The Gilded Lily (9 page)

His father ignored him, bending over a pocket watch to tie on one of his labels. He penned a few marks with the quill, blew on it so the ink would dry, then looked up.

‘Time for new ideas soon enough. You’re too full o’ them, if you ask me. Can’t sit still a minute. Always got your finger in one pie or another. No staying power,
that’s your trouble. And put that down.’

Jay dropped a watch chain he’d been winding round his fingers back onto the table.

‘Let the astrologer come,’ his father said. ‘There’s more to life than we can see on the surface, son.’

You bet there is, Jay thought; just don’t look too closely under your own two feet. He dragged his attention back to his father’s words.

‘You don’t know what it’s like to struggle. Times are uncertain. There’s the war with the Dutch, and the last king lost his head, never known anything as cock-eyed as
that in my life. Belt and braces, is what I’ve always said. That’s why I had you schooled.’

Jay frowned. His schooling had not been a happy experience.

‘Come on, Jay, please your old pa, eh? Look out for Nat Tindall, and if you see him again, tell him he’s welcome. There’ll be time enough for your newfangled schemes when
I’m gone.’

His father always had that card – the one that made Jay feel as though he was standing over him, just waiting for him to die. That really was an ace, and he knew he could not trump it. But
he had no intention of inviting that unwashed old goat Tindall anywhere near their premises, so he merely nodded. When his father had set his mind on anything and dug in his heels, it would take
more than a coach and six to shift him. Unfortunately for him, Jay thought, his son was tarred with the same brush.

One of Sad ie’s earliest memories was watching her father slump into sleep over the kitchen table. Ella said he was ‘neither use nor ornament’, and her face
had been full of disgust. Sadie knew she herself would never qualify for the word ‘ornament’. She grasped early on that she had better be of some use, that any advance she might make in
life would come through skill and not looks, so she was adept at many small crafts. Hers were the neatest stitches, the sturdiest baskets and straw hats, hers the most mouth-watering lardy
cakes.

So she had to bite her lip often, as Ella struggled to make Mr Whitgift’s wig ready for his fitting. Ella wrested it this way and that, pulled and prodded at it, tugging on the hair, as if
it were the wig’s fault it would not go right. Once she saw Ella thrust the wig away in frustration and she went over to help, but Ella hissed at her.

‘Keep out of my light.’

‘Would you like me to do a few rows to speed it on?’

‘Why? I can do it. He wanted me to do it, not you. Get out of it, you clod.’

And Sadie did not offer again, but watched Ella tussle with it. She knew that fighting with the materials never made it easy – you had to respect the tools, let them help you.

When the day of the fitting arrived, the wig was finished just in time. Madame Lefevre had put it on a stand with the other finished perukes. Sadie was glad for Ella, because she had seen the
effort she had put in. Granted, it was not as neat as her own work, but it would pass muster, and she was proud of the hours Ella had grafted, and excited to see how her handiwork would look. They
heard the doorbell jingle and Mr Whitgift’s slightly nasal voice in the lobby. Ella’s cheeks were pink even before he came in the room. He wasn’t exactly good-looking, his nose
was too sharp and his chin too small, but there was a swagger about him that made you think he was. And he was dark, like a Lombardy man.

Madame Lefevre led him through and Ella smoothed over her apron and picked up the finished peruke, holding it out with pride.

‘Ah,’ Mr Whitgift said, ‘it looks fine.’ He plucked the dark curled wig out of her hand and twirled it round on his index finger.

‘This way, sir,’ Madame Lefevre said, holding aside the curtain as Mr Whitgift stooped under the lintel. She beckoned Ella, who dutifully followed. The door of the fitting room
banged shut.

A few moments later they heard the door open and Madame Lefevre’s whining voice. Ella reappeared, red-faced, and slumped into her seat. The girls stared at her, trying to catch her eye,
until she pushed her tongue out at them.

‘How did it go?’ Sadie whispered.

But Ella continued to ignore them all, scuffing with her foot on the ground. Sadie’s heart contracted for her. Something must have gone awry. Since arriving in London, Ella seemed to have
lost all her customary perkiness. Sadie did not know exactly what had happened in Westmorland, why Thomas Ibbetson had died, but she often awoke at night to find Ella staring out of the window,
chewing her fingernails to the quick.

Madame Lefevre’s voice had lost its whining tone and now could be heard protesting loudly in the lobby. The bell jangled again as Mr Whitgift left, and a few moments later Madame Lefevre
was in the room shaking the wig at them, for all the world like a dog with a rat.

‘I have never been so humiliated.’ She hurled the wig at Ella, who made no move to catch it. It fell to the floor at her feet. ‘She reckoned it wrongly.’ Drops of spittle
flew from Madame Lefevre’s mouth. ‘He could have vouched for me all over the city. He has friends in the new theatre too. They need new perukes every month for their play-acting. The
best client I have had for years, and she could not follow a few simple measurements.’

‘If you please, madame, what’s the matter with it?’ Sadie asked.

‘She sewed it too bloody tight, that’s what.’

Ella was crimson. Madame Lefevre pointed to Corey. ‘Corey Johnson. I want it set right by Monday.’

‘Yes, madame,’ Corey said.

Sadie wilted on her stool. She knew what to expect before the words left Madame Lefevre’s mouth.

‘And I warned you, you cannot gainsay it. You are dismissed. The pair of you. And you need not think I’ll give you a wage. Look at the waste.’

Ella burst into life. ‘That’s not fair! Lay me off, but not Sadie. She’s done nothing. ’Tis no fault of hers, she’s a good worker.’

‘No, Ella. I’ll not stay. Not without you,’ Sadie said.

‘Don’t be such a bonehead,’ Ella said. ‘We need the pay. No point the both of us being out of work.’

‘Quiet!’ Madame Lefevre approached Sadie, with a vestige of a smile. ‘You may stay, but she goes.’

Sadie swallowed, and turned to Ella. What did she want her to do? ‘I’m not doing it without you, you promised me. You said we’d always stick together.’

‘Don’t be a fool,’ Ella said. ‘You’re grown up now, time to stop behaving like a biddy bairn. Keep your position, Sadie, if she’s offering.’

‘But what will you do?’

‘Something’ll turn up.’

‘But, Ella—’

‘Enough. Out, now, or she’ll be with you,’ Madame Lefevre said, grasping Ella by the arm and hustling her towards the stairs.

‘I can walk out without your bloody help.’ Ella wrested her arm away, and in doing so elbowed Madame Lefevre hard in the flat wood of her stomacher. Madame Lefevre reeled and
staggered backwards, knocking over Ella’s empty stool. The crash reverberated round the damp stone walls, round the cold bare ankles of the girls. The girls cowered down over their benches,
anxious to keep out of trouble. A slam followed by the rattle of the bell announced Ella’s departure.

Madame Lefevre was white-lipped. She primped and pinned her sparse black hair back into place and pulled the curtain tight to the wall. She stood with her back to it, as if to protect the girls
in the event that Ella should return. Sadie sank down on her stool and stared at the space in front of her.

The other girls bent to their work, though the atmosphere was thick as gruel. Sadie did not dare look over at the empty space where Ella used to sit. If she did, she might cry. She tossed her
hair forward over her face and continued to knot, even though her eyes ached and her head throbbed. It had been Ella who had always stood up for her against everyone’s taunts. Now she was
gone, who would defend her if they started calling her names? With Ella’s absence, the room seemed suddenly cheerless, as if all the warmth and colour had been sucked out of it. A knot of
fear tightened in her throat.

At home in Westmorland, she knew that if she was anywhere near trouble, the accusations would start. Folk would point and cross themselves, and whisper that Lucifer had left his mark on her.
Sadie had kept herself to herself, taking in sewing and weaving, and never went out unless Ella was with her. When Ella was there she felt braver. Nobody ever dared to tease Ella, and she would
brook no one taunting her sister either. Sadie hunched lower over the workbench.

She pulled a strand of hair until the knot tightened, and it brought to mind poor Mistress Ibbetson, the woman Ella said had been hanged through some fault of Ella’s. She had heard rumours
of these events when the milk boy came, and the man from the brewers for the empty jugs. But being closeted indoors had never heard the whole tale. And no wonder, she thought, as ’twas always
Ella as brought the news. She had said Mistress Ibbetson wasn’t a witch, but she had been hanged nonetheless. Sadie gripped tight onto the hook, pausing in mid-movement, a flutter in the pit
of her stomach. What must that feel like, to know you had done nothing amiss, and to be sent to the gallows with not a soul to gainsay it?

She had been to one hanging, when she was five years old, just after their mother died, and she had clutched on to Ella’s skirts, hiding her face the whole while, so she saw nothing. But
she could hear, and that was enough. A man screamed his sins out loud for all to hear, with not an ounce of shame. The cries of the pedlars – the words that were not words but just sounds.
Someone calling out in gulping sobs, ‘My Georgie, my boy,’ followed by her choked, ‘Lord have mercy ’pon his soul.’ She recalled the wind’s ghostly voice, and
the rain, the heckling crowd. The sudden hush as if the world had paused for breath. Then a creak like a gate swinging in the wind. She had pressed her palms over her ears but it did not drown the
sound that erupted all around her. It was the snarl of a pack of wolves baying for blood.

The wig in front of her was a blur, her eyes were filled with water. She blinked it back, swallowed. Maybe she should have gone with her sister. But then Ella had urged her to stay. She looked
over to where the stool was lying upended on the floor, and Ella’s empty place. It seemed to mean something, like an omen.

At the end of the day there was nobody to walk home with. Sadie stepped out alone, although the streets were thronged with people. There were hundreds of youngsters like
herself, all on their way home in raucous jostling groups. It was unnatural, she thought, there was not a wrinkled face in sight, and hardly any men her father’s age in London. The days of
shaking had seen to that. And what was it all for, all the bloodshed between the king’s men and parliament? So many dead, so that in London the children roamed in packs. Madame Lefevre was
the oldest person she had seen, not like in Netherbarrow, where the village was run by the elders.

When they had first arrived and were looking for work, they had to contend with crowds of urchins, all looking to make a little extra in good time for the Yuletide festivities. It had frightened
her, she clung tight to Ella, terrified they might lose each other in the crush. And everyone was thin as if they’d not enough to eat, and quite a few with a harelip or withered foot, or
other disfigurements. Sadie eyed these children with sympathy. Maybe she would not seem so unusual, there were so many odd-looking folk in London. Here people stared at Ella too, because of her
smooth rosy cheeks and chubby arms.

Ella found out they were taking folk on at the wigmaker’s, and she had elbowed her way to the front of the herd with the aid of a bodkin from her pinafore.

‘Show her your cap,’ Ella said, pushing Sadie to the front of the crowd. She had taken it off and wordlessly pointed to the rows of almost invisible sewing, the neat smocked frill at
the edge with its tiny cross-stitches.

‘Are you quick?’ Madame Lefevre had asked, eyeing Sadie’s downcast face doubtfully.

‘Like lightning,’ Ella interrupted, her fingers crossed behind her back.

So they had been taken on. But every position could be filled four times over. Sadie dodged another group of dishevelled lads who scurried past with their heads down like rats. Now Ella would
have no position, and her prospects of finding another employment must be thin. Sadie wondered if Ella had been out looking during the afternoon, and hoped for good news as she hurried back to
Bread Street. Maybe she would have kindled a fire and have something hot waiting, for on the short journey from Friday Street the drizzle had already soaked through Sadie’s clothes.

A mangy black cat, bony because of the wet, shot across her path trying to find shelter under the overhanging eaves. She knew she should spit to wipe out the bad luck, but she couldn’t be
bothered. With hunched shoulders she went to the darkest end of the alley, where there were three rickety doors set side by side. The rain was pouring off the roof in a steady stream. She had to
stand under it to knock. She gave two sharp raps on the middle door and waited for Ella to open it.