Figures in Silk (50 page)

The only time her flushed, smiling face clouded was when would- be buyers offered prices for Joan Woulbarowe’s cloth. “Not for sale,” she said briefly; and, nodding regretfully, the clients moved on to examine the next cloths in the pile.

By the time the crowd thinned and Isabel drew breath and looked round long enough to realize other silk traders were already packing up their stalls, all thirty cloths were sold or pledged.

When Rose Trapp lifted the bulging bag of coins from the cash purchases, there was an almost comical look of wonder in her eyes at how much they’d fetched.

It was done. Everything was gone. Isabel’s euphoria vanished too. Suddenly she was desperately tired. Her feet hurt from standing. Her face hurt from smiling. She didn’t want to be here, with people looking at her. She needed to get away from the eyes.

“Here,” Rose Trapp said, as if she knew, pressing the bag and the pile of bills of sale into Isabel’s hands. “The girls will clear up and wrap up your cloth. I’m taking you home.”

It was the sight of the bills of sale that forced Isabel to recognize reality.

She’d made her last sale in the Mercery. She couldn’t, after all, go on operating the Claver silk business. She didn’t, after all, have choices. She’d have to sell up.

She walked home, ignoring Rose Trapp, staring at the bills of sale, feeling dazed. The documents in her hand were innocent enough—simple pledges to pay her, at her house in London, by the end of the month, for the single silk cloth being contracted for. But they were also a reminder of the paperwork she needed to make the wholesale, international end of her business work—which she’d never get into place again. She needed to go to the trade fairs of the Low Countries a couple of times a year to buy silk cloths to sell on in London. And to do that, she needed the banking services of one of the powerful London Lombard families—a wealthy Italian who would write letters of credit, like these bills of sale but for much larger sums, with which she could make purchases abroad. But she’d seen the hatred in Dr. Gigli’s eyes. She knew no London Italian would underwrite her now, or ever again.

And she couldn’t buy without money.

She could still try to fight for justice at the Guildhall—get the Italians responsible for the fire named and punished, so that others who came afterward would lend to her again. But she knew in advance how hopeless that would be.

Her mind darted desperately from faint hope to fading possibility.

She still had half a year’s supply of silks in the store house, she thought. She could go on trading with them for a while, and hope things would right themselves of their own accord and the Italians would forget their animosity. But she knew even as she clung to that thought that it wouldn’t save her. City people were cautious, but they were merciless once they smelled defeat on someone. She’d seen her father cling too long to his City existence, after he lost his aldermanship; she’d seen him battered by law-suits, a target for opportunists and raiders like herself, before he’d finally accepted defeat and retired to the country. It would be more dignified to go now with her good name intact.

Or, just possibly, she thought, she could sell up and start again later in partnership with her father—using the House of Claver’s money to finance a renewed House of Lambert fronted by John Lambert, to whom the Italians might lend.

She sighed. Tried and failed to imagine talking over new strategies with her father. He’d never agree to following up any of her ideas. They’d only fight.

She shook her head. In the morning she’d tell Robert Lynom that she’d decided to sell.

She was so tired.

14

It was well into the morning when Isabel woke up.

Rose Trapp was sitting on the stool by her window, hunched up in the threadbare brown gown she always wore. She had some sewing in her hands. She wasn’t sewing, though, just gazing out. The sky was a promising pale blue, shot with silvery wisps.

But Isabel didn’t think the old woman was looking at the clouds.

She thought she was listening. Isabel could hear loud street talk.

Rose Trapp looked round and saw Isabel’s eyes on hers. She looked guilty.

“Did you have a nice rest, dear?” she said quickly. “You look a bit better, I must say. You were as white as death last night. I was worried. Your sister’s here, and the baby. I put them in Mistress Claver’s bed last night; I hope that’s all right. She’s brought a load of linen. Everything’s fine. Everyone’s fine. Now, you just stay put. I’ll run and tell her you’re awake. And I’ll bring you a bite to eat in a bit.”

Rose Trapp stood up. Why was she gabbling, as if she had something to hide?

Anxiously, Isabel said: “What are they saying out there?” and nodded at the window.

Rose Trapp looked hunted. “Don’t you worry, dear,” she wheezed. “Everything’s fine.”

“Tell me,” Isabel said faintly.

“Oh, just some nonsense . . . There’s always something, isn’t there? To be honest, I can’t make it out myself,” Rose Trapp lied unconvincingly.

“Tell me,” Isabel said, but she was slipping back into sleep as she spoke.

When she woke up next, Jane was with her. The baby, in her basket, was at Jane’s feet. Jane was sewing. But, like Rose Trapp the other time, Jane wasn’t paying attention to her work. She’d turned her eyes to the window. She was listening.

“What are they saying?” Isabel asked. Her voice seemed loud.

Startled, Jane turned toward her sister. Her eyes softened.

“Oh . . . you’re awake . . . and you look so much better . . . Thank God.”

Then she looked out again, and her sigh of relief turned into a different kind of sigh.

“It’s terrible out there. There’s a crowd on the street the whole time. I’ve stopped going out, especially with the baby. They’re so angry. It scares me what they might do . . .”

Jane caught Isabel’s blank stare. She shook her head. “Didn’t you know?” she said tenderly. “They think the king poisoned the queen.”

Jane leaned forward and put a hand on the blanket mound made by Isabel’s knee. “Come and stay with me at Sutton,” she muttered pleadingly. “Please, Isabel. Leave Robert to handle everything here. Let’s get out of London. I’m scared.”

She was nodding her head encouragingly; hoping she could make Isabel nod hers back, like a reflection, without even realizing Jane was tricking her into happiness.

There was nothing Isabel would have liked more than to be running through a meadow, with buttercups in the grass and her hems sodden with dew. But not yet. She still had to talk to Robert: make sure he understood the need to find new apprenticeships for the four girls; make sure he knew how she wanted the fund for silkwomen to be run.

The king called a meeting at the hall of the Knights of St. John at Clerkenwell the next day at noon to address Mayor Stokker and the citizens of London.

The room was packed, and buzzing. There’d never been an occasion like this. There was only one thing King Richard could be going to talk about—his marriage plans.

Jane and Isabel and Robert Lynom squeezed between the liverymen in their furred robes of office and wives in their finest silks. There were apothecaries and armorers and bakers and barbers and basket-makers and blacksmiths and brasiers and brewers and butchers and carpenters and chandlers and cordwainers and curriers and cutlers and dentists and dyers and farriers and fishmongers and girdlers and goldsmiths and loriners and masons and mercers and needlemakers and patternmakers and plasterers and plumbers and poulters and saddlers and salters and skinners and surgeons and upholders and vintners and weavers and wheelwrights and woolmen. There were a few silkwomen too, around the edges of the room: the ones with fathers or husbands whose status guaranteed them entry to this hall; or the few, like Isabel, who were registered as
femmes soles
, responsible for their debts. They’d tell the others what happened later.

When Dickon walked in, almost alone, with an entourage of three men bobbing anxiously behind, the crowd bowed and bobbed and fell silent.

You couldn’t fault his bravery. He was pale, so pale. His lips were tight. But he was composed.

He came straight to the point. “Since the death of my beloved wife, Anne, a week ago,” he said clearly, “you, the worshipful citizens of London, have naturally been concerned by an ugly rumor.

That I had already chosen as my next wife Elizabeth, the daughter of my brother Edward. And that I was hastening the death of the Queen of England to bring this new marriage about.”

There was a rush of indrawn breath. A note of reluctant admiration in the whispering. Who’d have expected the king to talk so straight?

“I’m here to tell you—that rumor is false,” Dickon went on.

Hubbub. He didn’t mind. He knew how to talk to a crowd. He nodded and waited out the noise. Then he gestured for quiet with downturned hands.

“I am not—have never been—could never be—glad of my wife’s death,” the king said. He crossed himself.

Most of the audience crossed themselves too. The man in black velvet before them was so pale, so clearly in grief.

“And”—he paused, to be sure there was complete silence—“I have never—intended—to marry—my niece.”

Liar, Isabel thought savagely. But she was unsettled to hear more than a few satisfied grunts from around her.

“He’s got guts, that’s for sure,” a man in the crowd said behind her as the merchants began pushing for the door. “But I still say he killed her.”

Isabel kept quiet. She was hugging one last memory of Dickon to herself.

She’d felt numb at the sight of him, or she’d thought she had.

No shock, no pain; just a coldness in her heart. She told herself: he’s a stranger to me; always has been. Still, she hadn’t been able to stop herself catching his eye as he looked around the hall before leaving. She’d held his gaze until he’d turned away. But she’d seen the acknowledgment of defeat in his face. He’d lost. He’d lied, and he knew she knew. That was enough. She wanted to get away.

“Tomorrow,” she said, turning to Jane. “Let’s leave London tomorrow.”

She was packing. She was wondering at the foggy emptiness inside her. It took her a while even to notice the scuffle at the door. Then Will Caxton burst into her room. She realized he’d just torn past Rose Trapp, ignoring her agonized cry of, “Here, you can’t just burst in! On a lady! She’s not even dressed proper!”

She looked down in mild surprise—it was true, she was only in her kirtle; she’d been going to change gowns. Will was gulping in air as if he’d ridden at a gallop, or run, all the way from the Red Pale. He rushed straight to Isabel’s side and began shaking her shoulders. He was indescribably dirty. There was earth and ash caked into his nails and eyes and clothes. His last few sandy hairs were rumpled up. His caved- in face was red and sweaty. There was a wild gleam in his eye.

“Will!” she exclaimed, dropping the linen she’d been packing into her trunk. She didn’t understand. If he was too excited even to notice the impropriety of his behavior, he couldn’t have come to make his peace with her.

“I came myself . . . ,” he panted, “fetch you . . . important . . .

take you back . . . hurry now.”

She stared.

His impatience was making him stutter. “Goffredo, they’ve found Goffredo,” he finally got out. She was rushing into her gown even before he said: “A-a- a-alive.”

But Goffredo was only just alive. They’d found him that morning in the collapsed cellar of the silk house. The ruins had shifted overnight; the cellar roof had caved in, leaving an open pit. When the print workers looked down to see if there was anything they could salvage, they saw feet in the pit. A beam had fallen over Goffredo’s legs.

He was unconscious. Only his hands were burned, but his legs were smashed and he’d been down there for more than a week. They put him on a plank and carried him to the tavern.

Hamo called in a surgeon and a priest.

The surgeon had cut away his clothes and washed him and splinted his legs by the time Isabel and Will half- fell off their horse and dashed inside. The priest was muttering the last rites over a knobbly mound in white.

Hamo, standing in a corner, watching, looked somber when he saw Will and Isabel. “The surgeon’s coming back with a poultice,” he muttered. “But . . .” He shook his head.

The terrible burning hope in Will’s eyes flickered. Goffredo was his last friend from the old days. He let air slowly out of his lungs, with a piteous noise he didn’t seem aware of.

He knelt next to the priest. “Thirty years I’ve known you,”

Isabel could hear Will mutter; a prayer as fervent as any priest’s Latin. “Thirty years.” There were tears on his cheeks.

Isabel knelt next to him. They were in Dickon’s room, she noticed, without minding.

She leaned forward and looked into Goffredo’s gashed, bruised mash of a face. There was nowhere she could safely touch that bloody mask. She started muttering her own prayers, too, but she didn’t think he’d survive the night. She was saying good- bye.

“ You should go,” Hamo said quietly. “Your people are waiting. There’s nothing to hope for here.”

She nodded.

Will looked up from beside the bed. Blindly, he nodded too.

He’d thought this rescue would turn out well, but it wasn’t going to. She thought: He doesn’t want me here, watching Goffredo die.

“He’ll let you know,” Hamo said, “when . . .”

His face said: When there’s a burial to come back for.

She nodded. She couldn’t speak.

She knelt by Goffredo once more. She wouldn’t have another chance. “I used to think this room was the color of happiness,”

she whispered, wishing she could at least touch his oozing hands.

“But it was the wrong kind of happiness. I wish I’d chosen yours.”

21

The merciful fog came down over Isabel again at Sutton. London and the past seemed so far away that Isabel’s grief for her lost friends could be contained within a comforting timetable of moments of wistfulness, unfocused eyes in a church candle flame, the comfort in the chantry priest’s mumble of prayers. That would do, for now. She knew the real pain was there, waiting until she was ready.