Slammerkin - Emma Donoghue [57]
She knew this much in her bones, she couldn't outrun Caesar in London. To stay out of range of his whetted blade for half a day already must have used up what was left of her luck. If she wasn't past the city gates by nightfall, she was sure, she'd be found in some corner of the Rookery, carved up like a Sunday joint, with her limp lips in Caesar's pocket for a souvenir. If she stayed to bury Doll, there'd be two of them stretched together in the Poor Hole. Forgive me? she asked in her head, but there was no reply. She simply had to get out of this city. Escape from who she'd been and who she might have become, from the future awaiting her at the end of an icy alley.
Till a few hours ago, the last place it would ever have occurred to her to go was the city her mother came from. What Mary had told the Matron at the Magdalen last night about a job waiting for her in Monmouth had been a lie, plucked out of the air. She only meant to spin a touching story of the welcome always kept warm for her in the household of her mother's best friend. The Jones woman could be dead and buried for all Mary knew, or she might have forgotten the very name of Susan Saunders. Who'd take in the daughter of a friend she hadn't seen in twenty years? What kind of fool would open her house to a stranger?
But it was this simple, when it came down to it: Mary's old life had slipped through her fingers. She couldn't think of anywhere else to go but Monmouth, nor anyone else in the world who might take her in but a woman she'd never laid eyes on.
All aboard,' bawled John Niblett to the passers-by. All aboard for Hounslow, Beaconsfield, Burford, Northleach, Oxford, Cheltenham, Gloucester, Monmouth.'
Along the Strand the coach crawled in the fading light of the afternoon, more slowly than the strollers and their cullies. Traffic had clogged where a gang of apprentices were playing football, their stockings muddy to the knees.
Niblett had said the journey would take nine days. Mary hoped that this was another of his jokes. He wouldn't laugh so loud if he knew how little she had in the rolled-up stocking she used as a purse; a bare fifteen shillings, after buying the blue holland gown. She had no idea how her money was going to stretch to food and lodging on the road, as well as Niblett's fare at eightpence a stage—but she couldn't afford to worry about that now. Her numb fingertips felt for her bag under her skirts. Niblett had offered to put it up behind, but Mary wouldn't hear of it. She'd weighted it with two cobblestones to make herself seem like a woman of substance, but she feared he might hear the stones lurching about beneath her folded dresses.
The wagon jerked feebly. Opposite Mary sat a merchant, his belly bulging out of the front of his fur-edged coat; he planted his knees on either side of hers and grinned. A pair of farmers, husband and wife, were folded together like nutcrackers, beside a runny-nosed student and three underfed journeymen. Riding up top with Niblett, saving his pennies and freezing his arse off, was a fellow with the lean chalky look of a schoolmaster.
As the coach turned up Pall Mall, a sedan chair cut across its path, borne by two footmen sweating into their liveries. Shoppers lingered on the street as if they'd forgotten what they needed, and blinked and stepped aside only when Niblett cracked his whip. And there, outside a milliner's, was the carriage of Mary's dreams: a butterfly in green and gold, resting on gigantic wheels. She pressed her face against the window to catch a glimpse of the rouged, wide-skirted creature descending from the step. She stayed in that position, though it made her neck ache.
Through the thick muddy glass she caught fragments of arches, grassy squares, pale columns, and marble window-sills. The merchant cleared his throat and pointed out new houses off Piccadilly. 'They say the Duke of Devonshire's is the nonpareil. He leaned forward to point out Berkeley Square, and his other hand hovered just beside her knee, brushing