Read The Serpent Garden - Judith Merkle Riley for Free Online Page B

have it cluttering up the shop. You have to take it up into your rooms.”
    “And just what is it you’re talking about?” Nan asked her.
    “You’ll see,” she answered, her eyes narrow and her smile malicious. Perhaps a gift, I thought, pushing ahead of Nan down the narrow, spiral stair. Downstairs, two sailors stood beside a long, dark-stained, canvas-wrapped bundle they had laid on the ancient rushes covering the floor. They looked embarrassed as I stooped to uncover the bundle. For a moment my breath stopped. Then I could feel a kind of curious coldness all through my body before I could hear the oddest scream that seemed to come out of me but also from far away. The skin was a bluish gray, and the clotted, open wounds, a deep murrey unlike any I could ever have imagined…. The bundle was the corpse of Master Dallet, as dead as a herring.
    The taller of the sailors, the one with the black hair and the earring, looked suddenly embarrassed as he stared at my swollen middle, and the wedding ring on my finger.
    “Um, an accident in the alley behind Captain Pickering’s house,” he said.
    “Footpads,” added the shorter one, with the rusty beard.
    “The captain came home from sea unexpectedly,” broke in the widow’s daughter, with a meaningful look.
    “—and found the accident,” interjected the shorter sailor. I scarcely heard them, my heart was pounding so. It was all clear to me. This was the terrible punishment for my forwardness and wickedness in daring to paint when I should have been serving my husband better. Now he was dead and we were ruined, all because of me and my selfishness. Who would look after us? Who would help the baby? He might have loved me, if the baby were a son. Now there was nothing. No hope. Tremors went up and down my body, and I felt faint.
    “Now look what you’ve done, and her expecting!” I could hear Nan accusing the sailors. “You’ve killed her with shock!” The first convulsion threw me at the feet of the corpse, and set the women in the room wailing. I felt heavy hands holding me down, and heard the widow giving orders, “Not there, here—do you want to kill the child as well?” As the seizure passed, the widow, who was kneeling by my side, rolled her eyes heavenward and proclaimed, “Oh, the sorrow! Only a widow can understand another widow’s grief!” Groggy as I was, I knew perfectly well that she was savoring the moment with that special pleasure that elderly people get from disasters. “What can a
man
know of women’s suffering!” she announced triumphantly. I could hear embarrassed mumbling from the sailors, who backed toward the door, only to find it had been barred by Nan.
    “Just see what your captain has done!” she said. “Do you know what great patrons Master Dallet has? He has painted our old King Harry the Seventh himself, and the new King Harry that is, when he was prince, and many other gentlepersons. Your master will never outlive the scandal of delivering his poor murdered corpse to his pregnant wife and killing her.”
    “He had a right—” grumbled the short sailor.
    “Nan—Nan,” I whispered, “I felt something. I think the baby’s coming.” Nan didn’t hear me, but the widow, who could hear a secret through three walls, did.
    “Murdering a poor, innocent widow
and
her orphan child—” the widow added, “a scandal to the heavens. All of London will hear. Your master will never escape the justice of God and man,” she announced righteously, pointing her finger melodramatically to the heavens. The sailors’ eyes darted from side to side. There was no escape through the barricade of women.
    “You tell him to come and take care of the orphan he’s made, or the world will know,” said Nan, still hard against the door.
    “Blasted magpies—now look what he’s done. I
told
him to get rid of it. Now he has to shut them up,” muttered the tall one with the earring.
    “A man who does his Christian duty by widows earns only