Dusk had fallen. Far off down the Thames estuary where the waters deepen into the trench that marked the subterranean barrier between England and its old enemy France, a thick fog was forming, its sinister intent to engulf London.
Fishermen, out from Mucking Creek and Foulness in their bobbing peterboats looked warily over their shoulders. Fearful of being caught in the rushing tidal waters by the fog they called to one another over the black rippling waters and hurriedly hauled the last of their crab pots with fingers bent crooked with cold. Lighting lanterns to spill fountains of radiant gold across their bows they set their sails and headed for home.
Swiftly, silently the rolling wall of whiteness engulfed them. Consumed in the milky paleness the tiny fleets, sensing the movement of the shifting tides like blind men sniffing the air, set their course for home, the fishermen's coats now sodden with the clinging fog.
Along the coastal villages wives stood huddled together by fires set on the beaches to guide their fisher folk back home their tarred wooden clad huts. They watched fearfully across the flat seas as the fog consumed the grey sky turning the sea into a solid wall of greyness, a rolling canvass of impenetrable gloom.
Within minutes the fog had trolled up the solidified waters of the river and spilled into the narrow lanes of the city, slunk over the cobbled squares and turned the conurbation into a foggy necropolis of strange, looming, tomb shaped buildings. The elements, having achieved their menacing purpose, settled on the lungs of their victim and resolved to asphyxiate him.
The shrouded veil of crinoline darkness tightened its purposeful grip on the slender streets, clinging to everything it encountered. Gas lamps, road-side sentries standing tall and thin in the gloom, appeared and disappeared at will, hissing reproachfully at those who ventured too close. Coughs, shouts, short shrill screams erupted unexpectedly from the dimness and then faded away into the leaching mist. In a world of shifting shapes and fleeing shadows, dark forms loomed and dissipated into the gloom, startlingly passer-byes, who, heads down, anxiously sidestepped each other and hurried pass.
On the south side of London Bridge, Bermondsey Market stood entombed by the sickly murkiness, the drying tanner's hides, flapped eerily in the gloom, unnatural shaped scarecrows blown to corpulent size by the sea breeze.
Off the piazza, away from the evil smelling reek of the Market, lay The Mouse and Owl, the haunt of the worst of London's wastrels and lowlifes.
Through the smoke filled tavern the noise of the costerman, porters, mudlarks and petty thieves rose and fell in hearty waves, raucous laughter occasionally breaking and surfing the uneven swell of sound. Gin swilling chattering girls in smeared rouge lipstick, hiding worn leather shoes beneath dirty petticoats and flouncy dresses fluttered their eyelashes at men with canes and cudgels.
Away in the far reaches of the labyrinth of fugue filled rooms, a young boy was playing a penny pipe for money and groups of nut tanned sailors muttered mutiny over pints of pale beer and incredible tales of far off lands.
By the hearth, a stooped man with the scrofulous face of a weathered gargoyle sat with an enormous hound on a wooden bench silently contemplating the fellow customers, his brooding features enough to warn off the heaving mass of spendthrifts, thieves and murderers that crowed around him. For he held, like the King of the Thugs, the pride of the place of the disorderly establishment, a table in front of the febrile log fire who's trickling flames gave up barely any warmth other than the acrid aroma of human wretchedness and odour of damp sawdust.
The gargoyle screwed his face up and addressed his hound with an accusing finger, 'You bite me again, Bisbee and there'll be trouble, you'll see. Don't take no account of the surroundings, it'll kick off. Here and now. A pork pie 'an gravy was the only pie they had and a pork pie 'an gravy what's you got. I ain't going up there again an asking for anything lardy –di-da like bacon a la wat'sit or pheasant quiche just cos you've got a delicate constitution!'
YOU ARE READING
The Ice Fair
FantasyFor the first time in two hundred years the River Thames has frozen over. In the city an Ice Fair has sprung up bringing the wonders of the old Frost Fairs back to London. Its centrepiece is a circus with a Dragon in it. Audiences are captived, the...
