Figures in Silk (17 page)

But Jane smiled joyfully when Lord Hastings, tousled and sweaty and even handsomer than before, spurred toward them.

She fumbled in her right sleeve as he drew up and pulled out a green kerchief; his token, which she must have accepted in private on the ride to the woods, and which she now handed back. She laughed at him, so invitingly and intimately that Isabel, relieved at a moment of real human contact, couldn’t help joining in.

“I prayed for you to take the buck,” Jane dimpled, breathy and baby- voiced, “and see how God answered me.”

He touched the kerchief to his lips, grinned, and trotted off .

So Isabel was confused when Lord Dorset, tousled and sweaty and also handsomer than before, spurred his horse toward them a few moments later, and Jane, smiling very sweetly at him, fumbled in her left sleeve and pulled out a mulberry kerchief, his token, which she handed back.

“I knew you’d get the hares,” she breathed at him. “With your sharp eyes. I was praying for your success.”

And this time Isabel just watched, gape- mouthed, as Dorset put the mulberry kerchief to his lips in a gesture identical to Hastings’s, and trotted off back toward the King, straight- backed and successful.

“Jane,” she whispered, not knowing whether to be shocked.

Jane only giggled. “Well, it made them both happy,” she whispered back. Jane never really felt guilty when caught in one of her pieces of guile. Her voice sounded pleading, but her smile was so merry and infectious that Isabel began to laugh again, out of sheer relief at this naughtiness amid the dignity and blank stares.

Jane added, through Isabel’s laughter, “And they hate each other so much; they’d have been miserable if I’d turned one of them down for the other. I couldn’t have taken one token without taking the second, now, could I?”

So this was how Jane bore the lonely dullness, Isabel thought, feeling a little happier for her sister. If, that was, Jane even found this boring or lonely. Perhaps she didn’t. Jane had always known how to amuse herself with some almost innocent bit of mischief. Isabel was less surprised this time when, once they’d arranged themselves somewhere low down the table in the tent and were eating in silence, and the big, casual king loped up to them, as golden and tousled as a lion, crunching at the piece of meat speared on the knife in his hand, Jane gave him a dewy look full of promise and pulled an embroidered crimson kerchief from her bodice. “I knew you’d take the biggest buck,” she breathed invitingly. “No one else can compare to the Sun in splendor . . .”

He laughed, a long, lazy chuckle that suggested to Isabel he knew perfectly well what Jane had been up to but didn’t mind her minxiness in the least. After taking back the token, he leaned down, touched Jane affectionately on the tip of her nose with his finger, and murmured something in her ear.

Isabel politely looked away. She was expecting to be ignored.

But the king, unlike his courtiers, wasn’t a man for discourtesy.

“The second lovely Lambert daughter,” he said, startling her, lighting her up with a long gaze. It was the kind of look that made her feel not only that he knew her well and admired her, but also that she was the loveliest and wittiest person in the room, and that he was about to laugh heartily when she made her next brilliant pleasantry. She’d heard he always had this illuminating effect. Anne Pratte, her guide to what people said, was clear on this point: King Edward could be relied on to know the title, acreage, and rental income of every knight in every remote corner of the land. This might, Anne Pratte was careful to add, just be because he needed to know how much he could count on when he stung them for loans, which he often did. And the reason he was also said to know the name of every knight’s and merchant’s wife might be because he had slept with them all. But that was just gossip, Isabel thought, dazzled. He said, “I was the unexpected guest at your wedding,” as if politely reminding her of something she might have forgotten. He continued, just as easily, “I’m sorry for your loss, Mistress Claver. Your husband died with courage.”

She bowed her head. So, respectfully, did he. So, after a second, did Jane. “Thank you, Sire,” Isabel whispered.

A pipe and viol started playing a jig behind them. Following the rhythm, the king waved a hand and raised merry eyebrows.

The sad moment was over.

“If I may say so,” he went on, his eyes gleaming with the pleasure of the compliment he was clearly about to pay, “that is a very beautiful silk you’re wearing.” He leaned over to touch the green- and- gold overskirt Jane had lent Isabel. The gesture brought his face level with Isabel’s and his big body so uncomfortably close that she nearly jumped back.

Grinning rather wolfishly at her, with his eyes now only a few inches from hers, he added, in a husky growl that, in someone else, might pass for a whisper, “One of the Claver house’s elegant imports from Italy, perhaps?”

He must know where it was from, she thought, in a daze.

He must have bought it for Jane himself. It must have cost . . .

Suddenly, she almost laughed at herself. Kings didn’t have to notice details, or refrain from flirting with their mistresses’ sisters, any more than Jane had to wear only one knight’s token. Why was she being so solemn? Perhaps it was going to be easier than she’d realized to bring the conversation round to the subject she wanted to discuss.

She grinned cheekily back and shook her head. Somewhere in her head she could feel the first glimmer of an idea. She raised a storyteller’s finger.

“Ahh, no; it’s not from Italy,” she said playfully, making sure to catch the king’s eyes and hold them. “Not this cloth. But it is beautiful, isn’t it? It’s from the newest manufacture of Italian silk cloth in Europe—from Tours.”

Don’t give me away, she silently prayed to Jane; she’d felt Jane start at her lie. Then, gratefully, she sensed her sister’s shoulders rise in acquiescence. Jane was always playing this sort of joke on people, after all. She’d give Isabel the benefit of the doubt for now; she’d go along with the story.

“Tours?” the King asked. “They make silk in France now?”

“Oh, yes,” she said, with an extraordinary external calm matched only by the extraordinary turmoil inside. “In his wisdom, the king of France is doing all he can to encourage the weaving of silk cloths at Tours—”

She fixed him with her most persuasive gaze.

“You may wonder why?” she went on.

The king paused. Isabel was aware of Jane at her side, scarcely breathing.

She could imagine what Jane must be thinking. The king was good- natured, but how good- natured would even the most tolerant of kings go on being if he got bored? Then, to both girls’ combined relief and terror, he smiled and began to look at least a little intrigued. “Why?” he asked.

“Because,” Isabel continued, not missing a beat, “he understands that establishing a silk industry in France is going to give an honest and profitable occupation to ten thousand people.”

She’d forgotten Jane now. But Jane’s whole attention was still fixed, in utter astonishment, on her odd little sister. Isabel was almost singing, Jane was thinking; as if she were wooing him. She wasn’t having a little joke, bending reality to amuse herself, as Jane might do; it looked for all the world as though she was about to start selling him something. “Ten thousand people,” Isabel went on, “all ranks and sorts of people, from clergymen to noblemen to religious women to others—all the people who’d sat idle before. Ten thousand people—imagine. That’s a fifth of the population of London.”

Edward wasn’t angry; in fact, his eyes were glinting at Isabel with what Jane thought might be amusement at this thin young girl- widow’s eloquence.

“That’s why silk manufacture has been spreading out of Italy for twenty years. To Spain. To Flanders. To France. Because rulers of countries all over Christendom are coming to realize that establishing a silk industry helps everyone in a community,” Isabel intoned. Really, Jane thought, almost shocked, she was staring at him like a snake hypnotizing its prey. But Edward seemed willing to be hypnotized. At least, he sat down on the bench and gestured Isabel to sit next to him.

“How so?” he asked. Jane was left standing.

“Because,” Isabel answered coolly, sitting down beside the king without for a moment letting her voice stop caressing his ears, “there are so many crafts in silk. Children and women can raise the silkworms, and reel and wind the silk they produce. The poor and the old can sort the silk, dress it, weave it, and dye it.

Merchants can run silk shops. And any citizen can plant mulberry trees or make partnerships with merchants.”

She smiled confidently at Edward. “And, of course, getting so many people into their honest and profitable new occupation can only be good for their king,” she went on. “As Your Majesty will appreciate.”

He lifted an eyebrow and leaned closer. “Go on,” he said seriously. Even Jane, whose fearful heartbeat was now slowing to a rate at which she could breathe almost normally, recognized this as an unambiguous signal to continue.

Isabel said purposefully: “A new manufacture attracts more outsiders into the City—like the five thousand newcomers who have come to Tours. That means bigger revenues—from taxes on grain and wine and salt and food and clothing—and also from tolls on merchandise entering and leaving the City, which obviously all go up too, because all those new people need new houses and shops and looms and workshops built for them.” She was rattling her figures off with glib expertise. She was smiling more intently than ever at the hypnotized Edward. “And don’t forget that once the business is established, the king will also be able to earn much more than before in dues for exporting textiles—because there will be many more textiles to export.”

She paused for emphasis: “It’s hugely profitable, in fact,” she said, with magnificent assurance. “That’s why the wise king is willing to make the initial outlay. Of course, it’s not cheap or quick to set up. But you’ll reap many times the benefit later.”

How does she know all this? Jane wondered, lost in Isabel’s argument. Then, did she just say, “
You
will reap many times the benefit later”? What did she mean by that?

Isabel’s hands were trembling—but with her dawning sense of achievement, not with fear. The divine madness was ebbing.

She couldn’t believe what she’d been doing and saying. She finished: “The great pity is that there’s no English silk-weaving center.” She lowered her eyes modestly, setting the king free at last.

“Yet,” she added.

A man standing behind Jane began to laugh and clap. Isabel turned to see who it was.

Lord Hastings was nodding at her. His feet were planted wide apart as if to steady himself. His dark face was split in the same kind of delighted grin she could see on King Edward’s face. “Do you know, Sire, I think she’s got a point,” he said. “It might work.

It just might work.”

The king smiled at Hastings. “Lord Hastings knows about trade,” he said comfortably, welcoming his friend into the circle with a gesture. “You know that, don’t you? He’s a stapler when he’s at Calais. One of you merchants: making fortunes out of cloth. If he thinks it could work, then—” He waved his hand again.

Lord Hastings passed Jane as if she wasn’t there. “Bravo, Mistress Claver,” he said, bowing as he squashed onto the bench with them. “Who’d have thought you had a business head on your shoulders? And now—what can you tell us about this initial investment?”

She rode home at the back of a party of knights returning to London. Jane stayed behind. For a few moments, Isabel revelled quietly in her solitude; it was the first time all day she hadn’t had to guard her expression. It was also the first time she’d had to consider the leering way the Marquess of Dorset, Jane’s blond second admirer, had cornered her in the tent’s shadows while Jane was dancing with Lord Hastings, after a lot of food and drink had been consumed by everyone present. Dorset had lurched his admittedly handsome body at her and pressed beery lips down on hers, grinning. She’d pushed him away, but he’d just said, “Oh, come on, you know you want it,” and, “You’re a beautiful woman, you know,” with lust and contempt equally mixed on his face. She’d had to kick his leg quite hard, while trying not to let anyone see what she was doing, to make him pull back. He’d sworn and stepped away, but he’d gone off , shrugging, still with that drunken, leering, triumphant grin on his face. Thinking about it now, she let her face twist into open contempt for the first time. Why did Jane tolerate him?

But there were more important things to think about. It was only once she was alone on the road, upon her horse, that Isabel became yawningly, terrifyingly aware that she needed a real silk expert for the follow- up negotiations the king had suggested take place with Lord Hastings, tomorrow, at the palace at Westminster. She’d already taken this deal as far as her own cheek and intuition and what scraps of knowledge she’d gleaned at Alice’s would go. She didn’t know what to ask for next.

She couldn’t ask Alice. Alice would take all the credit for doing a deal with the king. She couldn’t ask Anne Pratte, either, because Anne’s first move would be to tell Alice. Isabel knew that without having to test it: Anne wouldn’t be able to resist. Nor could Isabel ask William Pratte, for all his standing with the Mercers and loyalty to Alice—because he would tell Anne, and Anne would tell Alice.

She plaited the reins between her fingers, thinking. For a few moments she wondered about asking Goffredo. He knew everything. And he’d enjoy the adventure more than anyone. But then she imagined the overheated atmosphere that sharing a secret with him, even for a day or two, would produce, and shook her head. She’d just stopped him pawing her at every opportunity.

She didn’t want all that starting again.

That left only Will Caxton. His business in London wasn’t with Alice, unlike Goffredo’s, so if he suddenly absented himself the next morning, Alice wouldn’t bother herself too much with where he was going. But he was so unassuming, so low- key. Her first instinct was to rely on someone whose expertise she could hide behind: someone more flamboyant, a showman. And yet, as the horse jolted her one way or another on its leisurely amble, she began hesitantly to grasp the reality that her own showman-ship had got her this far. She didn’t need someone else’s flamboyance, after all; only some detailed knowledge and negotiating experience. And gingerly, gentle Will—who’d done as much, really, to make her part of Alice Claver’s circle as Goffredo ever had; who always behaved with respect, as if she were his friend—would provide all she needed of that, and more. He wouldn’t try to steal her glory either.