Slammerkin - Emma Donoghue [49]
The street lamps gave off the familiar stink of oil. She breathed in deeply, though it made her eyes prickle. The city was a frozen puddle of mud, and Mary was an exile come home. She remembered its dangers but none of them could touch her tonight. Even the names of the streets thrilled her, because she was free to stride down any she pleased. Clement's Lane, Poultry Street, Cheapside ... The sounds of the midnight bells swelled across the city. She picked up speed as she came in sight of St. Pauls.
Around the towering dome the streets were black with revellers. Guisers went by in fox and rabbit heads; St. George was busy saving the Lady at two different street corners. A red-eyed young gentleman in cream brocade tossed coins high in the air, barking with laughter as the beggars scrabbled for them. On the steps of the Cathedral, a fat man was wrestling an old bear; they embraced like Cain and Abel.
Buying whisky and an oatcake to toast the New Year, Mary kept one eye out for Doll, who surely had to be on the town tonight. It would be very merry to surprise her. 'Evening, old muck-mate,' Mary would call out, as if she'd seen her only the other day. Was that Doll there, under the apple-laden kissing bough lashed to a lamppost? No, it was another girl, with an unmarked face, baring her breasts to the sharp night air, a man at each nipple.
Mary's legs were beginning to give way; she felt as brittle as an icicle. Deep in her stomach, the whisky fought the gin. Time to head for home.
Hurrying by the vast blank fortress of Newgate she spared a thought for the prisoners inside. Surely the sounds of pleasure taunted them; how they must have longed to be set free for one night. Mary tried to imagine what it would be like to sit and wait for your fate, whether the noose or the Americas. In the back of her mind she saw the great dark bulk of her father, squatting in the straw. What had Cob Saunders's last days been, before the gaol fever took him? What had he seen in that delirium?
There were times in her childhood when Mary had almost believed what her mother said about Cob Saunders: that he was a fool who'd thrown himself away like a bit of paper. But then all at once would come a memory of pale arms like the branches of an oak wrapped around her, and a thick black beard standing between Mary and all harm. She couldn't see his face; it was blurred like a coin worn flat from handling. But she knew he'd never have thrown his daughter out on the street, no matter what she'd done. And it occurred to her now that he must have been some kind of hero, her rebel father—to join a riot and wager all the years he had left in him, for the sake of eleven stolen days.
They'd never even given his body back, after the fever had left him cold. He was somewhere behind those high Newgate walls in the locked Burying Ground, his bones scattered in the general pit. When the authorities laid hold of you, Mary thought with bitterness, nothing was your own anymore, not even your body. She would have liked it if there'd been a grave. She could have gone there tonight, and knelt for a moment on the iron earth, as if to say she'd come home.
She let the broad frosted river of humanity that was the Strand take her all the way, up Aldwych and Drury Lane. From a basement door she heard the sharp chatter of the dice, the roars of winners and losers. Two mollies slipped by in taffeta skirts, arm in arm; their stubble showed through the powder. Men of their kind weren't safe on the streets, but who could stay