Slammerkin - Emma Donoghue [155]
'Mary?'
Her limbs froze. The wine swirled in her head. She turned at last, like a packhorse under her load. She stumbled on her snowy train.
'Mary!'
She'd never heard her mistress shout before. Startled, she lost her grip on the dresses, and they slid to the floor.
Mrs. Jones's face was deformed. 'Take that off at once.'
Mary looked down at herself, the white velvet river of her body, and all of a sudden she was stone-cold sober.
This was where the road petered out. Where could she run to, this time? In a minute, she knew, Mrs. Jones would call for the constable and have her maid taken away as a thief. Mary could be hanged for this; they would hang her by the neck till she was dead for the theft of so much as a single lace-edged handkerchief, let alone two armfuls of the best dresses west of Bristol. This woman has all the power, thought Mary with absolute clarity. I live or die by her word. She said I was her daughter, but she could have me killed.
'Don't talk to me that way,' she said at last. The sounds came out slowly, thick as mud. 'You don't even know me.'
'I know very well who you are,' said Mrs. Jones. 'You're my servant.'
So much for love. Mary gathered all the bile in her mouth and spat in her mistress's face.
The older woman, petrified to stone, looked back at her. There was spit on her cheek.
'I'm no orphan, by the way, for starters,' remarked Mary. 'My mother's alive and well and hates my guts. Every word I've ever said to you was a lie.'
All the colour had drained from Mrs. Jones's face.
'I'm a whore; hadn't you guessed it yet? You're not the sharpest knife in the box, are you, Mrs. Jones? That money you stole, I earned it with my own crack. I've had every stranger that's passed through this miserable excuse for a town.'
Pain like lightning across the woman's forehead.
'Why, I've had your own husband up against a wall!'
Only a blankness about the mouth.
Then Mary couldn't think of anything else to say. She was emptied out, hollow. She waited for Mrs. Jones to bend under the weight of all those words. She would have liked to see her weep.
Instead, the mistress cleared her throat and said, almost sedately, 'Get out of my house.'
Mary began to drift towards the door, light as air.
And take off that dress before you soil it.'
She froze on the spot. The strange thing was that she could feel the mistress's words coming true. Her skin soured, leaking poison through every pore, contaminating every stitch of the silver embroidery. The velvet hung on her like a snakeskin. She couldn't peel it off now; there'd be nothing left of her. Unable to speak, she shook her head.
Mrs. Jones held out her hand. When Mary didn't move, the mistress made a peremptory little movement of the fingertips.
The meat cleaver was on the sewing table where she'd left it. She picked it up now; its weight was delicious against her fingers. This was the hand she'd always wanted, the hand no one could shake off, no one could ignore. Now Mary had come into her own. Now she was the Queen.
Mrs. Jones didn't seem to notice this transformation. She stepped up to Mary and wrenched at the sleeve of the white velvet slammerkin. They both heard it rip.
Mary stared at her skinny shoulder, laid bare in the gap, like the bone of an animal. Everything was spoiled now. There was nothing left clean in the world.
The first blow was so easy. It happened before Mary knew it—as if the cleaver had taken its own simple revenge on behalf of the dress. Mary didn't know what had happened