Slammerkin - Emma Donoghue [161]
'I never heard that,' said Daffy, his eyes on the crowd that stretched ahead of them. Then he turned and looked at his cousin hard. 'What do you mean, exactly?'
She went the loveliest shade of salmon pink. 'I don't know any details.' He could always tell when she was lying. 'But something to do with a tavern. And travellers.'
Daffy shut his eyes for a second and suddenly could see her, Mary Saunders, cider tankard in hand, going down to the Crow's Nest every other night in all weathers to do Mrs. Jones a favour. Her black eyes, her long stride. Of course. His skin burned with embarrassment. For all the books in his possession, he still failed to read the stories written plain as day in the faces of the people around him.
It didn't matter now. He had to change the subject before he gave himself away. He turned his eyes on Gwyn, her mild curves in her patched lavender gown. He might as well take his last good look now, before Jennett the Gelder got his stinking hands on her. 'So. Is your day set?' he asked, as civilly as he could manage.
'My day?'
Like a child with a scab, he knew he should leave it alone. But he went on. 'The date of—of your—'
She interrupted him before he had to say the word. 'Oh, no.'
'No?' he repeated, his voice high and bewildered.
'That's all off,' said Gwyn.
Daffy stopped dead.
Her cheeks were burning pink again. 'Jennett's off to Norwich,' she said, 'to marry a widow with a bakery.'
Daffy nodded in what he hoped was a sympathetic manner. A spark landed on the kindling of his heart, rested and glowed. He felt inflammable. He felt as if any minute now he might fall down in the street with excitement.
Without risking any more words, they walked together up the street as far as the Joneses', where Daffy's master stood like a lightning-struck tree, accepting condolences from neighbours.
Abi didn't attend the funeral. When Rhona Davies had arrived to measure the family for mourning weeds, Abi had stayed in her room and wouldn't come down. So now she watched the procession from the attic window.
She'd heard Mr. Jones talk to Hetta of heaven, but those stories were for children. What would happen was, Mrs. Jones would be put in a hole in the churchyard and her spirit would go into the mud. When Abi died, on the other hand, she knew she'd be going back to her own country. Sometimes she longed for it: the bright heat, the wet colours. Always supposing her spirit would be able to find its way.
In the lane behind the house, men were killing a pig; Abi waited for the screeching to end. Every year this sound told her that the long winter was coming and the stock had to be cut down. When she breathed in she caught a waft of the tanning pits in the back lane; fresh pig skins were beginning their slow decay to leather. Meat had to be salted for the fasting season. Soon the birds would be circling overhead, preparing their flight.
Time to go.
Just as Mr. Jones stumbled into his house and shut the front door on the crowd, Abi was slipping out the back way. Under her left arm she held the bag Mary Saunders had left behind her in their bedroom, filled with bright and gauzy clothes that Abi had never seen Mary in; she thought they must be what women wore in London.
Hidden down her leather stays was the five pounds in silver the Quakers had given her, after considering the matter in silence during a month of meetings. She'd asked Daniel Flyte when he and his Society would expect to be paid back, and he had smiled peculiarly, and said, 'Not in this life.'
Terror tightened now like a brass collar round her neck.
Would she be pursued? She couldn't tell. It all depended on Mr. Jones. He might be too slumped in mourning to think about anything but his wife—but then again, he might take Abi's desertion as another treachery, and call in the professional slave-catchers from Bristol to bring her back in fetters. If there were pursuers, she thought they would probably expect her to take John Niblett's wagon to London. Instead she was going to catch a boat at Chepstow, go down