Folly (18 page)

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task, so wasted half an hour in the nursery. She hustled down after, fearing that Mary would be packed and gone before she could get a last word in. Still no sign of Mrs. Wiggins, nor Bates, nor even that creeping little monster Nut. So what had happened to Mary? Eliza would have gone looking but for a noise from the cellar stairwell. Whoever ...? Ah, it was
them
. Eliza hovered next to the crack in the door.

"Mary," Bates was saying. "You're in terrible trouble."

"Ha," said the trollop. "That's not news to me!"

Eliza hovered next to the crack in the door, pressing a palm over her heart so's its thumping couldn't be heard.

"I can help, you daft girl! Would you just listen?"

She
was
daft! About time he noticed!

"Help? By offing me down the kitchen stairs?"

"By marrying you," he said.

Eliza would have fallen right over, but her feet were canny enough to get her across the floor and out to the street.

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MARY 1878 Telling About Disaster

Now it seemed that the hands on the clock were somehow spinning faster and noisier than usual. Nut shot through the door with Cook on his tail, stopping short when they spied me and Bates, though thankfully we had finished our embrace, as my husband-to-be had quite a scent up close. Mrs. Wiggins wore such a scowl you'd think I'd killed the best rooster.

"Here you are," she said. "We've been looking."

"Here I am," I said, eyes down, trying for respectful.

"I didn't think you'd last a week when you came here, Mary. You won me over with hard work and that smile of yours. And now you've let me down, getting yourself in trouble like this. I'm downright disappointed, but you're to gather up your belongings and be off."

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"You needn't go rushing down that road after all, Mrs. Wiggins," said Bates. "We're getting married, me and Mary, so there'll be no call to send her away."

I were relieved that Eliza were not there to hear him declare our intentions. Still, what happened instead mayhap were worse. Mrs. Wiggins clutched at her bosom as if struck by a bullet. She wheezed into a chair and went trembly. But it were Nut, gasping and throwing hisself at me, that shook me awake.

"No! Miss!" His face puckered up like a colicky baby. "You can't do that! Not Bates!" Those little arms enwrapped my waist with the fiercest grip.

"Hey!" Bates jumped on the boy, wrenching him off me by the scruff of the neck and throwing him onto the floor. Cook were huffing, I were shrieking, and Nut were crying most pitiful. Bates gave Nut a kick, and that were it. I hauled back my foot and kicked Bates as hard as I could.

"What the
hell
are you doing, girl?"

"I wouldn't marry you now if you paid me in gold," I said.

"Enough!" shouted Mrs. Wiggins. "We do not live in Bedlam! Mr. Bates, kindly remove yourself to the yard. Mary Finn, pack your bag. And, Nut ... Lord love me, Nut?"

Bates stamped out while I knelt down next to Nut, him lying in a bundle by the stove. "You hurt anywhere, Nut?"

He looked up with bruised eyes and his nose a-dribbling. "No, miss." He pulled me low so's he could whisper. "Don't you worry about me, miss. I'm a tough one, right?"

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"Yes, Nut, that's certain."

"But you can't marry Bates, miss. He's not good. Go, miss. Please, just go!"

I turned on my toes and went upstairs, skin prickling, heart racing, baby jumping. It were only two minutes later that Eliza flung herself in, glowering something awful.

I'd have liked to tell Eliza that I were not going to marry her beau after all, but that would have meant telling her I'd been close to doing it. The satisfaction didn't seem worth the trouble. She were looking everywhere but in my face, her eyes most curious about my belly. She stood in the doorway with her arms strapped across her chest like guns.

I gathered my belongings into my shawl, meager pile that it were. Thinking that word,
belongings
, made my throat ache. "Belonging" were far from suitable.

"Mrs. Wiggins said to watch you don't steal anything."

"You know I won't."

"I don't know."

"We've been sleeping bum to bum for how many months?" I said. "Do you really think I'd take the soap? Or the blanket? I've
been
your blanket some nights, Eliza."

"You're a liar and a slut so why not a thief too?"

"You know I'm not."

"I don't know."

"If ... if it were you ... in trouble," I started.

"It's not," she said, but only, we both knew, by the merest chance.

"It weren't Bates," I said. I tied a knot with the corners

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of the shawl. She were staring at me peculiar, like she expected more.

"May I pass, please?"

She looked down at her chapped hands.

"Eliza?"

Her mind were rumbling to find a clever retort, to scratch me with words so's I'd leave bleeding.

"If you want to see the last of me," I said, "you will have to let me go through the door."

She stepped aside.

Mrs. Wiggins waited in the kitchen, no Bates to be seen. Her mouth were a ribbon of disappointment.

"You're off?"

"Yes, Mrs. Wiggins."

"Show me."

I unknotted the corners of my shawl and let her look. No soap. No currants. No ink. No nothing.

"Mrs. Wiggins? I ... I ... have nowhere to go. I don't know what ... I ..."

"You have called down these troubles upon your own head, Mary. The rules were simple. I ... I'm sorry ... I did think you were a good girl."

"But, Mrs. Wiggins, I am! It were ... I loved him! And he loved me."

She shook her head, sad as can be. "Do you think that matters to anyone, Mary? Love is not for the likes of us, belowstairs."

Nut were waiting on the step, in particular to be the

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last face I saw at Neville Street. He were pale and tearful, cheeks streaked and shoulders shuddering. He clasped me about the middle and would have stayed there a week except that Mrs. Wiggins came out on the step and dragged him inside. So that were that. I were crumbly all through, and couldn't think later how I'd done it, but I walked away down Neville Street with as straight a back as I could manage. At the corner I turned, and saw Eliza at the attic window. I raised my hand, one last wave, but she ducked her head and pulled the shutter to.

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ELIZA 1878 Truth or Lie?

There were too many pieces for Eliza to have a hold on all of them.

Was Bates the
father
of this calamity? Or not? And if not, then why the
devil
was he making an offer of marriage to someone he'd called a
mere child
? Hadn't Eliza written out the words
Mrs. Harry Bates
at least one hundred times? Shouldn't all that frolicking lead somewhere substantial? Didn't she deserve to feel a little pique under the circumstances?

And if--by some chance--she'd got things wrong, how could Eliza ever confess that she had gone to see Mr. Tucker? That she'd told him ... That if it weren't for her ... That Mary's plight was all on account of a terrible mistake?

Not that Mary could be trusted, with those cunning

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green eyes and rosy lips. She was likely still fibbing every time she breathed. Better to remember that. Why worry where a liar might go from here? Better to chew over how to rekindle vigor in Bates. If he were willing to be married, he only needed guidance as to the choice of wife. If being a hero was so almighty important, Eliza could--she counted back the weeks on her fingers--Eliza could easily develop a few of the same symptoms. All it took was a bit of puking ...

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MARY 1878 What Happened Next

May you never know the despair that colored those first hours after I took my leave from the Allyn house.

Like a thread in a laundry tub, I were adrift and tumbled amongst the blurring crowd. Not having a place to walk toward, I walked all anyhow, and meanwhile commenced my pleading straight to God.
Show me
, I begged.
I've not been demanding of your favor. You've got my mam, after all! Should you not be of some use in her place?
And what answer did I get? The closing in of fog all around, as if to recall the night of my first embrace with Caden, to point the finger back at me.
Thou hast mis-stepped!
God's voice in my head were a little too close to that Margaret Huckle's. Were it meant to invite me home?

Thomas and Davy would be pleased as a birthday to

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see me. Wouldn't they? Only what if their stepmother had slipped her poison into their cups? What if little Nan sniffed at me, suspicious? But they'd be won over soon enough, I trusted that. It were our dad who'd sit between his wife and me, his heart forever pulled two ways at once. It niggled in me that I might not be the one to win such a contest, what with my rounded body and the steady drizzle of her opinion on his head.

And however could I hold up my chin on the threshold of that cottage, knowing there were no Small John waiting inside?

In my belly came a nudge as if a wee chick were discovering its beak. I stepped into the lee of a stall, mopping the fog drips from my face. If only Caden would appear right then and put his hands on me and warm my hips and scorch my face with kissing. But what use was such a fancy? Only to loose the tears. Should I intend to appear forlorn and sorrowful, to flaunt my plight, in hope of a tossed penny or the crust of a pie? Were it my destiny to finish up in the workhouse?

The workhouse sent my thinking skipping back to Nut's wee face, both eyes purpled now, thanks to Bates being rough. And thanks to Bates being rough on Nut, I were here a-sopping instead of making ready to be his bride. There weren't an hour went by I didn't reconsider those few stormy moments that skittered me out here.

Wed to Bates, I'd have held my position on Neville Street; it'd soon be forgot that you weren't his ... Bates

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could have writ my father, we'd have had news that mended all tears, we might have gone to visit someday ... Had I gone quite mad to depart from such a possibility as that?

But one quick think on Nut and I were sure that madness never clouded my reasoning. If Bates could kick one motherless boy, what might he do in a fit of anger to my own fatherless child? And if I closed my eyes and thought about him ... kissing me, about his hands untying my apron, slipping under my skirt ... it near about made me queasy.

It were Nut who saved me. Us really, me
and
you.
"Go, miss, just go!"
he'd cried. He were the one with love so swelling up his heart that he could send me off, only knowing the outcome must be better than what I nearly settled for. Well, Lordy, didn't he teach me something that day?

And all this while, it were fogging and then dripping and finally raining mournful hard.
Damn you, Caden Tucker. Damn you to Hell till your blue eyes burn!

It were feeling shame from the cursing that brought to mind St. Pancras Church, only a few streets away. It were too grand, of a regular day, for a mite like me to enter so bold. But there I went and there I huddled through that night and another, in the darkest pew, and there my dress and shawl did finally dry, as if by the quiet winking of candle light.

What happened next were the part in the story where

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the princess is tied up in the dungeon with bats swooping and the executioner's footstep on the stairs ... and all the listeners draw in their breaths together, knowing the end is hovering. But stories have a way of tricking you. Perhaps it's not the sinister stranger in a dark hood at all....

In my case, it weren't the dashing prince, either, but more of a wrinkly old angel. A carriage pulled to a stop with a sloppy spray of water sogging my skirt, two days' drying for naught. The driver paid no mind to me but got down to open the door. It were an aged lady inside and she looked at the muck beneath the wheels and stretched a hand out to touch the drizzle. The driver were not her own, I could see that. He were hired, and bored, and not so attentive as he should be to a passenger who looked like a ghost already. Her hair gleamed like gaslight through gauze and her glove on the door were the palest lilac.

"Mr. Richards?"

But Mr. Richards might have been brother to Harry Bates. He were busy eyeing two young ladies struggling with their umbrella in such a way that their bosoms bounced. The old lady had one foot on the step, expecting the driver to be there. I come forward, damp as I were, with an arm out to assist her. There were a second when she and I shared a smile, knowing it were not my place but she being grateful that someone were watching. It were only a second because Mr. Richards chose to do his job just then and trod on my foot as he turned, sending