Figures in Silk Read online

  It had taken Isabel what seemed an eternity to find the strength to raise her eyes. When she did, she’d been astonished by the picture the young man opposite her presented. Thomas wasn’t slurp-ing at the cup of wine his mother had left by his side before tactfully drawing away. He was slumped on his bench, with his pink face in shadow under hair that wouldn’t lie down. He was staring at his feet, pulling at the purse dangling down his leg with busy fingers, and biting his lip.

  He looks scared to death, Isabel had thought suddenly, sitting up straighter with the realization. More scared than me. He’d probably never succeeded in touching any of the tavern girls she’d seen him leering over in the Tumbling Bear and the Lion, she realized with a flash of intuition. This indulged only child of a rich widow, who’d never been sent to start an apprenticeship in another household, who’d been allowed to avoid learning his mother’s trade in her own house, was looking like a large child on the brink of tears. He’d almost certainly never been alone with a female of his own age. And now it was all catching up with him.

  She’d been surprised to find herself feeling something close to pity.

  She’d leaned forward, wanting so much to comfort him that she very nearly patted his hand. But the only subject she could think of to break the ice was business. Her father had said Alice Claver was planning to buy her son into the livery and give him one thousand pounds’ worth of goods so he could bypass apprenticeship altogether—the ten years of study most boys did—and start trading on his own account as soon as he was married.

  They’d still have to live with his mother while he was setting himself up; but Alice Claver’s home contained so many leagues of rooms and halls that it would be no hardship. Perhaps Thomas Claver would be reassured by being reminded of his prospects, so glorious compared to the ten pounds here and five pounds there that so many young bachelors cadged from wherever they could to scrape together the stock they needed to start trading for themselves. It might make him feel in control of his destiny. “You must be pleased about getting into the livery,” she’d ventured hesitantly, trying to form an alliance, doing her best at an encouraging smile.

  But he’d only scuff ed his feet against each other and scowled.

  “Oh, that. It’s just my ma pulling strings,” he’d said sullenly. “It doesn’t mean anything. Doesn’t mean I’ll actually get to do what I want. She’ll have her fingers all over my business from day one, just you wait and see. ‘Thomas, do this; Thomas, do that; Thomas, don’t do that.’ ” He peered up at last, but only to fix her with a look of gloomy malice before turning back down to his scuffing and scowling. “And it won’t be long before she starts in on you either.”

  Isabel only knew Alice Claver by reputation. In the markets, the silkwoman was respected and mostly liked as a force of nature; a solid woman in her middle years with a wide face and a wider smile, when she chose, though she wasn’t scared of scowling or talking sharply either. Alice Claver whisked through the covered markets where she kept half a dozen retail stalls and booths and chests, selling whole silk cloths from Italy and silk threads from all over the world and the piecework ribbons and small goods that were made by her workers in London, jollying her own people relentlessly along, sweet- talking the mercers, and selling to clients with such down- to- earth persuasiveness that they hardly knew where they were before they were parting with their money. She hadn’t married again after her husband died, years ago. But she’d kept his business going. And she’d made enough money from carry ing on Richard Claver’s trade in luxury goods to go on leasing the palatial great place they’d lived in together from the mercers for what every silkwoman in the Crown Seld knew to be the princely annual rent of £8 13s 4d. She’d registered to trade in her own name, as a femme sole, taking responsibility for her own debts. She didn’t have John Lambert’s disdain for training girls—she trained younger silkwomen as if they were proper male apprentices, teaching them everything about how trade was conducted. The only thing the trained silkwomen couldn’t do was to join the Mercers’ Company; that was for the men; but they could set themselves up and, if things went well for them, keep themselves in style without depending on a husband.

  Things had gone well for Alice Claver. She sold fine silk goods to the King’s Wardrobe. She visited textile markets in the Low Countries and bought the finest cloths in quantities that were the envy of many merchants. She’d even organized the other wives of the silk business, and some of the most influential of their mercer husbands, to join her and the unmarried silkwomen in petition-ing Parliament to protect their trade from foreign competition.

  And she was the center of charity around her home. She might not have much physical grace, but she had more energy than most women half her age—enough energy, Isabel thought with another surprised stab of compassion, to overwhelm a son with no great appetite for work.

  So Isabel persevered with her smile. “Oh, well,” she said brightly, reminding herself that a soft answer turns away wrath,“we’ll see her off , don’t worry.” She sounded more confident than she felt. Alice Claver would be hard to see off . “You’ll soon learn how to run things for yourself. And I can help. At least,” she corrected herself, smiling a bit ruefully at the thought, “I can a bit.

  My father’s always refused to let the women in his family learn the business. He says it’s because he has his position to think of, and there’s no need now he’s so rich, though we know it’s really because my mother never knew enough about silkwork to teach us herself or hold her own in the selds, and after she died it would have meant losing face to change his ways and let us start learning. Anyway, he doesn’t like training girls too much. So all he’s ever let me do is embroidery. But I’m good at that.”

  She kept her eyes on his face. She felt, rather than saw, him begin to look less lugubrious when she started to laugh gently at her own family.

  So she persisted, willing him to laugh with her: “He says, ‘Lovely ladies with long fingers should embroider church vestments,’ “and she imitated her father’s rolling, mellifluous voice well enough that the corners of his mouth lifted up. “It’s the only thing he thinks ladylike enough for us.”

  Suddenly he looked up and stared into her eyes, so straight and so hard and so long that she thought she’d said something to off end.

  She stared back, astonished. What could it have been? But then she realized he wasn’t off ended, just overcoming shyness. Slowly, his face softened. She could see sweetness in his relieved grin. “You’re not half as grand as I thought you’d be,” he’d said. Isabel thought they’d both briefly sensed the possibility of forming an alliance: the young and powerless against the families who controlled them.

  Whether Thomas Claver still felt well-disposed toward her now, at the church door, Isabel couldn’t say. Her eyes were fixed on the nails on the door while the priest mumbled.

  Her father had to nudge her when the time came to exchange rings. She pulled hers off her finger and held it out, still staring at the doornails through the drumbeats in her ears. Her fingers were damp and she could feel prickles on her back. But she didn’t hesitate.

  Thomas was less lucky. She could feel him tug. Nothing happened. He tugged again. This time the ring came off , glittered in the corner of her eye, and flew down toward the cobbles. It bounced twice. It turned like a tiny hoop. She heard, rather than saw, it come to rest at her feet.

  Everyone went quiet. Her father drew in his breath. His mother hissed, “Thomas!” Isabel glanced sideways at him from under her veil. He’d gone bright red. His mortified face was wet, his eyes appalled at his own clumsiness. Alice Claver was poking him in the ribs, pointing down, miming instructions for him to lean forward and pick the ring up. But he was rooted to the spot. Everyone else was frozen too.

  Isabel’s heart swelled with something that made her forget her fear. She bent down, picked up the off ending ring herself, and put it on her own finger; then she reached for Thomas Claver’s unresponsive hand, drew it to her,
and slipped her ring onto his finger.

  The group still seemed to have stopped breathing. Taking a deep breath, she raised her eyes slowly along Thomas Claver’s arm until she was looking into his face, and watched his eyes move from an awed consideration of the hand she’d dressed with her ring, up her arm to her face. Behind his obvious terror, whether it was at having broken the forward movement of the ceremony in a way that would be chewed over in the selds as a possible bad omen, or just at having embarrassed his mother with his clumsiness, she could see the dawn of a quiet, desperate hope in those white- ringed eyes, a hope that she might somehow save him.

  Hardly knowing what she was doing, she lifted her face to his, preempting the moment in the ceremony when bride and groom were invited to kiss. And when he only stared back at her, as if he had no idea what to do next, she boldly stretched out the hand that now wore his ring to touch the back of his head, stood on tiptoe, and kissed him firmly on the lips.

  There was a screech of approving laughter from one of the beldames by the water conduit. Then, even from within that awkward embrace, with her eyes shut and her body held apart from the big, hot frame of her husband, Isabel could feel the Lamberts and Clavers and Shores all relax; breath expelled; bodies moving; little murmurs and eddies of happy sound. When she opened her eyes and stepped back, Thomas Claver went on looking at her in a kind of amazement. He was still pink about the face, and still damp. But he was smiling.

  Isabel danced at the feast. She danced with Thomas, suddenly shy again and avoiding his eyes, aware of the dampness of his hands, holding herself nervously back from his large body. She danced more freely with every mercer who was her father’s or her new mother- in- law’s friend, until the blood came back to her cheeks with the sheer plea sure of movement. She whirled her skirts and flashed her ankles; sufficient unto the day, she thought,with sudden hectic gaiety, draining her cup of wine. Suddenly it felt like an easing of her burden in life to be free of her father. She was nervous about what would come after the dancing, of course; but there’d be time to worry about to night when to night came.

  When the third course was brought in, giant pyramids of blancmanges wobbling in the heat, she let her partner, a bright- eyed old friend of Alice Claver’s called William Pratte, lead her back to his place on the trestles and courteously pass sweet dainties her way.

  Thomas brought William Pratte’s wife, Anne, back to the table, then left the room. He half- glanced at Isabel. She caught the nervous look, but was too shy to smile back. It was only after he’d turned uncertainly toward the door that her lips started to curve up. She sat breathlessly quiet among his mother’s friends, feeling grown- up. She couldn’t be unaware of Alice Claver and the plump, knowing, eager Prattes gossiping beside her. They talked in low voices, darting cautious glances all around; but they clearly weren’t trying to hide what they were saying from her.

  “Well, of course they fight dirty,” William Pratte was saying, with a mischievous gleam in his eye. “The nobility have never been half as noble as they like to make out. They say King Edward didn’t so much win the last battle as chase the other lot into the millpond and drown them.”

  Alice Claver snorted irreverently. “Like kittens,” she said. “Well, all I can say is good riddance.”

  “Still. It’s not exactly Camelot, is it?”

  John Lambert was leading Jane down the row of raised arms in the center of the room. He was radiating happiness at having pulled off his plan, skittishly kicking up his heels and smiling at everyone whose eyes he met. Yet he must be able to see the room was only half full, and mostly with the Clavers’ and Shores’ family connections, not the great and good of the City he’d wanted to attract. Isabel thought, If they’d really forgiven him, the mayor would be here. The aldermen. Her relief at having got the ordeal of the wedding over was so great that the thought almost made her feel sorry for him.

  “Do you think it’s true what they say?” Anne Pratte was half-whispering, her eyes batting flirtatiously up and down. These people seemed to be much more disrespectful and sharp- tongued than her father, Isabel thought, with a flicker of interest. She’d only ever heard the York royal family discussed in tones of hushed reverence at home. Did they always talk like this? “About the youngest brother; the Duke of Gloucester; how he killed . . .”

  She dropped her voice. Isabel sensed she’d hear the same stories again. But for now a movement at the other end of the room was distracting her, a flurry at the door. Thomas? She glanced up.

  A crowd was forming over there. She could hear the sounds of hooves and metal outside. There were new people sliding into the room, round the edge of the group; and she could see one of them was Alderman John Brown. At the center of the crowd was a tawny uncovered head, taller than the rest, with bobbing and bowing going on all around it.

  William Pratte was still whispering conspiratorially, getting back to the meaty talk, lifting one hand off his plump knees—including Isabel, to her slight alarm, in his bright- eyed gaze. It was almost as if these middle- aged people, with their knowing ways and cheerfully treasonous talk, hadn’t realized how young and inexperienced Isabel was; if she hadn’t known such a thing to be impossible, she might have thought they were deliberately trying to include her, trying to be friends.

  The crowd by the door shifted and cleared, like clouds blown by the wind. For a second, Isabel could see over the three gray heads bent in front of her, and what she seemed to be seeing was her father, down on his knees, grinning like a lunatic at the floor and being patted on the back by a tall man in clothes that seemed to shimmer gold in the heavy afternoon light.

  “Look,” she said. Her voice was hoarse with surprise.

  William Pratte followed her finger. “Good God,” he said. “Alice, look.”

  Alice Claver’s head turned, and stayed stuck in a stare directed at the doorway. But Anne Pratte was still caught up in the whispering.

  “But Alice, that’s exactly what they are saying,” she was muttering happily. And then she looked up, too, saw Alice Claver rising slowly to her feet, still staring, and began to gape like an astonished fish. “It’s the king!” Anne Pratte said foolishly—foolishly, because others were dropping to their knees too now, crowding in: the mayor, suddenly and miraculously present; Will Shore’s parents; the Prattes; Alice Claver (how had she got there so fast?).

  Now John Lambert was scrambling to his feet to get out of the crush of kneelers, dancing backward in something close to panic to create a place of honor for the monarch who was gracing his table with this extraordinary visit, and startled apprentices and serving girls, getting the message, were rushing to and fro, clearing away the dishes from the tabletop, whisking in fresh dishes, strewing the boards with rose petals. And every bare head was bowed, but every pair of eyes was raised, fixed on King Edward, drinking him in.

  “Well,” said the king, casually moving through the room toward Isabel’s father and patting him on the back again, and every mouth opened in adoring appreciation of his words, “how could I let my best friend in the City of London marry his daughters without coming to wish them well?”

  John Lambert was pink with gratification, his smile almost cracking his face in half. He didn’t look handsome and distinguished, for once; his bowed posture and that smile reduced him to servility. He looked as though he was thanking God for having given him the opportunity, over the years, to lend King Edward£1,052 10s, the sum he so often liked to remind his daughters was as much as the Duke of Gloucester himself could hope for in rents in a year and more than most knights could hope to lay their hands on in a lifetime; he looked as though he was thinking that the reward of the king’s presence here, now, was enough to repay those debts even if he never saw a penny of the money again (which he might easily not). Still, no one could look handsome next to this king, what ever they were thinking, Isabel realized. Edward’s golden presence would always diminish everyone else.

  The king and his friend—a dark, laughing nobleman almo
st Edward’s height, who would have been the most striking person in the room if he’d come alone, and whom Anne Pratte identified for Isabel, in a piercing whisper, as Thomas, Lord Hastings, the king’s dearest friend—looked as though they were here to stay.

  The king ate a slice of beef. He drank a cup of claret. He smiled at Jane till she blushed. He congratulated Will Shore on his bride.

  He asked the groom’s permission to dance with her. He led Jane, floating like thistledown, through an entire basse dance. Why her, not me? Isabel thought, without really understanding the thought; she knew really that she’d have been terrified to touch the king’s person. But everyone turned to Jane first. “There, you see,” Anne Pratte burbled to Isabel, her face glowing, her disrespectful gossip of a few moments before entirely forgotten, blotted out by the majesty of majesty, “your father’s in the good graces of the king, all right . . . what an honor . . . can you imagine? I’ve never heard of anything like this before . . . you’d never have got King Henry mixing with merchants, that sad sack . . . I’ve always said loyalty deserves to be rewarded.”

  Now John Lambert was rushing to Isabel to present her to the king. She was embarrassed by the look of triumph on her father’s face, but she let him take her hand. However fast her heart was beating, she kept her eyes turned down as he pulled her along the side of the table and began muttering “Sire” and “May it please your grace,” and bowing and scraping. She made her deepest curtsey and rose, with her eyes still down. She didn’t want to be drawn into the excitement. But it was infectious. “Aha, another Lambert beauty,” the king said. And his voice was so deep and rich and full of unexpected beauty that it surprised her into looking up; for a second it had reminded her of the voice of the stranger she’d met in the church. For a second, as she met this stranger’s eyes, she was disappointed to see a bigger face, fleshier and handsomer. But something kept her gazing into these eyes, full of lazy laughter; aware of his sensual mouth, twitching up at one corner as if starting to laugh at some secret joke he was about to share with her. Perhaps it was the long gold of the afternoon, but in the warmth of that gaze she felt time was suspended. The crowded scene faded. All she was aware of was the man’s eyes holding hers until she felt her own cheeks tingle with plea sure and her mouth widen into a smile. Until, to her surprise, she found she was laughing—a laugh of pure, animal joy.