“He lied.” It was all she could think of to say. She was not sure what had made the boy tell his friends that there were men talking in the next room, but with that lie he had saved her and everyone in this house from being victims of housebreaking, possibly worse.
Mr. Bell told her, patiently, “All thieves do lie, my dear. Don’t let it worry you.”
Lily was shaking again, and he felt it.
He said, “I’m afraid that the child has been frightened by this, and it may not be healthy for Lily to sleep any more in the kitchen. We ought to prepare her a new place to sleep.”
“She can sleep with me,” Marion said. “There is room in my chamber.” She looked to her mother and added, “If Lily can still do her work, as you say, there’s no harm.”
With a soft smile, her mother agreed, “You are right.”
And so it was decided.
*
Jean shifted baby James high on her hip as she chose two more apples to add to the basket that Lily was carrying. “Well, I am happier knowing you’re sleeping upstairs with the family, but I still do feel I should bring ye away from that place. Are they good to ye?”
“Aye, they are very good. You need not worry.”
“I worry,” said Jean, in a tone that implied doing anything else was unreasonable. “We scarcely see ye anymore, and when we do, ye look so sad and tired.”
“I’m not sad.” Lily reasoned it would be no sin to stray from the truth this one time, if it helped to set Jean’s mind at ease. “And not so tired today.” She showed a cheerful face to prove it, taking Bessie’s hand more firmly in her own as they moved on to the next stall within the green market. “Will not ye have some plums? They are your favorite.”
“Not this time.” Jean moved along, bought half a pound of nuts instead, and with a single onion added, said to Lily, “That will do us nicely for the week.”
It was a sorry-looking basket in comparison to those she’d carried in the past, but Lily made no comment, knowing even with the coins she could give Jean from her own wages, every penny must be stretched as far as possible.
Their new lodgings were more distant from the marketplace than their old ones at Kinloch’s Close. The walk home took them longer. Bessie dragged her feet, complaining, until finally Lily made a game of trying to guess the secret occupations of the people they were passing.
“See now, he’s an outlaw,” Lily said in hushed tones of a carter standing at his horse’s head, his hat pulled low. “And in the night he rides that horse upon the roads, and robs all wealthy men who cross his path.”
Delighted, Bessie pointed to a merchant in his shop door opposite. “Who’s that?”
“Why, that’s the king’s own spy, who’s sent to catch the outlaw, but at every turn has been outwitted, because some men are not what they do appear to be.”
They’d finally reached the narrow land within the cramped and sunless close where Jean had found them lodgings on the fourth floor. A man had just come down the turnpike stair, and at the bottom turned to call up to a third floor window where a woman leaned out wearing nothing but her shift, her fair hair tumbled round her shoulders, and waved back to him.
Bessie tugged at Lily’s hand and nodded at the woman, wanting still to play the game, “Who’s that?”
“A princess,” Lily said, “trapped in a tower, by a—”
Jean broke in, and put her foot down. “No. She’s not a princess. She’s a common whore.”
Lily had, of course, heard people use that word before. She knew that it was bad to be one, and that it was also bad to call somebody one when they were not, although her knowledge of the meaning of the word itself was vague.
Jean warned, “Don’t look at her or speak to her,” and Lily kept her head down and obeyed, not even glancing upward when the woman called “Good morrow” to them in a mocking tone.
But Bessie, who could no more keep from questioning than breathing, barely waited until they were inside their own lodgings before asking, “What’s a whore?”
“A woman who takes money from a man,” said Jean, “for pleasing him, in ways ye are too young to understand. But it is wrong, and she is wicked. Why our landlord lets her bide here, I will never understand. Were it in my hands, I’d chase her to the gutter where she does belong, and she could take her fancy clothes and false smiles there and try to turn men’s heads, and good luck to her. There’s no place for whores among us decent folk.”