Now it was Beth’s turn to frown, and then she lowered her head and peered at her hands.
When she didn’t speak, Scotty said, “I heard ye telling Rachel about yer childhood. About yer mother and sisters and the market and yer father being a drunk with a temper. Ye stopped when yer mother and Ruthie died when ye were ten. What happened next?”
Beth was silent so long, Scotty began to think she wouldn’t answer his questions. But just when he was about to ask her again, she raised her head and spoke.
“When I was telling Rachel about it, I said that I sold all my pies the first time out at market after my mom died,” she said quietly, and he couldn’t help noticing that her accent had thickened again. Whatever she was about to reveal was emotional for her, he deduced.
“And that was true,” Beth assured him earnestly, and then kept her head up but dropped her eyes as she continued, “But what I didn’t say was that I didn’t take home the coin I made.” Her mouth twisted bitterly. “I was far too clever for that, or at least I thought so, certainly smarter than my mother. I determined that, unlike her, I wasn’t going to let father get the money that he’d always beaten off my mother. I wouldn’t let him drink all my hard work away. So, as the day passed, I paid some of the money to those we owed and bought the supplies for the next day on my way home. And then I tucked what little was left in one of Ruthie’s old stockings and put it in a hiding place I had. Behind a brick in the wall, that I’d worked loose years ago,” Beth explained before lowering her head again.
“I thought it was ever so clever,” she repeated sadly, and then sighed and admitted, “I soon found out not. My father explained it to me. Mother too had paid bills through the day, and bought her supplies along the way home, but she’d always made sure to keep a couple coins behind for him. Just enough for him to have his tipple, and she let him slap her a time or two ere she gave it up, so he’d think that was all there was. He knew it wasn’t, but didn’t mind so long as he had what he needed.”
Beth shifted on the bed so she could rest against the short headboard and then leaned her head back over the top of it and stared at the ceiling as she said, “The first time I came home with no money at all, he beat me something fierce. I couldn’t walk let alone work for near a week.”
Scotty clenched his hands at the thought of a grown man beating a young Beth so severely, but he kept his mouth shut.
“But the second time I came home without coin he merely said, ‘You’ll be sorry. You’ll see.’” Raising her head again, she said sadly, “But I didn’t see, because nothing happened until the third time I stubbornly hid the money and came home with none. That day he said, ‘Now you’ll see,’ and then he grabbed my arm and he dragged me out of the house. He dragged me for blocks and blocks, into the worst part of the city. A part where Mother always said good girls didn’t go. The house he took me to was quite nice compared to most of the others, and I had no idea what was coming until it was all but over and he’d sold me to a brothel owner.”
Now it was Scotty’s turn to lower his head, and he had to work to hold back the sound building in his aching chest for the ten-year-old innocent she’d been.
“It seems I wasn’t so smart after all,” she confessed dryly. “You see, when he didn’t beat me the second time, I thought he was giving up. That all Mother had had to do was refuse him once, take one horrible beating, and he’d stop trying. But the truth was he hadn’t beaten me the second time because he’d already decided what he was going to do, and he knew the brothel owner wouldn’t pay much for me all black and blue and bruised.”
Scotty raised his head in time to see her quickly wipe a single tear from her cheek, and then she cleared her throat and continued, “As it was, the bruises from the first beating hadn’t completely faded yet, so she didn’t pay as much as he’d hoped, but it was still quite a penny. More coin than I’d ever even imagined seeing.”
Turning her head, she peered at him and said dryly, “It seems young girls under twelve, even common girls like me, were valued for our virginity. Lords and fine lairds would pay a high price for a young, untried girl. So the brothel owners bought us from greedy parents or other relatives to auction off to the highest bidder.”
Returning her gaze to the ceiling, she shrugged. “As I say, though, they only paid my father mildly well. I still had some fading bruises, which meant they would have to wait for those to heal, feeding and clothing me the whole while before they could auction me off. Da wasn’t pleased by that, but there was naught he could do.
“So for a week I was locked in a room, fed and bathed and taken care of until the day of the auction. That was scary,” she admitted. “The first part wasn’t so bad. I was bathed and perfumed, my hair washed and dried and brushed to a fine sheen, but then I was put in a white gown and paraded in front of a room full of what to me seemed like scary old men. The way they looked at me . . .”
Beth shuddered and Scotty had to swallow the bile in his throat.
“But then they told me to strip,” she announced in a quiet voice. “I refused, of course, and struggled when they tried to forcibly remove the gown. In the end, it basically had to be torn from my body, and I was left to shiver and weep in front of those hungry-eyed men as they bid on me. After that I was rushed off by two of the brothel owner’s women, force-fed a horrid-tasting drink and placed in a bed.
“The whole while the women were telling me how lucky I was that the man who’d bought me was kind and didn’t wish a struggle or to have me screaming so was having me drugged instead. They said, ‘A good many of them fine gentlemen like a fight, and even like to hurt a girl, ye see.’ But I didn’t see, and I didn’t understand what was happening and I don’t know what they gave me, but it made me feel all queer and I had little control over myself. I tried to get out of bed when the women left the room. The window of the bedchamber they’d kept me in prior to this one had been boarded up so I couldn’t escape, but this one wasn’t, and I thought if I could just get to it and climb out . . .”
Beth shook her head. “But I couldn’t seem to master my arms and legs enough to even get out of the bed, let alone make the window, and then the ‘kind gentleman’ was escorted in and there was no escape.”
She lowered her head to stare down at her hands as if they were the only thing in the world at that moment, and it made Scotty want to pull her into his lap and hold her until all her pain went away. Part of him wanted to tell her to stop talking, not to tell him any more, but he didn’t and simply waited.
“He may have been a kind man, but no man likes to be laughed at,” Beth said finally. “And I don’t know if it was whatever they’d given me, or maybe hysteria, but when he stripped off his clothes and straightened, I thought him the funniest thing I’d ever seen.”
Grimacing, Beth glanced up briefly as she admitted, “I’d never seen a naked man before. The closest was me father in his nightshirt, but even that hid everything except his hairy feet. But this . . .” Beth shook her head and lowered her gaze again.
“He was like a rooster, a sagging chin, narrow shoulders slouching into a big fat belly over short skinny legs, and for some reason, I just started to laugh. And then I couldn’t stop, which infuriated him. He wasn’t particularly kind or gentle because of it, I suppose, but at least he was quick and left me to cry myself to sleep.”
Scotty watched her take a deep breath, and she seemed stronger as she said, “Of course, once I’d been bought and raped, my value dropped considerably. In fact, I was no longer useful to the brothel.” Glancing his way, she explained, “This particular establishment only kept the most beautiful women.”
“Ye’re beautiful,” he said almost too softly for her to hear him, but she did.
“Nay. I have red hair,” Beth told him as if he might not have noticed.
“Yer hair is beautiful.”
“The English don’t like red hair,” she countered.
“The English are idiots,” Scotty growled.