The Last Frost Fair by Narya

Chapter 1

Read Chapter 1

4th February 1814
London

 

The masses of ice had lodged under the archways of old London Bridge – for so folk had begun to name it, fondly nostalgic, even though the venerable structure still stood. (In fact, if rumours about the new design were credible – and Maglor believed they were – the old bridge was likely to stand for a decade or more yet. No time at all, as he reckoned things, but long enough in mortal years.) The tide washed in vain against the frozen blockade, and the waters of the Thames, unnaturally stilled, had hardened into a glittering tundra.

Maglor had not intended to stay in town for long. The sale of his house on Harewood Avenue was concluded, and for the last year or so he had been quietly setting his other affairs in order. Now a newly titled baronet was keen to view Holme Hall, “with a view to a swift and discreet purchase.” Why the need for discretion, Maglor could not say. The neighbourhood could hardly fail to notice that the Hall had a new owner, and he had made no secret of his own impending departure. Indeed, he had actively encouraged rumours of his dire financial straits, so that his withdrawal from society would not seem so abrupt.

Still, the winter had plans of its own, and Sir Thomas Locke would have to wait. Barely a mail coach had left the city since the middle of last month; first the roads had been impassable with fog, then snow, then with flooding as the snows thawed, and now with ice as the country froze over again. “A winter that sits in your bones,” his notary, Nash Fortescue, had said.

Maglor – or rather, Alexander Fenway, Esq. – had refrained from pointing out that he'd known far worse.

Not everyone minded the cold. The shops and taverns and houses and stalls had spilled their inhabitants onto the Thames, and Maglor walked among them, quietly observing. Coal fires burned in great iron pans, roasting sheep and turkeys and geese. Stalls topped with streamers and flags formed great canvas alleys stretching from Blackfriars to London Bridge. The air smelled of smoke and rich punch and spices and cake, and snatches of dance reels stole through the laughing and chatter. Some enterprising individuals had built makeshift roundabouts and swing sets, and were charging a shilling a head for a ride. There were the usual skaters and skittling parties, and a group of rambunctious young men had even set up a wrestling ring. Stories flew up and down that an elephant was being led back and forth across the ice at the foot of Blackfriars Bridge. Surely not! It was too fanciful! But a stroll along the river to Blackfriars confirmed this tallest of tales. An elephant! Whatever next! An air of breathy, heady joy wreathed the whole peculiar spectacle, and Londoners of all walks of life came together to shake their heads in wonder.

Maglor had been to frost fairs on the Thames before. The last one would be a distant memory for most of those gathered – if they had even been born at all – and he could not recall one so pervaded with wild, giddy urgency, with such a sense of snatching at the present and clutching it close to one's heart. He paused by a printing press selling entire commemorative books typeset and printed right there on the ice. Frostiana, one title read: Or, A History of the River Thames In a Frozen State. Two young women were squabbling over the merits of two different chap-books of winter-themed poetry. Maglor, after a cursory inspection, decided that both were of dubious literary value and moved on.

In places the sheets of ice had ground together and thrown up gleaming white pillars, or ledges like those cut into a quarry's edge. Breath curled frozen from mouths and glowed in the dimming light. St Paul's Cathedral loomed over it all, rising out of the mist and snow-flecked skies, its dome a lantern through the gathering gloom. Its presence in London's skyline now had an air of permanence, or even fate – yet Maglor remembered the old cathedral, and London burning, consumed by the flames that began in Pudding Lane one hundred and fifty years ago. Two mortal lifetimes. How recent it seemed.

He turned his gaze back towards London bridge, and then closed his eyes and slid into the Song. Still echoing faintly through its phrases and chords, Maglor felt the houses, grocers, haberdashers and water wheels that had once lined the bridge, though their physical counterparts were long since gone. Over and around their plangent whispers teemed the music of the city as it was now – death and life, horror and joy, faith and fear and grief and mirth. Thousands of strains meshed into a tangled web. Chaotic. Fragile. Utterly wondrous.

A quivering of the fabric near his coat pocket – nothing a mortal would have felt – drew him back to the physical world. Reflexively, he reached down and seized the wrist of his would-be robber. He felt cold young skin, and the jut of a bone that sat too near the surface.

“Nothing there but trouble, girl,” he told the wide-eyed waif staring up at him. Her hair was dirty, and her shawl full of holes. She might have been any age between seven and twelve.

You cannot save them all. So Maedhros had said to him once, long ago, before the breaking of the world.

He let her go, and slid back into his reverie.

It would be some time before he saw London again – several decades, at least. England was growing smaller, and more connected. It was harder to avoid being noticed. He had been over-bold this time, setting himself up as a country gentleman with land; there was too much expected of a man in such a station, too many social obligations, too many mothers scheming after an advantageous match, altogether too much attention. It was time to move on. He would wander Europe for a while – not France, though; not this time, he thought with regret – and perhaps then carry on eastwards. He had not seen China in hundreds of years. And then...

Olórin's voice sounded in his memory, as close and real as though his friend stood on the ice beside him. “To the end of the journey – in the end.” Maglor felt the corners of his mouth lift a little, and a touch of sorrow came like a cold finger to his heart. “We cannot look too far ahead.”

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Chapter End Notes

1814 saw the last Frost Fair on the River Thames. As Maglor observes in the first paragraph, the freezing of the river was made possible by the structure of the bridge that was in place at the time; the flow of the tide was all but stopped by the bridge's archways, and the river was solid enough for the festivities described above. Yes, there really was an elephant, according to eyewitnesses.

There were and are many country houses in England named Holme Hall. Maglor never owned any of them, as far as I'm aware. Harewood Avenue is a real (and very expensive) street in London with some lovely old Georgian properties.

Maglor's line "nothing there but trouble" is borrowed from Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. The remembered words of wisdom from Olórin are a direct quote from The Fellowship of the Ring.