The Corn

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  “Did Symon not feed you?”

  “Look, missus,” Feep told her carefully, “don’t reckon Symon’d be proper pleased wiv me talking on him, if you understands me. So’s I can’t say wot he is, see? But I reckon I can say wot he isn’t. An wot he isn’t, is me Pa – nor me master, nor me pimp. I does wot I does ‘cos I always dunnit and I don’t know how to do ort else. Symon, well, he lives upstairs. I only knows him ‘cos he knew me Ma. He don’t run the Molly Shop, though he do make a good friend to some of us boys and he don’t like to see us hurt.”

  Freia took a deep breath. “But the man who did this to you should be charged with assault. With cruelty. With immorality. With whatever people get charged with for doing terrible things like this.”

  “Don’t be daft,” said Feep. “Not wishing to be rude, that is.”

  “I am still not altogether clear,” continued Freia, ignoring the warning, while sitting beside the bed where her charge still lay cocooned, “what a molly boy does exactly, but since I am only inexperienced and not daft, I presume it is some form of prostitution. Such places, brothels is the word I believe, are surely regulated. They may not be considered respectable, but I understand they are perfectly legal. You could inform against your attacker.”

  “Not Molly Houses, they ain’t legal,” muttered Feep with a disdainful snort. “Proper stewes is legal all right, but Molly Houses just gets shut down. It’s wot them priest folks says, not that I ever bin to listen, but they reckon it’s wicked. Can’t say I feels wicked – just bloody sore. But them priests and gods and stuff got their own ideas, don’t they? So molly boys get chucked in the pillory, or whupped or plenty worse. ‘Corse, not that Symon would let anyone whup me.”

  “He let you get attacked,” said Freia.

  “Name of the game,” explained Feep with cheerful disdain. “Happens. ‘Sides, he weren’t there.”

  “It mustn’t happen again,” sighed Freia. “Nothing like that could happen again because you’d die at once. I’m beginning to guess what your job entails, and I believe you’ll have to change your career.”

  “An arse is an arse,” nodded Feep. “But not being tight no more after this, well, I won’t get so many customers. No one wants a loose bugger, as it were, pardoning the expression. Sucking don’t pay so well, but apart from me arse, I ain’t got nothing much else going for me. I don’t know how to do naught other.”

  Freia blushed, gulped, and tried to hide it. “You’ll have to stay here, then. You can help me in the shop.”

  “I told him you’d say that,” said the boy, gleeful in spite of persistent pain and restricted movement. “He says how I’d addled me brains. Mind you, that was mighty nice of him, ‘cos usually he says I ain’t got no brains.”

  “Symon?”

  “And he says to ask if you like your place wot he got you,” said Feep. “It’s bloody grand ain’t it?”

  The business was now thriving, and Freia opened her shop nine days within each ten-day. But now it was late evening and she had shut up shop, door locked, and candles snuffed out below. The little kitchen fire continued to heat its simmer of herbal mixtures, the warmth and perfumes rising through the floorboards to the bedchamber above. She sat on the window seat where she liked to curl, watching the slow passage of the river and the busyness of passing trade, with the familiar creak of the barges and cries of their crews, barrels and crates hauled ashore, the eel boats aiming downstream, the lapping of the steady tides and the gulls all eager white hunger in from the sea. The Cornucopia was the essential heart of the city, the cheery, endless flowing lifeblood. Now one of the thin sliced moons was playing a wayward floating reflection on to the water, and a scattering of stars appeared to shimmer across the far bank. Sitting there, half lost in dreams, Freia was only partly aware of what Feep was saying to her. She looked up. “Symon asked? Yes, it’s a beautiful place and I love it. Until now, I have loved him for getting my shop for me. Can I say that? That I loved him? You know what I mean, I hope. But sadly now I have half a doubt about what Symon does for a living. Dogfighting is brutal enough, but selling little boys is terrible wickedness, and I fear I may end up hating him.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  The scarlet Chapel towered over its own reflection in the Corn, and on the days held special in the godly calendar, it glinted with candlelight, and the High-Eden-Priest held ceremonies, preached his favourite sermons, and announced his own special list of sins and virtues.

  High-Eden-Priest Lord Ghorst listed pure chastity, love of the gods, loyalty to your lord and your king, and regular attendance at your church or chapel as the great Eden virtues. “The sins,” he said using his preacher’s voice, “are immodesty, especially amongst women, the disgusting habit of males pairing with other males, brutality and violence unless you fight in the king’s name, insulting the gods, merciless injustice and greed. These will be punished by the gods either during our lives, as with disease or injury, or after death if we manage to escape their anger until then. And long live the king.”

  “There isn’t one,” muttered someone in the vast crimson hall, and his voice echoed.

  “The gods will choose one very soon,” said Lord Ghorst.

  “You mean the council will.”

  The preacher who happened to be on the council, although lower in rank to some preachers of the past, clicked his tongue and decided to ignore the interruption.

  As the congregation rose to their feet, eager to repeat the list of what would now be classed as the best and the worst, at least until the next Holy Day, the chapel flared with the soaring beauty of a thousand beeswax candles reflected against the shimmering windows, the great silk banners and the swinging scarlet curtains. Within the inner sanctum, but back from the elevated royalty, Jak Lydiard stood muttering the correct responses while trying to keep his eyes open. Beside him, his father was booming with hearty piety. Across the aisle to his right and amongst the ladies of the court, his step-mother clutched her little ivory pendant and kept her thoughts to herself.

  “Sambod and Ytack, Wandong and Hosttang and all the lesser gods save us,” muttered Jak, on his knees for the blessing, “from war and turmoil ever again. Bring us a good king who will lead Eden in peace and prosperity. Most of all, I ask you to find the woman I love, and bring her to me.”

  He was aware of his father glaring, eyes red in the soaring lights under the high arches. The three-fold choir drowned out his words. From all across the land, they sought the purest voices, then trained for long years in the chant and the descent. Castrated in order to keep their voices pure, such half-men were much honoured and earned gifts in gold and silver. They spent long days in the Molly Houses but could no longer sing in a chapel if they were caught with their britches down.

  At the very back of the crowded nave and close to the great doors, the golden-eyed apothecary stood for a few minutes, bowing her head to the distant sounds of the choir. The singing echoed, wrenchingly harmonic, from the great vaulted roof beyond. The girl whispered her own brief prayer to Ytack, a god that puzzled her, but, she knew, was his. Obscured by the other women close around her, she could not see through to the sanctum where royalty now prayed for their own wealth and admiration. It did not matter if she saw nothing because he would not be there and if he was, which was inconceivable, she must not think to approach him. It was enough to pray for his safety and his happiness.

  When she opened her eyes, the sudden flare of a thousand votive candles and their pale smoke blinded her. She blinked, pulling her cloak around her shoulders. Then she slipped outside again into the soft padding snow and its strange witch-gleam under the stars. It was only a few steps down to the sluggish river but a very long, long walk to her own little shop where the fire would have died, Feep would be asleep and grunting in his dreams on the downstairs pallet, and the shadows would be cold and unwelcoming. But it was a home she had begun to love. So, breaking precedence, she slipped out early, holding up her skirts from the scrunch and drip of snow and slus
h. She left her footprints behind her, narrow pointed toes imprinted in the white.

  It was as Freia stood by the chapel doors, then turned, and hurried away and out into the snowy night, that Lord Lydiard, standing in a very separate place to his son, looked around hearing the scuffle, and saw the last person in the world he wanted to see.

  “Bloody demonic hell,” he told his wife afterwards. “I saw the bitch Freia. She’s here.”

  “Why call her a bitch?” demanded Lady Lydiard. “Unless you know that’s what she is.”

  His lordship muttered under his breath. “She’s a bitch because she’s a danger to my dearest son,” Godfrey said. “You know the bloody truth, woman, don’t be prissy. She may be a bitch, or she may not, I don’t give a damn. But she has to go. After all my trouble getting rid of her.”

  His disgruntled wife stared back and grunted, “I can’t even see the girl. She’s not here, Godfrey, you’re a fool.”

  Lord Lydiard looked back over his shoulder. “I thought I saw – was it her? Slipping out just before us? So if I’m right, she’s still living here.”

  Lady Lydiard pulled her hood over her neat little headdress, both spattered with snow dust. “Indeed it was, I expect,” she said, her words blown away in the wind. “First there’s the risk of the other lords. Most are slaves to their pricks, and she’s pretty enough. But then there’s Jak of course.”

  “I’ve no interest in anyone else’s adultery. It’s Jak that worries me.”

  “And with the little strumpet tripping in and out of the king’s private chambers, you think Jak wouldn’t meet up with her eventually?” Lady Lydiard’s stopped at the palace’s river entrance. “When you sent the boy back to the old manor, you should have ensured he stayed away a good deal longer. Duties, land, refurbishing the old house, anything.”

  “I tried,” sighed his lordship. “You know I tried. Damnation, finding the wretched hussy living right here in the palace was the only reason I sent Jak back to Lydiard in the first place. But once the king had died, it seemed the chit left as well. I presumed she gone home too. She’d failed in her damned silly medicines it seemed, so I thought the palace authorities would pack her away back to wherever she came from. Perfect indeed. She left, and Jak came back.”

  “But it seems that’s no longer true.” The lady pursed her lips. “You complain about my new friend, Godfrey, but at least he’s on our side.”

  “I don’t like the man,” Lord Lydiard shook his head. “Damned Southerner. Claims to be heir to the throne, and everyone laughs at such arrogant nonsense. I loathe him now, don’t trust him, and don’t want half the court to think me cuckolded.” He stared resolutely ahead. “Besides, that has nothing to do with the present danger. Jak’s back at court. And it seems that the wretched girl lives perilously close.”

  “I’ve had enough, Godfrey,” declared the lady. “Yes, the hussy was there at the back of the abbey – and if Jak sees her there, then you will have to cope with it.”

  “I’ll cope. I always do,” grumbled Lord Lydiard.

  “Cope?” demanded his wife. “You’ve never coped with anything in your long years, unless you shift responsibility or buy poison.”

  “Hush, woman, Keep your stupid squeaking down. The wench left the abbey before us as you saw, and Jak stayed in the chapel. It’s safe.”

  Up the narrow flight of back stairs, with a finger to her lips, she paused, looking back at her husband. “Safe this time.” She puffed into the dark corridor, her shoes echoing on the boards. No torches lit the lesser passageways. “But it’s time you thought of the future, Godfrey.” She found her own doorway, pushing the door open and hurrying inside. The snow frost danced from her shoulders to the rug. “I’ve been helping you with this for long enough. Do you want me to find someone to get rid of her entirely? But since the fault is yours, so the responsibility is yours, and the fear and the risks should be yours. Certainly, the means are yours,” she said, closing the door quickly behind them. “All you lack, Godfrey, is the intelligence to finish with this situation permanently.”

  Back at the chapel, its scarlet reflection flickering more like flames than the word of the gods, Jak sat quite still watching the congregation file out and away. Jak was equally eager to leave, but one thing had delayed him. A sudden burst of Freia’s colour, the surge of brilliance in azure that he had now always associated with love, had dazzled him and he had almost stopped breathing until the High Priest’s drone had interrupted. When he talked of his colours, his father turned and walked away, while Mereck laughed and called him a pickle-brain. But Jak knew the truth of his coloured vision. Usually. This time the blue had disappeared into candlelight and the flashing scarlet of the chapel. He did not entirely lose faith, but he knew well that Freia would never attend a church, especially this one which served the elite, the court, and the rich. She had never believed in any of the gods, and Jak knew she was probably correct.

  Within the little apothecary’s shop, the fire was not quite dead after all, its reflections flung up to the beams, faint crimson flickers across the crowded bunches of herbs hanging there, paper dry and aromatic in the heat. Nor was Feep sleeping. Used to waiting for late night customers in his previous home, now he often sat late into the evenings as Freia sewed or told stories, his head in her lap, all blond curls and eyes closed. Although still too skinny for any self-respecting cherub, he was a pretty boy, and his eyelashes were like pale fuzz tufts on the end of a furred henbane leaf. She liked to coil her fingers into the mopped hair around his forehead, and he would sigh and smile. He called her collection of hanging herbs her own Palace gallows, with crumbling bodies left to rot and swing.

  “Please don’t think of that, horrid boy,” she told him. “It’s cruel.”

  “They hung my old lady,” Feep had explained cheerfully. “I were born in the Island Clink. Don’t remember it of course but I’ve walked past often enough. The stink spills outside, so you don’t want to walk too slow. It’s men and women, and pigs and dogs, them big brown beetles with wavy bits, and more mice than all of them put together. Those that don’t get eat, that is, fer them’s hungry days, wiv no more’n a crust of black bread, and only if you’re strong enough to keep hold of it. I reckon my mother were lucky to get hung. Most of ‘em dies afore they gets as far as the rope. Gaol fever or the pestilence, just starving their flesh away, or killed in fights with rusty nails. I ‘spose I ortta’ ave died too.”

  “It’s amazing that you didn’t,” Freia breathed into the perpetual shadows. No one wasted good candles. “A small baby, in such a place! Did some priest save you?”

  “Symon did,” said Feep, shaking his thatch with a grin. “T’was Symon wot got me out. Outta Whit’s, and outta me ma too. Being in the limboes at the same time, he’d got friendly with me ma, was doing her maybe, though I ain’t never knowed Symon to have a care for proper fucking, not even with his own hand, as it were. Birthed me, he did, and was him as bit the cord in two when the woman as promised to do it was too pissed to help. A few months later me ma were dragged off for the swing. Symon bribed his way free and took me wiv him. He brung me up, in a manner of speaking. He’d promised me ma he would.”

  “Do you know?” asking but hesitant, “Why your mother was sentenced to death? Do they hang poor women for simple things?”

  “Dunno.” Feep shook his curls, then blew upwards to dislodge them from his eyes. “Well – I knows you get the rope fer killing and stuff. Stealing off a lord. Pissing at the palace gates. Nasty stuff wiv a priest. Well, I done that but t’wer the priest’s fault, not me own. Tis him wot ortta be nobbed. But wot me Ma done, well, I dunno. I reckon Symon knows, but I’d sooner not ask. He’s the one as helped me from womb to street, as they says.”

  “But amazing that he kept his word,” murmured Freia with a hiccup.

  “That’s one fing he always does,” smiled Feep. “Symon’s word is like the priests’ list o’ good stuff. Better, I reckon, since them priests is usually too pissed to know
wot they’s saying. Not that I ever goes to chapel, but I sure knows priests. Fact is, if Symon says it, he does it.”

  “He may keep his promises and be true to his word,” Freia looked down and away. “But I cannot admire a man who runs a Molly House and employs children so young to whore with grown men. And you too, after saving your life and bringing you up, he leads you willingly into such cruel pain and degradation.”

  “Ain’t no gradition being dug up,” Feep shook his head and his little blonde curls flopped. “Symon does wot he has to do. Growed up wivout no ma nor pa hisself, and there weren’t no Symon to help him. He don’t judge nor tells ovvers wot they ortta do, so he feels right comfy staying up top over the shop. But Symon rules the Downtown now. He don’t rightly have nort to do wiv the Molly House, part from living there and giving us some coin if we’s broke.”

  She was horrified again. “You mean he buys your – services as well?”

  “Gawd no, missus,” sniggered Feep. “Don’t reckon he even think o’ that. But he reckons on being our friend and does some mighty nice helping us when we meets up. He sure makes a bright share of them profits. Gets a share o’ everyfing wot happens in the Downtown. So he does what he does, just like I does what I can.” Feep shook his head again. “Now don’t go ever telling him I done told you wot he does.”

  “Oh dear,” Freia sighed. “I can’t say I’ve understood a word of what he does. I think I shall be a terrible coward and not think about it for now. And I love you, Feep, and will protect you. You don’t mind me saying that, do you?”

  “I know wot you means,” Feep changed the shake to a nod. “I reckons to say the same ‘bout you.”

  “You and Symon have already changed my whole life, and I’m deeply grateful. But,” Freia added, remembering other less recent concerns, “I am a little bothered that no one ever comes for rent. Symon explained in a way when I moved in, saying the place was mine and I don’t need a lease. He was giving it to me, but I owe him so much. Now I’ve seen some of the palace authorities working and scribing in the building directly behind this one. Do they own this place?”