The King's Daughter (30 page)
She still stood, looking at the house, undecided. Then she snorted. She pulled her hat lower over her face and shook her head.
We walked on towards the white house hidden behind its wall.
We had left the worst noise of Bankside behind us. The twin towers of Lambeth Palace were a dark shadow ahead of us on the bend in the river, the inns were larger and set in their own gardens. The waterside here was dark, frequented mainly by strolling couples, foraging dogs and the occasional purposeful walker headed either upstream for Lambeth and beyond, or downstream towards Greenwich and the sea.
She stared up at the tall, white façade and stepped gables beyond the gated bridge.
‘Hey ho,’ she said. ‘Fish Pool House. Here I am again.’
But she wasn’t there with me at all.
TALLIE
I see the smouldering looks launched by the whores at the richly-dressed newcomer and the way he ignores them all. While Mrs Taft is still oozing welcome at him and all those looks bounce off him, I close my book, slip through the door into the gardens behind the former manor house, and crouch behind a rose hedge. I had seen his eyes pick me out from the others.
‘Tallie? Little Tallie? Where are you, sweet?’ Mrs Taft calls from the back terrace, terribly civil.
If I run, I’ll never get away. Stand out too much in any crowd, even here in Southwark. His eyes would have picked me out, no matter what he had come for.
Feet crunch closed on the garden path.
‘Where’s that little black cow?’ ‘Sister’ Meg who works in a wimple and robes, for the fervent Protestants who like to fight religious wars by pretending to ravish a Catholic nun. Now just the other side of the rose hedge. ‘Puss?’ she calls. ‘Here, puss! You must put on your best gown and pack your things. Your time has come at last!’
I stand up.
‘Got her,’ Meg calls to Mrs Taft. ‘Our priceless little Moorish virgin.’ She grabs me by the arm. ‘It’s you he wants. Time to earn back the cost of all those fancy singing lessons and dancing masters.’
I jerk my arm free and give Meg the Look. Don’t mean to. It just happens. All the rage and fear swirling around in my chest twist together and rise up in a dark fierce beam, up through my throat and behind my cheek bones, and shoot out of my eyes. My eye beams feel like hot steel, like long pointed spears. I stand firm, like a swordsman, holding my blade poised at the enemy’s throat.
Fear flickers in Meg’s eyes. She lets go of my arm and wipes her hand on her skirt.
‘Chook, you must be careful how you glare at people,’ Mrs Taft once told me. ‘Or you’ll be taken for a witch.’ Too late now.
No one told me where I’m going. Nor for how long. I glance at the man sitting beside me in the private wherry. He keeps space between us even when the boat rolls on a wave and he could easily let himself be thrown against me. He doesn’t lay a hand on my leg, nor even touch my hand. He keeps his eyes averted, almost as if he wishes he weren’t there. He does not behave as if he means to bed me. Perhaps he’s only the agent for the man who’s willing to pay a fortune to take a black maidenhead.
Either way, he bought me. I saw him put the gold coins into Mrs Taft’s hand. Far too many for a single night, intact maidenhead or not. My lute lies in my lap and my small bundle of possessions at my feet.
I swallow down a sour trickle that rises into my throat. From the motion of the boat, I tell myself, not fear.
I glance sideways again. This time, the man is looking at me curiously. He keeps looking after I look back at him, but his glance does not connect with mine.
As if I’m a dog or horse he’s just bought. I grip the gunwale when the boat rides up and over the wake of a barge, fighting down a wash of panic. I’m not certain I can bear to be bedded by a man who looks at me like that…
I look down at the distance between us on the seat.
Nothing feels right. The number of gold coins, far more than I’veever seen paid for the services of any of the other whores, even those schooled in music and dance like me. More than I’ve seen handed over for a prize-winning horse in the market.
That cool, curious assessment in his eyes. The hint of a shrug as he turns away to look out over the river again. That space between us, when I have been taught that he should be leaning on my shoulder, perhaps sliding his hand under my skirt…
Cold terror swamps me. I always imagined that when my moment came, it would happen in Fish Pool House with Mrs Taft on the other side of the door, most likely with her ear pressed against it. With the other women nearby, some of them perhaps even wondering how I was fadging. Each remembering her own first time.
I’m completely at this man’s mercy. Alone, Lord knows where. No friendly women within earshot to hear me if I scream. No watch patrolling the Bankside… if not already inside drinking or tupping one of Mrs Taft’s whores.
Can’t swim. I look at the dark river water and imagine how it would pull down the weight of my skirts. But even on dry land… where could I go? With my skin, I can’t hide for long. In my best skirt and bodice, and these silk shoes, I can’t even run.
I press back against the seat, or I might fling myself from the boat. Why not? All that money might have bought my very life. How do I know that he isn’t one of those men the whores whisper about, who liked to hurt women? Who need to hurt women in order to find satisfaction?
My bodice squeezes my ribs tighter and tighter.
You can never tell by looking at them, the other women said. Sometimes the mildest, weakest looking man can be the most vicious. Perhaps that smooth cheek of his, and cleanly barbered chin conceal inner foulness.
He must surely notice my agitation. Perhaps he enjoys my fear.
What if he hates me for the colour of my skin? Or secretly fears me? And means to bait me like a beast, to chain me like a bear and set his dogs on me, as I heard from a sailor visiting Fish Pool Housethat the Spanish and French sometimes do with the natives in the West Indies?
What if he means to kill me?
Hiding in the garden, I feared losing my maidenhead. Now, I’d take the press and fumble of sexual interest that I’ve seen so often, rather than this chilly indifference that pricks the hair straight up on my arms.
We near the opposite shore. I stare up at what has always been a low distant cliff face of river walls. The wherry pulls up to the Whitehall Stairs.
The man leads me through a gate, a maze of streets and covered passages. I don’t know if we are inside or out. Through more gates, guarded this time, then through more doors than I can count. I hug my lute in front of me like a shield.
Standing alone now in a small wood-panelled room watched only by a single silent man-at-arms. Why does he avoid my eye?
What happens next?
A tall, pale woman enters, stares at me, then leaves again without speaking. The man returns and leads me through more corridors, across open courtyards, up a flight of stairs and along a gallery. He opens yet another door. And there she is.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘Do you still want to go on?’ Her tone begged me to say ‘no'.
‘I must,’ I said. I knew that if I wavered, we would both flee.
I looked back across the dark water at the few tiny lights of Whitehall stretched out along the other shore – my familiar world reduced to tiny orange spots of light and their broken reflections in the water. The windows of the Queen’s lodgings to my right were almost all dark, but candles and torches still burned in the king’s rooms. I was reminded of standing on the crags, looking down on Edinburgh Castle as if I were a bird, freed from the creature-self who lived down there.
‘I must,’ I repeated.
We had decided that I would keep answering to Peter, a young gentleman still with his maidenhead, who wanted to see how it was done before trying it himself.
‘I shall tell them that you’re a little simple. Remember not to speak. That Scots burr will give you away.’ She chewed her lower lip for a moment, then took my arm. ‘Here we go, Master Peter.’
I suddenly felt watery in the knees.
The watchman at the gate eyed us keenly. ‘You two won’t find what you want here,’ he said. Then he looked more closely. ‘Blessed fig! It’s little Tallie!’
‘Good even, Bull.’ She shook his hand, then left him open-mouthed as she took my arm and hauled me briskly across the bridge over the little moat that surrounded the house. ‘You’d best stay out of sight as much as you can,’ she said. ‘Anyone who’s had a good look knows us for females. This is all complicated enough as it is without having to explain why I’ve brought a woman, let alone who you really are.’
I stood a little back from the main door and pulled my hat lower.
‘Good even, Meg,’ she said to the half-clothed woman who opened the door.
‘Venus, bless me! Tallie! You came! And look at you!’ The woman turned to call to someone behind her. ‘Mrs Taft! It’s Tallie, dressed like a young lord! We heard you’d landed at Whitehall?’
‘That’s true,’ Tallie said shortly.
‘And now you’re bringing us wealthy custom.’ She stepped aside for a short, handsome, authoritative woman wearing a fine gown of red silk taffeta.
‘How now, Mrs Taft?’ said Tallie coolly.
‘Tallie!’ The woman was of much the same age as Lady Harington and looked very much as my lady guardian might if she ever painted her cheeks and lips. She reached up, lifted off Tallie’s hat and ran her fingers along the red-dyed feather. ‘You’ve done well, my girl. I may have let you go too cheap.’
Tallie reached out and took back her hat.
‘Are you broken yet?’ asked an unseen woman.
‘She must be broken,’ said yet another woman’s voice. ‘Wearing such a doublet with those silver buttons… unless she stole it… did you foist it, pet, or earn it on your back?’
‘Tallie! cried a new voice. ‘How fine you look!’
‘Will you bring your young gentleman in?’ asked Mrs Taft. ‘Your room is ready.’
‘In truth, he’s terrified.’ Tallie stepped inside. She lowered her voice. The women all laughed at something she said. Then money clinked. The women laughed again.
‘We’ll see you right,’ one of them shouted out to me. ‘Don’t fear! No need to be timid with us!’
‘You’re a lucky boy to be in her hands!’ called another. ‘I know a good few men who’d envy you!’
From a distance, I nodded curtly at the curious faces that appeared in the door.
‘Does he prefer boys… is that why you’re in that rig?’ This question was meant for Tallie’s ears, not mine.
‘This way!’ Tallie reappeared, grabbed my arm and hauled me away from the curious eyes, around the side of the house to a side door. ‘They think you’re the son of a nobleman who bought me.’
We climbed a flight of stairs that led to a narrow passage. Tallie opened one of a row of closed doors. I took off my hat and gazed uneasily but curiously around the brothel room.
It looked like any other fairly modest bedchamber. A bed, a high-backed chair and a table with a basin and ewer. A small fire burned in the fireplace. The air smelled sweetly of burning rosemary and something more musky. The bed hangings were silk, but the bed itself was covered with a simple linen quilt and held an excess of pillows. Then I saw the painting on the end wall.
Ignoring the picture, Tallie stood for a moment, grim-faced, with her arms crossed. Then she pulled back a hanging on another wall to reveal a cupboard niche large enough to hold us both. In the back wall was a wide, horizontal crack.
‘A look-hole.’ Tallie pointed. ‘The oracle. Have a squinny.’
I went into the cupboard and put my eyes to the crack. I was looking at the bed in another room.
I realised that the painting on the wall was of the bed
I saw through the look-hole, but, in the painting, it was occupied.
‘Men pay to watch?’ I whispered.
She nodded, started to say more, decided against it.
‘That’s vile! Do the couple know?’
‘There’s no need to whisper yet. The woman knows, of course. The man?’ She shrugged. ‘Depends on whether or not he likes being watched on the job.’
Suddenly I wondered if my father had ever secretly watched Frances Howard and Carr.
The door of the other room opened. A young woman placed herself in front of the bed, wearing only a thin white smock over her naked body. She smiled straight at me.
I reared back.
‘Stand at your post!’ Tallie pushed me back to the peephole. ‘You’re the honoured mark here tonight. You must now choose your trull.’
The young woman turned her back and sent me, or the young man she imagined me to be, a smouldering look over her shoulder. She bent forward over the bed and pretended to straighten one of the pillows, displaying her generous haunches. With another smouldering look towards the lookhole, she left.
A slightly older woman replaced her beside the bed. She was tightly laced into a full bodice and overskirt made from frayed blue silk brocade, much like Tallie’s dress when she had arrived at Whitehall. But the edges of her overskirt framed her naked legs, belly and dark wiry bush. She stood for a moment, hands resting lightly on her farthingale, then sat on the edge of the bed and opened her thighs so that I was staring at a strange flower of dark pink, fleshy petals.
I stepped back again. ‘I can’t do this!’
‘You wished to know. Are you selecting which parts of the truth you want again?’
I returned to the look-hole.
The next young woman was very young, and black. I glanced at Tallie. Her jaw was clenched. The girl wore a long, fur-edged loose gown that fell open over her nakedness as if by mistake.
‘"The savage virgin",’ muttered Tallie. ‘Who’d like to take her maidenhead… for the sixth time?’