Slammerkin - Emma Donoghue [164]
When the song ended the mummers held up their caps, and pennies began to rain down from the prison's tiny window. Soon enough the singers drifted away. The crowd thinned and started moving back towards the town; the fiddle dwindled to a far-off squeak.
Behind Mary, the old man was pressing his head into her blanket. She turned and shook him off. His face was a riverbed of tears. He spoke to nobody in particular. 'Never thought it,' he whispered. 'Never thought I'd live to see them taking out the Mari again.'
Then the guards came to herd them into the night room.
The Saunders trial was set for the first day of the Monmouth Assizes in March of 1764. Mary hadn't been outdoors in almost six months; on the cart that brought her from the gaol into town, she kept her eyes screwed up against the white spring light. She hadn't slept or eaten for a few days; consequently she felt nothing but a numbness. The grass was wet under the rattling wheels. What was that prayer she'd learned at school?
Oh Lord who can all things renew,
Scatter my sins as morning dew.
Spring slid into Mary's nostrils; the fields were spread with dung.
The courthouse on Market Square echoed with voices and shuffling steps. When all the benches were full of respectable townspeople, the guards had to bolt the doors to keep out the rabble. Mary limped into court between two guards.
Only when she heard him did her head go up. Mr. Jones, on his feet, shrieking higher than a woman, his fingers pointing like icicles: 'Killer! Killer!'
The judge's hammer had no effect.
'Killer!'
The guards had to muscle him out. Mary watched mutely, but felt a spark of life start up in her chest. To be hated so much, that reminded you that you existed. She could hear Mr. Jones's screams leaking from the passageway.
The lawyers were most interested in the details of what they called this most horrid crime. Injuries on the neck of the deceased consistent with the infliction of two, three, or four blows? Five pounds, three and sixpence, confiscated from the prisoner; in what coinage?
Only late in the day did they get around to asking why. 'Turning now from means to motive,' said the judge on the right, clearing his throat with a phlegmy rattle. 'Mary Saunders, have you any justification whatsoever to offer for your heinous actions?'
Save yourself, you silly bitch, urged Doll in her head. So Mary's mouth opened and she began to rant like a madwoman. 'Yes, sir. I do, sir. I am a poor miserable abused creature, sir.'
One white eyebrow went up.
She told the court that Mrs. Jones was the cruellest of mistresses; she'd whipped Mary raw, stuck needles under her fingernails, and stole her dead mother's legacy. Mr. Jones had forced her to lie with him every night, given her a foul disease, and threatened to chop her into pieces. Mary shrieked and wailed, telling the court about all the horrors that went on behind closed doors on Inch Lane.
The crowd oohed and ahhed, but she could tell no one believed a word of it.
At last Mary sank back into numbness. She had nothing more to say.
The judge on the left suddenly woke up and rubbed his watery eyes to peer at her. 'Is there any respectable person of property to testify to the prisoner's character in court?'
She shook her head.
'Has the prisoner shown penitence?'
Mary knew this was her last chance. It was like Petition Day at the Magdalen. These men didn't want truth, they just wanted a sob story. But when they wrote down your life in their books, the terms were always theirs.
'Any shame, or remorse?'
Mary chewed her lips.
'Do you not hang your head and weep?' the judge asked her fretfully.
She cleared her throat. 'Sometimes.'
That was evidently not the right answer.
'When you weep,' he prompted, 'is it with true regret, or merely pity for yourself?'
'Regret.'
'What do you