Conceit by Mary Novik Read Free Book Online

father shouted. “Many die of its virulence within three days.”
    “Then you have passed the worst,” Jo said, pushing his hair back from his forehead. “You have lasted thirteen.”
    “I have been fifty years in this putridness. I have no appetite for life, I cannot sleep, and I can barely sit up.”
    He looked as agile to Pegge as he had ever done, though a red spot had just erupted on his nose.
    “You are weak because you are fasting, sir,” said George, perching on the bed and filching a lump of foodfrom the uneaten supper. “And you would feel better if you shaved.”
    “We die every day and we die all the day long.” Each word was dropping like distilled liquor from a boiling retort. “The skin over these bones is but a winding-sheet. Each bell that tolls for another hastes my own funeral. My body will soon be with your mother’s in her grave.”
    “And what will you do there?” asked little Betty in spite of Pegge’s jabbing elbow.
    “Await our joint resurrection,” her father boomed, as if to the deaf.
    Even Betty knew of the resurrection, though she was hazy on the mechanics of getting there. Pegge saw her scratch her bottom quizzically through several layers of wool. After their mother died, their father had declared himself crucified for love , a phrase passed down in awe from the eldest to the youngest. Even now, Pegge could not drive it from her mind.
    “Since your mother’s soul was ravished into heaven, my mind has been wholly set on heavenly things.”
    “But it didn’t, did it?” said Pegge.
    “Didn’t what?”
    “Didn’t go to heaven,” she said stubbornly. “On Lucy’s eve, you seemed to think that my mother’s soul was buried with her body underground. You brought this spottedness upon yourself by roaming through the streets that night.”
    Pegge met her father’s stare, remembering the cold that had driven deep into her marrow, then rooted her feet deep into the boots that had been Bridget’s, that had been Lucy’s and, long before that, Con’s.

    On Lucy’s eve, a fortnight before, Pegge had followed her father along Fleet street past the Cock and Key and the Boar’s Head. By the time he was abreast of the Star and Ram, she was sorry she was wearing the loose purple gown. Once he passed the Queen’s Head, she knew where he was going.
    He entered St Clement’s just ahead of her, then disappeared. She was huddling behind a screen when she heard the sexton’s crowbar scraping all along the nave. Wielding the iron clumsily, her father finally got it wedged deep enough to shift a pavingstone to one side. Then he knelt on the cold floor, speaking lover’s gibberish to the underworld while she wished herself back under her old blanket. One of his poems had hinted at an unsavoury graveside reunion, amusing when read by candlelight in her warm bed but lacking in all humour in the draughty church in which her father’s cries now echoed.
    “I have come to keep my promise, Ann.” He threw the crowbar into the gaping chasm with a horrid ringing. “We two shall make our beds together in the dark.” Dropping nimbly over the edge, he landed in the bone-hole.
    What about us? Pegge thought. My scattered flock of wretched children , as he liked to call them when chatting to the bishop. How much more scattered and wretched they would be if he pulled the flagstone down on top of his head for good.
    Just then Sadie hurtled in, her coat as frizzled as if she had been running for an hour after the wrong scent. Going straight to the Dean’s discarded hat, she worried it with her teeth. Then, paying no attention to Pegge, who guessed shewas too cold by then to have a scent, the dog sniffed around the gaping hole-which was filled now with the thud of iron against lead, now a cracking like a rib cage being fractured, and now a terrifying stream of cryptic poetry. Her ears outraged but her loyalty unswerving, Sadie sat on her hindquarters and howled to call her Orpheus back from the