Firethorn

by Sarah Micklem

  There were other women in the clan’s tents now, other fodder for the men’s gossip. Some lived there and some came and went for a night or so. The Crux tolerated us, knowing that when the troop left the Marchfield for war, most would stay behind. The only woman of the Blood was Sire Farol’s wife, Dame Hartura. Being prone to jealousy and hoping, so I heard, to catch Sire Farol doing something he shouldn’t, she’d persuaded her father to let her accompany his troop from the clan Growan. Sire Farol was crestfallen when she arrived. She kept to his tent with her handmaid and her own cook, except for tourneys, when she could be found under the awnings of Crux, screaming until she was hoarse.

  There were mudwomen too, sheaths like myself. One crept about in a brown rag and never raised her eyes from the ground, and everyone knew she was shared by the men in Sire Erial’s tent, down to the bagboy. I pitied her. Once I offered her some childbane, but she scurried off with a sideways look of distrust and fear and avoided me after. Sire Guasca had found a pretty sheath named Suripanta. She plucked her brows and forehead like one of the Blood, and though she lived in the tent next to ours, she had no use for me once she saw the cut of my clothes and learned I wasn’t from Ramus. I detested her and her wandering eye; she liked to start fights among men who weren’t allowed to touch her. Sometimes at night she screeched at Sire Guasca and we could hear her and the thumps that silenced her. If they quarreled too loudly, the Crux would send his armiger over to bid them be quiet. Sire Pava had a sheath too, for two days of every tennight. She was a whore of some repute, and he couldn’t afford to buy all her favors.

  Since Galan was busy all hours during the day, I was no longer constantly under his eye. I had few duties, and those few I’d taken on myself: tending the fire, making poultices and tisanes to ease the men’s bruises and sore muscles, a bit of cooking and sewing. In the evenings I worked on my dress and a cloak for Fleetfoot with a hood lined in rabbit fur. Galan seemed incurious about how I spent my days, so long as I was in his bed at night. This suited me well, for idleness chafed, and I’d found other occupations.

  I went to the shrines around the king’s hall just after daybreak—to pray, I would have told Galan, had he asked, but he’d already risen, armed, and left for the hills and his exercises. I took Noggin, for Sire Galan couldn’t spare his jacks to go about with me. I felt Ardor had naught to do with me anymore, being the god of that maiden I counted my enemy. But the bones had said otherwise, when last I’d thrown them, so I burned a lock of my hair at Ardor’s shrine.

  After, I found Mai at the shrine of Delve, where she paid her respects every morning.

  “I have some visits to make,” she said. “Would you care to come with me?” She looked me up and down and clucked at my old dress and battered sheepskin cloak. Mai herself wore a gown of gray velvet with split skirts that fell on either side of her great belly, showing a red underdress. Her headcloth was piled high and wrapped with a silver chain. She courted a beating, for there were some armigers in the Marchfield who did not like to see a drudge dress too well—better than an armiger could afford. She said, “A pity your gown isn’t finished. Well, we must make do. Can you be wise, I wonder?

  “What do you mean?”

  “I need you to be wise today. I think it would be best if you kept your lips sewn tight. The less you say, the more you’ll be taken for a sage.”

  “Am I so foolish when I open my mouth?” Indeed, I felt the fool, for longing to see Mai again and forgetting how her teasing was apt to chafe.

  She gave me one of her hard hugs and laughed. “It’s not that you’ re foolish, Coz. But for certain you’re greener than a pintle shoot. It’s been a long time since I was as green as you.”

  There is a world of women that men never see, and Mai was one of the powers in that world. I knew her for a canny—how could I not, when she’d given me the means to bind Galan?—now I saw her ply her trade. And she hardly needed to tell me to keep quiet, for my tongue was in a knot when she took me to the pavilion of a certain dame of Prey, the king’s own clan. We left Noggin, Pinch, and Trave to hunker before the tent while we went in. The dame dismissed her guards and kept her handmaid. Soon we heard the men dicing outside.

  The tent was crowded with heavy, carved furniture of a sort more fitting to a manor than a campaign. No doubt it would all be carted back again when the men left for war and the women of the Blood went home. The dame sat before a table with her face shadowed by a great horned wimple draped with gauze. I could see the tip of her sharp nose and the arch of her nostrils, reddened as if she’d been tippling or sniffling.

  Mai took from her girdle a small wallet, and from the wallet an oilskin packet, which she unfolded on the table with delicacy, despite her swollen fingers, to reveal a handful of shriveled white berries: childbane. Enough for a tennight, at most. She said, “This comes all the way from the spine of the world, the Interminable Mountains. It can’t be found in these parts—it’s precious, very rare.” She gestured at me. “When Firethorn first brought it to me, after a long and arduous journey, I thought of you at once, my dame. “ I was not sure where the Interminable Mountains might be—each of our mountains had its own name, and none went by that one-but I nodded as if she hadn’t just lied uphill and down.

  The dame craned her long neck and looked down her nose to see what lay before her on the table. “What is it?”

  Mai grinned and leaned toward her. She lowered her voice. “Childbane, my dame. It will preserve your figure and your reputation. Once before, you came to me, to make sure that your husband would sleep soundly at night and annoy you no more. But a cold bed grows stale after a while—don’t you think? Now you can find another man to warm you—a comelier man—one who is neither so old nor so fat, one with an upstanding prick instead of a flabby old dangle. And he won’t have to unsheathe before you’ve had your fill, eh? Or make you suck on him instead (though to be sure, a swallow of white blood now and then is good for the complexion). Chew a few of these afterward and never fear your secret will show in a few months.

  The dame’s nose grew even redder, and I blushed myself. I was shocked to hear Mai broach such matters so boldly, so coarsely, as if she spoke to another sheath or a whore, and not a woman of the Blood. I expected the dame to call her guards and have us driven off. And besides, I’d heard talk of pricklickers, but I’d taken it for a jape, a by-name soldiers used to insult each other. Spiller called Noggin one at least twice a day. Mai caught my eye and winked.

  The dame sat demurely with her hands folded on her lap, her eyes downcast. She said, “How much?”

  Mai said, “Five blondes.”

  Five gold coins! I found my mouth gaping and closed it tight.

  Most of the Blood scorn bargaining, which is why they’re easy to cheat unless their servants bargain for them. This dame said, “Give me whatever four will buy. I can afford no more.”

  “A pity,” Mai said, “to give up even a little pleasure.”

  “There’s something else I need of you,” the dame said, and hesitated.

  Mai leaned closer and waited.

  The dame said abruptly, “Can you give me something to make men desire me? A charm, something …”

  “You don’t need one, a fine dame like yourself! There are many as would be willing—Sire Celoso for one. Haven’t you seen him stare? Blink at him and he’ll come running.”

  The dame looked up at Mai for the first time. She’d gazed down at the table before, or to one side or the other, or to the hands in her lap. Daylight coming around the edge of the door flap fell on her face. No starchroot could cover the burning of her cheeks. “It’s Sire Brama I want, and I want him to grovel.”

  I’d never heard of the man, but I recognized the need. It was shameful to see the dame lay bare a thought that should be kept hidden—and to recall I’d done the same not long ago. Mai had a gift for drawing out such secrets, for she appeared to understand any folly without scorning the fool. In truth, she did judge, but she hid it well.


  I looked to the dame’s handmaid, sitting on a stool behind her mistress. She had a hand over her mouth to hide her smile. She looked back at me and her eyes were merry.

  Mai said, “Ah, I see. That’s a different matter. You need a specific. But you say you have no money?”

  “For that I can give another goldhead.”

  “Usually it costs two,” said Mai. “But for you, my dame, I will strive to do my poor best. Can you get a lock of his hair?”

  The dame shook her head.

  “It will be less certain. But I’ll do what I can.”

  After we left the tent, Mai said, “I should have asked for eight; she’s rich enough. One of these blondes is yours, you know.”

  I thought, Only one? I’d found the childbane for her. Yet it was an astonishing fee. She made me rich, even as she made herself richer. I whispered my thanks, and then I asked, “Will you make a binding for the dame?” Perhaps it wasn’t as great a favor as I’d thought when she’d told me how to bind Galan, if she’d do as much for anyone. Still, she’d taught me for free. I wondered why, now that I knew it was her trade.

  She didn’t answer. Instead she said, “Did you hear who she was after? Her stepson, that’s who. She was too young to wed such an old man. Her parents should have chosen better. Sell that to a rumormonger! There’d be a few silverheads in it—now, don’t fret, don’t purse your lips at me! I ’ d hardly sell her secret when it’s worth so much more locked up in my strongbox.” She tapped her forehead. Then she cupped my face in her hand and her fingers dug into my cheeks. “It’s true you held your tongue in there, but you have a very speaking face. I can read you like an omen. You nearly made me laugh. Had you never heard of sucking a prick before?”

  I was abashed, the more so that her men and Noggin were behind us, and could hear what she said. But I’d been puzzling over something, so I whispered to her and she inclined her head to hear me. “Mai, I don’t see how you keep from biting.”

  I was sure she’d mock me for my ignorance, but she just shook her head and looked at me with pity. “You learn fast or get your teeth knocked out, don’t you? You don’t want to end up like those toothless old whores they call sucklers—all gums. Their quims have dried up and they’re good for nothing else.” She laughed, and there was a bitter sound to it. “Now your ears are burning! Stay with me, Coz. I’ll teach you not to blush.”

  After midday, while many were sleeping off their dinners, Mai took me to see some whores of her acquaintance who lived down the market road, in a tent striped red and rose. Trave wanted to come inside; he said he had coin for it. Mai gave him a shove and told him these whores were not for the likes of him. We left the men outside again and went in.

  Seven whores lived in that tent with an old crone and two or three girl children to haul slops and cook and launder—and a pander, who had little to do by my reckoning. When we went in the pander was lying in bed. He got up and pulled hose over his skinny legs and tucked his dangle into a huge leather prickguard that hung to his knees. Mai said, “If only your prick was that long!” and he smiled and said, “Oh, it’s long enough when it stands up, even for a great big woman like you—just try what I can do with it!” And he waggled the prickguard and turned his grin from Mai to me.

  When he’d gone out, Mai sat on one of the beds, which griped under her weight. She asked the whore lying under the covers, “What does he do with it?” and the whore replied, “Not as much as he thinks,” and that set them all to laughing and piling one quip upon another.

  I stood stiffly just inside the doorway. I’d never yet spoken to a whore. A wooden statue of Carnal’s female avatar, Desire, the benefactor of harlots, stood face-to-face with me. She was naked, as always, save for her cap shaped like a foreskin. Her hips were as wide as Mai’s, and her round breasts and the folds of her belly were polished from the hands of the women and their patrons who rubbed her for blessings on their way in and out of the tent. She held her lamp high, casting a golden haze within the dim tent. The daylight that seeped through the striped canvas walls behind her was tinted red. The whites of her eyes were inlaid with mother-of-pearl and her pupils were onyx.

  I owed Desire a debt and I wondered how she would make me pay. I should sacrifice a dove to her before it was too late. But she’d already exacted my homage—hadn’t she?—when she made me so greedy for Galan, when she made us both so greedy that we brawled and battered against each other, stealing the breath from each other’s mouths, until Galan shoved me half over the edge of the cot, and I was hanging on, saying things that shouldn’t be said aloud, and the cot juddered and rocked under us as if it might give way.

  I felt Desire’s touch on my cleft, and the shock of heat from it. She reminded me that she presided here, where whores coupled for coin. She outstared me and I looked away from her.

  Some of the whores were still abed; some sat about clad in sheer under-dresses, breakfasting or applying their paints at tables laden with half-eaten birds, bread crumbs, apples, and walnuts, with wigs, paint pots, powders, mortars and pestles. Their beds were crowded close as the boats moored down in the harbor, each with striped gauze curtains draped from bedposts tall as masts. The curtains, like their clothes, hid very little. The air was ripe with the commingled smells of musk, smoke, sweat, chamber pots, and too many perfumes. And under it all, the stink of the tannery farther down the market road.

  Mai beckoned me and I came a few more steps into the tent. She gave them my name and told them I was Sire Galan’s sheath. Their names were easy to remember, being all flowers, though I was hard put to match the flower to the doxy.

  “Sire Galan?” said one. “Is he the prickmaster who wagered against a maiden’s virtue and won?”

  “I’d like to meet the fool who bet against him,” said another, who went by the name of Corncockle. “He must be easy to cozen if he laid money on a woman’s chastity. Maybe he’ll believe I’m a maiden too.” She sat with her eyes closed and her head tilted back, wearing little more than a sly smile, while a short, wide-bottomed whore brushed her long black hair until it fell straight as rain down her back.

  Rumor must have jumped like a flea from one gossip to the next. How else could Galan’s wager be known here among the whores? And how long before the maid’s father knew?

  “I heard the maiden’s pining away for Sire Galan now that he’s done with her.”

  “That’s because he’s better than other men—they say he has a bone in his prick, that he stands always at the ready. Is it true?”

  They all laughed at my offended expression, and Mai laughed the loudest.

  A towhead harlot—she was called Corona—came up close to me. She touched my eyebrow, saying, “Is your hair truly red like this? Or is there a dye for it?” There was something odd about her. She had lean hips and a bobble in her throat like a man’s. Was she a eunuch? I’d heard tell the whores hadn’t much use for boy children, but some chose to cut the sacs off their baby boys rather than leave them to die on some hillside.

  I said shortly, “I was born with it.”

  “May I see?” she asked, and she tugged at my headcloth.

  I pushed her hand away.

  “Oh, why not?” said Mai. “We’re all women here. Come, sit here and I’ll give your hair a good brushing.” She patted the bed beside her.

  I let myself be coaxed. Mai had tickled my vanity, for my hair was the only beauty on which I prided myself. Besides, to be admired, even by a whore, was better than to be mocked. I sat on the tumbled quilts and took off my headcloth. The bawds came around, cooing and wrapping my curls around their fingers, and I ducked my head and tried not to smile. Mai took up a brush and tugged it through my hair until my scalp stung. “Such tangles!” she said, but soon the brush went freely, and I was as content as a cat having its chin scratched.

  “Your hair is very shiny. Do you wash it with piss?” asked a whore called Cowslip.

  I wrinkled my nose. “Water of maythen is better, and doesn’t stink.”
r />   Cowslip said, “Can you get me some of this maythen?” Her own hair was lank.

  “You’d be better off eating pig knuckles and bone marrow, if you can get them. It will make your hair grow thick.”

  Mai gave me a nudge. “Bring her some of this water, next time we come,” and she yanked my hair for emphasis.

  “Surely,” I said. “I’ ll make some up for you.” Already I knew where to go for maythen, for I’d seen a place on the sea cliff where it spread among rocks, in a carpet. The flowers were dry now, but still smelled sweet when they were trodden, a sign that they kept their strength.

  And so, slowly, we arrived at our purpose. We dawdled so long I’d begun to think Mai visited only as a friend, but these were customers too. She brought out an amulet she’d made for one of the whores. It was in a leather pouch with a thong to go around the neck. Neither said what it was for, but I saw six silverheads (graybeards, the whores called them) go into the purse Mai hid between her breasts.

  Then Mai brought out the childbane and named her price. She boasted that she meant to make the miscarrier go a-begging; not a woman in the Marchfield would have to trust her life to that bloody butcher again, now that a quickening could be stopped before it started. Then Mai swore that childbane grew only on the peak of Barren Mountain, in an ice garden patrolled by bears walking upright and dressed as men, and that I—a renowned greenwoman—had braved wolves and storms and bears and all to pluck the berries from under the very noses of the gods. The tale was riddled with nonsense, and yet the whores didn’t go astray, trusting her. I knew myself that childbane worked, and furthermore that Mai was no mountebank. Hadn’t she given me a potent cure for jealousy?