Silken Threads (17 page)

“Nay...perhaps. I suppose that’s what I’ve
come to find out.” Joanna lifted a phial from the stack and turned
it over in her hand; a ribbon of sunlight from between the closed
shutters ignited the bubbly blue glass like a jewel. Lowering her
voice, she said, “You were speaking to a man in the alley yesterday
afternoon, and you became upset.”

“Olive!” The deerskin tacked over the
doorway to the back of the house parted. Elswyth, in a rumpled
sleeping shift, stood glaring at her daughter with her intense
little dark eyes. The apothecary was heavier than Joanna recalled
from the last time she’d seen her close up, which was several
months ago. Her face was puffy and sallow; her hair
—
wiry
and red, like her daughter’s, but rapidly graying
—
hung
raggedly about her shoulders.

“Mum.” Olive wrung her hands. “You’re
awake.”

“Aye, and the shop’s not open.” Elswyth’s
gaze darted toward Joanna, taking in her opulent attire with an
expression of leeriness.

Joanna inclined her head to the older woman.
“Good morrow, Mistress Elswyth.”

Elswyth pointed to the phial in Joanna’s
hand; her fingernails were ragged and black with ingrained dirt at
the tips and edges. “That’s ours.”

Joanna set the phial atop the others. “Yes,
mistress. I know.”

Elswyth speared her daughter with her
half-mad gaze. “Why is the shop not open?”

“‘Tis early still, Mum.”

“Open the shop.”

“But I never open it this
—
”

“
Open it,
you lazy girl, or I’ll take
the paddle to you.”

Olive sighed. “Yes, Mum.” She looked bleakly
toward Joanna.

“I’ll help you with the shutters,” Joanna
offered, stepping outside.

“Thank you, mistress.” Olive unlatched the
big shutters from inside and then joined Joanna on the street. By
the time they got the awning buttressed and the countertop braced,
Elswyth had retreated into the house again.

Joanna took Olive’s hands in hers. “Come see
me when you have the chance,” she said
—
softly, lest
Elswyth was listening from behind the deerskin.

Olive squeezed Joanna’s hands, her eyes
filled with turmoil. “Thank you, mistress. I will.”

* * *

“Anybody home?” bellowed Hugh’s voice from
beyond the curtain drawn across the storeroom door.

“I am,” Graeham called out, sitting on the
edge of his cot to pull on his braies.

Hugh ducked through the curtain and entered
the storeroom, looking a bit less like a paid soldier today, in a
gray tunic trimmed in black braid. He still wore his sword on his
hip, but so did most men of his rank, whether they had any use for
it or not. Only that incongruous gold earring hinted that he might
be something other than an ordinary young nobleman. “Where’s
Joanna?”

“I’ve no idea. I haven’t seen her since I
woke up.” No doubt she’d been avoiding him. Graeham worked the
braies over his hips and tied them. “She isn’t here?”

“Nay.”

“She must have just stepped out for a
moment. I know she means to go to the Friday fair with you. Would
you fetch that shirt off the peg for me?”

Hugh tossed him the shirt, then rubbed his
forehead. “Where does she keep her wine?”

Graeham pulled the big shirt down over his
head, breathing in its freshly laundered scent. “Suffering from the
ale passion, are you?”

“Aye, I spent most of the night at the White
Hart, throwing the devil’s bones. Now all I’ve got to show for it
is a blinding headache and an empty purse. I could use a bit of the
hair of the dog, if you know where she keeps it.”

“In the cupboard in the salle.”

Hugh left and returned a minute later with a
ewer and two cups.

“Don’t pour any for me,” Graeham said,
thinking it best to keep his wits about him until he’d had a chance
to apologize to Joanna for last night. “I haven’t broken my fast
yet. Wouldn’t want to start the day off sotted.”

“Why the devil not?” Hugh poured himself a
cup of wine and swallowed it down in one tilt.

From the alley there came a faint clacking
that grew steadily louder. “That’ll be Thomas Harper, looking for
his breakfast.” Graeham hauled himself to his feet. “Do you know
Thomas?”

“A rather monstrous-looking leper?”

Graeham nodded.

“I met him the last time I was in London.
Poor, wretched basard.”

“Don’t let him hear you say that.” Graeham
unshuttered the alley window just as Thomas came into view,
shuffling along with his walking staff in his black cape and straw
hat. “Good morrow, friend.”

“Serjant!” Smiling, Thomas looked from
Graeham to Hugh. “I know you. You’re the brother.”

“I am indeed.” Hugh maintained a neutral
expression in the face of Thomas’s disfigurement, Graeham was
gratified to note. “‘Tis a pleasure to see you again, Master
Thomas.”

Laughing raspily, Thomas pointed a gnarled
finger at his ravaged face. “A pleasure to see
this
?” His
one good eye seemed to focus in on the cup in Hugh’s hand. “Where
there’s wine, Sir Hugh, I’m afraid there’s little wisdom.”

Hugh grinned and raised his cup. “If we’re
to quote old adages, I prefer
in vino veritas.
”

“If Alcaeus really did write that,” Thomas
said, “I suspect he did so while he was stinking drunk.”

Hugh made a little bow. “No doubt you’re
correct about that.”

“Are you looking for Mistress Joanna,
Thomas?” Graeham asked.

“That I am, but the shop window’s still
shuttered.”

“She’ll be back presently, I’m sure.”

“I’ll go wait for her out at the kitchen,
then.” Thomas turned and started making his way back up the alley
toward the croft. “She keeps a barrel for me to sit on
—
I
must get off these worthless feet.”

When they were alone, Hugh turned to Graeham
with a knowing smile. “How’d you like her?”

“Who?”

“Leoda. She was here last night, was she
not?”

How could he know? “Have you seen her
already this morning?”

Hugh snorted with laughter as he refilled
his cup. “I’ve rarely seen
any
whore before nones, unless it
was one I’d spent the night with. The morning hours are when they
get their sleep.”

“Then how...”

Hugh nodded toward the window. Graeham
cursed inwardly when he saw the string still tied to the window
bar; he hadn’t thought to remove it. He hobbled on his crutch to
the window and plucked one-handed at the knot in an attempt to
untie it.

“I’m glad to see you finally accepted the
wisdom of my advice,” Hugh said from behind him. “You should put
that string out at least once a week
—
’twill keep your
bodily humors balanced.”

Graeham grunted noncommittally, but he knew
he would have no more use for this string, except as a bookmark.
Far from balancing his humors, last night’s aborted little tryst
had left him in as agitated a state as he’d ever been plagued
with.

He winced at the memory of Joanna walking in
on them last night, grateful only that she had made her entrance
before Leoda had had a chance to go to work on him. Unperturbed by
the interruption, Leoda had still been eager to service him after
Joanna fled upstairs, but Graeham had retied his drawers and sent
her packing.

He was ashamed of himself for having
summoned Leoda. It had been both dishonorable and foolhardy, a rash
act born of a deep and restless hunger. In fact, no sooner had the
whore left than Graeham found his thoughts straying inevitably to
the woman asleep upstairs. What would it be like, he’d wondered, to
feel Joanna’s hands stroking him as Leoda’s had, to feel her mouth
on him, hot and sweet and coaxing, to feel her writhing beneath him
as he filled her with his aching need...Before long, he was
murmuring his Latin drill once again and cursing his unruly
passions.

“So, how’d you like her?” Hugh repeated.
“She’s not as tight as some of the younger ones, but her moves make
up for it, I think.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Graeham said over his
shoulder as he struggled ineffectually with the stubbornly knotted
string.

“You tupped her, didn’t you?”

“Nay.”

“Then what
—
”

“Your sister came downstairs and walked in
on us just as
—
”

“God’s bones!” Amusement warred with horror
on Hugh’s face. “She can’t have been very pleased.”

“I don’t imagine she was.”

“Did she make Leoda leave?”

“Nay, I sent her away myself.”

“Before she could tup you?” Hugh asked
incredulously.

“I never even intended to tup
her
—
not strictly speaking. I was going to have her in the
Frankish manner.”

Hugh grinned salaciously. “I’ve had her that
way. Too bad you didn’t get the chance to enjoy that talented mouth
of hers. She could suck a spear head off its shaft.” Abruptly he
cleared his throat. “Good morrow, sister.”

Graeham wheeled around to find Joanna
standing in the doorway, holding a tray laden with half a loaf of
black bread, a hunk of yellow cheese, two pitchers and a cup. She
stood motionless, regarding Graeham in dreadful silence, her face
stained red.

Graeham closed his eyes and raked a hand
through his hair.

He heard the rustle of silk and opened his
eyes to find her setting the tray on the chest next to his bed. She
was more incandescently beautiful than ever today, in a gleaming
tunic the same sumptuous golden brown as her hair. “This is for you
to eat while I’m gone, serjant,” she said tonelessly.

Hugh, damn his eyes, was chuckling
noiselessly, as if it were all some great jest.

Graeham swallowed, not knowing what to say,
but knowing he must say something. “Mistress...”

“We should be going, Hugh.” Joanna turned
and swept out of the storeroom, leaving the tantalizing scent of
wildflowers and spring grasses in her wake.

* * *

“I’ve never seen so many people here,” Hugh
said as he guided Joanna by the arm through the cacophonous throng
that had gathered in Smithfield for the Friday fair.

“Nor I. Must be the weather.”

A diverse assortment of
Londoners
—
nobility, merchants, clerics, peasants, and
scores of darting schoolboys in monastic habits
—
mingled in
the grassy field among foreigners speaking exotically accented
Latin, continental French and their native tongues. The Tower of
Babel must have sounded much like this. One section of the huge
fairground was a forest of merchants’ stalls beneath boldly striped
awnings. Another was set aside for the horse races and attendant
wagering. Roughly in the center of the irregular field was the
horsepool, a sizable pond around which were grouped the various
classes of horses for sale.

Hugh led Joanna to an area devoted to farm
implements and various livestock in makeshift pens
—
blooded
bulls, mares with their foals, pigs, oxen, spring lambs, geese,
even a peacock. Squinting against the bright sunlight, he looked
this way and that. “I thought perhaps Robert might be here. He
takes a rather keen interest in farming.”

Joanna stopped in her tracks. “You mean to
say you didn’t arrange a time and place to meet him?”

“I’ve never been much for planning,
Joanna
—
you know that.” He gave her that boyishly crooked
grin before continuing on. “Watch where you step.”

Wrapping her trailing sleeves around her
arms, she followed him past displays of sickles and scythes,
wheelbarrows and felling axes. “Look at me.” She held out the skirt
of her fine silken tunic, the hem of which was already suspiciously
stained. “I went to all this trouble to look presentable for this
fellow. I even left my shop closed on a Friday, and for what? This
entire day will go to waste.”

Hugh sighed. “You’ve been prickly as the
Devil all morning, Joanna. Does it have anything to do with...that
business about Leoda?”

She looked past him, her gaze falling on the
tidy cluster of stone buildings on the perimeter of Smithfield that
housed St. Bartholemew’s hospital. Graeham Fox would be
recuperating there if she’d refused his four shillings; perhaps she
should have.

Hugh cleared his throat. “They never
actually
—
”

“I know that.” She’d heard Leoda leave by
the back door shortly after she’d gone upstairs. “That doesn’t make
it all right.”

“You must understand,” Hugh said, “that
Graeham is a healthy young man, with the needs and appetites of
any
—
”

“I understand that perfectly well,” she bit
out. “What I don’t understand is how he could have had the gall to
bring that woman into my home. Whatever could have possessed
him?”

“Well...”

“It shows exceedingly poor judgment, if you
ask me.”

Hugh rubbed his jaw in that way he had when
he was uneasy. “Yes, well, I suppose it does. Certainly it
does.”

“You put him up to it, I assume.”

A gasp of nervous laughter escaped him; his
ears pinkened.

“Don’t try to deny it, Hugh.”

Contritely he said, “All right, I did
encourage it, but only because...” He shook his head. “Two months
is a damnably long time for a man to go without...release of that
sort, Joanna.”

“If he’s such a slave to his...his carnal
drives, then perhaps he should have boarded somewhere else. I’m a
respectable widow. I can’t have him bringing loose women into my
home.”

Turning on her heels, she strode away to
watch woman in a clay-spattered kirtle throwing cooking pots on a
kickwheel.

Hugh came up behind her. “Are you going to
make him leave?”

Frowning, she lowered her gaze, discovered a
smudge of manure on the tip of one of her gold slippers, and rubbed
it off on the grass. She
should
make him leave, despite the
money she’d lose. The house would feel empty without him, but she
was used to being alone. There were worse things than
loneliness.