The Gilded Lily (26 page)

Ella was talking about the cream, how Waley the apothecary made it, but Sadie was scarcely listening. Even if she dared to try it she still could not imagine going out with her face exposed like
that, with only a layer of cream between her and people’s stares. Yet it was what she had always wanted – to go abroad and for no one to single her out. But she had misgivings somehow.
She wanted folk to accept her as she was, not to be always in disguise. Besides, she was not Ella, did not have her nerve.

An image of Dennis came to mind; she remembered his lively brown eyes as he watched her explain the darning, and his contrite expression when he thought he had offended her. What would he think
of her if she painted up her face? What would she do if it went wrong and she came out all in blisters?

‘Come on, Sadie. Give it a try. It’s perfectly safe. It’ll make you pretty.’ Ella held out her hand, the back of it pasted white.

‘I said no. Just leave me alone.’

Ella pursed her lips and pulled on her gloves. ‘Fine. Next time it’s your birthday I won’t bother. I’m going out. I’ll come back when you’re in a better
temper.’

Sadie had stayed hidden away in their room now for four days. Ella said the notices were up everywhere, so she was mortal afraid to go out in daylight. Dennis had only called
again once, and then only to say his ma was taken poorly again and he had to sit with her. And right enough she could hear Ma Gowper’s cough from the room below day and night, and guessed he
must have been kept busy ministering to her needs.

The weather was chill and the room as cold and dark as ever. The January sun was hidden by cloud and fog; in London there always seemed to be both. After doing the chores, Sadie pulled her wool
shawl over her arms and leaned her elbows on the windowsill, watching the river slide by in the haze. There were gulls, swooping down onto the mud, pulling out the remains of a rotting fish or
squalling over the barges as they passed. Sadie watched their antics with something approaching envy. It could have been worse, she thought, at least there was a view – the window could have
backed onto a wall.

She could not see the street, but she could hear it. Out there the vendors were plying their trade, the milk asses brayed as they were led door to door. The howl of the ragman and the
high-pitched yelp of the belt and laces boy made her restless. She sighed and turned back into the gloom.

At first she had busied herself scrubbing and cleaning, but the besom made a scraping noise on the bare floorboards, so she stopped. She had heard Ella call goodbye to Widow Gowper and she did
not wish to arouse her suspicions or scare her. She would be afraid, poor woman, down there all alone. No wonder she listened out so hard. She was helpless down there in that bed, just as she,
Sadie, was helpless up here.

It felt strange, not making up her snap bundle or dodging the stray dogs on the way to the wig shop. In the countryside, dogs were used for hunting or for bringing back the game. They had a use
and a purpose. Here they ran wild like wolves.

When Ella had departed for Whitgift’s that morning after much fussing with her hair, Sadie had laid out all their remaining possessions on the table. Ella had bought basic cooking pots,
second-hand blankets and other necessities from Whitgift’s. They had hardly anything left to sell.

‘Right,’ Sadie said to herself, ‘let’s see what’s what,’ and she tallied on her hands, making a rough calculation. They might last two months, that was all,
if she couldn’t go to work.

They could have been running out on the fells of Westmorland, the fresh wind in their faces, the pale green-edged frills of the first snowdrops just beginning to brighten the woodland verges.
Sadie knew well enough they could not go back. And what would they do, if it did not turn out well for Ella at Whitgift’s, and Sadie could not work? She quaked at the prospect of relying on
Ella. Yesterday she had asked her to buy taters and onions, but Ella had come home empty-handed. What was more, there had been a fratch about it.

Sadie had been grating a knob of suet into a basin of flour. She was making a pudding. When she heard the door open, she had called out to Ella straight away, ‘Let’s have them taters
and onions then. I’ll soon get supper ready.’

Ella shook her head. ‘I haven’t got any.’

Sadie paused, her hands rimed with flour. Ella looked different. Her face was powdered, so that her eyelids appeared red and raw in contrast, and she had a new pair of white lace-edged gloves
on.

Sadie could not take it in. New gloves. And no taters.

‘You beggar,’ she whispered. ‘Did you use our money to buy new gloves?’

Ella pulled off the gloves and dangled them from one hand. ‘Course not. Jay gave me them. He said it’s too chilly to be out without gloves.’

‘Let’s have a deek then.’ Sadie tugged them from Ella’s hand. She turned them over and held them to her nose. They were fine white lambswool, fragrant with cloves, a
delicate lace crochet at the cuff. Sadie flung them on the table.

‘I don’t believe you. Them are not warm gloves. Them are trumpery. Don’t you tell me someone pawned these. They’re too good. They’re not second-hand, are they?
They’re new.’

‘So what?’ said Ella, pushing her nose into the air. ‘Jay
bought
them for me.’ She picked up the gloves. ‘From a
shop
. A ladies’ outfitters. So
there.’

‘Show me the rest of our money then.’

‘I can’t. I haven’t got any. I had to pay Dennis to get the notice read.’

‘He never asked you for money?’

‘He did.’

‘The whole three shilling?’

‘He did, so.’

Sadie turned away. She was impatient with Ella’s tale, it seemed unlikely Dennis would have asked for such a large tip. It made her cross when she couldn’t get at the truth, as if it
was she getting it muddled, not Ella. But she could not go down and ask Dennis about it without alerting his mother to her presence, even if she had the courage to do so. She sighed in
frustration.

‘What are we going to do, then?’ She waved the pudding cloth at Ella. ‘How am I supposed to make a pudding with no vegetables?’

Ella had shrugged her shoulders and said they would eat plain pudding. And Sadie had retorted that if she, Sadie, was not able to go out to market to buy, then Ella must do it. Ella had looked
sulky, and sat in the corner all evening cleaning and pushing at her fingernails with a pointed stick.

So this morning as Ella was getting ready to leave the house, Sadie said, ‘Ask Jay for an advance, won’t you? We can’t live off fresh air. If he’ll buy you them gloves,
he’ll surely not grudge us a few onions. Get some vegetables in, won’t you? Please?’

Ella’s thin eyebrows lowered and her mouth took on a stubborn cast. ‘It’s difficult. It’s one thing to be given a gift. Another kettle o’ fish to ask
favours.’

‘Just try it, won’t you. It’s not a favour. You’re owed a week’s wages by rights already.’

‘Oh, give up grizzling. All you have to do is laze about here all day.’ And Ella dragged her cloak off the back of the chair and made a great noise of going downstairs. So all Sadie
could do was wait, and hope Ella would bring something home. But it was a long wait every day, and Sadie found it frustrating to have so little to do. The little pot of white cream still sat on the
table where Ella had left it. She lifted the lid and looked at where Ella’s finger had poked in and made a well in the cream. Her birthday present. She blinked back tears, tied the lid back
on tight, picked it up between her finger and thumb and dropped it into the jug with a broken handle. Then she pushed it to the back of the shelf out of sight.

Ella must have talked to Jay, for a few days later she did bring home a half-dozen pigeon eggs and some breadcakes. But as the week passed, she was erratic with her purchases,
there was no rhyme or reason to her buying. Often the ingredients would not make a meal, for Ella had no proper practical knowledge of cooking. After all, there’d been a cook at the Ibbetsons
that did all that. She’d not had to fix for her da every day like Sadie.

Da. Sadie thought back to her life in Westmorland. There she had lived in the terror of Da’s belt, but now that fear was like a phantom. She could not feel it any more, but it still
haunted her. Would he still be thinking of her? Surely he could not forget his own flesh and blood. If they were caught, would he come then? Ella said they would be sentenced to burn if they were
found, and she imagined him coming just too late. She scrubbed hard at the table again until it was bleached white, tried not to remember the woodcut images of Tyburn, where the pyre provided
another noonday’s entertainment and guaranteed immortality in one of Dennis’s chapbooks.

The next night Ella came home with a pot of lye and a tiny paper twist of saffron and dyed her hair a dull yellow. Perhaps it was a good idea to disguise herself, but the
colour looked strange to Sadie’s eyes. Ella’s hair had lost its lustre and shine.

Every day Ella went off in her fine red dress and green cloak, leaving Sadie behind in the tiny box above the river. Within a week, Ella had grown impatient with Sadie’s questions about
her day, and when Sadie asked her with a simple, ‘Well?’ she said, ‘Just the usual. Rich old magpies and their gossip.’

Sadie was agog to hear all about fashionable London and pressed Ella for tales of what went on at the Gilded Lily. She asked about Jay Whitgift and about Dennis, and loved to hear of Mrs
Horsefeather and her frowzy gowns. Ella had always loved to be the first to tell of all the goings-on in Netherbarrow, but here it was like the cat had got her tongue. Sadie knew better than to ask
too much lest they get into another fratch.

Spring was still a long way off, the weather worsened, the wind howled through the window despite its sacking covering, and oft times Sadie was reduced to pacing up and down to keep warm. She
put on all the clothes she had, one on top of the other. Her usual skirt and bodice, underneath her flannel nightgown, with one of Ella’s too-big grey gowns over that. It did not matter what
she looked like in the day, for she never went out, and there was no one to see her. She dare not wear her clogs, in case she alerted Ma Gowper, so she wrapped her feet in rags in the daytime to
keep the cold at bay.

At night, though, she tidied herself and sponged down her good brown dress in case Dennis should come by. She combed her hair until it shone. He had been up twice, to tell her tales of his
father’s ship, his voyages across the seas to the Barbary Coast, and to share a cup of warm skemmy with her. She did not tell Ella of these visits – they were private, something she
could relive in the tedious hours whilst Ella was out at work.

The first time Dennis asked her if she might like to walk with him to fetch his mother’s physic, but she had said no. She daren’t go out, she said to him, in case someone followed
her home. She would not want Ella to be caught on her account. It had felt bad to turn him down, and afterwards she went over to the cupboard to fetch the pot, with the idea of painting her face.
But in the end she left the paste in the jug. The smell of it was enough to give her gooseflesh. And without a gown to wear with it, she would look preposterous. And whereas Ella and all the fine
ladies would only need a light touch over their peachy complexions, she would need it thick as curds.

But the next day Dennis turned up again as usual with more of his chapbooks in hand, and she grinned with pleasure that her refusal had not offended him. He sat close to her as they pored over
the pictures together. She always made sure she sat with her good side next to him. He had a way of telling that made the stories come alive in the room, like he was weaving a vast tapestry before
her eyes. She enjoyed his lively expressions and the way he moved his hands like a conjuror.

They were yarns his father had told him, thrilling tales of pirates and slave ships and a giant fish that nearly swallowed the ship. She asked him whether his father had been involved with the
fighting in the days of shaking.

‘No,’ he said. ‘He went back to sea. Never could stand the fighting. Told me a story about it once, and it made me think he was right.’

‘Oh, tell me it, Dennis, I’d love another tale. Especially one from your father.’

He pressed his lips together trying not to grin. ‘Wait whilst I think on it a while,’ he said, ‘I need to get it set in the right order.’ Then he began, his eyes rolling
up under his eyebrows as if he was bringing the story from the realms above him.

‘There were once two villages,’ he said, ‘and there had been haggling over the land that lay between them for many generations. Finally the arguments got so hot that they
decided the only way to settle it was to raise armies and fight a war over the land.’

Sadie propped her elbows on the table and put her chin in her hands, settling down to watch Dennis’s face as he talked.

He glanced to check she was listening, then continued. ‘Now each village had a standard-bearer who carried the emblem of the village on a flag, and these two men were the most guarded men
in the village because they each carried the symbol of their village’s honour. When the signal was given, the battle began. But both sides were equally matched, and all around them men were
falling –’ he mimed thrashing to and fro with a sword – ‘and many fell,’ he said, ‘but these two standard-bearers were protected. Day after day, the war was
fought, first with one side having the upper hand, the next day the other. The terrible slaughter waged on until the men of both armies lay either dead or wounded, and eventually at the end of the
seventh day only the two standard-bearers remained. “We will duel,” said one, “and finish this dispute for good.”’