I wanted to tell Sally—so she could understand, so she could help me. She would be angry with me if I tried to solve it all on my own, if I didn’t let her stand by me as she said she would.
But I was tired. So tired.
I closed my eyes, and I remembered.
chapter 15
Mama? Mama?”
She wasn’t in the kitchen. She liked to be there by the fire, in her chair, mending clothes or polishing cook pots or just rocking while she stared into the flames. She liked it because it was far away from Him, the He who stalked through our house like an angry shadow, the He who staggered home from the pubs stinking of ale and searching for a reason to be angry at us.
He would never hit me if she was there, because she would stand in front of me and tell him to leave off her boy, her blue eyes sparking fury.
My eyes were not blue. They were black like His, dark and pupilless, like the eyes of the sharks that swam in the sea. But my hair was like hers, soft and dark, and I would put my head on her knee while she stroked my head and we would both cry and pretend that we hadn’t. She would sing a little song, a song that went into my heart and stayed there, a song that I would sing all the long years of my life.
He had gone out as He always did every evening, before I came home from the bookbinders’. Mama hoped I would apprentice there when I was older, but for now I fetched and carried and cleaned up after the older men, and at the end of the day they would give me a coin or two to bring home to her.
She was saving all those coins in a secret place, a place He didn’t know about, and no matter how hard He hit her she wouldn’t tell. I wouldn’t tell, either, because I didn’t know where it was. But she was saving them, so that one day we could run away to a place where there were no fists and no fear, just me and Mama, happy for always.
I went into the cottage and called for her, but she didn’t come to the door with a smile the way she always did.
He wasn’t home, I knew for certain, for when He was in the house He filled up all the empty space. Even when He slept He did this, the sound of His drunken snores echoing through the cottage, the smell of drink and sick overwhelming any fresh air that might come in the open window.
“Mama?” I called, and when I went through to the kitchen she wasn’t there, and I started to worry.
Our cottage was only four rooms, and when I went through all of them I didn’t know what to do. She might have gone to the market, except that it was late and the market was closed. She would never have gone out with Him, for she said that drink made Him disgusting, and He didn’t want her with Him anyhow.
I stood in the kitchen and wondered if I should look for her, or if I should stay exactly where I was so she wouldn’t worry if she came back. I hated to make her worry, for she already had so many cares and I didn’t like to add to them.
Then I noticed that the back door of the cottage was open, just a little.
Mama would never go out and leave the door open like that. There were rats that lived in the narrow way behind our home, and Mama hated rats, and an open door was an invitation to them—she always said so.
And the candles were lit and so was the fire. Candles were dear, and Mama wouldn’t waste them. She wouldn’t go out and leave the fire untended.
I went to the door, and pushed it all the way open. I trembled all over as I peered in the dark, the flickering light of the kitchen behind me. I couldn’t see anything except the shifting shadows, but I heard the scurrying of the rats and I shuddered. I didn’t like rats either, though I wouldn’t tell Mama that. I wanted Mama to think I was brave.
I didn’t want to let the rats in the cottage, but I didn’t want to go out into the dark either, so I stood there and called, “Mama?”
She didn’t answer.
I wasn’t certain what to do. The door was open, so Mama must have come this way. And the candles were lit, so she must have meant to return soon. But she didn’t answer.
She might be hurt, I decided. And if Mama was hurt I would have to be brave, so that she would be proud of me.
I took a candle from the kitchen, and walked out into the night, closing the door behind me. The sound of the door closing made me jump. Candle wax dripped on my hand with a hiss.
It smelled funny, not like the smell of rotting and rats like it usually did. There was something else, something that made my nose itch.
I walked out carefully, the stones ringing under my boot heels. They were so loud in the darkness, though from out on the street in front of the cottage came the noise of people laughing and talking and shouting at one another. Those people seemed very far away from me.
The circle of light cast by the candle was small, so that the dark pressed all around it. I thought I saw, just for a moment, a wink of silver ahead of me, a flash that reflected the faint light and then disappeared.
First my foot trod on something, something soft. Then the glow from the candle found it, and she was there.
Her eyes were blue and empty and her dark hair was all around her head in a tangle. She lay on her side and her arms were thrown out in the direction of the cottage, like she was reaching for something, like she was reaching for me.
Her mouth was open and so was her throat and the blood was all over her blue dress, seeping from the smile where no smile should be.
“Mama?” I said, and my voice was very, very small.
I reached for her then because it couldn’t be, it couldn’t be that my mama, my mama who kissed me and hugged me and held me so tight, was there on the stones with her throat cut and blood on her dress.
I tried to pick her up, to make her wake up, to make her stop pretending to be gone forever. The candle fell from my hand and went out.
“What have you done?” A voice ringing through the darkness.
“My mama,” I sobbed.
A boy appeared from nowhere, a boy I thought at first I’d never seen before and then realized I had. He was a little older than me and had green eyes and ginger hair, and more than once I’d seen him on the street near our cottage. He didn’t seem to belong to anyone and sometimes I thought he was watching me when I went home at the end of the day but when I tried to get a good look at him he would be gone.