The Dust of 100 Dogs - A. S. King [71]
Emer thought about this for a few seconds and nodded her head. Hungry or not, she wasn’t ashamed of murder anymore.
“Can you not speak?”
“She has little English,” the Frenchman offered.
“Are you an ignorant, then?”
Emer stretched her shoulders and made a clinking sound with the cuffs.
The governor turned to the Frenchman, laughing. “Some good she’ll do you as a wife, man! How will she know what you want for your dinner?”
Emer eyed two sweet pastries on the governor’s desk. “Do you want these?” he asked her.
“When is my trial?” she asked.
The governor looked over to the Frenchman, raised his eyebrows, and shrugged.
“Two weeks,” the Frenchman said.
“Two weeks,” the governor said.
“Can I go back to my cell now?”
“I don’t see why not,” the governor answered, looking to the Frenchman for clues. “Would you like to take her back?”
He grabbed her roughly and walked her back to the prison below. When they reached the entrance, he left the cuffs on her and ran his hands over her body, stopping twice at her bosom and once at her bottom, where he squeezed her and left bruises. “God you stink, woman,” he said. “We’ll have to wash you before you board my ship.”
“I’ll be swinging in two weeks,” Emer said, “so you had best get your fill of me while I’m alive.”
“Oh, you silly girl!” He unlocked her cuffs and kicked her into the tiny cell and locked the door. “You still don’t understand anything, do you?”
Emer sat in her cell for two weeks. Once a day they brought a bucket, a handful of dirty animal fat, and a small cup of sour water. She spent her time thinking about everything—the Frenchman, the governor, the prison, but mostly about David and her crew. Had they taken her share and gone back to the cruising ground?
What had the Frenchman meant when he’d called her a “silly girl”? She’d seen how the governor relied on him. She’d seen how the Frenchman seemed to be the one in charge. Would he steal her now and finally make her his slave? She thought about killing him.
Four weeks later, she’d seen no one but the guard who brought her food and water. Two months later, she took to sobbing at night, wondering what would become of her life. Four months after that, she made a plan to bribe the judge and governor. Six months passed, then eight months.
Ten months since her capture, and Emer still sat cross-legged in the small cell. She’d lost so much weight and energy that she could hardly do more than sleep. Her legs suffered from a lack of circulation and one of her toes had begun to rot. The stink was unbearable—a sort of inner stench, which she could taste in the back of her throat—and she wondered if she’d live long enough to hang at all.
One day she heard more than a single set of footsteps approaching her cell at feeding time, and two voices mumbling to each other. The Frenchman took one look at Emer, gasped, and turned to the prison keeper.
“What the hell have you done to her? You damned idiot! She’s nearly dead!” He stormed back toward the stairway and up the steps. Emer could hear him cursing and yelling the whole way, saying things like, “She’s no good to me now! How would you like it if I killed your woman?”
She sat very still and put her hands to her face. Bones jutted from every angle and her eyes blinked uncontrollably. Did she really look as bad as she felt? As bad as she smelled?
When the Frenchman returned, he carried two blankets. He unlocked the cell and helped Emer crawl out. Her limp leg dragged behind and embarrassed her, but he didn’t seem to notice. She felt nothing in one foot below the ankle, and her muscles were so weak she couldn’t move from exhaustion. The Frenchman wrapped the blankets around her and picked her up like a small child. Only then could Emer feel how weightless she’d grown. In the light of the stairway could she see her legs—skinnier than any in Connacht, not to mention a lot more discolored. Emer had gone green and yellow—not