should be home now, seeing to my guests and preparing for the others. It is often beyond curfew before I can shut my doors, and sometimes I find customers waiting on my doorstep at the crack of dawn.' She bewailed her difficulties with complacency, a bright brown eye cocked upon Ailith.
'What kind of business, mistress?' Ailith responded politely.
'Oh, I run a bathing establishment, with a hostelry lying next door. It's not a brothel, I have nothing to hide,' she added quickly as she saw Ailith's look. 'I'm a respectable widow, and that's what keeps me in clients.' She sucked her teeth and folded her arms beneath her copious breasts, hitching them up beneath her chin. 'I heard that you were looking for somewhere to stay and occupation for your hands, and that you too are a respectable widow, indeed with a daughter to provide for.' Her glance went to Julitta, who quickly dropped her gaze to the task of pea-podding. 'No-one asks too many questions round here. That way, no-one never gets told any lies.'
Ailith coloured beneath the older woman's sharp scrutiny. The Southwark side of the Thames was outside London's jurisdiction, although in distance it was no more than a short boat journey or walk across the bridge. Here, bathing establishments had begun to flourish, some legitimate, others concerned with providing services less innocent than cleanliness of the body. She was not sure into which category Dame Agatha's premises fell, despite the woman's vehement reassurance. On the other hand, the offer of employment and a place to live seemed God-given.
'What kind of occupation for my hands?' she asked.
Agatha gave her a wintery smile. 'You're a suspicious one, aren't you?'
'Life has taught me not to trust.'
'Sometimes you have to take things on trust,' Agatha said. 'What I want is a someone to help me run my house and my business. Sigrid hasn't told me much about your life, but she says that you have worked in the households of a wealthy wine merchant and a Norman lord, and that you speak the language of the Franks fluently.'
Ailith nodded stiffly. 'That is true.'
'All to the good, since my clients are frequently Normans, and always rich.' Agatha tapped a ring-heavy forefinger against her prominent front teeth. 'You and the girl can have a chamber of your own, and I will pay you according to my profits — say five shillings a week and your board.'
Ailith knew that she had little choice, but all the same, for the sake of her pride, she was determined to hold out just a little. 'I will think on it,' she said.
Agatha's small eyes narrowed, but she nodded her approval. 'A day's grace I will give you, no more. I do not have the time, and neither, I think, do you.'
Exhausted, soaked to the bone, Rolf entered the de Remys' fine new house by the Thames, sat down at the trestle near the hearth, and put his head in his hands. 'I am never going to find her,' he said desolately to Aubert. 'For three months I have searched. I don't know where else to look.'
The merchant set a cup down in front of his friend.
'Drink,' he said. 'And give me your cloak.'
Rolf did so, and tasted the burn of ginevra mingled with the wine. He knew that he could remedy the hollowness within him by downing measure after measure of this concoction, that warm oblivion could be his for the swallowing, but only for a brief time. And payment was always exacted on waking.
'Then perhaps you should stop looking,' Aubert said. 'If Ailith had thought the better of running away, she would have returned by now — either to Ulverton, or to myself and Felice.'
'I could have made things right. She didn't have to go.' He listened to the heavy beat of the rain against the shutters. It had been spring when she left and now autumn was on the threshold.
'No, she didn't.' Aubert sat down opposite Rolf and joined him in a drink. 'But she chose to, and I doubt that you could have made things right even had she stayed. You would be asking too much of her heart – that is what Felice says, and I am inclined to agree.'
'She took our daughter too; she had no right.' Rolf ground an agonised fist into the trestle. 'God knows the kind of life Julitta might be leading!'
Aubert eyed Rolf sombrely. 'I know that is no small part of your torment,' he said. 'But it is something that you must learn to bear. It is right to mourn, but not at the expense of everything else. You still have a wife and daughter. Arlette has been at your side through thick and thin — even if you have not wanted her. It is time you acknowledged that particular debt.'
'You sound like a priest!' Rolf snapped savagely.
'I am sorry. I only meant to be your friend.'
'Ah God, I'm the one who is sorry,' Rolf grimaced and gripped Aubert's arm across the table. 'You present me with truths that I don't want to swallow.'
Aubert gave him a pained smile and returned the grip. 'I miss her too,' he said.
Rolf closed his eyes, squeezed them tightly shut, but Aubert's words were the key that unlocked a bitter flood of yearning and grief, and he lowered his head and wept until he was wrung dry of all emotion, and only a stone-like numbness remained.
PART II
JULITTA
CHAPTER 37
Merielle was a whore, although she preferred to call herself a courtesan. The truth was somewhere in between. She did not frequent the houses and bastions of the city's wealthy burghers and French-speaking nobility; they came to her in clandestine fashion, ferried across the Thames by knowing boatmen to the Southwark side and appointments with their lust.
Merielle was tall and shapely with flawless skin, huge blue eyes, and a pouting red mouth. In the six years since becoming the chief attraction of Dame Agatha's bathhouse, she had not once conceived, and the blessing of her barrenness made her very popular with men who had no desire to add the complication of bastard offspring to their family line, but urgently required the services that only a Southwark bath girl could perform. Merielle was ambitious and professional in her work. She was also a prize bitch.
'You stupid little slut, you're not currying a horse! Can't you be more gentle!' she snapped at the girl with the comb. Her voice, which was musical and throaty for her customers, was ugly and petulant now.
'I'm sorry,' Julitta said, not in the least. 'There was a tangle, it's out now.' She drew the comb down through Merielle's silky golden hair and thought grudgingly how beautiful it was. Her own hair was an uncontrollable mass of wood-shaving curls, and the colour was disastrous. 'Like raw liver – disgusting,' so Merielle was always telling her. But then Merielle never had a good word for anyone unless they were rich and male.
'That will have to do. You're too slow, there's no time now.' Merielle swiped Julitta's hand aside. 'My robe, bring me my robe.' She snapped her fingers.
Julitta curbed the urge to return the gesture in Merielle's overfed face. Her rebellious nature had already earned her several reprimands this week, and Dame Agatha was not patient at the best of times. With her mother sick, Julitta could not afford to incur any serious disfavour.
Eyes lowered, she brought Merielle a gown of blue linen to cover the light chemise. It was of a fashion typical to nursing mothers, its deep neck opening fastened for modesty by a simple clasp at the throat. Julitta, at fourteen, was not ignorant as to the purpose of the dress in Agatha's bathhouse. On more than one occasion she had seen a bellicose merchant thrust his hand inside Merielle's bodice and squeeze her breasts like a housewife testing bread dough. It was always a preliminary to yet more intimate pawing, and she was not ignorant about that either, despite the protective efforts of her mother.
