had to wait for days to find a ship that would take her from these shores, and Osborn would have had a watch put on the harbours within hours.'
Ma threw back her head and cackled with laughter. 'Don't try to cod me. We both know Talbot could smuggle a whole whorehouse of girls on board a ship if you paid him to.'
Raffe's face flushed with anger. 'How is the villein who's never been further than the manor's field supposed to fend for herself in a foreign land? She'd have died a beggar on the streets in a month, or worse.'
'Milking a cow or tending a field is the same the world over. We both know she'd have found work easily enough, so don't let's waste words.' Ma was no longer smiling and her eyes had taken on a glittering hardness.
'You want her here within your grasp. But if she stays here, she must earn her keep. I can fill Elena's bed a dozen times over with girls who'll gladly do whatever I ask for a roof over their heads and a full belly.'
'You owe me,' Raffe snapped. 'If it wasn't for me, your brother would have hanged in the Holy Land and you'd never have come to know him. I swore to you I'd never tell him who you were and I kept my word so far, because we both know that if Talbot ever found out you and he were kin, he'd start thinking he was master here. He'd want a share of the profits, and a great deal more than a share.'
Ma smiled, though her eyes remained cold and hard. 'I won't deny the old ape is useful. But you and I both know I've more than repaid that debt to you these past twenty years. A life for a life I've given you and I owe you nothing more. So if your girl can't turn a good profit for me, she's out.'
Ma leaned forward and plucked a fig from the trencher, but her gaze was fixed unblinkingly on Raffe's as if she wanted to make sure he understood every word she was about to say.
'Our parents died when I was still a babe in arms. Talbot was almost ten years old then, and, as he's told you, my father had already given him to a ship's captain in payment for a debt. My uncle and his wife took me in, thinking to make use of me as a servant as soon as I could lift a broom. But when they saw I'd never grow like other women, they sold me to the first man that would pay a fat purse to bed a freak. Some men are like that, you know, want to try one of every kind of woman there is, just like some men faced with a banquet won't rest till they've sampled every dish. The more exotic and bizarre, the better it suits their tastes — dwarfs like me, women without arms or legs, giants, Jewesses, Moors, albinos. Some men think if a woman looks different, she'll taste different between his thighs.'
Ma clenched her fist so tightly that the juice from the fig in her hand ran down her arm. 'I was lucky, if you can call it that — the man who bought me had money, and so did his friends. I wasn't a fool. I saw I'd got two choices: resist them and know that they'd rape me anyway, or go willingly with a smile on my face and screw every penny I could from them by giving them all they wanted and things they hadn't even dreamt of.
'Ever since I was twelve years old, I've survived and grown rich by giving men what they desire, even if they haven't got the guts to admit what they want to their own confessors. I learned to know men better than they know themselves, so believe me when I say, a man doesn't put his prize chicken into a den of foxes unless he thinks that hen is really a fox. So whether you know it or not, Master Raffe, you brought this girl here to a whorehouse because that's what you believe her to be.'
Raffe leaned forward on to the table, his head in his hands, trying to master the feelings raging through him. He felt as if he was trapped between two charging armies. Every instinct in him wanted to keep Elena safe, pure, unsullied, just as she had been that day