Chapter 4 #3
Bile rose in the back of her throat and she pushed back the memory of her mother’s men.
So many men, knocking on the frame of their small house tucked into the alley, barely more than a lean-to, a shanty crouched in the shade of a larger house, a house where there were servants and rooms with rugs and where real people lived.
Such a far cry was the life in that house from the miserable existence Inez had known, scrounging for scraps of firewood before daybreak, picking from the refuse that rich folk left outside for their animals to find food that might make part of a meal.
The men her mother took behind the worn curtain that served to divide her parents’ bed from the rest of the room that comprised their house.
The way Inez would sit outside until it was over.
She would have taken herself away at those times, but she’d learned that she was needed to help clean up after, sometimes the linen and sometimes her mother.
It wasn’t always that her mother entertained, and it wasn’t her regular trade.
Only when her father had been gone too long on a sail, or when he had been home too long and not bringing home wages from other work.
Inez’s mother had her baked goods to sell, but sometimes it wasn’t enough.
But if the women at market knew of the men who came sometimes to the alley where they lived and stepped behind the curtain, then they wouldn’t buy anything.
They’d sneer at her mother—Inez’s beautiful, dignified mother, who said her prayers to Santa Maria every morning, who made the most delicious broa, who had the softest hands and a low, musical voice and a smile like the sun setting over the sea.
If her mother had been a courtesan to the rich, she would have been fed the best sweetmeats, showered with jewels, shown off in a fancy carriage in silks and velvets and furs.
She would have commanded respect, adoration.
But because she was married to a poor sailor, not even a Portuguese sailor but a man from afar, and because what she sometimes sold was her embrace to men who paid for the chance to take their ease with her, she was dirt on the street to the merchants’ wives and daughters.
It wasn’t a life either of them would have wished for.
Inez had hoped things would be better when they came to England to find her father.
England was a rich land, wasn’t it? London was the biggest city in the world, so they said, bigger than Paris, if not as grand.
There would be work. There would be a better home than the shanty and better life for her mother at a different market.
But it wasn’t a better life. For her mother, it was more of the same life, hard and wearing and hungry, only with different men who came to the door when her father was absent, and different women who turned up their noses when they passed their stall at market.
On her deathbed, when her beautiful mother had been worn to a shadow and then the shadow had worn down to nothing, Inez had promised her mother she’d only ever take respectable work. She’d never let herself be used. She would do better; she would have better.
If only her mother had made her promise never to hang her heart after an unsuitable man, Inez thought now.
And what did it gain her to cling to virtue and respectability anyway?
They mattered to the women who hired her but not the men of the house trying to pull Inez into dark halls and doorways.
And no one would believe her claims of innocence if they knew she frequented Dark Lane.
“Go see Ceres,” Mother said. “I’m certain she will welcome you. We’ve missed your broa.”
Mother Ceres was the name given the cook, and Inez was relieved to see the Ceres presiding over the kitchens now was the one she’d known from before, a woman with skin darker than Inez and a round face that broke into a ready smile when Inez entered.
“Mother of mercy, it’s been an age since we’ve seen you hereabouts, Inanna. Come to stay with us again?”
“Come to work with you, Mother Ceres, if you’ll have me.”
“You know you’ll make more coin as a Vestal.”
“Certo, but I like to work in the daylight hours and sleep in my nights,” Inez said.
The cook chuckled. “You’ll find late hours when Mother wants to throw a banquet or the ladies are up late entertaining. But I could use a set of clever hands.” She nodded toward a battered brass pot perched on the huge black cookstove. “You can make the gravy for the fowl, then dress the turnips.”
Inez fetched a stew pot down from the shelf, then collected a scoop of butter from the ceramic dish kept cool in the scullery.
She put the kettle to boil, then hunted up a knife to hack up bits of lean beef and mutton for a proper gravy.
The kitchens of Dark Lane were a low set of rooms with thick oak beams bracing the ceiling and an ancient brick hearth, not like the sunny and high-ceilinged room at George Court.
But the ladies of Dark Lane welcomed her back, and Joseph Illingworth never did.
Inez carved off a slice of bacon with more force than was strictly called for. Why had she been such a fool for that man, again and again and again?
“So did the lord ever find ye?” Mother Ceres inquired as she withdrew a pan of bread from the brick oven. “The one as was looking for ye a while afore.”
Inez’s heart stopped beating for a too-long moment, then did a slow flip in her chest.
“A man? Dark brown hair, deep set eyes, too handsome for his own good or anyone’s?” Her heart tripped trying to resume its beat, blast that worthless organ. Had he come looking for her before? Had he finally wanted her, and she’d been too dim to see it? “He’s not a lord,” she added.
The cook’s eyebrows rose to the lace border of her cap.
“Well, he makes Bess call him his lordship, don’t he?
One o’ the high and mighty ones, for certain.
” Ceres sniggered. “Bess told us once as how his wig fell off during a lively moment, and he stopped and made her look away until he could get adjusted.”
Inez didn’t laugh along with Ceres’s hearty chuckle. “Large hooked nose, very thin lips? Wears a toupée with a pigtail in the back?”
“Aye, that’s the wig.” Ceres chortled. “How d’ye know him? He was particular keen to find ye.”
Of course he was, because Inez was in possession of something very, very valuable that rightly belonged to the lord. And she’d done him a greater wrong than mere thievery.
“I worked in his house for a time,” Inez answered. “When did he ask about me?”
“Oh, several times, well nigh pestered me and Mother for a month, swore he’d seen ye here and said we were hidin’ ye.
But you’d kicked off long before and we’d no notion where ye’d gone, and so Mother Vesta told him.
Vowed he’d bring the constable down on us, which ye know Mother Vesta won’t like, as she pays the man well to look aside from us and would have to pay him even more if a lord kicks up a fuss.
Now he just looks about all keen-like, hunting through the halls where he oughtn’t be, but he pays well and he’s a regular customer, so Mother don’t want to lose a fat cull. ”
Inez fumbled with a carrot she was slicing, sending a chunk skittering to the floor. Mother Vesta’s dog, a small greyhound, shot out from under the table to snap it up, then retreated before Ceres would reach for her broom.
“When do you think he’ll be back?”
Ceres shrugged and took up a cloth to turn the roast sizzling on its spit over the hearth.
“Usually every few days, when he’s in town.
Haven’t seen him in a bit, so maybe he’s done for the season and is headed off to his estate for the summer.
Shame he didn’t bring Bess along this time, but I suppose he’s got his bits hidden all over, and it’s too much extra luggage to cart along. ”
Inez sliced an onion to arrange over her ingredients in the gravy pan and let that excuse the tears starting to her eyes. If his lordship was gone from town, she was safe.
He couldn’t know enough to accuse her, could he? She’d fled that accursed house as fast as she could. But why else would he be looking for her, unless he knew?
A bell rang along the board hung high on the wall, and Ceres glanced up at it.
“That’ll be Queen Bess wanting laced up, I’ll wager.
She’ll have had an easy night so I don’t doubt she wants to spend her day in the shops.
That means she’ll want her chocolate and a bit of honey on her toast. Will you take it, Inanna? Certain she’ll be pleased to see you.”
The cook grinned as she popped two slices of bread onto the toasting stick and handed it to Inez.
“She might invite you to go along with her, but be prepared to look aside if you must. I’d wager our Bessie’ll find another john and take him in the alley outside the milliner’s so she can have a new length of silk ribbon for her hat. ”
Inez grazed the bread over the flames of the low fire hearth, lightly toasting both sides. “D’you think Bessie would? She’s such a fear of the pox.”
The pox was a fear rightly held by many in the trade, along with the clap and the itch. More than one former Vestal endured regular treatments of mercury because a john had cheerfully passed on his coin along with a disease he had acquired from previous adventures.
Not everyone died in the festering agony that Inez’s mother had experienced. But that memory alone, separate from her promise, was enough to make Inez shrink from the thought of sharing her body with a stranger.
She turned the toast onto a plate and scooped a dollop of honey into a dish, then poured a cup of chocolate from the pot perched on the hob. “The pan is ready for you to shake some flour in, Mother Ceres, then add the hot water for the gravy. I’ll be back to check on you in a moment.”