Slammerkin - Emma Donoghue [168]
Her mother's voice, clear in her head. Could Susan Digot have got word of the death of her old friend Jane, by now? Would she find out the name of the girl who'd done the killing? It would take a lot to surprise her.
A shameful death like your father's.
It came to Mary now that her mother had been right, after all: Mary had been born for this. In sixteen years she'd shot along the shortest route she could find between life and death, as the crow flew.
None of this was real. It was a story, come to life in a crude woodcut.
'But what kind of a girl was she?' Gwyneth went up on the balls of her feet to see across the square.
Daffy looked away and shrugged a little. How could he speak of Mary Saunders in the past tense, when she was sitting on that cart not a hundred feet away, with those ink-blot eyes and the sharp profile he still saw in his nightmares, even after all these months? He was trying not to look at the scaffold behind her, the snakish hang of the rope. It had been a bad idea to come today.
There was his father, twenty feet away, scanning the crowd as if searching for pickpockets. His face was set in the lines of an old man, Daffy thought. He caught Cadwaladyr's eye without meaning to. He gave a slight nod. Nothing too deferential; no hint of apology.
But Cadwaladyr nodded back, and pushed his way through the crowd. 'Davyd.'
'Father.' The first words they'd exchanged in a year and a half.
'Gwyneth, how are you?'
'Very well, sir,' she said, blushing as she bobbed on the spot.
Then there seemed nothing more to say. Cadwaladyr looked down and brushed a leaf off one worn shoe with the toe of the other.
Daffy cleared his throat. 'Mrs. Jones would have been glad it was you that officiated at her funeral, I think.'
His father lifted one eyebrow. The white hairs were tangled like briars.
To fill the silence, Daffy added, 'She was a good woman.'
'Have all your books taught you no stronger words than that, boy?' Cadwaladyr's voice came out like a roar. 'Jane Jones was the best woman in this godforsaken country.'
And with that he was gone, absorbed into the crowd.
Gwyn gave Daffy a weak little smile of encouragement. Her hand slid through the crook of his elbow, like a worm through soft earth. 'I am glad you left that house on Inch Lane, though, Daff. No good could have come of staying.'
'I don't know,' he said, his head beginning to pound. 'I feel sorry for the master.'
'It's a cursed building,' she told him, holding on tighter. 'You're better off at the Misses Roberts's.' She kept her eyes on the cart where the prisoner sat as if daydreaming.
Daffy shut his eyes and concentrated on the warmth of Gwyn's arm in his. This was all he needed. If she did marry him in the end—as she'd promised on the Scriptures, this time—then he'd never hold the long hiatus against her. To marry a good woman he loved was more than a fool like him deserved; more than his father had ever had. And if the image of the Londoner did lurk in his dreams, well, many a man had to live with a ghost or two.
He looked over at the girl on the cart again; he couldn't help it. She had the whitest face in the Square. Suddenly he was rocked by pity, deep down in his bowels. Sixteen years old was all she was. Last summer Mary Saunders had been rolling round on May blossoms with him, and today she was facing her death, with a faintly haughty expression.
It came to Daffy then, how easily the worst in oneself could rise up and strike a blow. How even the most enlightened man had little power over his own darkness.
Abi was lost in the streets of London. The map she carried was meaningless. The houses were crowded together like toes in a boot.
She spared a thought for Mary Saunders. Are you dead yet, poor bitch? She needed a guide, someone like Mary who knew how this swirling city worked. Abi couldn't believe the filth, the colour-soaked fury of it all, the smells spilling from coffee-houses and fish-shops. She looked up and saw a golden bird spinning in the wind. 'Where's this?' she asked a passing boy.
He spat black on the cobbles.