Slammerkin (16 page)

Mary shut her eyes for a moment and pictured the excessively splendid coffin she would buy, if she were a lady, and the milky horses that would pull Doll to her marble tomb. She knew this much: it was no use to run screaming for the parish men. Doll Higgins would never agree to lie on her back in the crowded Poor Hole. Mary would have to leave her here for a few more days, just until she'd earned enough to buy her friend a decent burial.

Her stomach was lurching with cold. Her lips moved but no sound came out:
Won't be long, dear heart.
It occurred to her to kiss the taut scarred drum of Doll's cheek, but she found she couldn't. The lightest touch might keep Mary there, rooted in this frozen alley. Instead, she stretched out her hand to the worn red ribbon in Doll's wig. Was it the same one, she wondered, the first one, the ribbon the child Mary had set her eyes and heart on at the Seven Dials, three long years ago?

After a moment of resistance, it released its bow and slid free. Its edges were stiff with frost. Mary stuffed it down her stays. It made her shudder.

In exchange she pulled off her blanket and laid it over the dead
woman. It covered the hump of her head, the bulge of her empty hand. Surely no one would disturb her before Mary could come back.

From the top of the alley, it looked like a sack, tossed on a pile of stones.

Mary ripped balls of frozen paper out of the garret window, letting in grey dawn and sharp air. There was no sign that anyone else had ever lived in this room. Not a scrap of clothing, not so much as a crust of bread. It was as if Doll had wiped away all marks of her presence before walking out into the night.

But there was that gap under the cracked floorboard where the two of them used to keep their money in a little tinder-box, when they had any. On her knees, Mary prised up the wood with her filthy nails. Relief, like Canary wine flooding her mouth: not the box but her clothes. Folded still, lying in layers and rolls between the rafters, starched with cold. She began wrenching them out. It was all here, Mary's whole stock of bodices, sleeves, and stomachers. There was her bag, crammed with linen, petticoats, and trinkets. Her snuff-brown mantee was as good as ever; that length of oyster grosgrain still flowed like cream. She touched them shyly, like old friends after a long absence.

There was that bit of mirror she'd got from the house that burned down in Carrier Street. She powdered her face till it looked back at her from the glass, as white as chalk; she needed the full mask today. She reddened her lips and two spots high on her cheeks. Little worms of black hair escaped from her cap. Only cullies had ever called Mary beautiful.
Come here, me beauty,
they mumbled. And why should she have believed them, since they were only spurring themselves on, convincing themselves that this girl was worth the shilling? Mary was handsomer than some, though, she knew that much. And she was only tired, today; she couldn't be
losing her looks yet, not at fifteen. She pulled on her crumpled felt slouch hat, breathed in to puff up her cleavage, and tried a dirty smile. But her dark eyes wouldn't join in.

Between the layers of damp cloth she found the little tinder-box. Not a brass farthing in it; Doll must have been down to the bone. Had the woman been starving, then, by the end, and would she still not pawn any of her friend's clothes? Mary felt her throat swell up as if she'd swallowed a stone. She should have known to trust her. And she should have seen past Doll's bluster about needing no one, her fine talk of liberty and
every girl for herself.
Mary should never have gone off and left her alone.

She replaced the box in the hole, though she couldn't have said why. The thud of boots on the stairs; only when the door crashed open did she turn. Mrs. Farrel's nose was even smaller than she remembered. The landlady shook her nest of keys like a rattle. As always, she was in full flow: '...and you can be telling your scar-faced crony that no one bilks Biddy Farrel and lives to boast of it!'

Mary gave her a cold stare, and then bent to scoop up her clothes.

Mrs. Farrel snatched a bit of lace from her hand. 'D'ye hear me, hussy? The cheek of ye, to come sneeviling in here in the night, removing property, with so much owing on it!'

'I owe you nothing.' Mary seized the lace.

It ran taut between them. 'Then the other hoor does, sure.'

Mary let go of the fabric. 'What's that to me?' she said after a second.

'Five days running she's after giving me the slip now, but I'll sniff her out, wherever she's hiding herself, so I will. You can tell her she pays up or I'll have the rest of her face cut off of her.'

A wave of nausea started in Mary's stomach. She had a feeling she was going to take this woman by the throat and press her thumbs in hard. 'Go look in the alley for your rent,' she could tell her then. But no, Mary wouldn't let anyone find Doll before she'd scraped together the price of her burial. She folded her arms tightly. 'What's the reckoning?'

A flicker of hesitation in the purple face. 'Ten shilling.'

'Damn me if it is!'

'Not a farthing the nasty drab give me for a fortnight. No, nor a month past,' added Mrs. Farrel, smoothing her oxblood skirt over her bulky improvers.

Was the woman lying? Please let her be lying. The thought of Doll, hungry for the whole month of December—'Half a crown for your trouble,' offered Mary coldly, reaching into the waist of her skirt to pull up her pocket.

'Half a crown up your arse.' There were specks of froth on the older woman's lips.

Mary shrugged and began stuffing her clothes into her bag, on top of her linen.

'Leave all that down where you found it now.'

'Every shred of it's mine,' said Mary softly. She kept packing at top speed. 'Whatever wasn't, you've flogged already, ain't you? Bet they're scattered across the stalls of Monmouth Street, all Doll's clothes.'

'Little I got for them, then, if they are,' spat Mrs. Farrel.

'What about her cameo bracelet? And her French cloak with the fur robings?' Mary edged across the room.

Mrs. Farrel extended herself across the door like a spider. 'There was nothing worth tuppence. Put down that bag now or I'll call thief.'

Mary let out a contemptuous puff of air. 'And what good would it do you, in this part of town? D'you think you'll get Bow Street Runners racing into the Rookery?'

'I've a fellow in my pay that'll put manners on you,' said Mrs. Farrel, her voice rising to a whine.

Mary put her face very close to the other woman's. 'Get out of my way, old bitch.'

For a moment she thought she'd won. Mrs. Farrel scuttled away—but only as far as the window. She stuck her head between the bars. 'Caesar?' she shrieked down, loud enough to be heard at the Dials.

Not him.

'Caesar!'

It couldn't be. There had to be other men with that name. The Caesar Mary knew of was his own master, wasn't he? Surely he wouldn't hire himself out as a hunting dog to Mrs. Farrel? Not even for the kind of wage that only the richest woman in St. Giles could pay?

'Come up this minute, man!' Mrs. Farrel bawled down.

But he'd worked for Mother Griffith once, hadn't he, the time he'd come after Doll with his long knife?

'There's a girl wants cutting, so she does,' Mrs. Farrel screamed with satisfaction.

Oh Christ Almighty. It was him.

Mary crossed the room and shoved Mrs. Farrel so hard her head cracked against the window-frame. The two of them stared at each other in shock. A trickle of blood zigzagged down the Irishwoman's wrinkles.

'I'll have him slice the lips off of you,' gasped Mrs. Farrel.

Mary seized her bag and bolted for the door.

'Caesar!' came the long wail behind her.

Mary got as far as the second floor before she heard the front door crash open. For a moment she paused on the balls of her feet. The bag of clothes hung like lead from her arm, and she felt her life like a thread stretched to breaking. She was turning to run back the way she'd come, when her eyes fell on Mercy Toft's door, and she remembered that the silly slut never locked it.

Mercy's room was empty. Mary shut the door with quiet, shaking hands and flattened herself against it. She stopped breathing.

On the other side of the thin wood, Caesar's feet hammered by. The African could run like mercury. Mary counted one, two, three, four, until she reckoned he was on the third floor. Then she ripped her shoes off and opened the door. The stairwell was empty. A trace of his sugary pomade hung on the air.

Ducking barefoot through nameless courts and yards and alleys
of the Rookery, her bag clutched to her chest like a baby, Mary found she was still holding her breath. She turned sharp left, and headed for the Dials, hoping to lose herself in the throng. As she thudded down Monmouth Street, weaving between the garish clothes stalls, she was reminded of something her mother used to say:
When I was a girl in Monmouth, there was none of this running about.

She turned again, doubling back along Mercer Street and up St. Giles's Passage. Before she reached the church she could hear its bells; their clamour rebounded between the tight-packed houses. There was no room to think, with her head full of bells and her ribs full of terror. A wind came up, and the golden bird spun on its spire. High on the chiselled gate, sinners with dirty stone faces crawled over each other to evade the gaze of God.

At noon Mary was sitting over a bowl of strong tea in the Cheshire Cheese. Her heart had stopped banging in her chest. She wasn't letting herself think about Caesar for a little while. In her head, Doll chuckled.
You can't let the fact that someone wants you dead put you off your tea, lass.
But Mary wasn't going to let herself think about Doll either.

In one of the spare shoes in her bag, rolled up to look worthless, was a single gold-clocked stocking; she'd lost the other one long ago at a gin party on Bow Street. She emptied the rolled-up stocking into her lap discreetly, now, and counted the money all over again. Two months of sewing hems, and this was all she'd got to show for it: one pound six shillings and a penny. So much for the fruits of honest toil. She raked the small coins in her lap like sand.

When a voice hailed her, she scooped the money back into her makeshift purse. (
You can never be too careful with whores, duckie,
said Doll in her head.) It was Biddy Doherty, a Cork girl who walked St. James's Park. Her words were fragrant with ratafia, a reek like almonds. Mary had to keep repeating that she'd been away, and no, she hadn't seen Doll Higgins lately. Something in her throat wouldn't let the story come out.

She stood Biddy a quart of ale, for the sake of the news, and old times. The river was frozen solid at Richmond, according to Biddy; a gang of Misses had gone down for the skating and the bonfires. Trade had been sluggish all winter; Biddy blamed the mollies. 'Sure, they do it for free, half the time, the filth!' And in this cold spell, cullies feared to unbreech in the street in case they'd freeze their bags off, and the war didn't help; Biddy blamed the Frenchies. Oh, and there was a thing: Nan Pullen got arrested.

'But I saw her last night, at the Dials,' said Mary, bewildered.

'Sure, it was only this morning they picked her up.'

'For whoring?'

'Not at all,' said Biddy with a snort. 'For borrowing her mistress's clothes, don't you know. They're after saying she stole them. It was a fine taffeta robe they caught her in, so she'll swing for it, so she will.'

Mary's head was buzzing. The Tyburn Tree rose up in her mind's eye, the bodies dangling like flies in a web. 'God help her.'

'Well, Nan should have known, the poor eejit. Thievery's the one thing they never forgive.'

Mary sat back against the greasy oak settle and let Biddy ramble on. She knew what she should do, what Doll would have done in her place.
Biddy, dear heart, let me kip with you for a night or two...
But the thought of lying next to this skinny, spirituous body repelled Mary. Maybe she could do without a bed for a few nights. Maybe she could walk the streets from dusk to dawn in her violet slammerkin till she made a bit of cash. Enough to bury Doll. Mary was sure she could bring in the cullies despite the weather, if she offered a cut rate of sixpence a throw. (Doll tut-tutted in her head.
Never go below ninepence, sweetheart. For the dignity of the trade.)
Mary knew the best thing would be to work all day and night, standing against a wall till her legs buckled, till her guts numbed, till the memory of Doll's frozen hand was wiped out of her head along with everything else.

But Caesar. Mary's heart was thumping again, as if she could smell him, the spiced aroma of muscle under the rich waft of his vast white wig. If only it had been anyone else but him. She covered
her mouth with her hand as if to shield it from the knife. She tried not to imagine what she'd look like with her red lips carved off.

She had to think practically. How much would it cost to pay Mrs. Farrel to call off Caesar? Now that blood had been mentioned, and his victim had slipped out of his grasp by means of a trick; now that it was a matter of the pride of his trade?

Mary couldn't sit still. The man might walk in any minute, pristine and calm, with his long knife pointing right at her. Was there anyone in the room who'd stand in Caesar's way? She'd never heard of anyone who defied him and lived to boast of it. She scrabbled to her feet now, and left Biddy Doherty behind in the chop-house, still chattering into her cup.

On the Strand, Mary met nobody's gaze; she bent her head over her bag as she broke into a run. Old snow moved like lard under her wet shoes. Wherever she turned, she kept an eye out for Caesar; once she thought she saw him, and ducked into an alley so fast she fell down and wet her skirt through to the top petticoat, but it was some other black fellow, a footman in gold livery.

If she were Doll Higgins, Mary knew, she'd be laughing at danger, greeting old customers, drumming up trade. If she were Doll Higgins she'd pick up her old life like a stained skirt and turn it inside out. But she was only Mary Saunders, and a man was hunting her through the slippery streets of this city, and all she could think to do was run.