writing_shadows

I was just digging through my hard drive and found this little thing, which I wrote months and months ago when I first brought Eliza into play. It's simple, but I rather liked it.

Tower Hamlets.

A little borough, Eliza remembered. Part of Middlesex, which didn't exist any more. The yeomen for the Tower of London came from there, or they had done, but it was too far to walk from Catherine Street unless you had a very good reason and who'd had the money for a hansom, back then? Eliza certainly hadn't. Neither the money nor the time to waste going to see places where she had no business. Everything was different now.

She'd thought, perhaps somewhat naively, that she'd be able to move right back in. Buy somewhere near the Aldwych, pick up where she'd left off. No dice: home was now under the rule of the Prince, and Marchant wasn't selling. So Tower Hamlets it was, Tower Hamlets and The Black Horse and the financial aid of a man she wasn't at all sure she trusted. Never mind, she'd be on her own two feet soon enough. She'd show them, she'd show them all, and if William wasn't around to watch her she'd just have to yell it all the louder.

The doors to the pub were creaking and chipped and the bar smelled of lager and vomit. It had been cheap, and that was why she had chosen it, but you get what you paid for and Eliza – or rather her 'silent partner' – had paid for a dingy little hole with a bad reputation and a gloomy history. “It has potential”, the previous owner had said. “I'm done with it, though. The punters are all wankers and me wife thinks there's a ghost in the cellar. Good luck to you.”

There wasn't a ghost in the cellar. There was only Eliza, and the only comfort to be gained was from the fact that Eliza was worse than a hundred ghosts.