Her fingers felt like ice. Eliza fumbled with the ends of her shawl, then stopped, because it only drew attention to how her hands were shaking. What was there to fear? No crime in hanging about, not so long as she was engaged in honest work. Tom knew nothing. So far as he was aware, she was simply Elizabeth Marsh, and Elizabeth Marsh was nobody.
But she hadn’t thought up a lie for him, because she hadn’t expected him to ask. Before her mind could settle down enough to find a good one, his expression softened to sympathy. “Got someone in Newgate, ’ave you?”
He jerked his chin westward as he said it. Newgate in the specific sense, the prison that stood nearby. Which was close enough to a truth—if not the real truth—that Eliza seized upon it with relief. “My father.”
“Thought it might be an ’usband,” Tom said. “You wouldn’t be the first mot walking around without a ring. Waiting for ’im to get out, or ’oping ’e won’t?”
Eliza thought about the last time she’d seen her father. Four months ago, and the words between them weren’t pretty—they never were—but she’d clean forgotten about that after she walked out of the prison and saw that familiar, hated face.
She shrugged uncomfortably, hoping Tom would let the issue drop. The more questions she answered, the more likely it was that he’d catch a whiff of something odd. Better to leave it at a nameless father with an unnamed crime. Tom didn’t press, but he did pick up one of his newspapers and begin searching through a back page. “’Ere, take a look at this.”
The piece above his ragged fingernail was brief, just two short paragraphs under the header MR. CALHOUN’S NEW FACTORY. “Factory work ain’t bad,” Tom said. “Better than service, anyway—no missus always on you, and some factories pay more—and it would get you out of ’ere. Waiting around won’t do you no good, Lizzie, and you keeps this up, sooner or later your luck’ll go bad. Workhouse bad.”
“Ah, you’re just trying to get rid of me,” Eliza said. It came out higher than usual, because of the tightness in her throat. Tom was just useful; his corner was the best one to watch from. She never intended more than that—never friendship—and his kindness made her feel all the more guilty about her lies.
But he was right, as far as it went. She’d been in service before, to an Italian family that sold secondhand clothes in Spitalfields. Being a maid-of-all-work, regardless of the family, was little better than being a slave. Lots of girls said factory work was preferable, if you could get it. But abandoning Newgate…
She couldn’t. Her disobedient eyes drifted back to the advertisement anyway. And then she saw what lay below, that Tom’s hand had covered before.
LONDON FAIRY SOCIETY—A new association has formed in Islington, for the understanding of Britain’s fast-vanishing fairy inhabitants. Meetings the second Friday of every month at 9 White Lion St., 7 P.M.
Eliza only barely kept from snatching the paper out of Tom’s hands, to stare at the words and see if they vanished. “May I?” she asked.
She meant only to read it again, but Tom handed her the paper and flapped his hands in its wake. “Keep it.”
The cold had gone; Eliza felt warm from head to toe. She could not look away from the words. Coincidence—or providence? It might be nothing: folk with money babbling on about little “flower fairies,” rather than faeries, the kind Eliza knew all too well. This new society might not know anything that could help her.
But her alternative was waiting around here, with the fading hope that it would do her any good. Just because there’d been another bombing didn’t mean any of the people involved had been here; it could have been pure chance last October, spotting him in Newgate. She’d spent nearly every day here since then, and not caught so much as another glimpse. They were tricksy creatures, faeries were, and not easily caught. But perhaps this London Fairy Society could help her.
“Thank you,” Eliza told Tom, folding the newspaper and stuffing it into the sagging pocket of her shawl.
He shrugged, looking away in embarrassment. “Ah, it’s nothing. You feeds me buns enough; I owes you a newspaper’s worth, at least.”
She wasn’t thanking him for the paper, but saying so would only make him more awkward. “I’d best be moving,” Eliza said. “These buns won’t sell themselves. But I’ll think about the factory, Tom; I will.” She meant it, too. It would be glorious to go back to something like normal life. No more of this hand-to-mouth existence, gambling everything on the hope of a second stroke of luck. After these three months, she’d even go back into service with the DiGiuseppes, just to know each night that she’d have a roof over her head.
If a normal life was even possible anymore, after everything she’d been through. But that was a question for the future. First, she had to catch herself a faerie.
Tom wished her well, and she gripped the handles of her barrow again, wheeling it down Newgate toward a fellow in Holborn who would sell her fried fish, if she could dispose of the rest of her current load. Her eyes did their habitual dance over the crowds as she cried her wares, but saw nothing unusual.
Second Friday. That’ll be the fourteenth, then. A bit more than a fortnight away. She’d keep on here until then, on the off chance that her luck would turn even better. But Islington, she hoped, held the answers.
The Goblin Market, Onyx Halclass="underline" March 2, 1884
With a clicking of toenails upon cracked black stone, the dog trotted into the room of cages. A half dozen lined the narrow chamber, three on a side, mostly full with sleeping humans. In the nearest, a young girl lay alone on a floor of filthy straw, curled in upon herself. The dog drew nearer, sniffing. His nose brushed her hair, close by the cage’s wooden bars, and she jerked awake with a cry of fear.
The dog sat down on his haunches and studied her, tongue lolling just a little. It was as close to an appealing look as a scruffy thing like him could come; his black fur was untidy and matted, and a chunk had been torn from his left ear. But when he made no threatening move—merely sat and watched—the girl moved hesitantly from the corner where she’d retreated. Holding one hand out, she inched closer, until her hand was near enough to the bars for the dog to extend his nose and sniff politely. He even licked her dirty fingers, a brief, warm caress.
At that touch of kindness, the girl burst into tears.
“Oi there!”
The dog rose in a swift turn. A squat, ugly figure stood in the doorway, scratching the wiry hairs of his beard. “Get off it,” the goblin said, scowling at him. “’E wants to see you, and not on four feet.”
In the cage, the girl had retreated once more. The dog cast a brief glance over his shoulder at her, then sighed, a peculiarly human sound. Bending his head, he concentrated, and his body began to shift.
He heard a faint whimper from behind him as the transformation finished. However little reassurance his dog form had offered, as a man he was worse; Dead Rick knew that all too well. Ragged trousers stopped short of his bare feet, whose toenails curved thick and filthy to the floor. On his body he wore only a torn waistcoat, scavenged off a dead mortal; he hated the confining feel of sleeves on his arms. His hair was as dirty and matted as it had been when it was fur, and as for his face… he didn’t turn around. He might not be a barguest, with a devil’s flaming eyes, but he’d seen himself in a mirror; the hard slash of his mouth wouldn’t reassure anyone.