8

‘The river has been freezing up for weeks, my dear,’ the man replied. ‘It is perfectly safe.’

‘I am not convinced it is, Papa,’ the girl kept on.

She was probably a year or two older than me, with mouse-brown ringlets and the smooth skin of someone who spent her days indoors. If Abigail were here, she’d have been sighing over the girl’s wide skirts, and the little hat perched on her head and tied under her chin. Me, I was wondering how anyone could move in such a get-up, let alone try walking on ice.

Her father’s jaw tightened. ‘Beloved, after everything that has befallen us, would I risk your safety? Well, would I?’

The girl’s face paled in a way that got me wondering what had befallen them – a tragedy, by the looks of it – though my chief concern was whether her father was right that the ice was safe. He was standing on it now, offering his hand to help her down the bank. Reluctantly, she hitched her skirts and joined him. Funny though, she didn’t take his hand.

The ice held, but proved near impossible to walk on. Just a few steps in and the man’s feet went from under him. He landed with a thump on his backside. I had to choke down a laugh, because it was funny, especially seeing his beautiful cloak getting tangled in his feet.

‘Stand still! Take my arm! Not like that!’ he hissed crossly to his daughter.

Eventually, she got the man back on his feet, and I lost them to the crowds. And good riddance too. If that’s what fathers were like then I was glad I’d been raised only by Mother.

*

Now that walking on the ice had lost its appeal, I was thankful to find the hiring fair in its usual place on my side of the river. There were farm hands and kitchen maids, grooms and carpenters, all recognisable by the tools of their work, which they’d laid out at their feet. I felt a bit daunted, then. I’d nothing to display but Mother’s parcel, which I didn’t suppose would help. But I remembered what she’d said about boys getting better-paid work, and stood squarely, chin up, ready to put on a gruff voice when someone spoke to me.

Business was brisk. It was obvious who was doing the hiring. You simply looked for the smartest coats and the loudest voices. Farmers, estate owners, housekeepers were barking out questions at whoever had caught their eye – ‘How old are you? What can you do? How much do you eat?’ – and checking hair, teeth, if a person had had the smallpox.

I waited. No one spoke to me. No red-jowled farmer shouted in my face. No housekeeper knocked the cap off my head to inspect my short hair.

Once the strongest, cleanest workers were hired, it was only the stragglers left behind – the old, the scrawny, the ones too sick to stand up – and me.

‘How old are you, child?’ a farmer demanded. ‘Can you kill a pig?’

‘He looks rough enough,’ smirked another. Then he noticed Mother’s parcel, which I was hugging to my chest. ‘What’ve you got in there?’

Before I could answer, he’d hooked his cane around the package. A quick flick sent it flying up into the air. It landed some way off in the gutter.

‘Hey!’ I cried. ‘That’s mine!’

As I lunged for the parcel, someone’s foot got there first. And I found myself eyeballing yet another pair of leather boots, only these ones were smaller and scruffier than the soldier’s.

‘Not so fast,’ said their owner, pulling me upright. ‘You, boy – you got a name?’

It took a second to find my tongue. The voice addressing me wasn’t a Somerset one. It was rich and warm: sunshine and canary wine. And this person, dressed in breeches, long boots and a black wool coat, was in fact a young woman. She had the brownest skin and brightest eyes I’d ever seen.

‘Ummm … errr … Fortune Sharpe,’ I said, swiftly adding, ‘It can be a boy’s name too.’ I’d no idea if this was actually true.

The woman looked narrowly at me. ‘Hmmm. Then no wonder this belongs to you.’ The parcel, in all its grisly glory, now lay open in the flat of her hand.

I took a very deep breath. ‘And who are you, Mistress …?’

‘Maira. Just Maira.’

It wasn’t a Somerset name, either. Other people were studying her now – her different clothes, her skin, her tall, upright frame. She wasn’t one of them, one of us. She stood out from the locals like gold amongst pewter.

‘Do you know what this is?’ she asked, meaning the dead skin inside the parcel.

‘A bit of lung, maybe? My mother gave it to me on the way here. She said it was mine.’

‘Which explains why you were named Fortune.’

I almost laughed out loud. I was cold, hungry and rather bewildered: I certainly didn’t feel especially fortunate.

Yet this Maira woman wasn’t like the bawling farmers or the housekeepers with their eagle eyes. Her waist-length hair and men’s clothes made her look magnificent. I didn’t know if I was scared or in total awe.

‘Are you having the boy or not?’ the farmer wanting a pig-killer asked.

I had to think fast.

‘Don’t let the parcel put you off. I’ll get rid of it, if you’ll hire me,’ I begged Maira.

She stared at me. ‘You must NEVER do that!’

‘But surely it’s only dead skin, so—’

‘Listen to me,’ she interrupted, fierce enough to make me flinch. ‘Your mother was a sensible woman in keeping it, unlike her child.’

I frowned at her, at the thing in her hand.

‘Still want to work for me, then, do you?’ she asked, her tone softening a little.

I nodded, though didn’t think to ask what I’d be doing. As long as it wasn’t pig-killing, I didn’t much care.

‘Come, then,’ she said, beckoning urgently for me to follow. ‘We must away.’

Yet before I could take a step, someone gripped my shoulder. ‘You, boy, are taken.’

In the tail of my eye, I caught a shimmer of dark blue velvet. I spun round in alarm.

‘No, sir, I’m not for hire,’ I told the man who had hold of me.

The rest of the crowd melted back until it was just me, the man in the cloak and his daughter, looking less than impressed.

‘I’m already taken,’ I tried to explain. ‘This woman’s going to hire me.’

Except when I turned to Maira, she wasn’t there. She’d disappeared with my parcel still in her hand.