The Corn

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  Freia whispered, “Thank you,” as a small child might thank a shop-keeper.

  “I shall send the dressmaker around this afternoon,” said Edilla. “Order what you like, within obvious limits, and I will come to advise you myself. In the future, when you can afford more materials, Thomas will advise you. He is very skilled in all aspects of our business. The first gown will be paid for by me, but soon you will have to start earning for yourself. Naturally, you will have to be trained up to our standards. In accordance with the importance of our customers, I do make allowances for some unusual requests, but you are unlikely to be required at such times until you are thoroughly experienced. Thomas will also assist with anything else of which you are ignorant. His standards are as exacting as my own.”

  Three days later, Freia sat on a small stool, hands in her pink damask lap. The gown was the most beautiful she had ever owned, but it was also the most revealing. When dressing that morning, she had pulled the neckline up as far as it would reach, but as Tom had marched into the room, he had laughed at her. Then, his fingers immediately on her breasts, he had arranged the tiny lace border so the dark rise of the oriel around her nipples was visible as one tantalising glimpse, stood back, approved his own work, and told her, “Men like breasts, my dear, although I have no idea why. To me they are vessels for the suckling of infants, and for any other reason are a little ugly. They wobble and droop.”

  Giggling faintly, Freia told him, “I almost agree with you. Must I wear my dress so low? It feels -embarrassing.”

  “Nonsense,” Tom told her. “I have nipples which I make no effort to hide.”

  She remembered, with a jolt of sudden pain, when she had first seen Jak. Closing her eyes, she then bit her tongue and remained silent.

  “But you must blacken around the eyes,” Tom told her, “which takes much practise.” He used a good deal of maquillage himself and was an expert with rouge and honey. “Honey on the lower lip, not the upper,” he told his new student. “And not too much or in the hot sun you will drip, and the customers will think you suffer from some monstrous disease.” He tapped her fingers with his comb. “Tut, tut, child, listen and watch. Now learn to tease the men you want to flirt with, madam,” he said, “being, of course. only those creatures who will pay. And beware, for please do not waste your time or mine. Your benefactor and tutor Tom, when contented with his student, is a delight of whimsy and gentle kindness. A generous talent indeed. But tutor Tom ignored, or unappreciated and made cross – now what a fearsome thought. Something I hope you will learn to avoid, my dear. You have too much to learn, so attend to those who know best. Now, first the eye paint.” He mixed oak gall and crushed coal and taught her a steady hand with the stick, though afterwards he warned her never to cry or she would soon appear dramatically striped, just like his new stockings, black and carmine.

  Freia had never dressed as grandly as she did now. As an unsophisticated country girl, she had known nothing of the subterfuge which was fashionable for a woman out to attract a gentleman. She now learned how to fabricate beauty with rouge on cheeks and breasts, eye-drops to emphasise and enhance, and honey-glossed lips to welcome kissing. Tom, with a stub of black coal between his forefinger and thumb, wiped shadow across her upper eyelid and onto her lashes. Then he held up a tiny round silvered iron, which reflected her gaze. Staring into the mirror, Freia stared at a woman she had never seen before. “I’m – pretty,” she gasped.

  “You are,” Tom answered with firm emphasis, “quite remarkably beautiful, Symon’s lady. When you’ve learned to do your own maquillage, I shall teach you some other tricks.” Laughing, he pointed to her lap. “When you’ve forgotten how to blush, I shall teach you tricks of a different nature.”

  Recovering health and strength, Freia moved from Edilla’s grand chamber to a far smaller room of her own. The window was thin horn with little allowance for light, but it was built outwards, enabling her to sit and stare down at the shoppers and crossers, flocks of sheep and geese heading to market, all the busy traffic of the bridge; and beyond it the heave of the river. The fleece-mattressed bed was large, and the deep green bed-hangings created forest shadows. Waiting there long hours, uncaring for the clatter of business on the stairs, she was cocooned like a curled bug, a butterfly waiting for its wings.

  The tiny garderobe held a chest and pegs for clothes, a clean commode, a tiny silvered mirror and a stand for the bowl and water jug. Hawisa had a narrow pallet at the foot of the bed, but she rarely slept there, preferring the gossip of the lower corridors, and the entrance into the communal solar where she stood sentinel for half the night.

  It was Pimping Tom who taught Freia how to shave her legs with a blade so sharp it left no stubble or snick. It had a little bone handle and was made for sharpening quills but served well for shaving. Her eyebrows she plucked, tiny iron tweezers with a pinch like a kestrel’s claws, until only the finest line remained, like the sickle moon when it has passed just one night since rebirth. The eyebrow arch appeared just a little haughty, so no need for additional inking. Her new stockings were knitted silk, fine enough to pass through a thumb ring without snagging. She bought buckled ankle boots lined in fur and pretty little shoes with short embroidered points. She had belts in silver links and purses in leather and a satin chemise and so many gowns they barely fitted in the clothes chest.

  “Tuck the bodice further down,” said Tom, “like this,” with fingers firm in her cleavage. “You still blush, Symon’s lady, yet you’ve chosen to stay here. So choose again. Choose to leave. Or choose to belong.”

  His fingers were still tucked in her cleavage when Freia realised something quite abruptly, and said, “I don’t know my own mind sometimes. I should leave, shouldn’t I. I’m not a whore. I’ll never really be a whore. But I have nowhere else to go, and no friends left. It’s comfortable here. I love staring out of the window. I love these clothes and the people all around. But when I have to start work – well, I know I’ll hate it. And then I’ll want to leave. But it’ll be too late.”

  He nodded, as if he understood even though what she’d said was contradictory. “Now,” he continued, adjusting deeper between her breasts, “the gown is made to make even the smallest breasts seem high and round. You are still too thin in this regard of course, but another few months of good, plentiful food and a leisurely life will help. Now, this is where you place the rouge, just a light touch, like this, across the rise and over the nipples.”

  “I shall look as though I have the pox,” she sighed, though accepting his hands on her body with patient compliance, trying to banish the blushes. “You know what I mean, don’t you? About working here – I have to wait and see how horrible it really is. If it’s not too bad – after all – I was at Sal’s for months, and nothing could ever be worse than that – I’ll try and save enough money to leave and start my own shop again.”

  Smiling, and entirely unexpected, Tom leaned forward and suddenly kissed the tip of her nose. It tickled. “Although,” said Tom, with a last dusting of rouged powder and a flick of his fingers, “you have extremely well placed breasts of a fashionable size and shape, I must remind you they’re of no interest to me whatsoever. As far as my loins are concerned, a desirable chest is muscled, flat and polished. These female swellings and protuberances are not to my taste at all. So keep your blushes to yourself, Symon’s girl, and do not attempt to flirt with me. However, if you are troubled, if you are hurt, or if you have reason to weep, then you may come to me at any time of the day or night, and I will help. But come now, take my hand, and I shall introduce you to my own choice of flirt.”

  Flirting with Pimping Tom would certainly never have occurred to her, but she called him friend, perhaps now her only friend, and she took his soft silken hand and followed him up the next flight of stairs. The attic rooms had been joined by an open archway and the entire space wafted veils, gossamer tapestries, embroidered curtains, golden fringes, tassels and sunlight through silk, reflected on satin. “Never,
” whispered Freia, “have I seen anything so – unbelievable. Wondrous. Amazing.”

  “Sufficient compliments,” said a gruff voice. “Let us be acquainted.”

  The voice came from low down, but Udovox seemed to be standing at full height. He was neither sitting nor kneeling. Yet his curling red hair came only to her shoulder, and she was considered short.

  “Meet my darling,” Tom waved. “We service male customers either separately or together, but our love is for each other. And no man in this shapeless world of ugly minds could ever match my Udo for the beauty of his kindness and his brain.”

  This first meeting with Tom’s beloved was, at first, a shock. As Tom was deliciously pretty, Udovox was bull faced with a snubbed nose, very large ears, and tight red curls much brighter than the colour of the rouge. “I do the dog to their bitch,” he grinned, wobbling one front tooth, loose at the visible root. “Most molly boys are all pretty dimples. I do it the other way, and I’m a rare act. They like to feel my strength and danger. And I’ve no need to pad my codpiece, as many of them do.”

  Tom said how careful he was with the customers he brought back to his lover. “Only the best, but none as pretty as might end up taking my place.” But it was after they had left Udovox lying contented on the lace tented bed and hurried back downstairs, that Tom said, “He almost runs this place, you know, Symon’s girl. We do it between us. Edilla brings the face - the refinement, perhaps we can say. The bordello has no name written on any banner or over the door, and we keep that dark and without advertisement. But every soul in Eden City knows who we are, and the name they give us is the Pearly Web. That’s because of Edilla, and the pearls she wears. She greets the customers, she organises the kitchen. But Udo and I make the rules behind the scenes and protect the girls.”

  “He is,” said Freia with a tentative apology, “a dwarf? Is that the right word? Does he mind?”

  “It’s the right word.” Tom neither smiled nor frowned. “And it’s not something he likes. It’s an accident of birth. Rare, but not unknown. Not many live more than a month, and some get thrown in the Corn before they even start to suckle, poor little unwanted souls. But my Udo is beautiful to me.”

  “Well, you’re not exactly tall.” Freia laughed.

  Tom joined the laughter. “All the strength and brain and beauty went into his head – and there was none left over to make the legs.”

  Her education continued, and all of it came from Tom, but she began to know some of the other girls. Amba was exceedingly pretty, but Tally was not. Tally, however, was generous and brought Freia fruit and cold drinks as the weather slipped into spring and days dawned hot. One day she said, “You wear pretty necklaces, Frey dear. Are they gifts from some admirer?”

  The ring was Jak’s. It was stamped with his badge of Lydiard nobility, a thick band of engraved gold and Freia touched it for comfort when she was frightened. Originally tied around her neck with string and clasped together with her mother’s talisman, it had never left her, even during rape and attack. Now it was hung on a white silk ribbon. “I loved someone once,” she told the other girl. “He gave me this. When I have a little money, I’ll put it on a gold chain.”

  Tom approved her jewellery but continued his lessons.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  “Now that you look acceptable and have grasped the rudiments of paint and plucking,” Tom told her, one finger lifting her chin as he scrutinised with a frown of faint approval, “you need training in the other arts. You must learn how to behave, not to be vulgar nor blatantly exposed, but sensual and welcoming. For instance, be careful how much vinegar you use on your sponges. Squeeze out all excess before insertion, or you will smell more like a pickled herring than a subtle temptation.”

  Freia could still blush. “I learned my job at Big Sal’s. I know what to do.”

  “As you very well know, this is an establishment of an entirely different class,” Tom scolded her. “Our customers expect the refined, and they often report to me afterwards, and can be highly critical.”

  “I don’t care.” She did not dare to care, for caring brought a reminder of humiliation, and of the person she had once been.

  “As you please.” But he smiled. “Although you’ll never receive top price if you don’t satisfy those who pay. But there are many ways of combining the refined with the blatant. Some of the girls shave their pubic hair. You’ve made friends with Tully. She has shaved her pubic hair into a small tufted circle. Very pretty.”

  When the wind was strong, the whole building creaked, leaning out further over the river, its higher storeys sagging a little. There was a customer’s privy on the first floor, a dark doorless alcove where the enclosed bench, its small hole looking straight down to the waves below, was comfortably surrounded with smooth wood. The Bridge shuddered with noise from dawn until nine of the evening when the southern gates were locked, with all who crossed from north to south, and from south to north, from the city to the bear pits in Bog-dock, and for the Bog-dock whores to shop in the city markets. But when there was a high tide, the pillars beneath the Bridge trembled in the surge, and as the wherrymen charged double to risk passage downstream, so Freia felt the vibrations even in her bed.

  In the chamber next along the corridor to Freia’s, Sossanna, about the same age at seventeen, had started on the streets at ten and now six years into her profession, was experienced. Slant eyed and with a waist so small she could clasp her hands around it, she appeared unusual, and therefore desirable. Youthful starvation had, perhaps, kept her tiny. “It’s knowing what the bastards want,” she explained, “before they know it themselves.” A slight lisp made her sound even younger and was another popular attribute. “Some want you obedient and quiet. They tell you what to do. Do this, do that, stick it here, stick it there. Then it’s best to smile all innocent. Others want to show off. With them, you have to fake it and tell the buggers how fucking wonderful they are. Pretend excitement. Pant and groan and lie about how big it is.”

  Freia said, “Enjoy it? Swiving’s no pleasure for a woman.”

  Sossanna nodded. “I certainly never enjoyed one minute of it, but some of the men want to think we do. Pretend or not, it’s up to you. Nasty, sticky things, men and their silly bits, but it’s a good living, and pretending earns you more. But no pinching their purses once they’re flat on their backs. Nor Tom nor Edilla don’t allow that.”

  “I wouldn’t,” Freia said. “It wouldn’t seem fair, since they pay so much anyway.” She had no idea what had been charged in Bog-dock, but Edilla’s prices were exorbitant.

  Business was also conducted on the stairs, in the passages, over the latrine, in the admitting chamber and in both the solars. Men who could not afford the full price were permitted to watch, while quietly relieving themselves. Occasionally fights broke out, though quickly stifled by Tom’s sword and Udovox’s fists. Hawisa was now employed to help keep order. With an arm nearly as forceful as Udovox’s, she was perfectly adapted, and only an outside attack would call for an outside protector. So the sordid, even amidst such splendour, was still that of a stewe and the smell of a whorehouse remained. Yet when a gentleman of station visited, as many did, he would see a house of gracious renown with the most beautiful women and young men, grand furnishings, the best wine, delicious food and a generous bounty of whatever his tastes were known to include. Shagging upright in the back corridor was not on view when the Lord Lashtim came with his friends, nor were Sir Oakley or Lord Dawkish presented with a bawd prepared to please each in turn for a count of ten and no longer. No gentleman was offered a half washed chamber pot, no gentleman was told to pay up first, and no gentleman discovered his purse gone once he had left the premises.

  Freia faced her first customer two ten-days after her arrival. She was absurdly nervous. “Shut your eyes, squeeze, and smile,” said Sossanna.

  “Squeeze what?” Freia asked in desperation.

  Giggling, “Tom hasn’t taught you that yet?”

 
; Hawisa patted her head. “Just breathe deep, darling,” she said. “Never mind the clever stuff. You done this maybe a hundred times already – more – there’s little difference whether the bed’s clean or not.”

  “Tom will choose you someone young and easy,” Sossanna assured her. “You’ll be all right.”

  “Tom thinks Udovox is beautiful. But I’d be frightened of anyone looking like Udovox.”

  “So shut your eyes. But just remember some things cost extra, so don’t let him stick it where you don’t want it.”

  “At least you’ll not have to sit in the main solar with the men choosing from what’s on offer.”

  “I never will. I won’t be a codling on a platter.”

  “You’ve had your poppy juice, my darling,” Hawisa said. “So remember your courage and just be pleased you’re neither codling nor pauper. Get on with the job and take what’s sent. The will of the gods, they say. Well, them gods have a mighty strange sense of humour, but long as I ain’t starving – I ain’t complaining – and nor should you.”

  Her breakfast was the opium drink and her principal sustenance of the day. Those early days of mumbling slurred addiction at the Bog-dock stewe had kept her more dull than drunk, and less awake than dreaming. Now habituated, Freia felt few effects, but just one hour late with the drink and the pains gripped her stomach like the grinding of hooves on stone. But she retained wits enough to bargain, as she had in her own business, and so did not sit naked to the waist, chattering in the large solar. To sit bare-breasted or almost completely exposed, waiting to be chosen by some strutting peacock or bent old codger, was an idea she found disturbing. Instead, she continued to entertain only those sent by Tom and balanced the financial discrepancy by treating any girl who was sick, injured, or pregnant. Free to walk the city and leave the stewe as she wished, Freia often returned to the same markets to buy her own supplies. Her experience with herbal cures became ever more useful.