Slammerkin (49 page)

She would be kind to Hetta, he knew. She would sit in his dead wife's chair, using her workbag, mending his twice-darned stockings, pouring tea from his China kettle. (He had thought of smashing it, that first night, just for something to break, but Jane wouldn't
have approved.) This second marriage would feel like a mummery and a mockery at first, but perhaps he'd get used to it. He and Rhona Davies might have half a lifetime ahead of them; twenty years of chances to produce a son, or several children, even; children with nothing of Jane Jones about them.

He cringed at the thought.

There was nothing wrong with Rhona Davies. She was strong and sturdy, though with rather more sharpness of wit than he liked in a woman. Just a little like Mary Saunders, he thought, and felt hatred rise up to swamp him.

He stared at the fresh white scaffold, and the coil of rope on the platform. He must watch carefully and commit the coming scene to his mind's eye: the witch squatting in her cart, the noose of justice hoisting her into the air. His memory was not what it used to be; already the details of his life with Jane were beginning to fray around the edges. Already he couldn't see his wife's face as it had been, only the clammy mask she left behind her, edged with brown blood. Surely the coming scene was not one he'd ever lose, though? Every bone in his body cried out for the girl's death. Surely when Mary Saunders's body was burnt to ash, some trapped nerve in him would be relieved, some hole in the world sealed up?

Just about every prisoner in Monmouth Gaol offered Mary a swig from his bottle; it was a tradition. She was soused by the time she climbed onto the cart outside the gaol. She felt no fear.

She held her hands out with a child's obedience, and the hangman tied her wrists in front of her. His mask hid all his features but a shock of red hair and a weak chin; she didn't know him. He was no Thomas Turlis, Master of Tyburn, that much was clear. This fellow was probably a farmer; maybe the only things he had killed before were pigs and foxes. She hoped he knew how to hang a girl.

The spires and roofs of Monmouth caught the first rays of light and bent them. For a moment, as she lurched along, the wheel of
the year seemed to have rolled back and Mary was a stranger, newly come to town in John Niblett's wagon. A pretty enough place, she thought idly. She could be happy here...

She wasn't too drunk to know where the cart was taking her, this fine spring morning, but she was just drunk enough to convince herself she didn't care. Unaccustomed to motion, she thought she might be sick over the side of the cart. But the Queen of Scots would never have done that on her way to execution, Mary told herself, making her mistress's little cluck of disapproval.

It wasn't far at all: Hereford Road, Monk Street, Whitecross Street, Stepney Street. When they turned the last corner, the cart lurched into a hole, and a splinter pricked Mary's knee. She pulled away, and with her bound hands she managed to tuck her skirt around her, between her legs and the harsh wood. Only then did it strike her as peculiar to be cossetting a body that would be dead before noon.

The Market Square was choked with people. For a moment, Mary, staring over the edge of the wagon, wondered if today was some festival; had Easter come early this year? Then a tentative roar went up at the sight of the cart and she realised, with a peculiar thrill, that they were all there for her.

The good people of Monmouth needed to see her hang, even if it cost them a day's pay. Their faces were tense with anticipation. They looked at her as if they'd never seen her before. She recognised a handful of servants she knew to talk to, and quite a few of the patrons—Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins, and the two old Misses Roberts in their sedan chairs, even. And a lot of strangers, besides, who must have travelled here for the day. But it wasn't like a Tyburn crowd, full of whores and tourists so used to the sight that it barely made them laugh. Mary would have laid a bet that most of these folks in Monmouth Square had never seen anyone swing before.

When the driver got down, the crowd engulfed the cart. A small girl on her father's shoulders grinned up at the prisoner. Mary could smell orange peel and hot spice cakes and an open barrel of ale. Everyone was dressed in their best; hats were bright with ribbons. The mood wasn't one of revelry, though; most faces looked tense, unsatisfied.

There's something in you that'll never be satisfied till you swing, Mary.

Her mother's voice, clear in her head. Could Susan Digot have got word of the death of her old friend Jane, by now? Would she find out the name of the girl who'd done the killing? It would take a lot to surprise her.

A shameful death like your father's.

It came to Mary now that her mother had been right, after all: Mary had been born for this. In sixteen years she'd shot along the shortest route she could find between life and death, as the crow flew.

None of this was real. It was a story, come to life in a crude woodcut.

'But what kind of a girl was she?' Gwyneth went up on the balls of her feet to see across the square.

Daffy looked away and shrugged a little. How could he speak of Mary Saunders in the past tense, when she was sitting on that cart not a hundred feet away, with those ink-blot eyes and the sharp profile he still saw in his nightmares, even after all these months? He was trying not to look at the scaffold behind her, the snakish hang of the rope. It had been a bad idea to come today.

There was his father, twenty feet away, scanning the crowd as if searching for pickpockets. His face was set in the lines of an old man, Daffy thought. He caught Cadwaladyr's eye without meaning to. He gave a slight nod. Nothing too deferential; no hint of apology.

But Cadwaladyr nodded back, and pushed his way through the crowd. 'Davyd.'

'Father.' The first words they'd exchanged in a year and a half.

'Gwyneth, how are you?'

'Very well, sir,' she said, blushing as she bobbed on the spot.

Then there seemed nothing more to say. Cadwaladyr looked down and brushed a leaf off one worn shoe with the toe of the other.

Daffy cleared his throat. 'Mrs. Jones would have been glad it was you that officiated at her funeral, I think.'

His father lifted one eyebrow. The white hairs were tangled like briars.

To fill the silence, Daffy added, 'She was a good woman.'

'Have all your books taught you no stronger words than that, boy?' Cadwaladyr's voice came out like a roar. 'Jane Jones was the best woman in this godforsaken country.'

And with that he was gone, absorbed into the crowd.

Gwyn gave Daffy a weak little smile of encouragement. Her hand slid through the crook of his elbow, like a worm through soft earth. 'I am glad you left that house on Inch Lane, though, Daff. No good could have come of staying.'

'I don't know,' he said, his head beginning to pound. 'I feel sorry for the master.'

'It's a cursed building,' she told him, holding on tighter. 'You're better off at the Misses Roberts's.' She kept her eyes on the cart where the prisoner sat as if daydreaming.

Daffy shut his eyes and concentrated on the warmth of Gwyn's arm in his. This was all he needed. If she did marry him in the end—as she'd promised on the Scriptures, this time—then he'd never hold the long hiatus against her. To marry a good woman he loved was more than a fool like him deserved; more than his father had ever had. And if the image of the Londoner did lurk in his dreams, well, many a man had to live with a ghost or two.

He looked over at the girl on the cart again; he couldn't help it. She had the whitest face in the Square. Suddenly he was rocked by pity, deep down in his bowels. Sixteen years old was all she was. Last summer Mary Saunders had been rolling round on May blossoms with him, and today she was facing her death, with a faintly haughty expression.

It came to Daffy then, how easily the worst in oneself could rise
up and strike a blow. How even the most enlightened man had little power over his own darkness.

Abi was lost in the streets of London. The map she carried was meaningless. The houses were crowded together like toes in a boot.

She spared a thought for Mary Saunders.
Are you dead yet, poor bitch?
She needed a guide, someone like Mary who knew how this swirling city worked. Abi couldn't believe the filth, the colour-soaked fury of it all, the smells spilling from coffee-houses and fish-shops. She looked up and saw a golden bird spinning in the wind. 'Where's this?' she asked a passing boy.

He spat black on the cobbles. 'St. Giles,' he said, 'where else?'

The crowd seemed to part for a second and there was a black man, but not like any Abi had ever known. His face had the sheen that came from eating fresh butter, and above it sat a wig as big and glossy as a cloud. His white velvet jacket stretched across his shoulders, and his smooth stockinged calves were massive. He was an emperor among men. It seemed anything was possible in this topsy-turvy city.

Abi smiled straight at him; she couldn't help herself. But his eyes slid past her, as if she were no more than a stone in the road. She remembered that she was not young and not handsome. As the black man walked on by, she saw what made his coat flare over his hip: stuck through his belt, a knife big enough to chop off her head.

Stepping sideways, she almost tripped into the gutter. She staggered, but regained her balance. Strangers barely turned their heads. She wondered whether her skin had turned white overnight, or become quite invisible. This place would do, she thought with a sudden surge of hope; no one would ever find her here.

All at once the bells of St. Giles began to ring, deafening her. The sound ricocheted off the buildings; Abi thought it would never stop till the end of the world.

***

So many eyes on Mary Saunders in the Market Square, greedy for details. Fame at last! So this was the moment she had so often dreamed of, when a crowd gathered to watch her ride past. Mary stared down at her foul and ragged skirt, which was hardly what she used to imagine she'd be wearing. For bracelets, two narrow rusty chains, locking her wrists together. For a necklace, the noose the hangman had just dropped over her head. The rough rope rested against her collarbone. So ordinary, a simple O, an idly open mouth to swallow her up. The long tail of hemp pooled in the cart at her feet.

Dai Carpenter was still working on the scaffold, hammering in the last nails. Beside him stood the red-haired hangman, scratching behind his mask. In her drunken haze, Mary felt a wash of pity for the man. When she'd done her own killing, the cleaver had moved in her hand so quickly that she'd hardly had time to feel its weight. But this man had to carry his tools with him; his work was marked by an awful decorum. The night before a killing, he knew exactly what would be demanded of him the next day—and without any rage or madness to help him, either. And the night after, he had to pull off his mask, scrub his hands, and sleep.

Her thoughts moved turgidly. What would the hangman do with her afterwards, she wondered. All bodies were worth something, in the end. In London they were sent to Surgeon's Hall for dissection, she remembered, as a further punishment. Would a young surgeon of Monmouth pay half a crown for Mary's body, to learn his trade on? Would he lay her on his slab tonight, this last hasty cully of hers? And what would he find inside? Would there be some mark, a smear, a little knot of evil?

But no, the drink was making her forgetful: they were going to burn her afterwards. If she craned her neck sideways, she could just see the enormous pile of wood. Now her heart began to hammer. Her body was going to make a bigger glow than Midsummer Night on Kymin Hill where the family from Inch Lane had had their last dance. The women to whom Mary had served tea for a year would warm their bony fingers at her bonfire tonight. They'd say good
riddance to her, and whisper darkly about poor Mrs. Jones:
It could have happened to any of us!

Mary looked away from the stack of splintered wood. Her eye fell on Daffy Cadwaladyr. He was too far away for her to tell if he was looking at her. But then, why else was he here if not to watch her be punished? It occurred to her then that if she'd married him, she might have had someone to mourn for her. She might have had an existence worth mourning. After all, how else was the value of a life to be measured but in the tears shed at its close? Daffy had been her best chance, she saw now, and she'd thrown him away like a scrap of paper.

And then she saw his head bend towards the woman beside him, and she recognised the stray blonde curl: his beloved Gwyneth. For some people, she thought, trials were only temporary; they sailed towards happiness through the roughest weather.

Bile filled Mary's mouth. Her drunkenness was wearing off. She jabbed her nail into the soft crook of her elbow, as a test; the pain came through sharp and clear. It occurred to her that this was no story, but the last hour of her real life. And now she started to shake.

It would have been better, she thought frantically, if the neighbours had struck her down at once, as soon as they'd caught her. Cadwaladyr's thick hands had certainly closed round her neck, when he'd caught up with her that night on the bridge, and it had taken five men to pull him off. Yes, it would have been better if Cadwaladyr had dragged her back to Inch Lane and pushed her face into a basin of Mrs. Jones's cooling blood and drowned her there and then on the kitchen floor. Then frenzy would have been paid with frenzy, instead of this cold retribution. It made her nauseous, to think of all the stately preparations for this event. Why, she wondered, had the authorities fed and housed her all winter, if they longed to see her thrash in the air today? Why did the men of law pretend to be so much loftier than other murderers?

Killing was killing, when you came down to it. Punishment had no rhyme nor reason; it fell like hail.

Mary glanced again at the pile of wood in the corner of the
square. She gripped one twitching wrist in the other hand and told herself not to waste time being afraid. She wouldn't be alive to feel the scorch of her feet, would she? It was the people of Monmouth who'd have to recognise that smell. It was men like Daffy Cadwaladyr who'd have to remember it always.