PROLOGUE
women's work

"Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil." -Psalm 23:4

Three Angels of Death chased Beatrice Price through life.

The doctors called the first Consumption. At nineteen, Trixie watched it destroy her father before her eyes, ruthless as all hell. She used to sit by his side and read him the Good Book as he drifted further and further from her. Terminal, the doctors said. Incurable. If he couldn't return to preaching, he would return to heaven, he used to say, and when the Lord eventually did call him home, he was so delicate and frail that Trixie wondered if there was much left to call.

Nineteen was too old to consider herself an orphan, but it was what the Consumption had made of her. Trixie's mother had left the world as she arrived, growing sick soon after giving birth; she'd never missed her—she'd never known her—but the loneliness after her father's passing had her dreaming up stories of how life would be different had her mother survived. Maybe she wouldn't be drowning in debt to a cruel landlord. Maybe she wouldn't be walking the streets in search of work every morning and coming home exhausted and empty-handed each night.

Women weren't meant for lives like these, she knew. If she'd listened to her father, and married Luca before he enlisted, she would be cared for by his family, but he'd been eager to throw himself into the trenches, leaving her with nothing but a brass ring and a promise to return. She wrote him letters, from time to time, and did not send them. What would be the point? He couldn't read.

Trixie walked the streets during the day and she waited at night, but the skies stayed grey and the winds stayed cold. She clung to survival desperately, her life running like a string parallel to death: always close, and never touching.


"Do you want a drink, or are you just going to sit there?"

Trixie was in the Garrison Pub, against her better knowledge. Her father had warned her about places like these and the men who tended to inhabit them. Even as she tried to make herself small, she could feel their eyes drag across her warily, and the man behind the bar was no different.

"Gin," she ordered, blurting out the name of the first drink that came to mind.

"For you?" he asked, giving her another once over.

She glanced over at the empty barstool next to her. "Who else?"

The answer satisfied him enough, though he grumbled as he went to fix her a glass.

She wouldn't be able to afford it. She was barely making rent, as it was, but this wasn't the kind of place where men offered to buy drinks for girls—and maybe more importantly, she wasn't the kind of girl men bought drinks for. As she sipped from the glass, she suppressed her own coughs at the burn. Much stronger than the wine from church.

"Where are you from?" the bartender asked.

"Here," she answered, avoiding the question she knew he was actually trying to ask. Her dark skin was an unusual sight for most of the people in Birmingham, and despite her permanent residence in the city, nobody ever seemed to get used to it. "My father was Pastor Martin."

"I don't go to Church," said the bartender.

"Neither do I," she replied.

He pointed at the ring on her hand. "Married?"

"Engaged," she answered. "He's fighting."

"So's everybody."

"I need a job," she admitted suddenly. "I have no income and rent's due in three days."

He made a big show of laughing, throwing his head back and patting his chest heartily. Trixie waited. When she didn't join in, his grin dropped from his face. Soberly, he replied, "We don't hire women. Try the brothel three doors down, they always have openings."

Trixie flattened her lips into a line. "I don't have any interest in being a whore. But I'm good with numbers, and I can read."

"You?"

Again, she turned to the empty bar stools at her sides. "I don't know who else you think you're talking to. My father taught me to read, and I kept track of the collections at his Church."

He narrowed his eyes at her, reaching under the counter for something. Next thing Trrixie knew, he was throwing the newspaper at her.

"Read the first article," he ordered.

She rolled her eyes, gingerly sliding her drink aside and lifting the paper in her hands. "Owing to the summary rejection by the German government of the request made by—"

He pulled the newspaper away, skimming the article as if to verify that she had read it correctly. "What's your name?" he asked, after a moment of narrowing his eyes and mouthing the words on the page.

"Beatrice Price."

He shrugged. "It's a nice party trick. Drink's ten shillings."

Dammit. Trixie reached into her purse and threw the change down, already hopping of the barstool. Another long day of walking, another night empty-handed.


The second angel of death struck the day before rent was due, and made Trixie a widow. Part of her knew what the telegram would say before she opened it, so she made a point of cooking dinner very slowly to put it off just a bit longer. When she had settled at the table to eat, she swallowed thickly and tore the seal from the paper.

WE DEEPLY REGRET TO INFORM YOU THAT PVT. LUCA DESILVIO DIED OF GUNSHOT WOUNDS ON NOVEMBER 21, 1917.

Trixie cried that night, for the first time in years. What was she supposed to do with herself but waste away? In the morning, her landlord would come to collect money she didn't have, and if the war ever ended, nobody would come home to her. The brothel wasn't looking so bad—not anymore.

She resolved to go down the next night. Whatever it took to survive.


In the morning, it wasn't the landlord who woke Trixie up by banging incessantly on the door. Her eyes were puffy from the night before, but she could make out through the window a dark-haired woman in a hat.

"Beatrice Prince?" she called, through the door.

Trixie pulled it open, ignoring the fact that she was still dressed in her night slip. "Price," she corrected, before she remembered her manners. "Oh—um, I'm sorry. Beatrice Price."

"Polly Shelby," the woman returned, seeming like she either didn't notice or didn't care that Trixie had been rude. She pushed past her into the cramped apartment, spinning in a circle as she sized it up. "I hear you're good with numbers."

"Really?" Trixie exclaimed, her eyes bugging out in disbelief.

"Yes? Was that information wrong?"

"No!" She shook her head. "No, no, that's correct. I'm good with numbers, I'm good with money, too. And I can read."

"Well, my accountant just got killed in a German trench," the woman said. "And I need someone to help out my...business."

"Right," said Trixie. "Well—I can help."

"Did you go to school?"

"Not...technically."

"Are you particularly fussy about your morals?"

Trixie's eyes darted over to the Bible on her nightstand. Maybe before, yes, when she had something to lose. But whatever test of strength God was trying to throw her way had just broken her. Now she had nothing but herself. "No, Mrs. Shelby," she answered. "I don't."

Polly Shelby nodded slowly, giving her another once over. "When can you start?"

Trixie's third angel of death was named Thomas Shelby.

Where the first two took, he destroyed, and in the ashes he left in his wake, Trixie found herself reborn.


A/N: good news everybody! i am now peaky blinders trash. anyway thank you for reading! if you feel so compelled, please leave a review letting me know what you think :)


Chapter One: Bad Intentions

"Are you some kind of whore?" Tommy asked.

The woman looked down at her body, as if checking to make sure. "Not that I know of."