Lightning Mary by Anthea Simmons

Author:Anthea Simmons
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Andersen Press Ltd
Published: 2019-04-03T16:00:00+00:00

14

BLOOD

Not long after my eleventh birthday, which passed without celebration, I was running an errand for some sprats for Mrs Stock (for her cat, to be more truthful! There’s poor folk, poorer even than us, who would eat a cat let alone a sprat!) when I saw a crowd of people gathered at the end of the Cobb. I could not resist going to see what they were gawping at. It was low tide, so maybe some fool had fallen in the ooze and couldn’t get out.

As I got closer, I could see bigwigs and their ladies pointing and pulling faces, the ladies with their lace kerchiefs over their mouths and noses. Then I saw what they found so disgusting. Hanging from the mast of one of the boats was the body of a dead horse, strung up by its hind leg. Its skin had been peeled off it so that the meat underneath shone pink in the sun. Fishermen were hacking chunks off it for bait.

The smell was vile, so for once I could understand the ladies being so fussy. I could not help but be fascinated, though, monstrous though the sight and the stench were. I had not seen a whole carcass like this before. I could see the big slabs of muscle across the beast’s haunches, shoulder and neck. Smaller strands of white stretched between the joints. I divined that these were like the strings of a puppet, allowing the animal to move by lifting hooves, bending knees. The fishermen had stripped one leg completely and it dropped to the deck in a clatter of bones and a splatter of blood.

One of the ladies went into a swoon and was just caught before her head hit the cobbles. Why she watched if she had no stomach for such things, I had no idea. Agreed, I too was observing but I was being a scientist. She was taking pleasure at the sight of a dead creature or just frightening herself with blood and gore. Either way, it was not a good reason to be there. Such things are not entertainment but there is no accounting for the strange tastes of these London folk.

I moved closer so that I could study the body more closely. I had seen from my father’s case how a body diminished when the flesh was stripped off it through illness and that should have come as no surprise. After all, the eel’s skull was much smaller than the creature itself had been when it was alive and a fish skeleton gives few clues as to how much meat it provided before it was cooked and eaten. All the Marys in my head started running around having ideas about the curiosities and how bones held together and how many bones might be in a body and how big that body might really be with the meat and guts and skin all back where they should be. I wished I had brought paper and pen with me so that I could make a scratch for Henry.

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