The dowager sat up in a hurry, swinging her short plump legs to the ground and pushing off the bedcovers. “Stop it, Kallivan. I’m not interested in your threats. I don’t complain about your unpleasant interest in little girls. I even presented a pair of my pallid laundry maids to you once. But don’t think you can use me that way.”
“In truth, I wouldn’t want to, my dear. You are,” he pursed his lips, half grimace, half smile, “too old. Too fat. Your breasts sag. Your skin is loose around the belly.”
The lady sniffed. “Spanking is one thing, Kallivan. Mean words are quite another. You may now leave.”
Without movement, he continued staring upwards, his hands now clasped behind his head. “Your own desires are – let us say – uncommon, my dear. Which is the only reason I come to you. But,” and he turned suddenly again, staring at her, “how would you cope if those desires were so much more insistent, and so much more uncommon? What if you lay awake at night yearning for the softness of a child’s thighs, the first budding of a young girl’s breasts, and the chance to touch that youth – to spoil that vulnerability – and finally, to utterly destroy the one thing you desire so much?”
Momentarily surprised, she said, “You are actually feeling sorry for yourself, Kallivan? I would never have expected it.”
“Your desires are petty, Valeria. You never have to bare the weight of desire which haunts me.”
“There’s no haunting, Kallivan, since I doubt you deny yourself. You indulge your pleasures often enough.”
“It is rarely so easy.” He shook his head, frowning a little. “Even the brothel girls are not as I’d wish them. They pretend youth, but they are not, let us say, unstained. And although I pay well, I cannot do with them as freely as my heart and prick demands. I accept. I do not complain. But they are not as they appear in my mind, or as they should feel beneath my hands. In the stewes, at least, I need to leave them – intact. And sometimes, if I find a beggar girl to play with as I truly wish, then there’s the risk of being seen or heard. It is rare that I can enjoy the leisure of true delight in the comfort of my own home.”
“And of hiding the corpse afterwards?”
“The is always the river. The Corn is conveniently placed.”
The dowager was dressed, pulling the tie of her robe about her. She was looking for her indoor slippers. “If you like to slice and kill, go to battle, Kallivan. Or find work on a farm or a slaughter-house.”
“Don’t annoy me, bitch.” He rolled over, sat, shrugged on his shirt and began to re-lace his stockings. “As yet you have no real idea how dangerous I can be. I have powers you cannot contemplate. Don’t tempt me.”
“Power?” She stamped her foot. “My good man, you’re no more than an impoverished knight. Perhaps it’s your fear of your own weakness that makes you want to injure those weaker than yourself.” Glaring, “But rarely those stronger than yourself, it seems.”
Almost dressed now, he pulled on the silken britches, tying them below the knee, the warm stockings kept within. His smile was very cold. “You have no idea. No imagination. But one day, madam, I will show you exactly what I do to those – weaker than myself.” He began to draw with his fingertip across the bedcover. The dowager stared at the shapes his finger suggested, and blanched. “I might bring another to you,” he murmured, “to show you, to demonstrate. Like this. To watch while I amuse myself with her. Knowing that afterwards –” Pausing, the freeze of his smile lit like the ice beneath the sunset. “The bitch at the brothel,” he murmured, “whether or not she is responsible for the door slammed in my face, is, I believe, responsible for holding back the assassin’s knife when I first employed the market brute to murder your dear son Jak. He took my money and he agreed the job. Then he flung it back. Not the Lydiards he told me. Who else would have protected them except that slut who claimed to love him? So, Valeria, I shall use her to show you something you still don’t understand of me.”
“Get out Kallivan, you disgust me.” She took two quick steps back and leaned against the door. “Come back when you want to play – not talk. I’m not interested in your peculiarities and I feel no pity for you whatsoever. Find me proof that wretched Jak Lydiard is dead, and I’ll permit you back into my bed.”
He walked towards her, took the door handle though did not lower it, and stood, staring down at her with no noticeable expression. “Remember one thing, Valeria,” he told her quietly. “It is I who do the whipping, my dear. Not you.”
They heard it before they even reached the doors. They were a few steps through the Bridge Gate separating the city from the south, when the muffled sound already reached them like the echoes of a storm, or the excess ale spilling from a tub. Hawisa and Freya picked up their skirts and began to run. With longer legs and mighty calves, Hawisa got there first. Maggs, all in a flurry, was hurrying from the rain-tub outside and quickly back into the main solar. She looked wildly around and delivered the water bucket to Madam Webb, whose eyes were tear filled. Freya had never seen – never expected to see – this woman cry. She raced indoors after her and stood at the entrance to the solar, staring at the rushing chaos and muddle of bodies within, trying to understand. There had been a scream, now only sobs and the multiple scuttle.
Then Freya saw Bannox their house guard kneeling on the rug, bending over something heaped there on the ground beside him. Tom was stretched on the makeshift bed, no hat, no grand clothes, no charming smile. He was white faced and a gash across his nose and cheeks seemed to have divided his face. Blood oozed and dribbled. His body twitched; there was more blood in his beautiful thick dark hair. The bordello’s Madam Webb, skirts scrunched around her knees, washed Tom’s face, neck and chest. His shirt was partly open, his fine doublet gone, and the collar ripped.
Every girl in the house was staring, pushing, twittering, watching and wondering but Freya pushed past them all. “I’m ready. I have the knowledge, the ointments and the herbs,” she said in a breathless rush, “the bandages and the best medicines. I will get everything. You all know what I can do. Wait for me. Whatever you do, don’t let him die.”
“Hurry, then. I won’t let him die.” Bannox was the guard and should have protected him.
As she hurried upstairs, Freya called, “Get them all out. We need quiet and space. Then come and help me. I need more clean water, clean rags, and a clean cup.” Collecting all the medicines she could, Freya then instructed Sosanna to find a needle and fine silk thread. She carried so many little tubs and jars all gathered up in her skirts as she ran back downstairs, they began to cascade and tumble down the steps around her. Sosanna came behind picking up what had been dropped.
“Oh, my dear Freya,” she wailed, “Poor Tom. Dear Tom. Will he recover, do you think?”
“He has to,” she said, clasping her hands tightly to stop them trembling.
The ragged slash across the face was not the worst injury, for there was also dark blood pumping from his chest just above the stomach. Freya washed it away, sponging tenderly, the water warm, but the blood returned.
As she raised his shirt, the flesh between his lower ribs gaped like a butcher’s shop, displaying all flesh and muscle. Tom’s eyes were closed. He looked dead, but he wasn’t. Edilla remained on her knees, clasping both Tom’s hands in hers, but it was Bannox who began to sing. This tall and solid man, short necked, wide chested, a man who might threaten and who appeared to strangers more fearful than sweet tempered, whatever the truth, was crouched beside this wounded man and singing a child’s lullaby. His voice was soft and so purely pretty he could have been a minstrel.
“In the breezes of Eden,
The babes of the women,
Sleep gentle and safe,
His song trailed off and he moved aside for the woman he knew as part doctor. “Are there other wounds?” Freya whispered, “apart from this?”
“This hole in his chest. The gash on his face. Bangs, bruises, whacks across the legs. Isn’t this enough?”
Her fingers we
re now covered in Tom’s lifeblood. “None of this will kill him unless anything gets infected,” she answered. “And infection is less likely if I sew tightly. He’ll have my best medicines and my very best care. But the stitching will hurt like fire.”
The solarium had cleared of almost everyone, but confusion continued beyond the doorway. Customers were arriving and curious gentlemen peeped in to see what was going on, pulled away by impatient hands.
“You want me, mister, or pay to watch a sick man get sicker?” Customers grumbled and the girls served them quickly, eager to hurry back and see if Tom was recovering.
Edda peeped in, smiled and wished Freya good fortune. “If there’s a lass can mend a sick bugger, it’s our Frey,” she said, disappearing upstairs with her customer in tow.
The potion held to Tom’s lips was pounded willow bark in hot sheep’s milk, and much stronger than usual. Freya had wondered whether to give poppy juice, but murmured, “This won’t take the pain away altogether. It will lessen the agony and mask the rising fever. Only courage will overcome the worst of it. And of everyone I know, Tom is the master of courage.”
Tom didn’t answer. He drank the cup dry and lay back with a deep sigh. Bannox understood and gripped both Tom’s hands, squeezing hard while Freya treated the wound to the face first. Sosanna brought the threaded needle, and Freya began to sew. She sewed tiny stitches, and close together, and kept sewing as Tom grunted, gritted his teeth, and finally fainted. Sossanna was crying but the gash was closed tightly. She soothed Tom’s sweating forehead, but he was unconscious. So Freya began to lay on the first salve of pure alum. She had brought three ointments down with her, and she applied each, one after the other.
It was Ruffstan’s familiar voice which momentarily interrupted, “It’s the lovely Freya I’ve come for,” the voice from the porchway called.
“Tell him I’m busy,” Freya called back.
Ruffstan’s insistence was a repetition over the next minutes. “Only Freya. I only want Freya.” A loud sniff. “Doesn’t she want an average friend anymore?”
“Tell him,” Freya turned to Sosanna, speaking through her teeth, “to come back in an hour. I’m far too busy doctoring a friend. A friend who might die.”
Nervous, probing, careful not to do more damage, Freya, having realised the hole in Tom’s chest was shallow and probably hurt horribly, remained without danger to his life. Freya stitched that too as Sossanna, heaving with sympathy, held the edges of the flesh together. Then Freya applied the three kinds of salve, and finally bandaged the wound thick and firmly.
“Dear Tom were always so proud of that handsome face, but he won’t be so beautiful anymore.” Sossanna paused. “There’ll be a scar on his face, but it’ll add interest, won’t it? Make him look tough.”
Edda, sitting behind, was still watching. “A scar like that?” she said. “Make him look tough and brave. And – interesting. Not as – how you say – elegant, p’rhaps. Not so pretty no more. But grand and strong. He’s just a little chap after all. Now he’ll look bigger.”
Tom was waking. His eyelids fluttered and those thick black lashes opened just a little, as if he tested the awaiting pain, unsure whether to return or not. Freya bent and kissed his cheek below the bandage as she watched Tom’s returning awareness.
Bannox said, “I must carry Master Tom up to his own bed.”
A very faint voice, a little hoarse and quite unlike Tom’s usual arrogance, slipped past his lips, the words blurred. “I shall walk,” whispered his distant voice. “I am not crippled and shall walk to my bed on my own two legs.”
And he did. It took a long time. Staggering single step after step, with both Freya and Bannox dancing around him and steadying from behind, helping from in front and murmuring encouragement, Tom mounted the stairs. Gripping the flimsy balustrade with raw scraped knuckles, he climbed to his own chamber and when a customer or a half-dressed girl appeared along a corridor or tried to pass, Bannox raised one hand. No one passed and everyone waited. Tom went first.
It was later and after a quick half hour with Ruffstan, who had complained bitterly at the haste until she explained her reasons, that Freya knocked on the attic door, murmuring, “Tom, are you awake?” Receiving no answer, she tiptoed in, but Tom was awake and opened his eyes with a vague smile, surely the first that day.
“Well, Symon’s girl,” he said in a hoarse mutter, “do I thank you for my life?”
“We can thank each other.” She knew him lonely, troubled and in pain. She was holding the second cup of willow bark tonic to his lips when she risked asking, “Who was it Tom? A customer? Or someone else?”
He managed to say, “No. Neither. A warning perhaps.”
“Who?”
He swallowed the medicine and leaned back in relief. “Your vile friend Kallivan. He had four men with him. I was out, coming home from the Fat Purse Tavern, and five ruffians jumped me.” His voice improved, gaining strength. “There’s no way of mistaking the white man, vile worm that he is.”
“Retaliation for being barred from our house?”
Tom recovered without reversal and Freya continued to nurse him, dividing her time between the job she loathed, and the doctoring that made her cry once she left Tom’s chamber. Changing blood-soaked bandages had rarely bothered her in the past but treating a close friend touched deeper. Finally the stiches could be cut and removed as the flesh closed and the scars turned fine white like the thin slice of a fresh cut onion ready for a breakfasts salad.
Yet it was some days before she realised why the attack had happened.
Chapter Four
Winter built its walls. The days were chilly, the winds sharp. Nights were longer. Freya lay in bed before dawn, listening to the world waking. She listened to the little slurp, slurp as the river began to rise around the pillar bases, and to the gentle creak of the Bridge and the first shops opening. She heard the faintest murmur of the distant thuds and bumps as a dozen shutters were taken down from a dozen windows, and the crackle and gusts of smoke as the first fires were lit, water set to boil, and oats to cook. A bird began to sing from the trees along the riverbank, a trilling echo as pretty as the sun’s glistening shimmer turning the sky ruddy and ruby, slashed only by cloud and the last blink of a star.
Her shutters were still down, not having raised them the night before. She had been too busy, sharing her hours between work and doctoring. So she lay staring at the new day, knowing already what it would bring. What it always brought. First came the poppy, to bring the breath of hope and the promise of life. Then the customers arrived, each uglier than the last, but poppy dreams were there to carry her away.
Yet there was another possibility, darker than before. A man who hated her had employed ruffians to attack her principal protector. Not dead, thank the gods. But Tom’s injuries left Freya vulnerable. Even the poppy did not leave her deaf to the whispers in her head and she knew this had been either a warning, a threat, or a preparation for the next attack, which would almost certainly include herself. Now, at night, her bedchamber door remained locked.
Halfway across the western ocean towards Shamm, Jak was also awake and listening to the birds. A flock of waking finches stretched, their tiny wing feathers opening outwards, fiery orange from deep brown, brown from fluttering grey, grey from brilliant orange. The puffed feathers of their breasts, deepest sunset orange, twitched with enthusiasm for a new day and a new sky waiting. Lower amongst the thick purple bushes of thorn and berry, the blackbirds were singing, announcing their territory in disdain for the finches. A crow flew overhead but did not stop. It was already on the hunt.
Turning to Symon, Jak yawned and covered his words with the stretch of arms, legs and throat. “Did you get it?”
The smile in answer was enough, and Jak nodded.
They nested, like the birds, in the heavy droop of the bushes, perfumed by the ripening purple berries. But it was escape on their minds. The gorge was as deep as the eagle’s swoop, and the cliff sides w
ere as precipitate as the fall from life to death. They had flown downwards without a scrape to their knees nor a whistle in the wind. But now they were trapped. The gaseous balloons, straining to make their natural flight upwards, were held down beneath the rocks. Once released, they floated up, ready to be caught by those waiting on the cliff tops. Slotting their arms through the laces provided, their own weight would carry these passengers gently down to the bottom of the gorge in safety. But there was neither balloon nor gas strong enough to carry a man back up the cliffs. Once in the gorge, you stayed there.
Others had a method. But it was not a secret shared. Symon and then Jak had searched for the route up and out and had not discovered it.
They stayed down in the bowels of the earth and dug.
For a young lord ill used to farming or shed building, it was hard work on blistered hands and bent back. Jak had often helped the men tending his own lands in Lydiard, and no land there lay prettily flat nor grassily ready for the plough. The cavern’s base was much worse to work – neither softly welcoming mud nor pliable sand.
When Jak remained cheerful, he laughed. “Now I have muscles that parade like arrogant champions. Muscles where no more than a slim sinew existed before.”
But he was not always cheerful, and optimism was the only brace. “Damn these myth-wallowing slavers. They achieve little enough themselves. I shall be out of here soon and prove them as stupid as they surely are.”
The work was unpleasant also to Symon, for he was a fighter and a bruiser, not a man of the soil. But his arms, legs and back were alike to an ox, and he could dig if he wanted to. He did not want to.
“Tis a nonsense, my lord. These fools will drown, I reckon, once they gets close.”
“Depending on how deep the ocean.”
“Goes on forever, I reckon,” Symon decided, leaning on the handle of the huge spade, half-buried in the ground.
No longer needing to whisper, they were surrounded by other men of Eden, a variety of those who had explored this far, been imprisoned, or shipped out for debt.
The Mill Page 4