Slammerkin - Emma Donoghue [110]
Her eyebrows hunched together. 'Whatever for?'
'I wanted some soil from where the chapel used to be. It's considered a holy mountain.'
'And did you get some?'
'I have a bagful in my trunk,' he confided. 'It's said to ward off disease if you sprinkle it under the bed, and to put a soul to rest, if you scatter it on a coffin.'
Mary's lips were pursed up with amusement. 'So even you, a rational fellow, is given over to superstition!'
He shrugged, grinning uneasily. 'I don't exactly believe it, but I like to hedge my bets. And the mountain does have a holy feel to it. You can see nine counties from the top,' he added.
He thought she might ask him to name them, but she only stared around her critically. 'Why are there fences round some fields, but not all of them?' she asked.
'Ah,' said Daffy, 'that's the tide of history you're looking at.' He liked the phrase, but Mary slid him a scornful glance. 'By the time we die, you and I,' he hurried on, 'every inch of green in Britain will be parcelled up for farming, and there'll be no more common land. That's how Gwyn's family came down in the world,' he added; 'they used to keep pigs on the common down at Chepstow, till the lord had it enclosed.'
'So it's an evil, then, this fencing?'
He shrugged ruefully. 'I couldn't say. Progress depends on it; we can't stand in the way of the times.'
Mary nodded abstractedly.
'I could lend you a very good book on this very question.'
'When do I get time to read books?' she asked him, her lips twisting with amusement.
'Now there you show your ignorance,' he reproached her. 'Socalled female education is shockingly insufficient. You have an exceptional mind, I've noticed—'
'Exactly,' said Mary, her black eyes mocking him. 'So I can do my own thinking instead of parroting from books!' A crow flapped overhead; she lifted her chin to watch.
'Brân,' said Daffy, savouring the sound.
'Beg your pardon?'
'That's how we say crow, in Welsh.'
'Oh, that gibberish,' said Mary with scorn. 'Get that from a book, did you?'
'No, from my grandam.'
Mary stared at the bedraggled bird, which had settled on a bush. 'It's not much to look at, is it?'
'Ah, but your crow is a thoughtful and witty bird,' he told her.
'Dirty nuisances.'
He shook his head, once more amazed by how little the girl knew. 'I grant you they'll steal anything that shines, but they've a fine sense of humour, and they know things.'
'What things?'
'When it's going to rain, for instance.'
The girl rolled her eyes.
'And they're said to tell the future. Not that I credit that,' Daffy added. 'But I did read of one that lived to be a hundred years old.'
'Books are full of lies,' Mary told him, laughing deep down in her throat.
The crow flew closer, as if to hear its praises. It gripped a fence, claiming it for its own. There was a gloss like ice on its thick bristling coat. It let out a hoarse cry, its beak gaping to release the sound.
'You must never kill a crow, by the way,' Daffy warned her.
'The farmers do, don't they?'
'Sometimes,' he said doubtfully, 'but it's bad luck. It might come back when you're asleep and peck out your eyes.'
Mary laughed again, but he could hear an edge of fright in her voice. 'It's nothing to a vulture. I saw vultures at the Tower in London. Huge crooked-beaked frights.'
'You forget I'm from London, fellow,' he quoted in a whinge, just as she'd put it on her first day in Monmouth. It was hard to make this girl flush, but Daffy thought he could detect a darkening along the cheekbone.
'If you've spent your whole life in the back end of nowhere,' she told him loftily, 'you can hardly be expected to understand what you're missing. In London,' she went on before he could answer, 'there are things you wouldn't even know the words for, despite all your book-learning! The walls of rooms are hung with silks and satins of such beauty you couldn't imagine.'
Daffy bent down suddenly, and picked a small startled white flower. 'Anemone,' he said, handing it over; he made her repeat the word until she had it right.