The Crown Tower

CHAPTER 18

Rose stood behind Gwen, watching as she blocked the front door and shook her head, denying the customer entrance to Medford House. She did this while glaring at him, which required her to tilt her head back, as the man before her was huge. He was so tall he would have had to duck his head to enter, if she had let him.

“But I’ve got good coin!” the man bellowed at her, bending over so that their noses almost touched. Rose had never seen a bear, but that’s how she saw him-a giant monstrous bear who was trying to barge his way into their home. She imagined this was how one would act, roaring into the face of a fox that for some inexplicable reason stubbornly stood its ground.

“I don’t care if you’ve got the Crown Tower jewels in your purse,” Gwen replied. “There are rules.”

“I don’t give a rabid rat’s ass for your rules! I came here for a whore. I have money for one. I’m having one.”

“Not unless I say so, and I won’t allow it until you abide by the rules.”

“I won’t take no bath!” The bear puffed the words into her face so hard the air moved Gwen’s hair.

Gwen’s arms came up and folded in front of her. “Then you won’t take no lady.”

“I don’t want a lady. I want a whore, and you don’t need to bathe to get a whore.”

The bear’s real name was Hopper, and he was indeed filthy, dressed as Rose had always seen him, in a wool shirt with dark yellow stains under the arms. He had two visible leaves caught in the combined overgrown hedge that was his hair and beard. It was possible he had no idea his head was gathering material fit for a squirrel’s nest; it was also possible he knew and thought it made him more attractive in a rustic, manly sense.

“In this house you’ll refer to the women as ladies, and you will present yourself clean and polite, or you can take your money across the street.”

This confused Hopper the bear. Rose saw it on his face, but he soon worked it out and scowled. “Grue ain’t got no whores. They’re all here now.”

“I meant go to Grue’s place and drink.”

“I don’t wanna drink. I need a woman.”

“Then go to another place.”

“Other ones ain’t worth paying for.”

“What’s wrong with them?”

“They don’t smell so good.” The bear wasn’t one to talk. He had a scent that made Rose think he had firsthand experience with the sewers.

Rose didn’t know Hopper personally. He’d visited The Hideous Head enough times that she knew his face, but they never spent any private time together. He was a regular of Jollin’s, who had often remarked about his smell. To her, Hopper wasn’t a bear so much as a skunk. A lot of the men they entertained fit that description, which was why Gwen had made a new rule.

“And you’d prefer a clean, sweet-smelling girl, is that right?”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“Because licking dirt and week-old sweat is disgusting, right?”

“Exactly.”

“The ladies here all agree with you, and that’s why you’ll wash before you visit us.”

“It don’t matter what they like. I’m the one paying. I call the tune.”

“Not anymore. Now you can either go across the street and drink that coin away, or head to the barber and get cleaned up and come back. And if you do, I’ll warn you to be polite and respectful.”

“Respectful of a whore?”

“Respectful of a lady of the house, or you can go roll around in the muck with a whore.”

He stood there breathing heavily, his lower lip pushed out. He let out puffs of air and looked down at the floor. “I won’t have enough money if I pay to get cleaned up.”

Gwen unfolded her arms. She reached out and touched the bear’s hand. “Get clean. Get shaved. Rinse out those clothes and come back. We’ll work out something. I don’t just insist our customers are clean. I also require them to be happy too.”

Hopper faced her and his stony mouth softened. “Really?”

“Absolutely.”

He pulled his tunic at the shoulder and sniffed. “Maybe it could use a dunk or two.” He nodded and left. As soon as he was gone, Gwen walked to one of the new soft chairs and collapsed into it.

“You’re turning them away now.” Rose crept up and sat on the bench beside her. It was one of the last bits of the old furniture, a simple plank that Dixon had built into a seat from the wreckage of the inn. Rose wasn’t sure why it was still there among all the beautiful pieces that Gwen had handpicked from the craftsmen in Artisan Row, but it was one of the few relics, one of the few reminders of how it started, and Rose felt most comfortable on it.

“We can afford to,” Gwen replied. “But he’ll be back. You know … we should invest in a few more washtubs. We can bathe them right here-even charge them for the privilege.”

“That’s a great idea. You never cease to amaze me.”

Rose smiled at her, and Gwen smiled back. They were all grins lately. At first Gwen had encouraged the practice, saying it was good for business; she didn’t need to remind them any longer. And they all looked so pretty in their new dresses. Gwen snagged the material from the same place she got the curtains, getting a deal on both. They all looked so fine and respectable that Gwen took to calling them ladies-the Ladies of the House. She liked the sound so much she insisted everyone do so. “You won’t get respect unless you act like you deserve it,” Gwen had told them. She knew what she was talking about. Gwen had gained the respect of every craftsman on Artisan Row. Putting food on the tables of the carpenters, tar men, glass blowers, and masons, Gwen also treated them as kings when they visited. Men who had scoffed when she entered their shops were coming to her for advice. No one was inviting her over for supper or suggesting she run for ward administrator, but they smiled when she passed by and often opened doors for her. No longer a foreigner, she had become one of Medford’s own. At last, she belonged.

Gwen had a million ideas. She held dances twice a week. Fiddle, Pipe, and Drum Nights they were called. It was free to dance, and no business was conducted until afterward. For a few hours they were gentlewomen at a ball, and besides it drew a nice crowd. Of course, they weren’t really ladies. Ladies were nobles, and ladies didn’t wear their old rags as slips under their dresses.

As the weather turned colder, Gwen invited the destitute in for free turnip-and-onion soup, but it wasn’t a case of charity. “Everyone has a talent for something,” she told each one, and she was right. Most of the poor used to do something: tin smith, rug hooker, farmer, chimney sweep. She put everyone she could to work, and those who were too old or sick were put to teaching others what they knew. Gwen put the farmers to work tilling a patch of dirt behind the House. Come next year it would help supplement their pantry. One old man used to sell honey and promised he would provide them with a beehive.

She wasn’t like the rest of them. To some degree or other, they had all given up at one time, casting away their dreams and giving in to the demands of the world. Rose saw the differences in the way Gwen acted, even in the way she walked, and most notably by the way she spoke to men. While she called all of them ladies, Rose knew the only real lady in Medford House was Gwen DeLancy.

They heard steps on the porch, and then the front door opened. A cold gust of chilling wind flickered the lamps, and into the parlor walked Stane. Splashed with mud and reeking of fish, his oily hair stuck to his forehead, his face bristling with whiskers.

Gwen was out of her chair in a blink. “What do you want?”

“What do you think? This is a whorehouse, ain’t it?”

Gwen was shaking her head before he finished. “Not for you.”

“What’d you mean, not for me?”

“You’re not allowed here-ever.”

“You can’t do that,” he said, taking a step onto the new carpet with his muddy boots. “You stole all the good whores and locked them up here. You can’t deprive a man entirely.”

“Watch me.”

He took another step and a sick little smile came to his thin, uneven lips. “I know Dixon isn’t here. He left town two days ago and ain’t back yet. It’s just you and me now. You don’t even have Grue looking out for you.” He took another step. “You know, Grue would probably pay good money for someone to put this place to the torch.” He looked around. “Be a pity to see it all burn away. Surprised he hasn’t done it yet.”

“Grue isn’t as stupid as you are. I obtained the Certificate of Royal Permit on this place by partnering with the city assessor. Just like you, he knows how much Grue would like to see us fail. Any suspicious fire or deaths and who do you think the city assessor will blame? And burning any building in Medford is a crime against the king, because he owns this building-we only lease it. And if you hurt any of us-”

“I ain’t gonna hurt nobody, just here for a good time.”

“Go someplace else.”

His eyes lighted on Rose. “I’ll take this one.”

Rose let out a stifled squeal and retreated three steps toward the stairs.

“Get out, Stane,” Gwen ordered.

“Or maybe I’ll just have you.” He took another step.

Gwen didn’t move, didn’t blink. She stood toe-to-toe, staring back into his eyes, and as she did, her face grimaced. “Oh, dear Maribor,” she muttered, and brought a hand to her mouth. On her face was a look of revulsion. “Oh, blessed Lord.”

The sudden change surprised Stane, who looked confused. “What?” He glanced at Rose, then back at Gwen. “What kind of game are you playing?”

“Oh, Stane, I’m so sorry,” Gwen told him, her expression turning to sympathy.

Rose was stunned. At first she wondered if Gwen was pretending, playacting, trying to trick him, only Gwen wasn’t acting. There was a look of horror on her face like nothing Rose had ever seen.

Stane’s expression changed too. Menace surrendered to concern. “For what?”

“For what’s going to happen.”

“What the blazes you talking about?” Stane took a step back. He turned, looking around the parlor, searching for the threat.

“He’s going to kill you.” Gwen’s voice was eerie, gentle and shaken. She wasn’t making this up. Her hands were quivering as they started to reach out weakly toward him.

“Who is?”

“It will be slow … painfully slow. He’s going … he’s going to cut you apart and leave you to bleed. Hang you up in Merchant Square and decorate you in candles.”

“Who is? What are you talking about? Dixon ain’t got the-”

“Not Dixon.” She said this with weight, with power, with a sense of foreboding. “You won’t know him. You’ll keep asking why-he won’t answer. He’ll never say a word. He’ll just keep cutting, and cutting, and cutting … while you scream.”

“Shut up!”

“It will be late at night,” she went on, taking a step forward. Her hands still out before her, shaking.

“Shut up!” Stane moved back off the carpet as if she held vipers before her.

“No one helps you, and the blood … the blood is everywhere. The blood is horrible. Can there be that much blood in a person?” Gwen paused, looking at the floor and shaking her head in genuine dismay. Her hands came up to shelter her ears. “You keep screaming as he hoists you up and lights the candles.”

“I said shut your mouth!”

“After he leaves, as you die, people come out. They look up, but no one helps. They know what you are-they’ve always known, even though they never knew all the things you did. One person knows about Avon, but none of them know about Ruth, Irene, and Elsie. And no one ever found out about Callahan’s wife.”

“How do you know about them?” Stane looked terrified.

“And Oldham’s daughters-both of them. You’re an awful, awful man, Stane.”

Rose had never seen anyone’s face filled with as much fear as Stane’-s-his eyes wide and darting.

“They watch you die,” Gwen continued, though even Rose wished she would stop. “One man actually puts a bucket beneath your feet to catch the blood. He’s going to mix it with feed and give it to his pigs. Oh, Stane, what you did to Avon, what you did to all of them was so terrible, and you should die for that, but even I wouldn’t wish this on you … but, I suppose … you do deserve it.”

No matter what effect Gwen’s words had on Stane, they sent a chill deeper into Rose’s bones than any wind ever could, but it was the look on Gwen’s face, the genuine sympathy and revulsion that stopped her heart. Somehow Gwen could actually see Stane’s death. And through her, he and Rose saw it too.

“You’re a crazy bitch-that’s what you are!” Stane shouted at her. “And you can just leave me alone.” He retreated out the door, slamming it behind him.

Gwen wavered and reached out to steady herself.

“Are you all right?” Rose asked, racing to Gwen’s side.

She grabbed Rose, squeezed tight, and cried.

“Here,” Rose said, holding out the steaming cup of tea.

“A porcelain cup and saucer?” Gwen looked at her, stunned.

“We were planning on giving it to you for Wintertide, but you look like you could use it now, and by then we’ll be able to get you something better.”

“Better than a porcelain cup?”

“You’ll just have to wait and see.”

The two were on the porch, which smelled of fresh paint and sawdust. They sat curled up on the wooden bench, their feet tucked, wrapped in a blanket that Rose had pulled off her bed. It was one of the original blankets they had wrapped in that first night they had spent in the dark parlor, sharing a loaf of bread and a brick of cheese.

That night seemed very long ago. So much had changed that it felt like another lifetime. The era they spent in servitude to Grue happened to a different set of women. It couldn’t have been them. It certainly could never have been Gwen. Resting against her on the porch of their house, after having seen her drive off Stane as if he were an opossum routing in their garbage, Rose couldn’t imagine Gwen ever having obeyed Raynor.

The night was cold and soon it began to rain. She first noticed it pattering on the roofs along Wayward Street; then the drops grew bigger, falling faster, and finally the patter became a constant hum. The porch was covered and the runoff from the roof made Rose feel like she was on the inside of a waterfall.

“How are you feeling?”

Gwen tilted her head against Rose. “Much better thanks to you. This tea is wonderful.”

“Gwen…” She faltered. “What just happened? What did you do to Stane? Was that…”

Gwen set the cup and saucer down on the arm of the bench and pulled the blanket tighter. She had a stern, almost angry look on her face. “I’m not a witch, Rose.”

“Of course not. I wasn’t thinking that.” Rose turned to face her, careful not to disturb the fragile cup.

“What are you thinking?” Gwen refused to look, staring instead at the rain, and though Gwen was enveloped in the blanket, Rose could tell her arms were folded.

“I don’t know-that’s why I’m asking.”

Gwen huffed. “I just looked in his eyes, okay? I looked and I saw … I saw his death. It’s hard to explain.”

“Is it magic?” Rose asked in a soft voice. She knew magic was supposed to be evil. Her mother had said so. But if Gwen could do magic, then it couldn’t be evil because as far as Rose was concerned, Gwen was perfection, and Rose’s mother had been dimmer than a starless night.

“No,” Gwen said quickly, still staring at the rain. “It’s a gift.”

She finally turned to face Rose again. “That’s what my mother always said. She called it the Sight. Some women, mostly Tenkins from the deep forests who are blessed with the Sight, can look at a person and actually see their future. Palms are the safest, but the eyes … the eyes can be an open window to the soul. Peering too deeply, you just topple in and become lost. You see, hear, and feel everything.” Gwen took a breath. “My mother had the Sight and so do I.”

There was a moment of silence that hung in the air.

“What are you thinking now?” Gwen asked. “Are you scared of me?”

Rose reached out and took Gwen’s hand. “No. I’ve just never seen anything like that before.”

“What I did with Stane … I didn’t mean for it to happen. It doesn’t usually. Almost never really.”

“It was good that it did,” Rose pointed out. “I doubt Stane will be back. Thank you, and not just for scaring Stane. What you did for me, for all of us really, is … well, you’ve given us a chance that we could never have had without you. You saved us all. You’re my hero.”

“We saved each other,” Gwen insisted.

“I don’t think so.”

“Sure we did. We’re like a family, and families take care of each other, support one another and-”

“Like a family?” Rose almost laughed, but it really wasn’t that funny-not funny at all when she thought about it. “That’s not how families work-trust me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m just saying that’s not how families work.”

“That’s how it was with me and my mother,” Gwen said.

Rose shifted, turning away. She didn’t like disagreeing with Gwen.

“How was it with you?”

“It’s not important,” Rose replied. “It feels like centuries ago. I was … Well, that’s too long ago to remember.”

“I know the others’ stories,” Gwen said gently. “I know Jollin’s and Mae’s and Etta’s. You never told me yours.”

“There’s nothing to tell.”

“Was it awful?”

Rose thought a moment, then shook her head. That was the worst part; it wasn’t terrible. She hadn’t been beaten or locked in a closet. Her family hadn’t sold her into slavery, and they weren’t murdered by highwaymen. Nothing so vile as that had driven her into the gutter. “No,” she said at last. “Just sad.”

“Tell me.”

Rose felt awkward now. Foolish that the conversation had taken the turn it had. She shrugged as if doing so would assure Gwen that what she was about to say meant little to her. “My parents worked a bit of land just outside Cold Hollow-that’s a couple miles east, between the King’s Road and Westfield. Lots of rocks and briers but little else. I guess my father tried, but maybe he didn’t know what he was doing, or maybe the land was bad-it looked bad. Maybe the seeds were no good or the weather too cold. My mother made excuses for him. Never knew why, as the only thing I know he ever gave her was blame. Then one day he was gone. He just left and never came back. My mother said it was because we were all starving and he couldn’t take seeing us die. I guess she saw it as his way of saying he loved us. I saw it as just one more excuse-the last one at least.”

Rose felt Gwen’s hand rubbing her arm under the blanket, those dark, almond-shaped eyes looking so soft and kind. Gwen was being so sympathetic. She expected a horrible tale, and Rose felt bad she had nothing awful to give-nothing but the harvest stupidity brings.

“We had nothing after that,” she went on. “My father, who loved us so much, took the mule and the last of the copper. We survived on roots and nuts that winter. My mother liked to joke that we lived like squirrels, but by then I had forgotten how to laugh. She wouldn’t beg and refused to ask for help. She would say things like, ‘He’ll be back. You’ll see. Your father will find work and come back to us with bags of flour, pigs, chickens, and maybe even a goat for milk-you’d like that, wouldn’t you?’ I was chewing bark for my dinner when she said this.

Gwen squeezed her hand, and Rose felt even more embarrassed that she was showing her so much concern. Rose also didn’t know why she had started to cry. She didn’t like crying in front of Gwen. She wanted to be just as strong, and crying over something so small and foolish was just weakness, and she hated weakness.

“My mother loved me,” Rose explained. “She was stupid, but she loved me. She gave me what food we found and lied about having eaten. The following winter when we couldn’t find any more nuts or roots, we ate pine needles.

“My mother died from a fever. By then she was not much more than a skeleton.” Speaking about it brought back her face, the sunken cheeks, lips drawn back showing her gums. “It wasn’t the fever that killed her. It wasn’t starvation either. My mother died of pride-stupid, foolish, asinine pride. She actually died of it. Too proud to ask anyone for help. Too proud to admit her husband was a lousy, miserable bastard. Too proud to eat her share of the…”

She lost her voice. It stalled in her throat, which had closed without warning, as if the taste of what was coming up was far too bitter to suffer on her tongue. She took a breath that shuddered its way in and wiped the stripes of tears flowing down her cheeks with the heels of her hands. “She was too proud to eat her share of what little food we had. She told me she had. She swore she did. But every time I complained about being so hungry it hurt, she always offered me a nut or a partially rotted turnip, claiming she had just found two and already ate hers.”

Rose sniffled and wiped her eyes again.

“After she was gone, I left my pride in that little hut and begged my way to Medford. I’d do anything. Once you’ve spent an afternoon chasing a fly around your house for dinner, once you’ve eaten spiders whole and drooled over worms found while burying your mother with your bare hands, there’s nothing beneath you. All I wanted was to live-I’d forgotten everything else. A clod of dirt doesn’t have dreams. A bit of broken stone doesn’t understand hope. Each morning, all I wanted was to see the next dawn. But you changed that.”

Gwen struggled to sip her tea, as she, too, had wet streaks on her cheeks.

“You aren’t like my mother,” Rose told her. “And you aren’t like me. You stand up for yourself and for others. You make the world be the way you need it to. I can’t do that. Jollin can’t. No one can-no one but you.”

“I’m nothing special, Rose.”

“You are. You’re a hero and you can see the future.” They sat for a time listening to the rain drum overhead. The shower had turned into a full-on pour and the runoff a curtain of water. Somewhere a metal pail was making a muffled set of pings, and the road was filling with water as puddles joined together to form rivers and ponds.

“Why don’t we talk about Dixon instead?” Rose offered a sly smile.

Gwen peered at her over the beautiful new cup with a suspicious squint. “What about him?”

“Rumor has it he proposed.”

Gwen looked shocked. “He did not.”

“Etta says Dixon offered to make ‘a proper woman out of you.’”

“Oh … that.”

“So he did!”

Gwen shrugged.

“What did you say?”

“I told him we would be good friends, always. He’s a very good man, but…”

“But what?”

“He’s not … him.”

“Him? Who’s him?”

Gwen looked embarrassed and shuffled her feet under the blanket. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t?”

She shook her head, then covered her face with the blanket. “Maybe he doesn’t even exist. Maybe he’s something I’ve invented, pieced together over the years. Maybe I’m just trying to convince myself he’s real and isn’t just my hope of what is possible.”

“You’re turning away a good-living, hardworking, breathing man for the idea of an imaginary one?”

She peeked out from the folds. “Foolish, huh? Some hero.”

“Well … it’s very romantic, I guess, but…”

“You can say it-stupid. That’s what I’m being.”

“What if this white knight doesn’t ever show up?”

“He’s not a knight. I’m not sure what or who he is, but he’s definitely not a knight. And if he’s not just a figment of my imagination, then he’s coming.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I sent Dixon to bring him.”

“What? How did you-”

“I read Dixon’s palm and saw that he would be the one to bring him here.”

“Wait. I thought this man, this not-a-knight, was just a dream, a fantasy of yours.”

“He might still be.” Gwen paused and looked as if she might stop there, but Rose was not about to let her quit now, not after being forced to vomit up her whole life story.

“Explain, please.”

Gwen frowned. “On her deathbed, my mother made me promise to come here … to Medford. And I received those gold coins from someone telling me the same thing. That’s why I was given the money. To help … him.”

“To help who?”

“Him.”

Rose shook her head, frustrated. “Make sense, will you?”

“I can’t, because it doesn’t. I don’t know why I was supposed to come to Medford. I don’t know who this man is-or anything about him. I just know that I have to be here when he arrives. I have to help him and…”

“And what?”

Gwen tilted her head down, hiding her eyes.

“What?”

“I don’t know. I’ve just been waiting so long, thinking about him, you know? Wondering what he might be like. Who he really is, what he looks like. Why I have to be the one.”

“Are you saying you’ve fallen for a man you’ve never met?”

“Maybe.”

“But that’s okay because you’re supposed to, right? The two of you are meant for each other, yes?”

She shrugged. “No one said anything about that. It’s just what I want to believe. He could be married for all I know.”

“Did they at least give you a name?”

She shook her head with an awkward smile. “I’m ruining my reputation with you, aren’t I?”

“Are you kidding? You can do magic and have a mysterious destiny. I want to be you.”

Gwen smiled self-consciously. “Everyone has a destiny.”

Rose looked at her hand, then thrust it out. “What’s mine?”

Gwen stared a moment. “You’re not afraid? Even after seeing what happened with Stane?”

“I said I wasn’t afraid of you, didn’t I? And this proves it. Go ahead, look into my future. Maybe I have a mysterious stranger coming my way too. Only don’t tell me about my death. I think I’d rather not know, okay?”

Gwen sighed. “All right, let’s take a look.”

Rose watched as Gwen opened her fingers and spread out the skin of her palm.

“This is interesting. You are going to fall in love. He’s handsome, too, a kind face. You’re going to fall in love and-” The tight grip she held on Rose’s hand relaxed and while she continued to stare at her palm, Rose could tell she wasn’t focusing on it. Her sight shifted to the decking of the porch.

“With who? Who will I fall in love with? Do you know his name?”

Gwen let go of her hand and reached for her tea. She lost control of the saucer and the beautiful porcelain cup slipped, fell, and shattered.

Gwen gasped as she stared at the broken shards of pure white scattered on the porch. “I’m so sorry.” When she looked up at Rose, there were tears in her eyes. “I’m so very sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Rose offered. “We can get another one.”

Gwen hugged her. Not like before, not like when Stane left. This time she squeezed as if Rose was all that kept her from being sucked away in the storm. She continued to cry, repeating, “I’m so sorry.”