Slammerkin - Emma Donoghue [159]
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.'
But Jane was gone to the master from whom no one was ever set free, thought her widower. All round him, the people of Monmouth were joining in the old familiar prayers, but he was calling God new names, and not holy ones.
Villain.
Whoreson.
Turd.
The holy bargain made as the saw bit through the boy's leg had been broken.
Then again, how could he prove that there'd ever been any such bargain? The Maker didn't speak, not in words. Not forty years ago, not now. What a fool that boy Thomas had been, to have mistaken God's silence for assent.
The air roared in Mr. Jones's ears. The coffin was lowered now, all the way down, bumping against the others. He stepped up with the first handful of dirt. He threw