The History of Mischief

by Rebecca Higgie

  Will returned late. We sat together in my room, on the floor by the fireplace where it was most warm. I gave him Frostiana and he flipped through it with a happy smile.

  ‘Listen to this: “Swings, bookstalls, dancing in a barge, suttling-booths, playing at skittles, and almost every appendage of a Fair on land was now transferred to the Thames.” Can you imagine?’ he said. He laughed and showed me a passage. ‘Some fellow wrote a letter to the thaw! Look! “Now as you love mischief, treat the multitude with a few cracks by a sudden visit.” What cheek!’

  I smiled at the mention of mischief.

  ‘Wouldn’t it be marvellous to see the Thames frozen over? I’d do anything to be back there when this book was printed.’

  I admired Will, his heart still so young. ‘I would freeze all the rivers and oceans if it would please you.’

  Will laughed. ‘With what divinity would you freeze the oceans?’

  I shrugged and grinned back, taking Frostiana from him. ‘Some sort of devilish mischief.’

  The next day, I resolved to find a proper hiding place for the History. My thief could freely come into our home now, had figured out where I kept the History, and had wormed her way into Will’s affections. I set about finding the one place better guarded than my briefcase, a place not even a clever thief could gain access to. The Reading Room stacks.

  I woke early and went to the stacks, to the packed shelf where I’d found Frostiana. I slid the History behind the row of books, behind many volumes of Davises. I felt sure she couldn’t get it there.

  The next few days were fairly mundane. Just the cold, some students and more Russian exiles. But then, after returning home late one day, Will greeted me at the door with an angry urgency.

  ‘Where’ve you been?’ he snapped.

  ‘Good evening to you too,’ I said.

  ‘Your boss has been here.’

  I frowned. ‘Richard? He’s out of town.’

  ‘No, Mr Blythe.’

  ‘Percy? Oh. How tedious for you.’

  Will paced. He tugged at his waistcoat, pulled at his sleeves. I suddenly felt uneasy.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘We have been so … foolish!’

  I grabbed Will by the arms to stop him moving. ‘What?’

  ‘He came here asking all these questions.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘He kept talking about birth records, about not finding you anywhere. He even checked up on your degree from Edinburgh. He looked into me, found me sure enough, but said he couldn’t find an Archibald Barrie anywhere. Even mentioned the initials on your briefcase and your bloody accent.’

  ‘You told him the M on my briefcase is my middle name, Magnus. He can look up Magnus Barrie and find your grandfather.’

  ‘Of course, I told him.’

  ‘Well, you told him about Father’s –’

  ‘Of course!’

  ‘And the records?’

  ‘I told him every stupid lie we ever invented!’ Will said, jerking his arms free. ‘He didn’t believe a word of it.’

  I shrugged. ‘It’s of no conscience. He can’t do anything. Richard won’t have an ill word spoken about me.’

  ‘People listen to these kinds of ill words.’

  ‘We have the degrees, we have the birth certificates. They’ve never failed us before.’

  Will shook his head and mumbled to himself, ‘I’ve made so many allowances.’

  ‘What do you fear? That this will happen to you?’ I demanded, motioning at the marks on my face. ‘You’ve made no allowances. None!’

  ‘I can never go home because of you!’

  ‘Me? You can go back to Auld Reekie whenever you wish! It is I who can never go back. Every moment I’ve lived has been in jeopardy. You think a little snoop like Percy has the power of gangs and wolves?’

  ‘Every man with ill-intent can summon a gang and rally wolves. That is how this’ –Will gestured at my face – ‘happened.’

  I was tired and didn’t want to indulge fears that ruled my life decades ago. ‘We’ve faced worse,’ I offered, and left Will to his frittering. Percy was not a threat I perceived as legitimate. I had all the means to rebuff him.

  I was fired the next day. Percy offered no explanation.

  ‘Richard will be hearing about this,’ I warned him, loudly. My voice bounced around the dome.

  ‘I look forward to it,’ Percy responded coldly. He held out his hand. ‘Your keys, Mr Barrie.’

  I slapped them hard into his open palm.

  ‘And my keys,’ Percy added dryly.

  ‘Your keys? I don’t have your keys, you fiend.’

  ‘Who stole them then?’

  My anger dissolved instantly. Percy’s keys had been stolen. It had to be her.

  I wasn’t allowed back in the stacks. Percy wouldn’t even let me approach the desk. The History was still hidden with the Davises. And now she had keys to the Reading Room. The stacks.

  Will insisted I make no fuss, but fuss I made. We had a week to pack and move our things, but weren’t allowed to stay another day in the residences, an absurdity for which there was no precedence.

  Mr McKenna somehow heard that we were staying at a local inn. That, apparently, would not do. We were to stay with the McKennas, two guestrooms awaited us.

  I spent the cab ride there trying to figure out how she’d done it.

  It snowed for days. Heavy sheets of brittle ice piled on the roads, killed off the homeless huddled in doorways, and stopped all telegrams through to Richard. Then the snow stopped and a frost set in. No mail, no travel, no going outside if you wanted to keep your fingers. Our hosts were friendly enough, and their house warm, but the combination of their cheerful conversation and my sudden unemployment plunged me into a gloom so severe I used the fairer sex’s oft-employed excuse of a headache to justify confining myself to my room.

  My thief spent her time reading or with Will. Their witless jokes and tinkles of laughter were too much to stomach. She read a lot. I even spotted her sitting opposite Will in the lounge, reading silently together. Why did her uncle allow her to be alone with a man who was but a stranger two weeks ago? Did Glaswegians have some perverse sense of morality those of Edinburgh and London were not privy to? The man seemed a civilised gent, why would he allow this? He was unapologetically Scottish though, and if he trusted Will to be alone with his unmarried niece, that was the way it was to be. He reserved all his suspicion for me.

  ‘Where’s your accent gone, man?’ he asked at one of the few dinners I deigned attend.

  ‘Time in London, sir,’ I offered, supressing the sigh of being asked the question a thousand times by a thousand equally as boring gentlemen.

  ‘Your brother managed to keep his.’

  ‘My father thought his eldest son would inherit the family profession of medicine, not his youngest, so it was I who followed him down to London when he was visiting patients. The commonwealth of this nation is not so commonly shared. The wealthiest patients are in England.’

  Mr McKenna approved of the dig at England and said no more. The man was clearly a dullard. At first, I’d thought he’d been the one to orchestrate all this, using a woman to try and steal the History without consequence, but time spent in his company made me rule out that possibility. Instead, I tried to figure out how she’d done it, how a French woman had convinced a dotty old Scotsman that she was his niece. I asked how she came to live with her uncle.

  ‘Very sad,’ Mr McKenna said. ‘My drunkard of a brother died with naught a penny to his name. I hadn’t seen the poor girl for twenty years when she showed up on my doorstep.’

  ‘Twenty years, sir!’ Will responded. ‘She must have been a sweet wee girl when you last saw her.’

  ‘Aye,’ Mr McKenna replied, nodding soberly.

  ‘How did you recognise her then?’ I asked, perhaps a little too pointedly. Will scowled at me.

  ‘Oh, you always know family, don’t you?’ Mr McKenna said, smiling at her.
My thief smiled back. Then she glanced at Will. Smiled at him too.

  It would, perhaps, be fairly obvious what happened next. You may think me rather simple not to have seen it. A day after the snow ceased, and the frost plunged the city further down the thermometer, Will came to me.

  ‘Miss McKenna getting a bit boring?’

  ‘She’s good company actually,’ Will said. ‘You would know that if you spent some time with her. Shame about your headaches.’

  ‘Shame indeed.’

  We sat for a moment, listening to the fireplace crackle.

  ‘I’m sorry we haven’t spoken much,’ he finally said. ‘I was angry.’

  ‘I understand,’ I said. ‘So was I.’

  ‘You were right. It was always you who made allowances, you who sacrificed. I never meant … I never knew how to make up for what happened. I just wanted a peaceful life, for us to be safe.’

  ‘I know,’ I said.

  ‘I always wanted to find a way. I wanted so many things for us.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I hope you understand, everything I do is for us,’ he said.

  His words came out slowly, like he was stumbling through them.

  ‘We’re fine. Stop this now,’ I said as kindly as I could. Perhaps I hoped to stop what I felt was coming.

  ‘There’s a simple way to guarantee a peaceful life, and that is marriage. A good family. Respected. Not wealthy but well-to-do enough,’ he said. ‘I sought Mr McKenna’s blessing for his niece’s hand in marriage yesterday. He happily gave us his blessing. She said yes.’

  I said nothing. He reached out meekly for my hand. I pulled it away.

  ‘We’ll still be us, Archie.’

  ‘If you marry her, there is no us.’

  ‘Don’t be unkind. There’ll always be us.’

  I looked at my hands. The cuts and gouges. The ugly red scars.

  ‘You’ll always be my brother,’ he offered.

  ‘I’m sick of being your brother,’ I said.

  I left the house, frost be damned. I didn’t want to be there in the warmth, among the champagne toasts. I’d lost my job, my mischief and my Will.

  I walked past birds fallen out of the sky, frozen by the winter. Some were frosted hard to windowsills. I picked one up, a sparrow, and held it to my chest. I warmed it in the same manner I’d commanded ice to evaporate the day my thief came into my life. The little creature softened, twitched. I felt warmth fill its cotton-thread-like veins. I heard its heart beating, fluttering like a butterfly’s wings. Its body twitched with more ferocity. Now awake, it desired to be free.

  I couldn’t let it go. It would freeze again without me. The sparrow tried to flap its wings. I clamped them down and held it closer to my chest. I wondered if the bird heard my heart beating, if its ears would burst at the drum-like cacophony of a heart that was no doubt bigger than its whole body.

  I found myself by the Thames, that star of Frostiana. Its current was surely the only thing still moving with ease in London. I thought of the printing press that fashioned the book I swapped for the History. Maybe the press had nestled in the spot where the Tower Bridge now stood. Perhaps it faced St Paul’s, as men around it walked on water. I thought of Will.

  The little sparrow chirped. It looked up at me, frantic. What was better? Freedom and a certain death by freezing, or captivity and warmth? I thought of crushing it, killing it quickly. Perhaps a small cruelty was the kindnest thing. It chirped again, begging mercy perhaps.

  I let the sparrow go. Held my hands out to the sky, that grandiose dome, the Pantheon of the world, and it flew away. I bent down, pulled my hand free of its glove, and let my fingers hover just above the Thames. I felt the chill coming off the river.

  I sank into myself, sent my mind into the water. I saw the billions upon billions of atoms beneath my hand, remembering pictures of water molecules from stolen books, the way the hydrogen atoms bonded, locking the liquid state into that of a solid. How funny that the first book Will ever caught me stealing was the one I remembered now, a little thing on the states of matter.

  The memory triggered the mischief. The water below my fingertips froze. The river pushed up against the patch of ice, but I willed it deeper. I could see right down to the atoms. I danced along each bubble of oxygen, snap-froze those hydrogen bonds in place. It crackled as the ice hardened. I stretched my fingers apart and watched the ice spread.

  I had a sizeable platform now, and took the step of a man more mischievous than wise. The ice was solid, at least twelve inches. I threw off my other glove. Holding out both hands, I froze the ice deeper, extending it into the Thames. I walked forward, watching the river turn solid before me. The ice was dark but smooth. The tides yielded, did not dent or push against the surface. I became cocky, walking faster, and then broke into a run, my feet outpacing the ice. As my shoe hit the water, I froze it. I jumped and ran over the river, freezing it before my feet came down.

  The ice hit the south bank. I turned like a skater, letting my shoes act as blades. I sent the ice outward, touching the Tower Bridge, extending past London Bridge. I poured my memories into the water, froze it solid as if to keep my past alive. I laughed.

  There was no water to be seen. The ice extended far beyond my eyes. I stood in the middle of the frozen Thames, where once men had drowned. I looked towards the Tower, to the arches of London Bridge and the dome of St Paul’s. The power of the mischief still poured out of me. Newspapers would later report that glass shattered in all the houses around the river, as water on dining tables and wine in cellars expanded.

  I shivered. It was cold. Very cold actually.

  A horrible realisation dawned on me.

  I, too, was made of water.

  The cold slithered through my veins, like some nasty eel, entering through my hands and feet and gripping my heart. I looked up as the water in my eyes froze them open and saw, if my mind wasn’t playing tricks on me, the speck that was my sparrow. As my last breath froze, the water vapour turning to ice crystals in my throat, I felt such joy that its tenacious flight should be the last thing I saw. Let there be celebrations upon the stage of my death. Will would have his frost fair after all.

  But I didn’t die. I just danced on the edge, tilted over for a second like my sparrow, before being pulled back.

  The first thing I saw was her, my thief. I fluttered my eyes and then wiped them, for they were full of tears. I was incredibly warm, and contained somehow. Ah, a bed. Tucked in so tight she might as well have chained me down. I was back in the McKennas’ house. My thief sat on a chair, facing me. I tried to get up but she pushed me down.

  ‘Rest,’ she said.

  I was in no state to object. My limbs were numb.

  ‘How did I get here?’

  She wanted to say something, but couldn’t. She opened her mouth and no words came out. She frowned and tried to speak again. Just a squeak. She looked confused. I’d seen this before on the face of a hundred or so mischiefs, trying to communicate their secret. I tried to speak back, to tell her of the magic I’d wrought upon the Thames. Nothing came.

  Yet, she managed one thing: ‘I saw.’

  You couldn’t have, I wanted to say. Only mischiefs could see mischief being done. Either she was my successor, or the laws of mischief had changed. I thought of the ruined pages and lost memories.

  I pulled my hand out from under the covers. I couldn’t feel my fingers, but they were all there, none blackened with frost as they no doubt should be. I looked at them for a moment, marvelling that they all seemed to work. I locked eyes with her and clicked my fingers. I saw her brown eyes flash blue just as the bedside lantern, the fireplace and the few candles winked out. I clicked my fingers again. The flames ignited. Her eyes never left mine. She saw what I did. Her eyes were now completely blue, no camouflage to them. She blinked a few times, and they turned back to brown. Was this her mischief? We both considered each other in silence, trying to figure the other out.

  She smiled.
‘You are very clever.’

  Then she got up, went to the door and called out, ‘Will, Archie’s awake!’

  I heard the heavy footsteps of a man running up stairs. Will came into the room in a flurry, embraced me, and then rested on his knees beside my bed. His head hung limply, touching the blankets by my chest. I saw the exhaustion of time spent coaxing me back to the world of the living.

  ‘You’re a right old idiot,’ he said into the blankets.

  I put my hand on his head. Touched his hair but couldn’t feel it. ‘Yes.’

  ‘You only have your life and all your fingers thanks to a good-natured boatman and my medical expertise.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He went quiet. I stroked his hair again, willing some feeling back into my fingers.

  ‘Is there a frost fair?’ I asked.

  Will sighed. His body shrunk. My thief touched him on the shoulder.

  ‘You can’t have a stage like that and not erect a fine performance upon it,’ she answered. She glowed with the kind of smile women employ to beg reconciliation.

  ‘I would love to be a spectator,’ I said, playing along.

  ‘If you can walk before Madam Tabitha Thaw comes to London, maybe,’ Will said.

  I smiled at the reference to Frostiana.

  Then, ‘Don’t do that again.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘You’re the last of my family. I need you.’

  A churlish part of me wanted to say, ‘You are to make another family soon. What need will you have of me then?’ But I held my tongue. Instead, I hung to the warmth of being worried about. I spent the afternoon wiggling my toes.

  ‘Come on, you monstrous fiends!’ I shouted, willing feeling back into them.

  I promised all ten of them they could walk again on the ice if they’d just tell the rest of my limbs to move too.

  My toes were kind to me, and so was my thief. I walked again with relative ease but Will didn’t think it wise to go out. Miss McKenna pleaded with him, saying how unkind it would be to deny a well man a once-in-a-lifetime event.