The Mourning Emporium (22 page)

The Londoners drew back fearfully at the mention of the truancy officers. The freckled boy held out a coin with a pleading look on his face. “Give you this if you doan dob us in to the mendicities. We doan want to go to the Refuge for Homeless and Destitute Children, an’ make shoes an’ wash clothes …”

“We are not spies!” cried Teo indignantly.

“That short-haired girlie speaks plain English anyway,” observed the boy who was conspicuously plumper than the rest. “So if you’s not spies, what is you?”

“Venetians from Venice, apprentice sailors from the good ship Scilla,” declared Renzo proudly.

“You doan look much loik sailors, Mister Cyclopeedy. Anyways, I thort Venice drownded under the ice and everybody dieded o’ that plague they got there.”

“Not everybody.” There was a catch in Renzo’s voice.

“Renzo’s mother drowned,” explained Teo in a low voice. “So did his Uncle Tommaso. And his father was a gondolier, but he died from his chest a long time ago. And my real parents were drowned, and now the people who adopted me have been kidnapped.”

“Poor show. Hain’t the bobbies been able to find ’em?”

“The police,” explained a curly-headed girl.

Teo shook her head.

“None of us has got Mas or Pas neither,” chorused the boys and girls. “Some of us mothers died. And some dint, but we is better orf wivout ’em.”

“I don’t understand.” Renzo knitted his brows. “We were told there were no poor children or orphans in London.”

“Indeedy? Ha!” The Londoners guffawed, and the plump boy was obliged to lie on the ground and hold his belly for some minutes. Then he grinned up at Teo and Renzo, asking, “Now, my treacles, the real question is, has you got any pie? Or giblets wiv gravy and rice an’ potatoes an’ coffee boiled expressly loik they drinks in Italy?”

“Sorry, we don’t have any food,” replied Teo earnestly. “If we did, we’d give it to you.”

The boy jumped to his feet, his eyes alight with excitement. “Hey, maybe they can git us some hot zooky! They is Eyetalian, they must know the zookymen. They talks their lingo anyways. They can interduce us friendly-loik.”

“Hot zooky?” asked Teo.

“Only the very latest novelty in savory snacks, innit! A bunch o’ Eyetalians is jest arrived in London, selling’ hot spicy pumpkin by the slice.”

“ ‘Zucca’ being the Italian word for ‘pumpkin,’ ” said Renzo triumphantly.

Teo’s and Renzo’s eyes met delightedly. Those pumpkin-sellers—the Venetian Incogniti sent by Lussa—were exactly the people that they desperately wanted to find.

“We’d love to,” cried Teo. “Let’s go right now! Where can we meet with them?”

“Steady on, girl. Termorrow hafternoon, maybes. It’s dark now, not safe on the streets, not for zooky-sellers nor childer. Termorrow mornin’ we’s got a job on, and after that, well, we’s got our own doings to do.”

“Doings?” asked Renzo and Teo simultaneously.

One by one, the Londoners stepped forward to introduce themselves and their professions.

“Hyrum Hoxton,” said the freckled boy. “I sell these ’ere Lucifers”—he struck one of his matches to demonstrate—“an’ bootlaces.”

Rosibund Grayhoare and Ann Picklefinch, both thin and mousy-haired, told of how they had run away from cruel homes in Glasgow.

“We call ’em the Haggis-munchers.” Hyrum explained that they were named after a Scottish confection of sheep’s innards held together with grease and oatmeal. The girls’ eyes glazed over with culinary nostalgia and their mouths curved upward at the memory of it.

“Now we’s snide-blitzers ’n’ snide-bubblers,” said the one called Ann, showing fingers apparently wrinkled by long immersion in soapy water, while Rosibund jingled her pockets.

“They clean up dirty coins,” explained the plump boy, bowing as he introduced himself as “Greasy Ressydew, boy of all trades.”

Next, the girl with the short arms edged forward. “Sally Twinish,” she coughed. “I weren’t borned loik this. My ma put me in with the baby-farmers and they shut me in a box so I’d grow up crookedish. They wanted me more pathetical, so they could put me out on the streets to beg. And when I weren’t pathetical enough, they whipped me till I were. Then they gave me back to my ma, so she could turn a penny on me. She kept a pin under her dress to make me weep when she carried me round town. So soon as I could walk, I runned away. Now I begs on me own account, and I shares me takin’s with me friends, loik. Ta very much!” She smiled warmly at a curly-headed girl who had edged over and now popped a piece of licorice between her lips.

“Tig Sweetiemouth allus feeds me, as me hands doan reach me teef.”

Tig smiled shyly at the Venetians and offered them some licorice.

The muddy boy introduced himself next. “Bits Piecer. Mudlark. I goes in the Thames at low tide and finds stuff.” He pulled a much-dented coffeepot from the enormous pockets of his ragged jacket. “Worth a shillin’ at the pawnbrokers. Course I hain’t saying that I hain’t got a power o’ work to do on it first.” He rubbed it with his thin elbow, producing a slight shine.

A sour whiff preceded the next boy, who did not proffer his hand. “Tobias Putrid, they calls me. I’s a tosher. I do wot Bits do in the mud. But in the sewer.”

A girl with a scarf wrapped around her lower jaw shuffled up. Her round eyes creased into a smile, yet from her hidden mouth came only inarticulate noises. Teo leaned forward in sympathy. Renzo asked, “Why does she wear the scarf?”

“She were a match girl,” said Tobias Putrid, as if that explained everything. “And now she’s a cat-gut scraper.”

Seeing the questions in the Venetians’ eyes, Greasy cut in bluntly, “She’s got the phossy jaw, my treacles, doan ye know? Her teeth is gone and her jawbone is rotted by that phossyphorus they use in the match factory. There’s dozens loik her. Marg’rit found her dyin’ behind the factory gate, put out wiv the rubbish. We doan even know her name, and she can’t tell us, can she, so we calls her Fossy. She plays the fiddle—wot’s strung wiv cat-gut strings—loik an angel. Show ’em, Fossy.”

Fossy produced a shabby little fiddle and played a few notes. It was as if she spoke. The longing and the sweetness were all perfectly legible in her music, like words written on a piece of a paper.

“She’s talking about her mother!” exclaimed Teo.

“Who is dead,” whispered Renzo.

“Marg’rit Savory has heard her whole story, hain’t you, Marg’rit?”

Marg’rit’s plump hand crept out to hold Fossy’s. “Yes, she’s a sweetheart, Fossy. And she would be so pretty if it weren’t for the phosphorus. Her ma were a celebrated beauty. Fossy’s got her ma’s hair.”

Marg’rit stroked it, adding, “Of course, Fossy’s own barnet fell out when she got sick. So when her ma died, they used her hair to make a wig for her little girl. It were all she had to leave. The quacks had taken all the rest.”

“Quacks?”

Pylorus Salt, a towheaded boy with clever eyes, introduced himself and explained, “Them what sell fake medicines on the street corners. It’s pure poison, but how them ladies goes for it! There must be summat in it that makes ’em keep comin’ back for more, says I.”

Next Renzo and Teo were introduced to “the District Disgrace,” who lisped: “My mother wath so ’shamed of me that she moved houth wivout tellin’ me.”

“What did you do to disgrace her?” Teo could not hide her shock.

“No idea. I think I wanted feedin’ too often. That’s woth she alwayth sayed.”

The last boy offered his hand. “Thrasher Geek, general lad-about-town. I say, you doan have any of them Eyetalian barrel organs on your boat, do you? I’d love to have a try. Or dancing mice?”

“Sorry, we had to leave Venice in a hurry. Nothing like that,” said Renzo.

Once all the introductions had been done, Greasy Ressydew turned to Teo and Renzo with a huge grinning yawn. “Well, ta-ta then, golden dreams, my treacles. We’s off for some pie and shut-eye.”

“And where do you repose?” asked Renzo, his own tiredness etched in gray all over his face. Teo too was suddenly stupendously, utterly, overwhelmingly tired. Her shoulders drooped. Yet the quarantine meant that they could not go back to the Scilla.

“Yew means sleep? We sleep loik royalty! We lay ourselves down in the lap of looxury each night, my dears,” Bits answered with a grin.

“Upon velvet!” Rosibund and Ann seemed always to speak together.

“Upon black velvet ’n’ silk ’n’ all sorts of lace! So long as it’s black, for that is ‘the garb of tears,’ ” quoted Greasy.

“In there!” A dozen smudged thumbs pointed at a somber building in the distance. It was painted black and adorned with large, sober lettering picked out in white and embellished by many curlicues.

Renzo pulled the telescope out of his pocket. He read aloud:

“It’s enormous!” remarked Teo.

“And extremely dolorous,” added Renzo. “What are Tristesse and Ganorus?”

“A pair of kind-’earted gintlemen. We works their funerals when we can. But we still keeps our own steady lurks ’n’ trades on the side. Ye kint rely on people for to die jest ’cos you want tenpence in fees. They dies when they feels loik it. Meantimes, trouble is, we still gits hungry.” The stench of sewers that came off him as Tobias spoke was a powerful reminder of what his trade was.

The boys and girls rustled in their various pockets and produced small card-mounted photographs of themselves posing beside potted aspidistra ferns. Each of them was dressed in fashionable mourning and looking as sad as could be.

“Why do you look so miserable in these pictures?”

“We’re in the business of sad, girl! We sell sad. That’s what a mourning emporium’s supposed to be for.”

“The mourning emporium sells photographs of children’s faces looking sad?”

“Nah! When Mr. Ganorus goes callin’ on the bereaved, he takes our pictures wiv him so people can choose which one of us they want for carryin’ the Pathetic Floral Tributes, and walkin’ alongside the coffin and weepin’.”

“You cry for dead people you don’t know?”

“It’s a gift,” said Bits. “I hain’t sayin’ it comes to everyone natural-loik, but it kin be coltervated. Watch. Everyone … on count of three. One, two, three … mourn!”

Instead of bursting into noisy tears, each child adopted a serious expression, cast his or her lids down, and squeezed a small teardrop out of one or both eyes.

“See? Plus,” explained Tig, “we dress up and show the ladies the latest mournin’ fashions in minicher. Wivout that they has to vulgarly take their own clothes orf to try ’em on. They doan wanna be bare nakid, even though Mr. Tristesse does lay on a nice coal fire for us all.”

“A great shop of that nature exclusively for mourning vestments?” Renzo marveled.

Tobias Putrid nodded. “It’s a queer lash-up, I know. But Queen Vic—rest her mean ole soul—set the fashion. You know she were a-grievin’ forty year an’ more for her Albert. Wouldn’t wear nuffink ’cept the strictest black mourning, an’ all her gewgaws was black too. Well, wot Her Madge doed, the nobility doed, an’ what the nobs do, then the jumped-up shopkeepers do too. It’s been like this ever since Her Madge became a widder. If you asks me, this whole town’s one big mourning emporium, that’s wot it is.”

He held up an arm clad in ribbons of black, like a dilapidated crow’s wing. “Black crepe from Norwich! You kint get no finer ’n that.”

Teo reached out an inquisitive finger. The fabric was the dullest-and stiffest-looking silk she’d ever seen.

Bits said, “And if it hain’t crape then it’s plain paramatta, merino wool and cashmere. S’long as it’s black as the Earl of Hell’s riding boots.”

“So you sleep in there with all the black dresses and crepe?” asked Teo.

“And the coffins?” Renzo’s tone was lugubrious.

“In the coffins, ackshally.” Greasy smiled. “Silk-lined, an’ uncommon comfortable they is too. Brass, lead, wood, wickerwork, as you loik. ’Cept for Tobias. He sleeps in an anty-room to the privy. On account of …” He wrinkled his nose.

Tobias looked down. “ ’S’quite comfortable. I loik it there. Peaceful-loik. Anyway, Greasy snores. An’ the District Disgrace cries in her sleep. All that sobbin’s a trouble an’ a dratted nuisance for the rest of us.”

The Londoners were meanwhile exchanging significant glances, followed by nods all round. Greasy spoke gruffly. “You hain’t got nowheres to kip, does you?”

“No,” responded Teo bluntly. “We can’t go back to our boat. The officer …”

Renzo threw her a warning look. Mentioning the Half-Dead disease quarantine was not likely to endear them to the Mansion Dolorous inhabitants.

“And we’re not going to get sick,” she told herself firmly. “If we were, we would have got ill in Venice. Or on the journey.”

Greasy said generously, “We’s decided to let yous come in wiv us. Turtledove woan say naught agin’ it, I hopes.”

“Turtle …?”

“He’s the chief-dog-in-mourning, wot took us all into the Mansion Dolorous. He walks in front of all the grand funeral processions, innit, wiv black ostrich plumes on his head.”

“So this Turtledove can talk?” Teo was pleasantly excited when Greasy nodded in a matter-of-fact way. “Turtledove speaks more helegant than we does, to tell the truth.”

Teo smiled. So there was some magic left in London! At least London children were not immune to it, even if the adults were.

“You work for a dog?” A superior tone crept into Renzo’s voice.

“We worked for Miss Uish, Renzo,” Teo reminded him, before he got too much above himself.

“We works for a dog an’ we’s nobbut grateful for it, my treacles,” Greasy reproved. “Yew comin’ or not?”

They shuffled through the snow that lay in dirty pillows all over the crooked, sour streets of Southwark, passing under humid railway arches that trailed dark tears of ancient moisture. Overhead, the chimneys belched beery odors and worse. As they walked, the Londoners told Teo and Renzo of their many famished goings-to-bed and belly-growling mornings before they found Turtledove and the Mansion Dolorous; of sleeping in ditches and waking with rats snoring on their heads.

“Did you have to steal?” Renzo asked shrewdly.

“Some of us used to be in that way at one time,” admitted Greasy roundaboutly. “A boy must git summat warm to put across his back, and his vittuals—or he gits the hungry staggers, doan you know?—so, blunt-loik, yes, there was days when we ate pies we found on windersills an’ wore wot we could reach on washin’ lines.…”