Slammerkin (46 page)

The mistress's eyes were staring. Mary leaned across the darkening pool and shut one with her finger. It left a streak of blood from eyebrow to cheek; a mummer painted up for Twelfth Night. Mary stared down at her dress, polka-dotted with scarlet.
Cold water, and a rub of lemon, Mary; that's what it needs.
She couldn't bear to touch the other eye. It watched her as she backed away across the floorboards. She feared to turn her back, as if on royalty, or a demon.

She grabbed an armful of clothes at random, without looking at them. Her feet left sticky patches on the floor in the passage. She moved too slowly; she fumbled with the latch. With a tiny fragment of her mind Mary knew she was an outlaw now. But she couldn't really believe that there was anyone left alive in the world.

'Mistress?'

When Abi opened the door to the shop the breath was shocked out of her.

She stood at a careful distance so the pool of blood wouldn't mark her. But then she saw it on her arm, a long smear of red. From the door, maybe? She began to shake. She backed out of the room without a sound.

Waiting in the passage, Abi shut her eyes, tried to unsee what she'd seen. She felt nothing for the dead woman, yet; she was too busy making plans. How was she to prove that she hadn't been here? Who could bear witness? She could run away now, this minute, to the other end of town, but what if someone saw her go?

For weeks now Abi had been haunted by Barbados. When she'd been called in to hold Mary Saunders for her whipping, that was what had started it. Not that any of the mistress's blows had fallen
on Abi, but as she'd held the wrists of the so-called friend who had betrayed her, and borne her weight, and as the strokes of the birch had resounded through the girl's body into Abi's—she'd felt terror rise in her mouth like bile. She was back in Barbados, and not the sunlit, heavy-fruited island of her deceptive memory, but the place where she'd sweated away nearly twenty years of her life, and never felt safe from a blow, never for one moment.

And now, watching the pool of darkness spread from Mrs. Jones's cleft neck, Abi knew that her world had cracked apart all over again. Last time a master of hers had died, she'd got a knife stuck through her hand for punishment. What would they do to her this time?

Behind her, the crash of the front door. Daffy's whistle, a snatch of some dancing air.

Abi opened her mouth and began to scream. Screaming was what the innocent did, wasn't it? She did it mechanically, as if scaring off birds. Now she should run for the neighbours, that would look like proper behaviour for an innocent woman. She pushed past Daffy in the narrow passage and didn't stop to explain. She raced round the corner and down Grinder Street to the nearest tavern, to where the crow's nest swung and creaked in the September breeze.

It was like a procession, but much faster. Something ancient and costumed, with rules and rituals no one understood, Daffy thought, as he cantered up Stepney Street after the shifting lights of the older men. He was gaining on them. Their shouts echoed like fragments from an obscure festival that hadn't been celebrated in their lifetimes.

'Stop her,' bawled one.

'Hold her,' screeched another.

Daffy saved his breath for running. Monnow Street stretched like a worm, all the way to the moonlit river. At the head of the weaving chase he could see his father, his wig slipping off, running faster than any of them. Daffy's feet pounded the pavement, and slipped briefly on a bit of old fruit. Ahead of them all, Mary Saunders reeled like a drunkard. Her white gleaming train dragged in the mud. She squeezed a load to her chest like a baby; a flap of lace fell down, and she bent to save it from the dirt.

On the long straight street their movement seemed preordained. There was nowhere else to go. The street was empty but for the quarry and the hunt and a few startled faces at windows. The girl ran straight for the bridge, its stone gap narrowing to the eye of a needle. Cadwaladyr was the length of a man behind her. No, she wasn't going to jump in the river, realised Daffy. She still imagined she'd get away.

A
LL NIGHT
Thomas Jones was in the kitchen with his wife. He had her in his lap. When the door started to creak open, and Mrs. Ash slid her head through the gap, he cursed her with a Welsh phrase he thought he'd forgotten.

But the weather was warm for September. The burial couldn't be put off.

Mr. Jones came out of his house in the glare of noon and walked down to bang on Dai Carpenter's door. His breeches were rusty with blood. His crutches weaved and scraped through the dust. In his pocket he had coins amounting to two guineas—part of the moneybag recovered from the prisoner—for a good beech coffin.

Afterwards he did something he'd never done in his life: he climbed upstairs in the middle of the day and lay down. Lay on his back in the empty bed and had no idea where he was; the world whirlpooled around him. If he stopped thinking, there'd be silence, and that would be the worst thing. So he asked himself questions, loudly enough to fill his head, like a child throwing stones at a sleeping dog. When would he find the time to finish that pair of satin stays for Mrs. Greer? Had Mr. Jenkins ever paid the last
shilling on his summer cloak? How much sausage was left in the pantry, or had it gone off?

Grief was a pricey business. Before darkness he knew he would have to go down to Rhona Davies on Wye Street—the town's only dressmaker, now—to order mourning weeds for himself and the child, and the servants too. Then the house would have to be filled with drink and meat for the Watch. Not that he had any desire to invite the neighbours in to gawk all night at his wife's body, but that was how these things were done.

Pain, obscure and tentative, in his leg. Not his real leg but the one the barber had cut off forty years ago. What had they done with that blackened limb, Thomas wondered now. Was it buried somewhere, maybe in the vegetable patch behind the old house on Back Lane? What he remembered was the sound of the saw skidding against the bone. And his boy's mind racing, then as now, full of plans and queries:
What trade could I follow that doesn't need two legs? How will I make up for what I lack?
And, ticking away in his childish heart, the real question:
Oh Lord, how will you repay
me?

After dinner, when Abi had taken away his untouched plate, Mr. Jones let his eyes meet his daughter's for the first time. In her soft fat face, her eyes were so like her mother's. How could he never have noticed?

'Fafa,' she said warily, 'where did Muda go?'

The silence pulled them all together like a net. 'To heaven, child.' His words came out heavy with breath.

A pause, as Hetta pressed her finger to a crumb and swallowed it. Mrs. Ash stared into her lap. Daffy scraped back his chair as if to leave the table. Then Hetta asked, 'Did she fall in the river?'

The nurse took a sharp breath, as if to rebuke the child, but the master's answer came smoothly. 'No.'

A longer pause. The three adults stared at the child as if she were a thundercloud coming their way.

'Did a big rat eat her up?' she asked, playing the dreadful game.

Mrs. Ash's hand shot out to cover Hetta's mouth, but her father
got there first. His elbows strained against the tablecloth; he held her tiny face between his hands. His nose was almost touching hers. 'No, it wasn't a rat.'

Hetta tried to nod. Her cheeks were squashed.

'It was Mary Saunders killed her. Do you follow, child?'

Mrs. Ash stirred in her chair as if her stomach pained her. 'Mr. Jones—'

'Child?' he repeated. He had to be sure Hetta understood. Right now he didn't care if it appalled her; he needed to hear the truth spoken, and be sure his daughter knew it.

'Our maid Mary?' asked Hetta, tears shuddering in her eyes.

'That's right. Mary Saunders killed your mother dead.'

And the child's face collapsed as if he'd punched it.

'Tell us this, and quickly, did the black have a hand in it?'

'No,' said Mary, before she understood what the constable meant.

'The black claimed she found the body. She had a stain on her sleeve.'

Mary caught a glimpse of escape. The lie that might save her; the syllable her life might hang on. Temptation opened like a chasm, dizzying. How easy it would be to give them what they wanted, to let them believe that Abi was at the back of it all...

She was suddenly repelled by herself. Wasn't one killing enough for her? 'No,' she said, more firmly than before.

The constable shook Mary like a rag. 'You'll get no benefit from shielding the heathen.'

'I'm not. I'm not shielding anyone.'

'Was it not the black's idea, at least?'

'Abi did nothing. Said nothing.' Mary's words came out like gasps. 'I swear. She knew nothing. No one's to blame but me.'

'A girl of sixteen?'

'I've got the woman's blood all over me,' she shrieked then, flapping her heavy skirt at him. Blood browned to the colour of mud, in
great arcs and puddles across the white velvet, the silver snakes, and apples. 'What more proof do you fools need?'

Mary thought it would all be over quickly, after that. But as she waited in the basement of the courthouse, stripped down to her shift and a blanket, she came to realise her mistake. By the end of the morning she'd been committed for trial at the yearly assizes, but no one thought to tell her when that would be. There was no hurry, after all; she understood that now. She was not important.

She'd never been out to Monmouth Gaol before; she'd never had cause. It was away up the Hereford Road. The constables took her in a wagon, with her elbows roped behind her. The wind made a tear run from her left eye. Her face itched. The wagon crawled past a few solidly built new houses, a couple of cottages. Then the town of Monmouth ran out, and there was nothing but bare land. Mary had the impression she was going into the wilderness, crossing into a country beyond time.

And after all, what did it matter where she was taken? Her path had run out. Her story was told. What she thought of as her life had ended and there was nothing to take its place.

The funeral was on the third day. There was a tremendous turnout that afternoon; Inch Lane was clogged with mourners. The Morgans sent their carriage to park at the corner of St. Mary's Street, as a mark of respect—though they didn't take the trouble to come in person, Mr. Jones noted bitterly. When the men had hoisted the coffin out of the narrow house, they put it down on the ground and set out beer and bread on it. It was Dai the Grinder who drew the short straw from Mr. Jones's clenched fist, and had to be the Sin Eater. He took a mouthful of the dry bread and washed it down with beer. Mr. Jones tossed him a sixpence; Dai picked it out of the mud. Then they all moved in to spit at him, and he pushed through the knotted crowd and shambled away. 'All my wife's sins go with
the Sin Eater,' announced Mr. Jones loudly. He hoped the Devil could hear him. He hoped it was true.

And who was to take away his own sins? What he couldn't forget, what he couldn't tell a soul in the world, was that May night behind the Crow's Nest, where he let his breeches down and gave in to the monster that lurked in the belly of every man. His mouth was full of dust now. Without his wife, what was Thomas Jones but an aging cripple, a one-legged buffoon, the dupe of a skinny young whore?

No one could stop him lifting his corner of the coffin, along with his wife's three cousins and a nephew. He shed one crutch, and flattened his shoulder against the smooth beech. He knew he was impeding their progress. Every time he leaned on his crutch and swung forward, the coffin leaped as if something live was trying to get out. Sweat formed a spiked crown around the edge of Mr. Jones's wig. He'd lost all trust in his senses; he couldn't tell if the sky impaled on the spike of St. Mary's was grey or the earth underfoot was brown.

The mort bell was tied to a yew outside the church. The Reverend Cadwaladyr was clanging it wildly as if warning of invasion. His face looked like raw meat. Had he been crying? He'd always been soft on Jane, her widower remembered.

Chrysanthemums, dried to brown around their edges; the south corner of the churchyard was strewn with papery flowers from the last burial. There was little room left in the Jones plot on top of all the children's coffins. The men filed to the left now, the women to the right, just as they did in church. Mr. Jones took up his position like a pillar, beside the head-stone, which had a freshly chiselled verse.

Here lie the bones
of Jane Jones,
murdered.

He'd wanted something more than that. Something to begin to describe her:
virtuous wife and beloved mother,
or
deeply mourned by all
who knew her,
or
who by her uniformly estimable actions has earned eternal rest.
Maybe even
whose untimely death calls out to heaven for vengeance.
But there wasn't much room on the stone, and every letter had its price, and Mrs. Ash had persuaded him that his wife wouldn't have liked extravagance. He had insisted, though, on having her trade emblems carved on—bobbin, bodkin, and shears—for all the mason had grumbled that it wasn't customary in the case of a woman.

A chill breeze moved through the trees; the first whiff of autumn. 'Oh God,' recited Cadwaladyr gruffly from his broken-backed prayer-book, 'I believe that for just and wise reasons thou hast allotted to mankind very different states and circumstances of life, and that all the temporal evils which have at any time happened unto us, are designed by thee for our benefit.'

Mr. Jones heard the words, as he had many times before, and suddenly didn't believe them. What benefit to anyone was this particular temporal evil, this incongruous death? He fumbled in the recesses of his mind for his faith, but it was gone. He no longer believed that his Maker would recompense him for all his losses. The bank was empty.

'Then the weary are at rest,'
read Cadwaladyr, his dark circled eyes glancing up from the page,
'and the servant is free from his master.'