The Hunger Read Online Free PDF Page A

court on Tuesdays and Thursdays.”
    “By invitation only, of course,” she murmured.
    “Then perhaps at other events.” He would not give her the satisfaction of seeing him disconcerted. “The Duchess of Bessborough’s ball on Saturday?” He doubted she had been invited. Countess or no, she was a woman who lived outside society’s rules. And he wanted to punish her for making him feel small.
    “Undoubtedly,” she said smoothly. “Or Lady Hertford’s rout?”
    “I live for the occasion,” he said.
    He bowed once and trotted with a fair imitation of insouciance down the stairs to where the servants waited with his hat and cane and cloak.
    Impossible man! Now here she was, all agitated by the smell of his blood and no man to satisfy her. He could not have doubted her intent. Had any man ever actually refused her?
    Beatrix ran up the stairs to her boudoir, trailing her shawl of black Norwich silk. Perhaps he doubted his ability to perform, since he thought she wanted a sexual encounter. That must be it. He was weakened by loss of blood and the attack. When it came to that, she could not have taken blood in good conscience from one faint from loss of it. What had she wanted?
    Betty helped her out of her gown. Beatrix hoped the girl could not see her state of confusion. She shushed her dresser out of her boudoir impatiently. Taking deep breaths, she willed her blood to quiet. It trembled rebelliously in her arteries. She breathed again. Slowly, the one who shared it slid down her veins. The pounding slowed. She sighed, in control again.
    But was she truly in control? She felt herself sliding down a slope she had been on for many years. At the bottom was a black pool she recognized but did not understand . . .
    AMSTERDAM , 1088
    The servants were gone, the house closed up. Beatrix haunted the muddy alleyways and the winding, narrow streets in her ragged red dress. She wanted her mother. She wanted Marte. But they were gone. Marte’s neck was broken, and her mother had . . . left her. Just left her .
    She hadn’t been good enough to love. And what would her mother say about her now?
    The nuns had apprenticed her to a seamstress and told her an orphan was lucky to get such a place. But the woman sent her out in daylight on errands, and sunlight grew more and more uncomfortable. Her skin burned and her head ached until one morning she refused to go outside. Her rebellion provoked a beating that looked to be the first of many. Beatrix had slipped out into the comforting darkness that night, never to return .
    Now she foraged in the refuse behind taverns and slept in the livery curled in the hay at the horses ’feet, with only their breath to warm her. But no matter how much she ate these days, she was hungry. Was it hunger? It was a kind of itching, unfulfilled feeling and it was growing .
    Tonight, it was worse than ever. She wanted to scream. She stole a whole meat pie from a street vendor and tore through the twisting alleys with all the speed she could muster to the marshes beyond the walls of the city. When she was alone, she stuffed great gobs of the pie into her mouth until she choked and retched .
    But it didn’t stop the aching, itching hunger. On all fours in the mud by the side of the raised stone road, she gasped for breath. How could she make the pain and the throbbing in her head go away? She couldn’t think! The smell of fecund rot surrounded her. A horse clopped on the road far away. Sensations assaulted her. She wanted Marte. She wanted . . .
    She wanted the warm cup of blood her mother brought her sometimes at bedtime .
    Of course! Blood would stop the hunger. The clop of the horse’s hooves sounded louder. She had tried to get her favorite treat before. Her mistress-seamstress did not keep any in the house. The vendors in the marketplace sold blood for sausages and puddings, but she had tried that blood and somehow it wasn’t the same. Where was she to get it? Mother . . .
    Sobs shook her as the