Tilia shrugged. "Men who are terrible in warfare are sometimes kinder in
bed. I thought his zipolo rather small, did you not? That was lucky for
you."
Rachel felt her face grow hot. "I have seen only one other--when it was
hard like that. And it _was_ bigger."
"Well," said Tilia, "small as this Tartar was, he was able to mount you
twice, and that is remarkable for a white-haired man who has been up
drinking all night." Then she laughed. "Ah, but you should have seen the
French cardinal who came here with this Tartar. He asked for three
women, and he swived each one of them mightily. Those French! I care not
for their high-horse airs, but they are a lusty lot."
Rachel felt herself smiling. Was it so easy to begin to think like a
whore and laugh at whores' jokes?
"Well," said Tilia, "we must get you washed out at once. You do not want
to be giving birth to a little Tartar in your first year as a woman, do
you?" She went to a cabinet and drew out a grayish-white bladder with a
tube coiled beside it.
"Peculiar-looking if you have never seen one before," said Tilia. "But
there is nothing to worry about. It does not hurt. We just fill the
pig's stomach with warm water and squeeze it, and the water goes through
the vellum tube and up inside you. The women of Rome used them centuries
ago when they did not want to get pregnant. I suppose that is why the
barbarians finally overran Italy."
Rachel looked at the thing Tilia laid on the bed beside her and felt
sick.
"Oh, by the way," said Tilia as she went back to the cabinet and got out
a basin and a pitcher, "I will let you keep the purse he gave you. He
looked so happy when he left here, I think you deserve it."
The Tartar could come and go as he pleased, thought Rachel, but she must
stay. Even now, with over five hundred florins, more money than she had
ever had in her life, she was alone. She knew how to travel; she had
traveled for two years with Angelo. But she also knew the terrors and
dangers of the road, dangers that ultimately had killed Angelo.
The best she could hope for was to endure this life for a year or two,
get what she could from it, let it make her rich. When she did leave,
she would have enough money to hire guards to accompany her. She would
make up an elaborate story about her past. She would go where no one
knew her, Sicily perhaps, and begin a new life as a wealthy woman,
venturing into banking or trading for herself.
The hope of a wealthy new life--that was the raft that would bear her up
when she felt she must drown in sorrow.