Forsaken Soul Read Online Free

agreement, when he suggested this arrangement.”
    Of course she had particular grounds to hate such a proposition, the cause of which her uncle was quite ignorant. But Martin knew her reasons well and found especial pleasure in the distress this whoring brought her. “I may not be chaste,” she said, as if arguing with some critic in the shadows, “but I have never given myself for gain.”
    Not that many of the men below had not hoped otherwise when she first came to serve at the inn, but her uncle soon knocked several heads together. The word quickly spread that the innkeeper’s niece might be a buxom lass, but her body was not for hire. Now she might still suffer ribald jests but only the occasional, rude touch. The former she answered with light and practiced retorts. The latter she greeted with the prick of a pin she kept secreted in her sleeve.
    Signy looked behind her at the closed door. The nausea returned, and she quickly shifted her gaze around to the room below. Straightening her back, she started down the narrow stairs. “Business is good,” she said aloud. That would please her uncle as much as it did her.
    Halfway down, she stopped and bent to look toward the inn door. Old Tibia must have left, she thought. Her heart ached for the poor soul, alone in the world and growing aged without kin to take her in. Although she and her uncle might disagree about allowing Ivetta, the harlot, to ply her trade in the room above, they did not argue about giving the old woman a meal and a cup of weak ale.
    In the past, the woman had often sat at that bench near the door and earned enough crumbs by selling remedies to ease mortal ills to keep herself alive. She enjoyed an especially brisk business in herbs that counteracted the effects of too much ale and was known to have tonics that helped men plagued by impotence. Even after the priory hospital became so popular, she kept her following of those who preferred not to share their particular sins with lay brothers, many of whom were reputed to be gossips. In the last few months, however, Tibia had plied her trade less and less.
    Signy shook her head. The old woman must be suffering so much pain now from her back and leg that death would be a joy. Youth surely had its curses, but those attendant upon the aged must be harsher to bear. Was there some merit in dying before the hair turned gray?
    She glanced back at the now invisible room above, shuddered, and hurried down the remaining stairs.
    Easing her way through the crowd of men shouting orders for food and drink, she caught sight of Ralf the crowner, still in his corner and staring at nothing, grim as ever. Through the crush of milling bodies, she watched him for a moment without danger of being seen. He had reason enough these days for that dour look after the death of his wife. A pang of sympathy did prick her heart, and she asked herself if she had finally forgiven him for using her so cruelly that brief time now past.
    She rolled the thought around in her mind as if seeking out any hidden bitterness. One part of her argued she should not condemn him. After all, wasn’t it simply a man’s nature to care little if the soft body he rode so casually offered that sweet ride out of love? Another now roundly cursed that she had been born one of Eve’s descendants, creatures with much cause to resent God’s decision to make them helpmeets to Adam. “Our Lord should have chosen some other to serve instead—like the perfidious serpent,” Signy muttered.
    As she watched Ralf pick up his pitch-sealed jack of ale, hesitate, and then drink with eyes shut, she felt a sharp pain in her heart. How many times had she watched this small habit of his and smiled?
    She clenched her fist and hurled silent abuse at his head. The very next moment, her heart cooled her fury and she concluded she was being unfair to the man.
    He was rude, prickly as a hedgehog, but a good man who had loved another for many years. Of course she had heard