Silken Threads (12 page)

“You must understand my concern. You’ll be
living under the same roof with her for two months or more, and
she’s a beautiful woman.”

“She’s a married woman. I make it a practice
to steer clear of them. Too many complications.” Graeham contorted
his lower face as he shaved his upper lip.

Joanna was wise, Hugh realized, to keep
Prewitt’s death a secret from Graeham. He must cooperate in the
charade, though it vexed him to do so.

“My word!” came a woman’s voice from the
alley. “Look who’s home from his adventures.”

Hugh looked toward the window to find a
sloe-eyed wench in a provocatively low-cut red kirtle peering
through the bars. Her great mop of hair, dyed severely black,
tumbled loose about her shoulders; her vermillion-stained lips were
curved in a coquettish smile.

“Leoda.” Hugh rose and crossed to the
window. She offered her cheek, which he kissed, noting that she
still wore that oppressively sweet perfume. She’d aged over the
past year, he thought, dismayed to see little creases beneath her
face powder, and a slight jowliness he’d never observed before. Or
perhaps he’d simply never seen her in bright daylight.
Nevertheless, she was still one of the prettiest whores in
London.

“Isn’t this awfully early for you to be up
and about?” Hugh asked her.

She yawned. “I spent the night with a
customer up on Popes Lane. He was gone when I woke up, so I never
even got paid, and he’d had me twice, the greedy bugger. I’m
heading back to my place now, to beg a bit of bread off my
landlady. My belly’s growlin’.”

“Are you still living in that garret over on
Milk Street?”

“Aye.” Giving him her most lascivious,
sleepy-eyed smile, she reached through the bars to brush a
fingertip across his lower lip. “You ought to come by sometime so I
can show you how much I’ve missed you.”

“A tempting invitation. I might just do
that.”

Her gaze lit on Graeham; she appraised him
with marked interest as he wiped his now clean-shaven face with a
towel. “Who’s this, then? A mate of yours? He’s glorious. Don’t he
have the loveliest eyes.”

“Breathtaking,” Hugh said dryly. He
introduced the whore to the serjant. “Graeham is renting this room
from my sister Joanna.”

“You can bring him along, too, if you’re so
inclined,” she suggested. “We’ll have us a jolly little romp, all
three of us.”

“Alas,” Graeham said, “I’m afraid I couldn’t
even make it as far as Milk Street.” He hitched up the left leg of
his braies, uncovering the bottom of the splint.

“You poor helpless pup,” she cooed. “Well,
if you can’t come to Leoda, you must let Leoda come to you.”

Graeham glanced toward the front of the
house. Hugh looked, too, and saw Joanna chatting with a passerby
without pausing in her work.

“Not here,” Graeham said. “‘Twould be...” He
shook his head. “Nay.”

“Ah, the sister,” Leoda said. “Are you and
she...”

“
Nay,”
said Graeham and Hugh
simultaneously.

Leoda looked back and forth between them
with strangely insightful amusement. “Yes, well, if you change your
mind, serjant, I pass through this alley at least once each night.
You need but tie a bit of string onto the window bar to let me know
you’re in the mood for a little company. Oh, and leave the latch
string out in back. I’ll be quiet as a mouse. She’ll never know I
was here.”

Graeham sat forward. “I really don’t
think
—
”

“It’s tuppence for the usual,” she said, “an
extra penny if your taste runs to somethin’ a bit fancier.” She
surveyed him from head to toe and back up again. “You’re darling.
And you, Sir Hugh
—
do come see me. We’ll make up for lost
time.”

Hugh bowed. “I tremble in anticipation.”

“Lying dog.” She blew him a kiss and started
sauntering away.

“Wait!” Graeham called out. “Leoda!”

Hugh looked at him curiously as he lifted
his purse from the floor and reached into it.

Leoda reappeared at the window, smiling in a
self-satisfied way as Graeham handed four pennies to Hugh and asked
him to pass them to her. “Change your mind already, serjant?”

“Fourpence,” Graeham said. “That’s what he
owed you, right? The man from Popes Lane?”

She rubbed her thumb over the coins. “You’re
payin’ me for him?”

Graeham shrugged a little sheepishly. “A
woman as beautiful as you ought not to be begging for her
breakfast.”

She stared at him for a moment in evident
shock, then blinked and slipped the pennies into her purse. When
she looked up, her eyes were soft. “I’ll be lookin’ for that string
tied to the window bar, serjant.”

When she was gone, Hugh grinned and shook
his head. “You’ll have to bed her now. She won’t leave you in peace
till you do.”

“You’re not serious.”

“I know she’s a bit long in the tooth, but
she’s been making a living on her back for enough years to have
learned how to do it right. And from the way she just looked at
you, my guess is she’ll give you the tumble of your life.”

“It’s not her age, it’s...” Graeham shook
his head in apparent bewilderment. “Jesu, Hugh, first you threaten
to slice my balls off if I take advantage of your sister’s
hospitality, and then you suggest I bring a whore into her
home?”

“Do it late at night, after Joanna’s asleep,
and she’ll never know.”

Graeham chuckled disbelievingly. “You’ve got
a strange notion of propriety, my friend.”

“Look.” Hugh sat on the cask again and
addressed Graeham squarely. “I know you promised to...keep your
distance from Joanna, and I know you mean well. You strike me as a
man of honor. But it’s been my experience that prolonged
abstinence, when it’s the result of circumstance and not of free
choice, tends to rob a man of such scruples. Most of the soldiers
I’ve fought with, if they go too long without a woman, they’ll tup
anything their cocks will fit into.”

“Give me credit for some small measure of
self-control, Hugh.”

“I’m not blind, Graeham. I see how you look
at her.”

Hot color tinged Graeham’s cheekbones.
“Brotherly concern is making you imagine things.”

“Come, now. How could any normal man live in
the same house with a woman like Joanna and not become tempted?
‘Twould go far to reassure me of your good intentions if you’d tie
a string around that window bar every once in a while instead of
trying to store your seed the whole time you’re living here.
Besides
—
’tisn’t healthy to go that long without easing
your lust. When I’ve had to do it, it’s damn near made my balls
explode.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“You’re just saying that to make me stop
pestering you.”

“Is there anything I can say to make you
stop pestering me?”

“I shouldn’t think so.”

Graeham laughed tiredly. “‘Twill be a long
two months, I think.”

“It will if you persist in playing the monk
the whole while. Listen, I’m going to pay a call on Leoda this
afternoon...”

“Oh, yes?”

Hugh grinned. “She really is most...inspired
when she’s been missing me. I can ask her to stop by here
tonight
—
”

“Nay.”

“Graeham
—
”

“But there is something you can do for me
when you’ve got the chance. A couple of things, actually. Next time
you’re out by way of St. Bartholemew’s, would you mind collecting
my baggage?”

“Gladly.”

“And do they still trade horses out at
Smithfield every Friday?”

“I should say so
—
except on feast
days.” The Friday fair, held weekly in a sprawling, grassy field
outside the city walls to the northwest, remained the high point of
the week for most folks in London.

“I’ve got a palfrey stabled at St.
Bartholemew’s. If you could arrange to sell it at Smithfield, I’d
be most grateful.”

“A
palfrey
.” It was Joanna, standing
in the doorway holding a deerskin-covered lapboard on which was
laid out a sheet of parchment, a quill, a penknife, sealing wax, a
clay jar of ink and a tangle of coarse string. She looked puzzled
but amused. “I wouldn’t have thought you were the type to ride a
palfrey, serjant.”

Looking discomfited, Graeham said, “‘Tis
a...long story. Are those things for me?”

“Aye.” She laid them at the foot of his cot.
“This isn’t proper cord for sealing a letter,” she said, indicating
the string, “but ‘twas the best I could come up with.”

“‘Twill serve me perfectly well, mistress.
Thank you.”

She studied Graeham
—
his
face
—
with an interest that made Hugh uneasy. “You look
different,” she said.

His gaze locked with hers, Graeham rubbed
his smooth chin. “I shaved.”

She nodded, her gaze lighting on his hair,
which had looked dark last night, but was drying into light brown
waves with a hint of rust. It seemed to Hugh as if there were
something more she wanted to say, but instead she turned and
glanced back toward her shop stall to find two women perusing her
wares. “I must see what they want. I’ll be back to empty the wash
bowl later, and then perhaps I can get you something to eat.”

After she left, Hugh said, “I must be off as
well. I promised I’d get that cart back to Southwark before
nones.”

“Many thanks for all your help, Hugh. But as
for your advice about Leoda...” He shook his head, smiling.

Using the penknife, Hugh cut off a piece of
string and handed it to Graeham. “Just think about it,” he said,
and left.

* * *

Graeham looked up from his second reading of
Wace’s
Roman de Brut,
his gaze automatically searching
through the open storeroom doorway and the empty salle to the shop
stall, seeking a glimpse of Joanna. He saw her standing at the
display window exhibiting her wares to a customer, an ethereal
silhouette in a haze of afternoon sunlight.

A full week in this place, and still he had
not tired of watching her as she went about her daily business. He
liked the way she moved, the languid elegance of her gestures. He
liked hearing the soft scrape of her voice as she chatted with
passersby while laboring over her embroidery frame. And he
especially liked the ephemeral perfume of newly sprouted grass and
damp earth and wild blossoms that lingered in the storeroom after
she’d been back there
—
which wasn’t nearly often
enough.

His leg still hurt, as did his ribs, but the
pain had diminished into a sort of tedious ache, more annoying than
tormenting. The surgeon had been by yesterday to check his splint
and sell him a fine wooden crutch custom-built to accommodate his
height
—
a vast improvement over either the sledge-hammer or
the broomstick he’d been resorting to. Of course, given that
Graeham dared not show his face out of doors, and was still too
infirm to do so even if he wanted to, the crutch languished at his
bedside for the most part.

Saving his place with the piece of string
Hugh had cut for him last week
—
the one he was supposed to
use to summon Leoda, but had pressed into service as a bookmark
instead
—
Graeham closed the
Roman de Brut
. He set it
on the chest atop the other volumes
—
a mixture of history,
verse and epic tales
—
that Hugh had been kind enough to
obtain for him from a used bookseller.

With the exception of his one isolated offer
to sever Graeham’s testicles and serve them up to him, Hugh had
proven himself quite a congenial and useful friend. During the
daylight hours, when he wasn’t visiting his sister, the amiable
mercenary seemed more than happy to run the occasional errand for
Graeham. At night he occupied himself as did any furloughed
soldier, in wenching and carousing till dawn, he and his mates
staying one step ahead of the ward patrols charged with keeping
London’s streets clear after curfew. Graeham listened with envy to
Hugh’s tales of his nocturnal adventures; if he weren’t confined to
this bed, he’d have joined in at least once by now.

Graeham heard distant voices raised in
argument and looked outside, his gaze automatically homing in on a
large second-floor window in the stone house next to le Fever’s.
They were at it again
—
a stout and opulently garbed fellow
of middle years and a dark-haired young man, his son, no doubt,
quarreling once more about whatever it was they quarreled about on
a nearly daily basis. This time the birdlike wife was in on it,
too, her voice a shrill, cajoling contrast to the masculine wrath
of her husband and son.

Graeham was tired of listening to them
fight. He was tired of the incessant cries of the street vendors
out front, the rumble of cartwheels, the squeal of pigs. He was
tired of re-reading the same books. And he was sick to death of
having to lie here on this cot all day like a bloody invalid, his
critical mission at a standstill for God knew how long.

The only activity he hadn’t grown weary of
was watching Joanna Chapman. His fascination with her had nothing
to do with boredom, and everything to do with her.

Peering through the house toward the shop
window, Graeham saw her hand a wrapped parcel to her customer, a
sturdy woman who reached into the wicker basket on her arm and
thunked a bundle of what looked like candles onto the
countertop.

Aside from his books, which he read sitting
up in bed with his leg propped on pillows, all the while keeping
one eye on the rear window, there was little to keep Graeham
occupied. He’d opted to recuperate here because of the location,
but so far his observations of the le Fever house had yielded few
insights that might prove helpful in the discharge of his
mission.

Byram, Aethel and the kitchen maid appeared
to perform their chores as dutifully as any servants, although Rolf
le Fever ranted at regular intervals about all manner of real and
imagined transgressions on their part. It seemed to particularly
incense him when he caught the plumply pretty kitchen wench
flirting with Byram. Graeham wondered how the guildmaster would
react if he knew that most mornings, after he left for the market
hall, the couple closeted themselves in the stable; it was always
some time before they emerged, disheveled and festooned with
straw.