Underbelly (55 page)

All three were proven, convicted murderers, who were doomed to die anyway, and their deaths were swift unlike that of Juliette, Coupeau and myself.

The law is not infallible, Emile, and sometimes even murder isn’t black or white
…Grey continued for a while with Emile, who remained unrepentant and didn’t achieve peace, instead taking his leave from Grey and his preaching. Another French voice answered his request for information about the Alieus, this one female.

Do you know Adelaide or Clemence Alieu?

Of course I know them. I’m their aunt.

How do you feel about them?

She laughed quietly and eventually said,
Family is family and mine was never normal. I was a year younger than their mother, Elise, who I idolised in childhood. She was born in 1025…

I very much want to know all of this, but I want to know your name first. I’d rather hear your story first and see if I can help you and then about your nieces.

I was as big as an ox. I only ever saw cocks when I stayed at Elise’s and only got to touch them when they were in a drunken slumber. I was the maiden aunt; there is no tale to tell.

Yes there is, Grey thought, unimpressed with what she revealed. He still needed her help and he hid his disapproval and said,
I don’t believe that. Whether you achieved all that you wanted to, you must still have dreams and aspirations and that interests me. I’m James Grey – what’s your name?

Jeanne Roubon. I wanted as much food as I could eat and to be like my sister. That’s all there is to say about me.

I doubt that but we can talk about you later if you’d rather talk about your family now.

Yes. Talking about me bores me, while I could talk about the Alieus for hours
, she said dreamily.
We lived in a town in the north, Rouen, and we lived in poverty. Elise’s fortunes changed when she married Jacques Alieu. He was a handsome, aggressive alcoholic drawn to Elise’s dark beauty and her dark side which was present for all to see and earned her slaps from clergy as she patrolled the streets. Criminal activity granted the newlyweds enough money to survive, and both plotted schemes and generally proved undesirable to all around them in their debauchery. Not to me though, I loved being around them. Elise sold herself at an inflated price that the wealthy were prepared to pay for this beauteous woman who often stole from her clients, often brazenly without apology. Jacques left her for a younger woman after taking much of her earnings and leaving her with seven unwelcome children. Elise was almost as large as I was by then and she looked at easier ways of earning money, her clientele mostly looking elsewhere.

The children provided an easy solution as she made them earn their keep through thievery and prostitution through their formative years. An elderly perverted ex-client of hers put in a bid for her eldest daughter which she negotiated for a higher price and sold her daughter, never to see her again.

How old was she?

Isille was 13, but an old 13. The idea was now put in her head and she held auctions for the others without ever inquiring why their prospective owners wanted them. She had enough maternal feeling to keep them until she felt they were mature enough to leave her but if offers were made her need made her adaptable. Two of her sons ended up slaves and her young daughter, Clemence, was retained merely to provide her mother with a steady income from her prostitution and thieving though the sales had netted Elise a tidy sum. She had many men after Jacques though never married again and she kept producing a baby nearly every year. These sales enabled her to live a comfortable life and her last batch with Jacques were identical twin girls, Adelaide and Matilde. All of Elise’s children with Jacques had been beautiful making them desirable to the buyers whilst some of her later children had been average but these two girls were clearly going to be exquisitely beautiful and Elise kept them cloistered away as the elder children stole and whored, these two blonde cherubs destined for greater things, her big sale in her old age and she schooled them to be what she defined as ladylike. They were even taught to read by a local scribe who taught them, under Elise’s supervision – what men can you trust? – his payment being a night with Clemence for every lesson.

Adelaide and Matilde may have been immured but they were not unaware of the outside world, the sound of the town all around them, something to be feared, and they were subjected to horror stories of abuse from their elder, crude brothers and sisters who could vanish in an instant. You might not believe this but none of them hated their mother though Adelaide and Matilde were hated by their siblings for the privileges and attention they received. Matilde proved to be very sickly but Elise always paid for a physician, which enraged the other children, bar Adelaide, who had seen others neglected and die without medical attention. As a result Matilde was the thinner of the two, Adelaide voluptuous with wide eyes and a happy disposition whereas Matilde was scrawnier and her eyes often looked red, Elise taking to slapping her if she tried to wipe them. She saw this as Matilde ruining her looks and Elise wanted them to remain identical, imagining this could appeal to some wealthy man’s desire. Alone they were stunning but together as a combined package presented to a suitable man – Elise knew how insatiable many men would be about them when they were only eleven but she waited for them to bleed. That happened late, Adelaide at 13 and her sister taking a whole year longer. At this stage there were no other children in the house, all sold on, and Matilde and Adelaide worried as they realised their turn was coming. They confided in me and I promised them they would be fine, a lie, but it was my sister I loved and who deserved my loyalty. As long as they were together they felt they could cope but they were so unfamiliar with the outside world, Elise having ensured their chastity and relative innocence, that they did fret.

The first man their mother presented them to, both clad in identical clothing, their long wavy bright blonde hair uncovered, petrified the life out of them. He would not buy them but he offered Elise a tidy sum to have them for the night. She was tempted but wanted them to remain intact for sale and declined. They were presented like cattle from that point on regularly and the stress made Matilde ill but Elise would no longer pay for a physician and took to beating her daughter in frustration, telling her she was ruining everything for them, looking so weary and fey.

For a change the girls were presented to a young man, a visiting merchant from England who eyed them up as Adelaide smiled serenely and Matilde tried to copy her in poise and demeanour but ended up fainting and was caught by the young man. Elise was furious at her weakness in front of a potential buyer who would not want to pay out an exorbitant sum for someone clearly so brittle, but he did. He was a slippery soul and he managed to get the figure reduced, which Elise allowed because she feared that Matilde could die and she decided it was best to get something for her. Adelaide pined for her, but with the chance of the double sale gone Elise put Adelaide to work at last, charging a huge amount to the titled man who took her virginity. Adelaide came to me afterwards and pleaded to stay with me, as my tiny home was guaranteed to be free from men. Obviously I took her straight back home, where Elise had a dozen men waiting, who’d glanced Adelaide in the past though always from afar and were all prepared to pay to have her now that she was attainable, that was how beautiful she was.

Some of the children returned. Fulk was sold as a slave to a farmer and after ten years the farmer was fond of him and let him go and he came back to us, not at all cross. He worked and helped out the family, now skilled at tilling the land. Rudolf escaped from his owner and was a very dangerous young man, a thief and murderer, but a loving son, who did what he had to to survive. Clemence lived and worked at a nearby brothel and she came to see us when she could and I treasured the family meals we had. Life was hard in those days, harder than it is now I gather from what I hear. We all accepted it, all of us apart from Adelaide. She had no problem at all with other people’s lives being hard, but the idea of her own life being slightly difficult outraged her. When playing the fragile, upset little girl didn’t work, she showed the fires of anger she’d inherited from her parents. She tried to refuse to do it and when Elise beat her, instead of crying she turned around and told her coldly not to hit her or she’d affect her value. I saw it happen and it was then that I knew Adelaide was trouble. The others slaved away, stole and whored themselves from a tender age, even killed, but it was one of the little princesses who had steel for a spine. She was always the dominant one of the two – she claimed later that she had been born Matilde and had convinced her sister to swap names at three, a story I’m not convinced of.

Elise knew she couldn’t hit her after that, but she made her work still. Adelaide tried to have some control, wanting to see the men and having the decision whether to refuse, something Elise wouldn’t allow. She managed to force her to work without complaint by telling her she could only read her sister’s letters from England if she did as she was told. She thought that we didn’t know what was written, and Matilde thought the same from what she wrote, that girl almost as ungrateful as her sister. We couldn’t read so we had a scribe tell us – not the same one, he’d grown quite wealthy and Rudolf robbed and killed him – and she told Adelaide that she wanted her to join her, that she was missing her dreadfully. She hated her husband’s mother and she said that she never saw Henry because he was always travelling, but she said that life was better because she was not being beaten, as though her mother had been cruel to her!

From what you’ve said she was.
Grey’s experience of talking to spirits helped as it had taught him how to remember names and details, even when many were thrown at him at once, though he did not need a good memory to know that Jeanne’s sister, Elise, seemed to be a terrible mother and base human being. He didn’t like to call anyone evil but this deeply, deeply flawed woman seemed to have no redeeming features.

Are you a father?

Not yet. We’re expecting a baby, which I would never mistreat. Selling or using your own children is indefensible.

But you sound boring, don’t you?

Grey held his breath, controlling his anger and breathing out deeply before responding.
Perhaps. Anyway, I’m the same as you; I don’t want to talk about myself.
What he meant was that he did not want to talk about himself with her (he enjoyed talking to Del and some of the others about anything, including personal topics).

It doesn’t seem the best subject
, she said snidely, laughing a little, putting him down for daring to be critical towards Elise. Her sister had always been her idol and she would not allow such a humdrum little man to denigrate her so without reproach.

Grey was very tempted to bite and say something hurtful back, Jeanne giving him plenty of ammunition, but he refrained. She had been adrift on the spirit plane for over 800 years and whatever her personality, that was a cruel punishment. Elise would not have deserved that, not Inge, not Octavius.

I’ll spare you my life story then. I’d like you to continue with Adelaide and Clemence’s story, especially Clemence’s life.
He was building up a picture of Adelaide while Clemence was less clear to him.

That’s a duller life, though not as dull as mine. Adelaide treasured those letters and Elise used them to control her, to try to stop her becoming the monster that had reared its head. It worked; she’d behave with the threat of the letters being burnt before she read them. We learnt from one of Matilde’s letters that she’d been secretly sending letters back to her, telling her what monsters we all were, and she tried to arrange for her to run away and meet her husband the next time he was in Rouen, to kidnap her away from us. Obviously we never let Adelaide read that. Instead Elise sent Rudolf to meet Henry.

She sniggered and said,
We had a fine time that night. He sold fine clothes and linens and we dressed up in them and spent his money on a horde of animals and gorged ourselves. Rudolf killed the men who were supposed to be guarding him and his booty who were very, very weak Anglo-Saxons and he beat Henry to a pulp, stripped him of the fine clothes he was wearing and threatened him with worse if he came back.
She laughed out loud, remembering Rudolf’s hilarious account of the night, delivered when they were all a little drunk.