The Corn

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  “Symon’s orfority,” said Feep. “You don’t pay nuffing. No part share o’ profits nor no other stuff. Symon arranged it.”

  “Legally?” persisted Freia.

  “Don’t be daft,” said the boy.

  “I never signed a document,” Freia insisted. “What if the palace officials ask me for proof?”

  “’Twas top dog at the palace wot give it to Symon fer Symon ter give to you, lady.”

  “But Symon’s power, however grand you hint it is, can hardly outweigh the Kings’?” Freia said.

  “Fer a start, there ain’t no king. And there be some fings what some people don’t like to have knowed,” said Feep patiently. “And them’s just the fings what Symon likes to know. If you understand me. Them in orfority is them as does the worst. Kings and palaces, chapels and priests,” added the boy, “it were a priest did this to me. I won’t name no names, so don’t ask. They get nasty, see? ‘Cos it’s sinful to want to do wot they wants to do, and that makes them proper angry. Won’t blame theirselves. So they blames me. Me being the tempting wot causes the sin. That’s part of the game too.”

  Sighing, Freia stared into the little fire still sparking although dying low. “Then there’s Bembitt. He’s a really disgusting person, but I think he works at the palace and he’s blackmailing me. So it’s the same as you’re saying only the other way around.”

  Standing up in a hurry, jogging from one foot to the other, Feep glared and said, “You show me the creep, lady and I reckons I’ll scare the bugger off. Ain’t no bastard gonna scare my lady.” He raised both fists, then looked suddenly back down at Freia. “Wot you done fer blacking, then? You never does nuffing bad.”

  “Actually, I didn’t.” Freia tried to smile. “But if Bembitt tells the palace authorities that I stole something, even though I didn’t, they’ll believe him, won’t they!”

  “Bembitt?” Feep queried. Freia nodded.

  Torches blazed suddenly in the street as the Watch, hoods up, passed below. The night was quiet, and they moved on, flames gusting in the wheeze of wind. Freia watched them go and nodded. “Yes, I understand. It seems that everything is right with the world. But underneath, where the Watch does not watch, life is bleak and sometimes terrible. I know about that too.”

  “They reckon our gods is the ones who decides. But tis often them sniffy gods wot does the worst. I got piles as well,” continued Feep. “But I ain’t complainin’. Comes wiv the job. If they’s still there after this, that is. If they is, and when everyfing else gets a deal better and closed up where it’s s’posed to close up, you might have somefing for that too.”

  Freia stared into the darkness, thinking of plague and pestilence, brutal murder on the town square and the world of horror which she had thought, absurdly, to have escaped. “I have a special, very soothing ointment for haemorrhoids,” she said vaguely. “I believe soldiers suffer from them too.”

  “Good. I’ve bin and come to the right place, then,” said Feep.

  Freia got her bed back after three ten-days and Feep slept on a pallet under the counter downstairs. He didn’t mind and said it was warmer down there. He limped a little for some time, but after that he was better, he said, than he had ever been for nine years at least, or whatever age he might possibly be, of which he was not entirely sure. She bought him a suit of worsted and a russet felt cap. Having spent most of his life half dressed, these warm and smart clothes were a new delight for Feep, who was immediately proud. Life seemed somehow brighter, and unwanted memories receded.

  Once the ecclesiastical clerks and the occasional cleaner next door had drifted away as dark fell each evening, there were the ravens, the gulls, and the occasional robin, bright-eyed and crimson breasted against the snow. An unpaved alleyway at one side, serving as an outlet from the higher ground for refuse aiming for the river and flushed by the raykers and the rain, was lined with cellars and storage chambers, pitch before and flax behind. Directly behind stood a crumbling wattle and clay frontage in-filled with brick and crammed its two storeys of tiny rooms onto larger and darker chambers at the back, owning the yard which could be used as temporary stabling. Yet although often opened to a sudden scurry of liveried officials, scriveners, scribes or acolytes sent to research past dues and land conflicts, the chambers housed only scrolls, papers and the records of many years, mouse nibbled and damp stained, overflowed their shelves. The ink pots had dried, and the quills stubbed and broken. Freia was never asked for rent.

  It was often the truly rich who came, sometimes themselves, curious to see the girl who understood medicine. Usually, it was a servant sent to buy something for her ladyship’s rheumatics, a child’s split knee, or the lord’s sudden diarrhoea after a night’s feasting. Matrons, “A girl? And so young. Are girls permitted to speak of such matters?” Doctors; “Do you know what you’re doing, girl? Treacle is a dangerous substance, not to be left in the hands of the ignorant and foolhardy.” Surgeons; “You’ll make up my own recipe exactly as I explain it, mistress, no more nor less nor one grain of chicken shit too little. I’ll not be trusting some nonsense mixture of your own.” The younger courtiers, or sons of courtiers; “Keep your potions. One sweet kiss is all the medicine I need from you, mistress.” But when she was asked to prescribe for the muscle spasms suffered by one of the king’s favourite horses, the assistant cook’s headache, the High priest’s constipation or a suspected rupture of the spleen, her cures were found to be quick and functional.

  The local midwives also came. Freia’s herbal mixtures could ease the terrible pains of birth and hasten labour. Promoting contractions in the heavily pregnant with a paste of juniper berries dissolved in a purge of mineral salts, could also be adapted for expelling a foetus still unformed, and, being usually bastard conceived, unwanted. It could be dangerous to sell a mixture used for abortion, but since it served also as a blessing and could be disguised as a medicine for a pregnancy past its prime, then there was little risk.

  There were other risks. “She won’t come herself,” said the girl, fumbling with her fingers. “And I’ve been forbidden to say who my lady is. But I’ve to ask if you supply charms. You know. Love potions.”

  “Love potions don’t work,” Freia told her. “And I’ll not have some befuddled lord accuse me of poisoning by sorcery. So what exactly does your mistress want?”

  “Nothing,” said the girl at once. “Not yet. She was just asking, to find out if you make charms. She’s curious. Only curious. I’m to go back and tell her what sort of potions you make.”

  “Medicines,” said Freia, steady-eyed. “Curatives. That’s all.” There was far worse on the top shelf where her mother’s more secret bottles sat, but they were hidden in shadow and were not for sale.

  So gradually, too busy for loneliness and too successful to be unhappy, Freia was also too tired once she closed up shop for anything other than a little food and then deep sleep. She dreamed, but that was the only time memories dared haunt.

  Feep changed everything. But other changes came too, and one, in particular, was considerably less welcome than the boy.

  Chapter Seventeen

  It was during the short winter days when Freia went out for supplies, that Feep learned to watch the shop and to sell what was already prepared and labelled. Still too weak to accompany her, Feep instead proved himself adept at selling, promoting and prescribing. He could not read, but quickly remembered and recognised which was meant for what.

  Feep was alone in the shop when Bembitt returned to collect his dues.

  “Where’s the female?” he demanded.

  Feep had learned how to serve a customer but had not yet mastered the skills of being polite. “Reckon you ain’t looking to buy naught if you talks about my lady that way,” he said, hands in the side pockets of his britches. “Anyways, she’s out.”

  “I’ve an official authority, signed and sealed,” Bembitt said, seemingly proud of holding anything remotely official. In one hand he was clutching a scroll of thick p
aper, rolled and sealed in wax. He waved this in Feep’s face. “Tell your mistress, when she returns, that I need to see her in the office directly behind this building. The ground floor window looks out onto the back alley known as Cooper’s Lane. I shall be there and expect her to come immediately.”

  With a growing suspicion as to who this was, Feep demanded, “Wot’s yer name, then, mister?”

  But Bembitt smiled with malice. “That’s none of your business, brat. Tell your mistress that her partner needs to see her.”

  The small office was crammed in behind Freia’s shop and new home, gazing over the lane at the same courtyard. Part timbered, it was another tall, thin building of little rooms and damp corridors without ventilation. Inside was a squashed study with one large desk and three walls lined with shelves, each shelf stuffed with scrolls. The parchments were disordered, unloved and uncurling in disarray. There was a smell of dust. The desk was covered in ink stains and hardened blobs of old sealing wax. Behind it sat neither priest nor deacon, but a thin man with both bowed legs in black woollen stockings, wrinkling loose at the knees, showing off piked shoes, toes badly stiffened and curling upwards like small tentative accusations.

  Above the protruding legs and above the slab of desk, Bembitt regarded his visitor, and smiled with smug satisfaction.

  “No,” he said, “it is not a coincidence. It’s a ten-day I’ve worked here, a placement I discovered when I started examining your rights and titles – or lack of them – to this property. So now, madam apothecary, I have the greatest pleasure in telling you that you can leave. Get out. In other words, you have no legal permission to stay here, rent free and without a lease to your name.” He leaned forward across the desk and leered. “Although I’m always open to bargains. I move into your home and share your bed each night, and I’ll legalise our joint right to the property.”

  Forgetting every word she had mentally prepared, Freia clutched her purse tightly to her chest and glared. “As far as I know, I have a legal right here, and the business is mine. I can find out the rights and any wrongs within a ten-day or less. And you’ll never enter my bed. Never. You won’t even breathe anywhere near it. And besides, you were a valet. What are you doing here now?”

  Bembitt smiled as widely as her disgust allowed him. “As for myself, my credentials are – impressive. And I knew you’d make something of yourself, too. A pretty girl can always bed her way into favour.” He crossed his ankles, which made his shoe points wobble. “And more, I knew you’d cured that other little slut’s warts, and a wretched variety of ailments amongst the scullions. Obviously, you had some skill with medicines. Your reputation flourished, even when there was no more laundry maid around to be rewarded.”

  With no mention of being chased for the king’s murder, Freia was partially relieved. She had naturally treated many of the other servants for minor ailments, but that alone wasn’t likely to save her from the ultimate accusation. “I left when the king died,” she said carefully. “But I wasn’t dismissed.” She thought a moment. “Were you dismissed. Why are you working here?”

  “Not your business, laundry girl,” said Bembitt, “What is more to the point is the accusation of stealing the king’s purse, and how I can help you now. I can, of course. For certain considerations and under specified circumstances. I’m sure you realise that exactly what you say and do now will either deprive you permanently of your business or enable you to keep it. I can arrange both. For whim – or – profit. You owe me the first ten-day half profit anyway. So, pay me that, and then we’ll discuss an increase.”

  She would have loved to throw the inkpot. “I have papers,” she said, producing them, neatly folded, from her purse. “I presume you can read? Here. These state that I’m the legal owner of this building in its entirety, including the business on the ground floor, with a right to full use of the stable courtyard standing adjacent. So look. You can’t bribe me, blackmail me or bully me.”

  The papers were not legal at all, but it hardly mattered because Bembitt did not even look at them. “So you know someone who can falsify and defraud. That’s a serious offence. But as it happens, I can falsify and defraud too, and I’m also very good at it.”

  Freia took her papers back. “I’ll show these to someone else, then. To your superiors.”

  “Who have no interest in you whatever,” said Bembitt. “It has all been left in my hands. You see, I’ve discovered you obtained the building originally by threats and blackmail concerning the previous priest of the lower parish, who sadly fostered certain unnatural vices which he could not permit to be publicly known. The present chapel authority, a god-fearing man who despises that priest, now forcibly retired, and the reason for your tenancy. But to avoid scandal, he’s agreed to let me deal with the matter, quietly if possible. So you have a simple choice.”

  “To deal with yet another man’s unnatural vices?”

  “Oh, my vices are perfectly natural, I assure you,” smiled Bembitt. “But for the time being, I’m more interested in a business partnership. I have my own apartments here and my own position to preserve. Indeed, I am already deeply involved in – other matters, let us say – which are of far greater importance and offer far greater rewards, should they continue and expand as I intend. You can keep your bed and your frigid little charms for the moment. If I ever decide to swive you, then I’ll go about it as and when I’m ready. In the meantime, your business seems remarkably prosperous. One day I might even decide to marry you.”

  Freia was shivering, though the room was stuffy. “I’d as soon marry a worm.”

  “Miserable words of failure,” snorted Bembitt. “Only the vanquished hurl childish insults. Calm yourself, behave like the respectable woman you are pretending to be, and come back and see me here tomorrow. I shall have our papers drawn up, perfectly legally for once. I’ll even approach the Parish delegation to the High Council for official membership. I might need to invent some more qualifications to impress them, but that’s no problem. You see, you should be thanking me.”

  Sitting, almost breathless, on her own cushioned couch back at home, Freia explained to Feep. “I never knew how Symon managed to get me this business, and I admit I was naive. Now I think I understand. He blackmailed the actual owners, being the chapel hierarchy of some sort, and in exchange for his silence, I got the shop. But no legal papers, of course, so Symon got this scroll of authority forged. I’m here, but I’m not legal. That damned horrible little worm found it all out. I’d wager he got thrown from the palace and was homeless and penniless, so decided to get work another way.”

  “Wot’s ‘ee doing wiv the church, then?” Feep demanded.

  “So he must be as illegal as me.”

  “I’s gonna see Symon,” Feep decided.

  Freia put out a hand. “You’re still weak, my dear boy. You’ve not left this building for days. At least wait until tomorrow morning.”

  “But they distrust you,” frowned her ladyship. “Father and son both.”

  The thin man stood with his back to her as he gazed from the window across the shrubbery to the river’s glimmer beyond. “Why should I care for their opinion?” he spoke to the window mullions. “Why should I trust anyone, or wish to be trusted in return? Your husband is a vulgar buffoon. But I have considerable knowledge of how his domain is entailed. There are few restrictions and only the manor house, and its immediate grounds can be denied to you. He has neither nephews nor cousins, and only that overblown son. Once his tedious whelp is gone, then you will be the beneficiary in law.”

  “But I have informed Godfrey,” Lady Lydiard said briskly, staring at her lover’s back, “that this unappealing brat of his is no longer my concern.”

  “Then you are unwise, Valeria,” he told her, without turning. “The brat is indeed our principal concern.

  She sat, a little hunched, on the cushioned settle as the slanting remains of the daylight filtered through the window, turning her cheeks a sallow wintry green. “But Jak’s death
ensures nothing if Godfrey sells the land not already entailed. He’s neither royalty nor wealthy merchant and might decide that without an heir, he’d best take the value in coin. He might draw up another testament. Or add spiteful codicils.”

  The thin man turned at last. He paused, as if summoning patience, and finally said, “You will continue to help your husband, madam, in keeping your step-son unmarried. A man wed, and ready to sire whelps of his own, would simply cause further barriers. Eradicating one is no problem. Two are more difficult to arrange. Eliminating three can only arouse suspicion.”

  Lady Lydiard also paused. She blinked, staring instead into her lap. “Is that what you want me for then, sir? The inheritance, and nothing more?”

  “You were not born into the right shape to tempt me, my dear, and you know this.” The gentleman smiled. He appeared calm, even complacent, but his clasped fingers twitched. The smile did not reach his eyes. “But as long as you accept my specific whims and desires – let us call them failings – then I am prepared to accept yours.”

  She shook her head, the little white headdress bobbing. “So some added comfort is always a pleasure, my love, is that what you mean? Very well. As we both accept that your somewhat bizarre desires are very close to those I also nurture, neither of us should complain. I do not.”

  Sir Kallivan frowned. “The law, madam, regarding inheritance, is one of my particular interests. I am heir to the throne.” He suddenly looked down at her, his frown increasing to anger. “You, therefore, know quite well, that when I inform you of your own rights, small though they be, I am telling you as any lawyer would. My interest, however, is small. Whatever you may inherit is small compared to my own claim, which is closer each day. The information I pass on to you, Valeria, is purely a matter of considerable kindness. We share a bed. You are neither young nor beautiful. Your waist exceeds the width of your breasts. I will never love you, Valeria. But we share – the attraction – to other matters. We can, therefore, enjoy each other’s night-time predilections. And I can be kind in return.”