Gudrun nodded. Her eyes flickered to Mauger. Aaliz said that he was as solid and unimaginative between the sheets as he was out of them, and not particularly generous. She contrasted that description with the good fortune withdrawing from her own arms now.
'Will you return?' Her fingertips slipped the length of his sleeve, the final contact of flesh, hand upon hand, and then the space of air between them, wealthy young man and riverside whore. He drew a breath, and this time it was she who laid a forefinger to his lips. 'No, do not answer that,' she said quickly. 'It was a foolish question.'
'Ready?' Mauger nudged Benedict. Gudrun stepped back, a professional smile on her face. There would be other customers as the darkness thickened and the night grew older.
Benedict returned her smile and walked away, turning to wave once before he lost sight of the bathhouse. It was drizzling, the twilight soft and murky and the air pungent with the smells of wet earth and smoky cooking fires. The two young men made their way down to the river and sought along the bank for a boatman to row them back across the water to civilisation.
'Was it worth it then?' asked Mauger, a slightly patronising smile on his lips.
Benedict murmured a reply and hoped without much optimism that Mauger was not going to demand a detailed account of his experience. He knew that the older man, having introduced him to the delights of Southwark, would feel entitled to know everything and be aggrieved at anything less.
They found a boatman within minutes. He was tying up his craft with determined tugs on the mooring rope whilst arguing with a slender young woman. An older female sat on the ground, her cloak bundled around her body, which shook with spasms of coughing.
'I tell you, I be finished for the day. I been rowing this hulk back and forth across the river since afore cockcrow this morn. Do you think I've no other life to live?' the boatman snapped.
'My mother's sick, she can't go any further. You must take us across!' The girl compounded her frustration by stamping her foot.
The gesture was familiar to Benedict, but he could not remember from where or why. The girl wore a dark cloak and a hood of paler, gold wool, the colour dim in the twilight. Escaping from its edge were several strands of curly dark hair. He could not see her face.
'I must do nothing, wench,' the man growled and started to walk away. In desperation, the girl leaped in front of him and clutched at his sleeve. Benedict was granted a swift vision of delicate features marred by the pinch of exhaustion and despair.
'Please, for the mercy of God!' Her young voice trembled on the verge of breaking.
Benedict intervened, stepping across the boatman's path as the man tried to shake her off and go determinedly on his way.
'I would make it worth your while,' he said. 'How much for the four of us? Come on, man, it's only one more journey there and back. Think of your profit!'
'I can't enjoy me profit if I'm dead from overwork!' the boatman snapped, but ceased trying to push past Benedict and put his hands to his hips instead, indicating that he was prepared to bargain.
Mauger rolled his eyes heavenwards and shook his head at what he saw as complete lunacy on Benedict's behalf. There were other boatmen further along the bank who would not cost the earth to hire. Let these women fend for themselves, they were of no importance. 'You are paying,' he said grimly to Benedict as an exorbitant sum was agreed.
Benedict drew the coins from his pouch. 'We cannot just leave them here,' he said. 'How would you feel if it was your mother or sister stranded here and sick?'
'Neither my mother nor my sister would be sitting on a riverside at dusk in a neighbourhood like this,' Mauger retorted.
Benedict's mouth tightened. 'Then for simple Christian charity, or don't you comprehend that either?'
Mauger gave him a fulminating look. 'You may think you know everything, but you don't,' he said curtly.
The boatman took the coins, made sure that they were genuine, and still grumbling to himself, set about untying the mooring rope. Benedict and Mauger glared at each other for a long moment, the hostility no longer sheathed but bare and bright.
It was the girl who broke the bitter eye contact by laying her hand on Benedict's sleeve, and pressing a silver penny into his hand. 'Thank you,' she said with heartfelt gratitude.
'No, keep your money.' He tried to push it back at her, for he could see that her cloak was patched and that a silver penny must mean far more to her and her mother than it did to him.
'Fair is fair,' she said, refusing to take it back, and turned away to help her mother to her feet.
They were all seated in the boat, and its grumpy owner had begun to skull out into the current, when the girl's mother raised her head and thanked Benedict with quiet dignity. He murmured a disclaimer, feeling uncomfortable. A sense of familiarity nagged at him, but pinning it down proved elusive, and it was Mauger, his arms folded across his chest and his gaze fixed broodingly upon the women, who made the discovery, his disgruntled expression becoming one of astonishment.
'Mistress Ailith?' he asked uncertainly. His glance flickered disbelievingly to the girl. 'Julitta?'
The older woman coughed into her blood-sodden kerchief and examined Mauger as intently as he was examining her. 'It's Mauger, isn't it?' she said weakly.
Benedict's sense of familiarity came home to rest with a breathjarring thud. He saw his own emotions mirrored in the expressions of the others, but individually tinged by their different characters. The older woman's gaunt, sick features wore a mingling of relief and fear. The girl was still bewildered, uncomprehending, but she had braced herself as if to resist a blow. Mauger's discomfort made him brusque and annoyed, while Benedict knew that his own features must display a fierce curiosity. Where had they come from? Where had they been? It was a return from the dead.
'It is impossible.' Mauger shook his head and his glower deepened. 'Lord Rolf searched high and low for the both of you. He thinks you are dead!'
Ailith grimaced wearily. 'He is not far wrong. Is he in London?'
'He is at Ulverton with his wife and daughter.'
'But my parents are in the city,' Benedict added quickly. 'Felice and Aubert de Remy.'
Ailith looked at him, and he saw a glimmer of recognition kindle through the pain in her eyes. She tried to smile. 'Benedict, I should have known you at least, since I suckled you at my breast for the first year of your life. You have your mother's eyes.'
'I remember you now,' Benedict said, a note of uncertainty in his voice, for the encounter had put him off his stride. 'But I would not have done so in passing.'
'And no surprise,' Ailith said with a wan smile. A cough shook her body. 'For the sake of old kindness, I ask you to take us to your mother. We have nowhere else to go and as you can see, my time is short.'
'Mama, you'll soon be well.' The girl clutched her mother's arm. The thread of fear in her voice reminded Benedict of a time long ago when he had dragged a terrified auburn-haired child across his pony's rump.
'Oh aye,' the woman said. 'I'll soon be free of pain.' She huddled into her cloak, retching.
Julitta bit her lip and swiped the heel of her hand across her brimming eyes.
Rain spattered into their faces. The boatman dipped the brim of his hat and clucked through his teeth, making his displeasure known. When they reached the London bank of the Thames, it was immediately obvious that Ailith's failing strength was not equal to walking the short distance along the bank between the mooring and the de Remys' house.
Mauger, being the stronger of the two men, lifted Ailith in his arms and carried her to their destination. In the past, he might have been hampered by her robust build, but the affliction of her lungs had wasted her to skin and bone. She lolled against him, only semi-conscious, the flesh surrounding her eyes so dark that it looked bruised.