The Gallows Curse (30 page)

    Ma
glanced slyly at him and, removing a long jewelled pin from her coiled black
hair, began scraping at the dirt encrusted under her pointed nails.

    'Thing
is, I can't keep the girl here indefinitely if all she's to do is cleaning.
I've women aplenty who are past their prime and don't get so many customers
now, so they'll gladly do a bit of cleaning rather than be thrown out on the
streets. They've served me loyally over the years and I'll not see them put out
for a newcomer. This girl of yours, she'll have to start bringing some money
in, and more than pennies at that. I'm taking a huge risk, hiding a fugitive
here when Osborn's got a fat bounty on her head.'

    Ma
Margot pulled a wooden trencher towards her and stabbed her hairpin into the
tiny carcass of a roasted songbird. She lifted it daintily to her lips. Her
sharp teeth crunched through the bones as she devoured it whole.

    'If
any of my customers should recognize her . . .'

    'Why
should they?' Raffe demanded. 'She's never been out of her village before and
the villagers who come here to market can't afford your prices.'

    Ma
smiled serenely at him and gestured at the food spread out between them. 'We
give our customers what they want and they pay for it. There are plenty of
cheap stews in Norwich where you can have a whore for the price of a beaker of
ale, but you may end up with a few surprises you didn't pay for.'

    Raffe
knew it was true; whatever else you could say about Ma Margot's, no man ever
got his purse stolen as he lay sleeping, or woke up to find himself being sold
as a slave to the pirates.

    Ma
leaned back in her nest of serpents and regarded him shrewdly. 'So what will we
do with her, Master Raffe? There's a number of customers have asked for her
already, for she is quite striking with that red hair of hers. You know what
some men say, flames on top mean there's a blazing fire below, and a few
customers would pay good money to quench it for her.'

    Raffe
was on his feet in an instant. 'Shut your filthy mouth!' His hand shot out to
grab Ma's throat, but he'd forgotten about the long gold pin in her hand. He
yelped as the point was rammed with unerring accuracy into his palm.

    'Manners,
Master Raffe,' Ma said, watching with evident satisfaction as he sucked at the
blood flowering in his hand. 'Here, sit down. Take more wine and some meats for
your belly. All men act with too much haste when they're hungry.'

    Still
smarting with rage and pain, Raffe reluctantly resumed his seat, and Ma waited
as he ripped the meat savagely from a roasted duck and stuffed it into his
mouth. He continued to eat in stony silence until, finally replete, he pushed
the trencher away.

    'Now,'
Ma said, 'let's talk business.'

    Her
tone was so calm and matter of fact, Raffe might have believed he'd imagined
the violent exchange, if his hand hadn't still been throbbing from the pin
stab.

    You
sent the girl here knowing what my business was, so you must have had your
reasons, Master Raffe. For if her safety was all that concerned you, she'd be
in Flanders by now, but that would have put her right out of your reach,
wouldn't it?'

    'That's
not true. I thought of nothing else but her safety. That was precisely why I
didn't attempt to send her abroad. We might have had to wait for days to find a
ship that would take her from these shores, and Osborn would have had a watch
put on the harbours within hours.'

    Ma
threw back her head and cackled with laughter. 'Don't try to cod me. We both
know Talbot could smuggle a whole whorehouse of girls on board a ship if you
paid him to.'

    Raffe's
face flushed with anger. 'How is the villein who's never been further than the
manor's field supposed to fend for herself in a foreign land? She'd have died a
beggar on the streets in a month, or worse.'

    'Milking
a cow or tending a field is the same the world over. We both know she'd have
found work easily enough, so don't let's waste words.' Ma was no longer smiling
and her eyes had taken on a glittering hardness.

    'You
want her here within your grasp. But if she stays here, she must earn her keep.
I can fill Elena's bed a dozen times over with girls who'll gladly do whatever
I ask for a roof over their heads and a full belly.'

    'You
owe me,' Raffe snapped. 'If it wasn't for me, your brother would have hanged in
the Holy Land and you'd never have come to know him. I swore to you I'd never
tell him who you were and I kept my word
so far,
because we both know
that if Talbot ever found out you and he were kin, he'd start thinking he was
master here. He'd want a share of the profits, and a great deal more than a
share.'

    Ma
smiled, though her eyes remained cold and hard. 'I won't deny the old ape is
useful. But you and I both know I've more than repaid that debt to you these
past twenty years. A life for a life I've given you and I owe you nothing more.
So if your girl can't turn a good profit for me, she's out.'

    Ma
leaned forward and plucked a fig from the trencher, but her gaze was fixed
unblinkingly on Raffe's as if she wanted to make sure he understood every word
she was about to say.

    'Our
parents died when I was still a babe in arms. Talbot was almost ten years old
then, and, as he's told you, my father had already given him to a ship's
captain in payment for a debt. My uncle and his wife took me in, thinking to
make use of me as a servant as soon as I could lift a broom. But when they saw
I'd never grow like other women, they sold me to the first man that would pay a
fat purse to bed a freak. Some men are like that, you know, want to try one of
every kind of woman there is, just like some men faced with a banquet won't
rest till they've sampled every dish. The more exotic and bizarre, the better
it suits their tastes — dwarfs like me, women without arms or legs, giants,
Jewesses, Moors, albinos. Some men think if a woman looks different, she'll
taste different between his thighs.'

    Ma
clenched her fist so tightly that the juice from the fig in her hand ran down
her arm. 'I was lucky, if you can call it that — the man who bought me had
money, and so did his friends. I wasn't a fool. I saw I'd got two choices:
resist them and know that they'd rape me anyway, or go willingly with a smile
on my face and screw every penny I could from them by giving them all they
wanted and things they hadn't even dreamt of.

    'Ever
since I was twelve years old, I've survived and grown rich by giving men what
they desire, even if they haven't got the guts to admit what they want to their
own confessors. I learned to know men better than they know themselves, so
believe me when I say, a man doesn't put his prize chicken into a den of foxes
unless he thinks that hen is really a fox. So whether you know it or not,
Master Raffe, you brought this girl here to a whorehouse because that's what
you believe her to be.'

    Raffe
leaned forward on to the table, his head in his hands, trying to master the
feelings raging through him. He felt as if he was trapped between two charging
armies. Every instinct in him wanted to keep Elena safe, pure, unsullied, just
as she had been that day he bound her to him over the body of Gerard.

    Yet
she had betrayed him with Athan. He could imagine every detail of it. He had
done so many times, some furtive sweaty groping in a stinking byre or stable.
And if she spread her legs for that gormless youth, who's to say there hadn't
been others? Even that, he persuaded himself, he could have forgiven her, if
she had only trusted him. Why couldn't she have brought the baby to him if she
wanted to be rid of it? He had offered her, stupid little girl, a base-born
villein, his love and protection and she wouldn't even condescend to take that much
from him.

    He
knew he only had to toss Ma a few coins and Elena would be his to do with as he
pleased, for as long as he pleased. That was all the old hag wanted - money.
But even now, even after all he'd risked for Elena, he couldn't do it. He couldn't
bear to see her mouth curl in disgust when she saw him naked, the ridicule in
her eyes, the mockery pouring from those full lips. He could not force himself
on her, knowing how much she would hate him for it.

    A
smile of satisfaction hovered around Ma's mouth. She pushed the wine flagon
invitingly towards him. 'Now, Master Raffe, let me tell you what I have in mind
for the girl.'

    Few
gentlemen came to Ma's house in the early afternoon, for most were seeing to
their own businesses. The women took advantage of the quiet time to sleep, wash
and mend their linen, or primp in readiness for the early evening customers.
But Elena, once her cleaning tasks were done, always spent the afternoon in the
courtyard garden. Mostly she just wandered among the vervain and germander,
lavender and bergamot, letting her skirts brush the bushes to release the
scents. Often she would pull a weed or clip off a dying bloom to encourage more
to blossom. It wasn't part of her duties, but she missed the fields and the
forests of her village in a way she had never dreamed possible.

    When
she had been a field hand, back before that day when Master Raffaele had
summoned her from threshing, she'd done her fair share of complaining about the
back- breaking work of hoeing and planting, reaping and gathering. But she had
not understood until now how much freedom she'd had to stop and stare up at the
wide open skies, the ships of white clouds drifting through the blue sea above
and the ragged flocks of rooks wheeling around the swaying trees. In all
directions the land had rolled out away from her, shaded with every hue of
brown and green growing paler and paler in the far distance until finally the
colours dissolved into the ocean of sky. But in here she could see no further
than the high walls of the courtyard and the square of blue cut out above her
head, like a piece of cloth laid ready to be crimped and sewn and bound.

    Back
in Gastmere, she had been able to escape on solitary walks to pick blackberries
or gather firewood, and find the space to be silent, listening to the piping of
a blackbird or the wind creeping through the rushes. But here she was
surrounded by women day and night, chattering, laughing, snoring. For all that
she missed the land, there was one thing she longed for more than any of that.
It was Athan. It was those precious moments when they'd walked hand in hand
under the great dome of glittering stars, when there seemed no one else in the
whole world save the two of them. Who was he walking under the stars with now?
Tears pricked her eyes. Why hadn't Athan tried to find her? Did he even care
what had happened to her?

    She
must have been muttering aloud, because a frightened little face peered round
from behind a raised turf seat that was covered over with fragrant purple
flowering thyme and wild marjoram. Then it disappeared at once. Elena tiptoed
around to the back of the seat and saw a small boy sitting on the grass behind
it, his knees drawn up to his chin, his arms wrapped tightly around himself.

    He
glanced up briefly, then lowered his head again, as if by not looking at her he
could make himself invisible.

    'Hiding?'
Elena asked with a smile, but the boy didn't answer.

    Despite
the heat, the other young boys were kicking a ball of woven withies
boisterously back and forth between them on the gravel path. The still air rang
with their shouts of triumph and groans as one side or the other scored a point
over their fellows.

    Elena
settled herself down on the turf bench, revelling in the cloud of perfume that
momentarily enveloped her from the sweet crushed marjoram and thyme. But the
little hunched figure didn't move. She reached down and gently fingered the
unruly mop of ash-blond curls. His hair was as silky and baby- fine as her own
little bairn's. The boy flinched away.

    'Don't
you want to play football or won't they let you join in?'

    He
made no sign that he'd heard her. She peered down at the soft rosy cheek, which
was all she could see of his face.

    'I'm
El . . . Holly.' She still couldn't get used to the name and the other girls
often had to yell it three or four times before she realized they were
addressing her.

    The
boy slowly raised his head. A stab of pain went through her as she looked at
the child. He was beautiful, with cornflower-blue eyes and long golden lashes.
His flawless, milky complexion was marred only by a small silvery scar above
one brow. But it wasn't his face which pained her, it was the expression in his
large eyes, frozen, dead, as if his mind was completely cut off from the world.
Though he looked like an angel, all she could think of was the tales she had
heard of corpses risen from their graves who walk without recognizing anyone or
anything.