Sylvia (17 page)

I did not reply but stood silently looking down at my dirty feet.

‘
Jawohl
, Frau Sarah,' Reinhardt called out.

‘Sylvia, do you understand?' she asked sharply.

‘Aye, Frau Sarah, but only if what you ask of me does not betray my conscience.'

‘Hurrph! Believe me, you will soon enough discover that conscience is a dish that does not fill the stomach.'

‘As long as I suffer a hunger after righteousness,' I replied, although my heart beat fiercely at my gall.

Frau Sarah smiled and in a tone we had not heard previously, one softly spoken as if a compliment, she said, ‘That is a reply well turned.' Then she cautioned me. ‘You seem both clever and questioning, Sylvia Honeyeater. But alas, you are born a woman. My advice to you is to hide both these virtues well or they will most assuredly bring about your downfall.' Then she laughed, a tinkling, merry sound and again one contrary to the character I had at first supposed. ‘Oh, perhaps not all at once. Cleaned up and in a fine gown that denies your humble status you will be very pretty and as you grow into a woman, men will think you beautiful and pay you much attention. Your beauty is your only weapon and you must learn to use it while it lasts, for beauty is a rose today and on the morrow scattered petals. If you learn the ways of a coquette and choose your bed carefully, then men will indulge your questing mind. That is, if you remember always to bow to their superiority, exclaim at their profundity, compliment their masculinity and sheath your sharpened tongue for use when later you are betrothed.'

Reinhardt laughed and clapped his hands. I could see that he too saw Frau Sarah for a different woman to the shrew we had both at first supposed, and besides, admired her wit and her insight into my contrary nature. We were to learn that she was a woman of both natures: shrewish, hard and difficult in the ways of business and demanding of our obedience and strict compliance while also not without kindness and concern for our welfare, especially my own.

‘What would you tell us?' Reinhardt asked, now willing to listen without resentment or buffoonery.

‘You will go to the bathhouse at once. You are to bathe from head to toe, pay the attendant for clean water not twice used and hot, not cold.' She turned to me. ‘I shall give you a fresh petticoat to wear when once you are clean,' she pointed to my dress, ‘so your skin is not tainted from that filthy garment. Also, a pair of slippers to keep your feet unsoiled when you return hence. Do you have oil of lavender for your skin and lye and rosemary wash to remove the dirt from your hair?' I shook my head. ‘No, of course not, why do I ask such a silly question? I shall give you some of each to use, also for light hair such as thine a rinse of chamomile – it will not only clean and scent your hair but cause it to affect a glorious shine.' She reached out and with a look of distaste fingered my hair. ‘When did you last wash this?' she asked, as if my hair were some unpleasant object to her touch.

‘By a stream five days ago, but I had no lye.'

‘It was not washed thoroughly, but there are no lice, that is something to be thankful for.' She bent forward and sniffed. ‘You smell, Sylvia, but I have smelled much worse in women of nobility and of the exalted classes. You will need distilled water of the flowers of rosemary to gargle twice daily to curb the stench of your breath and to make your close conversation sweet to the senses as well as to make sense. A comely wench is placed lower in appreciation by a prince or knight or rich man if with each sweet kiss there comes a whiff of sow's breath.'

I confess to finding myself amazed at such careful attention to my body. Nor had I previously heard of any of these exotic preparations. ‘How know you all this, Frau Sarah?'

‘Ah, it is all a part of the business,' she said, happy that I should ask. ‘I count myself a herbalist. It has been in my family for many generations. Many who come here wish to be seen to be more than they might otherwise be in life – their intention is to impress someone for some honest or dishonest purpose. While their attire or gown may be richly stitched, if they are ill-mannered, uncouth and carry a stench of body and breath, it poorly serves their chances of success.'

‘Aye, you would turn a crow into a falcon – they are both birds of prey – but the one despised and the other exalted,' Reinhardt exclaimed, displaying his own clever turn of phrase.

‘You would do the same for us then?' I asked.

‘If in the end we are to share in a profitable business you will be a worthy cause. Though I do not believe it will prove a difficult task. You are both pretty and talented, which is more than may be said of most of our customers.' She now looked at us sternly. ‘I ask only that you obey me implicitly – there are many traps for the unwary and the young and society is a prickly business with many a nose easily put out of joint. If we offend one, if they are of influence, then all will be offended. If in doubt how to comport yourself then you must consult me at once, do you understand?'

We both nodded our heads, then the ratcatcher spoke. ‘We do not have the means for the public bathhouse, nor have we broken fast today.' He shrugged and glanced at me. ‘I do not care for myself, but only for Sylvia who grows weak for want of sustenance.'

Frau Sarah sighed and shook her head. ‘Already there are tricks.'

Reinhardt looked most hurt. ‘It is God's truth, I swear it,' he lied.

Frau Sarah did not reply but looked directly into the ratcatcher's eyes and he in turn met hers so that they remained thus locked in defiance of each other.

‘I have some coin, enough for the bathhouse!' I exclaimed. ‘It is intended for another purpose but this one will suffice.' While I knew that I betrayed the ratcatcher with this admission, I simply could not stand by and allow him to take God's name in vain.

Frau Sarah turned. ‘What purpose?'

‘Alms, we will give half of what we earn to the poor.'

‘But you
are
the poor,' Frau Sarah said, bemused.

‘Yes. So I will pay for the bathhouse.'

‘And to eat?'

‘Today we will fast for a penance,' I said and looked at Reinhardt. ‘That is why I shall pay
only
for the bathhouse.'

Frau Sarah turned to Reinhardt. ‘There remains much of the rat still in you!' she snapped, her previous character now returned. She turned and left the room and returned shortly with a petticoat and slippers, both worn but clean and dainty, the first of each I had ever possessed. She also handed me the lye and two jars of herbal mixtures, then instructed me to wrap them within the petticoat and cautioned me against placing them in my Father John bag. ‘You must hold them close in your possession for you will pass through the markets,' she warned. ‘Leave your leather bag with me or all within it will be stolen as you press through the crowd. Nimble thieving fingers you cannot feel will empty your bag as you walk. Also your stave, you will find it awkward.'

‘Nay, Frau Sarah, where I go, there goes also my stave.'

‘But it marks you a peasant and is not comely,' she protested.

‘It is a promise made that I shall always keep. I cannot part with it.'

‘Very well, Sylvia,' she said, puce-lipped. ‘I can see you are stubborn; in your very first lesson on comportment you have failed.'

It was but a tiny victory but it told her I would not be pushed about.

And so we made our way to the public bathhouse. I had not spoken to Reinhardt while Frau Sarah had been absent from the room and he was wise enough not to engage me in idle conversation. But once outside the tailor shop he advanced a tentative statement that did not require an answer. ‘When we pass through the markets you will see where we have with great good fortune avoided working,' he said. I did not reply but walked steadfast and angry. We continued on a while, the silence between us growing until his garrulous self could no longer bear it. ‘What think you of the Jewess?' he inquired.

I stopped and turned accusingly. ‘Why?' I demanded.

‘Why what?'

‘Did you betray our trust, lie and then swear it was the truth on God's name?'

‘Ah, Sylvia, you do not understand the Jew, they will cheat you and take advantage if they think you are honest. Now the Jewess knows we are up to her game and can match her cupidity.'

‘Ha! You talk shit, ratcatcher!'

‘No, it is true!' he asserted, raising his voice. ‘I know these Jews, they are all the same!'

‘And you'll swear it on God's name, I'll vouch?'

He ran several steps ahead of me and turned and spread his hands. ‘Sylvia, she is rich. Did you not see the cloth in that room? Alone it is worth a king's ransom. They will make a pretty penny when they sell my rat-ridding services to the Jew's cousin and you can be sure the percentage she demands of our endeavour is nothing short of onerous. I asked but a pittance, the money so that we, for her benefit, might be clean and break our fast. Was that such a crime?'

That was the problem with the ratcatcher – he could well justify his most wicked actions and cause them to sound but a trifle, a mere indiscretion. ‘Nay, but you blasphemed, you swore it on God's name. Don't you understand, that is a mortal sin!'

‘Ha! Then all in the world is a sinner! We will shortly reach the markets and if you tarry at a stall but a few moments you will hear “My God!” this and “By God!” that, a thousand times each hour. This blasphemy you speak of, it is entwined within the language itself.'

‘And God writes each utterance in the Book of Sin and appends the utterer's name to it.'

‘Forsooth, Sylvia! Thou art impossible!' he cried. ‘In all eternity there would be insufficient ink or goose quills or skins rendered to parchment for the names that must perforce be inscribed in such a sinful book!'

‘Hence all the souls in purgatory and those that burn in hell!' I exclaimed. ‘Frau Sarah told the truth when she named you yet a rat.'

‘Aye, I am not struck low by her remark. Rats are self-employed, persistent, cunning and will survive when all else perishes.'

‘To carry the plague,' I added tartly.

‘Ha! What then of the Jewess naming thee contrary and cautioning you to sheath your sharpened tongue?'

I thought at once to say ‘
But only in the presence of a man
', but curbed myself just in time, for the hurt this would have caused him. ‘And thou shalt pay for the bathhouse and our food today!' I said instead, knowing that to argue further would not be conducive to his better behaviour. But I was learning that he did not, as I had supposed, always get the better of me in argument.

‘Very well, but I caution you, after the Jews have taken their percentage, there will be precious little left for alms to the poor and we, I guarantee, will not gain the larger share.'

‘That's not what you said before,' I accused him. ‘You said we would work with gentlefolk and sleep warmly and eat plentifully and not compete with jugglers and the monkey on the hurdy-gurdy.'

‘Aye, that I did, but I did not then know of Sarah the Jewess, but thought only of doing business with the old man, a much gentler sort. She has the sharpness of a whip's crack and her sting may hurt as much.'

‘Then should we continue with this dame?' I asked. ‘Or perhaps persevere on our own?'

‘Aye, let us try her for size. If she does not suit we will abandon her.' He grinned. ‘At least you shall have a clean wimple and a becoming gown and slippers and I a handsome outfit and undarned hose.'

I shook my head. ‘Nay, ratcatcher, there thou go'est again! We shall keep these clothes we now possess and if perchance we leave, then we shall return what is not ours to keep.'

‘Sylvia, we will most surely perish with such Christian morality as our guide! Think Jew! They are not like us, but they survive through thick and thin.' Before I could think to make a suitable reply he said, ‘Come now, we have reached the markets. Keep well thy vigilance, there are wicked folk abundant here.'

Yes, and Christians all I daresay
, but I kept this thought to myself.

If I had hitherto thought the streets smelling of shit and piss and rotting garbage an affront to my senses, they were as a sylvan wood when compared to where we now entered. A miasma of evil-smelling stench hung at the height of the numerous stalls and tents, so that the morning sunlight could scarcely filter through and turned the air into layers of greenish, brown and dirty yellow effluvium that stretched in noxious strands as if the veils of hell itself. The vile smell of rotting meat and fish, mixed with pig shit, rancid fat, over-ripened cheeses and the stench of numerous substances that my nostrils had not before confronted sent me close to fainting. To add to this fetidity, the acrid smell of the smoke from charcoal fires further dimmed the air and made my eyes to water and caused my throat a raspy pain and my lungs to constrict and leave me short of breath. The noise of the stall-holders and the folk attending the market made conversation impossible and their pushing, bumping and elbowing left me feeling bruised and battered. I was not able to return the pushing or fend for myself as I held Frau Sarah's slippers and bath jars wrapped in the petticoat crooked in my left arm and my staff in the right. Thus, for lack of momentum, I could scarce follow the ratcatcher as he walked ahead amongst the motley throng.