Roberta Gellis (4 page)

“Freak!” she exclaimed. “You should be dragged along in a player’s troupe so you could be shown off as a monster.”

“I make more money as a saddler,” he said, and laughed.

Bertrild sprang to her feet. “I am glad to hear you say that,” she spat. “I need fifty marks.”

“I do not make so much money as that,” Mainard replied indifferently. “I am a saddler, not an earl. I do not have fifty marks.”

“Because you spent it on buying that woman!” Bertrild shrieked. “You would not pay the debts on my father’s land, but you paid God-knows-what for that blind whore.”

Mainard did not wish to discuss Sabina. He had done his best to hide their liaison to salve Bertrild’s pride and had failed. Now he simply ignored that part of her accusation.

“I could not pay the debt on your father’s land,” he said, and added truthfully, “and had I had enough, I still would not have bought it free. The estate was ruined. I have never held land. I could not have restored it.”

“Return the woman to the pest house from which you bought her and give me the money, or I will tell the world what you have done.”

She would not let the subject go. “I did not buy Sabina,” he said flatly. “She was never a slave or bound. I paid nothing and will give you nothing.”

“I will find out what you paid, and I will get it!”

Mainard shrugged. “You will only find proof that Sabina is a free woman, lodging above my shop. She pays rent—”

“She lodges in your bed!” Bertrild’s voice rose to a shriek again.

He could not deny that but neither could he bear daily recrimination on the subject. With his heart beating like a hammer in his throat, Mainard made an offer it would kill him to keep. “If you will take me back into your bed and serve me as a wife, I will tell Sabina to find other lodging when her lease is ended.”

“Lie with a deformed monster and breed more monsters!”

Impervious to all her other taunts and insults since Sabina had restored his sense of worth, he still flinched at those words. It was a fear he had not yet had courage to mention to Sabina. While she had been a whore, he knew she had taken potions to clean out her womb; he did not know whether she was still doing so. He must talk to Sabina, and soon…. And the thought brought home the knowledge that Bertrild had refused the bargain he offered, no matter how cruelly. Suppressing his relief lest she see how glad he was and change her mind just to torment him, he shrugged again.

“I am a man. I have my needs. If you will not satisfy them, I must seek elsewhere for my relief.”

“You may spend a farthing in the stews then, if you can find a whore filthy enough to accept you. You cannot shame me by establishing a mistress in my house.”

“This is your house. You wanted no part of the rooms above my shop, so they are mine to do with what I will.”

“You will not keep your whore there! I will go to the alderman, to the justiciar if I must.”

“Do not trouble yourself or waste your time. I have already spoken to both alderman and justiciar, and to the sheriff and the Watch also. All know that Sabina is a blind musician. They know the rent she pays, and they know she was once a whore but did not like the life and left it. No men ever visit her. She goes out only to sing and play.”

Bertrild gobbled with rage. None of those men would fault another man for keeping a mistress, and she was known to them for so-called false complaints, too. Her hatred was so fierce that, strong as he was, Mainard felt uneasy.

“I will destroy her…and you too!” she hissed.

“Unless I finish you first,” he said, rage and bitterness overwhelming him, and turned and left the house.

* * * *

Bell was very pleased with the woman he had found until they had almost reached the Old Priory Guesthouse and, turning a corner, he noticed the position of the sun in the sky. Until then he had been so busy watching to make sure the whoremaster had not sent his men to attack him and take revenge on the woman, that he had not realized it was midafternoon and the clients who came to Magdalene’s soon after dinner would already have arrived. He glanced at the woman beside him and shuddered. No way could he bring this filthy creature where any client could see her.

The full daylight showed how far she had fallen. Now that the light of battle was gone, her eyes were like the dull green slime on stagnant water, and her mouth looked hard. Bell moved a little farther away from her. There were lice and fleas crawling on her. Likely he had a few of his own, but not so many one could see them walking about.

He thought of putting Diot in the stable, but he was afraid that William of Ypres, one of the king’s favorites and leader of all his mercenary troops, might suddenly appear. He was very rich, very powerful, an old friend and patron of Magdalene’s, and he tended to arrive when he liked without warning. He would not be amused by finding something like Diot in Magdalene’s stable—or maybe he
would
be amused; one could never tell with Lord William—but he would tease Magdalene about it, and
she
would not be amused.

By then they had reached the gate in the high stone wall that surrounded the Old Priory Guesthouse. When the nuns had it built, they had arranged adequate protection and isolation for their guests, although they would not accept them within the priory’s walls. The leather thong of a fairly large bell hung in easy reach. Bell’s lips thinned. If Magdalene was short a woman, all she had to do was pull the bell cord inside and be less welcoming.

Usually he rang the bell because Magdalene did not favor guests walking in uninvited; this time he did not. He unlatched and opened the gate softly, turned to tell Diot to enter, and just barely caught her as she started to run away. There was terror in her eyes as she looked at the tall stone wall.

“No,” she whispered hoarsely, “I will not go in there. God knows what is done to the women kept behind such walls.”

“Your name should he Idiot, not Diot,” Bell growled. “The walls were built by the nuns who then owned the guesthouse. Did you not see that the gate was open? What matter how high the wall if there is an open gate in it? No one is kept in this house against her will.” He pulled her through and shut the gate behind him.

“No!” she cried, pulling back.

Bell seized her and shook her. “Hush!” he hissed. “If you disturb Magdalene’s clients, she will murder me. Listen, I swear to you that no harm will come to you here. If you do not wish to stay, you will be free to go. But if you squall and make a stir and trouble Magdalene’s clients, I will beat you silly. Now shut up and come with me.”

Without further explanation, he dragged her around the side of the house, past the stable and into the garden. There he plumped her down on a bench screened by rose bushes and bade her sit until he returned, threatening to beat her if she ran away. By then the quiet, well-ordered garden, the sheltered bench, the open windows from which no screams could be heard had reduced the terror the walls had wakened in her. Before she could decide whether her fear of this “special” house was greater than her fear of angering a man powerful enough to cow the whoremaster, he was back with a most beautiful, elegantly dressed woman.

“Good God, what is this?” Magdalene asked, stopping short when she saw Diot.

“Never mind the dirt,” Bell said hastily. “It will wash away. More important, listen to her speak. I do not know what has befallen her, but if she did not begin in a gentleman’s Household, I will kiss her as she is.”

“Others have not found it so great a sacrifice,” Diot snapped.

Magdalene’s lips had parted to make a sharp comment to Bell, but she turned her eyes to the woman. The filthy rags and the bruises that could be seen through them had given the impression of an utterly broken creature, but the tart retort to a dominant male and the faultless accent in the Norman tongue started a new train of ideas.

“You were beaten and cast out of your last place,” Magdalene said. “For what?”

“Doubtless for refusing to obey orders,” Bell put in, when Diot hesitated. “I saved her another beating, or maybe worse, for refusing to service the whoremaster and doing some damage to his private parts.”

“It was a whoremistress who did this to me,” Diot said. “I had hoped she would be more understanding, but when I refused to eat a man’s dung, she had me beaten, took my clothing and my few farthings, and cast me out like this.”

Magdalene sighed. There was, of course, no way to guess whether the woman’s statement was true. It was certainly not impossible. And she had now seen through the dirt what Bell’s male eyes had more quickly discerned—that the woman was beautiful.

“And you speak good English too?” Magdalene asked.

“English mother, Norman father,” Diot replied in that language, “like so many others. But my mother was very beautiful, and my father was fond of her, so he let her speak her own tongue as well as learning his.” She stopped speaking abruptly and folded her generous mouth into a thin, hard line.

Magdalene wondered what had happened, but she did not ask. She had no intention of listening to a tragical story that might be pure invention…or might not. It did not matter now any more than her own tale, but even if everything the woman said was false and she was not suitable for the Old Priory Guesthouse, Magdalene could well afford to help her a step up out of pure charity.

“From what Bell says, you cannot go back to the place he found you either—”

“It was that house on Dockside opposite Botolph’s Warf,” Bell said.

Magdalene shrugged. “Well, you would not want to go back there in any case.”

“Looking like this, only that kind of place will take me,” Diot remarked bitterly.

“Yes, that is true,” Magdalene said, “which is why I will offer you a bath and a decent gown.”

“How much?” Diot asked, her eyes suddenly brighter with eagerness.

“For
caritas
. I am a woman and a whore also.”

Diot caught her breath, one hand clenching on the breast of her tattered garment and started to stand. Then she sank back on the bench and bit her lip. “I will owe you no favor? I will not work in any ‘special’ house. I do not mind futtering, but I will not be cut or beaten or sodomized or—”

Magdalene turned on Bell. “What in the world did you tell her about this place?” she asked indignantly.

He made an exasperated grimace. “Nothing that could give her such an idea, except that once I did use the word ‘special.’ I swore you did not allow your women to be misused over and over, but when she saw the walls….”

“Those were built by an order of nuns nearly one hundred years ago.” Magdalene shrugged. “I will not drag you in. Bell and I will leave you now. The back door is open. If you wish to come in, the first door past the kitchen entrance is the bathing room. If you wish, you may enter there. I believe there is a barrel of cold water and a hearth with a kettle of hot. You may bathe if you like. You may not go anywhere else in the house. If you try to do so, I will have you beaten and taken to the sheriff. You may, of course, leave at any time.”

Diot stared after the retreating backs but did not take long to follow them in. She was still afraid, but having heard Magdalene’s offer, it now seemed to her that any torture she would experience if she had guessed wrong was a price she was willing to pay to be clean again. Trembling, she entered the open back door, braced against being seized, but only an old woman, who had been sitting in the kitchen doorway, was there. She stood up abruptly and stared at Diot, then pointed wordlessly to the next doorway.

There Diot found exactly what Magdalene had described, including, folded on a stool, a shift, an undertunic, a gown, and stockings. After staring at them for a moment, Diot rushed to close the door and found to her utter delight that it could be locked with a light bar. She dropped that into its slots immediately and hurried to the hearth. Here she carefully removed the twist of cloth that held her three farthings—two that she had earned and the whoremaster had not yet collected and the one Bell had given her—laid the farthings on the stone and threw the cloth into the fire where, grease-laden as it was, it started to burn at once.

As quickly as she could, she then tore off every scrap of filthy cloth and added it to the fire. Naked, she drew a deep breath of satisfaction. Even if the fine whoremistress had meant to force her back into her old rags if she did not agree to let them do what they wished with her, she could not do so now. If they drove her into the street naked, she could complain—even a whore could complain of that.

Finally, she turned to the bath, dipped water from the barrel until it was half full, added the hot water, and refilled the kettle with fresh water. Then she realized the sides of the tub were too high to climb over and she nearly began to weep before she called herself a fool. Beside the tub there was a second stool and on it lay a clean drying cloth and a brush and a comb, both well used (the comb was missing a few teeth and the bristles of the brush were bent) but perfectly clean, and a pot of soap. Diot drew a deep breath and tears did begin to well over her lower lids.

Diot spent a long time in the tub. She washed twice in the first water, also washing and combing out her hair again and again. Then she got out and dipped out every drop she could into an empty barrel. After that, she hesitated, feeling she might be taking advantage, but the river was only over the road and down the bank. If the whoremistress was angry because she had used too much water, she would gladly fill the barrel again. Humming happily, Diot refilled the tub and began to scrub herself again.

Several times she had been aware of footsteps and voices in the corridor outside the bathing room, but she paid no attention. The door was safely barred. She would be clean again and decently clad before she had to gird her loins to face whatever awaited her.

Eventually and still reluctantly, Diot rose from the nearly cold water and dried herself. Wrapped in the drying cloth, she went slowly about emptying the tub and cleaning it, but she could not make the task last forever and, in fact, she was growing more and more anxious about her fate. Better to know than to fear, she told herself. Still her hair was almost dry before she dressed in the clothing that had been left for her. Now she was listening again, and she realized it had been perfectly quiet for a long time. Stroking the well-worn but clean and whole cloth she wore for courage, she went and unbarred the door.