Slammerkin - Emma Donoghue [135]
They turned away from each other, as if embarrassed.
At the door, the girl was stopped by a word.
'Mary?'
She turned her head.
'I'm glad you were here.'
Guilt like a splinter in her heart. The girl's vision blurred with tears. 'Yes.'
'Oh, and Mary. No one needs to know.'
She nodded once, slowly.
As she went downstairs with a cloth over the pot, she felt a curious sensation like fetters around her ankles. She passed Mrs. Ash on the stairs, and had to hold the pot high and casually, as if it contained the usual leavings.
The weather turned cold again in the last week of May, as if the year were reversing itself.
Stiff-faced, Daffy made a note of this unseasonable weather in the back of his coverless Curiosities of Monmouthshire, and never looked up from the page if he could help it. Abi wore two extra shawls she'd borrowed from Mary, and huddled into herself. To Mrs. Ash, watching from her upstairs window as she stuffed paper into the cracked frame, the occasional soft flakes of snow seemed another of the plagues sent down to warn sinners. Waste; milk spilling across the landscape.
Mary remembered a big storm from her first winter on the streets, the elms broken down in Hyde Park, the drifts that blotted out doors and windows, that family that starved to death on Bedford Street before they were dug out. And the smell of chestnuts, hot in her hands, as she and Doll thudded along the frozen banks of the Thames.
These days her master and she looked anywhere but at each other. He hadn't told yet, she was sure of that, but it could mean he was busy preparing his story. The mistress would surely have noticed something was wrong with him except that she herself was a walking ghost. It felt to Mary as if winter were knotting itself around them all again, and wouldn't be shaken off.
On the last evening in May, when Mr. Jones had gone out to his tradesmen's club, Hetta begged for the Queen story. 'But that's a winter tale, my love,' said her mother mechanically.
'It's cold enough for winter, Muda,' objected Hetta, squatting by the fire.
So Mrs. Jones shut her prickling eyes and conjured up the details. 'The Queen of Scots wore a black velvet dress,' she recited as if from her own memory, 'all buttoned up with jet acorns, set with pearl.'
Darning beside her, Mary nodded with professional appreciation.
'Her veil was long,' Mrs. Jones told her listeners, 'and lace-edged like a bride's.' It soothed her to think of it, she found.
'White?' asked the child, from Mrs. Ash's bony knee.
'What else would a bride wear?' Mrs. Jones smiled at her daughter. 'Her shoes were of black Spanish leather, her stockings were clocked with silver, and her garters were green silk.'
'How do you know?' asked Daffy suddenly.
Mrs. Jones stared at her manservant.
'I mean to say,' he explained in some confusion, 'how could—how was it possible for—for anyone to see her garters?'
A snigger from Mary. Mrs. Ash made a choking sound. 'Shouldn't the fellow sit in the kitchen?'
'He means no harm,' said Mrs. Jones.
'Such a question to ask!' hissed the nurse.
'The garters are a matter of public record,' Mrs. Jones hurried on, gathering her forces. 'Perhaps her ladies wrote everything down afterwards. Well now. They disrobed the Queen when she reached the centre of the hall, don't you know. She stood there in her petticoat—crimson velvet, with a crimson satin bodice, and red sleeves they tied on her to match.'
'The colour of blood,' said Mary.
'Indeed.' Mrs. Jones flicked an uneasy smile at the girl. 'And after the Queen had forgiven her executioner—and paid him too—she blindfolded herself with a white cloth embroidered in gold, and she covered up all her auburn hair.' She paused for a moment, so they could imagine the fiery hair being snuffed out. Mrs. Ash, Scriptures open on her lap, was pretending not to listen. Mrs. Jones's voice gathered force. 'Then the good lady knelt down, didn't she, keeping her back straight as a rod, and she placed her little white hands on the wood for a moment to get her balance.'
'Was it all gory?'