Slammerkin - Emma Donoghue [149]
Mrs. Jones stood still. Not a sound from behind the door; barely a wink of light through the keyhole. She raised her hand to knock, but it was shaking. Her fingers still smarted from wielding the birch.
She pushed the door open, and for a split second before the draught snuffed out the candle she saw Mary Saunders, slumped across the bed in her shift, like a child who'd fallen asleep unawares. The small light glossed her dark hair before it went out.
Mrs. Jones heard a clink, and a half curse, and the scrabble of a tinderbox. 'No, please, my dear,' she began, 'I'm sorry—'
'Wait,' ordered the girl in the darkness.
When the candle had been lit again, Mrs. Jones stepped forward and sat on the very edge of the bed. There was a thin pillow between them.
'I thought it was Abi,' said the girl, very cold.
'No.' Mrs. Jones's voice was hoarse. 'Abi's to sleep with Mrs. Ash tonight. I thought you might rest easier with the bed to yourself.' She looked down at her closed fist. 'There's something I must say, my dear. Can you not guess what it is?'
Those eyes, like scorch marks on a sheet.
'It wasn't my own wish to punish you in that way. I know you meant no malice, with Mrs. Morgan...' She cleared her throat; the noise was deafening in the little attic. 'Well,' she said, very low, 'we have the same master, you and me both.'
That bold eyebrow, inching up again, putting a question mark after everything.
'Aren't we all servants, one way or another, Mary?' pleaded her mistress.
The girl put her hands down on the pillow and leaned very close to Mrs. Jones. 'Maybe so, madam. But some get whipped,' she whispered with hot breath, 'and some do the whipping.'
The older woman felt her eyes flood. She was blinded. She looked into her own heart, dusty as charcoal.
She opened her hand, after a time, and offered the girl a tiny pot with a paper cover. 'Ointment. For your back. May I put it on for you?'
She thought for a moment that Mary might throw it back in her face. But the girl turned away, and started lifting her shift. Her shoulders were creamy in the candlelight, as far down as the first red stripe. Mrs. Jones edged nearer on the bed. The pillow between them made a curious clinking sound. Mary froze, and it was that, more than the sound, that alerted her mistress. She lifted up the pillow and saw coins leaking across the narrow bed.
'What's this?' Mrs. Jones's words were simple with surprise. Then she began to count. Her hand shuddered as it turned over the bigger coins as if they were stones in a puddle. Finally, she asked: 'How much is here?'
The maid turned to look down at the money as if she had never seen it before. 'Eleven pounds, three shillings, and tuppence ha'penny,' she said.
Mrs. Jones's mouth repeated the words without a sound. Her hands laid the pillow flat in her lap, and pressed down. For a moment she was tempted to get to her feet and walk away, and forget she'd ever climbed up the stairs to the attic tonight. Then she found her voice. 'Mary Saunders!' It was an accusation, a denunciation, but also a plea.
'What?'
'Where did you get this money?'
'It's mine,' said Mary.
'But how can it be?'
Mary stared back at her, as blankly as a cat.
Mrs. Jones's voice gathered strength and momentum. 'I know you lied to me about your old debts. But how can a maid in your position possibly have amassed such a fortune?'
That eyebrow again.
'Would you not call it a fortune, then?' asked the mistress, weakly. 'Eleven pounds!'
The girl's wide lips were sealed.
Mrs. Jones shut her eyes for a moment. She had to take control of this conversation. 'What matters is not how much it is,' she said more quietly, 'but where you got it.'
'That's my business,' snapped Mary.
Her mistress's mouth became a horrified O as the terrible thought occurred to her. 'I'll have no thievery in this house.'
'I've thieved nothing.'
'You must have. You must have robbed things from our