Slammerkin - Emma Donoghue [58]
As they creaked past Hyde Park, Mary glimpsed frozen water, and a pair of lady riders in tricornes trotting along its rim. When they passed the Tyburn Tree she made sure to observe it blankly, as if she didn't know what it was; as if she'd never bawled and cheered, never bought an inch of hangman's rope for the price of half a fuck.
'Madam?'
The merchant was speaking to her. Mary tried to remember if she'd ever been called that before in her life: Madam. He was leaning forward again with a sheepish smile, offering a small green bottle. Mary flinched. Had she let the mask slip? Had he guessed what she was?
'A sup of port, to ward off the chill?' he said.
She shook her head before the words were out of his mouth. And then she sat there with her eyes shut, taunted by the warm whiff of wine on his breath. She could have drained the bottle in one go.
Even when the road was clear in front of them, the wagon moved at the pace of an old man; this was clearly the best these spavined animals could do. She'd be quicker walking all the way, Mary thought grimly. But when she opened her eyes next, London was beginning to ebb away. She'd always had the impression that the city went on more or less forever, but already there was nothing left but a quilt of muddy gardens. The villages they passed were puny: Paddington, Kilburn, Cricklewood. Mary shut her ears to the merchant's chatter about population and trade, and kept her eyes on the world outside the brownish windows.
One day she would come back. She was sure of that much. One day when she'd nothing to fear from Caesar or hunger or the freezing night air. She'd ride into London again, not in this filthy cart but in her own gilt coach behind a pair of black mares to match her hair, with her own liveried men running alongside with torches, and trunks full of finery lashed on top. She'd live in a brand new pale-faced house in Golden Square; she'd look down from a window so high that people in the street would have to strain their necks to catch a glimpse of her.
'My dear Lady Mary,' he'd call her. A Jewish merchant, maybe, like the one in Harlot's Progress prints; they were said to make the most civil keepers. (The first time Mary'd had a Jew-man, she'd laughed out loud in surprise to see his yard all bare-headed.) Or she might have a husband by the time she got back to London; you never knew. She tried to imagine herself on the arm of a husband. Somehow she couldn't see it. But one thing was sure: she'd never have to empty her own pot.
Idle fantasies kept Mary going for the first few days, as the roads began to crumble and the wagon shook its passengers as if they were falling into fits. As the smell of bodies filled up the air, Mary shut off all her senses and breathed through her mouth. She lived in a dream of classical colonnades. Beyond the window the mud stretched away in silence, streaked with ice. On the third afternoon they passed a gibbet on a hilltop. Mary peered through the glass at the tarred body swinging in its iron cage, and tried to work out which bit had been its face.
Every morning she expected some hint of thaw; the passengers talked of little else but when the weather would break. Never in her life had Mary known such cold. Always before she'd been within reach of a source of heat: a tavern hearth, a cup of hot negus, a handful of roast chestnuts even. But this wagon inched across the country as naked and unprotected as a cow. Mary couldn't walk around or stamp her feet; she could only sit still. Her legs went numb from the toes up, till she had the impression they'd disappeared, and if she lifted up her skirts there'd be nothing there.
A peculiar memory nagged at her. When Mary was a child, in the worst of winter, her mother used to heat a stone in the embers, wrap it in a rag, and give it to her to take to bed. Once the child put it between her thighs, and after