The market has seen much better days. Those days were not even a distant memory, but a fever-dream, a strange, gold-and-scarlet dream of brisk trade, and silver and copper and even the occasional gold. Where delicacies and food were abundant, pouring out of the carts and holding-bins, barrels of tea and crates of silks and furs and other fine fripperies. Where an ill-dressed farmer was never in sight, much less a beggar. Much less a thief. What thieves there may have been had changed, suddenly, their professions, so that a man may walk with purse open, and fear not a wayward hand.
The market was empty. Near-empty, and grey, in the winter's light. Someone had made a fruitless effort to keep the square clear of snow, pilling it up in grey-coal heaps, left to melt and refreeze and send dangerous tendrils of ice down cobble-channels. There were few, here, who pushed wares, match-sellers and wood-sellers, and a man with a scant collection of molding roots. A butcher was there, sharpening his knives, ready for any desperation to wander his way - a farmer with a precious cow, a lame horse, or even a furtive, thin-cheeked man, leading a slinking dog on a thin bit of wire. He did his work for a cut of the meat, and meat was what there still was in abundance, meat and blood for pudding. Yet even that was shrinking.
There was something new there, today.
A lunatik came, a bag slung over his shoulder, and a great, steel kettle taken from some depth of Darkenhold. With a bit of copper he bought a match from the match-seller, and a bit of pence and a promise he bought some wood from the wood-seller. He set his fire, and he put down his pot over slatted wood. From the common-well, he took up water, and more water, the only thing that remained to them. There were those who were afraid, save the wood-seller, who sent one of his urchins off and waited, hunger in his dull eyes.
The water boiled. And here, the madman upended his bag, and into the water he dumped peas - great, fat, shelled peas - and beans, bay-leaves and salt. He had taken anything and everything that was ripe, from the green-house, and he had begged the salt and the bay from Darkenhold's cook. There is even a few sliced turnips, here and there, slogging from the pack and plopping into the water like the rolling of heads.
"This soup is free," Catch said, and he said it very loud. "It is f-f-free for, for everyone." And some did not come, or they went away, saying that this was a madman, unpredictable. And some did come, but they did little but take a bit of the soup, and then, run away. The wood-seller's family came, and took the hot, watery soup, and ate it. It was filling, if nothing else. It was a bit of green in a winter of white and red.
And Catch sat there, stirring his soup, doling out as much as he could give. And he said only this.
"This soup is f-f-free," again and again, serene, his face a too-bred mask of benevolence. "I m-m-made it for you. It's m-m-more than Glenn would have you eat. He would r-r-rather you eat lies."