The Corn

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  “A friend?” asked Tom, with a surprised twitch of the cherubic mouth.

  I nodded. “Don’t hurt her. The rest don’t matter.”

  Some of the other men were bundling a few of the girls into corners for a quick free swive. One woman struggled and spat. The man’s knife went under her ribs and up. He fucked and killed with the same grunt. “Come on,” said Tom. “Leave them be. It’s a filthy hole. Fire it.”

  He took my arm. I was still clutching the blanket around me and tripping over the torn hem of my skirts. The night’s chill masked the smell, but then I felt the heat of sudden flame against my back. “Oh don’t,” I said, turning desperately, “not fire.”

  Tom pulled me on. “Let us worry about that, Symon’s lady,” he said. “Now we have to be out of here, and quick.”

  Footsteps all around, running into the shadows of the back alleys away from the dancing scarlet soaring against a black sky. Then someone else was at my other side, taller than me, and out of breath already. “Thanks for that, darling,” said Hawisa. “I’ll pay you for it proper one day. In the meantime, I’ll watch your back for you.”

  I hadn’t meant her to come with us. Come where? I couldn’t imagine this man having a decent home. Then we were by the river and the light lifted, the first grey ooze of sluggish dawn, and Tom said, without my having asked, “The Bridge-gate will open soon. We have to lie low until then. Afterwards, I’ll take you to the place I use. You’ll be comfortable and looked after. But it’s not respectable.”

  “Anything,” I said, “will be better than it has been. Nothing else is worse. Not even the Island Prison.”

  Pimping Tom did not fail in anything he set out to achieve, and so they were expecting me. A log fire had been lit in one large chamber, and a wide curtained bed was high with pillows and a cover of clean wool, pretty in the candlelight. It was a brothel, but it was a different world to the one I had left. The sheets were fine linen and the bolster was duckling down. I clambered within the white warmth and disappeared into oblivion.

  When I woke, I knew it was almost a day later because the withdrawal cramps in my stomach were familiar.

  Late March and a fine flurry of raindrops like little gossamer threads pattered against the window leads. The flames across the hearth opposite the bed had shrunk to glowing coals, but warmth remained. The shutters were closed, but the bed hangings were left wide and I could see the pale shifting shadows within the little chamber and across the boards. Over my head the dark beams were high, telling of a grand house and a clean one, not a waving strand of dust nor a cobweb, no rat droppings nor the scuttle of a cockroach. It smelled clean. I did not. Tom was the first to open my big silent door and stride over to gaze down on me. In the shifting light, with sun spilling through the shutter cracks, he looked as honey-sweet as a baby. He said, “Awake, Symon’s lady? Can you speak?”

  I nodded. I was even lying on my back, nestled against soft wool and feather, with only a sad ache and the occasional spiteful little jabbing reminder; my wounds closed though not forgotten. “Yes indeed,” I said. “And so full of gratitude, you cannot possibly imagine.”

  “Symon spoke of you,” Tom said. “I’d been looking for you for three months.” He had changed from the blood-spattered purple silk. He wore a doublet of ruddy velvet slashed in orange and embroidered in gold thread. The clothes were worth a ransom.

  “Where is he?” I asked. I couldn’t sit up, being desperately stiff and almost naked. “Surely not still in prison?”

  “Out, but not in the city,” said Tom. “He bribed and plotted his way free, but there was trouble. The first plan went wrong. He should’ve been free well before his trial, but the tunnel caved in, and the bastard who informed against him originally, turned up again to warn the guards. So he knew there was a bugger in the know, and he needed to find out which it was. Got him, naturally, and was out in two days. He’ll be back in the city soon of course and left us with orders to look for you. Mighty important, he told us. He left money aimed at you too, but in the end, others spent it themselves. That’s life. Symon won’t be pleased it took me so long to find you, but the dirtiest stewe in shitty Bog-dock wasn’t a place I’d thought to search for a girl he called innocent as the angels.”

  “Then it’s Symon who has rescued me again?”

  Tom nodded, “And me, my dear, which I’ll thank you to remember. As for Symon, he’ll be back sometime soon, and you can thank him yourself. He’ll be chasing after the bastard who put him away. Never fear, he’ll get him in the end. Symon never gives up. What Symon says he’ll do, he does.”

  “So I’ve heard,” I said.

  “In the meantime,” said Tom. “I’m to look after you, and I will. Your fat maidservant is waiting outside.”

  “Maidservant?” I had a very good reason to be confused.

  Tom nodded. “I’ll send her in. You’ll be wanting a bath, no doubt, and food, something to drink, and new clothes by the look of it.” Yes, I certainly wanted all of that and the bath most of all, but something else first.

  Hawisa had already been well scrubbed. She looked strangely pink, every wallowing fold complacent. It was an adjustment to think of her as my maid, but I was particularly glad to see her. She sat on the edge of my bed and the mattress sagged beneath her, bouncing up on the opposite side. “It’s the cramps,” I told her at once. “You have to get me some. You know what.”

  “I will, darling,” she said. “They’ll have a supply in a place like this and a better quality too, I’m sure. Just be careful how much you ask for.”

  “I’ll ask for nothing. You get it for me,” I said. “And you know the dosage, so don’t poison me. Keep me alive, and I’ll keep you alive.”

  “Oh, you can trust me now,” said Hawisa, puffing from the room on my urgent errand. “We’re friends now darling, remember?”

  The honest barter of gratitude. I’d learned that long ago. Hawisa brought me the opium drink, and some watered beer and hot soup along with two rolls of brown bread sweetened with crushed grapes. She also brought me a bowl of warm water and soft soap for washing, and all seemed a luxury. I slept again, cuddled in a veneer of cleanliness. It was later in the evening before I risked asking for the bath. After a day of darkened dreams, I woke sore, Hawisa again sitting on my bed. I had seen no one else, heard no sound and Tom had not returned. “I cannot face the rest of the women here,” I said, “and whoever runs this place and has been kind enough to take me in and give me this chamber, not until I am myself again and washed all over.”

  Part IV

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Jak Lydiard rolled over, wrinkled his nose and toppled gently from the bed. It took a little longer to get up from the floor and the rug was slipping beneath him when he managed to crash back on to the side of the mattress, extricate his stockings from the chamber pot, pull them on and start to lace them to his shirt without getting the points in the wrong order.

  The girl lay complacently wide legged and sleepy beside him, watching him with patient interest. Her large breast splayed across her chest, half covering her ribs. Flat on her back, her flesh seemed to expand in lazy satisfaction.

  “You’re leaving?”

  “Have to,” muttered Jak. “Husband.”

  “You haven’t got a husband,” the girl pointed out.

  “But you damn well have,” said Jak. “And if he comes back and waves his steel under my nose and shouts cuckold, I’m too bloody pissed to do anything except smile at the poor bastard while toppling at his feet.”

  “Well,” sighed the girl. “It was wonderful. Both times. You will come again, won’t you, Jak.”

  “Come? Again?” smiled Jak hazily. “Yes. Sure to. Hope so. Somewhere or other.”

  The girl continued to regard him with fond regret as he attempted to get dressed. He was hopping on one foot and trying to shove the other into one of his boots, when he realised his stockings were on back to front with the toes pointing out from his heels and had to sit down
heavily and pull them off again.

  “What’s that?” asked the girl, with sudden interest.

  “What? Oh, that.” He had his stockings tugged up again almost to his braies, and his crotch, being the subject of the girl’s question, was quickly covered once more. “Scars,” he said, hitching everything back into place. “Buboes. Gone silver now. More than a few years ago. Caught the pestilence. Didn’t die though.”

  “I’d noticed,” said the girl. “I’m awfully pleased you didn’t.”

  Jak paused a moment, staring suddenly into space. His small wistful smile turned momentarily bleak. “Doctored,” he muttered at last. “Someone who cared for me. Someone I cared for. Saved my life. Then went away.” He had almost adjusted his codpiece but had tripped, sitting back with a small bounce onto the bed, when the girl slipped her hand around his waist from behind, her fingers crawling warm and deft inside the opening of his britches.

  Jak sighed, letting the final hook of his codpiece remain unclipped. He turned to face the girl now snuggled up to his back. “Cosy,” he said with tired appreciation, “but definitely not wise.” He removed her fingers, firmly setting her hand back onto her own naked lap. “Been nice to know you, Alma, very nice. But time to go.”

  “Amy.”

  He nodded, kissed her cheek, and staggered upright again. “Bye, Amy. Sleep well.”

  Outside the fresh air hit him like cold water in the face, with the smell of the river and the wind like a high wail across the stars. He had only the vaguest idea of where he was, but he was fairly sure this was water, and he was, therefore, either north, south, east or west. South was certainly less likely. He distinctly remembered travelling north. He assumed this slime of blue-grey scratching its way below the muddy banks was the Corn, as usual, and in which case he was probably somewhere on the outer edges of Lydiard. He couldn’t, however, remember where he had left his horse. There certainly wasn’t one tethered outside the cottage where he had spent a good portion of a pleasant but exhausting night, and nor was there one wandering around looking for him.

  He therefore trudged all the way back up to the inn, which he definitely remembered because he had been perfectly sober when he had paid for a room there, even if he hadn’t been sober when he’d last left it.

  The stars were cold and brilliantly intense. The sky seemed to be swinging, an arc of black velvet studded with diamonds, just like someone’s gown at some time or another, though he couldn’t precisely place who had been wearing it at the time. The movement was making him dizzy. He looked at his feet in case he was falling over, but they appeared to be solidly planted on the ground. So he set off towards the inn’s stables, where he noticed his horse happily munching on something, and so wasn’t lost after all. It seemed pleased to see him, and Jak fancied it was smiling. He was pleased to see it too, because it confirmed that he was in the right place. Unless, of course, he’d happened to sell the beast to someone during the evening, or lose it at dice, and then forgotten. This possibility did not trouble him for long, and he aimed himself at the tavern’s doorway.

  The tavern which fronted the inn was already sinking into the quiet of restful slumber, though the stables were restive, with late guests arriving and the high complaints of a young mare which had remained unexercised throughout the day. The jugglers and singers and local rabble had finally wandered off, leaving the taproom empty, with only dirty straw and a tired barman who had an hour’s work to do before he could hurry home to his wife.

  Jak Lydiard was still stumbling across the stable yard when someone short, who was therefore, he decided, presumably quite young, planted himself in the way. The boy was carrying a swinging lamp and smelled of garlic, raw onions and lamp oil. “My lord, forgive me.” He was stuttering. It wasn’t an easy message to give in the middle of a dark night to someone who appeared exceedingly inebriated. “I’m sorry, my lord. I was told to stop you before you retired to your chamber. It’s important, indeed it’s urgent. I have the letter here, my lord, if you wish to read it.”

  Jak looked at the folded paper in the ostler’s shaking hand. “Don’t be a fool, lad,” said Jak. “I couldn’t read my own name at the moment. Actually, I’ve forgotten it. You’ll have to tell me what that paper says.”

  The boy took a deep breath. He’d been afraid of this. “It’s your father, my lord. His lordship Lord Lydiard. I’m sorry to have to tell you, my lord, but your father Lord Lydiard is deceased. That is, I understand he has died.”

  Jak stared at the glare of the lamp and the small wavering figure beyond it. He silently attempted to judge the validity of this unexpected message, but his head had begun to ache. “Rubbish,” he said after a short pause. “Never sick. The old man’s as strong as a cart-horse. Looks like one too.”

  The apprentice ostler was rather taken aback. “My lord. It must be the truth. I was told to inform you as soon as you got back.”

  “Well, you’ve informed me,” said the new Lord Lydiard. “But it’s tricky. And I don’t believe a word of it. Besides, I have to sleep, or I’ll damn well fall over. I hope I’ve got a room to myself. Where is it?” He was holding on to the outer wall, even though it seemed to be constantly moving away from his grasp and was therefore offering less support than necessary.

  “It’s upstairs my lord. First door to your right.”

  “Ridiculous. What’s it doing up there?” demanded Jak. “Bring it down here at once.”

  “I’ll help you up, my lord,” said the boy, and did. Jak tumbled on to a bed large enough to hold twelve and flung himself sideways across it without bothering to undress, which he seemed to remember already having done once that evening anyway. He then immediately fell fast asleep.

  In the morning he woke with the virulent headache which he knew he deserved. He called for service and breakfast but was alarmed to hear that his shout emerged as a disjointed whisper. He therefore lay where he was and wondered what on earth he had got up to the night before. The chamber shutters were closed but three streams of insistent sunshine entered through the cracks and aimed themselves directly at his eyes, whichever way he turned to escape them. At least he was pleased to discover that there was no strange and naked woman in his bed, as there invariably was when he woke with a headache and a lapse of memory. There were no other snoring travellers either, and he had therefore somehow managed to get a chamber to himself while presumably his small entourage had been quartered elsewhere. He had a vague idea he was in Lydiard having diverted there for several reasons, but he accepted that this might be wrong. He might even be on his way back. Sooner or later, the facts would come to him.

  In the meantime, he rolled out of bed, thrust his head into a jug of water which stood ready on the high chest, stumbled out of his room and trudged downstairs. His clothes seemed to be in a shocking condition, but at least he was wearing them.

  “My lord,” said the voice of the landlord at his shoulder, “you did not take possession of the message sent last night. I have it here, waiting for you, my lord. Will you read it now?”

  Staring with some doubt at his feet, which appeared to be covered only in stockings and no shoes, he looked around at the landlord. “Am I dressed?’ Jak asked faintly.

  Somewhat startled, the landlord assured him that he was certainly dressed.

  “Properly covered?” Jak demanded. “Except for shoes?”

  “Completely covered and respectable,” said the landlord, not wishing to mention the creased disarray of every item. “I must now ask you to accept this letter, my lord.” And he handed it over. With a deepening frown, Jak was able to read.

  So the new young Lord of Lydiard, leading the three armed men of his escort, turned his mare south-west through the forests he had once loved so well, and returned to the place where he had been born and the lands now his own, and to a beckoning responsibility which he was not sure he wanted.

  By the time he was under the trees, trotting the familiar lanes created long before him by deer, swine and badger, the hea
dache had dispersed, and the leaf flutter was a gentle dazzle against his eyes and in his heart. He had forgotten that the place was so beautiful and meant so much. His young companions called to him, but he neither heard nor cared. He drank from the streams where the fast running water was finer and colder than any town carrier could offer. His horse, pleased with the tree shade, browsed as he slumped forward easily in the saddle, his knees relaxed against her belly, delighting in the memories now playing back to him in the sunbeams, in the birdsong and in the breezes. The three man retinue, realising their master was alone in his thoughts, stayed back and kept quiet.

  At the river, Jak stopped at last and sat there on the bank for a while, where he had taught Freia to fish and had pledged himself to her for life. Late winter but with the first warmth of Probyn, the fish were placid in the shallows. The tiny brown frogs darted from pebble to floating leaf, little leggy boatmen dainty among their own ripples. There was peace on the land, and the sky was cloudless. Eventually, Jak’s groom came quietly, saying, “My lord, it is getting late.”

  Jak smiled. “Go on without me, Reedam. I’ll follow on when I’m ready. There’s no risk here. I know every hillock and every creek.”

  “There could still be danger, my lord,” insisted the groom. “We’d sooner stay, even if tis out of sight.”

  “No,” Jak said. “Go on. Warn the household that I’m coming.”

  “Word has been sent already, my lord.”

  “Then they’ll be twice warned.”

  Instead, as a misty grey twilight softened the sky, he walked, leading the horse loosely by the bridle, up the hill to the cottage on the far slope. He wondered if it might have been knocked down, or taken over by someone else, but it was still there and still empty. The villagers, suspicious of hexes remaining in the air and the soil, had not disturbed the dead woman’s abandoned lair. It remained deserted except for the owl in the thatch, head under wing and softly hooting, worried by the sudden disturbance. There was a plague of mice, all a’ scatter across the floor and darting into the rotting holes in the boards as his boots echoed on the doorstep. There were some fat white ducks, pompous and strutting all proud and well fed, keeping their own vigil at a property they considered their own.