The Beggar Maid Read Free

reached Upper Thames Street. The snow was thick underfoot and beginning to freeze, and as her feet crunched its brittle surface the ice penetrated the holes in her boots, stabbing her toes and causing her to yelp with pain. Above her head snowflakes danced dizzily in the yellow gas light, and the sounds of the river filled her ears as she neared the place she called home. The hoots of steam boats and the creaking of wooden masts were almost drowned out by the grinding and groaning of cranes as ships discharged their cargoes onto the wharves. The great River Thames never slept, nor did the denizens of the tightly packed buildings that crowded its banks. Narrow alleyways threaded their way from the main streets to the wharves at the water’s edge. These dark and dangerous conduits were lined with warehouses, manufactories, pubs, brothels and tenements housing workers and their families, as well as the dispossessed. Communal cellars often filled with water and sewage during a particularly high tide, and rats the size of cats lived alongside the human occupants in the most unsanitary conditions imaginable.
    Duck’s Foot Lane was just wide enough for a horse and cart to squeeze through, leaving little room for error. The tall buildings leaned towards one another at crazy angles, and were linked by overhead walkways. Steel hoists protruded from the walls high above street level, and vicious-looking hooks dangled idly from ropes awaiting deliveries of raw materials next day. From dawn until dusk whole cargoes of imported goods, baled and tied or transported in wooden kegs, would be hauled skywards and dragged into the upper floors of the buildings by men who worked at dizzying heights with nothing to save them should they slip and fall. Accidents were common and fatalities occurred too frequently.
    Charity had grown up in this undesirable neighbourhood, but she had fond memories of her early years. Before her father died they lived in a neat terraced house in Chelsea. Her grandmother had looked after her and Pa and Grandpa left early each morning to catch a horse-drawn omnibus to the City, where Grandpa worked as a clerk in a shipping office and Pa followed the time-honoured profession of law writer. She remembered the distinctive smell of Indian ink that clung to his stained fingers when he returned home in the evening, and the lines of fatigue drawn on his face by an invisible pen that would not wash away. Tired he might have been but he always found time to take her on his knee and tell her about his day, or to read her a story from her favourite book. Early on in her life she had learned to love the sound of words and the rhythms and patterns of speech. Story books led her into an enchanted land of imagination like no other, and an escape into worlds that she would never otherwise have known.
    She quickened her pace. It had stopped snowing and the wind had veered round, bringing with it a strong smell of malt and hops from Barclay and Perkins’ Brewery south of the river, with just a hint of acidity from Potts’ Vinegar Works, and something much less pleasant from the tannery in Bermondsey. She plunged into the dark canyon of Duck’s Foot Lane. It was relatively quiet in the early evening, but it would grow noisier as the night progressed and seamen of all nationalities thronged the pubs and brothels, or sought solace in the opium dens. The snow had been trodden underfoot and churned up by horses’ hooves and cart wheels, turning it to filthy slush, and she picked up her skirts, treading carefully as she approached the tenement building where she and her grandfather lived.
    The front door was never locked as the landlord left security to each individual tenant, which meant that there was none. People came and went as they pleased and as long as the rent collector was paid his dues he did not bother to count heads. Charity almost fell over the prostrate body of a drunken woman who was slumped at the foot of