The AltoBy Meltha
Isabelle
1606-1608: London, EnglandFive years had passed since Venus's introduction into her new profession: five years filled with experiences she shut out as soon as the sun rose. It was long since she had lost count of the number of buyers. Several men took her as a favorite, coming regularly to her for their weekly or monthly or even yearly thrills. It had taken Geoffrey almost a year and a half to marry a respectable girl and begin his life as a family man and cobbler. Of course, he still occasionally visited "for the sake of times past" as he put it, but these times were few and far between. He now had three small children and a fourth well on the way, considering the way his wife's skirts were stacked up every time Venus passed her on the street.
Within the leaping house, time had left several changes. Clara had been throw out of doors two years ago with an unwanted child in her womb when she could no longer hide her condition. She was never seen again. A new girl had arrived not long afterwards: Nancy, who was so plain she was almost not taken in but who had been allowed to work there provided her only pay was meals, a roof over her head, and the clothes on her back. Lately, she had taken a cough that sounded suspiciously harsh, and Venus doubted she would live out the year. Gwen had a long, thin knife scar running down the length of her right arm, a souvenir from a customer who had chosen to use her to vent his frustrations over a gambling debt. Jane, Dinah, and Moll had all come down with a bout of fever a little over a year ago, but the younger girls had managed to pull through it. However, Jane had lost weight and was never truly well again, her heart sometimes seeming to beat out of its regular course. Dinah, on the other hand, had the mark of the illness stamped on her features, which became sharper and carried a constantly bitter expression, her handsome looks being almost entirely spoiled in the process.
Moll was now dead. Though perhaps only thirty years old, she had looked nearly half that over again in a time when thirty itself was considered on the brink of old age for a woman. Not many in the slums of London were able to survive that long. She had been buried with no funeral, no rites, and no coffin. Her body, an old sheet knotted around it, was carried on a bier out of the city and buried in a shallow grave near a crossroads since no decent church would have taken her remains. In a few days any evidence of her burial had been blotted out by travelers who had thrown small stones and refuse on the place as a token of their disdain and fear of a damned soul. Among those who flung pebbles and smashed crockery on her grave were men who had bought her in years past.
Martin didn't speak about her passing, but he did get quite drunk for a full day. Once that day was done, he continued on as if nothing had happened, selling off her things to pay for what he called her "expenses" and pocketing the money. Venus had seen enough death to know that the same fate awaited all of them sooner or later, and she was revolted, but she gave herself cold comfort in knowing that by the time she was put in a grave she would most likely have far more pressing worries to deal with than where her body was stowed.
Venus herself, however, had blossomed. The girl who even as a half-starved gutter rat had been beautiful enough to cost a small fortune had benefited from food and shelter. When let loose, as it always was in the evenings, her hair fell in lush golden ripples to her waist. Her face had lost the rather gaunt look it had always worn from malnourishment since childhood and had become softer and almost heart-shaped. She had managed to sprout three full inches in two years before she stopped growing, making her one of the tallest women Martin had. But it was her eyes and her smile that had changed the most. When she willed it, she could make them as warm and perfect as a summer's day, beckoning the most austere men to follow her like puppies trailing after the butcher's delivery boy. In Martin's presence, most of the time she had learned to adopt an attitude of submissive obedience by lowering her eyes and slightly pursing her lips, managing to spare herself the beatings she would have received during those other times when her temper would get the better of her. But when she was alone, the glint that those blue orbs held was sheer, unadulterated greed, and she rarely smiled except when counting her secret stash of gold.
There was a loose stone in the hearth of her room, not unlike that brick in the kitchen long ago, and beneath she had hollowed out a small hole in the broken mortar. This was where she kept the coins her admirers would give her as tokens of their esteem or in hopes of another favor, hopes that she usually granted. Most of her small pay each week had been secreted away as well. Martin assumed that she had spent it on material for a new dress or cap, but he didn't realize she had made her own business transactions with the cloth merchant, and in trade he always gave her a much lower price.
It had taken as many years as she had fingers on one hand, but at long last she had what she needed. She had counted it over three times though the amount was burned into her mind and she would have bet her pretty teeth that she'd counted right before. But it really was time. At last. She caught up the coins in a leather bag and muffled their clinking with wadded cotton, then put it carefully inside her petticoats. She grabbed her wrap from the bed and threw it over her shoulders, drawing the hood up to keep out the November chill.
"I'm off to market," she called loudly as she strode down the hallway, eluding Martin's door without trouble and practically flying down the street, well past the market and the shops and the endless hovels and brothels that hemmed in the section of town. After almost an hour of walking, the air wasn't quite so foul. Soft, green parkland stretched away from her, bordered by lovely homes, nothing so grand as that the Worthshires owned but each a bit larger and far better built than Martin's leaping house. Respectability hung in the air like a ripe apple. Decent middle class families occupied each dwelling, well-heeled children played in the park that had once been the King's hunting grounds, and the smell of wood smoke and baking bread instead of rancid ale wafted from the doorways. That is, all the doorways save one.
That one stood quite empty. The windows in its relatively clean, half-timbered facing were without hangings and showed vacant rooms within. Only a table and a few other oddments of furniture that the previous occupants had left behind were scattered under a thin veneer of dust. However, a tall, thin, balding man stood in the dooryard, looking anxiously this way and that until he saw Venus approaching.
"Ah, yes," he said nervously. "M-m-m-mistress..."
"Trestle, sir. Mistress Isabelle Trestle, as I told thee at our last meeting, is the name I prefer to use now," she responded with a sweet smile. "I did so enjoy that meeting, Mister Draver. Did not thee feel likewise?"
"Aye," the man said in a slightly too high voice as the woman pressed in a bit closer to him and gave him a look that would have caught stone on fire. "Aye, most assuredly, m'lady."
"Good. Now, hast thou the documents?" she asked, managing to keep the desperate excitement from her voice.
"They are within. But, Mistress Ven... Mistress Trestle, I beg pardon, art sure this is wise?" asked Draver, still looking about like a caged animal. "The house is not what... what ye are used to at all, is it now?"
She turned her back and rolled her eyes at his inability to confront the truth in plain words.
"Mister Draver, what thou mean is that those persons who hold the higher offices at your establishment might not take it well to heart if they found thou hadst allowed one in a profession such as mine own to purchase this place. I pray you, speak what is in thy head," empty as it is, she added silently.
Looking over his shoulder, he quickly escorted her into the house and shut the door behind them. The privacy gave him some tiny spark of backbone.
"Aye, tis that. And that yer neighbors wouldst most like not be fond of such a one as ye, at that," Draver added quickly.
"Hast been settled, good sir," she said in her most reassuring velvet tones. "The family who hast asked thee to put forth this place for them asks naught but the money, aye?"
"Aye," he said uncertainly.
"And money shalt they have, in full. They need not be told who gives the gold, need they?" she said, lowering her voice into a coaxing murmur.
"Nay, they have no intention to come this way again, so they'd not know," he said, still with traces of doubt clinging to him.
"And I have given thee my word, good sir, that all will go on here most discreet. I have no wish to be thrown from this place, nor," and she drew her hand softly down his face, playing with his beard, "do I wish to bring aught of trouble upon such a man of great import as thee. Twould be foolish of one so helpless and frail as I to injure one so powerful as thy good self. I am but pitiful in all."
He was obviously at the very end of his resolve, and she was making him putty in her hands.
"Have ye the gold here?" he croaked out.
"Indeed, good sir," she said as she dropped her gaze to the floor with a coquettish smile and used her charms to their full extent. "Where are the papers?"
"Upon the kitchen mantelpiece. Sign at leisure, Mistress," he said at last.
A quill, inkpot, and sheaf of papers sat on the broad stone mantle in the next room. He carefully pointed to the spot that needed her mark, and she made an X on the space.
"And the gold, Mistress Isabelle?" he asked as he put a ribbon around the papers.
With a smile that entirely concealed her loathing, she gave him a look that let him know precisely where he would have the privilege of finding it. By the time he left an hour later, he didn't even care that the amount was two pounds less than he'd bargained for, which Isabelle had counted on. He would put in the final bit himself with a whistle and a song.
As the door closed and Isabelle looked around her, she had a strange, fluttering feeling deep in her stomach. Hers. This place was hers and hers alone. True, it didn't have more than a stick or two of furniture, and there would be precious little to live off until she could bring her most discreet and wealthy customers here to carry on their liaisons in privacy, but there was no Martin. The fluttering increased until at last she let it out for what it was: a laugh, a real, honest, joyous laugh unlike any she'd felt bubbling up within her since the days when she'd worn jerkin and hose. It nearly made her hoarse, but she laughed until her sides were black and blue from her stays and she didn't give a tinker's damn for the bruises.
She took the key from the mantle, rushed to the door, and locked it behind her, then fairly danced across town once more. By this time, it was mid-afternoon. She knew she would have been missed hours ago, and Martin would most likely be readying a belt for her on her arrival, but her plans were quite different.
She burst through the front door and ran up the stairs to her room, quickly changing into the most worn dress she owned, that same dark blue woolen frock from so long ago. Hurrying, she grabbed the few things she owned that weren't community property: a brush, a pair of stockings that had been a gift from an admirer, and a few pence she stored in a drawer of her nightstand to keep Martin from becoming suspicious about her hoarding. In only a moment, she was outside Jane's door, knocking rapidly.
"Aye?" came her voice from within.
"Open the door and be quick," Isabelle whispered urgently.
"Tis early yet, Venus," Jane said as she let her in. "We're not needed downstairs yet."
"We'll not be needed downstairs ever again, Jane," she said with a wide smile. "I told ye once that I'd not forget yer kindness to me so long ago. Tis time I repaid ye in full."
"What say you?" Jane asked in confusion. "Art well, Venus?"
"Quite well. I have just bought a house, a true one, one that isn't so full of holes that the wind screams through the walls and the rain forms lakes on the floor. Tis mine, Janey, and I want ye to come with me there this night, ne'er to see Martin again," Isabelle said as Jane stared at her. "We'll choose our own buyers, only the best, and need not live like pigs anymore."
"Ye've gone mad," Jane said quietly. "Quite mad. Tis not possible."
Isabelle reached into the bosom of her dress and pulled out the key. "Looks this like a madwoman's dream? Hurry! Pack only what that odious ox cannot call stolen from him and let's away."
Jane stared a moment longer, then reached out a finger and touched the key in Isabelle's hand as though sure it would dissolve into dust. When it didn't, she blinked, and a smile started to slowly form on her weathered face.
In a flurry of movement between the two, Jane was ready in even less time than Isabelle had been, and the two walked, unable to suppress giggles that sounded strangely girlish to their ears, down the hall and the stairs, and had nearly passed the door when Martin suddenly appeared and slammed it in their faces.
"What is this? Tis near time for them to arrive, and ye both not painted nor dressed for work, and laughing most merry. Tis unseemly," he growled dangerously. "I'd have thought ye'd have learnt to hate the strap by now, but it appears yer all but begging me to use it. Well then, I shall not deny ye."
"Indeed? I think not, Martin," Isabelle said clearly with a haughty glare. "We no longer need yer kind protection or tutelage. We've both done with ye. Is not so?" she said, looking to Jane.
"Tis," Jane agreed but looked at Martin with some trepidation.
"Leaving are ye? After all the gold I've spent on ye, savin' ye from hunger and cold, this is the gratitude given?" Martin bellowed. "I'll not have it!"
It was precisely at this moment when he seemed ready to thrash the two within an inch of their lives, that the door suddenly was thrust open from the outside, battering Martin on the back of the head and making him fall forward. The pair of customers, who had arrived a bit earlier than usual, stared in confusion as Jane and Isabelle ran like lightening through the now unblocked door. They were free.
They arrived outside the door of number 36 Garden Street just as night fell. The key was turned in the lock, and with a click, they were inside and safe. Isabelle had led Jane in a circuitous route, making sure they weren't followed. Somewhere on the other side of the city, there were noisy, drunken buyers demanding to know where the Venus of the Thames had gone, and Martin was nursing a cracked pate and swearing with great creativity. But here, at last, there was quiet.
Isabelle rounded up some of the scraps of broken furniture on the floor and put them in the fireplace, striking a flint stone to spark flames into life. They sat in companionable silence for a while, watching the bright fire dance in the hearth and cast a homey light over the front room.
"I'll not be called Venus again," Isabelle eventually said. "I hated that name from the first. Tis Isabelle Trestle who owns this house, and I am she."
Jane nodded. "Isabelle. It suits ye, better than Venus did most sure. Jane was ever my name, so I think I shall keep it."
"Ye'll do as ye wish now, Jane. Keep it or not as you like. Tomorrow we'll hatch plans, but for now, sleep. There's no beds as yet, but the stones on the floor belong not to Martin. I intend to sleep well upon 'em," Isabelle said as she claimed a bit of space near the hearth, pulling her dress tightly around herself to keep warm.
"Thank ye, Isabelle," Jane said solemnly. "I ne'er thought to be... I thank ye."
Isabelle opened one eye from her spot on the floor. "Not another word. Get you to sleep or I'll throw you out in street," she said with a smile, then rolled over and slept very soundly.
Outside, three forms skulked away in silent fury, repelled by the barrier that had gone up across the threshold of one of their favorite hiding spots as soon as a living person had taken up residence there. They had considered burning it to the ground in spite, but the alarm that would have been raised could cause problems for them, and there were other vacant buildings to call home, after all.
The next day brought a few problems, but nothing could break the happiness of the mood. Between them they had a small bit of money, so they each bought an egg to roast in the ashes of last night's fire. Still, the house has nearly as empty as a cave and filled with dust and the smells of disuse. They would need some funds quickly to keep their new neighbors from growing suspicious.
As it was, after finishing their small but strangely satisfying breakfast, they began the process of making the house livable again after several months without a human inside it. Oddly, the cobwebs and vermin weren't nearly as bad as Isabelle had counted on. It was almost as though someone had occasionally used the place, but it didn't seem like beggars. There were no ashes in the fireplaces and no peelings or scraps or other signs of food. Unless they'd had no need for warmth or sustenance, they'd been extremely neat tramps.
The price of a few rags, scrub brushes, and a bucket nearly emptied their pockets completely, but they couldn't seem to care. The cleaning went remarkably fast, and within a day, the entire bottom floor was shining like a diamond in the dawn light. It was nearly three o'clock when a knock came at the front door. Jane, who happened to be closer, opened it, and there stood a little boy of seven or eight.
"Please, mistress," said the child politely, "my lady mother doth ask thee and thy sister to share bread with us tonight. We live in the house that sits yon," he said pointing next door. "Will it please you to come?"
Jane smiled behind her hand at the boy. If his "lady mother" only knew! Still, she and Isabelle had no dinner of their own to eat tonight.
"Aye, we should be glad of the company," Jane said, trying to sound as formal as possible. "Tell thy mother we shall gladly accept her kind hospitality."
The boy bowed quickly and ran to his own house, all but losing his shoe in his haste as he loudly called out "Mother! They said aye!"
"Aye to what?" Isabelle asked curiously.
"We're invited to sup next door tonight," Jane answered.
Isabelle seemed to regard this for a moment. "Well, I didn't expect to have this happen so quickly, but was bound to be so. We needs must think of a plan."
"They already think us sisters," said Jane.
"Good. That will do to begin withal. We'd best try to look proper for tonight, sister dear," Isabelle said as she began to pat the worst of the cleaning stains out of her dress.
The bells had chimed seven in the church tower when Isabelle and Jane arrived for dinner. As it turned out, the boy's mother was about the same age as Jane, and her brood of children was so numerous it was impossible to count them all. Her husband was a stern-faced man, his hair prematurely gray and his eyes very sharp. Fortunately for them, he wasn't the type to frequent their previous residence.
"Good even, ladies," he greeted them as they sat at the table. "I am called Henry Kentfield. This is my good wife Katherine. Children! Leave off this at once! Ye'll have dinner in the nursery, as is yer usual custom."
The children filed out in an orderly line, perhaps a little too orderly for Isabelle's liking. The oldest boy, the one who had spoken to Jane, had his jaw slightly open as he stared at the pretty blonde lady until one of his brothers slugged him in the arm and he fell back into step with the others. At least one of them had taste, she thought wryly.
In spite of Katherine Kentfield's repeated proclamations that the meal was "nothing but a trifle," the table all but groaned under the weight of a brace of fat chickens, three loaves of bread, small mountains of onions and parsnips and leeks, and a tray of sweetmeats. Both Isabelle and Jane had to forcefully remind themselves not to gape at the food and to eat daintily, as was the custom for ladies. Still, in spite of etiquette, they managed to eat their fill. Isabelle's childhood occupation proved highly useful to her once again as she covertly stowed enough food in the hip pockets of her dress to last them for a good three days.
Unfortunately, during the dinner it became all too obvious why they had been invited. Katherine was undoubtedly the neighborhood gossip, and she had asked them here in order to learn before anyone else who the two mysterious women were who had taken up residence in the former Whitby house. She plied them with questions at each bite, salivating over the answers far more than they were over the food.
"Indeed, Mistress Trestle," said Katherine between mouthfuls of bread. "And yer dear husband has been dead these two years now, has he?"
Isabelle nodded sadly, brushing her hand quickly across her eyes. "Aye, tis so long since Roger hath been gone."
"Then why do you not wear mourning?" she asked a bit sharply.
"Ah, Roger did forbid me to do so on his deathbed," she invented quickly. "He said he did not want that I should pine for him."
"I see," said Katherine quickly, using her knife to spear a roasted onion from the platter and swallowing it nearly whole. She was, the two noted, either remarkably fat or pregnant again, perhaps both. "And no children?"
"Nay," she said softly. "I have no children. I am but a poor widow who wishes naught but peace and a bit of privacy, Mistress Kentfield."
"And thou? What of thee, good lady?" Katherine asked Jane swiftly.
"I," Jane stammered a bit, "I am sister to Isabelle."
Katherine gave them an appraising look. "There's little similarity of features between thee."
"True," Jane said, "but I favor our mother and she our father."
"And hast ne're married at thy age?" Katherine said, her eyebrow rising in consideration.
Isabelle took in Jane's half-panicked expression and dove in. "She hath had many a suitor, my sister, but she hath turned them all away. Jane has... has taken a vow of maidenhood."
Jane stole a look at her over the top of her wine goblet that clearly said she expected the entire house to be engulfed in lightening from on high at any moment. Isabelle returned the look with an unseen shrug. If they were going to do the thing, they might as well do it to the hilt.
"Indeed," said Katherine in a surprised voice. "Tis most irregular."
"I prefer to keep my reasons private," she managed to squeeze out in a satisfactorily confident voice, but Isabelle could see that things were beginning to spiral out of control.
By the end of dinner, when Isabelle and Jane were escorted by a pair of the Kentfield's servants to their own door, they had learned far more than they ever wanted to hear of the business of every person within a mile radius of their new house, down to the exact numbers of children, the names of pets, and the cost of their furnishings to the last farthing. One thing had become patently obvious. They had moved next to the most avid gossiper in all of London and perhaps in all of the island. Once they shut their own door, they both let out matching gasps of relief.
"What was the name of yer husband again, Is? Robert or Roger?" Jane asked in amused confusion.
"Ask me not. I've no clue," Isabelle responded as she emptied her pockets of the extra provisions. "Above all else, even if we starve to death, let's keep well out of the claws of that creature. She'd call for us to be clapped in irons faster than a raindrop falls."
Jane nodded dolefully. "This complicates matters a mite."
The next day, Isabelle was quickly on the lookout for customers. She had half a dozen regulars who would be looking for her already, but she needed to be careful and only approach those that wouldn't immediately give Martin her address. She imagined he would learn where she was eventually, but, if she was firmly ensconced at her new residence by then, it would be impossible for him to drag her away by force without drawing undo attention to himself, and Isabelle knew that was the last thing he would want, especially in this part of London. Eventually, she decided on paying a call on one of her wealthier and more smitten clients.
After following her quarry with due care through the business streets until an opportune time presented itself, she managed to catch Sir Wilbert as he was coming out of a fashionable hatter's store. With a delicate "hssst!" she drew his attention into a nearby alleyway where they would be screened from view.
"Mistress Venus," he said after carefully making sure that no one had seen him. "What are ye doing here? I've called for ye at Martin's, and he says he hath thrown out ye and Jane for... becoming a burden."
Isabelle managed to refrain from making her eyes roll in exasperation over the man's ludicrous delicacy in not wanting to mention the word "pregnant" when he was all but delicate in her chambers, and she swallowed the curse that sprung to her lips over Martin's usual lies.
"Nay, nay, Jane and I have but taken up a new residence, Sir Wilbert. I was afraid Martin might deal with things this way and not let my very favorite young man know whence I had gone," she said, pouting prettily up at Sir Wilbert's decidedly not young face. "Wouldst still like to be my friend, good sir?"
"Aye," Sir Wilbert said enthusiastically, "indeed I should."
"How glad I am! We are at number 36, Garden Street," she said quickly.
"Gard... but Venus, that's not... I mean, that place is," Sir Wilbert fumbled.
"I know, tis not the same sort of place as Martin's. Oh, tis much nicer, sir, and no drunken louts will bother thee or thieves give thee trouble," Isabelle enthused. "And what's more, I have left my old name behind me. I am now Isabelle, good sir."
"Isabelle, eh? Well, Mistress Isabelle, may I call on ye tonight?"
"I should like that very much, Sir Wilbert. Wilt be by when the bells strike seven?" she asked.
"Indeed, and I shall bring a friend for Mistress Jane as well. Is the... ehm... price the same as at Martin's?" he asked.
"Just the same as ever," she said with a smile, noting that his delicacy didn't extend to his pocketbook. "I'll look forward to our meeting, then. Oh, but good Sir Wilbert, might I implore thee for a scrap or two of charity beforehand?"
By the time she had left the alleyway, she had enough money to procure two beds to be delivered to Garden Street that day, a necessary business expense.
Winter turned to spring, then spring to summer, and summer led to an autumn when the light came through the curtained windows of number 36 and fell on a pleasant scene of comfortable, stylish furniture and a warm fire. Isabelle and Jane employed a maid and a cook now, each of whom knew how to keep silence, and the upper floors were masterworks of good taste and decorum. Isabelle was still far more popular with the gentlemen who called than Jane was, often spending evenings at the theatre with her paying companions, the whole party masked as was the custom, watching charming comedies written by Shakespeare, who was sometimes in attendance himself. There were balls and galas that she would attend, charming the nobility with her wit and beauty, and when it was breathed in whispered words behind heavily jeweled hands that she was a courtesan, far more often than not she found she had some new suitor by morning. Courtesan: the word was so much prettier than whore, though the meaning was the same. And, as she'd learned to do what felt like a lifetime ago, she felt nothing with each.
Jane, meanwhile, though not as fortunate as Isabelle, was still living better than she ever had before. There were no beatings, no sharp words, and if the clients treated either of them with cruelty they were dismissed at once. True, there was emptiness a plenty in the work itself, but in spite of their current pleasant state, there really was nothing else they were able to do.
Still, both knew a time would come when beauty would fade, and each set aside a portion of her earnings to support herself in the time to come. Honestly, Isabelle was almost looking forward to the day when she would see silver threads in her hair and lines upon her cheek, when she could retire once and for all from this business and live quietly elsewhere, perhaps in the country. Still, for now, compared to what she had known, hers was not a bad life.
The neighbors had long ago given up trying to understand the odd comings and goings from number 36, all except for Katherine Kentfield. She suspected what was going on and spied on the pair of supposed sisters day and night, but she was never able to catch them in anything conclusive. The gentlemen who called were always gone well before dawn, and the few times when she'd been so bold as to approach one going in the house to ask him what business he had there, he always replied with the same answer: the Trestle sisters created the most beautiful embroidery and lacework he'd ever seen.
On an airy October evening full of the scent of leaves from the park, a strange chance befell Isabelle. It wasn't the least bit unusual for one of her clients to refer a friend to her anonymously, and so it was tonight. Sir Wilbert had asked her leave to have a dear companion visit her that evening, and she had smiled graciously, saying any friend of Sir Wilbert's was most welcome in her home. Silently, she added that any rich friend of Sir Wilbert's would find an even warmer welcome.
When Isabelle swept dramatically down the stairs that night and to the very ordinary-looking man in his forties who stood awkwardly in the main room, he blinked rapidly at her.
"Ah, I take it I have the pleasure of meeting the famous Mistress Isabelle? Justly famous, to be sure, as your beauty is all that has been said," he declared politely.
"I thank thee, good sir," she said with a curtsy. "Dost thou wish to delight me with thy name in turn, or wilt you wish to keep that as thy own affair?"
He tilted his head, considering for a moment before finally coming to a decision. "I am called Sir Stephen Grashill," he said, and thankfully he was looking at the tapestry above the fireplace and missed Isabelle's eyes popping in surprise.
This was Millicent's husband. Isabelle had once met his brother Frederick, leading to that scene which still haunted her in nightmares, but she had never laid eyes on Stephen before. Well, well, well, she thought with a shudder, things do come full circle, don't they?
"I am most pleasured to meet thee, Sir Stephen," she said without the slightest tremor in her voice.
As it fell out, Sir Stephen was highly taken with the lovely lady and became one of her most frequent visitors. However, as was usually the case with such men, the subject of his dear wife was never raised. Isabelle couldn't help her curiosity, though, about what had become of the stupid fool of a girl whose indiscretions had landed her in the street, not to mention what had become of the devious Lady Worthshire. She was not so stupid as to ever raise the topic, biding her time and waiting to see what fortune would drop in her lap.
Her patience was rewarded eventually. As Sir Stephen called upon Isabelle for his usual weekly appointment one Friday eve, she noticed he was reeling drunk, a thing highly unusual for the normally sober and, to be frank, quite boring Sir Stephen. That night he was in remarkably good spirits and was quite possibly the giddiest man she'd ever seen.
"Well, good friend," she cried happily as he grabbed her by the waist on their meeting and spun her dizzily through the air, "you are in remarkably high mood this eve! Pray you, what has made you so merry? Tis not just seeing me again, is it?"
He plopped her clumsily back on her feet, then got down on his knees and very noisily kissed her hand with an extremely loud smacking sound. Isabelle eyes were wide in surprise at the complete lack of decorum in the man, but she wondered if she was at last going to get a peek at what his life was like.
"Good Mistress Arabella," he slurred drunkenly, and Isabelle frowned at the completely wrong name, "it looks as though at long last my wife's father will be handing over the title of Worthshire to me."
"You don't say so," Isabelle said, her mind clicking quickly. "What generosity has prompted this?"
"Aye, he died didn't he?" he said with a loud laugh. "Took his time about it, but he finally did it."
"So you are now in possession of all his property, eh?" Isabelle said, quickly calculating just how much her tip for the evening might run.
"Indeed, my pretty little wench," he said, pinching her cheek. "Indeed. Bless him for it and bless his dear reprobate brother!"
"Lord Henry had no brother," Isabelle said before she could stop herself. "I mean to say..."
Luckily, Sir Stephen was so drunk he didn't even notice the gigantic slip. "Nay, not any more. Lord Henry was the younger of the two, so by rights, when their father died, the estate should have gone to his elder brother, but he went and got himself fairly disowned. No one hast spoken of him for years."
"How very fortunate for you," she said, pouring him a nice, large goblet of wine to keep him talking. "Now, what could he have done to have earned such a mark of disgrace?"
"Faith, he married," Sir Stephen said as he downed the goblet at a gulp and held it out for more, which Isabelle gave him.
"Twas not a favored match?" Isabelle prompted him carefully.
"Nay, he did marry a pretty young thing, incomparable eyes, but she was Jewish. The Worthshire family was outraged, but he chose love over all," Sir Stephen said with a snort. "Lost the whole fortune. Silly fool. Should have taken the girl as his mistress and married whom he was told."
"Thou art wise indeed, Sir Stephen," Isabelle praised him as she refilled his cup yet again. "But will it not be a worry to thee that he may come back to bother thee? I'd not want a good friend such as thee to be troubled."
"Nay," he said, regarding the world through the bottom of the glass. "He's been dead of the plague now many years."
"And his wife?" she asked, wondering if she could get an answer from him before he passed out.
"Oh, she died afore he did," he said with a mindless giggle. "My wife, Millicent... I don't recollect as I've ever talked to ye of Millicent?"
"Nay, thou hast not," she told him, realizing he must be even more drunk than she thought for him to bring up his wife.
"Aye, well, she did tell me her little family secret," he said in a whisper. "The wife didst die in childbirth. Twas a girl."
Isabelle knew what had happened. There was almost no need to be told the rest. As she sank down into a chair, her knees failing her completely, she turned white as the meat of an apple.
"And what became of this child?" she asked in a tone that, in spite of her years of training, trembled fearfully.
"When the father died, which he did not long after her birth, she was delivered to the Worthshires with a note asking for her to be cared for or else God's curse be upon them for it. Lord Henry was a most superstitious man, so he did take her in, but she wast naught but the scullery maid. She died when she was but ten years old, not long afore I married Millicent. Most ugly, she said she was, and a thief as well."
Isabelle didn't move for a very long time, but as Sir Stephen had kindly taken the opportunity to lose consciousness across the flagstones, this went unnoticed. Her face was dewed with sweat, and her heart was beating faster than she could ever remember it doing. They had been her family: her uncle, her aunt, her cousin. She should have had the rightful place as Lady Worthshire from infancy. The child of the heir to one of the largest fortunes in London had been forced to work as a slave, a pickpocket, and a whore simply to live.
And there was never a damn thing she could have done about it.
Jane woke early the next morning to find Isabelle still sitting in the chair over Sir Stephen's insensible form, staring at thin air.
"What grieves ye?" she asked, her brows knit in worry. "Ye dost look a fright. Is aught wrong?"
Isabelle's eyes slowly focused on the other woman, and then a smile came to her face, a smile utterly without joy, the smile of someone whose mind was nearly unhinged.
"All is wrong, Janey," she said, and began to laugh in a horrifyingly cold, almost violent way. "All is wrong!"
The laughter continued for a long while in spite of Jane shaking the woman, and at length it turned into tears, great, sobbing tears that shook her tiny, silk-draped frame as she clung to her friend, unable to say a single word. Jane led her upstairs slowly and put her to bed, where she remained, eating nothing, for two days. Sir Stephen remembered none of his confessions at all but went happily on his way to take possession of the house that still held his mother-in-law.
Isabelle never told Jane what had been revealed to her. When at last she had pulled herself together and gathered her scattered wits, she swallowed the latest in a long line of bitter pills with complete silence. Jane had suggested that Sir Stephen should be kept out of the house after that, but Isabelle refused, explaining he hadn't tried to harm either of them and was still one of the best paying men they had. Jane kept quiet on the subject, deciding that Isabelle must have her reasons, though she was always ill at ease around the man after that.
For a few months, everything remained just as it had. The buds on the tree in the front dooryard slowly grew green and put forth leaves, and the chill in the air became less each day. Spring let a slow, smooth blanket of green unfold itself in the park across from their residence, and Isabelle spent a good hour each morning watching the sun sparkling off the dew-laden grass from the view of her bedroom window. No matter what things crept around her heart or what things she did, that vista was always perfect, untouched as a faraway dream and as unsullied as the first snowflakes of winter. Turmoil might reign sometimes inside the house and her soul, but never out there.
Everything had grown peaceful, and the two "sisters" were becoming used to the regular ebb and flow of the days. Isabelle had become far and away the most popular companion for the lower levels of nobility, and Jane, whose clients grew sparser, while perhaps not content with her life was at least not uncomfortable and was drawing near a point where she would be able to live on the remainder of her wages for the rest of her life. But it was a calm that preceded a tempest.
Isabelle was out that morning. Drizzle was speckling the cobbles that day, but she had decided to brave the damp weather to go to the market on the most frivolous of errands. She wanted a spray of lilacs for the hall table. The buds were now in bloom, and there would be farmers selling the fragrant blooms from stalls at the market. Normally, this would have fallen to the maid as her errand, but the girl had twisted her ankle last week and wasn't fit to walk far. So it was that Isabelle slung a basket on her own arm and, with a warm cloak about her to keep off the rain, wound her way through the streets of London to buy a handful of flowers.
She had barely been gone an hour before she returned to Garden Street, the basket spilling over with an abundance of purple flowers. The gentle, heady fragrance had made her smile, and she was so preoccupied that she almost didn't notice the noise until it was too late.
There was a very large crowd of people blocking off the road, most of them shouting and some quite drunk. A strange, cold feeling like a hand of ice closing around her heart struck Isabelle, and she instinctively pulled the hood of her cloak more tightly around her and abandoned the conspicuous flowers over a neighbor's fence, calling no attention to herself at all.
With growing dread, she noticed that crowd was, as she had feared, clambering closer to her own home. It wasn't a fire. Of that she was sure since there was no smoke. With skills she had never lost, she eased her way slowly closer. She was most fortunate to find an old woman speaking to a young man, asking the very questions she most wanted answered.
"What goes on here?" the crone asked in rusty tones. "Why do they block my way? If I do not return to my mistress's house with the bread quickly, she'll turn me out of doors."
"Ye'd best find another path then, for they are not likely to move. The sheriff hath come to arrest two women of evil repute in yon house," the man said, and Isabelle's arms stiffened.
"Evil repute, say you? Indeed, tis an odd place for such as they. What hath brought about this?" the woman asked with interest.
"Merry, one of them did carry on assignations with Lord Brookside, and indeed his lady wife did find it out. She is close kin to the king, ye knowest, and he hath decided to let her make an example of the wench what lives here and her counterpart," the man said as he almost lazily chewed an apple.
"Example? How so?" the woman asked.
"Truly, they have caught one and but wait for the other now, who was not about. The woman who is held, called Jane, is to be flogged in the square and to have her nose split by the law, then she may go her own ways, but the other, who is named Isabelle, is to be burned alive as a witch since Lady Brookside hath said that none but an evil sorceress could tempt her husband away from her. The king hath given his blessing upon it," the young man said as he threw the core of his apple from him.
Isabelle's jaw was clenched. It had been that stupid Lord Percival Brookside? A sorceress to tempt him from his good wife's side indeed! He had engaged half the prostitutes in the city that she knew of! Of all the men to bring them down. But Jane... she must see to Jane.
It was just then that a wild cry of the crowd's erupted as a confusion of movement happened near their front door. Even at this distance, Isabelle knew what had happened. They were leading Jane forth, and a few moments later, the sound of a horse-drawn cart could be heard amidst the jeering of the people. Prominent among them was dear Katherine Kentfield, babbling in proud tones to everyone she passed how she had know for months that the Trestle sisters were nothing but "the lowest of drabs, fit for naught but hell itself."
From a distance of ten feet away, Isabelle saw Jane cowering in the back of the cart like a frightened child, her eyes enormous. Isabelle's mind fluttered from one useless scheme to the next, each more improbable and doomed to failure as she watched the procession of the guards file past, the large number testament to the king's backing of everything being done. There was only one option left.
Isabelle ran like mad in the opposite direction, losing herself in the crowd.
All she could do was try to save her own skin. While Jane's fate would be terrible, at least she would be alive, she thought. They wanted Isabelle dead. She wandered for a bit aimlessly through the streets, trying to think clearly. There was not a customer she had who wouldn't turn her over at once to the law in order to gain favor with the king. Some of Martin's girls might still have been friendly towards her, but Martin himself would throw her on the fire if it came to that. She considered going into hiding, but the danger was too close upon her. If she hid, she would need to go somewhere she would never be found: the other side of the earth.
Isabelle stopped cold. The Virginia Colony. She'd heard tell of it. It was a wild, untamed place full of danger and hardship, and it cost a small fortune to get passage on one of the ships there. Some said the place was full or gold and jewels just waiting over the next hill, but she knew this was the talk of idle dreamers. The reality was grim, but she knew that on this day a ship was set to sail for that place, and among the passengers were the first females to go to the colony. True, most of them were the lesser sons and daughters of nobility, but there had to be a way aboard. And that way, she was sure, was money.
She couldn't chance returning to her home. It was lost to her, along with all her things, her money, her clothes, all of it. She had nothing. Nothing except...
It was an insane plan, but the times called for insanity. She reached into the pocket of her dress and took out the three pence that still rested there, then walked with determination to a small store and bought a piece of parchment. Every step she took towards her final destination practically made her ill. As she went, she folded the paper in four, tore the edges, worried it between her fingers, and once stopped to rub it against the damp dirt of the cobblestones. By the time she reached the Worthshire's, she was as ready as she could be.
With a steady hand, she knocked on the door that she had sworn she would never enter again. A maid opened it, puzzled at the well-dressed woman who stood on the other side.
"May I help you, good lady?" she asked.
"Tell Lady Worthshire that she has a visitor," Isabelle said as she swept past her and into the house.
"Aye, Mistress, and who shall I say is here?" the maid asked uncertainly.
"Just bring her!" she fairly screamed, and the frightened maid took off at a run to find her.
The house remained almost exactly the same. The same portraits glared down on her disapprovingly, the same stairs creaked under the fleeing maid's shoes, the same rafters held the ceiling high above her head, and for a moment, she was ten years old again. She shook her head quickly to clear it, and as the figure of Lady Alice Worthshire, now fourteen years older than she had been when she had ordered Abbie put in stocks, appeared in the doorway, Isabelle steeled her resolve.
"And who, pray tell, do I have the honor of receiving?" she said in extraordinarily polite tones, at least until she knew who the stranger was.
"I have not time for pleasantries, Lady Alice," Isabelle said quickly. "It is who I am that brings me here."
"Indeed?" replied Lady Alice with a raised brow. "And what is it that thou art here for?"
"Dost thou not know me?" Isabelle said with a note of satisfaction. "I suppose I have changed marvelous much since we last met."
Lady Alice stared at the elegant woman with a complete lack of recognition, and then she began to squint. "Thou dost look familiar in some ways, though I cannot recollect."
"Picture me but smaller, with my bones fair ready to poke through my skin from hunger, my skin and hair smeared in dirt, and thou shalt come upon it quickly enough," she said coldly.
Lady Alice mouth went slightly slack with shock. "Tis not possible. Thou canst not be."
"Aye, tis thy very own little Abbie who ran away so many years ago. I have come home at last, and I do mean home," she said with a note of threat.
"Get out of my house," Lady Alice ordered her, her bearing suddenly threatening. "Ye've no place here."
"I might as well tell ye to get out of my house, hadn't I?" Isabelle responded, fire in her eyes. "It should have been mine, after all."
Lady Alice inhaled sharply. "So, hast found out all?"
"Aye," she said smoothly. "And now, yer to do something for me. I want passage on the ship that sails this day for Virginia."
"And why should I give ye aught, guttersnipe? Even with yer fine dresses and clean hands, yer still naught but the child of a disowned man. Get ye hence into the streets, and die there for what I care!"
"Oh, ye'll give it me, for I know ye of old, my good Lady Worthshire. Of all the things that most terrified ye, twas scandal that held the most stain. Know ye this. I am a whore. I have been a whore these many years. And now, the king doth want me burned as a witch. If that does happen, then the last thing I shall say when the stake is lit shall be my parentage, that the Worthshires are kin to a witch and a whore," Isabelle said in a deadly tone.
"None shall believe ye," Lady Alice replied calmly, though she grew slightly pale.
"Perhaps not, if it were not for this." Isabelle produced the paper from the pocket of her dress, a paper that looked like it could be well over two dozen years old now. "I believe there's a very moving passage about how God should strike you down if I were not treated well. Shall I read it to you, in the hand of your own dear, long dead brother-in-law?"
"It's impossible," Lady Alice gasped as she stared at the paper. "It was burned."
Isabelle then risked her greatest gamble. She was wagering her entire life on this one chance. "But, as usual, neither you nor my dear uncle did for yourselves what the servants could do instead. Servants sometimes do not do as they are told, do they, Auntie?"
The older woman's face blanched entirely white. Rage was etched into every line of her face, and whether it was a trick of the fire or not, sparks of red seemed to glow in her eyes. Isabelle returned the gaze with every atom of rage in her being. She held all the cards provided that no one looked at them.
"Ye will go and never come back?" Lady Alice said angrily.
"I'll never set a living foot upon this place again, I assure you," Isabelle vowed.
By nightfall, a young woman who called herself Sarah Gimble was lodged in a berth inside the creaking timbers of a sailing ship bound for the western horizon. She had a small bag of gold beneath her pillow, but aside from this, she had only the clothes on her back. As the waves crashed against the sides of the ship, rocking the passengers violently in the darkness, she wept over the fate of Jane, whose weakened heart had at last given out with the first cut of the whip.