Frost Fair

by Edith Layton

  “I like horses,” Flea said, clearly horrified at the idea.

  “Maybe you didn’t hurt it then,” Will said with utmost patience. “Grant you that. But did get one to gallop toward this man the other night?”

  “I work at night,” Flea said, amazed.

  “Aye, just so,” Will said. “Did you work for Auntie Jane, or anyone else, and push another man into the street then? Near Covent Garden?”

  “I work in Auntie Jane’s house,” Flea said, frowning. “She lets me go out walking all day. I have to be back at night to work for her in the house. I wouldn’t push anyone,” Flea said reproachfully. “Sneaking up behind isn’t fair.”

  Will dropped his head into his hand and rubbed his cheek. “Here’s a coil,” he muttered. And was surprised he did. Because he was not known for his sympathy and had forgotten he had any. But the giant was not guilty. Not of murder, nor of trying to murder anyone. Of that, he was sure. But the law required he find a villain. Or at least, the reward he’d worked so hard for did. “My lord?” he asked, looking up at Lucian. Because a burden passed would not be his own.

  But Lucian was not really listening. He was still reeling. “My uncle died in a whore’s bed,” he murmured, “but why? He was going to marry a worthy young woman in a week’s time. Why trifle with a whore the week before?”

  Now it was Will who looked down at his hands. This case was toying with his guts. He hadn’t known he could feel anything but rage in them anymore. He’d have to tell the viscount the reason, because he was sure he knew. Better it was he did that, he reassured himself, than letting it be Auntie Jane. But still, he didn’t want to see the look in the nobleman’s eyes when he did. He’d come to respect the man, and know him a little. The Viscount Maldon was cool, arrogant and self-serving. He was a nobleman, after all. He wasn’t cruel though. In fact, the man had shown touches of a rare compassion, for his kind. And he had a sense of humor that more nearly matched his own than most men did.

  “Why did he do such a thing?” Will asked. “We’ll speak of it later, my lord.”

  “Oh, really?” Maggie said, her eyes snapping with rage. “I think you ought speak of it now. I’m in this as much as either of you. I told poor Flea he could trust you, I persuaded him to tell you, and I ought to know what it is you’ll speak of later too, I think. I may only be a fish…”

  “Cut line,” Will said. “It’s nothing to do with you, or even Flea here. It’s something I think the viscount ought to hear by himself.”

  “No,” Lucian said, “have done, Mr. Corby. She’s right. Mrs. Pushkin brought us to her friend Flea. She’s helped all along. I think she deserves to know. If it’s something you think will upset me, well then, who better to hear it in front of?” He offered Maggie a weary smile. “Perhaps if it’s terrible enough news I’ll get another pot of that amazing tea from her. I think I could hear of my own utter ruin and grin at it, if I’d enough of that. Come, what is it, Mr. Corby? You think you know why Uncle was there? I’d hear it, if you please.”

  Will sighed. “So be it. Auntie Jane was there through the whole of it, Flea said. That told me, and believe me, I didn’t want to hear it either. But truth is truth. Here, big ’un,” he told Flea. “Tell us about Millie. Only one thing. How old is she?”

  “Millie is eight,” Flea said promptly, happy to have an answer. “We had cake and tea for her birthday.”

  “There it is,” Will said gruffly.

  Lucian turned ghastly pale, his long eyes closed in pain. Maggie put a hand to her heart.

  “I don’t think he fancied them that young usually, or I’d have heard of it,” Will said, “but it’s like I said. Some men think such doings cure the clap. Your uncle, my lord, was trying to cure himself before his wedding to that worthy woman—who’s luckier than she’ll ever know. We have to pay a call on Auntie Jane now. I’ll close her down, and set her on the run. That, at least, I can do now. But as for murder? I can’t prove it. I think excitement killed the baron. Your brother said he was excited before he even started. So did Flea. And—begging your pardon, Mrs. P.—but attempting an eight-year-old must have been hard work for an old fellow. But he got rid of the clap at least.”

  *

  “She was no innocent!” Auntie Jane raged. “The little slut’s been working the trade for a year now, maybe more. I got her from Mrs. Cooper. Well, the old man asked for a virgin, I got two and let him choose.”

  “She was not an innocent?” Maggie breathed, not knowing whether to be more aghast because the child was, or was not.

  “God, no!” Will said for Auntie Jane, his mouth twisting in a cynical smile. “Were she, he might have managed it. Bawds like Auntie Jane don’t supply real virgins. You know your herbs, Mrs. P. These girls make a living being innocent. You’ll find Auntie Jane likely paid a visit to your friend Mr. Abernathy first.”

  “Alum,” Auntie Jane said, nodding, “an ointment made with alum, agrimony and some wolf’s bane, he said. I’m not used to such. But Abernathy is. He deals with everyone, no questions asked and all questions answered. The baron needed a virgin. I could have got him a widow’s daughter from down the street, thirty, fat as a flawn and with spots, but a virgin absolutely, and in need of money. But he wouldn’t have believed anything but a child, would he? Men don’t.

  “He asked ’round the street, and come up with my name. A little late. If he’d come to me before, he wouldn’t have got the clap. He offered whatever I asked, he was that desperate, well, but he’d just come from his physician. I didn’t want to loose the money. The ointment cost the earth, but you only use a bit. I think we used too much. She must have closed tighter than a drum. The old man was excited before he started, and then he was at it hard, puffing and pant…”

  “Be still!” Will demanded, if only because the viscount was growing pale again. “No. You can tell me something else.” He paced the parlor’s length, and then rounded on her. “Why did you set rogues on the viscount here? And his brother?”

  “What?” Auntie asked. Her perpetual sneer faded. She looked genuinely confused.

  “The men you set to run him down the other night. The one you sent to push his brother into the street the same night.”

  “Never!” Auntie said, shocked. “You think I’m mad? I deal with men’s bodily needs, redbreast. Nothing else. If a gentleman wants something of me, I hurry to find it for him, of course. But tangle with the gentry for anything else? I’m sorry I ever met up with the baron, I rue the day I tried to help the old bastard. If he were a common man, I wouldn’t be entertaining you now, would I?”

  “You didn’t have a score to settle?”

  “I didn’t have a score to keep,” she insisted. “Listen. He came to me. He asked me for a virgin. I gave him what I thought would make him happy. He died at it. Going to put me in chains for cheating him? Think I should have found him a real one? As for running down the viscount—why should I?”

  “Did he say anything before he died?” Lucian said, because he had to know.

  “Just before he died? Nothing that made sense,” Auntie said. “Before that? He was full of jests. Bad ones, good ones, he couldn’t keep his mouth shut. I never saw a man so happy, so ready, willing and eager to roger anyone. He had himself a huge…”

  Will raised his hand, threateningly. She fell still. “Your uncle killed himself, my lord,” Will said, “and there’s an end to it. This trull had no part in it other than supplying him the means.”

  “But is that not punishable?” Lucian asked.

  Will smiled. It was not a pleasant sight. “By God, maybe. Few others care. My lord, you can buy or sell a child to push up your chimney to clean it and light a fire beneath to get him working faster do you choose. You can use them to muck out your stables, your Jerichos, in factories, for ornaments, if you like. Look around. What’s more common than common children? Nothing comes cheaper. The lucky ones work. At anything that will keep them alive.”

  “Yes, and so you may go now,” Auntie Jane
said.

  “Oh, may we?” Will laughed. “I think it’s the other way round, Auntie dear.” He rose and walked to where she was sitting. He came so close he didn’t need to speak as loudly as he did. “I want you out,” he said, “closed and gone by nightfall, except for the lingering stench. I can’t prove you killed the old man, you say? Oh, but I don’t have to prove it, dear Auntie. And well you know it. I have only to haul you before a magistrate, and have my lord point his noble finger at you. Flea will say the rest. Then all you’ll have to worry about is who’ll hang on your ankles for you when you drop so you don’t dangle too long at the end of your rope before you strangle.”

  “I didn’t kill him.” She glared at him.

  “He died here, that’s enough. Don’t think about the justice of it, that would be a laugh. I can have you in Newgate for any number of reasons, Auntie, and you know it. If not for your child whores then for any number of other offenses. I can name them. It would only take a little imagination to put you in the Sheriff’s picture frame. You’d be put to bed with a shovel before nightfall—if you were lucky. Otherwise, you’d find yourself useful to some eager medical students. Your choice now. Or mine, after?”

  “It will take more than a day,” Auntie Jane said, rising from her chair in agitation.

  “No,” Will said, “it will not.”

  “I need Flea to help me…”

  “No,” Maggie said, “he’s staying with me now. He won’t be back. And you can’t have the children, either. I mean the little girls. She can’t take them with her, can she?” she asked Will.

  “She might as well. It’s that or the workhouse for them. They won’t be better off without her.”

  “Only a man could say a thing like that!” Maggie said furiously. “I’ll take them too.”

  “Take them in? Are you mad?” Lucian asked, revolted.

  “Are you?” she retaliated, because now she was so outraged she didn’t care if he was a nobleman or her king himself. “They aren’t wicked, they’re too young. And what’s to become of them? Should they be used again and again, because men have already sullied them? No. They’re children. Eight years old. What do they know of sin? If men could buy them as virgins when they aren’t, then by God I’ll teach them to act like virgins, though they are not.”

  But in the end, only one of the little girls went with them. It was the fair-haired girl the men had seen playing with the puppy on the steps when they’d first come to Auntie Jane. She took her scant belongings in a bundle and rode away in the coach with them. The other, the dark-haired one who smiled at them when they arrived, ran away when she heard her fate.

  The little blond girl sat huddled in a corner of the carriage, silent, all the way back to Maggie’s house. She didn’t look at the men. But then, they both avoided her eye too.

  *

  They stood in Maggie’s sitting room, saying their good-byes.

  “Your house will be bulging at the seams, Mrs. P.,” Will said when Alice and Annie took the silent child away with them to bathe her as Maggie demanded. “My young rogue Jack in the kitchen. God knows where you’ll put Flea. And there’s his dog. And now, another girl. Can you sell enough fish to feed them all?”

  “I’ll buy fewer treasures for myself,” Maggie said on a shrug. “The children will help around the shop, and they’ll grow and help more. Flea has a strong back, even if his mind is weak. He can be taught to help too. Even the dog will eventually work for me, guarding my shop.” She smiled up at the runner, her first genuine grin in hours. “I think of it as a good investment,” she said pertly. “You’re the one who told me how important they are, aren’t you?”

  “I was speaking more of grain, ores and such. But I see your point.”

  “So. That’s all there is?” Maggie said. “After all our questions? But—what of the attacks on the viscount and his brother?”

  “Not attacks, then,” Lucian murmured, “simply coincidence.” His voice surprised them both. He’d been quiet since they’d left Auntie Jane’s. It was as if he had already left them in his mind.

  “I don’t believe in coincidences like that,” Will said. “It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t fit.”

  “Life doesn’t make sense. And it’s seldom fitting,” Lucian said, almost to himself. “How I shall tell my mother, I don’t know. I shudder to think of my brother’s reaction. He was Uncle’s favorite, and for reasons I never understood, Uncle was a favorite of his. Until he discovered he hadn’t been left any money, of course. But that was in the nature of a betrayal. And so he’ll take this hard anyhow. But he must know. I wonder if we ought to tell Lousia at all. Good God!” he said, his eyes opening wide in sudden shock. “How can we tell anyone? We can’t have something like this on everyone’s lips. There’s Nicholas. I don’t want him to ever know of this.”

  “They have to know,” Will said. “Your brother offered a reward for the answer. I can’t cheat him. Your son never has to know, but your mother certainly can deal with it. As for the lady Louisa…that’s your decision. But I think she ought to know. She had a narrow escape. It might make her think more deeply in future.”

  “Yes,” Maggie said, “Lady Louisa deserves to know.” She gasped, struck by a sudden thought. From the color of her face, Will guessed it before she spoke. “My lord,” Maggie told Lucian in a small voice, “she might have to know for other reasons. He went to Auntie Jane to cure himself, but—but it is possible that he and Lady Lousia—I know it’s not pleasant to think about—but they…”

  “They may have anticipated their vows?” Lucian said with an ugly twist to his lips. “A month ago I’d have laughed at the idea. But now? I know nothing anymore. You’re right. Perhaps, Mrs. Puskin, I could impose on you? Could you—would you be willing to tell her?”

  “Of course!’ Maggie said.

  “But…” Lucian shook his head. His face was stark, his voice had a note of desperation in it. “May I ask both of you to tell no one else? Please. I’ve my family, my name to think of.”

  It was a hard thing for him to ask them, and they both knew it.

  Will tilted a shoulder. “My lord, my lips are sealed. I think I can say Mrs. Pushkin will be discreet. But there’s no sense lying. Auntie Jane will talk. Her girls will talk. The lower classes will know. It may percolate to the top.”

  “Rumor can’t be helped,” Lucian said. “But rumor dies. So long as it never becomes fact. Thank you.”

  “So then, it’s over,’ Maggie sighed. “And here I was going to ask you if you’d care to come to the Fair again with us.” She laughed nervously. The matter of the Frost Fair was an inconsequential thing in light of all she’d heard today. But she couldn’t bear to think or talk about the consequential things just now.

  “I know it’s foolish, but I’ve caught the fever,” she said. “No one knows how much longer it will last. If the weather holds fine it will soon be gone, and gone forever. I doubt we’ll see another such in our lifetime. Since everyone’s there I thought there wouldn’t be sense keeping the shop open. So, since I promised the children…well, to be honest, I promised myself one last look at it. I thought to ask you two as well, but now I see our adventures together are over.”

  “Do you?” Will asked. “I don’t. One last one, I think. I’ll go. As you say, if everyone is there, there’ll be more trade for me there too. I’ll join you. And you, my lord?”

  “I think not,” Lucian said.

  Neither Maggie or Will were surprised. They were only secretly surprised to find themselves feeling a little wounded. Because the world was returning to normal, and so why would a viscount want to pass his time with a Bow Street runner or even an uncommon fishmonger?

  “I have to talk to the family, think this out,” Lucian said absently. “I will see you again though,” he added quickly, as though hearing their thoughts. “I’ll take you to Lady Louisa,” he told Maggie. “If not tomorrow, then at your earliest convenience? And there’s the matter of the reward I owe you,” he told W
ill.

  “Well, I didn’t earn it by myself,” Will said handsomely. “I think there’ll be something in it for Mrs. Pushkin too. But if I’m to be paid soon, I think I’ll have enough coin in my pockets to treat you to a fine luncheon,” he told Maggie. “You say you want to make a day of it? I’ll be here at nine,”

  “I think not!” Maggie said with a wicked grin. “Noon! If it’s to be a holiday, let’s make it a grand one. I’ll sip chocolate in bed like a lady, and spend the morning making myself magnificent for the Fair.”

  “With that pup, and all your charges?” Will laughed. “Lucky if you can keep your eyes closed until first light.”

  “Well,” Maggie admitted, “I do want to have things in order so we can start work all the earlier the next day.”

  “Noon, then,” Will said.

  “I will be back,” Lucian told her at the door, before he followed Will to their waiting coach.

  “The thing is…” Will said as they drove back to Lucian’s house, “it don’t all add up.”

  “It does,” Lucian said, staring out the window at nothing. “No one tried to kill me, Mr. Corby. I see that now. It’s just that when one’s mind’s on murder, one sees it in every shadow. The horse was struck and made to gallop in my direction. No doubt Arthur was pushed too. The streets were crowded, and London is never easy. My uncle was a vile man and met a deserved end. My brother and I were merely unlucky. At the same time. It’s unusual, but not unheard of. Uncle’s blood was spilled through his own idiocy. No one is after ours. Send your lads home from my alley. Let them have a holiday too. It’s over.”

  But Will fretted about it, even as he treated himself to a hackney ride back to Bow Street. It didn’t feel over to him.

  *

  “No!” Arthur breathed.

  His mother was so distressed she got to her feet, as though she could leave the subject where she’d been sitting when she’d heard it. A moment later, she sat again, as the information sank in. “Vile, vile man,” she muttered. “To lower himself so—well, but he was always a selfish creature, caring for nothing but himself. But the family! If this gets out—and it will, filth bubbles to the top, no matter how deeply it’s hidden… What shall we do?”