Chapter Two: Tools of the Trade

All but forcing him into the booth, she handed him a woefully molding pie, too excited to see another person to care much. Her shop, like herself, had fallen into terrible disrepair, and the ale in the barrel had long ago gone bad, but she poured him a tankard nonetheless, chatting to him (really without taking a breath) about the lack of customers and how terrible her pies must be, really to cover her embarrassment. She didn't recognize him at first, until she had taken pity on him and brought him to the back to give him some gin to cleanse his palate. Then, in the firelight, she thought... he looked like...

When he inquired after the room above her shop, she decided to test him, saying people thought the room was haunted, recounting the events that had passed up there, until he screamed and gave himself away. Her heart seemed to expand all at once until she could barely speak.., and she whispered, "So it is you. Benjamin Barker."

And all he had wanted to know was where Lucy was. And so once again, she told him half the truth. She poisoned herself with arsenic, and Turpin took their daughter. She had listened to his agony, his anguish, and wanted desperately to comfort him. Then he had whirled on her, telling her his name was Sweeney Todd now, that he was crazed for revenge, and what had she done but take him upstairs to his old lodgings, once filled with light, now neglected and dark. Amid the dust, she knelt and loosened a floorboard, a familiar location, and drew out a wrapped package. She undid it, enchanted by his face, terrified that the rush of love she had always felt for him had come back to her full-strength. "When they came for the girl, I hid them," she said softly. "Could've sold them, but I didn't." She remembered suddenly going upstairs to look for things to sell, seeing his box of razors, and weeping, hiding them. They were too precious. Now he was back, miraculously, and holding the carved box. He opened them, and the razors glinted as bright as they had always been. "Those handles're chased silver, innit?" she asked, her accent thickened into East London dialect.

"Silver," he said softly, distractedly. "Yes."

As he admired his favorite tools of his former trade, she stared at him, taking him in, all his pallor and his wild hair, the remains of the man she loved so intensely. She moved closer and closer to him, taking in the miraculous fact that he smelled wonderful, leaning into his skin, hoping for some token of appreciation for all her efforts, and received only a rough, "Leave me." Which she did, of course, content to let him bask in his past for a moment. He came down later, and she fed him with meat she had bought that day, a better meal than her last pie. He didn't speak much, and despite her efforts, he would only nod.

A week after his arrival (she had set him up with a bed in his upstairs room), a week spent plotting and planning to revive his business, since it would be mutually beneficial, she told him of a man who visited St. Dunstan's market once a week on Thursdays, and who was reportedly the last word in barbering. For this event she pulled out her good dress, her last one, and pinned a hat over her disheveled curls. "He's here every Thursday," she repeated. "Eye-talian. All the rage, he is. Best barber in London, they say."

He hadn't said much, but she had had to, very nonchalantly, prevent him from pulling out his razor in the middle of the market when he spotted the Beadle Bamford, whom she too now hated violently. Much as she wouldn't mind seeing him bleeding on the floor, for how he had taken Johanna from her, she knew murder in broad daylight was... undesirable. And so she had stayed him and he had obeyed, standing meekly beside her. And she would have been lying if she said she did not feel a small glow of triumph that he did so.

They watched a little boy perform the duties of a street-caller, hawking bottles of a "miracle elixir," to grown hair on even the most stubborn of scalps. When the scent of piss drifted to them, she felt Mr. Todd stiffen beside her. He had found his way clear to destroying his rival. She helped just a bit, throwing in an acid comment or two, but it was when he challenged the peacock Italian to a shaving contest that he truly distinguished himself. She watched in undisguised admiration as the Italian strutted and crowed, while her Mr. T merely sharpened his razor, taking his time on purpose she supposed, and then did what he did best: shaved closely and cleanly to the skin. The crowd was delighted by the spectacle and in the ensuing minutes, she put his coat back on him, taking her time to run her fingers over his clothes, straightening things here and there, and told a gentleman where his premises were. Word would spread quickly, she knew, and she could just imagine the money flowing in, hard times over. It would be lovely to have no debts any longer, maybe think about some nice new dresses, for if men came for a shave, surely they'd come for a pie too. The thought was wonderful, and she was grateful to Mr. Todd.

She could overlook his little indiscretions, the excessive consumption of gin, the fact that he hardly had a kind word for her (or many words at all), all for the fact that he was alive and standing in front of her.

She brought Albert's old chair to him one Tuesday morning, hauling the blasted thing up the stairs herself and dragging it into the center of the room. "It's not much of a chair, but it'll do," she said, settling herself into the worn leather. "Was me poor Albert's chair. Sat in it all day long he did, after his leg give out with the gout."

"Why doesn't the Beadle come?" he asked agitatedly. "Before the week is out, that's what he said."

"Well, who says the week's out?" she asked contentedly from her perch on the, her legs crossed in a decidedly unladylike posture, her red-striped stockings exposed (a vanity she had allowed herself; women should have lovely things, no matter how poor). She was proud of her figure, that it hadn't suffered in all the years of neglect and work; she was still curvy, her breasts still high, her waist as tiny as it had ever been. Well, there had been no babies. "It's only Tuesday."

He glared at her, flinging his sharpening block aside with a thump and walking away as though she had said something of no merit. And so she took it upon herself to soothe him, calling him all manner of tender names and making the very valid point that the matter deserved some forethought. That he wanted revenge was perfectly acceptable; she too had reason to want the judge and the Beadle dead, though he couldn't know this. To distract him she suggested flowers to make the room more prepossessing, but his attention was all for his razor.

Then the young man had come clattering up the stairs and the spell was broken. With him he brought the earth-shattering news that Johanna he was rescuing Johanna, and the look on Mr. Todd's face had broken her heart. "Bring her here, love," she said, relishing the way Mr. Todd's eyes traveled to her for advice. The young man ran out smiling, and Mr. T went to the window. "Poor little Johanna," she murmured. "All those years without a scrap of motherly affection. Well, we'll soon see to that." And, with visions of a beautiful young girl who would treat her as a mother, she too went to the window.

She noticed Pirelli the same time Mr. Todd did. "Hello," she said. "What's he doing here?"

"Keep the boy downstairs," was all the answer she got.

And she did, without question. She whisked him away from his peacock master and handed him a fresh pie, which he ate greedily. She engaged him in conversation and kept a sharp ear on the events upstairs. All she could hear was footsteps and the faint murmur of voices. And then-- and then, a terrible thud, as though a body had hit the floor. Knowing Mr. Todd... she sprang up and began banging around, affecting a busy manner. "My, my, my," she said hurriedly. "Always work to be done. Spic and span, that's my motto." It was ludicrously, obviously untrue, but the little boy accepted it. Then, suddenly, he remembered an appointment and went barreling up the stairs. She spent a very tense three minutes in nearly suspended animation until he came down again, completely unperturbed, saying that his master had been unexpectedly called away, and that Mr. Todd had told him to go back down for a glass of gin that she would be kind enough to provide. And provide it she did (even left him the bottle), before hurrying upstairs to find out just what had happened.

"That lad is drinking me out of house and home," she said. "How long 'til Pirelli gets back?"

And then he had turned, and the bright red stain on his freshly-washed shirt made her jaw drop. "Mr. T, you didn't!" she gasped.

His eyes slid to the trunk against the wall, and she lifted the lid with some trepidation. The body made her stomach heave a little and she slammed the lid shut in horror. "You're barkin' mad," she hissed at him. "Killing a man what done you no harm!"

"He recognized me from the old days," Mr. Todd said grimly, inspecting his razor. "Tried to blackmail me. Half me earnings."

"Oh, well," Mrs. Lovett let her breath out, aware that it would have been money out of her pocket as well. "That's a different matter, then." But still... killing someone... she hadn't wanted to believe him capable of it. "For a moment there I thought you'd lost your marbles." She heaved the lid open again and observed the crumpled body, her horror pushed back to someplace vague. "Ooh. All that blood. Poor bugger," she said, remarkably calmly. "Oh, well." She reached in daintily, removed his purse and looked inside. There were a significant amount of bill and coins within; more help for the shop. "Waste not, want not," she murmured, speaking her thoughts aloud. "So, er... what are we going to do about the boy then?"

"Send him up." Mr. Todd didn't even look at her.

Mrs. Lovett felt her heart drop. "Oh, we don't have to worry about him, he's a simple thing."

"Send him up." This time he looked at her, his teeth gritted.

Mrs. Lovett absolutely refused. She moved closer to him, her fingers drifting across the front of his vest. "Now, Mr. T, surely one's enough for today." She tilted her head ever so slightly, so that her smooth neck and shoulders were presented to him. "Besides, I was thinking of hiring a lad to help me 'round the shop. Your poor knees aren't what they used to be." Oh, yes, she had noticed him wincing when he bent.

"All right." Mr. Todd walked away from her, towards the window. Mrs. Lovett breathed a sigh of relief. She joined him at the window, looking down into the wet London streets.

"'Course we're going to have to stock up on the gin," she continued. "Boy drinks like a sailor."

She saw something catch his attention, his whole body alert. "The judge," he blurted, his frown intensifying. He looked around the room, as if searching for something, and then turned on her. "Get out," he growled. She didn't move, hoping he would ask her to aid him somehow in this. "Get out!" he snarled, and she practically flew out the door.

The next space of time she would never quite remember. It was quiet, until she saw the sailor run up, the judge run down, heard the word, "OUT!" shouted from above, and saw the sailor go barreling down and back into the streets. She immediately dropped the rolling pin, which clattered to the floor, and flew back upstairs.

"All this shouting and running about, what's happened?" she demanded.

"I had him," Mr. Todd said faintly.

"The sailor busted in, I know," she said, shutting the door hastily. "I saw them both running down the stairs."

"I had him." His voice was raw.

Mrs. Lovett did not like the tone his voice was taking. It scared her badly to see his eyes growing wild. "There, there, dear, calm down--" she began, but he cut her off.

"No! I had him!" He was nearly screaming now.

"Easy now," she started again, "I keep telling you--"

"When?" His face was blanched, no color at all underneath his skin, and her small comforting smile dropped. With fear in her face, she tried again, "What's your rush?"

"Why did I wait?" he snarled at her. "You told me to wait! Now he'll never come again!"

Mrs. Lovett watched him rage, pacing, screaming, pushing her into the chair and holding his razor to her throat (even then she stared at him with desire, desire he was too insensible to see), and finally falling to his knees. When he opened his eyes again, staring emptily at the ceiling, she let her breath out. "That's all very well," she said, trying to keep her voice steady. "But what are we going to do about him?" She tossed her head in the direction of the chest that still contained the Italian man's body.

He didn't answer. She bent over so that she was face-to-face with him. "Hello?" she said. "D'you hear me?" He'd gone over the edge, she thought. Still nothing. She locked her arms around his middle and heaved him to his feet. "Great useless thing," she murmured affectionately, helping him down the stairs and into the shop. Retrieving the bottle from the boy Toby, who was now sleeping peacefully in front of the fire, she poured Mr. Todd a half-full glass. "Drink it down," she said, for all the world like a mother with a sick child. He did so, wincing at the burn. His eyes cleared. "Now. We've got a body moldering away upstairs. What do you suppose we should do about that?"

Staring into the depths of the glass, Mr. Todd said, "Later on when it's dark we'll take him to some secret place and bury him."

He'd gone over the edge for a certainty. No one killed anyone in their right mind. As his pale fingers wandered over the glass, Mrs. Lovett thought with a surge of love and tenderness and fear, that even there, even over the edge, she would follow him.

And so she whispered her plan to him, making terrible, scandalous fun of the people of London, letting him sweep her around the shop in a waltz. In this way she proved her devotion to him.

She was amply rewarded. He was filled with pent-up energy from the thrill of his first kill, from the frustration of losing the judge, from the twisted exhilaration of her plan. When he backed her into the wall and pressed himself to her, he murmured, "You're a bloody wonder, Nell."

The pronunciation of her name so startled her that she looked straight into his eyes in confusion. "What?" she asked before she could help herself. For a moment, just for a moment, she thought she saw Benjamin looking out from those black eyes.

Mrs. Lovett submitted to his touch uncomplainingly. He backed her into the baking table, forcing her knees apart, smearing flour onto her dress, in her hair, along her skin, shoving the worn fabric up her thighs, half-frowning at the violence of her reaction to him. Oh, she was as silent as she was able, but the table scraped back a few inches along the floor when he undid his breeches and pushed into her, and she had let out a noise between a moan and a yelp with his name mixed in, "Mr. Todd!"

Somehow, when he was this embarrassingly close to her, he couldn't hear her address him by a title. So he covered her mouth with a long-fingered hand and hissed, "Shut up."

And her eyes, large and wet with tears, glared into his defiantly before they closed and her head tilted back, her white throat exposed to him. Curiously enough, without his razors she presented no temptation to him, no organic plea for death. He had frowned down at her unblemished skin. She was... moaning, her arms pinned back by his hands, her thighs gripping his hips.

This wasn't about her, he reflected as he dug his fingers into her flesh, eliciting a sharp intake of breath from her. He felt as though he were looking at the world through the haze of his desperation to relieve this tension, this pent-up tightness he stored between his shoulders, and (when he saw her bustling from table to oven and back again, his accomplice in all things), between his legs. It was a feeling he'd effectively quashed during his time in Botany Bay, one that sprang up unexpectedly about a month after he had arrived back and settled into his rooms over her shop. He had done nothing about it then, but slowly, surely, the primal need for human contact had forced his hand, quite literally. Forced his hand up the skirt of a woman he didn't desire with the same fire with which he had wanted his golden Lucy, but who was willing and present, and whose body accommodated his without complaint.

It didn't take longer than five minutes, Mr. Todd slamming his hand down on the table next to her when he came, raising a cloud of flour. He pulled out and away all of a sudden, pulling her skirt back down. He did up his breeches and cleared his throat. Mrs. Lovett straightened herself, looking up at him with such adoration he turned away from her. What did one say at this moment? Neither of them knew. And so he merely glanced at her, muttered a quick, "I'll be going," and fled.

Mrs. Lovett smoothed her hands over her dress again, wincing as she slid back onto her feet. She pulled at her skirt and sighed. That flour would take hard scrubbing to get out of her dress.

Her lips curved just so slightly.