paper for a penny each.
“You only vant to talk to me?” said the woman, her accent thick as she stared at Hero with obvious suspicion. A stocky woman dressed in ragged but clean clothes, she had fading fair hair and a scar from what looked like a saber slash running the length of one side of her face. She said her name was Anja Becker, and that she was originally from Hanover. “I don’t like to just talk.”
“Well, you can cut my profile while we talk, if you’d like.”
“I zink I’d rather do zat.” She picked up her scissors and reached for a piece of paper. “Look at zee Polygon.”
“How long have you been doing this?” asked Hero, watching her. Once, she must have been a pretty woman. “Cutting silhouettes, I mean.”
The old scar across the side of Anja’s face seemed to darken as she squinted assessingly at Hero. “Since I vas fourteen, maybe fifteen. But you need to turn zee head sidevays and look at zee Polygon.”
Hero obediently shifted her gaze to the curving facades of the ring of houses at the center of the square. “You’ve been in England that long?”
“No. Started in Hanover, I did.”
“How did you end up in London?”
“I don’t vant to talk about zat,” said the woman.
Given all that had happened in Hanover in the last twenty-plus war-torn years, Hero suspected it wasn’t too hard to guess at the vague outlines of this woman’s life. She said, “Do you always work here in Somer’s Town?”
“Ach, no. I like to vork here because I can see zee fields and zee hills, but I move all over, I do. If I stayed in one place, I vould soon cut zee profiles of most all zee folks who vant zem, now, vouldn’t I?”
“True.”
“Keep zee head turned,” snapped the woman when Hero’s gaze drifted sideways.
“Sorry.”
“I do my best business at zee fairs. Used to be, there vas a fair somewhere around London most every week, at least when zee veather’s fine. But they’re shutting them all down now, more and more. Too rowdy, they say.” Anja made a scoffing noise deep in her throat.
“How did you learn to cut profiles?”
“Learned it from an old voman in Hanover, I did. I vas born in zee countryside, but ended up in zee city after zee French soldiers burned our farm and killed my mutter and vater. At first, I used to just bronze and frame zee profiles zee old voman cut—I can bronze zis one for another fourpence, if you want, and frame it for another ten. But after a while, zee old voman, her hands started shaking so bad, she had to have me do zee cutting too.”
“I should think it would be a difficult thing to learn.”
“You need to have a good eye and a steady hand, ja. I’m not as good as zat old voman was. But I’m good enough.”
“What happened to her?” asked Hero.
“She vas killed by soldiers.”
Hero watched a young man in yellow pantaloons and a coat with a nipped-in waist come down the steps of one of the houses in the Polygon and let himself out the iron gate. “Is it hard to make a living cutting profiles, now that they’re restricting the fairs?”
Anja blinked and glanced away for a moment, her throat working when she swallowed. A gust of naked fear passed over her features before being quickly, ruthlessly suppressed. But that rare moment of raw vulnerability told Hero everything she needed to know. “Hard enough,” said Anja, “especially in zee vinter.”
The woman was so determinedly strong and independent, thought Hero, so formidably controlled. She’d survived so much, her life constantly torn apart by wars begun by kings and princes and a certain upstart Corsican to whom women like Anja meant nothing. Nothing at all. Hero found herself aching for her and all the countless others like her, and had to clear her throat before she could say, “I’m looking for a little boy I’d like to interview—a little half-Chinese boy of eight or nine. Have you seen him?”
“A Chinese boy?” Anja pursed her lips as she thought about it. “I don’t zink so, no.”
“He may be half-English.”
“Don’t zink I’ve seen him. Lots of French around here, but I’ve never seen any Chinese.” Anja set aside her scissors and held up Hero’s profile. Despite the woman’s earlier self-deprecating remarks, it was startlingly good. “So. Do you vant zis framed?”
* * *
Hero was standing on the far side of the Polygon, the framed silhouette