The Corn
Page 48
I used to mix it myself as a medicine, and that had always been for the greatest pain, and never the strongest mix. I sniffed the cup but pulled my face away. “Why won’t you help me give it up?”
She gazed at me. “Well lass, you’d be on the floor cutting your wrists with your sharpest knife. Don’t you know that? Tis one life you live, what you was never meant for. You live every day, thanks to me. You laughs, you does your job, you makes friends with the girls, and you sleep well at night. All thanks to me and the poppy drink.”
“But I can’t eat much. Food makes me vomit. I’m getting skinny.” I stared back at her, and then at the copper cup. “Do you use narceine – or seed – and how much?”
But she had already opened the door and was edging out. “Drink up lass,” she told me, “and you make up your mind to stop when Symon comes back. That makes more sense to me. Outta here – life changes. And he’ll help.”
Left alone, I rolled over and lifted the cup. I drank. It was always going to happen, and I knew it. No childish attempts at being stronger than I knew I was, and no childish attempts to prove myself worthy of a better life.
Customers rarely arrived early. Stomping off to work, or preferring to stay in bed with the wife, very few yearned for a brothel visit at first light. After gulping down my poppy drink, I often left the Bridge and walked a little, breathing in the fresh air and clearing my head of sleep and the drug that followed it.
Then, breathing in deep forgetfulness, I would kick through gutters that ran scarlet with discarded intestines and chicken heads, and where the pudding raykers regularly sluiced less than half their legal requirement. But although windows would be opening over my head and shutters would clatter to the floor, I knew I was alive before most of the city dwellers, for I desperately wanted these moments of freedom and never cared about the filth. Up Skinner's Alley as the stallholders raised their awnings and bagged their coins, ready to start work, while beyond was the scuffle of an argument over the price of their goods.
“Woollen stockings, two kamps each pair.”
“One kamp each leg?”
“Good value. Best wool. Best knitting. Tight as a thumb up your arse.”
“Who buys one leg? You’ll always sell a pair. Make it a kamp a pair.”
“Go knit your own, skinflint. Two kamps a pair, and that’s final.”
“Three stripes for a bag of cabbage leaves and sliced onion mixed. All ready to chuck in the pan.”
“And what if I wants them onions but no cabbage?”
“So go buy onions from some other stall.”
“And a cabbage without onions will cost me less than three stripes, I reckons.”
The bargaining could take longer than it would eventually take to cook and eat them. My daily routine. Oh, what a dismal life I was living, when I could say this was usually my happiest hour. I was feeling more determined after such a walk when I accosted Tom regarding the customer we all hated most.
“He wouldn’t want you anyway, my dear. He’d prefer girls of six or seven years old, only we don’t handle children that young at this house. And sadly, he’s not so little himself.” Tom, playing the boss, was twirling the golden tassels on the cord of his short red doublet. And he shrugged again. “Did he visit Sal’s in Bog-dock as well? I’m surprised, since he’s mindful of his pride and insists on luxury. But Sal wasn’t fussy about any girl’s age and took on any wretched little brat homeless and running the streets. So you’re not the sort he wants and should be safe enough. Meanwhile, I have three of my girls crying in my own chamber, and my Udovox almost in tears himself at the sight of their injuries. If the bastard comes again, I’ll call on Symon to rid us of him.”
“Symon’s disappeared.”
“I know,” Tom said, “or I’d have called him already. For Madam Webb forbids me to shun this bleached flour creature, who carries his knighthood like both a threat and a defence and bribes his way with double the asking price. Yes, yes, our grand Edilla claims she’ll accept no violence on the premises, but a customer who pays more than she’d normally earn in a ten-day, well, he’s not going to be thrown out. But I’ve a mind to disobey our Mistress Pearly and give Symon the pleasure of finishing the white turd. He’s the worm who once informed on Symon and had him gaoled, so Symon wants his hide. But as our Master Symon is on his travels yet again, then perhaps I shall have to deal with that slime coloured shit myself, and my Udovox will help me.”
The man Tom sent to me that evening was an average customer, his demands average, his appearance average and his manners the same. A short, squat man in the clothes of an affluent trader, a faint smell of boiled bacon and a persistent frown. “I’ve paid and I want my dues, but no more than is fair,” he told me, hitching up his doublet and unlacing his codpiece. “I swive fast and strong, but I want you on your elbows and knees, girl, skirts up to your waist behind. And grunt away if you want, but no talking. No complaints. No distractions.”
I barely noticed what he did. Instead I thought, as I always did, of quite other things, my mind wandering along sweeter paths. I heard the groan of the knotted ropes holding the mattress beneath us, and the man’s strenuous breathing, building to excitement and then collapse. But it was of my mother I was thinking. A thousand times I had wondered about how a good and kind woman, nursing the sick, even tending to those she despised, had lived the life I knew she did. She had nursed sick animals. She had loved her daughter. And all the time there would be a pot hanging over the fire where wolfsbane, antimony and monkshood were brewing in a nettle soup, ready to kill one man while she cured another. And had she left these brewing poisons, gritted her teeth, and let a man she despised bed her, in order to give some protection and an illustrious name to the child she was already secretly carrying?
If not the fat lord, and I hoped it was not, who in the devil’s name, was my father? Once I had accepted that I had none. Now I was older and a damn sight more educated in those same matters. Had she loved someone? Or perhaps been raped?
I did not resemble Jak except for the colour of our eyes. But then, neither of us looked in the slightest similar to Lord Lydiard. Jak must have taken after his mother, and I had never seen her, so could not judge. But I had to admit I didn’t look much like my mother either so what did any of it prove? Jack had rich green eyes like the emeralds glittering from their rocky cave. My own eyes were also green, but a hazel green with golden streaks like a frame around a small green glass window.
No answers, no meaning, no explanations. And did it matter? Jak wasn’t going to find me and he’d no doubt be wedded to an heiress by now and should have forgotten my name.
After the customer had left, I washed carefully, pinned up my hair, took down the shutters and sat beneath the window, curling on the padded cushion set there, watching the river below. The night seemed blossom sprigged, like the blackthorn bush. The softly hesitant bell from the chapel on the bank further up the Corn whispered midnight, but I was not tired. I could barely see the darkly swirling waters below my window, but could hear them, the repetitive shudder as the tide hit the pillars, the sibilant foam against the bases, the steady murmur as the Corn slopped into its final journey to the sea. The screeching gulls were silent now, and the wail of the river birds had turned to a tremor of ripples against the banks. Eden’s citizens were asleep, their candles extinguished and their snores reverberating through their small timber-framed houses.
I stared at the pale luminescence where a little moon-gleam shone across the watery heart of the city, snoozing too, its own snores just a slurp of sludge and debris against the harbour steps.
I wondered if I would dream sweet; I hoped of Jak, my mother perhaps, of Feep and even of Symon. But now I had slept badly for many nights, my body aching for the morning’s poppy drink, and my recent dreams had all been of poison and the knife, revenge and hatred, of Bembitt, of Kallivan and of Bryte.
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Also by Barbara Gaskell Denvil
Cornucopia
The Corn
The Mill (Available for pre-order soon)
The Sands (Coming Soon in early 2020)
Historical Mysteries Collection
Blessop’s Wife
Satin Cinnabar
The Flame Eater
Sumerford’s Autumn
The Deception of Consequences
The Stars and a Wind Trilogy (Norse Fantasy)
A White Horizon
The Wind from the North
The Singing Star
Box Set
Crime Mysteries
Between
The Games People Play Series (Crime Fiction)
If When
Ashes From Ashes
Daisy Chains
Time Travel Mysteries
Fair Weather
Future Tense
Children’s Bannister’s Muster Time Travel Series
Snap
Snakes & Ladders
Blind Man’s Buff
Dominoes
Leapfrog
Hide & Seek
About the Author
My passion is for late English medieval history and this forms the background for my historical fiction. I also have a love of fantasy and the wild freedom of the imagination, with its haunting threads of sadness and the exploration of evil. Although most of my books have romantic undertones, I would not class them as romances. We all wish to enjoy some romance in our lives, there is also a yearning for adventure, mystery, suspense, friendship and spontaneous experience. My books include all of this and more, but my greatest loves are the beauty of the written word, and the utter fascination of good characterisation. Bringing my characters to life is my principal aim.
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