Marianne, the Madame, and the Momentary Gods by Tepper Sheri S

Author:Tepper, Sheri S. [Tepper, Sheri S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780575116061
Publisher: Hachette Littlehampton
Published: 2011-09-28T22:00:00+00:00

The cell in which they left her was not uncomfortable. There was a cot, a toilet, a basin, a glass for drinking water, even a screen so she could use the facilities without undue display to anyone peering in through the little grated window. The room was reasonably warm, and it was dry. On a table by the heavy door, barred with iron and studded with thick nails of gleaming bronze, the five crowns huddled like socialites in a drunk tank, making a fierce show of quality to cow whomever was responsible for the outrage.

Marianne was no longer looking at them. She had looked, for a time, trying to remember if she had indeed stolen any such thing, for this is what she was accused of. She had tried to explain to the guardsman that the crowns were not unlike the elephant harness or the double bed, having arrived in some similar and as unexplainable a fashion, but he had been unwilling to entertain any such possibility.

‘You were at the palace, you admit it,’ he said.

‘Only out by the fence. Along with hundreds of other people.’

‘But you were there. And five things disappeared, and now you have five things.’

What could she say to that? She did, indeed, have them. Even now she had them. ‘The broadcast didn’t say what things,’ she pleaded. ‘It didn’t say what things at all!’

He sneered, pointing. Could anyone doubt that crowns like these belonged in a palace? Could anyone doubt they had no business in the indigo washer at the Clean Machine?

Marianne sank onto the cot. She wondered if the old man had ever come back for his trunk. She wondered if crying would help. She wondered if screaming would help and decided it would not; the sound of screaming had echoed through the prison almost since she had entered it, sometimes softly and plaintively, sometimes with an excess of agony that made it quite unbearable to hear.

‘But I didn’t take them,’ she said again, aloud.

‘You’re not charged with taking them,’ said a voice. ‘You’re charged with receiving them.’

There was someone at the grated window, peering in at her. She could see one glassy eye. ‘I didn’t receive them,’ she said. ’The machine did. It does things like that.’

‘You’ll have a chance to explain that to the magistrates, tomorrow,’ said the voice. ‘I thought I’d warn you, in case you wanted to change your clothes and tidy up a bit.’

‘I only have these clothes,’ she shouted, suddenly angry. ’The ones I had on.’

‘Closet,’ said the voice. ‘There’s a closet.’

Of course there was a closet. It contained three pairs of overalls, a fireman’s helmet, and a ball gown at least five sizes too large. ‘I will appear before the magistrates as I am,’ she said aloud, attempting to sound dignified. ‘In my own clothes.’ She was wearing a simple shirtwaist dress, now somewhat rumpled, and a wool sweater, both in mud shades.

The grating across the window in the cell door slammed shut, as though in frustration.

The five puppies came out from beneath her cot and gathered around her feet.

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