The Secret Pearl (2 page)

He allowed her to precede him into the room and closed and bolted the door behind him. He set the single candle he had brought up with him in a wall sconce. The noise from the taproom was hardly diminished by distance.

The prostitute was standing in the middle of the room, looking at him. She was young, he saw, though not a girl. She must have been pretty at one time, but now her face was thin and pale, her lips dry and cracked, her brown eyes ringed by dark shadows. Her hair, a dull red in color, was without luster or body. She wore it in a simple knot at the back of her head.

The gentleman removed his top hat and cloak and saw her eyes move over his face and along the ugly scar that began at the corner of his left eye, slashed across his cheek to the corner of his mouth and on down to his chin. He felt all his ugliness, with his near-black unruly hair, his dark eyes, his great aquiline nose. And it angered him to feel ugly in the eyes of a common whore.

He strode across the room, unbuttoned her pale gray cloak, which she had made no move to take off herself, and threw it aside.

Surprisingly, she wore a blue silk dress beneath it, long-sleeved, modestly low at the bosom, high-waisted, unadorned. But the dress, though clean, was limp and creased. A gift from a satisfied customer some weeks before and worn nightly ever since, he guessed.

Her chin lifted an inch. She watched him steadily.

“Take your clothes off,” he said, unnerved by her quietness, by her differentness from all the whores he had known in his youth and during his years in the army. He seated himself on a hard-backed chair beside the empty fireplace and watched her with narrowed eyes.

She did not move for a few moments, but then she began to undress, folding each garment as she removed it and setting it
on the floor beside her. She was no longer watching him, but kept her eyes on what she was doing. Only when she came to her chemise, her last remaining garment, did she hesitate, her eyes on the floor at her feet. But she removed that too, drawing it up over her head, folding it as she had done her other garments, and dropping it to the top of the pile.

She set her arms loosely at her sides and looked at him again, her eyes steady and expressionless, as they had been before.

She was too thin. Far too thin. And yet there was something about the long slimness of her legs, about the shape of her hips and the too-small waist, about the high firm breasts that stirred the gentleman who watched her. For the first time he was glad of his decision to engage her services. It had been a long time.

“Unpin your hair,” he told her.

And she lifted thin arms to do so and bent to set the pins carefully beside the pile of her clothes. Her hair fell over her shoulders and about her face and halfway down her back when she straightened again. Clean, lifeless hair, not red, not blond. She lifted a hand to remove one strand from her mouth, her eyes steady on his.

He felt a surging of lust.

“Lie down on the bed,” he told her as he got to his feet and began to undress himself.

She folded the bedclothes back neatly and lay on one side of the bed, her legs together, her arms at her sides, her palms against the mattress. She did not cover herself. She turned her head to one side and watched him.

He undressed completely. He scorned to try to hide himself from a whore, to try to hide the purple and disfiguring marks of the wounds on his left side and left leg, which even in a mirror made him grimace with distaste, and which must repel any stranger not expecting them. Her eyes moved down to them and then returned calmly to his face.

She had courage, this whore. Or perhaps she could not afford to lose even the most repulsive of customers before she had earned her pay.

He was angry. Angry with himself for returning to whoring, something he had given up years before. Angry that he felt self-conscious and ashamed with a prostitute. And angry with her for being so much in control of her feelings that she would not even show her revulsion at his appearance. If she had done so, he could have used her accordingly.

And the thought revolted him and angered him further.

He leaned across her and took her by the upper arms, moving her so that she lay across the bed instead of along it. He grasped her hips and drew her forward until her knees bent over the side of the bed and her feet rested on the floor.

He slid his palms between her thighs and spread her legs wide. He pushed them wider with his knees, bending his legs so that they rested against the side of the bed. And he spread his fingers across the tops of her legs and opened her with his thumbs.

Her eyes were lowered, watching what he did.

He positioned himself and mounted her with one sharp deep thrust.

He heard the sound of shock deep in her throat and watched her bite down on both lips at once and shut her eyes very tightly. He felt all her muscles tense in self-defense. And he waited, standing above her, buried deep in her, watching her with hooded eyes, until the breath came vibrating out of her and she imposed relaxation on her muscles. Her eyes were fixed on his.

He slid his hands beneath her, holding her steady above the mattress as he leaned over her and took the pleasure for which he had employed her. She remained still and relaxed as he moved swiftly and deeply in her, her arms spread across the bed at her sides, her eyes wandering over his facial scar and looking back up into his. Once she looked down to watch
what he did to her. Her hair was spread across the mattress to one side of her, where he had moved her across the bed.

He closed his eyes as he released into her, and bowed his head over her until he could feel her breath against his hair. And along with the blessed relaxation he felt the stabbing of a nameless regret.

He straightened up and disengaged himself from her body. He turned away to the washstand opposite the foot of the bed and poured cold water from the pitcher into the cracked bowl, dipped the rag of a cloth into it, squeezed out the excess water, and returned to the bed.

“Here,” he said, holding out the cloth to her. She had not moved beyond bringing her legs together. Her feet still rested on the floor. Her eyes were still open. “Clean yourself with this.” He glanced down to her bloodstained thighs.

She raised one hand to take the cloth, but it was shaking so out of control that she lowered it to the bed again and turned her head to one side, closing her eyes. He took her hand in his, turned it palm-up, and placed the cloth in it.

“You may dress when you have finished,” he said, and he turned his back on her in order to dress himself.

The quiet rustlings behind him told him that she had brought herself under control and was doing as she had been told. And yet when he turned at last, it was to find her trying to do up the three buttons of her cloak with hands that were trembling too badly to accomplish the task. He took the few steps toward her, brushed her hands aside, and did the buttons up for her.

The sheet at the edge of the bed, he could see over her shoulder, was liberally stained with blood. He had ripped her quite effectively.

“When did you last eat?” he asked her.

She straightened her cloak, looking down at it.

“When I ask a question, I expect an answer,” he said curtly.

“Two days ago,” she said.

“And what did you eat then?”

“Some bread.”

“Was it only today you decided to turn to the profession of whore?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “Yesterday. But no one wanted me.”

“I am not surprised,” he said. “You have no idea how to sell yourself.”

He took up his hat, unbolted the door, and left the room. She followed him. He paused at the foot of the stairs and looked about the noisy taproom. There was an empty table in a far corner. He turned, took the girl by the elbow, and crossed the room toward it. Any customer who was in his path took one look at him, at his fashionable clothes and harsh, scarred face, and instantly moved to one side.

He seated the girl with her back to the room and took the seat opposite her. He instructed the barmaid, who had followed them to the table and was bobbing curtsies to him, to bring a plate of food and two tankards of ale.

“I am not hungry,” the girl said.

“You will eat,” he said.

She did not speak again. The barmaid brought a plate on which were a large and steaming meat pie and two thick slices of bread and butter, and he gestured to her to set it before the prostitute.

The gentleman watched the girl eat. It was very obvious that she was ravenous, though she made an effort to eat slowly. She looked about her when her fingers, which still trembled, were covered with crumbs of meat and pastry, but of course it was a common inn and there were no napkins. He handed her a linen handkerchief from his pocket, and she took it after a moment’s hesitation and wiped her fingers.

“Thank you,” she said.

“What is your name?” he asked.

She finished chewing the bread she had in her mouth. “Fleur,” she said eventually.

“Just Fleur?” He was drumming his fingers slowly on the top of the table. He held his tankard of ale in his other hand.

“Just Fleur,” she said quietly.

He watched her silently until she had eaten the last crumb on her plate.

“You want more?” he asked her.

“No.” She looked up at him hastily. “No, thank you.”

“You don’t want to finish your ale?”

“No, thank you,” she said.

He paid the bill and they left the inn together.

“You said you had no place in which to ply your trade,” he said. “Do you have no home?”

“Yes,” she said. “I have a room.”

“I will escort you there,” he said.

“No.” She hung back in the doorway of the Bull and Horn.

“How far away do you live?” he asked.

“Not far,” she said. “About a mile.”

“I will take you three-quarters of a mile, then,” he said. “You are an innocent. You do not know what can happen to a woman alone on the streets.”

She gave a harsh little laugh. And she hurried along the street, her head down. He walked beside her, experiencing for the first time in his life, though only at second hand, all the despair of poverty, knowing that his own problems, his own reasons for unhappiness, were laughable in comparison with those of this girl, London’s newest whore.

“Please do not come any farther,” she said at last, stopping at a corner outside a dingy shop that advertised itself as an employment agency.

“You cannot find employment?” he asked her.

“No,” she said.

“You have tried?”

She looked up at him with that little laugh again. “Do you think that this is anything but a very last resort?” she said. “It is
hard to persuade oneself to starve to death when there is one last thing to sell.”

She turned and would have hurried away. His voice stopped her.

“Have you not forgotten something?” he asked.

She looked back at him.

“I have not paid you,” he said.

“You bought me a meal,” she said.

“A meat pie, two slices of bread, and half a tankard of ale in exchange for your virginity,” he said. “Was it a fair bargain?”

She said nothing.

“A word of advice,” he said, taking her hand in his and closing her fingers about some coins. “Don’t undersell yourself. The price you asked would invite only contempt and rough treatment. The treatment I gave you, by the way, was not rough. Your price should be triple what you asked. The higher your price, the more respect you will command.”

She looked down at her closed hand, turned, and walked away without another word.

The gentleman stood and looked broodingly after her before turning and striding toward more fashionable and more familiar streets.

I
SABELLA
F
LEUR
B
RADSHAW DID NOT
leave her room the next day. Indeed, she did not even leave her bed for much of it, but lay staring listlessly up at the water-stained ceiling or at the dull brown walls from which age-old paint gave evidence of its existence only in a few dirty flakes. She wore only her chemise. Her silk dress, her only dress, was draped carefully over the broken back of the lone chair in the room.

For the first time in her life that day she touched despair and did not have either the will or the energy to pull herself free of it. She had been close before during the past month, but by
sheer willpower she had clung to hope, to a dogged determination to survive.

Sally, the seamstress’s assistant who lived upstairs, knocked on her door at midday, as she often did. But Fleur did not answer. The girl would want to talk, and she would want to share her own meager meal. Fleur did not want either the company or the kind charity.

She had survived. She would survive—perhaps. But she had discovered that survival after all was not necessarily a triumphant thing, but could take one into the frightening depths of despair.

She bled intermittently through the day. She was so sore that sometimes she squirmed against the sharp pain of her torn virginity.

And that was not the end. It was merely the beginning. Her first customer had paid her handsomely—three times the sum she had asked for in addition to the meal. The money would pay her overdue rent and keep her in food for a few days besides. But then she would have to go out again to pursue her new profession.

She was a whore. She shut out the sight of the ceiling, closing her eyes wearily. No longer was she contemplating becoming one with horror and the fading hope that she might somehow avoid the inevitable, believing in her heart of hearts that something would come along to save her.

She was a whore. She had agreed to be hired by a gentleman, walked to an inn with him, removed all her clothes at his command while he watched, lain naked on the bed at his bidding, watched him strip away all his clothes, and then allowed him to open her up and take his masculine pleasure in the most secret depths of her body. She had given her body for his use and taken his money in payment.

She quite ruthlessly enumerated in her mind all the stages by which she had entered the profession that would be hers
until she was too old and ugly and diseased to attract even the meanest customer. Or until something even worse happened.