Chapter 36: Apprenticed

"Hey," a small woman called to me as I rode through town. "Hey, you big, dirty farmer," she yelled and waved. She stood on the porch of a general store with a package in her hands, and she was the brightest thing in sight with a purple dress and a fringed, red shawl. Her dark hair was arranged in long ringlets and her face was bright with rouge or excitement, perhaps a bit of both. I reined up, got down and walked across the street trying to figure out who she was.

"You don' remember me, do you, you big ox?" the slight woman said, sounding a bit worse for liquor so early in the day. She smelled of lavender and rum.

I shook my head and admired her well knit body and frank look.

"How 'bout if I say you owned me for a few minutes?" She smiled up at me, a good smile in a bright face.

"Emma?" I said, "Good lord!"

"Right the first time," she said, grabbing my arm, "come along."

I followed her down a boardwalk and up some worn, outside stairs to a dark room above a large tavern.

"Sit," she said, pointing to the only chair. "I'll get us something."

She put down her bundle, opened a cupboard and produced a bottle and two dirty glass. She wiped the glasses out with her shawl, splashed whisky into them and handed me one. She gulped hers and I sipped mine. It was awful, raw stuff not even fit to call white lightening but probably sold as rye.

She sat on her unmade, swaybacked bed and looked at me, the empty glass between her knees. She dumped the shawl behind her and fluffed out her dark hair. Her bulging breasts stretched the tight dress's low-cut bodice. It obviously had been a good dress at one time.

"How you been?" she asked, arching an eyebrow.

"Busy," I said, looking at her. She was more than dirty, her hair was oily and her fingernails black. She looked years older and worried, with lines across her forehead and beside her mouth. Her body sagged and her hands trembled despite her efforts to sit up straight.

"Why you looking at me like that?"

"You're still awful pretty," I said. "What have you been doing since I last saw you, how long ago was it, November maybe?"

She shook her head. "I'm a whore," she said quietly. "First man I took up with after you left, when your company went out scoutin', he put me to work, swiving his friends and superior officers. He kept the money, a sergeant he was. Beat me black and blue. Then when he deserted and most a'the army disappeared off in the woods, I came here with a huckster. Did him right in his wagon. Tain't easy; he's a fat one."

"I don't believe it?" I said.

"It's all I know, since I was thirteen, all I can do." She sniffed. "I'm good at it. You never had me did you? You wouldn't know."

I shook my head and took the glass from her trembling hands. "Why?"

"I'm a trollop by nature, a jade, a, well whatever you want to call it. I do it for money, mostly officers, but I don' really care. Want'a try?"

"Some man involved?" I asked suspecting there might be more to the story.

She nodded. "Tolliver, big feller, owns this place. I did him for a crown a month or so ago, to a fare-thee-well, round and about they call it. He liked it and we made a deal, an arrangement. I do him once a week, and he don' charge me any rent, gets me some customers too. He takes a shilling a man."

I shook my head and looked into her sad, rheumy eyes.

"I never felt the same after those men raped me," she said. "Honest, I didn't. It means nothing, the horsin' don't, just a way to eat. I don't hardly feel it."