Elena was not unacquainted with sex; after all, she had grown up surrounded by all of nature's fecundity. Before she could even put names to the beasts, she had seen cocks fluttering on the backs of hens, rams tupping ewes, stallions covering mares and even other stallions. She'd giggled at lads and lasses rolling together in the pasture. It had seemed but a natural expression of life, the grunts and groans and squeals of its daily renewal.
In the cottages or even the Great Hall, most of these human couplings were little more than animal copulations, rapid, furtively hidden beneath blankets, the noise suppressed for fear of disturbing children, parents or some short-tempered bed-fellow. They required no thought or imagination beyond the basic urge to relieve the burning of nature's honest lust. But as Elena was about to discover, the human mind, if left unoccupied, can create such strange fancies as have never entered the head of a cockerel or dog.
Luce nodded towards the board. 'We get many foreigners coming here, sailors, merchants and the like. We don't always understand what they want, so they can just point at that. Mind you, we have to use the board with some of the local lads too. They only have to step in here for every word they ever learned since they were weaned to vanish from their poor little heads and they start to babble like babies.' She smiled fondly. 'One lad I had the other day, couldn't even remember whether he was asking for a woman or a boy.'
'A boy?'
Luce waved a hand towards the wall. 'Boys work in the chamber next door. Some of the men in here don't like to see a man with a boy, puts 'em off. Funny, that,' she added, almost to herself, 'how what sends one man into ecstasy sends another to vomit.'
'I thought those boys were the sons of the women.'
Luce snorted. 'They're somebody's sons all right. There's many a mother or father has sold their sons to work in here. But they don't belong to us, though some of the women in here are more mothers to them than their own have ever been.'
Elena closed her eyes as a sudden pain slashed through her head. What had become of her own son? What had Gytha done with him? Was he really being cared for somewhere safe, or had she sold him? Would he end up in a place like this? For a moment she was almost glad she was here, as if that would be enough to appease heaven and spare her son from such a place. She wanted to believe that whatever happened to her meant it could not happen to him. But deep down she knew that wasn't true. A woman and her child could easily be slaughtered together — they often were — but she clung to the thought all the same: I'm doing this to protect him.
Why do mortals think that suffering is a coin with which they can buy justice or salvation? We mandrakes learn wisdom from our fathers: life is a steal if you are a talented thief, and if you are not, then you may suffer all you please but it will buy you nothing but pain.
Elena could not prevent her face from screwing up into an expression of disgust as she glanced once more at the pictures on the board. She looked at Luce, trying to imagine which of these things she did.
Luce saw her expression and her face darkened. 'You needn't sneer at us. You're in here too, aren't you?'
'But I couldn't do that!' Elena said.
You'd be surprised at what you can do when you have to, and if you bend a little, kitten, you might even get to enjoy it.'
Elena felt her face burning, knowing that Luce had realized exactly what she was thinking. But she still couldn't bring herself to imagine doing such things with strangers. She couldn't and she wouldn't. She was married in all but name. She wasn't like Luce. She would never be like Luce.
But she wouldn't have to be. Raffaele would come soon, maybe he'd even come today, and take her somewhere safe. She wasn't staying here. She didn't live here, not like the other girls. Today or tomorrow Raffaele would come for her.
Trying to avert her gaze from the mesmerizing pictures on the board, Elena threw herself into the cleaning and tidying, trying hard to focus on smoothing, straightening, tossing, turning, strewing, all those chores which back