Masques of Gold (34 page)

Justin never remembered what he and Lissa said to each other that morning beyond the fact that a peace was patched up between them. They agreed to resume the life they had led before he had tried to make their relationship open to the world, but it was not the same. The perfect comfort they had felt in each other's company was gone. Shame tinged the pleasure of Justin's love-making too often when he remembered that temptation to avoid marriage and wondered whether he was using a fine woman as a whore. And grief threaded all of Lissa's days, no matter how firmly she tried to forget that sooner or later she must lose Justin entirely. She tried desperately to recapture joy, but often she wept instead of laughing as she used to when her culmination came. Neither blamed the other; each took all the fault alone, but that bred quarrels about stupid little things—because they were afraid to talk about the important ones.

Gamel took on cargo, largely provided by Justin's cousins, and sailed on 12 June, and Lissa received offers of marriage from Thomas (who was joking) and Richard (who was not), solely for the sake of her ties with the Hanse. Lissa thought it was funny, although she did not show that to Richard. She teased Thomas with high-flown nonsense and rejected Richard with gravity, pointing out that although Gamel had taken wool at this time of year because he intended to cross the narrow sea, he seldom did so later in the season when he set off on longer voyages thus having Gamel and Gerbod as uncles-by-marriage could not be much advantage to a wool merchant like Richard. Justin did not think his cousin's suit was humorous and had a blazing fight with Lissa because she had not refused it with truth, that she was already sworn to him.

After that quarrel, Justin stayed away from the house on Soper Lane for a week. Lissa wept a little, but she was so exhausted from fearing the next word either of them would say wrong that she was not altogether sorry to miss him. They met quite by accident in the Chepe. Lissa had gone to the Cutlery to buy a new chopper and literally bumped into Justin, who was walking home. The accident occurred because she was looking toward his house instead of at Soper Lane, and he was looking back toward Soper Lane instead of toward home. Both laughed so much over this mutual silliness when each confessed, and such a shock of longing passed between them, that Lissa waited up for the first time in a week, and Justin came when it was hardly dark.

She did not scold him for coming too early, and they went along better for a few weeks after the separation, just long enough to present a relatively contented image when Gerbod arrived. He had the full story from Gamel, whom he had met in Hamburg, and he went out of his way to meet Justin and spend time with him. Gerbod said nothing of marriage, but was driven to ask whether Lissa had any news yet of her accursed father. His burst of rage, expressed against William but actually in response to his inability to help his niece, was accepted calmly at the time, for Justin and Lissa were in heartfelt agreement with him; nonetheless, it was unfortunate because it broke the tenuous peace they had achieved, and only a week after Gerbod sailed they quarreled bitterly and parted again.

Not all the tension that contributed to their quarrels came from Lissa's conviction that her father would bring them trouble. The entire merchant community in London was tense and braced for trouble. The tale of the treachery of the Poitevin barons was widely known. Justin had been one of the first to hear the story as William de Mandeville, with a kind of grim satisfaction, passed on the news he had had in FitzWalter's letter the day it arrived. Not long after, a kind of confirmation came in a letter from the king addressed broadly to all his earls, barons, and knights in England. This, under the guise of confidence, was an appeal for men, but very few responded. In general, the merchants who came from the countryside reported that anxiety and dissatisfaction with the king's foreign war were widespread, although the discontent was muted by better news from the earl of Salisbury in Flanders.

Lissa heard more than she wanted about these matters, although she did not see Justin. Her second parting with Justin had been less painful because she had been less happy while they were together, and by avoiding the Chepe, she made sure that they would not again fall into each other's arms. She was much busier than usual too, because she was doing all the purchasing from the many vessels that arrived in the good weather.

She had an entirely different kind of trouble during the bartering with merchants who came from outside London. Dealing with major purchases and sales herself naturally generated questions, particularly as to why she was using Hamo Finke as the goldsmith to whom payment should be made. Not wishing to malign her father's goldsmith, Lissa mentioned that she had been married and widowed and said that she had placed her accounts with Master Hamo simply to avoid confusion.

What Lissa did not expect was that this news would bring offers of marriage from her fellow merchants, including those from within London who had been waiting for Lissa to signal her willingness to remarry but who did not want to be behind with their proposals. Lissa's constant activity dulled her sense of loss, and the first few men who presented themselves with proposals were a support for her wounded spirit. But soon Lissa was crying herself to sleep every night because of a proposal of absolute and ultimate suitability. A fellow pepperer, Edward Chigwell, offered his eldest son, Edward, a young man who, only two years before, had courted Lissa on his own and on whose account, because she liked him very well indeed, she had fought bitterly with her father. To further sweeten the offer, Master Chigwell suggested that Lissa should have the choice of which business, his own or her father's, she and her husband would handle directly. The other shop would not be given to the second son but only be managed by him or by some other member of Chigwell's large family, again according to Lissa's choice.

Such an offer was not one Lissa could refuse and forget or laugh about in privacy. She forced herself to say that although it was true her choice was her own now, her father must still be considered. William could create so much unpleasantness when he returned that she would not come to any agreement until her prospective husband and his family had talked to him and decided whether they still wanted the marriage. Lissa hoped that being reminded that her father was alive and might reappear any day would discourage this particular suitor, who knew William Bowles well. On the contrary, her “fairness and honesty” caused both father and son to become even more enamored of her, and the younger Edward began to present himself to escort her to any function of the guild that she attended.

Under the circumstances, Lissa could not avoid considering the young man as a husband. He was certainly kind, thoughtful, and attentive, if somewhat more reserved and patriarchal than she remembered. He had a tendency to reprove her—most gently, it was true, but reprove her nonetheless—when she whispered jests about the long, pompous speeches made by some masters at the formal guild dinners. Worse yet, he did not understand her when she teased him. She would ache with longing for Justin when Edward answered one of her fanciful flights either with literal instruction, as if she were feebleminded, or with shocked incredulity followed by indignation at her levity. In two words, Edward was incredibly dull, and Lissa could not understand how she had overlooked that shortcoming when he first courted her—except that she had not then known Justin.

On the other hand, it was plain from Edward's manner and the way he looked at her that he was more experienced with women than he had been two years earlier. That idea set Lissa's mind along a different path, and involuntarily she considered him as a man. He was handsome—much better looking than Justin, if one was to tell the truth. His eyes were a clearer blue, his nose, though straight, did not look so much like a knife blade, and his mouth did not make a hard and bitter line above a cruelly determined chin. And if Edward's body did not have the strength and grace of Justin's…well, he was still well made. Then Lissa thought of that body in her bed and nearly vomited.

That was when she began to cry bitterly over what she had lost, but she checked her tears and reprimanded herself harshly. She could not embroil Justin with her father just to satisfy her lechery. If she had endured Peter without worse than mild distaste, she told herself, she would soon grow accustomed to a younger and more virile partner. But scolding herself was little help, and she found the company of her eager swain harder and harder to endure.

Matters came to a head between Lissa and Edward on the first day of August with the arrival of the news of the defeat of the king's allies at Bouvines. Lissa heard of it at the Steelyard, where she had gone to examine some fine cloth her uncle's factor had set aside for her. As a courtesy—and to discipline herself because the thought of seeing Edward was so distasteful—she stopped at the Chigwell shop to pass along the news if they had not yet heard. Master Chigwell was not in, so she told Edward of the disaster. She then began to speculate on the probable results of France's victory, whereupon her suitor told her, somewhat loftily, that it was not a subject on which a woman was qualified to comment.

Lissa responded with some heat that it was a subject any merchant had better consider very seriously indeed, but Edward did not take warning. He answered with a superior smile, patting her shoulder as he said he was sure they would suffer no harm from King John's foolishness, and if trouble should come, he would do the worrying for both of them. At that point, Lissa lost her temper in earnest and told him that unless he did his thinking with his rod, which she was beginning to believe must be the case, she had as good equipment for worrying as he did and that if he did not agree it was plain he was not the husband for her. She left the house before he could reply, chuckling all the way home over the expression on his face and feeling, she thought, as a bird must when its cage is opened and it is set free.

She had rejoiced too soon, however; Master Chigwell appeared at her shop barely two hours later to apologize for his son. Mistress Lissa must pardon a young man's pride, the elder Edward pleaded. It was not that his son failed to appreciate her business acumen but that he wished to appear strong and protective to her. This was so likely that there was little she could say, but she persisted in her opinion that she and young Edward were not suited, giving as examples the many times her light humor had offended rather than amused him. That was only a foolish young man's pretense of dignity and wisdom, Master Chigwell said, and his lips smiled but his eyes did not. A
very
foolish young man, he repeated. Lissa was smitten with pity for poor Edward, who was no longer what she wanted but who certainly did not deserve what his father would inflict on him if she could not be appeased. She temporized, promising to reconsider, but she could feel the net of the bird catcher swooping down on her and felt suffocated and frantic.

What made everything more dreadful was that Edward, after being threatened by his father, began to touch her suggestively and try to kiss her. Lissa had never found the idea of coupling with Edward pleasant, and now when he attempted to display a sexual desire she was sure he no longer felt, she was sickened. More than once she bade him leave and then felt guilty for causing trouble between father and son. The result was that when William Bowles came and pounded on the door soon after dark in the third week of August, Lissa very nearly ran down to greet him with joy. One thing she understood was how to manage her father, and all she had to do was convince him she still craved Edward. After that she could trust him to change Master Chigwell's desire for the match into loathing and thus rid her of Edward too.

Showing William that she needed him was no way to get his help, however; so when he flung open the door of the solar, Lissa restrained her welcome to an indifferent “So you are back, are you?”

“Tell Oliva to get me something to eat,” he snarled.

Lissa laughed. “Food is easy enough to get, but you will sleep on Paul's pallet on the floor tonight until I can have your mattress restuffed. Did FitzWalter's business occupy you so fully that you had not time to send a message to say you were alive?”

He turned from an angry contemplation of the bare boards and leather straps of his bed to stare at her. “Are you saying you cared whether I was alive?”

“Oh, no,” Lissa replied, not very truthfully because she did care; she would have been glad to hear he was dead by any cause except her uncles' hands.

“Well then, mind your own business or I will kick you out and sleep in your bed.”

That threat was mere bad temper and did not trouble Lissa at all. “I have been minding my business,” she retorted. “You left me in a fine state when you ran off with every farthing. I had to use my dower to buy stock.”

“I grieve for that.” William grinned. “Oh, how I grieve.”

“You need not,” Lissa replied with the sweetest of smiles. “I lent the shop the money and took a handsome fee for it out of the profits. You did me a good turn by giving me to Peter de Flael, you see. I learned something from dealing with Peter's accounts.”

“You practiced usury on your own father!” William shouted. “You bleeding bitch! I will teach you a lesson. Oh, I will teach you a lesson!”

“I can be beyond your lessoning any time I wish,
dear
father.” Lissa continued to smile good-humoredly. “That is another good your forcing me into marriage with Peter has brought me. I hold my own marriage portion—I have even added substantially to it—and I am free to choose whom I will. I have had offers from a dozen men. Consider that while I get you something to fill your belly, and mend your manner to me if you wish to keep me here to manage your shop.”

Leaving William speechless with rage, Lissa ran down into the workroom. She had considered telling her father to get his own food in order to make him even more furious, but she realized that she had to prime Paul and Oliva on what to say about Edward. If she mentioned Edward herself, her father just might be clever enough to work out that she did not want him. If he did, he would certainly agree to the marriage to spite her. If, however, William got the information about Chigwell's offer from Paul or Oliva, he would probably remember that she had once wanted to marry Edward and do all he could to make Chigwell withdraw the offer.