by Ila Mercer
Yaron did not answer but gave Lita’s fingers a quick squeeze before he bid her farewell. As he left, she caught him studying the room and hall with careful attention.
Lita’s hopes sank. How would he break in to Madam Grist’s house? With bars on the window and locks across the front and back of each door, he had no chance. And even if they did manage to escape, the Hunter would try and find her. Doom Mountain could only be a refuge for so long, before even that became unsafe too.
*
Later in the day, clearly unhappy that she had not managed to reach the right audience for her newest girl, Madam Grist announced to Lita they would attend the theatre.
With the thought of leaving the imprisoning house, Lita’s spirits soared. How hard could it be to slip away from the old Madam, she thought to herself. And then she would run, as fast as her feet could carry her. She would not wait and rely on Yaron to rescue her. She would be her own rescuer.
All afternoon Lita was attended by Biccen, a waif of a girl whose face was so pitted it resembled the rind of an orange. Any other maiden might have bewailed the unsightly blemishes left by the pox, but Biccen didn’t. She told Lita that she counted it one of her life’s greatest blessings for it had delivered her from her painted fate. Her only fault, as far as Lita could see, was that she held Madam Grist in such high esteem. ‘Other Madams cast their girls onto the street soon as they can’t make an earning from them,’ Biccen explained. ‘But Madam Grist kept me on, for I’m good at making up the girls.’
Biccen it turned out was artful in dressing hair. She rinsed Lita’s hair with a sweet-smelling tincture that made Lita’s hair glossy and thick. And then she coiled and pinned it into a simple and yet graceful style. Squinting her eyes, with pins between her teeth, Biccen stepped back to appraise Lita. ‘You don’t want nothing too fussy,’ she said. ‘– just fresh and pretty. Gentlemen prefer first rite girls who don’t look spoilt.’
‘Must I wear that awful white shroud again?’ Lita moaned. She was thinking of the weight of the dress. With all the little seed pearls, it was terribly heavy, and she would need something light if she was to run very far.
Biccen tilted her head and considered. ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘You’ll need something new this evening. Something to dazzle the eye and get the notice of the best gentlemens.’ She marched over to a trunk in the corner of the room and pulled out the most beautiful gowns Lita had ever seen. There were velvet robes in sunset hues, sheer silk shifts, dresses made from embossed linens, shimmering damasks and soft cashmere shawls. All were bold and rich in colour. But at the bottom of the trunk, underneath the other finery, lay a dress as starkly crystalline as frost. Biccen picked it up and reverently slid her palm over the surface of the fabric. Lita held out her hands and Biccen brought it to her.
The dress was light in Lita’s arms, as though made of air. ‘This will do,’ Lita said dismissing the gown at once. She did not care how it looked. She cared only that it not hinder her flight, and she handed it back to Biccen.
Biccen pursed her lips and frowned as she hung the dress carefully over the dressing screen. ‘It will more than do, after it’s been pressed,’ she scolded. ‘But I guess you can’t help your ignorance.’
After Lita was bathed and oiled, Biccen applied a trace of paint to Lita’s lips and eyes. Over her cheeks and brow, she dusted Lita’s skin with a shimmering powder scented with lavender. She fetched the gown, helped Lita to step into it and buttoned the back and sleeves.
It fit Lita snugly around the waist and hips and swelled modestly around breasts Lita had been anxious to hide all week. The wide neck line skimmed just beneath her shoulders and tapered into long fitted sleeves. The skirt however was generous and when Lita moved, the fabric swirled elegantly. The cut of the dress was not unlike the beautiful wool dress Sal had given her.
When Biccen put her in front of a full-length mirror, Lita gasped in astonishment. She hardly recognised the creature in the mirror and then her face crumpled with despair. ‘What have you done?’ she whispered.
Biccen prissed and preened, tucking a stray hair back into Lita’s coiffure. ‘After tonight you’ll be the talk of the town and Madam will have to beat them away from her door with a stick.’
At that moment, Madam Grist slid into the room. She wore a deep blue gown, quite modest for once and only her lips were painted. She nodded approvingly at Lita. ‘You’ve outdone yourself Biccen. Very nice. But we’ll have to do something about that scowl if we want to gain the attentions of a nice young noble.’
This was hardly of concern to Lita for she had decided she must flee as soon as they were out the door. All the same, she pasted a fake smile on her lips and pretended to heed Madam Grist’s advice.
Madam Grist led them down to her parlour and ordered Lita to sit by the fire while she sent Biccen out to fetch a carriage.
‘Now, what about a warming drink before we leave?’ Madam Grist said. ‘You look a little nettled and it will soothe your nerves.’
‘I’m not thirsty,’ Lita replied.
Madam Grist poured a drink from a decanter and stood over Lita. ‘It has cloves and honey in it.’ Madam Grist offered the glass, but Lita shook her head.
With a snarl Madam Grist said, ‘We will not leave before you’ve drunk it.’
Despite her misgivings, Lita took the glass. She did not want to lose her opportunity of escape and after a week of living with Madam Grist, she knew the old woman would not back down once she had set her mind to something.
Lita swallowed the draft in a single gulp. It tasted extremely sweet with a bitter aftertaste. She wondered what gave it the bitterness.
Shortly after she’d drunk the draft Lita noticed an odd sensation in her limbs. Suddenly they felt heavy and when she lifted them, it was like moving through water. Her thoughts too, became dreamy and vague. She peered around the room, wondering where all the other girls had gone. Madam Grist loomed suddenly before her, her teeth ridiculously huge, with giant lips flapping as they squawked something unintelligible. Lita stifled a giggle. She looked down at her fingers and gazed at them in wonder. How was it that she had never noticed what an oddity they were? Like branches of flesh sprouting straight from the palm. And then the Hunter was there, pulling her to her feet, folding his arm snugly around her waist.
From there on, the evening became a blur of sights and sounds. There was the cockling rumble of wheels over cobbles and outside the carriage window, the lights in the street lamps fluttered like fragile wings and then broke free, winding through the silky black in flickerings of blue and gold and green. ‘So pretty,’ she thought, but could not form the words with her mouth.
Outside the theatre, she heard folk murmur and gasp as she alighted from the carriage. They cleared a pathway for her and she knew for a moment what it must feel like to be royalty. The Hunter gripped her tightly, but she did not mind. Without his support she would have fallen over, and she did not want to make a fool of herself in front of such fine folk.
Once they were inside the foyer, the heaviness in her limbs vanished and she felt lighter than air. She was aware of kindly faces smiling and she returned the gesture. So nice, they were all so nice, she thought, and then the Hunter led her and Madam Grist up another flight of stairs. They sat in a box with velvet seats so embracing and soft Lita wanted to curl up and go to sleep, except she couldn’t because Madam Grist kept poking her. Lita turned her eyes to the scene below.
Beneath them sat rows and rows of pretty folk, all turned to face one way. Why were they doing that, she wondered? And then she remembered. She was at the theatre, that’s what folk did at theatre. She had never been to a theatre before, only shows with travelling troubadours. She wondered if it would be any different and then became distracted by the music. She closed her eyes and travelled back in time. In her mind’s eye she and MaKiki had stopped their travel for the day. Hodder grazed nearby and MaKiki was off collecting herbs. Lita lay in a patch of clover, while a nice summer breeze st
roked her skin and dragonflies whirred as the warmth of the sun seeped into her bones. Oh, she was happy again. So happy.
Finding the Key
‘Oy, love,’ a painted lady called. ‘What about it?’ She raised the hem of her skirts to her wrinkled knees, winking lewdly at Yaron.
‘Did you see that?’ Yaron said, turning to Sal.
‘Well how else is a girl to show what she’s got?’ Sal asked, and patting him lightly on the arm added, ‘Pay no heed. We’re nearly there.’
Yaron turned back to glance at the painted lady. ‘You know,’ he said under his breath. ‘I think she’s even older than you.’
Sal shot him a reproving glance and pursed her lips.
They halted in front of the seventh door of a two-story stone building. The paint of every door and sill was blistered and peeling and black mould followed the mortar lines. The building, in fact the whole street, gave off the odour of decay. It was because they were built on reclaimed land, Sal had explained. These streets had once been a swamp, in the years before Yawmouth became a thriving centre of trade.
Sal thumped a green copper knocker and presently an old rake of a man appeared before them. He narrowed his eyes and looked as though he might try to shoo them away but then Sal reached out to clasp his bony hand. ‘Don’t you remember your own daughter?’ she said.
‘Salianna?’ the old man asked, fumbling for something inside his cloak. He drew out a rusted pair of spectacles and perched them on the bridge of his sharp, long nose. Within seconds a wide grin transformed his features. ‘Oh, but you’ve got so full of figure. I’d hardly of recognised you without my specs.’
‘Last time you saw me I were half the girl I am now,’ Sal agreed.
‘I always worried you’d slip down a crack, never to be seen again. But now look at you. Just like your mother, bless her soul. She was a hefty girl and too much woman for a weed such as me. When that miner from Korc came along, I knew I’d lose her for good.’
Sal squeezed her father’s arm.
After the introductions were made between Yaron and Sal’s father, they all went inside. The dreary little front room served as a shop with a few keys and locks displayed on the shelves behind a long dusty counter. Sal’s father pulled aside a faded velvet curtain aside and they entered what appeared to be a workshop.
Hundreds of keys, simple and ornate, lined the walls, flowed from jars and lay scattered across every flat surface. In the corner of the room, a forge glowed with dying embers and on a workbench, strewn between half constructed locks, lay metal rods and sheets, files, hammers and tools that Yaron had never set eyes on before.
Sal’s father swept a pile of keys off three chairs and they clattered to the floor. Sal and Yaron sat down while her father put a kettle on to boil.
When Sal and her father began reminiscing about the old days, Yaron learned a great many things about Sal. For one, he had not known she’d been in the service of the King – in what capacity they did not say, except that it had required her to mix with the most unsavoury sounding characters such as Mad Dog Miley, Finich the pinch and Slider Mengles. Funny, he’d always been under the assumption she was a painted lady before coming to the Downs.
‘And why are you here with the young Senna?’ her father asked.
Sal glanced from Yaron to her father, with a look that said follow my lead. ‘One of our kitchen maids was grabbed by bandits when she went pickin’ in the woods. And we’ve heard they sold her off to a house of paint.’
‘We’ve come to take her back,’ Yaron added.
‘Do you know whose house?’ Sal’s father asked.
‘In Chalky’s Den we heard about a new girl livin’ at Madam Grist’s,’ Sal replied. ‘And she matched the description perfectly.’
Yaron prickled with the memory of Chalky’s Den. A man with half his nose missing had been whetting a knife by the fire. In a huddle in the opposite corner, a scraggly gang of men with knives in their belts, spoke to each other in low voices. And when Yaron tried to order an ale, the bar tender had told him he had no business being there. Sal, on the other hand, had seemed right at home, and found a number of rough looking acquaintances she introduced as friends. In all his life, Yaron had never met folk such as those in Chalky’s Den. They were the sort you might expect to meet in a dark alleyway, or in the dungeons of Lancor city.
‘This morning Yaron went to Madam Grist’s house and found our maiden,’ Sal said. ‘But Madam won’t release her from indenture for anything less than a King’s ransom. So, you see we are stuck.’
Sal’s father scratched his ear and frowned. ‘And you thought your dear old papa, who you haven’t bothered to see in ten years, might give you the key to break into Madam Grist’s establishment.’ He shook his head. ‘I have a reputation to uphold Sal, and nobody would come to me no more if it got I was giving keys away willy-nilly. One lock. One Key. That’s my policy.’
Sal glanced shrewdly round the room. ‘Is that so father? So where are all them locks for each of them keys? In a hole under the floorboards?’ Her father squirmed under her glare. ‘Did you install Madam Grist’s locks for her?’
‘I might of,’ her father answered.
‘And you made a copy of her keys?’
‘I thought at the time, it would be good insurance for her. In case she ever lost her set.’
‘And Madam Grist knows about the second set?’
Sal’s father scratched both ears now, and a look of worry settled into his features. ‘I didn’t think to bother her with the detail.’
‘In the same way you don’t bother to tell your other customers?’
‘Oh pullock!’ he grunted with annoyance. ‘You have me. But so what if I make extra sets of keys? It’s not like I sell them to anyone.’
Sal raised one brow. ‘Papa? You’re not still doing it, are you?’
‘What? ‘Yaron said, with shock plain upon his face. ‘He’s not a thief, is he?’
‘No. Worse in many ways,’ Sal answered. ‘Because it’s indecent.’
‘I never harm nobody,’ Sal’s father said.
‘You silly old coot,’ Sal sighed. ‘I’d hoped you were past all that. You know it’s only a matter of time before you get caught?’
‘I wish you’d fill me in,’ Yaron said. ‘I’m starting to imagine all sorts of terrible things.’
Sal shrugged. ‘You tell him Papa.’
Sal’s father crossed his arms and stared at a point over their heads. For a moment he looked as though he might refuse to say anything but then expelled his breath. In a low mumble he said, ‘I like to go into folks houses when they’re sleeping. But not in their bedrooms,’ he added hastily. ‘I know that wouldn’t be right.’
‘Whatever for?’ Yaron asked, feeling a little shocked.
Sal’s father shook his head. ‘I don’t know really. Just to see how they live. What they have. To imagine what their lives might be like.’
‘It’s why our mama up and left him all those years ago. And we girls with her. It was shortly after that I came into the service of the King. Then I returned to Yawmouth and met up with my papa again. For a time there, he stopped sneaking into folk’s homes, didn’t you papa?’
He nodded.
‘I’ve tried to stop,’ he moaned. ‘But when you left, it came on me worse and worse… until I couldn’t help meself.’
‘Will you assist us then?’ Yaron said, slightly repulsed, but also wanting to get to the point of their visit.
‘I would if I could. You see, I don’t know where Madam Grist’s keys are,’ and noting the crestfallen expression on Yaron’s face added, ‘Don’t get me wrong, they’re here, somewhere. It’s just I don’t keep them in any particular order. It’s the only way I can stop myself from going out every night.’ He explained further. ‘It’s only when I manage to match a key to my records for its particular lock that I know whose house it belongs to.’
‘Heaven’s’ Sal exclaimed. ‘It’ll be like finding a flea in a rug.’
>
‘We’ll never get her in time,’ Yaron said. He had promised Lita that they would get her before she was made to go through with her first rite and now, he feared he might not be able to deliver his promise. There had to be another way.
‘Why don’t you go back to the painted quarters and see what you can find out about Madam Grist’s plans for Lita,’ Sal said kindly. ‘Finding them keys is a task for two. Any more than that and we’d get ourselves in a right muddle.’
Shortly thereafter, Yaron left Sal and her father to sort through the thousands of keys. He wound his way through the gloomy streets whistling quietly through his teeth. Though it was three in the afternoon, a heavy, coiling fog had rolled through the quarter and a lamplighter was busily igniting the wicks. Yaron pulled his cloak tighter around his shoulders and jammed his hat over his ears. He strode past taverns, putters and merchant trading houses and became quite lost after a while. The fog had muddled his bearings so that he could not even retrace his steps. He thought about catching a carriage when he spied a tall man with a flowing ginger beard less than three paces away. Yaron almost laughed for he’d only just been thinking of the fellow.
Under the awning of a putter’s shop, Captain Wright argued quietly with another. Yaron caught a little of their exchange and it sounded as though they were talking about a ship. ‘Captain?’ Yaron called.
The man stopped arguing with his companion and turned. Recognition dawned on his features. ‘Yaron, isn’t it?’
Yaron immediately strode forward and clasped Captain Wright’s hand, giving it a firm shake. ‘What a remarkable coincidence,’ he said but then stopped himself short. He was about to tell Captain Wright about his endeavour to save Lita from Madam Grist but then thought better of it. There was no telling who Captain Wright’s companion was and where his sympathies lay. ‘What business brings you to Yawmouth?’ he asked instead.
‘Nothing of consequence,’ Captain Wright replied and then turning to his companion said, ‘Think about my offer and I’ll come by at first light.’