Slammerkin - Emma Donoghue [54]
Mary let out a contemptuous puff of air. 'And what good would it do you, in this part of town? D'you think you'll get Bow Street Runners racing into the Rookery?'
'I've a fellow in my pay that'll put manners on you,' said Mrs. Farrel, her voice rising to a whine.
Mary put her face very close to the other woman's. 'Get out of my way, old bitch.'
For a moment she thought she'd won. Mrs. Farrel scuttled away—but only as far as the window. She stuck her head between the bars. 'Caesar?' she shrieked down, loud enough to be heard at the Dials.
Not him.
'Caesar!'
It couldn't be. There had to be other men with that name. The Caesar Mary knew of was his own master, wasn't he? Surely he wouldn't hire himself out as a hunting dog to Mrs. Farrel? Not even for the kind of wage that only the richest woman in St. Giles could pay?
'Come up this minute, man!' Mrs. Farrel bawled down.
But he'd worked for Mother Griffith once, hadn't he, the time he'd come after Doll with his long knife?
'There's a girl wants cutting, so she does,' Mrs. Farrel screamed with satisfaction.
Oh Christ Almighty. It was him.
Mary crossed the room and shoved Mrs. Farrel so hard her head cracked against the window-frame. The two of them stared at each other in shock. A trickle of blood zigzagged down the Irishwoman's wrinkles.
'I'll have him slice the lips off of you,' gasped Mrs. Farrel.
Mary seized her bag and bolted for the door.
'Caesar!' came the long wail behind her.
Mary got as far as the second floor before she heard the front door crash open. For a moment she paused on the balls of her feet. The bag of clothes hung like lead from her arm, and she felt her life like a thread stretched to breaking. She was turning to run back the way she'd come, when her eyes fell on Mercy Toft's door, and she remembered that the silly slut never locked it.
Mercy's room was empty. Mary shut the door with quiet, shaking hands and flattened herself against it. She stopped breathing.
On the other side of the thin wood, Caesar's feet hammered by. The African could run like mercury. Mary counted one, two, three, four, until she reckoned he was on the third floor. Then she ripped her shoes off and opened the door. The stairwell was empty. A trace of his sugary pomade hung on the air.
Ducking barefoot through nameless courts and yards and alleys of the Rookery, her bag clutched to her chest like a baby, Mary found she was still holding her breath. She turned sharp left, and headed for the Dials, hoping to lose herself in the throng. As she thudded down Monmouth Street, weaving between the garish clothes stalls, she was reminded of something her mother used to say: When I was a girl in Monmouth, there was none of this running about.
She turned again, doubling back along Mercer Street and up St. Giles's Passage. Before she reached the church she could hear its bells; their clamour rebounded between the tight-packed houses. There was no room to think, with her head full of bells and her ribs full of terror. A wind came up, and the golden bird spun on its spire. High on the chiselled gate, sinners with dirty stone faces crawled over each other to evade the gaze of God.
At noon Mary was sitting over a bowl of strong tea in the Cheshire Cheese. Her heart had stopped banging in her chest. She wasn't letting herself think about Caesar for a little while. In her head, Doll chuckled. You can't let the fact that someone wants you dead put you off your tea, lass. But Mary wasn't going to let herself think about Doll either.
In one of the spare shoes in her bag, rolled up to look worthless, was a single gold-clocked stocking; she'd lost the other one long ago at a gin party on Bow Street. She emptied the rolled-up stocking into her lap discreetly, now, and counted the money all over again. Two months of sewing hems, and this was all she'd got to show for it: one pound six shillings and a penny. So much for the fruits of honest toil. She raked the small coins in her lap like sand.
When a voice hailed her, she scooped the money back into her makeshift purse. (You