Beloved Enemy (22 page)

No longer able to bear the pitiful sight, Bellebelle ran down the street and darted into a narrow alley where she stumbled on the filth-strewn surface, almost falling into a pothole. Picking her way with care, she continued down the alley, turned a corner, and saw that she had entered a wide lane that looked easier to manage. The image of the girl in the cart stayed in her mind.

The thought of such a terrible thing happening to her was terrifying. Whoring was the only life she knew, and thus far it had treated her well. But suppose the brothel at Gropecuntlane would not take her in? Suppose she had to live off the streets? Suppose—Bellebelle stopped, suddenly recognizing the houses smeared with red, black, and blue paint. Yes, there it was: a wooden house with blue shutters, exactly as she remembered.

She smoothed her hair and walked slowly up and down past the house, trying to summon the courage to knock on the door. Finally she stopped outside the tavern, uncertain what to do next. A large beefy man with a black patch over one eye stormed out the door of the tavern followed by a companion, almost running Bellebelle down in his haste.

“’Ere, look where you be going.” He stopped, his eyes narrowing. “What you doin’ loiterin’? Ain’t seen you ’afore, has I? Not from the brothel you ain’t. I knows the bawds there and ye ain’t one o’ them. Plyin’ ye own trade, are ye? Hawke won’t like that he won’t.” He grabbed her roughly by the arm. “Steal them clothes too did ye? A whore, and thief to boot, I’ll wager.”

“No, good sir. I—I be new at the brothel.” She twisted her arm away and started to run but the man caught her.

“Ah, leave the lass be, Hugo, let’s eat.”

“She ain’t from the brothel, I tell ye. Black Hugo’s never wrong. Wager she’s got some money too with all them fancy clothes.”

“Yes, I be from there.” Bellebelle struggled wildly in the grip of his iron fingers. “Leave me go.”

“We’ll see who’s right. C’mon. Hawke’ll thank me for getting rid of ye. He don’t like no poachin’ on his territory.”

Black Hugo dragged Bellebelle down the street and knocked loudly at the door of the blue-shuttered house. The door opened and a man filled the threshold. His head was bald, pocked with bluish stubble; a livid purple scar contorted one side of his face into a hideous pucker.

“You’re not welcome here, Hugo, how many times must I tell you?” To Bellebelle’s surprise he spoke partly in the accents of a gentleman, “Now if it’s trouble you wants—”

“No, sir, no trouble.” Black Hugo’s tone had changed to a whine. “Just found this doxy loiterin’ about the tavern and she claims to be one o’ ye new bawds so I—”

“I never saw her before—oh, good day, my lords, I hope you were well-provided for?”

Two richly clad men appeared in the entrance preparing to leave, while the brothelmaster—Bellebelle felt sure it was he—fawned over them. One of the men, much older than the other, with gray-streaked fair hair and beard, examined her curiously.

“What a lovely creature. I haven’t seen her before, Hawke, is she new? Looks less like a tart than any girl you’ve got. I’ll take her next time.” He bowed to Bellebelle and with his companion walked down the street toward the cookshop.

“Yes, my lord, I’ll do that, my lord,” the man Hawke called after them.

“Don’t show your face here again, scum,” he said to Black Hugo, pulling Bellebelle inside and slamming the door.

“Follow me.”

He led her down a dark passage and into a large clean chamber furnished with a table, several stools, two large oak chests banded with iron, a bed, and a brightly burning brazier. A stack of leathery sheets, strange featherlike implements, a stone jar filled with black liquid, and a three-branched silver candleholder, a kind she’d never seen, littered the table. Hawke indicated a stool and sat down opposite her.

“I’m Hawke, the brothelmaster. Tell your tale, girl. If you lies to me I’ll turn you over to the likes of Hugo and his cronies, and that’s a promise, that is.”

He was a strongly built man, and Bellebelle could not tell whether he was old or young. It was impossible not to look at the scar, the round hairless head, or the heavy black leather belt studded with silver that encircled his waist. Haltingly at first, Bellebelle told her story, leaving nothing out including her wounding of de Burgh. The only thing she held back was the vision in St. Mary’s. Hawke’s eyes, reminding her of ice in winter, never left her face.

“Hans de Burgh,” he said at length. “Last year that Flemish scum marked one of me best girls so fierce she could never work no more. The whoreson’s not welcome here and well he knows it. You be safe from the likes of him in Gropecuntlane. We has a favored clientele. In high places some of ’em.
Very
high if you takes me meaning.”

Bellebelle didn’t, but thought it best to keep silent. “Gilbert don’t hold with no violence neither,” she offered.

Hawke stared at her as if she were half-witted. “Does I care what Gilbert holds with? I provides everything a man wants, see? Girls, virgins, children, boys, whipping within reason—it’s all one to me. But the price is steep, see, for certain practices. Arrangements made well ahead of time. All done proper-like. That’s sound business.”

He continued to stare at her and she felt herself cowering under his frosty gaze. “We charge the highest fees in London, girl, and we gets them, see? Only the best is good enough for Hawke’s brothel.”

He rose to his feet. “Take off all your clothes.”

With trembling fingers Bellebelle slipped off her wool shawl, then her tunic and gown, until she was clad in her chemise.

“Are you deaf? All off’s what I said. Don’t have no use for a squeamish doxy.”

“I—I has some money under this,” she whispered.

“Does you come by it honestly?”

“Oh yes,” she said and told him about Jehan de Mornay.

“I’m not interested in your money,” Hawke said in an impatient voice. “Just the goods I’ll be offering for sale.”

When she stood naked before him he walked all around her, tapping his finger against his long yellow teeth. He prodded her breasts with an indifferent finger and a shake of his head. “A bit tight but they’ll grow. What are you now, fourteen, fifteen?”

“Sixteen. Maybe more—”

“Fourteen if anybody asks. I’ve a good mind to pass you off as a virgin.”

“But I’m not—”

“Does you think that matters? I has the means to make virgins, I does.” He gave her a pitying smile. “You didn’t learn much in that Bankside stew, did you? At the moment I has enough virgins so we’ll leave you be.”

Hawke pinched her buttocks and sighed. “Hips like a boy, and we’ll have to fatten these cheeks up. Skinny shanks please no one.”

Then he made her open her mouth and peered into it.

“Nothing puts the client off more than rotten teeth or stinking breath,” he said with an approving nod at her even white teeth.

He then knelt on the floor and, prying her legs apart, much to Bellebelle’s disgust carefully examined her private parts. When he slipped an impersonal finger deeply inside her and probed about, she stiffened in pain and humiliation. But he paid no attention.

“All right. You ain’t hiding no deformities, and I can see and feel for meself you’re not infected. What’s your name?”

“Bellebelle. But I were christened Ykenai.”

“Does you enjoy your work?”

“I don’t know nothing else. It’s something I do so’s I can live.”

“O’ course. Does I look foolish? What I mean is, does you get pleasure out of your fornication? With that fellow who give you the clothes and money, for instance.”

He was watching her closely. With a shudder of distaste she shook her head. “Never. Can’t think why the men does.”

Once again Hawke nodded approvingly. “Good, good. Them as feels nothing, and most of you don’t, make the best whores. All right, Bellebelle—no whore’s named Ykenai—I don’t need me another doxy, but my lord of Crowmarsh, the man you saw at the door, wants you, a big point in your favor. Now, you plays fair with me and I’ll play fair with you, and that’s a promise. Just remember you’re not on the Bankside no more and don’t tell your customers you was, see? Might put ’em off.” He paused. “Oh yes, just so you knows that I’m no easy mark for whores to get round, me taste is not for women.”

Was he a sodomite? Bellebelle had heard tell of these, but since Gilbert didn’t cater to that trade she had never met one before. In truth, Hawke and the brothel-house itself frightened her. But even though his manner and ugly scar gave her a queasy feeling in the pit of her belly and made goose bumps on her arms, she felt that Hawke would be a better brothelmaster than Gilbert. She felt safe with him.

“I’ll just make me a record here and then I’ll explain the rules and regulations, how much you’ll earn and all them particulars.”

While she slipped on her chemise, Hawke pulled his stool up to the table, slid the silver candleholder closer to him, and smoothed a sheet of the leathery material. He took the long feather, then dipped it carefully into the black liquid. Curious, Bellebelle walked a few timid steps over to the table.

“Ain’t seen no writing before, has you?”

She shook her head.

“Well, you wouldn’t find no lettered men on the Bankside, now would you? This be a goosequill pen, see? This be ink. I be writing on parchment.”

He began to write in a slow painstaking hand as he said aloud: “On this twenty-first day in the month of July in the year of Our Lord Eleven-Hundred and Forty-Eight did one Ykenai, called Bellebelle, formerly of the borough of Southwark, in the parish of—”

He gave her a questioning look.

“Don’t rightly know. St. Mary’s, I guess.” Without warning Bellebelle burst into tears.

Hawke threw her a disinterested glance, then shrugged. In the flickering candlelight his scar seemed to throb like a scarlet snake. Ignoring her, he bent his head and resumed writing.

Bellebelle quickly put on the rest of her clothes. She had never felt so foolish, so ashamed, so alone. Why was she crying? She had been accepted at Gropecuntlane, a step up in the world; she was safe from de Burgh, and free of the Bankside stews. What was the matter with her? After all, she had always dreamed of bettering herself, hadn’t she?

“W
E MUST GO BY SHIP,”
Eleanor told Louis, barely able to address her husband with civility.

After leaving Paris a year ago, what was left of the crusading army had finally reached the Greek coast. It was now painfully evident to Eleanor that they would never reach Antioch by land.

Eleanor could hardly believe that her initial sense of excitement and high adventure in Paris had turned into despair and near hatred for her husband and the French. It was now obvious to her—and everyone else—that the crusade, far from being the glorious odyssey all had envisioned, was a total disaster. Trouble had begun three months after crossing the plains of Hungary—and the Franks were almost entirely to blame.

Eleanor and the captain of the Aquitainian contingent, as well as lords of other provinces, had kept control of their knights and foot soldiers. But the French army, disobeying Louis’s orders, had taken to pillaging farms and villages. By the time the crusaders reached Constantinople, they had left behind them a legacy of fear and hostility.

Since then, the near escapes, misadventures, surprise enemy attacks by the Turks, and driving winter storms had all blended into one long hideous nightmare that Eleanor preferred to forget. Louis had turned out to be a grossly inefficient leader—but many of the troubles, Eleanor knew, were blamed on herself and the Aquitainians. The French complained that her baggage and women slowed them down, her frivolity was unseemly, her knights unwilling to take orders from the French. The Franks and the Aquitainians made no secret of their ever-growing mutual hatred. Louis’s personal maladroitness was ignored.

“Yes, by ship,” Louis said now in a resigned voice. They had spent the latter part of the journey arguing about almost everything, and Eleanor could see he was too exhausted to provoke another quarrel.

“But there is a shortage of available ships,” replied the captain of the Aquitainian contingent. “This means that a great many of our surviving pilgrims and foot soldiers must be left behind.”

“How can we leave these people to an uncertain fate?” cried Eleanor. “Surely there is something we can do?”

“Their fate is far from uncertain, Madam,” the captain said. “These people will perish—unless they turn Moslem. It is the only way to survive among the infidel. But if we are to save ourselves we must reach Antioch as soon as may be.”

“Become Moslems!” Louis paled and crossed himself. “Better to perish than give up one’s faith.”

Eleanor did not trust herself to speak. How typical of Louis. She knew perfectly well that if she found herself on the horns of a similar dilemma she would do what she had to do in order to survive. What did not bend, was broken.

The starved remnant of a great host that had once been thousands strong finally left the Greek coast. After a perilous sea voyage wracked by storms and tossing seas, they sailed into the port near Antioch. Eleanor, pale, thin from lack of nourishment, and near collapse, stood on the deck of the ship. Clinging to the rail she observed a party of knights waiting on the quay. Was Raymond among them? Eleanor, who had not seen her uncle for nineteen years, doubted she would recognize him.

A tall figure garbed in gold-embroidered purple robes, no doubt an emissary sent by her uncle, stepped forward to greet them. Eleanor saw an exceptionally handsome man with a commanding presence—and was instantly drawn to him. His hair was a mixture of dark gold streaked with bronze; his eyes the color of the sea at Talmont at midday, a soft blue tinged with green. When he smiled Eleanor’s heart turned over; she could not take her eyes off him. Her interest quickened. An instant later—too late—came the shock of recognition. For one wild moment it was as if her beloved grandfather had returned from beyond the grave.

“Your Majesties, what a great honor to welcome you to Antioch,” said Prince Raymond in French. Then in the soft, melodious
langue d’oc
of his native Aquitaine he added: “Despite your recent hardships, Niece, it is easy to see that you have more than fulfilled the promise of your early beauty. I’ve never forgotten what an enchanting child you were.”