Marie Brennan: With Fate Conspire

So she hopes, and has hoped for longer than she can recall. But each thrust brings the knife that much closer to her heart.

One way or another, she will not have to endure much more.

The monster city seethed with life. Its streets, like arteries both great and small, pulsed with the flow of traffic: hackneys and private carriages, omnibuses bursting with riders inside and out, horse trams rattling past on their iron rails. People on foot, on horseback, on the improbable wheels of bicycles. On the river, ships: forests of masts and steam funnels, skiffs hauling cargo to and fro, ferries spilling passengers onto piers that thrust out from the stinking foreshore. Trains thundered in from the suburbs and back out again, the population rising and falling, as if the city breathed.

The air that filled its lungs was humanity, of countless different kinds. The high and the low, glittering with diamonds or the tears of despair, speaking dozens of languages in hundreds of accents, living cheek by jowl, above and below and beside one another, but occupying entirely different worlds. The city encompassed them all: living and dying, they formed part of the great organism, which daily threatened to strangle on its simultaneous growth and rot.

This was London, in all its filth and glory. Nostalgic for the past, while yearning to cast off the chains of bygone ages and step forward into the bright utopia of the future. Proud of its achievements, yet despising its own flaws. A monster in both size and nature, that would consume the unwary and spit them out again, in forms unrecognizable and undreamt.

London, the monster city.

The City of London: February 26, 1884

“Hot buns! A farthing apiece, warm you on a cold morning! Will you buy a bun, sir?”

The cry rose into the air and was lost among others, like one bird in a flock. A burst of steam from the open cut alongside Farringdon Road heralded the arrival of a subterranean train; a minute later, the station above disgorged a mass of men, joining those carried into the City by the power of their own feet. They shuffled along Snow Hill and up onto Holborn Viaduct, yawning and sleepy, their numbers sufficient to stop carriages and omnibuses when they flooded across the street crossings.

A costerwoman’s voice had to be strong, to make itself heard above the voices and footsteps and the church bells ringing seven o’clock. Filling her lungs, Eliza bellowed again, “Hot buns! Hot from the oven! Only a farthing apiece!”

One fellow paused, dug in his pocket, handed over a penny. The four buns Eliza gave in exchange had been hot when she collected her load an hour ago; only the close-packed mass of their fellows had preserved any heat since then. But these were the clerks, the ink-stained men who slaved away in the City’s halls of business for long hours and little pay; they wouldn’t quibble over the truth of her advertising. By the time their wealthier betters came in to work, three hours or so from now, she would have sold her stock and filled her barrow with something else.

If all went well. Good days were the ones where she traced the streets again and again, with new wares every round: laces for boots and stays, lucifers, even larks one time. Bad days saw her peddling cold, stale buns at sundown, with no comfort save the surety that at least she would have something to eat that night. And sometimes a doss-house keeper could be persuaded to take a few as payment, in exchange for a spot on his bench.

Today was beginning well; even a bun of only moderate warmth was a pleasant touch on a cold morning like this one. But chill weather made men sullen in the afternoon and evening, turning up their collars and shoving their hands into pockets, thinking only of the train or omnibus or long walk that would take them home. Eliza knew better than to assume her luck would hold.

By the time she reached Cheapside, following the crowds of men on their way to the countinghouses, the press in the streets was thinning; those still out were hurrying, for fear their pay would be docked for lateness. Eliza counted her coins, stuck an experimental finger among the remaining buns, and decided they were cold enough that she could spare one for herself. And Tom Granger was always willing to let her sit a while with him.

She retraced her steps to the corner of Ivy Lane, where Tom was halfheartedly waving copies of The Times at passersby. “You’ll never sell them with that lazy hand,” Eliza said, stopping her barrow alongside.

His grin was as crooked as his front teeeth. “Wait ’til tomorrow. Bill says we’ll ’ave exciting news then.”

“Oh?” Eliza offered him a bun, which he accepted. “Scandal, is it?”

“Better. There’s been another bombing.”

She had just taken a large bite; it caught in her throat, and for a moment she feared she would choke. Then it slid down, and she hoped that if Tom saw her distress, he’d chalk it up to that. “Where?”

Tom had already crammed half the bun in his own mouth. His answer was completely unintelligible; she had to wait while he chewed enough to swallow. “Victoria Station,” he said, once he could speak more clearly. “Right early this morning. Blew the booking office and all ’alfway to the moon. Nobody ’urt, though—pity. We sells more papers when there’s dead people.”

“Who did it?”

He shrugged, then turned away to sell a paper to a man in a carpenter’s flannel coat. That done, he said, “Harry thinks it was a gas pipe what blew, but I reckon it’s the Fenians again.” He spat onto the cobblestones. “Fucking micks. They sells papers, I’ll give ’em that, but ’em and their bleeding bombs, eh?”

“Them and their bleeding bombs,” Eliza echoed, staring at the remnants of her bun as if it needed her attention. She had lost all appetite, but forced herself to finish anyway. I missed it. While I slept tied to a bench, he was here, and I missed my chance.

Tom rattled on about the Irish, allowing as how they were devilish strong buggers and good at hard labor, but one paddy had come up the other day, bold as you please, and tried to get papers to sell. “Me and Bill ran ’im off right quick,” Tom said.

Eliza didn’t share his satisfaction in the slightest. While Tom spoke, her gaze raked the street, as if frantic effort now could make up for her failure. Too late, and you know it. What would you have done anyway, if you’d been here last night? Followed him again? Much good that did last time. But you missed your chance to do better. It took her by surprise when Tom left off his tirade and said, “Three months, it’s been, and I still don’t get you.”

She hoped her stare was not as obviously startled as it felt. “What do you mean?”

Tom gestured at her, seeming to indicate both the ragged clothing and the young woman who wore it. “You. Who you are, and what you’re doing ’ere.”

She was suddenly far colder than could be explained by the morning air. “Trying to sell buns. But I think I’m about done in for these; I should go for fried fish soon, or something else.”

“Which you’ll bring right back ’ere. Maybe you’ll go stand around the ’ospital, or the prison, but you’ll stick near Newgate as long as you can, so long as you’ve got a few pennies to buy supper and a place to sleep. Them fine gents like to talk about lazy folks as don’t care enough to earn a better wage—but you’re the only one I’ve ever met where it’s true. ” Tom scratched his neck, studying her in a way that made her want to run. “You don’t drop your aitches, you ain’t from a proper coster family—I know they runs you off sometimes, when you steps on their territory—in short, you’s a mystery, and ever since you started coming ’ere I’ve been trying to work you out. What’s around Newgate for you, Elizabeth Marsh, that you’ll spend three months waiting for it to show up?”