Then he talked to Auntie Jane a long time. But he didn’t go upstairs with a girl then. He went home. He came back to Auntie Jane again. He was very happy to come back. He was laughing and very happy to be back,” Flea said sadly. “He was so happy then.”

  “Did he go with a girl that night?” Will asked. Flea just looked at him. Will took a deep breath. He spoke softly, patiently. “I mean, did he go upstairs with a girl the second time?”

  “Yes. He went upstairs with a girl then.”

  “What girl?”

  “Millie.”

  “And then?” Will prompted.

  “I heard a scream. So I ran upstairs. I’m not supposed to go upstairs, unless there’s trouble. Then I’m supposed to go upstairs and stop the trouble. Millie was screaming and screaming. But Auntie Jane says that’s all right. She says sometimes the girls scream for the fun of it. Auntie Jane says they don’t mean it. I’m only to come upstairs if she says. Or if she screams. She was screaming.”

  “Auntie Jane?” Will frowned. “She was upstairs too?”

  Flea nodded.

  “I mean,” Will said, barely repressed impatience in his voice, “did she go upstairs after the scream?”

  “No. She was there.”

  “With Millie and the man?” Will’s expression was growing dark.

  “Yes.”

  Will’s hand fisted over his book, his face grew tight. Lucian looked at him curiously, and then turned his attention back to Flea. Maggie sat beside the huge man, her hand on his arm, her expression distraught, her eyes bleak.

  “And then?” Will asked.

  Flea’s chest moved in a sigh. “He was sick,” Flea said, still not meeting the runner’s eyes. “He was very sick. He was laying on Millie’s bed. On his back. She was crying. His face was all red. Then it was white. He was choking. He was…” Flea frowned, trying to find the words. “He was.…moving like an eel in Mrs. Gudge’s basket, like. This way and that. All the time. Up and down. And back and forth. His mouth was open. He was saying things. I don’t know what. Just noise.”

  “Then, he stopped,” Flea said. “He got quiet. He got stiff and quiet. We waited. But he didn’t move again. Auntie Jane looked at him and said, ‘Oh God, he’s dead.’ ‘Oh God, that’s all I need. The old bastard is dead.’”

  Lucian could swear his blood was actually running cold. Uncle, dead of a fit in a whore’s bed? There was so much he wanted to ask. He didn’t dare. The dialogue was between Spanish Will and the giant. It was clear the monstrous childish man was afraid of them. Maggie’s small hand on his arm seemed to be the only thing keeping him from fleeing. He seemed to suffer as he sat there, forcing out the agonizingly slow, damnable words.

  “And then?” Will asked softly.

  “Then Auntie Jane slapped Millie. To get her to stop screaming. She sent her to another room. Jenny’s room. They’re friends. Then she looked at the old man. ‘Well, he’s never dying here,’ she says.”

  Flea quoted Auntie Jane more clearly than he himself could speak. Will suspected the giant could remember far better than he could frame speech. “And so?” Will asked again.

  “And so Auntie Jane told me to take him away. She said, ‘If he’s dead he can be just as dead somewhere else. Take him away, Flea.’”

  “So then you carried him away,” Will said.

  “No. Auntie Jane said, ‘Wait.’ She told me to help her take his clothes off. She said, ‘He won’t be needing these anymore. And the less they find the less chance they’ll ever know what happened.’”

  “He didn’t remove his clothes?” Lucian blurted.

  “Many men don’t in such places, my lord,” Will said, never taking his eyes off Flea. “They don’t go there for the same kind of experience more worldly men do. It’s a simple thing they’re after, like taking a…” He looked at Maggie, and said, “like relieving their bladders. And so then you took him away from Auntie Jane’s?” he asked Flea.

  “No. First Auntie Jane told me to wrap him in a blanket,” Flea reported faithfully, his brow furrowing with the effort. “She said, ‘drop him off and bring the blanket back. I want nothing of us in this. And stay to the shadows. Take care no one sees you. If anyone asks what you’ve got, say it’s old clothes.’”

  “Did Auntie Jane ask you to leave him on Mrs. Pushkin’s doorstep?”

  “No,” Flea said sadly. “She asked me to drop him in the river. She said, ‘Take this cosh, and hit him a good one, and then drop him in the river, down by the bridge. Go now.’”

  “Ah,” Will said, nodding, “the lack of blood, of course. Clever Auntie Jane. If we’d found him naked, bashed and floating, and mind—we might not have done because the tide could have carried him to sea or he could have got caught under a bridge until it was too late to recognize him—there wouldn’t have been such an investigation. Because any man could be set upon and murdered were he fool enough to walk by the river at night this far east. But a man with no wounds might have set us wondering. Clever. So, why didn’t you do it, Flea? Why didn’t you listen to Auntie Jane?”

  “He started moving,” Flea said. Lucian’s jaw knotted over the exclamation he stifled. “I felt him moving a little. I was walking to the river. I had him over my shoulder. I felt him move. So I put him down. I unwrapped him and looked. I touched him. He wasn’t cold. I put my ear on his chest. I felt his chest, like Missus did when I brought her that cat I found. I brought Missus a cat after a carriage ran over it. She fixed it. The man’s chest went up and down a little. I t
hought Missus could fix him like she did the cat.”

  “Then why did you bash him?” Will asked, though he already knew.

  Flea’s face set in lines of deepest woe. “When I got here, I put him down. I looked again. He wasn’t breathing anymore. He was cold. He was dead. So I picked him up to take him to the river. But people were coming out on the street. The sun was coming up too. So I hit him like Auntie Jane said I should. I left him. I ran away. I took the blanket, like Auntie Jane told me to. Can I go home now?”

  The room was very still.

  Maggie spoke first. She turned to Will, then Lucian, her voice angry, and pleading too. “He didn’t kill the baron, surely you see that? If you take him, it’s Tyburn for him. Because what can he say? What can he do? But he didn’t kill the baron. I believe him, don’t you?”

  “Aye,” Will said on a deep sigh. “But the law is the law, Mrs. P. And it isn’t wrong, neither. If Auntie Jane told your big friend there to bash some stranger for no reason other than spite, he’d do it. So if he swings for this, it may save someone else’s life someday.”

  Flea looked up. He tilted his head, his eyebrows came down until they almost met at the middle. “No,” he said slowly. “No. I wouldn’t. Ma said it’s wrong for me to hit people. I’m too big. I…” He heaved a great sigh. He licked his lips and looked down, sorting through his store of words to say what he meant. His head came up. “I wouldn’t kill anyone. Not if Auntie Jane said so. Not even if Missus told me to. It’s wrong. I protect the girls. Because it’s wrong for men to hurt them. I protect anyone smaller than me. Ma said I should. I don’t kill anyone. It’s wrong. That man was dead. So I did what Auntie Jane said.”

  “Did you also attack the viscount the other night?” Will demanded. He huffed at Flea’s obvious confusion and said through gritted teeth, “This man, here. Did you stab or stick a horse to get it running toward him?”