The Alchemist of Souls (Night's Masque, #1)(57)

"Well, I suppose His Highness thought it unmeet for an ambassador to haunt the stews of Southwark."

"Stew?"

"Brothel. House of pleasure. Place of resort."

The young skrayling continued to look puzzled. Mal sighed.

"A place to buy a woman's favours, to bed her as you please."

Kiiren sat down by the hearth and looked up at Mal. His eyes reflected the lamplight like a cat's.

"It does not seem right to me," Kiiren said, "this buying and selling of flesh. Women are honoured amongst our people."

"And amongst some, at least, of ours," Mal replied.

"I cannot accept this gift."

"It is unwise to offend a prince, sir."

The young skrayling looked wretched but did not answer.

"Is it…?" Mal hesitated, unsure he wanted to pursue the topic further, but was not any intelligence valuable? "You are not like other skraylings."

"No, I am not." Kiiren stared down at the ground.

"I reckoned as much from the first."

"I have been set apart from birth, raised to the role I now play."

"You said as much at the banquet," Mal replied. "You were taught English by our sailors."

"There is more to it than that."

"How so?"

Kiiren sighed. "Amongst my people, as yours, women do not act upon stage. Men take their parts, or rather senlirren do."

"Sen… leeren?"

"Man who has been… changed as boy, to make him able to speak like woman."

"Oh?" He thought back to his brief glimpse of Kiiren naked. He had not been able to see much from behind, admittedly, nor was he sure what to expect a skrayling eunuch to look like.

"You need not be sad for me," Kiiren said. "It was long time ago, and I chose it freely. And we have herbs to take away pain, and heal mouth so it is as if–"

"Mouth?" Mal stared at him.

"Why, yes." Kiiren bared his even, yellowish teeth. "Our women have no long-teeth, so I must have mine taken out."

Mal's blood ran cold at the image: bloody trophies being ripped from a skrayling's mouth. Had Charles and the others known the symbolism of what they did?

"You are upset, Catlyn-tuur," Kiiren said. "I am sorry for talking of painful business. You must think we are barbarians."

"Not at all," Mal replied, trying to shake off the memory. "We do the same – or worse – to our own children, for much the same purpose. At least, the Italians do. It is not practised in England."

He recalled Lodge's account of the "women" of Antilia.

"Is this commonly practised in the Seven Cities?" he asked.

Kiiren looked at him curiously. "I am from Vinland, not Antilia."

"Then those were women Lodge saw, when he approached the city. Short hair, no tattoos…?"

"Of course. All our women live in safety of cities." He smiled. "Humans are thought most strange by my people, to live together. Your men seem so – what is word? – effeminate, to us."

"Begging your pardon, sir, but I'm not the one dressed like a woman."

He fell silent, fearing he had said too much and Kiiren would take offence, but after a moment the ambassador returned his smile.

"So," Mal said, "senlirren or not, sir, do you wish to lie with the whores tonight?"

The familiar scents of the theatre enveloped Coby and she stood for several minutes, back to the door, letting her eyes adjust to the gloom. All around her the huge wooden building creaked like a ship under sail as it cooled. Coby told herself firmly there was no one else here and nothing to be afraid of.

After a moment's thought she fetched some cushions from the box-office, and arranged them on the floor of the lowest gallery between the front bench and the low wooden partition that kept the groundlings out. Sleep did not come easily, however. She kept thinking back to Betsy's words. Philip was determined to go to the fair and, lo and behold, the rehearsals were cancelled. What was more, the most sorely defamed of the players was the man who had been set to watch over Philip. And who but the players knew where he had slept last night?

No, that couldn't be right. How had Philip managed to sneak out of the house and back under Master Parrish's nose? And then there were the prints of hooves and booted feet. It had to be coincidence. Unless… Philip had money. Quite a lot of money. Enough to bribe someone to post a libel? Perhaps. But then who wrote it? She sighed. Philip might recite his lines with surprising delicacy of feeling for such a villainous illheaded lout, but he could barely write a letter to his mother, never mind a poem.

She would find an excuse to go back to Thames Street during tomorrow's rehearsals and search the boys' room. At least that way she could eliminate one suspect. She was only glad this watch duty would keep her well out of the apprentices' way for a while. After what had happened at the fair today, she knew the reprisals would not be long in coming.

Mal paused at the foot of the steps. How to politely decline a gift from a prince? He supposed the girls would have to stay the night; he could hardly send them home now. And what if they were not common whores, but the daughters of ambitious noblemen hoping to win the ambassador's favour? It was scarcely good Christian behaviour, but it had been done before; indeed, it was said that the princes' own grandmother, Queen Anne, had been thus put into King Henry's path to snare him.