Figures in Silk (46 page)

She smiled, and a wave of hoots and laughs and gasps and claps broke over the room. The crowd was with her. Goffredo was standing tall. The Italians did not smile.

From out of the corner of her eye, she noticed her father’s face.

There was astonished respect on it, something she’d longed for years to see. She only wished she had time to enjoy it, now it was there. But she had to keep thinking.

After a whispered consultation with the men around him, the mayor leaned forward.

“Are you suggesting, Mistress Claver,” he said distantly, “that the actions of debt and trespass taken out against Master D’Amico today are”—he wrinkled his nose—“false?”

Isabel stood tall. Her cheeks were pink. Her voice rang out loud and proud. “I am, Your Honor,” she answered, and was aware of another sudden buzz of talk, and some frankly vicious looks from the Italian end of the table. She also noticed Goffredo, staring at her with admiration, shaking his head ruefully at her impudence, beginning to grin. He’d kiss his hand at her in a minute. She liked him so much that she nearly laughed.

Triumphantly, she went on: “I’m no lawyer, your Honor. But I believe Master D’Amico and his lawyer, Master Robert Lynom, will contact you shortly to ask for a corpus cum causa to be directed to the Sheriff of London. We want the motives of the plain-tiff s in this case investigated. And we want all charges against Master D’Amico dropped.”

Isabel and Goffredo were nearly mobbed on the way back to Catte Street. Everyone in the Mercery wanted to know more about the mystery weavers.

“Soon,” Isabel said calmly in answer to all the questions, nudging the beaming Goffredo through the crowd. “We will have more to tell you soon.”

When her own father appeared, she dropped a deep curtsey and kissed his hand, as a daughter should. She didn’t ask what had brought him back to London for the Guildhall meeting. He didn’t explain. But when he said, a little hesitantly, “So, you’ve set up a weaving venture . . . ?” and paused, hoping for a dutiful filial answer, she only nodded her head sideways at Goffredo and said, as she had to the others, “Soon; we’ll have more to tell you soon.”

But she put a hand on her father’s arm—that soft, beseeching movement Jane used so often, to convey helpless goodwill—and added, “I promise,” and then, “dear Father.” And she was surprised to see a timid look of plea sure in his eyes.

She couldn’t say more. She wasn’t sure it was wise to let the Italian merchants know quite how close the Clavers were to succeeding. The news was out now; telling had got a reprieve for Goffredo while the Lombards’ claim and his counterclaim were looked into. Registering the weaving business together would still be impossible till the mayor was satisfied Goffredo was honest; but at least she’d created a mood of sympathy for him, and raised the question of what the other Lombards were really up to. If all else failed, she could go to the king for justice. She thought she’d get it, what ever else came between her and Dickon. Yet the thought of approaching him made her quail. She didn’t want to let it into her mind yet. She thought the Clavers could win by themselves.

Still, she thought, it would be prudent to choke off any more talk for now. She moved off , linking arms with Goffredo so they could step through the crowd together.

“You’re not,” Goffredo said, with the broadest of smiles, squeezing her arm with his, “afraid of gossip? About you and me?”

She grinned. She could hardly remember feeling this on top of life. Everything seemed easy all of a sudden. “No,” she said, deciding what would come next on the spur of the moment.

“Why? Everyone thinks we’ll marry anyway, sooner or later. This is only what they’ve been expecting. It makes sense.” Not quite believing she meant it, he laughed incredulously, then, when she didn’t laugh back, tried to pull her to him. Gently, she pushed his chest. She went on: “Not now. We can talk after all this is over.”

She'd forgotten the painful longing for a while, when she’d been on her feet addressing the mayor. She’d been floating, her feet hardly touching the ground, her mind and mouth full of inspiration. But the pain came back as her breathing slowed down, as the front door creaked open and they stepped back into the familiar gloom of inside. Her unglamorous, tiring, dull pain: an ache, her patient hope, endlessly deferred.

She sat and said nothing while Goffredo—who was full of inspiration and excitement himself now, waving his arms and talking nineteen to the dozen—told and retold the story of the ambush for Alice and Anne and William. “You should have heard Isabel,” he said. “I cut a pitiful figure at first. But she was magnificent.”

“You didn’t,” she said, “you were braver than I could have been. Dignified. You didn’t flinch once. You kept your head.” But she cut short the rest of his generous praise. She didn’t look at the quiet hurt in his eyes, though she admired the manful way he banished it. She didn’t want to sit up late and eat and talk. “I’m not hungry,” she said. “I’m tired. It’s been a long day.”

She dreamed she was in the tavern room. It was empty except for the unmade bed. The sheets smelled of Dickon. Then she saw he was there, after all. Asleep: a dark shoulder; rumpled black hair. Suddenly she was honey and sunlight. She tiptoed to the bed. She was going to kiss his forehead, very tenderly. The first thing he’d see when his eyes opened would be her.

She woke up as she leaned toward him. She didn’t know where she was or what had changed. When she realized she was at Catte Street, alone, she cried. It was worse to have dreamed of happiness, but woken up, than not to have had the dream at all. No one saw or heard her cry. The house was asleep. It was dark. The full moon had set.

If Isabel woke up to the understanding that loving Dickon meant she’d never be able to bring herself to marry Goffredo, or anyone else, the others woke up with nerves. Alice called the Prattes and Goffredo to Catte Street. “We must be very careful from now on,” she said sternly. “More careful. They’ll be watching us like hawks.”

Anne Pratte breathed out through her teeth. She said:“Ooh, it still gives me goose bumps to think how close they came yesterday to shutting us down.”

She always sounded as though she were enjoying herself.

Alice ignored her. “They’ll be looking for the workshop,” Alice went on, looking into one face after another. “It’s not going to be that hard to find. That’s what we need to shut down.”

William Pratte nodded. “You’re right,” he said, sounding relieved. “We should stop till we have the registration sorted out.

We have the first cloths ready. Let’s dismantle the looms. Get the weavers out of Westminster. Lie low until all this blows over.”

Working out how to quietly vanish, then reappear, was harder than it seemed. The elaborate plan Anne Pratte proposed began with Isabel going to Westminster, as she’d done every Thursday before her illness, to spend the night in the house before her Friday session with the princess.

Alice shook her head. Isabel said falteringly: “But I’ve been ill.

It’s months since I’ve been to the palace. They won’t be expecting me.” She was suddenly scared of being swept up again in that other world, when all this was so urgent.

“You’re better now,” Anne Pratte said firmly, ignoring Alice’s mute warnings. “Who’s going to believe you’re still convalescing after what you did today? The whole City will be talking about it.

It’s time to start again. The princess is your best patron. You shouldn’t lose her.”

Reluctantly, Alice nodded. It had taken Isabel a while to 38 recognize this, but she usually let Anne Pratte decide what should happen at moments of crisis.

Anne went on setting out her plan. As soon as Isabel reached the house on Thursday evening, she was to tell the silk teams they were going on holiday. She’d leave them on Friday morning, taking apart the looms and stacking them against the walls. She’d go to the palace; return to the house; and spend Friday night at Westminster.

The others, meanwhile, would leave London one by one and make their separate ways to Westminster on Friday: Alice and Anne by boat; William by road; Goffredo, later, by a different boat. If asked, they’d say they were invited to a Friday dinner at Will Caxton’s. Once at Westminster, they would supervise the packing. Alice and Anne would load the valuable silk thread supplies onto William’s horse, ready to take back to London. Everyone would be waiting to leave when Isabel finished at the palace on Friday afternoon.

They’d have a bite to eat together at the house, then they’d split up. Will Caxton could ride William’s horse and take the silk supplies back to London before curfew. The two old ladies could go back by boat to show their faces in the Mercery the next day, as usual. Meanwhile, Goffredo and William would walk the silk weavers downriver to Chelsea, stay the night at the inn there, and be off by road for Jane’s house by dawn. Once the weavers were settled in Hertfordshire, the two men could return to London.

Goffredo would be in plenty of time for his Guildhall appeal.

Isabel would come back to London on Saturday morning. The weavers would stay away until they knew Goffredo had been cleared and the business formally recognized and registered at the Guildhall.

Any snoopers who found the Westminster house before that would see nothing more than meaningless bits of wooden frame propped against the walls and Will Caxton’s foreign print workers next door, gabbling at them in their murderous foreign tongues.

Isabel nodded. She didn’t respond to Goffredo’s smiles and nods and hand squeezes. She hadn’t shaken off the heaviness of waking up from her dream. She was hardly thinking about the evacuation. Now she was definitely going, the thought of Westminster, and the palace, was blotting everything else out again.

She was dreading having to see Princess Elizabeth. But she was also hoping, with a raw desperation that felt as miraculous as life returning, that she might manage to run into Dickon.

She could hear Alice saying, in that booming voice that always got her noticed in crowds, “The important thing is to be in-conspicuous.” The voice seemed very far away.

She couldn't be in Westminster and not see Dickon. As she passed through the gatehouse and the corridors and the changes of guard, she so wanted him to appear spontaneously before her that her desire began to seem, even to her, like a kind of magic: a spell, an incantation, pulling him back to her. He must come; he must.

But when she did see him, leaving the princess’s rooms while she was still waiting to go in, it felt as impossible as a dream.

She smiled dreamily.

“Dickon,” she whispered.

He hadn’t been looking. He was already vanishing down the stone corridor, like the wind. But he whirled round when he heard her voice.

For a moment they looked at each other without moving.

There were guards behind her, loaded down with the parts of a jeweled gown, staring stiffly ahead.

He drew her into the window. He didn’t take his tired eyes off hers. There was wonder in them; and, she thought gladly, gratitude; hunger. He was paper- white, she saw. Worry, or fear, had gouged scars across his face.

“I thought . . .” he began in a whisper. “I thought you’d gone for good.”

She could feel his hand on her arm. It made her glow with joy.

She shook her head.

She saw a hope she hadn’t dared expect come into his face.

He looked back at the guards. Their presence clearly bothered him.

“Can I see you?” he muttered. “Later?”

It was what she’d wanted for so long. Quickly, she nodded.

Then she remembered.

“Not after this,” she muttered. They’d be packing up at the silk house this afternoon. There’d be pandemonium. They’d all notice if she just vanished.

Evacuating the silk house suddenly seemed just an irritating chore, an obstacle to what she really needed to do. She sighed, thinking frantically.

But once they’d gone . . . Her face cleared. She could.

“Later,” she breathed.

He nodded, and turned on his heel.

“Are you really alright? ” the princess asked, not unkindly. “You still don’t look well.”

She’d never commented before on how Isabel looked. Why would a princess notice her servants’ complexions, after all, or the smudges under their eyes?

Isabel felt exposed by that speculative sea-green gaze. It made her feel soiled and old. She shrugged off the question, strengthen-ing herself with the knowledge that to night she’d be with Dickon.

“Yes,” she said as firmly as she could, through the pins in her mouth. “I’m better.”

The princess herself was beautiful today.

Strawberry-gold hair, pink lips, warmth in her cheeks, lightness in the movement of waist and white fingers. As if she’d been gilded with happiness, as if she’d grown up enough to know the shape her life would take and was satisfied with it.

When Isabel had come in, the princess immediately had work for her. She’d opened a box and taken out three emeralds and a stiff piece of green cloth of gold. They’d been a gift, she said. She’d been keeping them for Isabel. She wanted her to make a purse.

And, it seemed, she was in a mood to talk.

“I’ve often thought about you, this winter,” she said.

Isabel lowered her head.

The princess’s voice went gently on: “Since I realized you were right.”

She fell silent. Isabel said blurrily, through her pins and purse strings: “About what?”

“About the king, wanting to marry me if his wife dies. You were right. He does.”

Isabel looked up.

She was disconcerted to find the princess’s eyes on her. Princess Elizabeth’s head was nodding, and she was smiling, as if she knew the idea of that marriage would be of interest.

“All this”—the princess smiled down, pointing at the precious materials, with what Isabel thought might be a glint of triumph—“is a gift from him; he wants me to keep his letters with me at all times . . .”

The thought that came to Isabel now was hateful: Princess Elizabeth couldn’t know about her and Dickon, could she? This watchful intensity couldn’t mean—Dickon wouldn’t have told?