The Corn

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  “Funny little thing, and proper feeble at its job,” Edda giggled. “How can a man be bothered fucking, when his pointer ain’t much more than a humiliation?”

  “A problem he won’t have in the future,” I said, and knelt, regarding the challenge in the sudden light. Maggs had found two candles and had lit them both. One hissed a little, dripping sweet-scented beeswax.

  Sossanna bounced cheerfully on the scrawny ankles. “Well, he’s had his last fuck, gift from me,” she said. “Hope the bugger’s proper grateful. Though I reckon the miserable little bastard never had a chance to come.”

  They had never seen it done to a man, but both Edda and Hawisa, once country girls, said it was easy enough. “My Pa used to castrate the bulls when they was babes, poor scraps,” Edda said. “They does it to horses as well, though I never seen one of them done. I bet they kicks. Just like this bugger.”

  “Hold him still,” Freia said. “I don’t want to kill him.”

  Bryte now understood. He lay on his back, gasping and nauseas, terrified and furious. His mouth was stuffed with dirty woollen cloth, and his tongue was sore and swollen. Every effort he had made to free himself having failed, now he lay flaccid and sick, waiting for the inevitable, or for any possibility to retaliate or scream. His eyes were red-rimmed and bulging with horror. Hawisa, now firmly enthroned on his belly facing his feet, his hands squashed within her own, frowned. “Why not kill him? The bastard deserves it, after all. And if you let the bugger go, he’ll fucking tell on us.”

  “I were happy to do whatever you wanted,” nodded Sossanna, still settled on his grubby ankles, the dirty soles of his feet buried under her skirts. “But I don’t want no sheriff after me and I ain’t going to the gallows, not for you nor nobody. Kill the fucker. Chop it all off and let him bleed out.”

  I paused, thinking, but I knew the answer. “He can’t tell on us,” I said, “for several reasons. For a start, I have as much against him as he has against me, and I could have him arrested for rape, kidnap, killing and slavery. Whereas, if he’s found dead and mutilated, Bembitt would surely tell on me.” Actually I wasn’t sure about this either and for several reasons, but the fact remained that I didn’t want this bastard to die. I wanted him to live, and think every night of what he had lost, just as I did.

  “Oh yes,” grunted Hawisa. “And who’d believe the word of a whore against some fucking gent? It’s the nobles whose word they’ll take.”

  “Nothing noble about this little blighter,” giggled Sossanna. “Not now, anyways.”

  “I know a few people,” I said at once, “or I did, who could stand witness for the respectable businesswoman I once was, and if Symon ever comes back, he’ll arrange it all safely for us.” I frowned, sitting cross-legged now on the rug beside the man’s bare legs. “And as for you two, he has no idea who you are, and even less idea as to where we live. Maybe he thinks we all come from the Southwark Stewe where he sold me.”

  “It’s still a nasty risk,” said Maggs.

  The inhuman glare of Bryte’s red-veined eyes seemed to etch into mine, but I felt not even a crumb of sympathy for him. My capacity for sympathy was dying anyway, and for this man, I felt only disgust. “He’ll never tell,” I said. “He’ll be far, far too ashamed. He’d be ridiculed by everyone in that cynical marketplace of louts and bruisers.”

  “He’s a bastard little fixer, and there’s plenty already knows the bugger for the trouble-maker that he is,” Hawisa said.

  “Takes the innocent to the gambling dens where they load the dice and mark the cards. Takes other innocents to back-lane stewes where they’re robbed and beaten and left in the gutters.” I was remembering what Simon and Feep had told me and how I had sadly disbelieved them at the time. “And I was innocent too – so completely innocent,” I murmured, “– when he ruined me and hurt me so badly and sold me to the meanest stewe in Southwark.”

  “So the nasty little turd deserves death.”

  “This will hurt him more.” I wished I could ungag him and let him plead. Even let him scream. But the threat of his neighbours hearing was too great if his mouth was unbound. “He’d be far too ashamed and won’t ever, ever dare say a single word.” I smiled at my friends. “It will be a secret he’ll keep to his death. What a pure, celibate man he is about to become, the pride of his poor parents no doubt, and an example of the teachings of Holy Mother Church.”

  “Let’s get on with it,” mumbled Hawisa. “I’m getting sore, and the little bastard has long fingernails.”

  The knife was ready. It was my own and kept sharp for preparing medicines. I bent over Bryte and gingerly fingered his body. The testicles were bluish and weedy beneath a covering of damp, tangled brown hair. They smelled sour. “How much do you think I should cut off?” I asked Hawisa.

  “Chop the prick and leave the balls,” Hawisa advised without much care. “Do it the other way round and the bastard just loses all interest in fucking, grows fat with a nice shiny head of hair and buggers off to sing in a church choir.”

  “So, if I cut off this – thing,” I lifted it gingerly, and it felt slimy and sickening between my fingers, “it leaves the desire, without the means to satisfy it? Alright, that’s better. But I don’t want him bleeding to death. It’ll have to be cauterized and then sewn. I don’t mind the chopping and the burning, but I hate the thought of embroidering the mess.”

  “I’ll sew the bastard up,” said Hawisa with sudden interest. “I wouldn’t mind sewing up every hole he has. Just as long as the bastard don’t wiggle.”

  “He won’t do that,” Edda sniggered. “He’ll have fainted long before you start stitching.”

  Not yet approaching unconsciousness, his eyes were wild, wide, and unblinking. “But have you,” I asked Hawisa, “any experience in mending wounds? I doubt it.”

  She shook her head. “But I darned a torn shirt once,” she said, “and more than once a hole in my stockings.”

  “That’ll do,” I nodded. “It doesn’t have to look pretty. I’ve sewn wounds often enough. But this one – I don’t want to touch more than I have to.”

  “Think of the bugger as a pig on the farm,” Edda suggested. “Not much difference, I reckon. But don’t forget to leave a hole for pissing. Or the silly sod might explode like a cannonball.”

  I was actually surprised at how tough it was to cut. The absurd wedge of gristle and knotted veins shed its small flooding of blood which pooled around the man’s legs and leaked from rug to floorboards. I held the flaccid organ upright with reluctant fingertips, pressing carefully before sawing, cut by cut. Bryte sank back, emptied his bowels with a slight gurgle and fainted with a rattle of the throat. “I reckon the bugger’s almost dead anyway,” noticed Hawisa approvingly.

  “Then slap his face and keep him alive,” Sossanna said. “But reckon we can stand up now and leave him lying there. Hardly likely to leap up and start dancing now, is he.”

  “Keep your voices low,” begged Maggs. “This ain’t the best moment for some bloody friend to come a’marching in.”

  “Stop fussing and take that rag out of his mouth,” I told her. “He needs all the breath he can get. Then light another candle. The light in this room is dismal.”

  “What do you need to see?” demanded Hawisa. “Just keep carving on what you’re holding, lass.”

  “Then you hold your own knife over this candle flame,” I mumbled, half bilious, “ready for the cauterizing. The needle and thread I’ve brought are in my purse. You’d better get it ready. This is bleeding everywhere like the stuck pig he is. And we don’t want to be splashed in blood and gore out on the street afterwards.”

  “You already look worse than a butcher’s wife from the markets,” sniggered Edda. “But I sure ain’t searching for no shitty cloak to wrap you in. I’d as likely run into the man’s mother.”

  Bryte did not regain permanent consciousness during or after the operation. Several times he opened his eyes a crack and began to squeal, but Sossanna clampe
d her hand over his mouth, and when he bit her, she knuckled him out cold again. The small bleeding wound was quickly cauterized, the fleshy edges shrivelling to a dark closure. Hawisa’s stitching was clumsy and puckered into welts but, with a tiny gap left central, she knotted the thread, and I cut it free with the bloody knife, afterwards wiping the blade on the man’s doublet.

  Then I laid the little gristled remains of the man’s penis back in its place between his legs, though now quite separate. “He can decide himself if he wants to keep it as a memento, or feed it to the dogs,” she smiled.

  “Well, hurry,” sniffed Sossanna. “It stinks. I want out.”

  Hawisa was already standing, having wiped her hands on the blanket which still lay crumpled on the ground. Now she turned to leave. “Come on, my girls,” she said. “The nasty little viper can call the doctor soon as he wakes, but I reckon we’ve done as good a job as any medick might. He’ll come around soon enough, and sob for his Ma. Time to leave.”

  Edda, Maggs and Sossanna stumbled to the door. I stopped one moment, looking back, took a deep breath and forbade myself to vomit. Then I followed the others down the stairs.

  Outside it was still raining, just a desultory drizzle in a chilly wind but enough to keep Eden’s good citizens off the streets. Surely no one saw we five women hurrying down the back streets, hiding the bloody wet stains on our gowns.

  That afternoon I burned my dress and sat peering blankly at the cinders lying across the hearth. I was wondering if I had gone entirely mad.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  The Bridge, the busiest thoroughfare in the city, was kept clean. Not for us, the naughtiest house in the long row of buildings, Pearly’s Webb. But the constant passage of animals, the goose boy with his slap-footed and squawking crowd of white feathers, the shepherd with his scurrying sheep, though often distracted by barking dogs, goats skipping as if they enjoyed trampling the cobbles, and horses carrying their riders or pulling their carts or carriages, they all left their thick ooze of stinking shit down the sloping path, and it was necessary for the rayker and the shop keepers to pick regularly over the rubbish and sluice down the rest. Within an instant of spying out any rubbish heap, gulls fought over floating carcasses as the cleaners moved in. Excrement was kept to a minimum, and the central waste-way wasn’t piss-yellow but a gentle damp grey.

  Little or nothing was thrown from house windows for the latrines emptied directly down into the Corn below, and sometimes we heard the cursing of the wherrymen passing beneath the stone arches.

  But this was now summer, and the first ten-day of real summer was always a celebration, and for most, a day off work. For the stewe-girls, naturally, it was a day of working harder for longer. Yet we still enjoyed the excitement. High across the Bridge, the coloured silk streamers danced in the swirling breezes. Jugglers and pipers, tumblers, mummers and bawdy singers moved between the flying ribbons, laughing at the boys grabbing the girls, stealing kisses, and watching the children play at hopscotch and knucklebones, bladder ball and skipping.

  This was a bright day, a nice day, and a good day for business. Yet some of the stalls packed up early with the shopkeepers more interested in parties and fairs. Masked revellers swarmed, swinging the girls around with teasing fingers ready to squeeze where they shouldn’t. The wise kept their purses safe tied, but no one cared to dress plainly on a day such as this. In the market, a puppet theatre attracted a squealing wriggle of children, and at the northern end of the southern square someone had set up a dog fight. Yelping and snarling and the shove of the men, screaming and laughing, all those scrawny legs scrabbling to get closer amongst the smells of eager sweat. But Toby was not amongst the dogs and Symon was certainly not amongst the men.

  Permitted an hour off work for our own pleasure, a generous allowance from Tom, Sossanna and I walked across to the usual market on the northern side and asked a dozen stallholders and received always the same answer. “He’s gone away. No idea where. Been gone nigh on a season of months. No knowing what for, since Master Symon answers to no man.”

  “But he promised to be back soon,” I insisted. “I am a true friend and know Symon well. You don’t need to deny him thinking I might run to the High-Justice.”

  But each stallholder shook his head. “No matter, mistress, for the man ain’t here. He went north and ain’t bin seen since.”

  We returned to the Bridge, meandering a little, savouring the freedom and the sunshine. The river water was placid under sky blue reflections. Cygnets were bobbing in a row, scrubby brown stalks behind their pristine sires.

  Kicking our pointed leather toes along the banks, Sossanna took my arm., screwed up her nose, and muttered, “Do we really want to go back yet? Or ever at all?”

  “Never? It’s a wonderful idea.” I was sighing dramatically. Dreaming of freedom. “But we haven’t anywhere else to go. Not even a hut. Not even a tent.”

  “It’s not such a bad life,” Sossanna said. “Tis a miserable fact that my mother bore eighteen children to my father. A brick burner and a good respectable man he was. Worked the marls, and lime dust killed him in the end, poor bastard, leaving my Ma to look after us on her bloody own. She carried twenty three times in all, but t’was only three of us lived past a few miserly months. Then my brother Dickon was killed falling out a tree, just eight year old. That left me and Horace, and look what I made of meself. All that suffering, poor Ma, and what bloody good did it do her?”

  “Then you should visit her sometimes and comfort her,” I said at once.

  “Oh, she died,” Sossanna said. “And fucking better off for it, she is, poor lamb. Me brovver arranged the burial, and I’ve no idea where he is now. But that’s hard graft and respectable living for you. You can keep it. I ain’t sorry to be a whore.”

  A young man had followed us back to the Bridge. He watched us, grinning and nodding, and with a smart flick of the wrist on the tiny drum suspended around his neck while fingering the pipe in his other hand, he began to play the music I had always loved. He danced as he played. For a few moments, he would hop and kick, twist in tight, fast circles, then kick up his flat feet and hop again. But in the next moment, he began to dance with elegance and even faintly romantic seduction. Beautiful movements led him across the banks and back up, as if proving his versatility. His tall hat was decorated with huge feathers that bounced in time to the music, long legs prancing in their tri-coloured stockings beneath the flounce of his shirt. I threw the knackerer a few generous pennies and walked off with Sossanna.

  She still had pork grease on her fingers for all through the squares there had been jugs of ale a farthing a cup, and pigs’ trotters a ha’penny each, spring lambs set slowly turning on huge spits with the coals beneath spread like burning dog turds, and spring piglets with their innards all pulled out and the intestines tied around their chins and up into bows. Sossanna and I both licked our fingers. The young man with the drum and pipe was following us, hoping for another coin, or perhaps for something else. “Come on, this way,” Sossanna called me

  I wanted to stay by the river. “I like the sun on my neck.”

  And then, like a sudden and furious fire behind her eyes, I saw him.

  “What now?”

  “Wait.” It was the back of the man I saw, but I recognised him at once, and it was the first time I’d seen him since my friends, and I had castrated him. I felt no guilt, but I did feel shame. I didn’t want to be the sort of woman capable of such a thing. But at least the bastard hadn’t died. His pompous strut hadn’t altered, but he wore an unusually long coat for summer weather, which covered his codpiece. Then he turned, and I recognised the dagger in his belt, with its straight hilt and the one little crystal at its cross, for he had used it on me. I wished I had used it on him.

  I moved abruptly away, stepping quickly behind Sossanna. When I looked back again, he was in a circle of other men, all laughing and comparing their successes at that morning’s game of dice. I whispered, “Sossa, look, it’s him.
That creature in the silly lace collar and the pink doublet, and we know that his codpiece is three times the size of what’s beneath it. He mustn’t notice us if we can help it.”

  We walked back towards the Bridge. Nor did we see again the young knackerer with his drum and his pipe and his ready hand. At that moment, seeing Bryte, the knackerer had slipped from my mind entirely and unsurprisingly.

  It is perhaps just as well that we can never know the future.

  Even in the Lower City, it was a lemon day with butterflies riding the sunbeams and the breezes sailing gently through the clouds. I was ridiculously happy when I wandered back, just a little late, into the open doors of Pearly’s Webb. Udovox was trotting down the stairs as Sossanna and I began to climb up.

  He looked at me. “Late?”

  A deep and supercilious voice, Udo never told me off as dear Tom did, but they were both darlings and never upset me. “I saw that pig-man again,” I said with such a big smile, he laughed. “He didn’t see me. I’m glad he’s alive, and I’m glad he didn’t notice me and I’m glad he’s suffering, as he has to be.”

  “Glad all over?” suggested Udovox.

  And that was just how I felt.

  When Hawisa brought me the copper cup the next morning, I opened one eye, blinked up from the pillow, and mumbled the words I had been practising the night before. “No, thanks, dear Hawisa. I don’t ever want the poppy drink again.”

  But she didn’t believe me and didn’t even have the slightest intention of giving me that chance. She left the cup sitting on the stool beside my bed. “There’s no one can snap their little fingers and give it up,” she said, half grumble. “You leave it as long as you can, lass. But you knock it over or chuck it from the window, I promise you’ll be sick by breakfast and half-dead by lunch.”

  “Is the dose so strong?’

  But she shook her large frowning head, squinting through the first morning light as she took down the shutters. “For the time you been on, tis me to thank fer not doubling the dose. Most want it that way. But I never done that for you, nor won’t. But stop altogether? You best see how you feels in an hour or so – and t’will still be sitting there waiting for you.”