The Corn

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  I sat entranced. It was a reminder of real life, bringing memories of past years, taking Feep to the mystery plays, sewing him a shirt, kerchief or new braies as a gift for the first day of Probyn. My mind drifted back further to childhood in Lydiard and curling warm in my mother’s arms as she told me stories. Now I refused to call myself a whore, but peered down, excited, at the grandest procession I had ever seen.

  The marching banners carried the red badge on gold, and the painted and imagined face of our first King Dyr. Then more priests, twenty tall candles and twenty torches, a multitude of flaming light shuddering in the little sharp wind from the river, then bursting bright and high again, simple with no instrument but the voices of the chanting and prayer. Bald heads and coarse gowns woven from tumbleweed, half lost within shadow, and the minor note of continuous murmur.

  It had lasted perhaps an hour. I left the window and crawled back to bed. No visitors, no men. Just sweet thankful sleep and the lullaby of the opium.

  With her sleeves rolled up and the folds of her lower arms pendulous, Hawisa stood over the copious hearth at the back of the ground floor. She was stirring the cauldron. “Here, my darling,” Hawisa called. “You like mixing the medicines and brewing tonics. So help me boil up the best medicine of all and learn another useful trade. Cock-ale, it is, to sell on the side, with a good profit.”

  The proper recipe started with a freshly killed cockerel, scalded, plucked and de-loused, strung in a sack and boiled in locally brewed ale along with raisins and added nutmeg. The fowl, scrawny and flea-bitten, was usually the loser from some cock-fight held in the nearby churchyard or outside the Clink gaol. “It’s a drink guaranteed to raise the prick,” Hawisa told the men. “If you miserable buggers need any help hardening up, then it’s cock for cock.”

  The season of Probyn edged towards spring, with the anniversary of my birth shrinking unnoticed amongst the puffing sweat and grime of customers. Sal strode the streets, serviced men while standing in the urine puddles of the alleys and took her meagre silver at once to the nearest tavern. When she’d spent, she’d work again, and drink until the alehouse threw her out. Staggering home, swearing loudly, she would collapse and sleep downstairs on a rug, clutching her guts so as not to spew and lose what she’d paid for. She was tall, flat breasted, and raucous. She also liked to whip her girls.

  Several others apart from myself had adapted to the anaesthesia of semi-oblivion. The opium lumps delivered were not just for me. But most girls sufficed with drunkenness, both simpler and cheaper and perhaps less dangerous. There were regular drunken fights when the girls fought between themselves or scuffled with the men, those customers not too pissed to notice the loss of their purses.

  I also bought good solid soap. The other girls were free to attend the bathhouses, where they could not only wash but do an excreta trade. Still not trusted to leave the stewe, I hadn’t bathed for three months, but insisted on a ten-day scrub from a small basin of grimed suds. I accepted this, as I did most else, with little more than a whine of acclimatised complaint. I was losing track of how much the opium had overtaken my mind, but I was more than ever conscious of my imprisonment.

  I was, of course, not who I had once been. I knew this but did more than accept it. I relished it. The innocent child awash with loss and misery was now a young woman capable of – well – capable! So when Sal needed a cure for constipation and cramps in the womb, I said, “I’ll make her a marmalade of mace, and a tonic of runny aloes. But this time I have a price. I want to go out to the market myself and buy what I need. I have to leave this wretched building, or I will go quite mad.”

  “I’ll find out,” Hawisa nodded. “I reckon Sal will go along with it if I put in a good word.” The next morning, with Sal groaning from the cramps, Hawisa came back to me. “It’s agreed,” she said. “And I’ll be coming with you, with a good grip on your arm mind, and I’ll knock you senseless and all your teeth out too if you try to run.”

  I smiled. “Run? I might not have the energy to walk.”

  “Cheer up, darling,” said Hawisa. “I’ll buy you a pie from Lanky Will’s. You’ve had no proper pay yet from all your shagging, though don’t go thinking you’ve been cheated, for you’ve had your bed and bowl and all that poppy drink’s not cheap. But maybe now we’ll start giving you a little share. Prove you can be trusted, work your arse a little more, and I’ll let you walk alone and go search out the men you want.”

  “Want?” I said. “Who can think I want any of this?”

  Hawisa chuckled amiably. “You’re still not used to it, are you darling! Most don’t take this long, but you came from a different life, I know that. Still, you’re a pretty little thing, and you’ll do good business once you settle. Sal paid a high price for you, you know.”

  “I should kill her for it.”

  “Don’t talk fucking daft,” said Hawisa, undisturbed. “You should be flattered you were well paid for. There was a high debt owing, and taking you cleared the lot. Mind you, she’s had her coin back many times over by now. That’s why she says you can start getting a share. And it’s me thinks you should take your first walk at last.”

  I was in a rush to remember fresh air. As we left the house, I saved up the first inhalation for the doorstep, and stood there a moment, excited. Not so fresh after all perhaps, but the air was cold and that felt invigorating. I stared at the sky. It was all cloud and deeply lowering, but I thought it was blue enough and bright and full of heaven.

  I already knew the street because I had spent so long peering from the windows but to stand and see at its own level as if I was a normal woman out for a stroll, was heady. I stared up at the squash of three storey houses as narrow as poles, held up with a patchwork of struts and beams and all bending outwards. I could hear the high wail of the gulls and knew we were near the river. So I went with Hawisa to the Bog-dock market, bought the mace and the aloes, fresh sponges, vinegar, and a clean comb for my tangled hair.

  It wasn’t on the first walk but on the second, that I realised someone had noticed me and was staring. On my third walk, the same man was following me. By the fourth, he had decided to come over and talk, but it was obvious that he wasn’t after the services of a whore. At least, not a woman and not for himself. The man who noticed and then followed me was not part of the usual scenery. He was very different.

  “You have the most beautiful green eyes, madam,” he said, standing suddenly right in front of me and blocking my way. He had come from the shadows.

  Hawisa, still my careful chaperone, glared. “Get the fuck away,” she ordered. “The girl’s spoken for.”

  “No doubt,” said the strange man. “But I need to know her name.”

  There was noise around us, the usual push and shove and spit and riot. But he spoke well and quite softly, and I listened as if I knew this was going to be important.

  “Push off,” said Hawisa. “Unless you want your fucking balls chewed off.” She began to haul me away, but I thrust her off and stood my ground.

  “Freia,” I said. “Freia the apothecary.”

  This polite interloper was quite small and ostentatiously pretty. Had he dressed differently, I would have thought he was not only a girl, but the most attractive I had seen. He had a cherubic face with fluttering blue eyes and soft brown curls with veins of rich black. With a little blunt nose, high cheekbones, and a dimpled chin, he was fragile seeming, and his lips were heart-shaped and very full with a child’s pout. But there was ice behind the blue eyes, and I did not think he was as young as he seemed.

  He said, “I know something about you, Mistress Freia. So where might you be staying, and is the lodging of your own choice?”

  I looked like a whore or a beggar and was aware of it. This man was clean and gloriously decorated, but I had never before seen stockings in silk of such a virulent cerise, and his britches’ codpiece was embroidered in scarlet over gold, excessively prominent beneath a very short doublet slashed in white satin.

 
“The house behind me,” I said. “And not my choice. I was kidnapped.”

  Hawisa glared, “Sal’s Stewe, and none of your fucking business.”

  “I see,” he said to me. “Then I might be seeing you again.”

  “You won’t,” said Hawisa. “Now piss off.”

  The small man moved away, but he turned and bowed before he went, with an impressive display of elegant calves just as if I was a noble lady instead of a harlot in a dirty gown. Then he waved as he walked off, and smiled, more to himself than to me, as though he had thought of something particularly satisfying.

  The next morning Sal grabbed me.

  True to form, she grabbed me from behind. “Fucking strumpet,” she hissed, “think you’ve found a pimping violet to strut for you? Don’t go thinking he’ll worst me, for there’s no man can, and this little molly-petal least of all. I’ll flay his prick from his balls and feed it up his precious arse.” For three months and more I’d learned the language of the whore, but I still rarely understood a word Sal said to me. The man I had met was unusually pretty, especially for a man. Skinny Sal, flexible and dangerous, hair hennaed, flat cheeks centred around small red spots of high colour, looked masculine and perhaps a little mad. I had never been clever at astrology in my medicines as physicians often were, but I had quickly decided that Sal was moon-gripped, a luna bawd of Eagle tempers, and when she was close it was not her face you had to beware, but your own back and a probable knife under your ribs. Sal was a feral sow and as bony as the spit to roast it on.

  Now even I could guess something had happened to annoy her, and it was probably me. Hawisa said, square hands on square hips, “She didn’t send for the pimp, Sal, I’ll swear to it. It weren’t no assignation.”

  Sal twisted around to face Hawisa. “I told you it was too fucking soon to let the troll out. Lords it like she’s queen of the bawds, all snot in the air and talking piss fancy like she wouldn’t come her lot, not if the fucking king put his licker up her. Won’t even lard her arse, then tries to bugger me with tricks outside. Looking out for an apple-squire pimp, is it? Reckon she just earned herself a fucking good flogging.”

  Flogging was definitely a word I understood.

  Hawisa stood her ground. “Pimping Tom works for the Spider’s Web, and you know it,” she said. “He looks for customers, not new girls. Besides, they pride theirselves on the best. And that ain’t us.”

  The code was unravelling. Ages past when I was still myself, Symon had told me to expect a man called Pimping Tom. It seemed so long ago, and I had forgotten. Opium, intoxication and hopeless lassitude had fuddled all but the strongest memories. “Is this all about that man who asked my name?” I demanded.

  “He came banging on the door last night,” nodded Hawisa. “Him and two other buggers, wanting to see you, and had the nerve to shove a knife in my face. I broke one of their fucking wrists. Screamed hard enough to shrivel the fifth leg off a donkey he did, little bastard. So Tom went off. But he said he’ll be back.”

  I turned to Sal. “I don’t know him. I don’t know what they want.”

  “But I know what I fucking want,” said Sal. “And you’ve been getting on my pissing tits for too pissing long.” She had the whip. It was a long strip of narrow leather, with a small metal buckle fastened to its end to stop it fraying. The handle was wood and bound in heavy twine, smooth to the grip after long use. Sal soaked it first in ale for an hour, then drank, laughing, from the same bowl. She’d whipped most of the girls at some time or other, and on some excuse or other, so now they were pleased it was me and not them. They helped strip me to the waist, which ruined my new serviceable gown, and held me over a low bench, two girls to each outspread arm. I was suddenly bitterly cold. Sal stood over my back and I could feel the dirty scratch of her skirts against my ankles, and the bristles of her bare legs beneath, rubbing on my calves. Then I heard the cut of the wet leather strap through the air.

  At first, one of the girls counted and another giggled, and I could hear Sal grunt and puff like men fucking. The pain was astonishingly intense. I had been prepared, muscle-tensed, but it was sharper than I could have imagined. I thought that first cut would slice through my entire body. It was excruciating beyond expectation, I screamed at once. The second strike was as terrible, and the third. Time stretched with the swish of the leather, its sudden spring and whistle. Then the snap as it hit, the parting of flesh and the heat of the blood. I couldn’t breathe. Then everything began to befuddle. I stopped screaming. I could hear my own voice gasping and sobbing, choking and gulping, and then nothing.

  I woke up on my pallet, lying on my belly with Hawisa squatting on the rushes beside me, and fire straddling my back. “Silly bitch,” said Hawisa with a strange, harsh affection. “You ought’ve begged quicker. Not begging, well that just makes her go on longer and deeper.”

  I wanted to explain that it was hardly pride that had kept the wails for mercy stuck in my throat. I still couldn’t speak. Words didn’t form.

  Hawisa was holding a small earthenware tub and the smell was calming. I recognised my own perfumed salve. “Is this the one to use, darling?” Her fingertips were like little rough stones against my wounds.

  “Yes,” I managed to say. “Wash first.”

  “Me?” she asked, not at all offended. “Or what’s left of your back?”

  “Both,” I said.

  It was two days later when I was back on my feet and staggering to the one little copper mirror in our downstairs entrance to see what had been done to me. I winced and crawled back upstairs. From shoulders to waist, I had been stripped raw, tatters of flesh caked in black blood and the smears of my own ointment. I asked Hawisa to wash me again and slick the grease on thicker. “Can’t. It’s all gone,” she said. “I’ve used the last. Make more or put up with it.”

  I put up with it for two days and then sent a girl for new ingredients. But it was the night before I could remake the salve when everything happened.

  Having accepted no men since the whipping, my pallet was a cocoon all for myself. There were fleas and beetles and silver grey things with delicate antennae and nervous habits, mice twitched and squeaked, ate the beetles, and moved on but the cockroaches had been temporarily cleared by the dusting powder I’d used. So I slept almost alone, and I still lay on my belly. I had to. I was dreaming. Jak was bending over me, and his eyes were dark as night and he was weeping. I could see the stars in his pupils and the glitter of tears clinging to the long thick sweep of his lashes. Then I saw my mother. She had never looked so beautiful nor so joy-filled in life. “Your brother?” Her echo laughed. “No, my precious girl. Not by that slag of a father. You are free to love whom you choose.”

  But I turned away. Free? I did not even have the freedom to dream sweet. Then I felt the warmth of Feep’s hand clutching mine. “I’s so bloody happy,” he whispered. “And you will be mighty soon, mistress. I promise.”

  The noise that woke me was so violent that I scrambled up, thrust from the safety of dreams like a baby bird tumbling from its nest in a storm. The crashing and hammering below continued. Women were screeching. Two of the girls in the cubicles adjacent to mine ran at once, followed by their worried customers, hurriedly hoisting up their stockings as they scurried downstairs. I shrank back against the wall. I had lost the top half of my gown in Sal’s attack, and had wanted no other against my lacerated back. Several of the women left their breasts bare within the house, but accepting I was a whore, not yet a trollop, I never had until now. Downstairs the noise was vibrating ever louder. I looked from the window. There was a flare of torches and a wild scramble of men, raised clubs, the sudden brilliance of steel catching the light of flame and a confusion of legs and feet, arms and shoulders. Yelling, screaming and swearing, men fighting women and with such a thunderous assault on the front of the building, all its timbers shuddered and the place where I crouched trembled. I saw a man grab one of the women and toss her behind him. She spun, landed on her knees in the gold-car
mine of torchlight, then was up in an instant, climbing his neck with her nails and teeth. A small man in neat shining curls and a silk purple cape stepped across and brought the hilt of his knife hard against the back of her skull. She dropped like crumpled linen at his feet. He gave an expedient kick to remove her from his way. Then I saw nothing more of them, for they were all inside the house.

  Although now I was sure they had come for me, I shivered, pulling my blanket around me. Then three men came running up the steps to the second floor, such a booting and clatter and shouts of my name. “I’m here,” I croaked, though I doubt if they heard me. Louder than any sound I could make was the squealing and roaring, the pounding of feet and fists and the hiss of the torches, each rebounding into the empty night. Then Pimping Tom emerged grinning from the stairwell and waved a bloodstained sword in my direction. “Come on then, Symon’s friend. Didn’t you know it was us? We’d best be gone before the Watch is on to us.”

  I scrambled obediently up and hurried behind him. I was terrified and excited and almost unbelieving. Downstairs was carnage. Sal was dead. Her throat was open like the slashing on an expensive shirt, streaming blood through gaping marbled white. Her lips were rolled away from the gums as if she had been trying to bite at the knife that slew her. Her belly seeped blood from another wound. She was known. The men had gone for her first.

  A few of the other women were unconscious or dazed, held back by the grinning men, ten of them, or more perhaps, and armed. Three held Hawisa who was panting like a boar at bay. Tom, unruffled at my elbow, waved a generous purple arm. “Take your pick, Symon’s girl,” he said. “Shall we kill them all? Or some and not others? Are any friends? Symon says you’re no whore. So which one of them pulled you into it? Which of these doxies do we spit through the middle?”

  I looked down on Big Sal’s exposed ugliness and dirty twisted legs. “The one who bought me, is dead already,” I muttered. “I don’t care one way or the other about the rest.” Then I looked at Hawisa. I remembered her threatening and slapping me. But I remembered her advising me how to survive. She had fed and cared for me at the beginning. She had taken me out for fresh air and treated my back with the ointment. “Not that one,” I said. “She’s all right.”