LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

Thinking it might crawl towards me and grab my ankle, I hurried off. Nearby was a severed foot still in its shoe and such other gobbets of human flesh as could hardly be named. Dogs’ barks pierced the air off to the east where hounds were mauling a corpse. My best hope was to move out towards the ebbing tide, where I might find a body freshly washed ashore. As luck would have it, down where the sand was still wet and glistening I found a fine-looking man stretched out. I wove a path towards him, willing myself to touch every corpse I passed for luck. The gentleman wore a dark suit, so sombre he must have had an inkling he was on the way to his funeral when he dressed himself. A well-built fellow he was. If you stood him up he’d be head and shoulders above any man in the village, apart from the giant, Pentecost. I wondered how long he’d struggled in the cold water.

      It grew lighter by the minute. Pale lichen showed on the rocks, pink crystal glinted in the seams of the cliffs and the rising sun lit the dead man’s face. His dark hair lay across his cheek, covered in a slick pale rime. There was a gash down one cheek and a shadow of stubble on his chin. There was no smell off him yet, fresh out of the sea as he was. I crossed myself to show contrition before digging into his sodden trouser pockets, searching his wrists and inside his jacket, but I found only a pocket book, the pages stuck together, which I threw aside, and a watch on a silver chain which was full of sea water. Time had stopped and God had turned his back on the world.

      When I was done with the man, I rose to my feet and moved through the mist, almost stepping upon a child’s body that lay like a sixpenny doll on the sand. The little thing’s face was turned away, which was a mercy. I went further down towards where the tide was washing out, but was stopped in my tracks by the sight of two pretty boots poking out from under the hem of a woman’s skirt. Though the boots were soaked, I saw they were of the softest tan leather, laced before, with the tops reaching only just above the ankle. It was a fashion new to me. On one toe hung a little rose cut out of leather, but its twin was missing on the other boot. The woman’s feet were daintier than mine, but I would gladly have put up with a bit of pinching around the toes for the chance to be seen in a pair of boots such as those.

      I got down on my knees and set about working the boots off the lady’s feet. The first came away easy enough but the other was the devil’s own work. I tugged at the laces, but they were tightly knotted and wet, and in any case my blood was turning to ice and my fingers, usually so strong, were losing their grip. Almost crying with vexation, I pulled with all my might, but the dead woman’s ankle was swollen with water and the boot wouldn’t shift. If only I’d come out with a knife. By now my fingers were so numb I could barely move them, but I gave that boot one last tug and off it flew, so sudden that I hit myself in the mouth with it, and fell backwards onto my ass. For a moment I sat there, winded, my mouth stinging from the blow.

      When I got my breath back I put the boots in my kerchief and knotted it. Wasting no time, I got to work searching the rest of the woman’s body. Her frock had been stripped from her and her shift clung to her limbs, cambric silk by the feel of it but rent beyond repair. There was nothing else on her of any value.

      A tooth was dangling from the lady’s bottom lip on a pink thread of flesh, so I pulled it out, a charm I might use to cure my Mamm’s windpipe of the chronic. Although it shamed me to look for long at the faces of the dead, I couldn’t help but gaze at this woman. Her dainty upturned nose, black as if charred, stood out against her face that was all the paler for being encrusted with salt. Her eyes were black seams with just the whites showing between them. White sand covered her hair like a hoar frost, and there was a streak of gleaming red on a lock that fell over her ear. Looking closer, I gasped with horror to find her ear lobe had been chewed off. It was the same on the other side, the jagged edges still wet with fresh blood. For a long moment, I shut my eyes, breathing deeply to keep down the hot bile rising in my throat.

      As I put the tooth in my apron pocket, I heard a noise, a low moan, more beast than human. Did the woman yet breathe? Had I jolted her back to life by drawing the tooth out of her jaw? Her eyes and mouth seemed to move, but they might have only trembled in the wind. Bubbles rose between her lips, and then – that sound again, part moan and part belch, her bosom rising and falling, and at the last only the hiss of air between her lips. Her soul was fleeing her body, and the thought gave me such a fright I screamed, which set the gulls shrieking overhead letting the whole world know what I was about. I would have fled, but right then I heard footsteps, and a crone in black widow’s weeds loomed out of the fog, planting her crook in the sand at each step, her back-basket a hump on her shoulder and her shawl fluttering behind her. It was Marget Maddern, known to all in the cove as Aunt Madgie. She was the very last person I wanted to see at that moment. The old woman drew up by me and leant on her crook, panting as she looked me up and down, her creased brow crowned by a white mob cap.

      ‘Was that you screaming just now, Mary Blight?’

      I nodded. ‘I had a fearful shock – seeing what some devil have done to this poor lady’s ears.’

      Aunt Madgie leant over the woman and looked her up and down, before fixing her gaze on the ragged frills of crimson where the earlobes had been chewed off. She turned and peered at me through narrowed eyes. ‘I hadn’t thought you so faint-hearted,’ she said. ‘I see that for all your tender feelings, you were still able to fill your kerchief.’ She leant closer towards me, looking into my face. ‘What happened to your mouth?’

      ‘My mouth?’

      ‘It’s bleeding.’

      I put a hand to my lips and saw blood on my fingertips. ‘I bumped into something in the mist and cut my mouth, that’s all,’ I said.

      She gazed at the woman’s ears again. ‘Do you swear this is not your doing, Mary Blight?’

      ‘I do.’ She gave me such a damning stare, I had to look away. I could outstare anyone but her.

      ‘And yet I found you crouched over the body, and with blood on your lips?’

      ‘Oh wisht! I confess that I did take the woman’s boots off, and in so doing hit my face with them. I didn’t tell you at first, for I was all of a tremble when I saw you. But it’s the truth, as God’s my witness. Some other devil got here before me and did the rest.’

      She gave me a still keener look. ‘And she was dead when you came upon her?’

      ‘I swear to God.’

      ‘Take care with these oaths, lest they prove false. Perhaps you thought that while there was still life in the woman, you had no natural rights to take those boots. Maybe you helped her soul on its way?’

      ‘Never! I am no murderer.’

      ‘I’d be more inclined to take your word for it, were you less renowned for stripping clothes and jewels off dead women.’

      ‘I’m not alone in that.’

      ‘Aye, ’tis true, but we must not cross the bounds of decency, or the cove will be infested with Preventive Men.’ A crow swooped low over our heads and croaked to harry us away from the corpse. ‘It doesn’t belong to you to go sneaking about like this after the hard work is done, Mary Blight. I know your ways, looking for pickings from the last few bodies that drift ashore. And all for vanity. When will you learn that it’s One and All in this cove and always has been? What else have you found this morning? Sovereigns? Spanish dollars? Let me see.’

      ‘Only some oranges.’ I swayed the heavy kerchief in front of her. ‘And I found this on a man a little way off. A watch that be full of water.’ Fumbling in my apron pocket, I brought the watch out and handed it to her.

      ‘Maybe we can get it fixed in Penzance,’ she said. ‘Whoever owned this won’t need to tell the time where they’re gone.’

      At last, she slowly turned and hobbled away. But before she was gone more than a few yards, she stopped and spoke, her back still turned to me. ‘I’ll have my eye on you, Mary Blight. Take heed.’

      With Aunt Madgie gone, I got up and threw my kerchief over my shoulder. The mist had cleared to show a mass of broken clouds flung across the heavens from the east to the west, glowing with the sun’s

Скачать книгу