Molly Malone's Arc

Chapter 2 of 9

Molly opened her father's old ledger and stared at the empty pages. The leather cover was cracked and soft from years of use. She needed to learn the numbers first. How much did each fish cost her? How much could she sell it for? Her father had kept it all in his head, but that wouldn't work for a proper business. She dipped her pen in ink and started writing. Cod: bought for threepence, sold for sixpence. Mackerel: bought for twopence, sold for fourpence. The numbers looked small on the page, but they were real. They were the start of something bigger. She closed the book and tucked it under her arm. Tomorrow she would track every sale, every penny. That was how empires began. The next morning, Molly walked past her stall and kept going. She had fish to sell, but today she needed something more valuable. The Whitechapel Merchants Guild stood three streets over, an impressive stone building with carved details around the doorway. Grand arched windows lined the front, letting light spill onto the street. Molly had walked past it a hundred times but never went inside. Today was different. She climbed the stone steps and pushed open the heavy door. Inside, men in dark coats stood around tables covered with papers and ledgers. They looked up at her. She held her father's book tight against her chest and walked to the nearest table. "I need to learn how to run a proper market business," she said. Her voice didn't shake. One man with gray whiskers glanced at her apron, still smelling of fish. He nodded once and pulled out a chair. The man spread open his own ledger and tapped a column of numbers. He showed her how to track costs against sales, how to spot the fish that made the most profit, how to plan for slow days and busy ones. Molly wrote everything down in her father's book. After an hour, he closed his ledger and looked at her. "Numbers are half the battle," he said. "The other half is keeping your product fresh." He told her about market tents with water baskets, how the best sellers rinsed their fish throughout the day to keep them bright and clean. Molly walked back to her stall with her head full of new knowledge. She stopped at a weathered tent nearby, its fabric tattered but still standing. Inside sat baskets of grain and onions, and she saw how the setup worked. She would need something like that. A proper tent, baskets for water, a system to keep everything fresh. She opened her ledger and added a new line: Equipment needed. The list was growing, but so was her plan.