Year of miracles, p.13
Year of Miracles, page 13
part #1 of Collected Stories of the Old Races Series
YEAR OF MIRACLES
London's slaughterfields stank of blood and fear and regret. Mostly blood, of course: it sank into rough-woven wool, caked beneath ragged fingernails, traced muscle in arms and soaked the ground underfoot. Cattle and goats, sheep and chickens, dogs, cats—any kind of meat could be dressed out in the fields, and every kind of animal seemed to know it. Frightened bawling and thin screams were part of the air.
Once in a while, a man lay in the streams of blood, damming them with his stiff, smelly body until the guards took him away, or impatient butchers kicked him toward the river. More often the river: wealth rarely came to the slaughterfields, and so neither did law.
It was better that way, mostly. There were rules in society. She didn't know much about them, except to know women were traded and bet on and bred like horses. In the slaughterfields she at least owned herself. It would have been different if any of her brothers had lived, maybe, but they hadn't, and her father had needed someone to lift carcasses, to bend over them and strike flesh from bone, after the stroke had weakened his left side. The second one had taken his life, but by then she was the face of the family business, and folks just moved on with that. Two years had passed now, and she wasn't rich, but she wasn't whoring, either.
"From whom would I buy two dozen cows, a dozen pigs and as many sheep, and, oh, a flock of chickens for dining on?" A man's voice, behind her. She had a table with wares, and a stretch of canvas to keep the sun off and prevent the meat from spoiling too fast. Some of it, the expensive stuff, was salted already. The man might want that, since his request was unheard of. Nobility might ask for that much meat, but nobility didn't come to the slaughterfields themselves. They sent servants, though this man sounded too cultured to be one.
There was no hope of schooling her voice to match his. It made her uncomfortable in a way she was not when servants came around. Many of them had risen from low places and still sounded like the country and street folk they were. This man made her aware of how broad her accent was, and how refined his. Made her aware of the differences in their worlds as only the rich could do: thoughtlessly, effortlessly. It was clear enough, and always had been, that those born to a cheapside life were considered by the wealthy to deserve it, somehow. The poor knew better. There was no deserving or worthiness. There was only fortune, good or ill. Mostly ill.
She shaded her eyes, taking the sun's glare down enough to see the man. A stranger, someone she'd never seen before. Someone who shouldn't have looked comfortable in this part of town, but he was fearless. He was also tall, slim, ginger-haired and green eyed, and in a cloak only a fop would wear, its colors striking and bright. Layer after layer of fine cloth, reds and golds in no fashion she'd seen before, and the vest beneath it of cloth softer than she would ever touch. Just seeing it made her wipe hands on her skirt, uselessly; the fabric was stiff and black with blood. She squeezed it as she curtsied, feeling red dampness ooze between her fingers.
"I could get you that, sir. Not for tonight, nor tomorrow, but for Sunday dinner, aye. Slaughtered and dressed and brought to yer table, m'lord. I'd need payment in full up front," she added boldly. Even payment for half that lot would fill her belly for three months, but the rich didn't always know to bargain.
His eyes widened with mock dismay. "Slaughtered and dressed and brought to my table? Now why would I want that, when it's so much more fun to make the kill myself?"
She rubbed a finger in her ear, squinting at him. "My lord? You'll want a farmer with lands for that, if it's for hunting them yourself...." Hunting boar: the wealthy did that, she knew. But hunting cows and pigs was an oddness, even for the rich.
"Oh no." He kicked a foot up, displaying a boot of dark red leather, rich and beautiful and covered in the worst a slaughterfield could offer. "Hunt cows? And ruin these boots?"
She stared at the muck and offal already staining the fine leather, then lifted an uncomprehending gaze to the bright-eyed man whose foot rested on her table. "M'lord?"
"Your name, he said gently. "What is your name, slaughterfield's daughter?"
"Sarah," she said after a moment. "Sarah Hopkins, m'lord."
"Sarah." He took his foot from the table and bowed, deeper than she imagined a man would give even the queen. When he straightened again it was with a wicked grin. "All I wanted, Sarah Hopkins, was an excuse to speak to you. My name is Janx."
"My lord Janx," she said when it became clear he expected some kind of response. Up and down the way, others were staring now. Pausing in their salting, in their butchering, in their gossip, and leaning to get a better glimpse of the dandy at her table. He had better buy something, she thought: bad enough to already hear cat-calls and whoops, but worse by far if all the man wanted was to return to his monied friends and laugh over befuddling a slaughterfield girl. "Will I find the cattle and the sheep for you, my lord Janx?"
"What?" He looked surprised, then recalled himself and waved a hand. "Oh, no, no. Have dinner with me instead."
She stared at him. There was no other possible response, or none that wouldn't have her arrested by the rarely-seen guards. He waited, though, with unconcerned expectation that slowly shifted toward uncertainty. "You don't eat dinner?"
"Not with the likes of you, m'lord." The words weren't quite insulting. Sarah judged her tone was, though, by the astonishment flitting across the redhead's face. No one, she imagined, had ever referred to him as the likes of you. That was reserved for people of her class and below.
Janx, who was tall and slim and quite beautiful, sounded honestly confused: "Am I not pleasing to you, Sarah Hopkins?"
It was something a doxy might say to a man indifferent to her wares. This time Sarah looked both ways, up and down the alley of blood she and others worked. Waiting, she decided, for the others to show themselves. The men who had made the bet with red Lord Janx. The bet that he had lost, to be standing here asking silly questions. When it became clear—again—that he actually expected an answer, Sarah said, "Of course you are, my lord Janx," because first it was true, and second and more important, it was the answer that might keep her from being beaten or worse, should his friends push the jest too far.
"Then why not have dinner with me?"
He was a very good actor, this Janx. If he could look this bewildered, as if he really didn't know the answer to his question, then Sarah thought he would do well in one of the theatres in the round she'd gone to once or twice when she'd had a penny to spare.
He would have made a convincing, handsome face up on the stage, but it seemed the good looks hid a simpleton's mind. Sarah was crass and loud and bold, as all the butchers were, but as a child she'd been quieter. She had learned brassiness to survive instead of learning more numbers and letters as her father had hoped she could. She had learned to write her name when she was eight. It was the little girl who'd loved learning those four careful shapes with the "a" repeated who answered, much more gently than the cleaver-bearing woman she was now. "Because you are a lord, my lord, and I am a slaughterfield butcher."
He snorted a puff of blue smoke, though there was no pipe in his hands or even visible in the lines of his clothes. "If that's your only excuse, couldn't I insist by rights of being a lord?"
She nodded, and when he looked pleased, had the nerve to ask, "But why would you?"
"Oh," he said after a moment, and this time it was his turn to gentle the answer. "You really don't know, do you?"
"Know what?" Her mind danced, light and full of twists and turns, like she'd taken too much of the poteen.
Janx, tall and ginger and fine, said, "That you are the most beautiful woman London has seen in this side of twenty years, my dear."
Her burst of sound was not a beautiful woman's laugh. Raw and sharp, it hurt her throat, but tightness hurt it more as Janx's smile faltered. The slaughterfields stank of regrets, and that smile gave all those regrets a face of their own. It hurt him, Sarah thought, that she didn't believe him. That she couldn't believe him. It took time to find her voice again. "Thank you for the kindness, Lord Janx. Go home now, my lord. Find another woman to..." Mock: that was the word on her lips. But she said "Woo," instead, and wondered at herself even as Janx gave her another slow, deep bow, then walked away with thoughtfulness written in his features. He was hardly a dozen steps away when her fellow butchers came, laughing, teasing, wide-eyed with envious wonder. A few of them angry: angry that she had caught the eye of a lord, even if that lord had no business being in their part of the city. "A wager, a wager, that was all," she said more than once, and let her blushes be mistaken for modesty or pleasure. This would feed the gossips for months. Years, even. Any time someone with a hint of wealth came to the slaughterfields, the ginger lord's attention to Sarah would be remembered.
"Small enough price to pay," she said beneath her breath, and more clearly, "A pity he spent no coin. What good's a lord if his purse is tight?"
That earned laughter and a degree of forgiveness, and little by little the day faded toward normalcy. Cuts of meat sold, enough to cover the cost of a table along the row, and a bit left over for a pastie and beer before sunset took her home.
There was no looking-glass in the two-room street-level house that had been her parents' and now was hers. Of course not: glass was for the rich, and a copper was better spent than pounded flat to make a reflection. But a wooden bowl of water showed Sarah her face in barely-moving ripples, and she really looked at herself for the first time since childhood. Children were interested in such things, in making faces and seeing them copied back, and in learning the shapes that made up themselves. Adults had no time for that, not with bread to put on the table and butchering to do.
She didn't look like the child she remembered. That girl had been as clean as any slaughterfield's child could be, and a little spoilt. There had been curl in her dark hair, but it had been so many years since her hair was let loose of a tight braid that surely the curl had been choked out of it. She had been pretty, perhaps, in the way of children who are not yet broken by the world, but she had grown up strong, and that was a far better thing. Much as her father had loved her, a beautiful daughter would have made him more money by lifting her skirts than wielding a cleaver.
For an instant—only an instant—she thought of using the water to clean herself with. To see if, beneath the dirt and blood, some of the girlhood prettiness remained. The thought left as quickly as it came. It would be noticed if she was clean, tomorrow, and those who had been angry would turn cruel. Giving herself airs, they'd say; airs, because a lord had spoken to her. Making herself better than they, they'd say, because only their betters would bathe and perfume themselves. Never mind that there was no scent that could drown the smell of blood: even letting the idea take root was dangerous. It was no way to survive. The water went into a pot for porridge, and Sarah put the ginger lord out of her mind so he could not disturb her rest.
He came back in the morning.
She knew it before she saw him, a cold sick excitement in her stomach as whispers and sharp looks scattered her way while she prepared her table. A chicken leg stretched so, the cleaver slammed down to separate it from the body. Slammed too hard: it stuck in the table, and harsh laughter followed as she yanked it free. She would not, would not, look up in anticipation. Would not smooth her rough-spun skirt like a nervous maiden. Would not do anything but her duties, though her hands were cold and she split the other curséd leg in half when she took the knife to it. She was still staring at that, counting up the damage to her earnings, when Janx stopped before her table a second time.
"You'll get me gutted, my lord," she said to the chicken, and forgot to curtsey. Janx drew breath as if to speak, held it, and then held his silence too. Unexpected, that: she thought he was one who spoke just to hear his own voice, and wouldn't have imagined she might still his tongue.
But she had, and that was invitation of its own, so she spoke to the chicken again. Safer than looking at the red lord's light. She might let herself become fanciful, if she looked at him again. "There's naught as unforgiving as the poor. They'll see me dead before they see me rise, and you coming here twice hints I could." Not that she would. Not that she might. Not either of those things, not ever. Saying that, thinking that, was beyond her. Mad enough to say as much as she already had. "You do me no favors, my lord, by coming here."
Silence again, long enough—loud enough: every table near them, every passer-by, stood arrested, breath held, straining to hear every word that passed between them—long enough that the chicken's blood spilled to the table's edge and over, and made a pool around her shoe. That was long enough to wait on a man's answer without seeming bold about it. Sarah looked up, a dry swallow moving her throat, and found Janx's unreadable gaze on hers.
"But you won't come away with me," he said. Not a guess. Not even—quite—an invitation. Because he knew better, and while the answer he gave was true enough, it twisted a queer knife in Sarah's heart.
"Of course not. How could I?"
He nodded, slow and thoughtful as he'd been the day before. "I'll have that order from yesterday. Slaughtered and dressed for my table for Sunday dinner. You can do that?"
Sarah, hoarse with disbelief, whispered, "Payment in full."
Laughter sparked in Janx's green eyes. "One third, slaughterfield's daughter. A third today, a third when I come to inspect the meat before it's delivered, and the final third—"
"On delivery," Sarah said, swiftly. "On delivery." Janx dropped his voice and stepped closer. So did everyone within a stone's throw, heads turning and tilting the better to hear them. "Are you really in danger because of my attention, my dear? Will they come at you in daylight?"
"Yes," she said, "and no. Probably not."
"Then I'll arrange for protection at night. When will the meat be ready for inspection?"
"Protection?" Her thoughts were slow, slower than the river choked with winter ice. This went beyond a jest. Beyond a wager. A man of means couldn't possibly think her worth protecting. She thought of the water bowl and the woman it reflected, and wondered what he saw that it hadn't shown. Or maybe he liked blood and filth: a man who offered to hunt herds of cattle might. Heart sick in her chest, she shook her head. "If I'm worth protecting I'm worth killing, sir. Don't do me that favor. Whether it's the guards or a hired man, they won't look right around here."
"The man I have in mind will go unnoticed. The meat, Sarah Hopkins?"
"Saturday sundown." If she lived that long.
Janx smiled. "Saturday sundown. Until then, my man will come to watch over you at dusk. The first third in full," he added, dropping a bag of coin onto her workspace without bothering to count it out. Then he went away with no look of care or concern. Sarah watched him go, then turned a helpless gaze down the row.
One among many met her eyes with regret instead of resentment. Jacob, a miller's son who didn't stink of blood and shit, and who had come courting her of late. He was stopped three tables down, as if he'd heard tale of yesterday's scene and come to talk or tease about it. But the red lord had returned, and that, perhaps, changed everything. Sarah said, "He will cast me away," and Jacob smiled. Not a happy smile. A smile of loss and acceptance.
"Maybe," he said, "but maybe not. And if he does, if you come back, I'll never say a word about it. Reach high, Sarah. Hold tight."
He left then, a better man than she might have ever dared dream of having. It wasn't fair, Sarah thought. It wasn't fair that life played games like this. Offering two men, one who was beautiful and impossible, one who was steady and sensible. One who would burn and one who would hold.
It wasn't fair that she was just foolish enough to reach for fire.
At least she had coin to spend and an order to fill. Even better, almost, was the gossip fodder she offered: twice she drove bargains laughably to her advantage, so eager were the vendors for details of Lord Janx's smooth voice, of the cut of his coat, of the fall of his hair. That word of all those elements had rushed ahead of her didn't matter. She was the very source of the particulars, her word to be trusted above all others, even if the moment her back was turned claws lashed out. There were no blades; that was all that mattered.
She was still out as the sky turned red and then grey with evening. Lord Janx's man would never find her, if he even existed; it would be her own neck getting home. Not that his man would likely find her small cottage, either, packed as it was between countless others. The red lord had not, after all, asked where she lived. Nor would she have had an address to give him: her alley had no name, and no signs to point the way. You knew, in London's back ways, or you didn't, and if you had to ask you were likely to be knifed and left for dead, your boots and coin stolen.
"Sarah Hopkins." Another man's voice, another new voice, though as unlike Lord Janx's as it could be. He sounded like he was always about to laugh or maybe sing, light and cheery. This one was deep and solemn, no humor to it at all, and it belonged to a man who stepped out of shadow to tower above her.
Janx, she thought clearly: the lord Janx was tall. This man was taller, perhaps the tallest she'd ever seen, and so broad across the shoulder she moved her head to look from one side of him to the other. His hair and eyes had no color in the dusky light, and he was not nearly so finely dressed as the red lord had been. Only far better than herself, or anyone who might normally walk this part of town after nightfall. Her voice broke between laughter and disbelief: "He thought you would go unnoticed?"
A rumble came from the big man's chest. Not quite a laugh, but amusement. There was humor in him after all. "Janx only notices beauty, so to him, I'm unremarkable. My name is Alban. I'll keep you safe, Sarah Hopkins."
"I think you could keep the whole of London safe," she murmured, and let him follow her home that night, and for two more besides. When they spoke, he called the red lord Janx, no deference shown, though nothing in his clothes or bearing said he too was a lord. It was only on the third night that she dared ask about that, and the white guard—if Janx was red, Alban was white, paler than any man she'd ever seen—rumbled again.
