Billingsgate Market

Billingsgate Market is the riverside fish market where Willis Pule’s urgent search for live carp brings him into contact with the market’s crowded trade and, just beyond it, a discovery that redirects his plans. The episode links a practical need in Ignacio Narbondo’s experiments to the market’s ordinary commerce, then carries Pule from the fish stalls to the Thames embankment and Bill Kraken’s hidden prize.

Setting and Trade

At dawn, Billingsgate is active with boats, dockworkers landing fish, vendors, and customers moving through its wet streets beside the Thames River. The market’s abundance is both its defining feature and a source of discomfort for Pule: the fish, shellfish, and other marine goods crowd the stalls, while their odors compound his exhaustion and unease. A tract-passing youth and other converts of Shiloh are also visible among the market traffic, though the tracts are often put to a more practical use as fish wrapping.

The market matters to Pule because his existing carp have died of swim-bladder disease, while Narbondo needs another fish for the attempted restoration of Joanna Southcote. Pule thinks breeders from fisheries in Chingford might have carp for sale at Billingsgate. The oceanarium, he believes, cannot be tried twice in one day, making the market his immediate alternative.

Pule’s Search

Pule arrives after a sleepless night, convinced that he must find a fresh carp before it begins to dry out. His anxiety about the task sits alongside his preoccupation with his appearance: earlier remedies for his complexion have failed, and he remains sensitive to the possibility that passersby are observing him. In this state, the noise and press of the market intensify his impatience rather than distracting him from his purpose.

When a vendor calls attention to seven live carp in a water trough, Pule makes his way toward them and asks the price. He will not haggle; speed matters more than bargaining. The transaction ends with the vendor pocketing a pound note, and Pule leaves with a barrow and a boy accompanying him. The market has supplied the fish he sought, but the encounter is not a clean escape: the vendor mocks him by filling Pule’s cap with squid and putting it back on his head. Pule rushes away and throws the cap, squid and all, into the Thames.

From Market to Embankment

About a hundred yards along the embankment, with the market’s activity receding behind him, Pule notices a sleeping man sheltered beneath a damaged stone projection. What catches his attention is an object protruding from the pillowcase in the man’s arms. He recognizes the sleeper as Bill Kraken and the object as a Keeble box, identifying it by details he has seen in Narbondo’s sketches: a clothed hippopotamus and dancing apes carved on the lid.

Pule is not personally acquainted with Kraken, but he believes he knows enough about him to exploit the chance encounter. The box’s appearance changes the direction of the errand: the market has brought Pule to the riverfront in search of a carp, and the adjoining embankment now offers a possible means of gaining the valuable box. He sends the boy to buy heated brandy and two glasses, paying him three shillings and promising another on his return, while keeping his attention on Kraken and the prize.