The Corn

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  Freia pinned up her escaping wisps of hair, clutched the grubby hems of her skirts and walked carefully between the stalls, avoiding mud, offal and the shouting men. But all three intruded, and there was nowhere else to go. Her shoes had worn thin, and the damp squelch of the mud now slipped inside the soles and found her toes through the holes in her stockings. She had nowhere to go and no plans, but she still had her bundle of possessions under her arm, heavy with her mother’s pots and bottles, and her purses tied safely beneath her clothes. She was strangely and consciously happy.

  Wandering, she, recognising the piled herbs her mother had often used in her potions, amused by the juggler and delighted by the young drummer boy and his sister singing, her hand outstretched. On the far edge of the open grass, walled off from where the market square sloped into the shadows, heaped straw bales had closed off a smaller square; a space barricaded and set apart. Around the outskirts, seated on the straw and standing behind it, yelling, jeering, cursing, cheering, frantically wagering and suddenly clapping, a mill of men watched whatever took place within the barriers. Curious at first, Freia peeped through, yet with the crowd ten thick and everyone shoving, she saw nothing. But half smothered by the noise of the eager audience were the sounds of animals fighting; squeals, snarling fury and whimpering. Freia smelled blood.

  At her side, a boy whose head came only to the collar of her cloak and could, therefore, peer beneath the flailing arms of the spectators, said abruptly, “Bugger. The black’s ripped both the yeller’s ears off.”

  Freia looked down on knotted blonde curls. “Are you talking to me?”

  “I s’pose so,” sniffed the boy. “But no one’s forcing you to listen, is they?”

  “So it’s a dog fight then? It sounds repulsive.” Freia stepped back. “How can anyone enjoy watching animals tear each other to pieces? How can anyone spend time training them to do it?”

  The boy appeared to have missed the point and nodded earnestly. “Bloody hard work it is too,” he agreed. “You’d fink they’d be keen ter fight, being as it’s their own hides they’s fighting for. But most of ‘em either wants to scarper quick, or they start chewing on the wrong bloody bones. Mine, most likely. You tries to help, but you gets bit, you gets scratched, and then you sends them into the ring, and the wrong bloody dog beats the other bugger. All that trouble fer nuffing!”

  Freia eyed the child with distaste. “You bet money on this sort of thing? How horrible. How would you like to have your ears ripped off?”

  The boy looked up at her, grinning suddenly. “There’s plenty as risks it – but not me,” he said. “Too little and too skinny. But them fancy wrestlers – well – that’s a business is well worth the watching. I knew a big bloke once had both ears, and his nose bit off by the other bugger. I lost me wager on that bout too.”

  Through the scrummage, Freia saw a momentary scrabble of canine fury as one animal, hackles high, haunches low, raised a stippled ridge of hair along its back, snarled, and sprang. Blood striped its coat, but the fight was not over yet. Freia moved quickly away. “Perhaps, if the poor wretch survives, I could mend it. I help animals live. I don’t enjoy watching them die.”

  “Ain’t no one fixes up fighting dogs,” snorted the boy. “Specially not females, thinking they’ve got dear ickle puppies to cuddle. It'd tear you to shreds.”

  Freia gazed at the urchin with faint contempt and turned away. In such huge and unaccustomed crowds, she felt breathless and confused. She mumbled, “Stupid boy. A maimed and terrified fox is more dangerous than any fighting dog,” though she was not strictly sure if that was true. “I’ve healed foxes with broken legs, and I’ve healed men dying of the pestilence too. There’s nothing worse than that.” She shook her head and walked quickly away. A little light rain had replaced the early drizzle, and now damp cabbages stood in rows on the sloping counter, oozing wet earthy smells of leaf mulch and ox manure. A scalloped awning kept off the worst of the weather, while a sickle of sunshine streaked through the cloud cover and struck the sides of the first little parsnips, polishing their wet skins golden, bare brow- tailed like mice.

  Asking, though not expecting help, Freia said, “Do you know where I might find a bed for the night? A hostel? An inn?”

  He looked from cabbage to girl. “Try a brothel, lass. There’s two on the Corn islands and one on the Bridge. Inns and the like don’t take pretty girls on their own. Likely to cause trouble.”

  She looked across the great noisy square and its busy crowds, children running, couples laughing, well dressed matrons, their starched headdresses gleaming even in the wet. Full baskets, jangling purses. Selling, buying, business done and hurrying home, everyone with a purpose except herself. Freia felt shabby and lost, and for the second time, her confident excitement faded. She tried to scrape the mud from her shoes, but the thin leather soles cracked and began to flake apart. Pulling up her hood, she squeezed through the bustle, wondering where to go next.

  “That’s her,” a high pitched voice squeaked behind and a little below her. “She said as how she would.”

  “Then let her prove it,” said a different voice, far deeper and from some distance above her. He was huge and broad shouldered with a low forehead under a thick tousle of black curls. His eyes were small and red-rimmed as if he had trouble keeping them focused. His nose had surely been broken many times and now spread crooked across the middle of his face, more snout than nose, with two squashed open nostrils as rich in black curls as the top of his head. The yellow brindle dog he was cradling looked very like him, except that it was blonde, and oozing blood.

  Freia said, “I’m sorry.”

  The man stared. “Why? What for?”

  “I mean,” said Freia, for after all it was hypocrisy, and she felt little sympathy for either man or animal, “I’m sorry your dog is hurt, and you lost the fight.”

  “We didn’t,” said the man. “Toby won. But poor little blighter’s in bits. My boy said as how you claimed you could put him back together.”

  “We don’t reckon you can do it,” said the boy happily from his small shadow.

  Freia took a deep breath, pleased for a chance to be useful, although wondering what her fate might be if she failed. “Well, I probably can’t,” she said. “He looks very damaged, poor creature. But I’ll try. Is there somewhere indoors we can take him?”

  The dog’s eyes were bright trusting beads. They looked more aware than its owner’s, but it had no ears. Ragged bleeding sores striped the lean muscled body. Flesh hung in scarlet flaps and the upper lip was torn, gums lacerated. The dog choked as it swallowed its own blood.

  “If, that is, you wasn’t be objecting to where and what, as it were,” pondered the large man. “But being as we won the fight, Toby and me, we’ve good honest coin to pay for the doctoring.”

  The boy looked rough, the man worse. Both wore a strange combination of mismatched clothes and everything almost in rags. It would surely be foolish to go alone to a stranger’s house. Freia asked the boy, “Do you live there too? And your mother?”

  The boy grinned, eyes narrowed. “You’ll come?”

  Her ointments and medicines were in her pack. Homeless in a strange place, a reputation as a healer could be even more useful than money. Yet if the dog died, the reputation would quickly shatter. She looked down at the boy, who had not answered her earlier question. “Do you have a mother waiting at home?”

  “What, me?” He sniggered. “Not ‘xactly.”

  “You’ll be proper safe,” interrupted the man. “I gives my word.”

  As if his word meant something and made everything somehow all right. The dog was gurgling from a ravaged mouth. It didn’t have the energy to whimper. She thought it deserved a chance. Freia followed the man and the boy.

  They led her to the Corn, and stepped, hopping across, from one little island to another, the gurgle of the river looking dark and muddy between. The house they led her to was large, low except in the centre where it rose to a
second floor and jutted out with a terraced balcony looking out over the waves. At the rear, she could see the building rose higher still, three storeys in fact, and a peaked roof with an attic turret. It seemed a grand home for such beggarly souls, but Freia was pleased that this was no slum in some back alley, and she willingly entered.

  Never having visited one of the islands before, she was fascinated at first, but then surprised. Inside, and twinkling at the windows, were many candles and at first, it seemed welcoming. The frontage was wooden, the roof tiled, the jutting upper floors seemed crooked, but the windows were large and contained real glass with brick surrounds. Even the door was well built with huge copper hinges and an even larger copper lock, handle, and knocker.

  As the boy pushed open the doors, Freia was equally impressed for the principal room was well plastered and hung with tapestries and rugs. The floorboards seemed well laid, and there were also rugs on the ground around the great stone slab for the fire. The Freia realised something was wrong. Underneath a steady leaking drip of rain, sat a row of young boys, all staring with interest at the female who had entered. They were not accustomed to females. The small faces, bright-eyed and interested, held two possibilities, and the first, that of an orphanage, was highly unlikely.

  The fire slab was empty as the day was warm, and despite the rain, there was no accompanying chill. It was surprisingly comfortable with a cheerful interior. At the back of the long room, a wooden staircase led up. At the front, the open space was layered in grime overlying the woolsack cushions. Yet a sense of welcome remained. Benches and screens divided one wall into a dozen cubicles, cushioned and bright. Even the ceiling beams were painted bright colours, and along the opposite wall, an ample table held a mass of upturned cups, platters and brimming beer jugs.

  The man laid his dog on one of the cushions and knelt beside it. “Ain’t no harm will come to you here, missus,” the man said, beckoning her over. “I lives upstairs but reckon it’s warmer down here.”

  Ignoring her worries, Freia sat on the straw. The dog bled on to the cushion. “I need more light,” said Freia and the boy, hopping interested behind them, lit a tallow candle stub. “And cloths for bandages.”

  “Go rip a sheet,” the man told the boy over his shoulder. “You got plenty of them.” The boy quickly disappeared upstairs. His movements could be followed by each creak and squeak of the floorboards above. The upper storey sagged down, creating a perilously convex ceiling to the lower, unbalanced by too little overhang of the frontage outside. The urchin came back with an expanse of soiled material and began to tear it into lengths. Freia pulled out her ointments. She had her own needles and thread. The man brought her a bowl of water. Freia, bending over dog and candle, worked for an hour while the dog licked her hands. After she had set a splint to its broken foreleg, washed, stitched and covered all its wounds in salve before bandaging them, she gave it water to drink with half a drop of mandrake tincture dissolved. With a snuffle of pain subsiding combined with utter contentment, the animal slept.

  The man sighed, leaning from his knees back on to his heels, mouth wide over yellow gums. “You,” said the man gruffly, “is a proper fine surgeon, mistress. And how much would I be owing you, then?”

  She had no idea. “Give me what you think it’s worth.”

  “My name’s Symon,” he nodded. “Maybe you won’t be knowing it, not yet anyways, but that there means summit, as it happens, and in these parts, there’s not many what forgets my name once heard. I may not be what you’d call a respectable man but knowing me can prove mighty useful to them as wants the difficult made easy. I gets things done, as it were, and what I wants done, gets done as and when I wants it, being as I waits for no man. So I reckon to give you half our winnings, Toby’s and mine, and that’s fair. But I can do a sight more if you wants it.”

  It was a very fat purse. “I don’t know what you might mean,” said Freia, her hand damp and very squashed from Symon’s effusive gratitude. “What could you do for me?”

  “What you done is mighty impressive, missus, and I don’t impress often, as it were.” Symon squinted through the spit of the guttering candle. “Set you up in a right proper business, I could. Doctoring. Apothics. Medicks. You got a shop already?”

  Freia was immediately dazzled. “No. Not yet. No house. Not even a room. I’ve seen the place I want, and I went this morning to get it and pay too. But they told me to come back another day. I looked raggy, I suppose, and they thought I’d try and cheat them or start an illegal business, but the place belongs to the church, so they just told me to go away.”

  Symon winked, which disconcerted her. “Then I’s the man you needs, mistress,” he told her. “Tis easy done, to get your own shop. Proper ‘spectable premises. That’s what I does, in a manner of speaking. Getting things. Doing things. You helped me, so’s I be ready to help you, mistress, if you wants it.”

  Freia stared up in amazement at the man looming over her. “I can’t imagine anything more perfect,” she gasped, fingers shaking as she wrapped the purse she’d been given within her bundle of potions. “Master Tanner, you are – exceptionally kind. And your son? What’s his name?”

  “He ain’t nobody’s son,” said the man. “And you doesn’t want to know his name. It wouldn’t be proper. He don’t matter.”

  Freia looked down at the blonde head bobbing cheerfully at her waist. “No. I doesn’t matter,” smiled the boy.

  “It’s a wonderful offer,” Freia said, half frightened to believe it. “If you can really find me premises at a reasonable rent, then it would be – a wonder – a miracle. Of course I accept. Either the place by the river that I’ve chosen already – or if that’s not possible, then any other you wish.?” She thought a moment, and carefully added, “I would be most grateful of course, Master Symon, but what I could give in return might be less than you expect. I mean – I could offer no personal favours. And would you – expect – a percentage of any profits?”

  Symon frowned. The frown folded what was visible of his forehead into dark furrows and his eyes narrowed. “I ain’t no respectable man, ‘tis true,” he said, “but when I says to help, then it’s helping I does, missus, and not no thievery nor wanting no personal favours, begging your pardon, which ain’t my trade. I gets you a shop, you does your business and that’s that.”

  “Thank you, you are very, very kind,” Freia mumbled, dazed.

  “It might take a few days,” nodded Symon, with a knowing finger to the massive expanse of his nose. “So where does I find you, once I done set it up?”

  The sleeping dog was snoring through its damaged face and smudges of blood again stained the bandages. “I’ll need to treat those wounds again tomorrow,” Freia said. “So I’ll come back here, if I can find it. But I don’t know this part of the city, and I haven’t got anywhere to sleep yet so I can’t give you my direction.”

  “Well, you surely can’t be staying here,” said the man with a slightly reluctant grin. “Nor upstairs, since I lives there alone. I’ll try and think of sommint. Bissom‘s chandlery mayhaps.” He nudged the boy. “Go ask Legless Alice. Explain nice. Say it’s for a proper respectable female.”

  Freia stared at the heavily bandaged animal whose life she had saved and who had somehow saved her own. That she might be raped or murdered at any time certainly occurred to her, but disaster ran an equal chance with fortune and sometimes fortune had to win. She would not be robbed. What sense to give her a full purse, if only to thieve it back? She clutched her bundle and dreamed of a shop, bright with polished pewter, jars, bottles, and the perfumes of all the herbs she loved. She shut her eyes and saw rows of her mother’s recipes amongst shelves of scales, pestles and bowls, all the equipment of a bustling business with the fire simmering hot and the door opening to a hundred clients. Upstairs, over her own premises: her own bed. And in her own bed, with feather pillows and linen sheets, there would float different dreams, of Jak and kisses and warm, strong arms to hold her safe. She thought
perhaps one of the old gods sometimes smiled after all.

  The next island was tiny, and just one short hop from Alice to Symon. So she stayed five days with Legless Alice, who had two wiry legs of flesh and blood, but who was so addicted to strong beer that they rarely supported her. The old woman slept downstairs on the straw because climbing the steps would no doubt have meant falling and breaking her neck, so Freia had the little truckle bed upstairs to herself, sharing only with the lice, fleas, cockroaches, mice and rats. She occasionally tended the shop and sold candles and tapers, and doctored Symon’s big yellow dog which was frequently carried over by the nameless boy who had first found her and changed her life.

  The old woman spoke rarely. Alice was usually too cupshotten to remember how words worked and when partially sober, the gaps Between her teeth made sound sibilant and almost unrecognisable. Freia cooked her pottage and gave her three pennies for the use of the bed, but rarely understood Legless Alice’s stuttered responses. Freia didn’t press her gratitude. It was to be expected that grand city people would be too busy for her gossip or even to remember her face.

  Within a few days the mutt was breathing freely with a generous dribble of saliva and snot but a clean tongue and bright eyes. Wobbling on three legs and a twig splint, he continued to lick her hands. “Toby never does that to no bugger,” said the boy in admiration. “Toby bites every bugger, ‘cept Symon. Reckon he likes you, missus.”