The Frozen Thames

by Helen Humphreys

  (image credit 1684.1)

  It is the coldest winter there has ever been and the ice freezes hard and fast and smooth. The watermen trade their boats for sledges and pull people across the river, for the same price as when they had rowed them over. A whirly sledge twirls passengers around a stake set into the ice. Coaches are pulled by both horses and men. There are games of football and bowls, horse and donkey races. There is music and a large bear-garden. A fox is hunted on the ice and a bull is staked out in a ring by the Temple Stairs. Dogs are tossed in to bait the bull and many are gored to death before the beast is brought down. Men have skates to slide over the river, and horses have their hooves wrapped in linen to prevent this very same thing. Three cannons are brought out upon the ice to commemorate the royal visit, and boats are sent over the frozen Thames with their sails set and wheels fastened to their hulls to keep them upright.

  The Frost Fair is also called a Blanket Fair, on account of the blankets used to fashion the booths. The Fair lasts eight weeks and what is remarkable about it is not the city of wonders that it produces. It is not the fact that the winter of 1684 is so cold that trees split apart suddenly, as though struck by lightning; or that the river ice on the Thames freezes to a depth of eleven inches. It is not even that a printing press was hauled out onto the ice, that words were formed from the mouth of winter, that men and women can have their names printed in a place that, by spring, will cease to exist. No, what is remarkable about the Frost Fair is that it does not operate by the same rules that govern life on land. It is a phenomenon and is therefore free of the laws and practices of history. The poor and the rich alike inhabit the same space, participate in the same sports and diversions, are, for a very brief moment in time, equal citizens of a new and magical world.

  1689

  —

  These freezes are going to kill me. It’s bad enough that I am one of four thousand watermen plying trade on the river Thames, trying to row twopence out of the pockets of the wealthy men. It’s bad enough that the hay and straw boatmen have started to carry passengers, even though they are not licensed to do so and we, as freemen, have had to apprentice for seven long years to be granted this right. It’s bad enough that we live on the south bank of the river because the theatres were here and we used to row the traffic from the city side to the theatres before the theatres up and moved to the north side of the river. It’s bad enough that our numbers are kept unreasonably high because we’re used as naval reserve and, anytime there’s a war on, we can be plucked from our spot on the river and pressed into service for our country and King. I am not ashamed to say that I have hidden myself away to avoid being sent into battle.

  We are working men, but we have a history and tradition, a certain respectability. We wear a dignified red coat with our numbered silver licence pinned to our sleeve. The wherries we row across the river are painted red or green, to distinguish them from other boats. We even have our own coat of arms, with a pair of oars overtop a boat bobbing on the water and two giant seahorses standing sentinel on either side of the boat. There is a school for watermen to be opened in Putney by one Thomas Martyn, a man who was rescued from the river by one of us.

  All of this to lament the fate of the watermen during these freezes of the Thames. I am, simply put, starving because the river has turned to ice. At first I tried to transform my wherry into a sledge, to pull people across the river, but I cannot pull much faster than a man can walk, and the custom I received was so little as to be not worth the effort. It is far more exhausting to pull a boat over the ice than it is to row one that same distance over water. When the river is in its natural state, the only way across is by the London Bridge, and that is so clogged with traffic that it is a much slower prospect than being ferried across the water. In this way I make my living, because of this situation. Now the situation has completely changed. The entire river has become a bridge and a man may simply walk from one side of the Thames to the other if he wishes to cross it.

  I cannot be a waterman without water.

  Every morning I walk from my house on the south bank to the stairs where I used to row out across the river. I’m there by seven, walk up and down the stairs for warmth, stand on the landing stage, and smoke my pipe. This early in the morning there is not a soul out on the ice, but if I look to my left and right I can see the other watermen standing on their landing stages. We are like sentries, on guard over our precious Thames, and all of us waiting for the same thing – for the morning when the ice begins to shift and crack and the river is returned to us again.

  (image credit 1689.1)

  1691

  —

  The ice can barely hold us up. The freeze was sudden and the thaw has been just as sudden. We are more than halfway across the river now, so there is no going back, but when I turn to see how far we’ve come, I can see that the prints of my boots are slowly filling up with water behind me.

  I was warned by my husband not to attempt a crossing. The ice has crept over the river while we slept, he said. It could creep away again, just as swiftly. But my husband has been wrong about many things and I chose not to believe him. When the river froze in 1684, there was a Frost Fair on it for weeks and the ice held and held. A cannon was wheeled onto that ice and booths set up in the middle of the Thames. I looked out of the window this morning and saw this ice, and I thought of that ice.

  But I am learning that each ice, each freeze, is different from the one before. That freeze was hard and smooth. This one is uneven, spongy underfoot, covered with snow. I cannot even see the ice itself and so only half believe that it is there. But when I turned and saw my footprints filling with water, I knew that, not only is the ice there, but the river is there as well.

  I am taking my son to Cheapside Street to buy him some boots. He has grown fast, and his old ones are worn through at the toes. There is a good shoemaker on Cheapside who will not charge us very much to make Jack a new pair of boots.

  I thought it would be easier to cross the river over the ice instead of trying to cross at the bridge. The bridge is always so full of people and carts, and the river was empty of traffic this morning.

  Now I know why this is so.

  “Mama,” says Jack. “My feet are getting wet.”

  The water is over his boots.

  “Walk behind me,” I say. “A little ways behind me.”

  I pick my way carefully over the ice, testing each spot where I am to place my foot, treading gently on the surface so as not to disturb it. My boy is lighter than I am. If I do not go through the ice, then he will be safe walking behind me. Neither of us knows how to swim.

  I am all over shivering with fear. All I want is for us to make it safely to the other side. I will never be so foolish again. I will listen to my husband. I will never trust in something that seems one way but is another. Ice is water. Water cannot hold anything up.

  I look down and see the mush of snow and the wet leather of my boots. I look up and see the spire of St. Antholin’s church in Watling Street. It glitters in the sunlight, a tall needle piercing the sky. I will thread my fear to that spire, sew myself in towards land by that needle. Just in thinking this I can feel my hope grow taut, feel it tug me onwards to the church.

  St. Antholin’s was named after a monk who supposedly lived to be 105 years old. It is a new church, built to take the place of one that burned in the Great Fire of 1666. King Charles’s architect, Christopher Wren, has been working on it for thirteen years. This is the year it will finally be finished.

  Jack is thirteen years old. I gave birth to him during the same month that the building of St. Antholin’s began, and I have always linked the two events together. Nothing bad will happen to us as long as I can keep the church spire in my sights, as long as I can keep us walking over the Thames towards it.

  Perhaps this is the nature of ice, that it is an illusion. Perhaps ice is merely a form of faith. Step onto the water. Believe that it will hold you up, that you may walk safely acro
ss it, that it is strong enough to carry you – and it will.

  1695

  —

  I am looking out the window of this shop, down at the frozen river, at the spot where my mother and I nearly drowned four years ago.

  In all that time the Thames has been water and now it is ice again. This year was a very cold winter, the coldest that anyone can remember. It is said that it is so cold that wine will freeze in a glass at the supper table.

  The river has been frozen for more than a week now, but I will not venture out across it. I will never walk out over that ice again.

  All the same, I cannot stop watching it. When there are no customers in the shop, I come up here, to the top floor of the house, and I look out over the white world of the river. People and carts move across the frozen surface, move from one side of the river to the other as though it were the easiest passage in the world.

  I remember how there was no one on the river that morning my mother and I started across. I thought, how lucky we were to have the space all to ourselves. It was only when I noticed my mother looking around in a fearful sort of way that I knew that it was not a good thing that we were alone out there.

  My boots sunk into the ice and my feet became wet and I thought we were to drown. My mother bade me follow her, and I did this, but I did not trust that we would make it to shore.

  When we had made it to shore, I refused to leave it. I would not travel back with my mother to our house on the south side of the river. I would not cross that water again, even over the London Bridge. That whole day she tried to persuade me to return, but I would not, and so my mother helped me find a shop that would have me as an apprentice. This is the shop. I am now finished my apprenticeship and have qualified as a fruiterer. The man I apprenticed for, Geoffrey, has taken me on as a partner in his business. That is him now, stomping about downstairs. In winter, and with the Thames frozen, there is not much fruit for selling. Apples. We have apples. Geoffrey must be moving the baskets of apples from one side of the shop to the other.

  From the upstairs window the frozen Thames looks like a swan’s wing, a white curve of feather and bone. It looks beautiful and harmless, and I know that neither is true.

  That’s Geoffrey’s heavy tread on the stairs and there he is, standing at the top of the staircase, his red beard stuck with sawdust. He is carrying an armful of bricks.

  “Help me,” he says, as he leans forward and spills his load of bricks onto the floor.

  “Help you with what?”

  “We’re going to brick up the windows,” says Geoffrey. “Now that Mary’s dead the King is intending to raise revenues.”

  Geoffrey was partial to Queen Mary. She governed with King William and now William alone is in charge of the realm.

  “And?” I say. Geoffrey is a nice man, but he is a tad parsimonious with the words.

  “And he’s planning a window tax. Every window in every building is to be taxed.”

  I can see that this makes a certain kind of sense. The richer the man, the bigger the house and the more windows he is likely to have in that house.

  Geoffrey kicks the bricks rather angrily towards me. “I’m going to brick up these windows,” he says. “These ones, up here. Only the shop window downstairs needs to stay.” He turns to go back down for more bricks. “Help me,” he says, over his shoulder.

  We sleep in these rooms above the shop. It will be like sleeping in a tomb, with the windows all bricked up.

  I lean forward, press my forehead against the cold glass. This is how it would feel to lay my face against the river ice. It would be this hard and chill, this smooth against my skin.

  I still dream about that day I walked out over the ice with my mother. In the dream I am following her and she is walking slowly down into the water. In the dream I am not afraid.

  1709

  —

  The woman waits for her husband at the side of the road. She carries a length of new rope and an orange and she has wrapped herself in two shawls against the cold. She is early, but she was so afraid of being late that she hurried quicker than she knew she could through the frigid streets to wait here.

  Her husband is being taken by open cart from Newgate Prison to Tyburn to hang at the gallows there. He has been caught thieving and has been sentenced to death.

  The woman stamps her feet to shake the cold out of them. It is all due to the coldness of the winter that her husband was caught and tried and now is being taken to the gibbet. The winter is so cold that the Thames has frozen over and many cattle and birds have perished.

  The woman’s husband had a pet sparrow. He had found it fallen from its nest when it was a fledgling and he had fed it and kept it tucked in the pocket of his coat. He taught it to come to his whistle and then he set his plan to working. He walked about London, looking in the windows of the fancy houses until he saw something he wanted – some silver plate that could be sold and melted down – and then he opened a window and released the sparrow into the house. The bird flew from room to room and if the man heard no screams or shouts then he knew that the house was empty and he would follow the bird through the window and steal the plate. If he were caught in the house he would say that he had followed his pet sparrow in and was after catching it, and to show that the bird was indeed a pet he would have it return to his whistle.

  This plan never failed, and the man and his wife enjoyed a comfortable life from the profits of this enterprise. They bought the finest cuts of meat and had their clothes made by the best tailor and dressmaker in the city. The sparrow was fed cream and bread milled from the choicest flour.

  But this winter proved to be too cold for the little bird. It died one night, fell from its perch in the parlour of the house where the man and woman lived, and they found its small frozen body the next morning when they woke. It was the bird that had protected the thief, and the mistake the man made was in not realizing this soon enough. The very next house he entered to rob he was caught in.

  There is a clatter of wheels on the cobblestones and the hanging cart swings into view from around the corner. The woman steps out to meet it, forces the driver to stop his horses.

  “I need to speak with my husband,” she says, and gestures to the back of the cart where her husband sits on the boards dressed in his best suit and guarded by a man with a pike.

  “You may come along if you wish,” says the driver, and the guard helps the woman climb up into the wagon.

  The woman sits down beside her husband.

  “I brought you a rope,” she says.

  “No need,” he says. “The sheriff supplies the hanging rope.”

  “Well, I wasted twopence then.”

  “Perhaps your second husband will be able to make use of it,” says the man, and they both smile.

  “I brought you an orange too,” she says, handing it to him. His hands are tied in front of him and they make a nest for the orange to sit in.

  “Where did you get an orange at this time of year?” says the guard.

  “The fruiterer down by the river has some from a Spanish ship.”

  “Must have cost you dear,” says the guard.

  “I can peel it for you,” says the woman.

  “No,” says her husband. “I like the look of it.” They both look down into his cupped hands at the orange, bright like a flame in this white world.

  There is nothing that can be said between them that has not already been said. Now it remains simply for the man to die well, to die bravely. His wife will help with this by tugging on his feet as he hangs from the gibbet, to hasten his death. Then his body will be cut down and claimed by the anatomists for dissection. But the woman has the last of her money tucked down the front of her dress and she plans to buy the body of her husband from these doctors before they can chop it up. She will buy his body and have it buried entire.

  For now there is nothing but this bumpy ride over the cobbles to Tyburn. There is the warmth of this man she loves pressed against the
side of her body, and there is this orange, bright and glorious, roosting in the safe hollow of his hands.

  1716

  —

  Bess is exhausted. She has been rhyming all day and all the words have left her body, lifted like a flock of birds into the sky.

  “I need to stop,” she says to her husband, Will, but he has moved out of hearing, is well out in front of the booth, trying to entice customers in to see her.

  The river has been frozen for almost two months and a town of tents has been erected upon it. There is a cook’s tent where gentlemen come to dine every evening. There are tents that sell ale and tents that sell gingerbread. There are two printing presses and people can have their names printed on a card to keep for posterity. An ox has been roasted near the Hungerford Stairs by a descendant of the man who roasted an ox on the ice at the last Frost Fair in 1684. A woman selling apples has fallen through the ice and drowned and has been immortalized in a poem, two lines of which Bess is wildly jealous of: The cracking crystal yields; she sinks she dies,/Her head chopt off from her lost shoulders flies.

  Will and Bess’s booth has a sign out front that reads: Rhiming on the Hard Frost. Bess has always had the gift of rhyme, and it was Will’s idea to turn it into money at the Frost Fair. So far they have been rather alarmingly successful. A customer will offer up a line and Bess will complete the poem. If the customer cannot think of a line Bess’s husband will supply one. This is a better situation for Bess as Will gives her the first line to a poem she has already invented and memorized. Unfortunately most customers prefer to give their own first lines.