GIN

“It seemed to me that all I had to do was go with them to enough gin-houses, buy them enough gin, and let them talk...”

The bitter wind blows a flurry of icy snow around the man as he walks through the maze like streets and alleys of the great rookery known as Seven Dials. It is the last day of February, a day that only exists every fourth year, a day that is somehow outside time, unreal, a day in which secrets may be , learned, a day on which anything can happen. He is not alone, from every doorway, every window, every opening into darkness there are eyes that watch him. They are the eyes of the desperate, the greedy and the lost. It seems that the watchers do not know what to make of him. His clothes are too old, too much mended to mark him as wealthy and although he walks alone through the most dangerous streets of the city he exudes a curious air of confidence. It is as though he belongs there though not a single one of the watchers can recognise him or put a name to the shadowed face. And so he walks through stinking alleys and winding lanes without hesitation, following a map that exists only in his mind.

He can feel the eyes upon him, has felt them since St Giles and smiling a secret smile he grips the hilt of the knife in the pocket of his great coat. He does not expect to use it, he knows the watchers, knows their type and knows their style. knows what they see when they look at him, too much risk for too little reward. Yet the knife is a comforting presence, an old friend, as charm to ward off the most desperate, the most dangerous, those that would take any risk for the smallest reward.

From Queen street he turns into the narrow confines of Neale's passage and from there, without hesitation he steps into an alley, no more than a brick walled gap that runs down the side of a house, close and foetid, stinking of decay. The alley ends in a close yard where a flight of decaying wooden steps lead upward, crisp with ice that crackles beneath his feet. At the top a door stand shut, he knocks and enters without waiting for admission.

Within it is a single room, a crumpled bed in one corner, a rag pushed into a hole in the broken window; a remedy that seems pointless in its implementation as the wind whistles and howls regardless. A fire smoulders listlessly in the grate and a woman sits upon the hearth beside it dressed in layered rags that have faded to a uniform grey. She looks up to watch as the man seats himself at the other side of the fire, upon the stones of the hearth, disregarding the ash and the cinders that littler the area.

“Oh,” she says. “It's you, again.” Gratefully, thoughtfully she draws on an old clay pipe. “Not a milliner today, then,” she observes and he grins a wolf's head smile.

“Not today.”

She grunts, unsurprised. “Who are you today, then?”

“Childermass.”

At this she laughs aloud. “That isn't a name. That's a day! Unluckiest day of the year.”

He shrugs. “It's my name. Only one I've got.”

“Your birthday,” she sneers, guessing the truth, that there had been no father to give his name to a fatherless child.

He looks at her, meeting her eyes, as night black as his own. “That too,” he says.

She is, after a fashion, a kindred spirit. Much the same age as he, she is a part of what he might have been, had his life been but a little different; a part of what he escaped. If he half closes his eyes he can almost see her as a child, bare foot and hungry, wandering the cruel streets of the city, a flower grown wild amongst the ruins. It is as though he knows her, as though he can read her like a book, and as he looks at her he knows that something, long ago, happened to her that has destroyed her; something, many things, or perhaps even someone. For she is ruined, the crumbling wreck of the child she once had been. Yet she retains a certain beauty as though she has been through the refiners fire and all that is unnecessary has been stripped away. The grey streaked hair that falls from its careless pins still hints at its once luxurious glory, her face, gaunt and spare, shows still the shape and structure that had once made her beautiful. She is the skeleton of a leaf fallen from the tree, decaying upon the forest floor in its last, strange, elegance.

“So,” she says, breaking his train of thought. “who sent you?”

“Norrell,” he replies and she laughs again, showing all few of her blackened teeth.

“And why should I do anything for him? My husband was the King of the Magicians till he came.”

“Norrell's the King now.”

“Him!” she sneers. “The King of no one!” Again she laughs, though it is hardly funny and the expression on her face is bitter and angry. “No more magicians, none but him.”

“Be that as it may, he wants a book your husband claims to possess and he will will pay well for it.”

“Told you before. No book here,” she says shortly, turning to the fire, lighting a taper, relighting her pipe, closing her eyes as she takes the smoke down deep into her ruined lungs.

Taking a bottle from his pocket Childermass removes the cork and drinks. Immediately her eyes open, suddenly hard and greedy, desperately sad. She leans forward involuntarily, as though she could drink the smell of the gin. She shudders, almost in ecstacy, almost in pain.

He watches he closely but she does not speak. She neither asks nor pleads, he knows there is no book and she has nothing to trade for that which she wants, only the burden of her sorrows that she carries like a child. Silently he holds the bottle out to her and she takes it, she cannot help herself, need drives her and she lifts it to her lips, drinking deep before the gift is withdrawn, before impossible payments are demanded. As he watches her whole body seems to relax and soften, the sharp angles of her face becoming something more gentle. She sighs, glancing at the dark, silent man who sits upon her dusty hearth as though he belongs there, the man who pretended to be a milliner, the man she tried to rob. The man who is searching for a book she does not have.

She smiles wistfully, the gin making her maudlin. “Did you know, I was 12 when I met him? 12 when he walked up to me told me he was a magician and took me to the gin house and then to his bed?” She says it as though it is a reason, as though it is an excuse for so many, terrible things. She drinks again, bitter comfort for all she has suffered. “I have nothing to tell you, nothing to give you.” Suddenly her eyes fill with tears for all the injustices of a hard life, all the demands that cannot be fulfilled, for all that has been lost. He face twists as her pride struggles with an insupportable grief and eventually, bitterly, a tear rolls down her cheek as she bows her head over the bottle of love and hate. “I sold flowers, down in Covent Garden. Vin used to say I could dance there, I was that good. I danced for him, back then.” She looks up, ravaged, ruined. “Long ago,” she whispers and the unstoppable tears stream down her cheeks.

Silently Childermass reaches out and takes the bottle from her, lifting it to his own lips before pulling her toward him, wrapping her in the warm folds of his great coat as she wept in agony upon his shoulder.

He places his hand upon the back of her head, caressing the silver shot black of her hair. “Tell me about your husband,” he says.