The Corn

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  But this time I did not sleep on a pallet at the foot of the bed, nor stayed curled in the big chair. It was deep into the night when Jesha showed me to a secondary bedchamber, tucked away at the back of the third floor where the walls, protruding out into the street above the lower structures of the building, creaked all night in the wind like a barge caught in the river currents. It was a lullaby I welcomed. Before the first light of morning, she brought me ale and bread and begged me to come quickly. The dawn was still barely flushing the sky through the unshuttered window.

  “I have dismissed the servants for the day,” Jesha whispered. “I will do anything you need myself, and privacy is best. My husband understands. He has gone to stay with his mother. I think my lord is a little better, but he is in great pain.”

  But it was exhaustion that gave the appearance of peace. And he was never going to recover. “I can give him a little more poppy drink,” I said, “but I have no other antidotes, for there are none. If I give more foxglove juice, it will kill him.”

  The rash had not subsided. It was spreading across his chest and up into the merged layers of his neck and chin. Where his mouth had been wet with a froth of saliva, now his lips oozed blood and formed protuberant scabs like calluses. His voice was dry rasping, an effort of speech, but he was clear-sighted and awake. “I cannot swallow,” he stuttered. “But the thirst is terrible. I must drink.”

  Jesha held a bowl of milk for him. He had already refused the morning beer. “Milk will further coat the tongue. Boiled water would be better,” I said. “At what hour does the delivery come?”

  “The water-carrier has already been,” she said. “I’ve mixed water with the sheep’s milk and warmed it. That’s what my mother always gave me when I was young.”

  Lord Lydiard was drinking greedily with a burning thirst, but it gushed from his mouth, and he choked and spluttered as he tried to swallow. “Drink slowly,” I ordered, “and only water.” I saw that his hands, podgy fat fingers and yellowing nails, were already paralysed into claws and he could not hold his own cup. His lower eyelids were bruised, almost black. “And open the shutters,” I ordered. “We need light. This is not a pestilence where sunlight will be agony. This endless darkness is like a funeral.”

  Undiplomatic words, and Jesha started to cry again. “Damned women,” spat Lord Lydiard, finding lubrication enough for his irritation. “I’ve been surrounded by them all my life. A plague of them. My mother loved animals more than me. I doubt she loved me at all. She was a bitch and her mother before her. Wives and lovers. Even a witch of a daughter.”

  I laughed and said, “Be thankful for it. Considering you took long enough to acknowledge me.”

  “That was your mother’s idea, not mine,” said Lord Lydiard, looking up at me suddenly, the glint of malice clear amongst the bruises. “She used me. She wanted a child. I loved her. She never loved me.”

  I said, “You don’t understand love. What you felt was lust. I’m glad she wanted a child and not a husband.” I was cooking the poppy syrup over the low fire in the hearth. The thin rising smoke was straight as an arrow, up to the rafters.

  “I love my son,” sighed Lord Lydiard. “Though I doubt he loves me either. But at least I know there’s a good man to carry on the title.”

  I only realised it then. Jak, wherever he was, and without knowing, was about to become High-Eden Lord Lydiard. I paused, looked the dying man in the eyes unblinking, and said, “Where is he?”

  But he looked away. “I’m dying with a yoke of sin around my shoulders. Avarice and lust, anger and envy. Murder. Oh, don’t purse your lips and look prim. I don’t regret any of it, and murder least of all. But I won’t die leaving you to run off and corrupt my son. I know women. I know how they lead men astray. You’d lie with him and never tell him he’s your own brother. I won’t risk that. He’s a good boy. Leave him alone.”

  I nearly slapped the old fool. Instead, “I didn’t sell this poison to you or your wife,” I said calmly. “It’s you who die burdened with vice and guilt, not me. I love Jak. I wouldn’t do anything to hurt him.”

  “I bought from another,” sighed Lord Lydiard. His voice was cracked and rasping, one moment dry and gruff, then spluttering brown dribble which he could not swallow. I reached across reluctantly and washed the sweat from his face and the spittle from his chin. “But there are many dealers in the city,” he said suddenly, staring back at me. “Valeria’s lover knows how to bring death. The man is filth, pale as curdled milk and virulent as the dysentery. He bleaches away life with his fucking evil. I once met another creature like that, the colour of maggots, and the brain of a maggot too. I knew him as a child and chased him from my lands. Now he’s back to haunt me. He and Valeria will try and steal from me when I’m gone, but I’m no fool. Matters are already arranged, and only Jak will inherit.” Lord Lydiard paused, almost choking.

  I whispered, suddenly interested, “Are they related? What are their names?”

  Closing his eyes in pain, my father now managed to croak the names, but not much more. Kallivan – sir – Valeria’s lover. Wants to be – king. What – a joke. The other? So long ago. A brat. Stealing. Hunting licene. Thribb I think. Not from Lydiard.”

  “If this is the end indeed,” whispered Jesha from her own far shadows, “then I must call the priest. You cannot die with this weight of unshriven sin, my love.”

  Lord Lydiard looked across at her, then back at me. “It’s true then? You can’t save me?”

  “I believe you’re dying,” I said into the echo of the pause. “I came too late to turn back the inevitable. But it will be a slow death. There’s time yet for absolution.”

  All morning he lay there with Jesha clutching at his hands, while the poison ate its path within the lolling body and the pain grew worse. He still spoke sometimes, but it became increasingly hard to understand. His tongue swelled, his throat pulsed virulent scarlet lumps, and the drink he craved he could take only in tiny sips. His eyes shrank, the whites shrivelling into sepia, crimson rimmed, all gaping black pupil in a frame of petrified blood and puss. The rash across his chest moved up over the lower part of his face, further attacking mouth and nostrils until he could not close his lips, which split and bled and splayed back from his gums so his mouth was all blood and salt, further ravaging his thirst. I gave cups of willow bark, then of the strongest poppy. Jesha held the cup to his lips, but he could sip only sometimes.

  Then, as he stared at me in horror, the whole mass of him began to solidify. He was paralysed.

  “Now, truly, you are dying,” I said. “You must decide when to send for your priest. When he comes, I will leave.” There was nothing more I could do. My mother’s poisons did not easily surrender their intended victims.

  My father could no longer speak, and the distortions of mouth and face and eyes were all stone in an agony of realisation. I pitied Jesha. Her sobbing was a distraction, all helpless misery that made her useless to me as a servant. So I did it all myself, and washed the bloody froth from the man’s face, pressed his staring, terrified eyes closed, and dripped water against his bursting tongue. He still breathed, still conscious, though it was a great effort and a throbbing, desperate heartbeat.

  “Listen carefully,” I said. “I can give more opium poppy now. It will kill you. But you are dying anyway. The opium will kill quickly and free you from pain. The poppy brings sleep, and then death during sleep. Squeeze my hand if you want release.”

  He squeezed. He had the strength still to do that, and he squeezed until I thought he would crush my fingers. “Get your priest,” I told Jesha, shaking her. “Hurry. “I’ll give the opium when I hear you returning, but then I have to leave. For God’s sake, don’t tell the priest about me. I’d lose my business and perhaps my life too. Now hurry.”

  I had mixed mandrake root with the opium and held a little now, spread on a rag, beneath Lord Lydiard’s nose. It calmed him and lessened his suffering. When Jesha had gone, running down the stairs as if the ho
unds of hell were after her, grappling with her headdress as she tumbled out of the door, I sat there, holding the cloth and talking my father out of this world and into the next.

  His eyes, closed now, could no longer open but I knew he heard me. “Your priest will shrive you,” I said, clear and direct to his ear, “but I will give you a last gift, since you are my father and gave me life, even though it is a life I do not always want.” The afternoon sunshine now lit the room and the bed and the body on it like a pool of golden ripples, brighter than any goldsmiths. “There will be no pain,” I promised, “and no more fear. The poppy death brings peace.” He twitched a little, as if desperate to speak. But he was no longer able even to squeeze my hand. He was twisted into immovable, conscious stone. All I could hear in the shifting sunbeams and the little flurries of rising dust was the erratic pounding of his heart and the guttural wheezing of his breath. I continued. “My mother told me this many times. You loved her once, so you should believe what she believed. She said dying was the most beautiful adventure of all.”

  When I heard the grating of Jesha’s key in the lock downstairs, then I took up the opium drink I had mixed and slid the liquid on to his lips and tongue. I watched the petrified muscles relax a little and the flushed skin fade. I told him, “Very soon you will begin to fly. Let the breezes take you.”

  I stood at once, pulling on my cloak and bringing it over my hair to partially hide my face. I went back briefly to the bed and leaned over. I removed the opium rag and put it back into my pack with the other medicines I had brought.

  I hurried down the stairs, passing Jesha and the priest on their way up. I must have looked like a servant and the priest did not notice me. I let myself out and stood taking a deep, deep breath of crisp, bright air. Leaning back against the wall, eyes closed, I decided that nursing the sick was not something I would ever willingly do again.

  When I opened my eyes once more and blinked, I had completely changed my mind about where I was heading. Home would seem too drab. I had watched a man die in a vile manner, but I had not loved him for even one moment. Yet Jak would miss him, and never understand what or how it had happened. It was Symon I needed. Lord Lydiard had spoken of a man, his wife’s lover, who he had described as pale and bleached as milk. A man who brought death. I thought I knew who that was. But there was another man, the one who had somehow sold my mother’s poison to my father.

  All the grand shops were open, busy and noisy. The customers were a sweep of silks and velvets, brocades with fur trimmings. The women wore gilt netting and pearl pins to cover their hair, and the men’s hats were all brushed felt, feathers and damask. There was more wealth on each well-combed head than I would see in a month of selling herbal potions.

  Walking from Upper to Lower City along just one long road was interesting – even humorous. The differences became so immediately obvious. And even more obvious was the shouting, clashing, and general noise that abruptly echoed from the banks of the Corn which ran parallel to this street.

  I turned, ready to leave. A street fight was something I certainly wished to avoid. But then a child tugged at my skirts from behind, and called out, “Mistress, is it you? Come on then, come on. You can’t leave now, mistress.”

  I didn’t recognise the boy, but I thought he must be from the molly house. So I asked, “Is it Symon? Is he out of prison?”

  He was already running back up the alley, but he shouted over his shoulder “It’s cos he ain’t here, mistress. Come quick.”

  I smelled blood, then realised it was on my sleeve, the blood of the man who had pushed into me. I picked up my skirts again and ran as fast as was possible towards the river and the Molly House.

  The little dark alleyway was paved in hard beaten earth, muddy from the rains and slimy from refuse, and the trampling of boots. There was no central gutter so what fell, stayed until washed and cleared. No city rayker was ever paid to clean here, but sometimes some dejected inhabitant would make an attempt to clear his entrance.

  We called a wherry to take us over, but demanded double the kamps, since the fight on the island could be heard streets away. Yelling, tussling, running, and four spread bleeding on the ground. Had I arrived before, I might have been hurt myself. The boys told me about it afterwards when I sat cosy beside the molly house fire drinking ale, a thing I certainly had never thought to do in my life.

  The latest Betsy, always Betsy whatever her real name, who ran the molly house, lay beside the doorway. She had been knifed through one eye, and the gushing mess of her face made me heave. I had never seen anyone so monstrously hurt, and although I knew she must be dead, I had to be certain. I knelt briefly, and then quickly moved away. I still had the medicines I’d taken to Lord Lydiard’s bedside, but all for treating a man dying of poison, and of little use to me now except for relieving pain. Two boys were injured, and I gave them the willow bark tonic.

  Then the boy who had called me to him, crept from the shadows outside. “We needs Symon back,” he told me, leaning his head on my shoulder as I bandaged his arm. “Wivvout him, we gets all the drunks and them nasty buggers wot wants to fight as well as fuck. We gotta get Symon back. Now we ain’t even got Betsy.”

  Another boy peered out, his head pushing beneath the other’s arm. “And clear up that dead female,” he muttered, “lest the sheriff or some other silly bugger comes. It’s enuff trouble we got ain’t it, wivout having no more. We needs a cart to carry ‘er down and bung ‘er in the river.”

  The first boy said, “Not our Betsy. She be ours and we ortta bury her or make a pyre.”

  “Wot wiv?” objected the second. “No coin, no grave hole. That priest don’t do nuffing fer free. A fire brings trouble an’all. And I ain’t paying my lickle bit o’silver fer that mean old crone wot made my life a buggering misery.”

  “Into the river,” shouted someone from inside the doorway.

  And it was done. Rolling just ten steps, the boys saw the body splash into the high tide, brushed off their hands, and hurried back indoors.

  “Squimber,” said one of the older boys, who introduced himself as Pod. “Squimber was the boss of the Lower City way back. Symon took over, but Squimber never died. But the old bastard musta heard as how Symon be in the Nick now, so he come around to do mischief without no one to stop him.”

  “Just revenge?” I asked.

  “Ain’t no such fing as just revenge,” complained the boy who had brought me here this time. “Revenge be everyfing, ain’t it.”

  “Lest Symon comes back soon,” Pod said with a stamp of one foot, “we ain’t gonna have a Molly House no more. Reckon Squimber will burn it, being too old to take over proper. Burn it and burn us too.”

  Frankly burning such a vile place didn’t seem a bad idea to me, but certainly not with the boys inside. ‘But it’s several more days before my appointment to see Symon,” I explained.

  “Nah,” Pod said, shaking his head at my ignorance. “You reads and writes, sure enough. So you get pen and paper and you writes out your own appointment. Just put the prison name at the top in big black letters. Then guards don’t know nuffing. They see the prison name, and they reckon what you says must be true. Go early, take a basket, and tell ‘em ‘is today yer appointing.”

  Being one of the older boys, Pod worked less, but helped the others more. His speech was far more understandable, and I wondered if he’d come from a better family. In which case, why was he here? But I didn’t ask. I didn’t think he’d ever answer anyway.

  It was much later when I left, hailed a wherry and got myself back home at last. Now I would go the following morning to visit Symon, but I hardly expected to manage his release.

  Exhausted, back at home, I discovered Feep in a temper, not with me, which had never yet happened, but with Bryte, the silly young man who had tried to court me. I hadn’t seen him for some time and had virtually forgotten him. It was the pale man I worried about, my father’s miserable death, and Symon’s arrest. Why remember an idiot I didn
’t even find attractive?

  “He come here looking fer you,” Feep informed me, almost dancing with pent up emotion. “Told me orf, the cheeky bugger did, fer not askin’ him in. You’s out, I told him. Bin gone nigh three days. Bugger orf till she comes back.”

  “I suppose you could have invited him in,” I sighed, collapsing into the chair by the back fire, which had gone out. “He’s a respectable man. A ‘Finder” he calls himself.”

  Feep tossed his curls. “Don’t be a duffer, missus. It’s his job, ain’t it, to see quick who knows the difference ‘tween a fart and a farrow, and them simple folk wot don’t know a tumbler from a trollop. So your gent reckons you wouldn’t never know wot the word ‘Finder’ means. Tells you it’s all fer finding apples for them as likes apples, and ‘neeps fer them as wants ‘neeps. You believes it, ‘cos you don’t know no better. Wot sneaky Bryte don’t know hisself, is that you gotta boy wot knows a goose from a gander and an arse from an elbow and has met them Finders afore.”

  “Perhaps,” I decided, “there are honest Finders and dishonest Finders, just as there are honest traders and dishonest traders. Master Bryte, I’m convinced, is an honest man.”

  “Talk to the bugger if yer wants then, and call ‘im friend,” snorted Feep. “But best keep yer coin locked up, fer that there gent’s ‘bout as bleedin’ trustworthy as a Prison gaoler.”

  I accepted that my increasing business surely seemed attractive to a man on the watch for a wife and companion, and had I not been financially secure with the promise of more to come, I doubt he would have come anywhere near. No sensible man overlooks the opportunity of respectable ambition, nor the possibility of filling his purse with honest profit. But I didn’t suspect him of duplicity.

  “Pig piss,” said Feep, and turned away. He was rarely quite so vulgar, so I knew he was angry.

  “You’re only a child and can’t possibly know everything about the man,” I said, now equally cross. “You admire Symon and think the best of him. But perhaps he’s the boss of the molly house after all. They certainly don’t manage well without him. But it’s him I’m going to see tomorrow.”