A dreadful winter came; each day severe

Misty when mild, and icy cold when clear

From the opening of Frostiana, the 1814 celebration of the River Thames in winter.

Crushed between the sonorous music of Life and coughing rattle of Death sits Warr and Pinkle, the Undertakers. Through a primordial crack formed under the ancient church of St Stephens, the forces of life and death rub up against each other like the movements of the earthly tectonic plates. Back in ancient times the wound was cauterised by the Old Gods who knew the workings of the universe. Odin, Marduk, Geb, Shangti, Kukulcan, Ymir and Old Father Time (although he was known by a different name back then, a name he no longer recalled) sung a song of enchantment that wove the spells to knit the gaping wound together.

Those Old Gods have now left, long forgotten by the earth's peoples they drifted away into the interminable chasm of space. Now just Old Father Time remains.

But recently this crack, this wound in the unfathomable forces of the universe has, once again, sprung open.

It is this unexpected rent in the cloth of time that disturbs Old Father Time. Sitting in the graveyard next to the church amidst the calcite angels that hover paternally over the headstones, he is staring unseeing at a cloak of snow thick as winter's fist. He is ruminating over the mystery, over what has caused the fracture, over how he can repair it.

A great Pleistocene bruin is wandering the Devils Punchbowl, an ancient meteor crater that lies south of the stilled waters of the frozen river Thames. Extinct now for many millennia, the great bear rips chunks from the silvered barked birch and topples thirty foot ash with the merest nudge of his powerful shoulder. A pack of wolves, not seen since Albion was linked to Europe by land, roam Epping Forest, pattering silently through the snow, running down terrified deer in a well-rehearsed, black pantomime of snapping jaws and lupine cunning.

Nightly, odd things creep from the crack and scuttle across the water logged fields and into the rancid sewers of the city. Unwieldy beasts flap into the night sky and scurry unheard into the fathomless forests to feed on the helpless woodland things. The tower of the church of St Stephens is crowded with a hundred monstrous vamparic bats, steaming in the putrefying gasses of their own guano.

And while London lies in ignorance of these oddities the New Gods called into belief by civilisation have not failed to notice this catastrophic fracture in time's workings and come to investigate. They gawk like vultures over a wounded beast, their beaks glistening in readiness for the pickings that it may throw up. Something special, something juicy, they think, marks its arrival.

Sitting with the pink winter's sun rising over his shoulder, running his gnarled fingers through the ragged teeth of his cotton spun beard, Father Time was crowded in with his own thoughts. With trembling lips he whispered to himself the soothing chants of his youth he'd learned when the planet was still running molten red from formation and tried to recall the one's that closed the fracture. He sat befuddled, confused, tormented by his own failure to remember. So, so long ago.

Something disturbed Father Time's ruminations. Up the gravelled path cut between the church and the old vicarage next door struggled a figure, flailing legs battling the thickset snow. Father Time studied him from behind his deep-set eyes, tracking the progress of the clots of snow thrown high in the wake of this tiny burrowing hominoid. It was a young boy, wrapped like a mummy in a thick overcoat and puffing great plumes of frosted air above him like an advancing stream train.

Bearing a pail of milk and a warm loaf clutched close to his chest to ward off the cold, the lad progressed slowly up the lane hindered by the drifts of snow his soggy leather boats and baggy trousers now dyed dark brown with the viciously cold melt water. Despite his age (Father Time found it difficult to guess such things) he surmised that he was thirteen or perhaps fourteen years of age

He passed Time, appearing not to notice him, intent on carrying with him a senseless tune, which he whistled between lips numb with cold, seemingly gratified to hear it bouncing off the walls of the narrow lane around him. He toed open the gate and sauntered up the path cleared earlier under his own endeavours.

In the crooked porch of the ivy covered house, sensing something, perhaps that he was being observed, the boy looked back over his shoulder. A pair of sparkling eyes, set below a high, pale forehead crowned with a mop of unruly sandy hair searched for movement in the silent landscape. He rubbed a pug nose red with cold with the back of woollen gloved hand and gave out an elfish grin as the red flash of a robin flickered on the high slate wall, and in a thrice was gone again. Then with the fumbling of cold hands on lock the boy unlatched the door and slipped from view.

Father Time, rested his chin on his hand, a pose stuck like Rodin's The Thinker and recalled talking to the not so long deceased Mr Pinkle. 'Everyone in life has a talent. It may be a vast talent or it may be lesser, but it is a talent none the less,' Mr Pinkle had pronounced to Time, tweaking the edge his black undertaker's hat courteously as he spoke. Mr Pinkle's talent concerned the tracking of the pounds and pennies as they edged their way in and out of his gilt edged ledgers. The Warr's talent was that they could make the dead look alive. All the Warr's had that talent from old grandfather Warr who had met Father Time on the twisty road some years ago, to the youngest member, the apprentice Martin, still very much of this world. Not so Mr Pinkle, who now lay underground, hands crossed over his thin chest not six feet from where Father Time was sitting.

Inside the house the grandfather clock hands twitched and the chimes sung out six am. Martin Warr dropped the warm milk into the larder and the loaf into the oven and held his hands in there for a moment in the womb like warmth until he could feel the stinging blood ebb back into his fingertips.

He changed his shoes and ran down the circular stairs to the basement his still numb fingers dancing across the rough brick wall like the jigging legs of a hanging highwayman. Once in the mortuary he donned his leather apron, washed his hands in gelid spring water that coughed and spluttered from the brass tap into a porcelain sink and then stuck them under his armpits to finish the job he'd begun in the kitchen.

He attended the small fire at the end of the low ceilinged room, easing the poker between the logs as they coughed and spluttered as bellicose as the innards of a failing steam engine. He fiddled with the gas lamps, twisting the little taps until the flames hissed soporifically throwing an idle light into the cavernous room to chase away the floating motes.

Then he checked the list of the dead and counted the bodies off. Like he did every day.

Five coffins stood in a row on wooden easels in the mortuary. A beggar found in a doorway, two thieves' who'd managed to fatally stab each other during an argument and an elderly midwife too poor to pay for her funeral sent down by St Thomas's hospital. And a girl found dead in the Thames, presumed drowned.

A day's work to prepare the bodies for funeral.

'Good morning, Mrs Thistlewaite.' He said this without looking up. He checked his list again and with a blunt pencil secured behind his ear added some notes to the paperwork.

From the gloaming recesses, Mrs Thistlewaite, the housekeeper stood like a bird of prey watching him, her beaky nose protruding from under pair of glasses fixed securely round her craggy neck by a golden chain. Her thin, bony fingers clinging to each like two bird's feet locked together in some unnatural embrace.

Martin bent about his work, uncovered his first charge the drowned girl and instantly stood up, shocked.

Around the palest, most serene of faces tumbled a mass of hollow gold laced hair that spread like rainbow's ends over her delicate moon white shoulders. The icy glitter on her skin whispered of snow dusted fields, the broken garland in her hair of winter hedgerows sharp with frost glistening in the midday sun. Scents of wild flower honey and cut grasses drifted up and crowded the room with their intoxicating perfumes.

She had not been asleep when death had visited her. Of that Martin was sure. Bits of Thames weed stuck like leaches to her arms and legs and the ragged crown of vegetation trapped in her hair fell in jumbled disarray across her torn lace dress. He reached down and gently lifted her hand in his, the skin was soft and so sharply cold that it made him catch his breath.

Seeming unabashed by the poignancy of the lifeless cherub before him Mrs Thistlewaite sung out. 'Well let's be about her, Martin. There's a job to be done.'

'She looks like an angel.' Martin murmured as much to himself as to the impatient Mrs Thistlewaite.

'She's dead, Martin.' replied Mrs Thistlewaite with a curious sidelong glance at the flock haired young man.

Mrs Thistlewaite saw the world only in hues of black and white. There were no sunset reds, wild wheat yellows or glittering sea greens in Mrs Thistlewaites world of pragmatic sensibilities. Even her hair, which was so frizzled it looked like she looked like she'd been upturned and held over a blasting hearth, held a colour that floated betwixt feathered owl and rabbit skin, in a manner that seemed a constant disappointment to her. She would have preferred it to be one or the other, black or white, grey being entirely incongruous with her nature.

'Yes. I know she's dead. She looks like a dead angel then.' Martin said.

'Are there things such as dead angels, Martin?'

'I don't know.'

'I thought you would.'

Martin ignored the comment and looked at the girl's face. Like a tragic ice maiden its beauty perfectly preserved by the freezing waters of the river at the moment of death. He considered Mrs Thistlewaite's point, about angels. Actually he did know. There were such things as dead angels but they were not as singularly beautiful as the girl in the coffin before him. Dead angels could be difficult to deal with and somewhat terrifying. He made a point of avoiding them. Always.

With trembling fingers he rested her hand back on her stomach and lifted the clipboard balanced on her chest, turned it up to the feeble light and read the details.

Girl pulled from the river at Bankside. Firemen cut a hole in the ice to free the body. Drowning, accidental death, no claimants for the body.

'Poor thing,' squeaked Mrs Thistlewaite in a manner that suggested she couldn't care if she'd been run over by her own parents while rescuing a kitten from the vicissitudes of a certain unlucky death.

Martin tightened his scarf round his neck; despite the fire it was suddenly chilly in the basement of the house where they kept the bodies of the deceased. The roof was long and low, so low Martin had to duck below the bracing timbers to work in it. He looked back along the narrow room to check the fire, it burned softly effusing the air with the mild aroma of woodland pine.

Poor thing, Mrs Thistlewaite had said. She always said the oddest things; as if to deliberately confuse him. Now the only thing he could think of was to repeat the phrase, poor thing, but that sounded stupid. He busied himself round the dressing area cleaning up the steel instruments with a linen cloth. If he looked busy maybe she'd go away.

'Poor thing.' said Mrs Thistlewaite again, looking expectantly at him and then at her watch.

He was glad he hadn't said anything. Three poor things would have sounded inane and that would have confirmed Mrs Thistlewaite's opinion of him to be reported to his father as further proof of her constant disappointment in him.

Outside, through the little oval windows he could see a raven dancing around in the yard picking over an object it had unearthed from the frostbitten grass. On the other side of the courtyard, the oak door to the workshop was slightly open, a movement within betraying the coffin maker toiling away in his workshop.

Despite his desire to be left alone with the girl, to bathe in the soothing radiance of her palliative serenity, Mrs Thistlewaite had not gone away.

Returning to the body he began to pick thin strips of weed from her face and drop them into a metal kidney dish. He sighed and hesitated. He wanted to reach down and lift her eyelids, hoping that at the sight of him, she would sigh and stir, her buttermilk lips quiver with life fulfilling air, her breast lift and she would reach up, take his hand in hers and in an instant be his.

He looked into the silver bowl. It held the detritus of the drowned, the plant life that twirled and danced to the tune of the dark rivers waters. Snakes of emerald weeds, white berry of mistletoe, red of holly, twisted, flattened husks of hops ripened in the late autumn sun. Like a recipe for a witches potion drawn up by the dark lord of the undercurrents. He closed his eyes and let his mind swim with the current. Weeds, berries and the swan white body of the girl caught in the swirling waters flashed past.

Mrs Thistlewaite had retired to the far end of the room, she was gently tipping the flagons of formaldehyde to check to see which were coming to an end. Pressing her ear to their sides to check for the slop of their contents she appeared like on old woman picking up shells at the beach at Lyme, listening for the sounds within, her eyes blown wide with the expectation of capturing the whisper of a far distant ocean.

'Mrs Thistlewaite,' ventured Martin across the room, 'why does the government pursue the practitioners of Majic so?'

She paused from her endeavours and for a moment her shadow stilled in the flickering gas light. 'Mr Palmerston, our Prime Minister has no time for such truculent things. He holds that under our great Queen may God bless her,' she whispered quickly under her breath. 'He holds that we should not listen to charlatans who believe in the mysteries of Majic. This is the age of enlightenment, our new renaissance. Our new majicians are men of science in the vein of Mr Newton. We have the likes of Mr Brunel and Lord Kelvin to amaze us with their astounding mastery of mekanics, electric fluid and magnetism.'

Surprised at this response from the normal reticent housekeeper, Martin pressed on. 'But why is it he has to hunt them down so, the majicians?'

Her shadow appeared to pulse and grow. 'Because he sees them as tricksters, Martin. The Maji are men and women who think they have control over our destiny, who can understand still what sits outside the bounds of science who can conjure and talk to spirits, who can meld the world around us in a way others cannot understand. And Palmerston fears that, the government fear that, for it is for governments to rule and their subjects to be ruled. And what they cannot understand they cannot rule so they must exile it.'

'Mr Thistlewaite, I've heard Mr Palmerston uses one they call the Inferno to find them, the Maji that is. He hunts them down on a government commission.'

Without turning to him she drew a deep breath and expunged it in a withering plume of hoary air into the chilly mortuary. 'There is a man, an evil man, a behemoth of a man, a man they call the Inferno, he carries with him a majical instrument he uses to detect those he suspects of practicing majic.'

'The Red Right Hand,' Martin whispered. 'So you've heard of that?'

Settling a large jar back in its place, she swung round to face him. Seeming transformed by the very mention of the Hand, her hair, unclipped from it normally fastidiously placed fastenings had fallen in voluminous trusses about her shoulders, her bowed shoulders thrust back, showing the curvaceous nature of her frame, her whole being glowed as if her years had been wrested away from her. The spritely elderly housekeeper was suddenly aflame with an inner fire.

'The Red Right Hand,' Mrs Thistlewaite repeated, spitting the words between her bloodless lips. 'The thing the Inferno carries with him. Damn the man! It lies within a jewelled box the Inferno carries with him always. It is said to been torn from the arm a great Maji many eons ago. It has such powers as we would not understand. Laid on the head of any practicing majician it glows like volcanic stone so hot that it forever marks the guilty with its fingerprints burnt into their molten skin. It is a good thing made evil, Martin.'

'And the thing in the tower, the Infernal machine. The machine that lies constantly ready in the Tower of London?' Martin fumbled, shocked by her transformation.

The corners of her eyes burned with tiny flames that quivered in the gloom. She sucked her tongue and drew a shuddering breath that bent the gas lamp's wicks. 'I have heard the foulest of rumours about that machine. It sits there in the tower, a mekanical device of demonic construction. Those that are caught by that man and that hand are taken to the Tower. The poor wretches are strapped into a chair made of the skin of hanged men and a device attached to their heads. When the machine is switched they howl and scream as the thing issues forth great gobs of fires and thunder whilst it tears the majic bodily from them until they are left poor husks of their former selves.'

'Where does this majic go?'

'Stored in a great Egyptian jar, with the face of Horus carved on its side, decorated with Runes to contain the Majic until it is needed for some heinous purpose no doubt. The jar was seized from Napoleon on the bloodied fields of Waterloo, it was said he found it under the looted temple at Luxor.'

Self-consciously her hand sought out her tumbled down hair. She drew herself in and smoothed the creases from her dress. 'I have said too much Martin.' Her voice shook with ebbing emotion.' I have spoken out of place, there are many injustices in this world.' Suddenly she grasped his shoulders, 'but beware Martin the dangers of practicing Majic are real, very real!'

Martin was confused. 'So majic is real and the Red Right Hand the Infernal Machine?'

Her voice, released from its previous ardour, cooled. 'Of course it is just rumour and conjecture. The subject of the existence of majic is a contentious one. Science is the world explained, majic still holds its secrets from us. Once understood Majic transforms itself effortlessly into science. That is the only difference.' She shrugged her shoulders and gave a forced smile. 'But Martin none of that matters, any that are suspected of majical practices are exiled to the colonies, you know that don't you? They endure many hardships there.' She gathered a great clump of hair at the back of her head and held it tight in the shank like a drying wheat sheaf, shook it to free the knots and pinned in roughly back into place.

'But the Red Right Hand, the Machine?'

She patted him reassuringly on the shoulder, 'Fanciful things made real on the whispers from the madhouse. It was not becoming that I should have spoken of such things for to do so gives them credence. But the exiles are real, Martin. Honourable men and women are taken from their families and sent, broken husks to the colonies.' Her voice dropped. 'There are dangers here for all that do not fit in, like those who see ghosts. Have a care, Martin.'

She lowered her dulling eyes as if embarrassed by the imprudence of conversation gone too far. Grasping him firmly by the arms she turned him to the body of the girl. 'Enough of this chin wagging Martin, you have your work to attend to. I heard the clock in the hallway chime seven am. Time is running away with us and your father will not be pleased by the progress of his apprentice.' She scolded.

The cooling breath of Mrs Thistlewaite standing behind him bought him to his senses. Placing the half-filled bowl back on the table and gently pushing the girl's hair away from her forehead, a thought struck him.

'Mrs Thistlewaite, how could she have drowned in the River Thames?'

'She probably couldn't swim.' Mrs Thistlewaite nodded as if she said something profound, then withdrew a tissue from her pocket and dabbed her eyes. 'The rivers' a dangerous thing, all those twisting currents suck you down to the black depths and to certain death.' She twirled her hanky in the air as if to demonstrate the dangers of the fathomless waters of the Thames. 'Oh, and the smell. Can you imagine?'

Martin wondered if drowning people would bother smelling anything. He doubted it, they were probably worried about other things. Like staying alive. He decided to change the subject. 'Are you going to the fair, Mrs Thistlewaite, on the ice, to see the dragon?'

'Foolish thing to believe in Dragons, not in these times in any respects. I expect gullible folk think they will see a beast marshalled by goblins, blowing flames and gambolling about the awnings of the circus tent under the auspices of a pugnaciously hirsute ringmaster. In truth it will be a contraption made of plaster of Paris, filled with French dwarfs and strung on invisible wires marshalled by lascivious, drunken stage manager as ruddy and bald as a freshly picked cherry.' She laughed at her verbal conjuring and then as if surprised by her own levity stopped and bit her lip so tightly it drew a line of blood.

She looked down and seeing the collar of her prim dress had become unbuttoned muttered under her breath and clipped it back into position. Then with it drop of her shoulders, a chary mien filled her countenance once again.

Marking the change in her attendance, Martins attention returned to the body of the girl. 'Mrs Thistlewaite, the river is frozen solid from Windsor all the way down to the gibbet at Tilbury Point. Even here, in the city it's over eighteen inches thick, further up it must be solid ice, like rock. How could she accidentally fall into the water?'

Mrs Thistlewaite scratched her birds nest hair and fixed her unblinking gaze on the girl, 'Yes, now you mention it, it is odd.'