The Corn

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  “And slip the length of it. Ice isn’t easy to walk on. You need spiked shoes.”

  “Coddled codfish I’ll stay in bed,” decided Marrok.

  “Though now I suppose I should come back to the city before winter’s over.” Jak’s smile faded. “I felt my duty was here, now I’m lord. But apart from your wedding, which naturally I’ll attend with pleasure, I need to see the Law-Giver or one of his assistants. I shouldn’t really bother you with this, my friend, and it’s been many months since I oversaw his reburial, and had a fitting monument erected to my late father. But I’m damn sure he was poisoned.”

  “Well, my daft friend,” Marrok said without sympathy, “that’ll be your dearest darling step-mother, I imagine. No great surprise. Do you care? You’re the lord now, you’ve got all the money and land, and the people will prosper ten times over with you instead of him. Begging your pardon, Jak, talking about your father like that, but you know it’s true.”

  “Murder is murder. Do we ignore it in our own family?”

  “Don’t know, Jak. Haven’t been poisoned yet.”

  “So your wedding’s planned for the last day of Probyn? I promise to be there. But in the meantime tell Verney for me not to marry poor little Reyne off to Kallivan, he’s a brute. But sorry, I won’t be marrying her either.”

  Jak Lydiard woke to thunder. The shutters rattled, and through their slats, Jak could see neither daylight nor moon gleam. The thunderous echoes faded and were then obliterated suddenly by rain pelting against the mullions. He groaned and rolled over, but unable to sleep now, he stared up at the tester that topped the high posts of his bed. It billowed in handsome indigo, swaying gently as though to a melody he could not hear himself. The long tassels hung heavy in palest azure with a glint of gold thread. The curtains swathed the carved posts, embracing their stations, rarely closed. Indigo again, lined silk, and painted large and central with the Lydiard arms in gold and black. They were the colours he associated with the woman he still remembered, when permitted sufficient peace, and yet now feared he might never meet again.

  Then quite suddenly Jak felt himself surrounded by moving colour, not those of his bed, the curtains and the walls beyond, but by the swirls of superimposed halos, first misted and then luminously vivid, strong enough, it seemed, to pick him up and carry him from the sweaty bedcovers into the brilliance of a summer sky.

  And now the colours spoke. They sang. Jak lay in transformed wonder as he knew, although without words, that Freia lived. He breathed in the certainty, turned over and closed his eyes, sleeping at last in greater peace than he had known for more than a year. But he didn’t tell Marrok. They met that morning in the main hall, both gazing despondently through the window at the steady sleet. A fire had been lit but had not yet warmed beyond its confines.

  “Coddled codfish,” Marrok complained. “There’s neither warning nor sense to it. What good is this sort of climate anyway? You can’t travel, you can’t hunt, you can’t even go searching for farm girls in the hay barns.”

  “It’s good for the crops and softens the land ready for the next ploughing,” Jak said. “And you leave my farm girls alone.”

  “Want them all for yourself, I suppose?” Marrok strode away from the window and slumped on the high chair seated beside the hearth. He stretched his stockinged feet to the blaze. “I’m not riding in this sodden freeze. Buttered barnacles, Jak, the road will be nothing but mud within the hour. You’ll have to put up with me for another couple of days, my friend.”

  “Just as well we finished the harvesting,” nodded Jak. “There’s still a small meadow down by the brook which hasn’t been cut yet, and that will turn to mould unless the sun brightens within the ten-day. But both the vineyards are stripped already, and one ruined field out of twelve won’t spoil a successful harvest. We’ll have full barns and good protection against the winter, even if it’s a harsh one.”

  He looked down and realised that his friend was staring up at him in alarm. “Good Lord, Jak,” said Marrok, “you sound like my steward at home. Even my father doesn’t mutter about apples and turnips. And may I remind you that barns are for a little relaxing merriment with the local girls, not for storing grain. If you keep talking like a farmhand and dressing like a scarecrow, I shall have to stop visiting and stay at court instead.”

  Jak grinned, looking down at the sweep of his trimmed velvets. “Hardly a scarecrow this morning. But wait until your father leaves you the title. You’ll find yourself counting fields and inspecting barley too.”

  “Never,” Mereck shook his head. “There are so many damn fields, I never learned to count that far. I’ll leave it all to the stewards just as my father does.”

  “I’ve a good steward too, and I still intend overseeing it myself,” said Jak. “But of course, your estate is a good deal larger and richer than my own.”

  Marrok nodded vigorously. “There you go, Jak, proving my point. Your lands are short of funds. How will you ever follow the call to battle if you have your nose to the plough? What you need is a rich wife. Now, by a remarkable coincidence, I happen to know just the right person.”

  It was as though the colours swam back into his head, bringing the knowledge and the burst of delight it had brought when he woke. Now he grinned. “My charming friend, I shall soon be attending your wedding, but you won’t soon be attending mine. Which reminds me, now we have the oh-so-popular Frink on the throne, how’s he going? He hasn’t been assassinated by any of his lords yet?”

  “We never see him, but I assume he’s alive.” Mereck was still glaring out of the window at the steady pound of the rain. “He gives no dances, parties or celebrations. They say he sits alone and drinks the best wine and the best brandy and stuffs himself full of lemon cream cake. He passes on his orders to the council, but never has any idea whether or not they get obeyed because he stays permanently in bed. I doubt the council obeys a single command, but since I don’t belong to the Great-Council and I don’t speak to the king, I haven’t the faintest idea. Besides, I couldn’t care one drip of dribble less. They can all fall into the Corn for all I care.”

  Mereck was chewing his lip. “Not the stories I’ve heard about the king, Jak,” he muttered. “But, putrid pustules, who knows? One lord says the king stays in bed, but another says the king’s a tyrant, and loves the torture chamber.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Each barge was gilded in gold, though there was no sun to illuminate it. The strokes of the oars cut in perfect symmetry, spurred through the troubled waters, leaving a wake of busy spray. The banners flapping in the wind cracked, caught and dipped as the oars did, a wind furled unison like a well-practised troop of jugglers. Three painted boats, thirty-eight oarsmen heaving in upholstered scarlet, a flurry of ducks rising to escape the bow waves.

  Standing in her bedchamber, Freia could lean, elbows to the inner windowsill, and look down at the river traffic directly below. There were the royal processions like the one she now watched sailing below. There were fights between the wherrymen when two answered the same call for hire, or two attempted to race each other to the same island, or demand preference over another when passing beneath the Bridge’s supporting columns. Utter boredom and the mindless drifting calm of the poppy drink combined, leaving her aimless, staring from one window or the other, finishing yesterday’s wine jug, or lying in bed with memories floating by like migrating swans.

  Edilla ran it. Freia knew the name for Tom had already explained. “It’s a stewe but a high-class place, legal, licensed, regulated and very well frequented,” Tom had told her. “The Madam knows her game. Sal’s slum was the whorehouse you were in last, and that’s the worst in all of Eden. Now this one I’ve brought you to, it’s by far the best, The Pearl of Eden’s stewes it is, so it’s known as Pearlie’s Web. Oh yes, it’s a bordello and a brothel. But this spider doesn’t sting. She’ll leave you alone until you’re ready, and it’s me who says ready or not. It’s a favour she’s doing you, but it’s a favo
ur already paid for by Symon through me. Mistress Edilla doesn’t give charity.” Tom pursed his lips. “Symon says you’re no whore. Edilla wouldn’t be pleased, but you can walk out if you want to. But if you stay, you’ll make good money, and I believe it’s a fairly comfortable life. It suits me, Symon’s friend. And it might suit you.”

  Hawisa set up the bath in the kitchen and led Freia downstairs. She bent, as if very old, fumbling with the dirty tangles of her hair, the filthy remains of her skirts and broken fingernails. She walked barefoot, bare-breasted, and the pains of past months made it hard to stand straight, but no one watched except Hawisa, and no one interfered.

  It was a small separate kitchen with a grand hearth big enough for a full-sized giro-rosto, and three stands for cauldrons and pans. This was a house that expected the gentry and even nobility. The customers could feast as they wished, and entertainment would include flesh of many kinds.

  The wooden tub had been set up in front of the fire and two young girls, sleeves pushed up to their elbows and sweat in their eyes, were boiling water and tipping it in. When there was water enough to come above Freia’s waist, Hawisa nodded and sent them off. Freia undressed quickly and stepped in. For a moment she lost all breath, and the pain hit like a scalding knife. She knew the heat was opening some of the scars across her back, but then after a moment she forgot the pain, and her muscles loosened. With a sigh of relief, she sat, wriggling downwards, knees up. It was a small barrel bath, but she could soak almost to her shoulders by squashing chest and legs. Then she shut her eyes and breathed deep. The steam was hugging her in damp billows, so she was muffled in mist.

  As it drifted upwards towards the beams, she opened her eyes again, and immediately tried to sink lower. Tom said calmly, “Would you sooner I left? But I can help more than your fat servant can, and I’m far more experienced, my dear. She told me about the whipping, and I can see the results. Your back is striped like the wild cat, and sadly, far less interesting. You need attention. And that is something I’m prepared to give.”

  Freia couldn’t see Hawisa. “Did you send her away?” she muttered, crossing her arms firmly over her breasts. “Surely you’re no doctor?”

  Tom simpered and shook his head. The baby lips opened to neat little teeth, as clean as ivory. “No, Symon’s lady. I’m a pimp, and that’s not quite the same thing is it now, but I treat the women when they need it.” He pulled a stool next to the bath and sat, beautifully turned calves stretched, lime green wool as fine as a second skin. “Your eyes are the colour of my stockings,” he said, still smiling. “But why be shy after the life you’ve been living? Besides, you’re the wrong sex for me, lady, and you’ll never be a temptation. The love of my life has his own chamber upstairs, you’ll meet him tomorrow if you like. He’s unusual, but I enjoy the unusual. In the meantime, I can help you.”

  He had removed his coat and wore only a short pleated shirt over his britches and stockings, the sleeves detached. His arms and shoulders were slim but muscular. This violet could kill. “It would be stupid to be shy,” Freia sniffed, “after what’s happened over these past months. But I’ve never before taken a bath with a man watching, a man I hardly know.”

  “Lie back, and close your eyes,” Tom commanded. “I shan’t be intrusive, for that won’t be necessary I imagine. But you need someone to do what you can hardly do for yourself, and the women here are all too self-absorbed while your maid is a fat toad with no touch of finesse. I’ve told you, and I recommend you regard my words, my dear, and remember what is good for you. What you need is experienced doctoring, my girl, and I’m experienced.” So she did as she was told and lay back against the wooden curve of the tub with its metal coopers’ braces and soft linen lining, shut her eyes, and tried not to show her embarrassed discomfort. “That’s better, Symon’s lady,” said Tom. “No maidenly blushes please, not from an over-worked and badly bruised whore. Now we can start.”

  He spoke the truth, and she accepted that. His hands of silk, though the palms were strong and supple, did not touch below the water line which reached up to her waist, except for leaning in to extract her feet, lifting each one to massage, to wash, and to pare the nails clean and neat. He scrubbed the soles with a little hard brush which softened them and turned them into the feet of the lady he called her. His brisk efficiency seemed glorious and her embarrassment fled. More thorough and more gentle than she had ever been with herself, he washed first. He washed her breasts, with his long clever fingers firm across her skin, his palms casual across her nipples.

  Tom washed her face, careful around the bruised eyes, and she could feel his warm breath over her lashes. He washed her shoulders, arms and hands, massaging again with his fingertips pressing into the starved hollows at the back of her neck, easing away the knotted strain until she was all marchpane and smooth floating satisfaction. Then he said softly, “Now we must attend to your back, and this, I’m afraid, will hurt. But it must be done. You will carry these scars for life, I think.”

  She leaned forward, her chin on her knees, and let him work. He was right and it hurt. With water and fingers, he picked away the loose skin, the dried blood and the scabs. Freia sighed in gratitude. Tom did to her what she would have done for a patient, and she knew he did it with skill and kindness. After it was finally finished and washed again with clean water from the copper pan, he patted her skin dry with soft wool and began to slick ointment across all the ravished flesh. Smiling and mumbling to herself, Freia was feeling human again. The months in the whorehouse at Bog-Dock had turned her into a half-dead and fumbling doxy, barely aware of what she did. Indeed she had done nothing. Others did it to her.

  Now she was alive again, and murmured, “You should have been a doctor.” He was so gentle that she felt very small and safe but breathed in the perfumes of lavender and oils of ginger, raspberry, and sweet juniper. She recognised those smells, although they were no longer her own supplies. Everything had been lost in the fire, including the poisons, and including the money, everything good, everything bad, and also her own life’s essence.

  Freia sniffed into the bubbles and steam.

  The steam had subsided, and the water had cooled by the time Tom sat back, briskly drying his own arms and hands. Then he said, “Well, Symon’s lady, since you’ll certainly be too shy to climb from the bath while I’m here, I’ll leave now and send in your maid. She can dry the rest of you and take you back to bed.”

  She looked up at him. “You shouldn’t be a pimp,” she said. “You’re a skilled doctor. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome, Symon’s lady,” said Tom. “Just remember, I’ve promised to look after you, and I will. But go thrifty with the poppy drink. I doubt Symon would approve.”

  So he knew. But Freia almost laughed. “Symon’s my friend,” she said, “and someone else I’m excessively grateful to. But I’m not his girl, his lady or his lover. I’m not even his family. I hardly approve of his lifestyle either.”

  Tom was still sitting on the stool at her side, elbows now on the edge of the tub beside her. “But the poppy can kill. Weren’t you an apothecary?”

  “I don’t care about dying,” she told him.

  He wasn’t smiling. “Foolery. But you’re a strange one,” he said softly. “Half lady, half bawd. As timid with me as a kitten, though you must know what a woman keeps between her legs doesn’t interest me in the slightest. And you spit at pimping though you’ve whored in one of the meanest stewes in Bog-dock and you drug yourself each morning, then talk like a priest.” He smiled at last and stood up. “I’ll be seeing you, Symon’s friend. If you need me, tell your fat toad, and I’ll come.”

  Hawisa came bustling in with towels. Freia looked back in disgust at the water she had left behind. Slimy brown with floating scabs and little scummy swirls of blood. Now eager to climb back into bed, she was bundled up, and food was brought. Afterwards, she slept like an old scarred soldier home after months on campaign.

  When Freia woke, feeling reborn,
she already had a visitor. The tall woman said, “I’m Edilla. I know who you are of course. At the moment, you are occupying my own bedchamber, but you may stay here for a few more days. I believe Thomas has been looking after you, and you have brought your own maid with you.” The tall, handsome woman stood very straight and stiff. “This is a house that serves only the men who can afford us. We cater to many tastes although I accept no girl younger than ten or eleven years, and I rarely take customers I do not know, who might have other tastes I refuse to indulge. I do not allow cruelty on my premises, and my women are well protected. Thomas has extremely high standards and brings us only the best.” She sighed. “And Symon, whom I believe you know personally, was once my protector and would have an armed gang here within half an hour if I called for it. I hope he returns safely. However, most of our clients are refined, and you will be taught to make the best of yourself.” She paused, her hands clasped in front of her. She wore black. Finally she said, “You are naturally free to leave whenever you wish, as Thomas has paid your ransom costs already. But we are also free to demand you leave, should you prove troublesome in any manner. You must not take customers except through this house, and you cannot refuse any customer which either Thomas or I have deemed suitable.”

  Having never thought of this as a legal business, Freia tried to understand. At Sal’s brothel, she had not been free to leave, nor make her own choices. Yet nor had she been ordered to do anything except lie there quietly and ignore everything else. Previously a passive slave, it now seemed she would need to wake up. She asked, “I have to do what the men want?” And gulped.

  “Naturally,” the Bordello Mistress told her. “The girls here keep half of their earnings, though you will have to pay for your drugs and your clothes from your own share. Your bowl and board are covered. Thomas chooses the customers, and I set the charges. You cannot refuse anything without my permission, but because of Symon, and if you also offer your skills as an apothecary while you are here, I shall be lenient.”