Slammerkin - Emma Donoghue [80]
A flick of blackness drew her eyes upwards. Crows were gathering in a skinny beech, bouncing in the branches, shifting their heads from side to side as they cawed, as if looking for trouble. Mary craned up and tried to count them.
Five for riches,
Six for a thief.
Her neck hurt as she let her head drop back and her mouth open. There was another, in the next treetop. And another.
Seven for a journey,
Eight for grief.
Others wheeled overhead. Her eyes were watering. The birds' croaks were fusing into one great excitement. She blinked snow off her lashes. Scores, hundreds of crows, all homing to this skeletal tree; shaking away from it in a wide arc, then doubling back as if constrained to return. Some waited on the very ends of the branches as if preparing to migrate, but she knew that couldn't be so. It wasn't as if they had anywhere else to go.
Now she was paying attention, Mary realised that the air had been full of the crows' rapid grumble all morning. Such a sore cawing; a shallow abrasion of the throat that seemed to expect no acknowledgement, no answer, certainly no consolation. She wondered what was grieving them. The scarcity of worms? The long wait for spring? The fact that they hadn't been born peacocks? The dark beaks repeated the birds' resentment as if they had to, as if they'd forgotten why they ever began but now knew no other sound to make. The heavy sky shook with their complaint.
Across the river the men were going up and down the white fields with barrows; a dark stench drifted through town. 'What are they doing in the fields?' Mary asked Daffy when she squeezed past him in the little yard.
'Dunging,' he said between blows. The log split apart under his axe.
She repeated the word, derisory.
His breath came out in a cloud. 'They spread dung out to be ready for the plough, see. To fertilise and fructify the soil.'
Him and his words! Mary pursed up her lips. 'What'll they sow, then?'
'Coltsfoot,' he said, leaning on his axe for a second. 'Hogweed. Maybe crow garlic.'
Mary laughed out loud. 'Don't think to fool me with your nonsensical names.'
'As if a city girl would know one leaf from another!' he said.
She believed him now, but she wouldn't say so. She dawdled on the icy doorstep. As the man lifted the axe high in the air, his shoulders were thick as a terrier's. 'That's what you all call me, the Londoner, isn't it?'
Daffy's axe paused; he glanced up.
'I've heard you in the Stays Room, with the master, and with Abi too.'
He split a log cleanly. 'Here's another little quaint country saying you may not know: Those who listen at doors won't hear any good of themselves.'
'Do you bear me a grudge, then?' Her voice was merry.
His blade stuck; he had to batter the log against the stump before the axe cut through. He spoke gruffly. 'All I say, and I'll say it to your face, is you got a place that should have gone to another.'
So that was it. This wretched job! At once Mary went on the attack, as Doll had always taught her. 'This other you mention,' she began sweetly, 'I don't suppose she's that little brownish girl I've seen you dawdling with in the market?'
Daffy straightened up. 'My cousin Gwyneth,' he said through narrowed teeth, 'is the finest woman who's ever walked the earth.'
He'd bared his throat to her blade; he knew it and she knew it. 'I do beg your pardon,' said Mary softly. 'I must have been confusing your fine cousin with some ragabones I saw begging for heads and tails round the back of the fish stall.'
She wouldn't have been surprised if he'd hit her, now, but his hands stayed wrapped around the shaft of the axe, and his eyes rested on the log-pile. The man's silence impressed