“Aren’t you the silent one, Brother! Am I so disgusting? Or do you think me sinful for feeding this…” She brushed one hand lightly over her breasts. “…decaying flesh? Should I have prayed instead?”
“You may be old but are not yet dying,” Thomas replied. His words might have been innocuous, but his tone was sharp with irritation. She was no witch, he thought, just a troublesome hag. He bit his lip in repentance, cursing the weariness that made him impatient and harsh to a querulous old woman in pain. “As for the innkeeper’s niece, I do not listen to mean-spirited gossip,” he added quickly.
“Ah, charity! That’s always the greatest virtue, isn’t it? Never hope. Why’s that? I’ve always wondered.” Tibia laughed but there was no joy in it. “Ah, Brother, forgive me. You came here with warm compassion, and I burn your ears with blasphemy. I confess it. I have sinned. Will you forgive me in God’s name?”
“God forgives everything.” Thomas extended his hand. “Would you not go inside and seek your bed? Sister Anne has sent a sleeping draught.”
Briefly, Tibia struggled to stand, then gave up with a loud gasp. “Lift me, if you’re willing. Take me to my straw pile,” she whimpered. “Were my son alive, he’d have made me a softer place to lie in and stayed while I fell asleep…”
Thomas felt a twinge of guilt. “Then after you drink this, let me wait in his stead until you sleep,” he said, bending to pick her up.
She uttered a sharp cry as he set her on her feet, and then pushed weakly at him when he took one arm to steady her. “You’re most kind, Brother,” she hissed in pain. “Please sit at my side. As you offered. Tell me of God’s grace. That would bring comfort. I must think on dying.”
With that, she slipped through the small opening to her dwelling.
Thomas followed her into the darkness.
Chapter Three
Signy reached out, desperately grasping for the wall to steady herself.
Her head spun. A cold sweat rolled down her temples and cheeks. Then her fingers did find the wall and she leaned against it, pressing her face against the rough surface as if greeting a dear friend. Slowly the nausea eased, but the sweat did not dry in the oppressive air of the upper rooms.
It is over, she thought. It is done with. Yet she trembled with the weakness of a newborn babe. The innkeeper’s niece squeezed her eyes shut to keep from weeping.
Below her, the patrons of her uncle’s inn shouted. A few sang bawdy songs, and their raucous joy rose with the stench of their hot bodies.
Signy took a deep breath, taking in the familiar smell to reassure herself that the world was no different than it had been but a few minutes ago. Turning around, she leaned her back against the wall. A sharp twig protruding from the hard clay wall scratched her arm. From the thatch above her, she heard a familiar rustling. Rat or mouse most likely, creatures she hated, but tonight their stubborn presence was a source of comfort.
“I loathe Martin,” she muttered and felt better for having said it. Why should she feel otherwise? He was a man who took whatever he wanted, discarded it at will, but always left evidence of his possession like gangrene in a poisoned wound.
“And I hate his foul jests,” she said.
Bringing Ivetta here on a regular basis, as if the inn were a brothel, was just one example. Why not swyve the town whore midst the wood splinters on the floor of his cooper’s shop, when he wanted a woman, or rent out his stinking bed when he had a paying customer for her?
“Because he wished to mock me,” she answered herself.
Signy pushed herself upright, walked slowly to the top of the stairs, and looked down at the milling crowd below. The inn was a profitable enough business, so why did her uncle permit this blatant whoring? Surely it did not bring him that much extra coin.
“I like the king’s face on silver as much as my kinsman,” Signy whispered, “but I would have spat in Martin’s face, not grasped his hand in agreement, when he suggested this arrangement.”
Of course she had particular grounds to hate such a proposition, the cause of which her uncle was quite ignorant. But Martin knew her reasons well and found especial pleasure in the distress this whoring brought her. “I may not be chaste,” she said, as if arguing with some critic in the shadows, “but I have never given myself for gain.”
Not that many of the men below had not hoped otherwise when she first came to serve at the inn, but her uncle soon knocked several heads together. The word quickly spread that the innkeeper’s niece might be a buxom lass, but her body was not for hire. Now she might still suffer ribald jests but only the occasional, rude touch. The former she answered with light and practiced retorts. The latter she greeted with the prick of a pin she kept secreted in her sleeve.
Signy looked behind her at the closed door. The nausea returned, and she quickly shifted her gaze around to the room below. Straightening her back, she started down the narrow stairs. “Business is good,” she said aloud. That would please her uncle as much as it did her.
Halfway down, she stopped and bent to look toward the inn door. Old Tibia must have left, she thought. Her heart ached for the poor soul, alone in the world and growing aged without kin to take her in. Although she and her uncle might disagree about allowing Ivetta, the harlot, to ply her trade in the room above, they did not argue about giving the old woman a meal and a cup of weak ale.
In the past, the woman had often sat at that bench near the door and earned enough crumbs by selling remedies to ease mortal ills to keep herself alive. She enjoyed an especially brisk business in herbs that counteracted the effects of too much ale and was known to have tonics that helped men plagued by impotence. Even after the priory hospital became so popular, she kept her following of those who preferred not to share their particular sins with lay brothers, many of whom were reputed to be gossips. In the last few months, however, Tibia had plied her trade less and less.
Signy shook her head. The old woman must be suffering so much pain now from her back and leg that death would be a joy. Youth surely had its curses, but those attendant upon the aged must be harsher to bear. Was there some merit in dying before the hair turned gray?
She glanced back at the now invisible room above, shuddered, and hurried down the remaining stairs.
Easing her way through the crowd of men shouting orders for food and drink, she caught sight of Ralf the crowner, still in his corner and staring at nothing, grim as ever. Through the crush of milling bodies, she watched him for a moment without danger of being seen. He had reason enough these days for that dour look after the death of his wife. A pang of sympathy did prick her heart, and she asked herself if she had finally forgiven him for using her so cruelly that brief time now past.
She rolled the thought around in her mind as if seeking out any hidden bitterness. One part of her argued she should not condemn him. After all, wasn’t it simply a man’s nature to care little if the soft body he rode so casually offered that sweet ride out of love? Another now roundly cursed that she had been born one of Eve’s descendants, creatures with much cause to resent God’s decision to make them helpmeets to Adam. “Our Lord should have chosen some other to serve instead-like the perfidious serpent,” Signy muttered.
As she watched Ralf pick up his pitch-sealed jack of ale, hesitate, and then drink with eyes shut, she felt a sharp pain in her heart. How many times had she watched this small habit of his and smiled?
She clenched her fist and hurled silent abuse at his head. The very next moment, her heart cooled her fury and she concluded she was being unfair to the man.