Roberta Gellis (5 page)

The old woman was standing in the kitchen doorway again when Diot stepped out, and she pointed up the corridor and said, in a slightly overloud and flat voice, “Go into the common room if you want to speak to Magdalene.”

Diot cast a single longing glance toward the back door, but she knew the old woman could tell the whoremistress she had left, and she could be caught before she got out the gate. In addition, clean and decently clad, old patterns were wakening. She had been well treated, even given guesting gifts; she could not escape the obligation of at least returning thanks. She nodded at the old woman and turned to walk up the corridor toward the common room. As she passed a closed door, she heard a woman’s delighted giggle. Through the opposite door she heard a man’s groan. No screams. No shouts of rage or insults, which usually accompanied the passion of men who needed to hurt women.

At the entrance to the common room, she stopped in shock. It was very large, with two windows on either side of an open door. To the left side of the room was a big, well-polished table flanked on either side with a long bench and at the head and foot with shorter ones. On the other side of the chamber was a substantial stone hearth on which a small but bright fire burned. Around the hearth were four stools, two with sewing baskets beside them. The third held the man who had brought her here, comfortably disposed with one hand on his knee and the other gesturing as he spoke. Before the fourth stool was a large embroidery frame, and behind that sat the whoremistress, working at a pattern which must be an altar cloth.

Diot stood staring at the central large cross done in thread-of-gold and at the oval beside it which she thought must be Saint Sebastian. She was speechless. Whatever she imagined, it had not been this chamber, far better suited to a nobleman’s London dwelling than a Southwark whorehouse,
with a whoremistress embroidering a religious article.

“There!” The man had noticed her. “I told you she would wash up pretty.”

The whoremistress—her name was Magdalene, Diot now remembered—turned her head. She smiled. “Pretty is not the word. You are quite beautiful, Diot.”

“A curse,” Diot said bitterly, and was surprised to see the woman, who was even more beautiful than she, wince.

“So it can be,” Magdalene agreed. “Now, would you like to join us?” She glanced at the way the light came in the windows. “I would like to speak to you about whether this house will suit you, but if you do not wish to join us, you may go without let or hindrance.”

Diot looked around the room. She ached so to remain in this place, which brought back to her a life she had lost, but she remembered that terrible things could lie under a clean exterior. Her lips parted, but before she could speak, the old woman marched into the room.

“She cleaned up the room real good,” she said to Magdalene, “and even remembered to fill the kettle, but the water barrel is near empty.”

Diot felt herself blushing, a thing she was sure she had long forgotten how to do. “I took two baths,” she confessed in a low voice. “I will gladly fetch water from the river to refill the barrel, if you will show me what to use.”

Magdalene smiled at her very warmly. “Thank you. That is a fair and gracious offer, but it is not needful. I have a man who comes in the morning to do such chores.”

“Then—” Diot began, still not quite certain what she was going to say, when the old woman made her jump by seizing her hand.

“Here,” she said, pressing three farthings into Diot’s palm. “You left ‘em on the hearth.”

Diot stared at the coins. How could she have left them? Yet she knew that she had forgotten because the bath, the soap, the comb and brush, the clean, decent clothing, had pushed her back into a time when she did not need to be much concerned with three farthings. Yet now, they were the difference between starving or selling what she was wearing.

“Th-thank you. Oh, th-thank you,” she stammered. “I would not have been able to buy food, and I am so hungry….”

The old woman cocked her head but did not reply, and Magdalene said loudly, “She was thanking you, Dulcie. And she is hungry. See if there is some bread and cheese
and a cup of ale for her.” She turned to Diot as the old woman started briskly back to the kitchen. “She is deaf,” she said. “If you want her to understand, you must speak slowly and loudly.”

“You have a deaf servant?” Diot blinked. Such people were ordinarily cast away to live or die as they could.

“It has its advantages and its disadvantages in this establishment. Sometimes it is hard to make her understand, but on the other hand, she never hears anything she should not hear, so she cannot blab any client’s business—not that she would do so apurpose, but anyone can make a mistake.”

Fascinated, Diot took a few steps closer, and Magdalene waved to the empty stools. This time, after a wary glance at the silent man who was watching her, Diot sat down.

“Letice,” Magdalene continued, “one of my women, is mute; she cannot say anything she should not either. Ella, the other woman, could not remember or understand, even if she was willing to pay attention to anything other than a man’s privates. And that, Diot, is the base and foundation of this house and its prosperity. My clients pay high fees, not so much for futtering a clean, sweet-smelling, beautiful, and enthusiastic woman, although all my women are beautiful, clean, sweet-smelling, and enthusiastic, but for utter security. My clients are mostly rich; some are also important men who cannot afford to have their private pleasures common knowledge. In this house, they are safe, their names, their business, their persons, and their property. No man has ever lost so much as a half-farthing in this house nor had his coming and going remarked if he wished to hide it. No tale has ever come out of this house to discomfit a client.”

“You make clear what the women must and must not do,” Diot said. “Aside from security, what do the men receive?”

“A good enough counterfeit of affection, admiration, and desire to convince each man that he is handsome, clever, and altogether wonderful; that the woman who served him cannot wait to serve him again. A client also expects a sympathetic ear if he has troubles—but he knows he may not take out those trouble on his woman. That is what you fear, but neither abuse nor unnatural acts are permitted in this house, and I have powerful protectors to enforce my will.”

“That is true,” the man said with an odd grimace, and got to his feet. “I hope this solves your problem,” he added, a touch of anger in his voice.

“I hope so, too,” Magdalene said, “but it will make no difference to what I am.” Then she sighed and held out her hand. “Will you not stay and eat with us, Bell?”

He shook his head, but took her hand and kissed it. Then turned and went out the door.

On the second Sunday morning after Diot had arrived in the Old Priory Guesthouse, she was occupying one of the four stools near the hearth with a small embroidery frame on her knee. The bells of St. Mary Overy rang out for Tierce and Ella began to sing a hymn in her sweet, little-girl voice. Diot drew in a deep breath and blinked her eyes to drive back the tears that had formed in them. It was as if the whoremaster’s men had killed her in that loathsome stew and, having expiated her sins in pain, she had gone to heaven.

Although she had been fearful and doubting a week ago, Diot had not been able to force herself out of that beautiful, quiet house, and when Magdalene again asked if she wished to stay, she had agreed. By that time, the maid had laid a generous portion of bread and cheese and a small cup of ale on the table. Magdalene then secured her needle and gestured Diot to take a seat.

While Diot ate, Magdalene told her that one of her women had gone to live with a lover, and she was in need of someone to take her place. After the clients had left, Diot would be able to meet the permanent residents and decide if she thought she could work with them. Whether or not she wished to do so, she could have an evening meal and a place to sleep. If she thought she would like to stay, she could remain for one week on sufferance. In that time, if she stole, she would be put out penniless; if she was disagreeable to or offended a client, she would be put out with a penny. If she satisfied the clients and did not offend Ella or Letice, she would be paid ten pence for the week’s work without charge for room and board, and then she would begin a month’s trial.

Diot had not believed a word of it—but it had all been true. The first Sunday had been like a dream. After breaking her fast on a meal she had not seen the like of for two years, she heard Magdalene tell Letice to pay Hagar and take her back to the place where her countrymen stayed. Diot had then been told she would have Hagar’s chamber. She had been told where clean linen and cleaning supplies were kept and left to make the room into her own. Wanting to believe the dream, she had scrubbed everything washable and polished everything else until the place smelled like spring and every surface shone.

The next day, replete with good meals and well rested, she was offered her first client. He was a big man and brutal looking, but soft spoken and gentle when he touched her. He was also very richly dressed and carried a heavy purse. Diot did not need to feign enthusiasm; she had always enjoyed futtering, and she particularly enjoyed titillating a man until he was so drained he begged for rest.

So after she submitted beneath him, she rose atop to ride him, and after that gallop, she had kissed him softly as he slipped asleep, relaxed and snoring. Diot lay beside him eyeing the jewels twinkling on the collar and sleeves of his surcoat. With a sharp knife, she could lift one or two of those jewels and perhaps she could add a coin from his purse…. Would he miss any of those?

Before she moved, however, she had considered the powerful muscles, the hard face, the scarred arms and callused hands. Was that a man who would dress like a popinjay to go to a whorehouse? It was a not-very-subtle trap, she realized, and let her eyes close with relief. She had not really wanted to steal and was relieved to know it was out of her power to do so.

She touched nothing that was not hers all the following week, even running after one merchant to return a shilling he had left on her clothes chest. He had laughed and said it was for her, that she had given him a wilder ride than he had known in years. And then, hardly believing what she was doing, she had gone to ask Magdalene whether she was permitted to keep for herself what had been offered or was required to share with Letice and Ella. A whole shilling! But she had not lost it.

“So long as you never ask nor even give the smallest hint that you desire a present or an extra coin, you may keep what is freely offered,” Magdalene had said. “But they are already paying ten times the rate of a common stew and know my women are well paid, so will rarely offer more. Moreover, if any man thinks you are prodding him to give more, he will complain loud and long—and you will have to leave.”

“No, no,” Diot remembered herself saying, her voice trembling. “I will never ask for more. I will do all I
can to please them.”

At that point she still did not believe that Magdalene would pay her ten pence for her week’s work. Ten pence! Forty farthings. That would have been eighty men where she had been; here it had been twelve, two a day and on two days another man who slayed the whole night, but that was pleasant. They had talked and laughed and played a game of chess and had a little meal in the middle of the night, which Dulcie provided as a matter of course without grumbling.

Then atop that, atop the shilling and the full meals and the clean sheets, this very morning Magdalene
had
given her the same ten pence as she handed to Letice and Ella and told her she would be free to go to the East Chepe to shop, all by herself, any morning before clients came. But best of all, she had what she had been dreaming about for days. Magdalene had said she had done well and could stay for another month.

Diot knew she was still on trial. If she offended a client during that time, she would be put out; if she stole, everything she had would be taken to appease the client and she would be turned over to the sheriff. But she did not care about those strictures. She would never
have
to steal again. She was never hungry or cold now; she was safely lodged in her own clean, well-furnished chamber; and she now believed that no client permitted in the door could tempt her to offend. Diot closed her eyes and swallowed. Surely she was dead and in heaven.

Magdalene had been watching her newest whore from the corners of her eyes as she embroidered one of the final saint medallions of the altar cloth that was due at the mercer’s next week. She was far better pleased with Diot than she had expected to be. As the woman’s fear of misuse receded, Diot had shown herself to be clever and surprisingly perceptive about the desires of the men to whom she was offered. And she enjoyed her work. Now all that needed to be proven was that she would not revert to her old ways, that she would not tell tales of the clients where she should not, and that familiarity would not breed contempt of her clients.

Just as Magdalene was considering whether she should allow matters to proceed on their own or give Diot a gentle warning, the door, which had been closed against the morning chill, was opened to admit a girl child followed by a blind woman. Magdalene caught her needle into the cloth and smiled, assuming that Sabina had found time to visit.

“Magdalene!”

The voice was so strained, so choked, that the smile was wiped from Magdalene’s face, and she jumped to her feet, knocking over her embroidery frame. “Sabina,” she cried, starting forward, her arms outstretched. “What is wrong, love? Have you quarrelled with Mainard?”

Orienting on the voice, knowing there would be open arms to receive her, Sabina released her hold on Haesel, dropped her staff, and rushed forward. She flung herself into Magdalene’s arms.

“She is dead!” she gasped, bursting into sobs.

“Dead? Who is dead?” Magdalene cried, but she felt suddenly sick.