The Silver Horse by Kate Forsyth

Author:Kate Forsyth
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: MacMillan
Published: 2006-10-17T04:00:00+00:00

Filthiness and Folly

The iron door to the cell grated open. The guard loomed in the doorway, holding a tray. He was a big man with a smashed nose, ears like red cabbages, and hands like overcooked steaks.

Mimi and Sabina screamed and shrank back against Maggie, their grandmother, who put her arms around them. Mimi’s mother Silvia looked up dully. Since she had inadvertently caused the death of a constable, causing the charges against them to include murder, Silvia had been sunk in a bewildered misery and apathy, a stark change from the busy, cheerful woman she had always been.

‘Now, now, no need for shrieking,’ the guard said. ‘I’ve brought you some breakfast. Aren’t you hungry? It’s not much, I’m afraid, the cook here is mean, and takes the best stuff for himself, but it’s better than nothing.’

He shut the door behind him with his shoulder, and set the tray down on a rickety table.

The two little girls stared at him from the shelter of Maggie’s arms. The guard smiled, showing a mouthful of crooked, discoloured teeth. ‘Come, am I so scary?’ he said. ‘I’m not going to hurt you. Look what I’ve brought you.’ He shoved his hands into his trouser pockets and brought out two beautifully made little rag dolls. He offered them to Mimi and Sabina, but they shrank back and did not go to him. After a moment, he turned and gave them to Beatrice, saying apologetically, ‘It’s my face, it scares them.’

Beatrice smiled wanly, and took the dolls to the little girls, who pressed them close. Although they were cousins, not sisters, they were alike enough to be twins with their skinny arms and big black eyes. Sabina was ten and Mimi a year younger, and they were tired, bored, scared and fretful. It had been hard work keeping them entertained over the past two days, and the women had long ago run out of stories and games, or the heart to tell them.

‘I’m guessing you didn’t sew them yourself,’ Maggie said to the guard as she got stiffly to her feet. She was a thin scarecrow of a woman, with a face that was all nose and eyelids. She spoke around an empty pipe that she kept clamped between her wrinkled lips, occasionally taking it out and staring at it as if she hoped some tobacco may have materialised there miraculously.

The guard grinned. ‘Not I!’ he said. ‘That’s my wife’s handiwork.’

‘She’s a fine seamstress,’ Maggie said. ‘Not like me.’ She gestured down at her ragged skirts with one hand, and the guard grinned again. ‘I can throw a meal together, though,’ she went on as she bent over the tray and examined the food there. ‘Not like this cook of yours. He calls this a meal?’

‘I’m afraid so,’ the guard replied.

Maggie screwed up her face. ‘No wonder everyone in this gaol gets sick,’ she said. ‘Not one of us got a wink of sleep last night listening to the coughing of that poor man next door.

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