Seeing the questions in the Venetians’ eyes, Greasy cut in bluntly, “She’s got the phossy jaw, my treacles, doan ye know? Her teeth is gone and her jawbone is rotted by that phossyphorus they use in the match factory. There’s dozens loik her. Marg’rit found her dyin’ behind the factory gate, put out wiv the rubbish. We doan even know her name, and she can’t tell us, can she, so we calls her Fossy. She plays the fiddle—wot’s strung wiv cat-gut strings—loik an angel. Show ’em, Fossy.”
Fossy produced a shabby little fiddle and played a few notes. It was as if she spoke. The longing and the sweetness were all perfectly legible in her music, like words written on a piece of a paper.
“She’s talking about her mother!” exclaimed Teo.
“Who is dead,” whispered Renzo.
“Marg’rit Savory has heard her whole story, hain’t you, Marg’rit?”
Marg’rit’s plump hand crept out to hold Fossy’s. “Yes, she’s a sweetheart, Fossy. And she would be so pretty if it weren’t for the phosphorus. Her ma were a celebrated beauty. Fossy’s got her ma’s hair.”
Marg’rit stroked it, adding, “Of course, Fossy’s own barnet fell out when she got sick. So when her ma died, they used her hair to make a wig for her little girl. It were all she had to leave. The quacks had taken all the rest.”
“Quacks?”
Pylorus Salt, a towheaded boy with clever eyes, introduced himself and explained, “Them what sell fake medicines on the street corners. It’s pure poison, but how them ladies goes for it! There must be summat in it that makes ’em keep comin’ back for more, says I.”
Next Renzo and Teo were introduced to “the District Disgrace,” who lisped: “My mother wath so ’shamed of me that she moved houth wivout tellin’ me.”
“What did you do to disgrace her?” Teo could not hide her shock.
“No idea. I think I wanted feedin’ too often. That’s woth she alwayth sayed.”
The last boy offered his hand. “Thrasher Geek, general lad-about-town. I say, you doan have any of them Eyetalian barrel organs on your boat, do you? I’d love to have a try. Or dancing mice?”
“Sorry, we had to leave Venice in a hurry. Nothing like that,” said Renzo.
Once all the introductions had been done, Greasy Ressydew turned to Teo and Renzo with a huge grinning yawn. “Well, ta-ta then, golden dreams, my treacles. We’s off for some pie and shut-eye.”
“And where do you repose?” asked Renzo, his own tiredness etched in gray all over his face. Teo too was suddenly stupendously, utterly, overwhelmingly tired. Her shoulders drooped. Yet the quarantine meant that they could not go back to the Scilla.
“Yew means sleep? We sleep loik royalty! We lay ourselves down in the lap of looxury each night, my dears,” Bits answered with a grin.
“Upon velvet!” Rosibund and Ann seemed always to speak together.
“Upon black velvet ’n’ silk ’n’ all sorts of lace! So long as it’s black, for that is ‘the garb of tears,’ ” quoted Greasy.
“In there!” A dozen smudged thumbs pointed at a somber building in the distance. It was painted black and adorned with large, sober lettering picked out in white and embellished by many curlicues.
Renzo pulled the telescope out of his pocket. He read aloud:
“It’s enormous!” remarked Teo.
“And extremely dolorous,” added Renzo. “What are Tristesse and Ganorus?”
“A pair of kind-’earted gintlemen. We works their funerals when we can. But we still keeps our own steady lurks ’n’ trades on the side. Ye kint rely on people for to die jest ’cos you want tenpence in fees. They dies when they feels loik it. Meantimes, trouble is, we still gits hungry.” The stench of sewers that came off him as Tobias spoke was a powerful reminder of what his trade was.
The boys and girls rustled in their various pockets and produced small card-mounted photographs of themselves posing beside potted aspidistra ferns. Each of them was dressed in fashionable mourning and looking as sad as could be.
“Why do you look so miserable in these pictures?”
“We’re in the business of sad, girl! We sell sad. That’s what a mourning emporium’s supposed to be for.”
“The mourning emporium sells photographs of children’s faces looking sad?”
“Nah! When Mr. Ganorus goes callin’ on the bereaved, he takes our pictures wiv him so people can choose which one of us they want for carryin’ the Pathetic Floral Tributes, and walkin’ alongside the coffin and weepin’.”
“You cry for dead people you don’t know?”
“It’s a gift,” said Bits. “I hain’t sayin’ it comes to everyone natural-loik, but it kin be coltervated. Watch. Everyone … on count of three. One, two, three … mourn!”
Instead of bursting into noisy tears, each child adopted a serious expression, cast his or her lids down, and squeezed a small teardrop out of one or both eyes.
“See? Plus,” explained Tig, “we dress up and show the ladies the latest mournin’ fashions in minicher. Wivout that they has to vulgarly take their own clothes orf to try ’em on. They doan wanna be bare nakid, even though Mr. Tristesse does lay on a nice coal fire for us all.”
“A great shop of that nature exclusively for mourning vestments?” Renzo marveled.
Tobias Putrid nodded. “It’s a queer lash-up, I know. But Queen Vic—rest her mean ole soul—set the fashion. You know she were a-grievin’ forty year an’ more for her Albert. Wouldn’t wear nuffink ’cept the strictest black mourning, an’ all her gewgaws was black too. Well, wot Her Madge doed, the nobility doed, an’ what the nobs do, then the jumped-up shopkeepers do too. It’s been like this ever since Her Madge became a widder. If you asks me, this whole town’s one big mourning emporium, that’s wot it is.”
He held up an arm clad in ribbons of black, like a dilapidated crow’s wing. “Black crepe from Norwich! You kint get no finer ’n that.”
Teo reached out an inquisitive finger. The fabric was the dullest- and stiffest-looking silk she’d ever seen.
Bits said, “And if it hain’t crape then it’s plain paramatta, merino wool and cashmere. S’long as it’s black as the Earl of Hell’s riding boots.”
“So you sleep in there with all the black dresses and crepe?” asked Teo.
“And the coffins?” Renzo’s tone was lugubrious.
“In the coffins, ackshally.” Greasy smiled. “Silk-lined, an’ uncommon comfortable they is too. Brass, lead, wood, wickerwork, as you loik. ’Cept for Tobias. He sleeps in an anty-room to the privy. On account of …” He wrinkled his nose.
Tobias looked down. “ ’S’quite comfortable. I loik it there. Peaceful-loik. Anyway, Greasy snores. An’ the District Disgrace cries in her sleep. All that sobbin’s a trouble an’ a dratted nuisance for the rest of us.”
The Londoners were meanwhile exchanging significant glances, followed by nods all round. Greasy spoke gruffly. “You hain’t got nowheres to kip, does you?”
“No,” responded Teo bluntly. “We can’t go back to our boat. The officer …”
Renzo threw her a warning look. Mentioning the Half-Dead disease quarantine was not likely to endear them to the Mansion Dolorous inhabitants.
“And we’re not going to get sick,” she told herself firmly. “If we were, we would have got ill in Venice. Or on the journey.”
Greasy said generously, “We’s decided to let yous come in wiv us. Turtledove woan say naught agin’ it, I hopes.”
“Turtle …?”
“He’s the chief-dog-in-mourning, wot took us all into the Mansion Dolorous. He walks in front of all the grand funeral processions, innit, wiv black ostrich plumes on his head.”
“So this Turtledove can talk?” Teo was pleasantly excited when Greasy nodded in a matter-of-fact way. “Turtledove speaks more helegant than we does, to tell the truth.”
Teo smiled. So there was some magic left in London! At least London children were not immune to it, even if the adults were.
“You wo
rk for a dog?” A superior tone crept into Renzo’s voice.
“We worked for Miss Uish, Renzo,” Teo reminded him, before he got too much above himself.
“We works for a dog an’ we’s nobbut grateful for it, my treacles,” Greasy reproved. “Yew comin’ or not?”
They shuffled through the snow that lay in dirty pillows all over the crooked, sour streets of Southwark, passing under humid railway arches that trailed dark tears of ancient moisture. Overhead, the chimneys belched beery odors and worse. As they walked, the Londoners told Teo and Renzo of their many famished goings-to-bed and belly-growling mornings before they found Turtledove and the Mansion Dolorous; of sleeping in ditches and waking with rats snoring on their heads.
“Did you have to steal?” Renzo asked shrewdly.
“Some of us used to be in that way at one time,” admitted Greasy roundaboutly. “A boy must git summat warm to put across his back, and his vittuals—or he gits the hungry staggers, doan you know?—so, blunt-loik, yes, there was days when we ate pies we found on windersills an’ wore wot we could reach on washin’ lines.…”
“And now look, what helegance!” Pylorus Salt hastily held up his arms for a general inspection of his clothing, revealing quite a deal of flesh through various apertures that did not figure in the original construction of those garments. “ ’Strue, they’s all a bit bald where they rub, but at least they’s warm, an’ they’s ours, an’ we dint ’ave to beg for ’em at the Old Clothes Exchange in Houndsditch, an’ we doan has to rent ’em out by night for others to wear while we is sleeping.”
“Before we met Turtledove,” said Greasy, “our lives was pitiful. They called us Ravens or Nobody’s Children. When we couldn’t turn a penny on our reg’lar doings, we had to hide in grand doorways so’s we could leap out to open cab doors for a tip. We turned somersaults in the mud on the hope of a half-penny. We even dived into the stinkin’ river for sixpences that the nobs throwed.
“Sometimes we had to walk all night because the bobbies wunt let the likes of us sleep in doorways. We couldn’t hardly ever afford the three-penny lodgin’ houses. We dozed all day on park benches. Now we gets decent grub, we sleeps in comfort, and we got an income time to time wiv the funerals.” He looked hard at Renzo. “I hain’t goin’ to have any jumped-up sorts from Venice tell me we’s not in the pink.”
“Of course not,” agreed Teo hastily. “And yes, we’d be grateful if you’d permit us to share your lodgings.”
Renzo opened his mouth. Teo kicked his ankle, adding, “Abjectly grateful.”
“ ’S our cunning secret entrance, innit, to the Mansion Dolorous.”
Greasy lifted a flap to a letterbox and turned a lever in the aperture. In the middle of an ivy-covered wall, a previously invisible door swung aside. Greasy parted the tendrils of ivy whitened with ice. The Londoners filed in, beckoning Teo and Renzo to follow. Thrasher struck a flint to a lantern on a hook by the door. Tig pulled aside a velvet curtain and they were plunged into a delightfully warm darkness, except for the wavering light of the lantern.
“What the bucket …!” exclaimed Teo, and then she too was silenced by the prospect that began to emerge in front of them as the Londoners darted about like fireflies, lighting ornamented gas-lamps.
“A warehouse full of mourning vestments” did not even begin to describe this Aladdin’s cave of jet-black merchandise. The walls of the Mansion Dolorous undulated into towering riches warmed by glowing grates at regular intervals. Racks of dresses stretched into the distance until they congealed into a slew of blackness. There were solidly packed shelves of black-edged stationery, visiting cards and envelopes. Teo glimpsed a card that read, You are desired to accompany the corpse of …, with a blank left for a name. There were perfume bottles bedecked with black ribbons. Black gloves were neatly folded on trolleys next to rolls of black braiding trimmed with beads and sequins, black fringes, silk and jet drops. There were crisply pleated silk mourning fans mounted on ebonized sticks, black feather boas coiled in rustling black nests, and white mourning handkerchiefs embroidered with black teardrops. There were mourning cockades for coachmen’s hats. An immense haberdashery cupboard was honeycombed with compartments for black hairpins, black rosettes and black armbands.
Mourning jewelry winked somberly from glass-topped cases. Renzo and Teo bent over a display of brooches made of human hair plaited and shaped into patterns and set behind glass. Other brooches showed dim daguerreotypes of sad faces. There were gold mourning rings inset with black enamel, gray and black pearls, shiny jet bracelets, scarf pins, tiaras, jeweled and feathered hair combs, lockets, pendants and cameos with white profiles etched on onyx backgrounds. There were mourning lampshades in Chinese pongee silk and mourning bookmarks embroidered with forget-me-nots and doleful poems. There were black funeral teapots and associated tea plates, and even a mourning ear trumpet in vulcanite, horribly reminiscent of a black bat. And immortal wreaths of flowers fashioned from parian and silk stood stiff and white under glass domes.
“How the English love death!” marveled Teo. “They seem to enjoy dying more than living. They must spend more money on it, anyway.”
“You hain’t wrong,” affirmed Hyrum Hoxton. “And this hain’t even the biggest mournin’ emporium in London Town. You should see Jay’s in Regent Street. They is our deadly rivals. We hates em loik poison.”
Even the white baby clothes stocked by Tristesse & Ganorus featured smocking threaded through with stark black ribbon.
“Poor babies,” thought Teo. She might have worn one of those herself when she attended her real parents’ funeral in Venice, yet she had been too young to have any memory of it now. Renzo, she suddenly remembered, had not even been allowed to attend his mother’s funeral. The Mayor had been in such a hurry to get rid of him. A glance at Renzo’s grief-stricken face told her he was thinking the same thing.
A pure white dress of lace and satin-scalloped ribbon caught her eye, reminding her unwelcomely of Sibella. Then she noticed the dress had no back.
“Burial gown,” explained Bits briefly. “The dead doan need to cover their behinds when they’s lyin’ in their coffins.”
A whole rack of mourning capes stretched back into the dark recesses of the warehouse. Teo ran her hands down one that was studded with black beads.
“Quality jet, you know, from Whitby,” Bits informed her. “None o’ that cheap French himitation stuff here!”
There were even mourning sweetmeats in miniature coffers. “That’s the best mourning licorice from Knaresborough.” Greasy opened a box and offered it round. The Venetians also sampled some delicious aniseed comfits and dark purple crystallized mourning grapes.
Teo walked wonderingly through rows of hats, all neatly labeled and then placed according to the size of head.
Then came the mourning underwear, carefully folded elaborate black nothings all discreetly labeled: Cambric combinations, Trimmed with Torchon Lace Insertion; Ladies’ Longcloth Mourning Knickers, Superfine Cambric, Nottingham Lace; Ladies’ Mourning Knickers, Plain Featherstitched, Trimmed Embroidery and Insertion, Plain; Shrewsbury Flannels; Mourning Camisoles; Black Melton Gaiters. A flash of bright purple caught Teo’s attention.
“What’s that?” she asked. “I thought I saw a bit of color?”
“After a widder’s done a year an’ a day in total crepe, that’s deepest mourning, and then she do nine month wiv only half the crepe, but always black,” intoned Greasy. “However, she may add some velvet ribbons an’ jet, if she loiks, doan ye know?”
Thrasher took up the account. “Then she do six months o’ half-mourning, which means as she’s ’lowed to wear a bit of trimmings in gray, white or purple or heliotrope. Then, gradual-loik, the amount of color grows, till she’s wearing almost ordinary clothes, but she has trimmings of mourning loik these”—he held up some jet buttons—“and these”—some black belts set with glittering eyes of jet. “It’s the same rules for hats an’ bonnets.”
He was interrupted by
a cry of pleasure from Renzo: “Look, a book department!”
“It’s the Improving Tomes Library,” said Greasy. “Not so very cheerful readin’, I’s afraid.”
Renzo ran an expert finger down the black morocco spines, reading aloud in mocking wonder: “Our Childrens’ Rest, or Comfort for Bereaved Mothers by Anonymous; Cometh Up as a Flower by Rhoda Broughton; Why Weepest Thou?—A Book for Mourners; The Death and Burial of Three Little Kittens; Dead Men’s Shoes by Mrs. Braddon … oh, and here’s Mr. Ruskin’s The Stones of Venice! But Teo,” Renzo moaned, “the pages have all gone black!”
“Like the postcards,” whispered Teo. “Images of Venice. He wants to destroy them all.”
Replacing the blackened book, Renzo now lifted a slim volume weighed down with the title A Token for Children: Being an Exact Account of the Conversion, Holy and Exemplary Lives and Joyful Deaths of Several Young Children, by the Rev. J. Janeway.
“Look at this, Teo. What tosh!” Renzo did not notice the expressions of the Londoners hardening as they gathered around him in silence.
He was still leafing through A Token for Children when a large, hairy paw landed with a thump on his shoulder, pushing him, then pinning him to the ground on his belly.
“Yew’d trespass then, would yew, boy?” growled a voice behind Renzo’s ear. “Yew’d touch what ain’t yourn, ye vagabone?”
Renzo’s mouth fell open, but no words came out.
“We doan take kindly to snootified trespassers at the Mansion Dolorous,” snarled the voice, which was perfumed with a strong smell of raw meat. “In fact, we tends to bile ’em up and eat ’em wiv custard. Wot yew got to say for yerself, boy?”
Turtledove was built more for inspiring awe than for speed. However, it was a speedy cuff that the brindled bulldog administered to the side of Renzo’s head now, and a speedy blow with which he rolled Renzo on his back, holding him down by a paw to the throat. The fob-watch from the dog’s black sateen waistcoat dangled above Renzo’s terrified eyes.