Slammerkin - Emma Donoghue [76]
She knew how much, above all, she had to thank her Maker for. She went to church twice a week, but most of all she read His Holy Word, and puzzled over it, and tried to live it, and every night she stayed on her knees by the bed until they were bruised. But when the moonlight came in the shutters, on nights like this one, Nance Ash couldn't help thinking of how she'd had her single chance and lost it as easy as a leaf might be blown from a tree, simply because she'd slept sound one night seventeen years ago this January, dreaming of God alone knew what. She'd never slept right though a night since. She just wished, now, she could remember what she'd been dreaming of, all those years ago: what was it that had been so sweet she hadn't wanted to wake?
It was still pitch black out; Mary decided it couldn't be later than half past five. The second day of her new life.
'Mary!'
There it was again, from somewhere downstairs. Mrs. Jones: her voice had that strange lilt to it—like Susan Digot's, it occurred to Mary now. But this wasn't Mary's mother or Mary's house. This was a mistress waking a hired maid.
All at once Mary knew she'd wandered out of her own story into another, and was lost. She pressed her face into the pillow and stopped breathing. Service. The word sounded so harmless, so everyday. Folk went into service all the time. I've found a very proper place, they said; I mustn't lose my place. But whatever place this was, it wasn't Mary's.
She conjured up Caesar's impassive plum-coloured mouth to scare herself. She couldn't show her face back in London yet, she knew. Monmouth's a hidey-hole, that's all, said Doll in her head. Like that stinking ditch we crouched in when the bread riot ran amok, remember? Anything can be borne for a while.
'Mary Saunders!'
Nan Pullen once said a strange thing about her mistress, the same woman who would one day hand Nan over to the magistrate. Masters and mistresses were only cullies by another name, according to Nan. You pretended to be satisfied, or grateful, even. You served them, but they never knew you. You robbed them of whatever you could, because whatever they paid, it was never enough for what they asked.
Mary hauled herself off the pillow and sat up. Abi was lying beside her like a figure on a tomb, arms folded. Mary almost jumped. She had thought the maid-of-all-work would have been up hours ago, starting the fires and boiling water. 'Good morning,' she said warily.
Abi said nothing, only stared up at the ceiling.
'Aren't you needed, below?'
'I sick.'
Mary gave her a closer look. No flush or sweating, not a shiver. 'What ails you, in particular?' she asked pointedly.
'I sick,' repeated Abi, and turned her face to the window.
As Mary hurried down the stairs past the Joneses' bedchamber, the mistress called her in. 'Do you need any help dressing, madam?' asked Mary.
'Oh no,' said Mrs. Jones, flustered, tugging the cage of her hoop up around her narrow waist, 'I only wished to ask if you slept well.'
'Well enough, madam. So Abi's been taken sick, it seems,' said Mary neutrally.
'Ah, yes, so she told me when I looked in, first thing this morning.' Mrs. Jones worried at a knot in her hoop strings. 'She's not as strong as she looks, you see.'
Meaning—Mary took her to understand—that Abi was a shamming malingerer, but the mistress didn't want a fight today.
'Perhaps you could help me serve breakfast?'
'Of course,' she told Mrs. Jones, taking the tapes of the slim hoop and pulling them into a neat bow in the small of her mistress's back.
'Why, thank you, Mary.'
The master took no more notice of Mary than