Roberta Gellis (31 page)

Although her eyes were fixed on the pattern she was embroidering, she was hardly conscious of the needle setting the stitches to outline a rose. Never. Never would any man again have the right to demand she be faithful! But she could not hold back a little silent giggle when she remembered Bell’s swift riposte to her suggestion that he was going to stay at Saint Albans to be purified. She shook her head. The greatest danger she faced in dealing with Bell was not his beautiful body or his handsome face but that he was so much fun.

“When will soon be?” Sabina asked pathetically, interrupting Magdalene’s thoughts.

“I do not know, love,” Magdalene soothed. “Remember that it is not only because he is afraid you will have changed toward him that Master Mainard does not come but because Bertrild’s death has caused him to be all behind in his work. Monday they did no work at all and Tuesday, although he sent Codi and the boys back to the shop, I fear they did nothing or did nothing well enough to be called work. Likely he spent most of Wednesday undoing the disasters they had created. And even today, I suspect little was accomplished.”

“Perhaps tomorrow? Oh, no! Tomorrow I have an appointment to sing at a birthday dinner.
Oh, what shall I do? If he should come and I not be here…what will he believe?”

“That you were singing at a birthday dinner,” Magdalene said dryly. “How could you be so stupid as to lie about a matter so easily proven. Sabina, if he will not believe what you say—and what Haesel says—you must not go back to him.”

“Oh, I must! I must! I care so much for him.” She wiped away a few more tears and then smiled tremulously. “But I did not mean that he would be angry, only that he might think I was avoiding him. Perhaps I had better send a message to Mistress Saylor that I am ill and cannot come.”

“Do not be so silly. This is a new client, and you must not disappoint her. Mainard will not come at dinnertime anyway. That would break up his day too much.”

“But he often came at dinnertime. We mostly ate our meals together.”

“Sabina! Your brains are rattled loose. It is one thing for him to walk up a flight of stairs and eat a meal that Haesel fetched and then walk down again. It is quite another to walk almost a mile from his shop, across the bridge, and then here and have to walk back again.”

Sabina drooped. “Yes. I suppose I am being silly. And he might not come tomorrow…. But if he should come tomorrow or any other day and I not be here, I could not tell him how much I care for him. He might go away and…and fear to come back.”

Ordinarily Magdalene would have scoffed, but recalling Mainard’s pain she thought Sabina might be right. “You have a point, love. He is so unsure and suffers so much…. Yes. I will tell you what we can do. You can make a list of all of your singing appointments for the next week and the places you will be, and Tom Watchman or Ella and Diot can bring him the note. Oh, and I will write that you beg him to come any other time or to tell you if he wishes you to cancel any of the appointments because you are very eager to be with him.”

“Yes, yes. That would be wonderful. Now, let me see. Tomorrow I must go to—

“Wait, love. Let me fetch a pen and ink.”

The list was made easily enough, although the directions for each place took some time. Sabina insisted on giving those in case Mainard wanted to be sure where she was. The letter explaining why she sent him the list and urging him to come to her took a great deal longer. Sabina was afraid to press too hard, lest Mainard think her bold or that she wished to impose her will on him, but she wanted to press hard enough for him to feel the sincerity of her longing.

She was just about satisfied with what Magdalene had written for her when Diot showed “Mayor” out the way he had come in. Sabina took her letter and her lute and retired to her chamber because the next set of clients would be coming soon. Letice, clinging and stroking, led her man out into the common room rather than down the back corridor a few moments later. He stopped beside Magdalene to admire her embroidery and to make a special appointment with Letice for Tuesday morning the next week. Magdalene did not often accept morning appointments, but he explained he would he sailing for France on the afternoon tide that day and wished to take a pleasant memory along.

The bell had pealed to announce Diot’s second client before Ella and her messy eater staggered to the bathroom, giggling all the way. Magdalene shook her head. It was a harmless lunacy compared with some of the things men thought whores should be willing to do, but she could understand why his wife would not permit it—if he had ever mentioned it to her. Dulcie came from the kitchen to strip the bed and replace all the linens. Of course, they charged the client two farthings extra for the washing, but it was a nuisance.

Letice’s second man came, a pale, frail clerk who slunk in from the back gate, having entered through the priory. Magdalene knew he made Letice anxious, but he would have no other woman. Magdalene could not decide whether, like the new sacristan of the priory, he had chosen Letice because she was not Christian or because of her exotic looks. But he had an almost abnormal desire for her. In fact, what made Letice anxious was that she was terrified he would die in his violent convulsions of mingled ecstasy and guilt. Magdalene heard him begin to whimper even before the door closed.

The bell pealed again, and Magdalene hissed between her teeth as she put her embroidery aside and got up to answer. That would be Ella’s second client, and she and her fruit squasher were not yet out of the bath. She ran down the corridor and quietly tapped on the door of the bathing room. That would be a reminder to Ella not to encourage another passage at arms in the tub, which she would likely do if the man had the strength. Then she went out and opened the gate.

Her breath almost caught in her throat when she saw who was there. She had forgotten it was his day. He had canceled his regular appointments on Monday and Tuesday but kept the one on Thursday. How fortunate that Ella was busy! She would be able to talk to him, perhaps in the guise of urging him to come more frequently to test his reaction to Bertrild’s death.

“Come in, do,” she said in English, remembering
that Lintun Mercer was not really fluent in French.

She stepped back from the gate and gestured him toward the house. “I am very sorry that Ella is not here to greet you herself,” she continued as they walked toward the door. “She will be ready in just a few moments, but we had an accident with some dessert from dinner, which she took into her room. Dulcie had to change all the sheets, and Ella had to take a bath. She is sometimes silly—

“Sometimes!” Mercer said, laughing as they entered. “The girl’s an idiot! What did she do, take the pudding into bed and fall asleep on it?”

Although
Magdalene bristled internally at the contempt with which Mercer spoke of Ella, who was childlike but within that not stupid, she only smiled and said, “Something very like. You know how timid she is. She was eating and a loud noise startled her. She dropped the pudding and in her attempts to clean it up, it got smeared all over. Sit down at the table, and I will fetch you some wine and cakes.”

Since Mercer knew the Old Priory Guesthouse’s wine and cakes from guild meetings that were held there, he was very willing and took a seat at the long table while Magdalene went to the kitchen, passing the bathing room on her way to and fro. Through the closed door, she faintly heard splashing and voices. Good, it would be some time before Ella was ready.

“Ella missed you Monday and Tuesday this week,” Magdalene said as she set the refreshments before him.

“Does Ella know me from any other man?” he asked, raising a brow in doubt while reaching for a cake and lifting the cup of wine.

“Oh, yes. To be sure she does.” Magdalene laughed, swallowing her irritation with the man’s attitude. “Of course, she does not know your name, but if asked to describe you, she would give a very vivid picture.”

He put down the wine cup without sipping from it. “I am not sure I wish to have Ella’s other clients recognize me.”

“Of course not!” Magdalene snapped. “My women never mention one client to another. You should know that.” Then she reminded herself that, no matter how irritating, this
was
a client, a good one, worth, until Bertrild started squeezing him, nine pence a week, and that her purpose, now that Bertrild was dead, was to induce him to be worth that much again. “Anyhow—” she continued quickly, allowing her lips to curve in simulated amusement “—unless you have a wife or another leman, I doubt the description would mean much. Ella ‘knows’ you from the waist down.” She laughed lightly. “I hope you are not overmodest, but she does tend to recognize men by their privates.”

He relaxed, grinned, and lifted the wine cup again. “Since you say she missed me on Monday and Tuesday, I can take that as a compliment.”

Still annoyed and thinking she would like to make those privates too sore for Ella to use, Magdalene murmured, “Oh, yes. Ella is very enthusiastic and proud of her skill.”

“Skill?” Mercer’s brow wrinkled.

“Ah,” Magdalene said, clenching a hand nervously under the table and barely preventing herself from biting her lip in chagrin, “I meant craft. My mother was from the north, and I still use a word or two from that country, although I was born and bred in Oxford.”

“Oxford is a good place for whoring, what with all the clerks and students from the schools there.”

Mercer took another cake and Magdalene, lowering her angry gaze to the plate, reached for one also, so furious she was unable for the moment to control her voice. To call her mother a whore just because she was! Then she swallowed her spleen with the bite of cake she had taken. It was better for him to think that she had been born a whore from a whore than that he remember her slip into the speech of the north. It was better and safer if no one connected her with the north, where a drunken knight had been killed by a knife in his heart and his wife disappeared.

“Yes, it was,” she said, her voice easy although her blood still pounded in her throat. “In fact, business grew so good that I found I needed larger quarters and so came to London. I hope business is mending for you, too, and that you will soon be able to come more often. As I said, Ella misses you. You are a favorite swain.”

“What? She calls me a ‘swine’? Favorite or not, that cannot be a compliment!”

“No, no.” This time Magdalene did bite her lip. “Once I am reminded of my mother, I use her speech. The word was ‘swain,’ which in the north means lover. Do forgive me!”

“Hmmm.” Mercer’s eyes were cold. “I wonder what you women do call us when you are private? You should be careful, though, lest your slips of the tongue betray you. I—

“I am so sorry, so sorry!” Ella cried, running in from the corridor with only a drying cloth around her; she was glowing pink from pleasure and her bath. “There was fruit and pudding all over me and my bed, and—”

“Yes, love, I already told your friend that a dessert of fruit and pudding was spilled in your bed. Do not bore him by telling the tale all over.”

Ella laughed in a trilling crescendo. “I hardly ever talk to this friend. Talk is not for what he comes, and I am very glad of that, for he is strong and can futter me many times.”

“Ella!” Magdalene reproved.

Mercer was laughing, however, obviously flattered and excited by what Ella said. He rose and put his arm around her, bending his head to kiss part of her breast, which was exposed by his pull on the towel. They went off together, leaving Magdalene staring down at the two cakes left on the plate. Had he been threatening her when he said she should be careful lest her slips of the tongue betray her? Mainard said Mercer was from Lincoln. Could
he have heard of Brogan’s death? that Brogan’s very beautiful wife had disappeared, and somehow made the connection between the beautiful Arabel de St. Foi and the beautiful whoremistress Magdalene la Bâtarde?

Why? Why had she lapsed into the speech of her early life? She had not done so for years, having carefully extirpated any signs of her northern origin for fear she would be identified. Many years had passed, and Magdalene was reasonably sure that her husband’s death, as she had planned, had been accounted the work of thieves, who had then abducted her. She rose from the table and went to her stool by the hearth, where she picked up her embroidery. So why had she slipped so stupidly? Mercer was not a man she would like to trust with any knowledge about her.

As she embroidered, she went over and over the conversation she had had with him, trying to remember all his gestures and expressions. By the third or fourth review, she was even more annoyed with herself. If she had not told him, he would never have known the words were northern; she could have told him they were Welsh or Cornish….

Magdalene froze, the small embroidery frame dropping to her lap. But Mainard had told her that Mercer had been born and bred in Lincoln. Born and bred in Lincoln? No, that was impossible. She was sure Lintun Mercer had never heard the words ‘skill’ and ‘swain’ before. But that was the common speech of the area around Lincoln. Was it possible that in the city…. No, merchants from Lincoln had come to the smaller town near her husband’s estate, and they had spoken the same way she had. So Mercer was
not
from Lincoln.

Magdalene frowned, then snorted softly with disgust. Unfortunately that meant nothing more significant than that Mercer was dishonest, which they knew already, and had probably fled wherever he did come from because he was about to be exposed, like Jokel de Josne. Good God, was no one in that Bridge Guild honest except Mainard? She blinked. Was that why Mainard had been invited, no, pressed, by Perekin FitzRevery to join that Bridge Guild? Because his respectability and transparent honesty would lend credibility to all the others? Mainard was the only leather worker; the others were all mercers or goldsmiths.

She went over the five chief members of the Bridge Guild in her mind: John Herlyoud, who had violated his journeyman’s bond; Perekin FitzRevery, who had falsified a deed to his farm; Ulfmaer FitzIsabelle, who had stolen from a dead man; Lintun Mercer, who had stolen half the business from his partner’s heirs; and Jokel de Josne, who had fled his home city before being arrested. It was interesting that he had left in 1130 before Saeger had married in 1131 and only appeared in London in 1136, after Saeger’s wife was dead.