Son of the Morning

November 1684

London

Hal

‘Where to now?’ Hal Bartholomew swept the small girl up in his arms and followed her sister along the tangle of pathways weaving between stalls selling everything from sweetmeats to ale and trinkets, with hog roasts and braziers roasting chestnuts and potatoes beyond. The Thames had frozen hard again, and another frost fair had quickly colonised it. Sounds echoed strangely in the labyrinth. Gusts of shouts and laughter. Clashes of music ebbed and flowed. And the cold wormed its way through his thickest clothing, yet the rich smells of cooking seemed somehow warming. Was that possible? He savoured them again, sniffing the frigid air. Well, it certainly seemed so to him, though he decided not to risk Penny’s opinion, for he had little doubt she would find it laughable.

‘Come on,’ she called over her shoulder, her voice quickly whipped away by the stiff wind. ‘Look at this.’

Where the stalls ended, the entertainers took over. Jugglers. Fire-eaters and fiddle players. Stilt walkers and acrobats. A puppet show. They took Jane to join the watching crowd there, and for a time it held her rapt attention. Until she spotted her brothers. They were with a gang of street lads sliding on a track made by wetting the ice enough to melt the frost until they had a strip that looked like glass, slick with constant use.

Jane pointed and began to struggle. ‘Me. Me do.’

Hal swerved back towards a stall selling sweetmeats. ‘Look, Janey.’

Her eyes widened and she pointed again, this time towards a pile of marzipan subtleties in the shape of tiny pink mice. ‘Have mouses.’

Penny laughed, patting Hal’s arm. ‘Quick thinking there.’

The stallholder filled a paper cone and handed it to Penny after taking a coin from Hal. ‘You’ve a pretty little chick there, Master. How old?’

‘Just shy of her second birthday.’

‘Looks just like her pretty ma, so she do.’

They walked away smiling at each other. Penny reached out and stroked Jane’s curls escaping from her thick woollen coif. ‘I don’t think she looks like any of us.’

‘Well, the woman could see you in her, which means your mama.’

Penny nudged him, smiling with exaggerated coquettishness now. ‘She thought her ours, Hal.’

‘Hmm.’ He held his tongue, knowing she hated thinking he saw her as a child still. Her next words confirmed it.

‘Mama was my age when I was born, don’t forget.’

Jane took a pink mouse from the cone and bit off its head.

They both laughed. ‘Little savage,’ Hal said.

‘Lily cabbage.’ Jane grinned, showing small teeth coated in pink sticky sugar before putting the headless creature into her mouth.

Hal looked inside the rather large cone. ‘I think she’d better share them with the boys. If she pukes when she gets home, we won’t be popular.’

Jane clutched her prize tight. ‘Mine.’

‘You mean I won’t be popular. You’ll be back at Eastcheap.’ Penny frowned. ‘At least you can’t sail for a while … can you?’

He saw the light leave her eyes and shifted Jane so he could support her with one arm and touched Penny’s cheek softly. ‘I have cargoes arriving, Pen. And there was still an open channel out from Rotherhithe when I left.’