The Gilded Lily (40 page)

Around lunchtime Ella spotted a familiar figure walking down the ice, the distinctive hat with its three pheasant feathers marking him out. He was with a group of other young dandies, all in
tight-fitting coats with cloaks a-swagger. ‘Look lively,’ she said to Polly, ‘here comes Jay Whitgift.’

Polly immediately straightened her skirts and pulled down her hood so that her hair was showing. Not to be outdone, Ella did the same, but also undid her cloak to show more of the lace
chemise.

The men paused outside one of the tented alehouses, with a wooden crown atop, and Jay laughed at some jest before clapping one of his friends on the back. The others disappeared inside, and Jay
sauntered down the row, pausing at the goldsmith’s and the printing booth where you could have a souvenir ticket printed by the heavy iron press.

When he got to the Lily’s tent, he said, ‘Ah. I see by the slates, I was right to set you up here. You’ve done well. Who has been in?’

‘Miss Woodward and her friends, Miss Almoner, with her mother. Oh, and Lady Edgware. But mostly folks I’ve not seen afore.’

‘There was Miss Hunter,’ said Polly pushing her way forward.

‘Oh yes, Miss Hunter –’ Ella glared at Polly – ‘but she don’t count ’cos she didn’t buy anything.’

‘Have you enough stock?’

‘Yes, sir, there’s plenty,’ Polly said before Ella could reply. ‘Ain’t it grand, sir! There’s boys skating on the ice, in proper skating shoes. They must be
Dutch, ’cos we ain’t got nothing like that over here, and over by the ship there’s a man set up a stage to dance jigs—’

‘And we saw a spit outside the tent called the King’s Head and it were roasting a whole ox,’ interrupted Ella.

‘Is that right? Where is the King’s Head?’

‘Turn left at the end of this row,’ Polly said, as Ella opened her mouth to tell him.

‘Very good,’ he said, smiling at Polly. ‘I’m partial to a roast.’ He looked at Ella. ‘I should fasten up, if I were you, the cold can soon go to your chest.
Can’t have you sickening for anything before tonight. Have you no muffler?’

‘Yes, Mr Whitgift, but I did not think—’

‘Wrap up, then. My carriage will call for you at nine. Make sure you’re ready.’

‘I will be.’

‘Keep up the good work,’ he said, throwing a smile at Polly. Then he turned on his heel and headed back towards the Crown. They watched him duck under the awning and disappear from
view.

‘I’ll take one of these,’ said a red-nosed woman, swathed in a woollen shawl.

‘Eleven pence,’ Polly said.

Ella took her coins and Polly began to wrap the item.

‘What’s this about him coming for you in a carriage?’ Polly said, handing the woman the package.

‘He’s going to take me to meet his friends. One of them’s a knight of the king’s bedchamber.’

‘You never!’

‘Cross my heart. They’re all earls and lords. And one of them bides with the duke’s players. They’re after a pretty girl to go on stage. They asked after me
particular.’

‘Can’t think why. Anyway, play-acting’s only for whores.’ Polly’s face was sour.

‘’Tis not. Jay says the king and everyone goes to the theatre now. You’re behind the times.’

‘Jay says, Jay says. Bet he only wants you to open your legs.’

‘Don’t be coarse. Just ’cos he asked for me and not you. You’re jealous, that’s all.’

‘Am not.’

‘Yes, you are. ’Cos you know what it means when a man takes you out in his carriage.’

‘No! You’re never betrothed.’

‘I’m not saying anything.’

Polly huffed through her nose and turned her back on her. A few moments later, she rejoined with, ‘I don’t believe you. He’d never in a hundred Sundays wed you. Pa
Whitgift’s trying to get him set up with Miriam Edgware.’

‘I’m saying nothing. You just watch me, that’s all.’

As she walked back to the Gilded Lily from the Frost Fair, Ella kept thinking about Sadie’s words, that her mother would have thought she looked like a whore. There was
an unaccustomed pain in her chest that would not go away. Sadie had become awkward. Time was, she was as docile as a kitten. Ella did not know what she would do if she had to mind her much longer.
If Sadie would not help herself by doing as Ella suggested, then what would happen? She couldn’t stay locked up there for ever. She had provided nothing whilst Ella was out working at
Whitgift’s, all she’d been able to do was to make a measly pair of stockings. It had been weeks since Sadie had been able to work, and Ella had to pay all Sadie’s rent out of her
own wages. It wasn’t fair.

She walked as fast as she could given the icy streets. The air was swimming with tiny snowflakes that melted as they touched her face so that she had to shake her hood to keep it from getting
wet. She gritted her teeth and pushed her head forward as she walked.

She nodded to the nightwatchman, and opened up the Gilded Lily. A wave of warmth hit her – Meg must have banked the fires. She lit a candle and, seeing a large square parcel in the shop,
hurried upstairs. The second parcel was there in her chamber – the new mirror. Carefully, so as not to waste the moment, she sawed through the string with her nail-paring knife and peeled
back the oilcloth wrapping. Her mouth fell open in an expression of incredulous delight. She let the cloth fall to the ground, where it buffeted a cloud of dust that swam in the stuffy air.

Nothing had prepared her for the vision of the other world she saw before her. It was a window into another room. She saw a young woman, dressed in a wash of blue, a white lace fan dangling half
open from one arm, standing before a set of low windows, each criss-crossed with lozenges of glass panes, and each bearing a panel of brownish-green stained glass in the centre. She could see quite
clearly the slightly distorted snow on the roofs of the other buildings outside the window, and even the smoke from the chimneys moving against the night sky.

Of course she had seen looking glasses before – but they had been small pocket glasses or hand glasses. Women wore them hung from their waists, and men flashed them in their hats, or
showed off their carved glass-cases at the card table. Other looking glasses of this size were made of polished metal, and the reflection was like looking through a gauze or an insistent mizzle of
rain.

Tentatively she moved closer to the seamless surface of the glass, and the woman in the gilded frame moved closer too. A curvaceous figure, with slender arms, leaning slightly forward from her
nipped-in waist. The brass eyeholes on the front-lacing of the dress, the fine dentelle of the lace on the chemise, even the rise and fall of the bosom. Ella looked, delighted. Sadie was wrong. The
woman she saw there was a fine lady. As so could Sadie be too, if only she would see sense.

Ella brushed down her skirts and posed some more, turning this way and that, looking over her shoulder at the back lacing of her dress. She moved closer to the mirror and slowly raised her head
until, startled, she met a pair of blue eyes, fringed with thick dark lashes, looming from a marble-white face.

She recoiled.

The picture had been alluring at first, from a distance, like a painting in a book. But as she looked more closely, the image grew more disturbing. She hurried to light more candles. At first
she was curious to see the dull lifeless hair, crimped and tonged with sugar into stiff yellow side curls, the eyebrows uneven painted lines over rough stubble. Was this the woman renowned
throughout London for her beauty? As she looked into this new harsh reflection her expression turned to one of fascinated horror.

Her hand came up to touch her hair, and with shock she saw that the skin on the back of her hands was crinkled, the fingers bony. Tentatively, she peered closer. The Spanish cochineal she had
applied to her lips had bled into the white powder of her skin, and her upper lip was a mass of tiny fissures, crazed like a secondhand chamber pot. Unable to take it in, she brought her face right
up to the glass, until she could see that there were certainly cracks in the paste around her nose, and that her forehead had all the appearance of a limewashed building ravaged by the weather.

She examined the surface of her skin with growing nausea, until a mist from her nose softened the definition of the features before her and she withdrew to let the bloom on the glass clear.

She thought of the forthcoming evening. Jay had made it plain he was expecting her to make a good impression on Wycliffe. Wycliffe was used to the company of the gentlemen at court. She was
actually going to be in the same room as someone who had dined with the new king. Perhaps Jay had given her the looking glass before she was introduced on purpose. She squirmed with shame. A hot
flush of embarrassment rose around her neck, creeping upwards to her cheeks until they glowed damson. Ella observed the patch of colour flare, then fade until her complexion returned to its usual
pallor.

A means must be found somehow to perfect herself before Jay’s carriage arrived. She twisted the cord of her fan round her hand until the fingers turned white whilst she thought what to do.
There was nobody in the Lily. She hurried downstairs.

Two hours later when the door opened below, Ella did not hear it. She had moved her dressing stool before the glass, and now stood behind it dressed in scarlet silk. Her face was illuminated by
two torchères ablaze with lighted candles set either side of the frame. Before the mirror was the side table, with a scatter of open pots and phials, its surface smeared with white and
pocked with powder.

‘Miss Johnson!’ The call came from below.

Ella turned slowly, holding her own gaze, until she was standing side-on to the glass, examining her profile, a look of intense scrutiny on her face. Her face was motionless.

Only her eyes moved, liquid in the dry shell of her face.

Jay’s carriage and pair were outside the door. The horses’ flanks steamed in the night air. Ella swirled on her cloak over her red dress and braced herself against
the thickening snow. Jay nodded his approval, and Ella dipped her head. She dare not smile lest her carefully applied lip paint should bleed. She looked across at Jay from behind her fan as they
jolted through the cobbled streets. His hat was on his knee and the ridge of ice crystals on the brim melted into a puddle of water which dripped onto the floor of the carriage. He stared steadily
out of the window, as if he were travelling alone. Her eyes took in his profile, his aquiline nose, the slightly furrowed brow, and the familiar longing twisted her heart. She did not dare to
speak, for in polite society, the gentleman must always speak first.

She vaguely thought that he should have arranged a lady’s maid for her, if she was to meet with Wycliffe. She had become confused now as to where her station was in life. Before she worked
at Whitgift’s it had been very clear. Now she was unsure if she was a servant or a lady. She was expected to behave like a lady, keep a tone of reserve, even rudeness. But now it was becoming
clear she was still a servant, since he did not think her yet worthy of a chaperone or of a lady’s maid.

The carriage took them through the narrow streets towards the centre of the city, and the buildings passed in a blur of candlelit windows and intermittent snow. The streets were empty of
night-time hawkers and whores, for it was already after curfew. Just the usual assortment of ragged and yelping dogs that owned the streets after dark.

The carriage drew up at an imposing stone house and Jay descended, his boots sinking in the snow. He walked ahead, whilst the burly coachman helped her out. She picked up her skirts to lift them
clear of the ground and tiptoed as quickly as she could in the slippery conditions. A servant opened the door and ushered him up a staircase into a stuffy retiring room and Ella followed, hands
gripping tight onto her fan. She walked with her back rigid and her head up, playing the lady, ready to make an impression on these famous gallants of the king’s acquaintance.

The four gentlemen in the room were playing cards and barely glanced up from the table. Ella was disconcerted to see she was the only woman in the room.

‘Ah, Whitgift. Good,’ said one of the men, smiling at him and beckoning him over. ‘Filthy weather, isn’t it?’

‘Is that the girl?’ asked another, giving her a cursory glance. He was dressed in an oriental robe and a soft turban-like cap. Jay started to speak but before he could answer he
shook his head. ‘Well, she won’t do. A yellow-haired maid is no good. Not for the stage. The fashion is for
les brunettes
, dark girls. They look more striking from a
distance.’ He looked at Ella as if she was something distasteful. He turned impatiently back to his cards. ‘Why did not anyone tell me that she was blonde,’ he grumbled.

‘You didn’t ask,’ Jay said.

‘Don’t heed Mohun, you can join us for the next round. Here, have a drink,’ said a corpulent gent, raking a pile of coins towards him on the table. ‘Buckhurst’s
brought a cask.’

One of the other men looked up from his hand of cards to stare at them both, then winked at Jay. Buckhurst was a younger man than Jay, she guessed, with a crop of black curly hair tied back with
a large bow, and a lovelock dangling over one eye.