The Silversmith's Wife _ Sophia Tobin (14 page)

14th June, 1792

I am dull, and scratch over the past in the evenings; but I must do this, for from my misspent days, my new life must be born and my purpose reinvigorated.

My wife had a brother, an idiot child who she nevertheless doted on. In the early days of our marriage the thought of him was a sore spot in my mind. Even on the Sunday before our marriage, I sat in St James’s on Piccadilly, and wondered what fate God had in store for me. I closed my eyes, and prayed for serenity: to feel as I did when I looked at the night sky. But instead all I could hear in my head was the laughter of that idiot child. That wretched boy. I suppose the anger stayed with me.

‘What news, my good man?’ Maynard said. He was standing casually, his hand tucked in his pocket, as though he was surprised to meet Digby, but the watchman wasn’t fooled. He had seen the way Maynard had pushed the tavern door open with his shoulder and looked in, his face all curiosity, bright eyes taking in all the inhabitants. His bluff, over-cordial tone was a warning, unnatural and piercing, alerting the tavern guests. A couple of men sitting nearby stared at the visitor.

Digby’s long-standing regard for Maynard had been waning over the last day or so. It waned even more now, when he noted Maynard’s flushed cheeks, and specks of the good dinner he had eaten on his face and cravat. The presence of food spattering was, in itself, an affront to Digby, who didn’t waste a crumb. ‘Sir,’ he said, and took a swig of his porter. Maynard sat down next to him; a large man on a small stool.

‘I hear our mutual friend Renard was buried yesterday,’ said Maynard. It seemed to Digby he was already retrenching his good cheer, and his customary coolness was returning. ‘All very hide-in-the-hole, wasn’t it? Taylor could hardly get the words out when I met him just now.’

‘At another coroner’s meeting, were you?’ said Digby, his interest piqued.

Maynard nodded. ‘A suicide,’ he said. ‘Collings, the jeweller. I believe he supplied to Renard occasionally. Seems the season for it. So. Go to St James’s to see the Frenchman put away, did you, Digby?’

Digby paused, his lips twitching in a silent curse. ‘Don’t know why you need me to keep a watch out, when you clearly have spies everywhere,’ he muttered. He looked at his pint rather than Maynard’s face. ‘So I went to the church,’ he said. ‘A prayer can do no harm, can it?’

Maynard gave a boisterous laugh. ‘No, indeed,’ he said. ‘And Renard would need it.’

‘Thought you might be there yourself,’ said Digby.

‘I?’ Maynard raised one eyebrow sardonically. ‘I have better things to do with my time than feign mourning for a tradesman – and a dishonest one, at that.’

‘Coffin slipped,’ said Digby. ‘It made me wonder. Disquiet, you know. The dead not resting, not avenged.’

‘How did Mrs Renard look?’ said Maynard. For all his apparent lightness a moment before, his eyes glittered with interest.

‘Sickly,’ said Digby.

Like a wineskin slit open, he thought, her soul all emptied out.

‘Does she really grieve, I wonder?’ said Maynard.

‘God give her good fortune,’ Digby said, the words finding their way out of him almost against his will. He had surprised himself, and raised his cup to the surprise more than anything else.

‘As I said, you have the sharpness to see it all,’ said Maynard, a brief, indulgent smile fading to seriousness. ‘I am a little tired of chasing around after you. If you come across anything, Digby, that pertains to this case, what say you tell me?’

‘And why should I do that, sir?’ said Digby. ‘I’m tired enough watching the streets. Or am I to be rewarded for my trouble?’ He liked the way Maynard needed something from him, how he shifted in his seat. ‘Sounds to me like a lot of work,’ he said.

Maynard stayed silent for a moment. His face was expressionless when he leaned forwards towards Digby ‘I hear you’ve been drinking the health of Tom Paine,’ he said, in a low tone. Digby did not think Maynard could even speak like that, in a voice as soft as a woman’s.

‘I have not,’ said Digby. ‘And you know it.’

‘With all the disorder people don’t like that, Digby. Our watchmen are paid to keep the peace on the street, not cause unrest.’

‘I’m no Leveller,’ said Digby. His mouth was dry. The porter in his cup looked dark. He would have taken a sip but thought it would taste as bitter as poison at this moment. If he choked on it, it would show weakness. ‘I don’t care for politicking,’ he said. ‘And every man that knows me, knows that.’ His voice was gruff, and defiant. He was glad to hear it, for it was proof that he was able to hide his fear.

‘Politicking,’ said Maynard, ‘is the least of your troubles. Been to a pawnbroker’s recently?’ Digby stared at him, felt the rapid falling away of fear, real fear, that could not be countered by show. ‘Where did you find things to pawn?’ said Maynard. ‘Could it possibly be that you pick up treasure during the hours of your work? Do I need to ask what you have been pawning?’

He sat still. Digby could see no trace of triumph on the man’s face.

‘I see my meaning has hit home,’ Maynard said. ‘Keep your eye on things for me, Digby, and I’ll look no further. You want to keep your place, don’t you?’ He seemed almost sorrowful as he drank back the contents of his glass.

Digby gave a slight shrug, and said nothing when Maynard got up and left. He knows nothing, he thought: thank God I kept the watch with me. I am hemmed in on every side, I am royally fucked, just like Renard’s poor widow.

It was dark, the full, uncompromising darkness of a winter’s evening that seemed to fill every corner of the house. Mary had sent Benjamin to visit his relatives, telling him to come back with his tears dried, and to begin his work again as the person who would one day own the shop. He had gone, but she sensed that he was unwilling to obey her, and she saw that already his youthful features were hardening with the knowledge of his power.

Mary told Avery she wished to make the tour of the house alone before locking up. It took courage to enter the dark workshop, even though she carried a candle. During her marriage the night had always been her enemy, the time of day she feared the most.

She went straight to the place that Pierre called his own: a small space of bench, its large pouch of leather below, that he would occasionally show visitors, sweeping out his arm. He would always say the same thing: ‘This is my bench. I may be a goldsmith, a seller of fine things, a master of many men; but I am also still a working silversmith, even after all these years.’ And he would pause and nod, as though communing with some part of himself where his vocation still lay, a seam of precious metal running through his heart.

Mary knew his performance was part sentiment, part business sense. To her the two did not belong together, but he had melded them seamlessly. The truth was, he hardly ever worked the metal in his last years, and the vague memory she had of him at the bench in the months after their marriage was a picture of discomfort. She remembered him swinging the hammer, his face sheened with sweat and his expression hard. He had always maintained a sentimental liking for the camaraderie of the workshop, and his sense of himself as a master of craft was something he had clung to. Yet swiftly Pierre had become a man that dealt with people: a salesman, a builder of networks. He kept his apprentice and a couple of men, but more and more the silver had been delivered to him, finished, from outworkers.

Of course, many patrons were under the impression that Pierre alone produced every piece of glowing plate that graced his shop’s walls. And before candlesticks and salvers were sent to their owners, his maker’s mark was struck over that of the workman who had made them. It was common practice, but Mary still disliked it. Her husband had seemed a world away from the men that made the objects. His arms had grown thin, and he was happiest when his hands were stained with ink rather than grazed and hardened by the tools on the workman’s bench.

Beneath the full moon long ago he had promised to make her a marriage cup of silver, but he never had. She remembered staring at that moon, feeling his hands on her arms as he held her there. In that moment, she had thought he was right: it was the silversmith’s moon, for it was as cold and hard and unyielding as unannealed silver.

She still associated him with the empty bench, and as she stood there, the candle trembling in her hands, he seemed only a breath away, the scent of him hovering in the air. There was something touching about the space: the tools of his craft all neatly put away, an ancient mark here and there where a piece of silver had been worked. It would be easy, she thought, to love the space he had left behind; something unreal to fill the emptiness. The memory of his face was slipping from her mind, leaving a disembodied impression beyond specifics. The unhappy memories of the hideous closeness of marriage faded too: the smell of his skin, and the taste of him.

Over the last few days Mary had thought over the past, turning it and looking at it from every angle as a jeweller inspects an unset stone; and she had become convinced that Eli had been brought back to London too soon after her marriage. It had been her own fault; her confidence had grown too quickly when Pierre had promised her that all would be well.

‘I never wish to be parted from you,’ he had said, with the air of one bestowing an honour. She had been grateful for it, and taken her chance.

‘Will you let Eli return?’ she said. ‘It pains my parents to be parted from each other, and Eli’s health suffers. If he returns, he need not travel about freely as he was wont to do. But he only flourishes amongst the people he loves.’

Pierre was in lyrical mood. ‘When you look at me in that way, with your eyes alight, how could I do anything else?’ he said.

Mary had written the next day, and her mother and Eli had returned ten days later.

It had been in her father’s parlour that she had seen Eli again. His face had lit up at the sight of her, rising to his feet, his arms reaching up to her as he tried to say her name. Mary had been lost in her joy, but when she turned to see her husband’s face she had been frightened by his tight expression, the flex of his jaw as he stared into the middle distance.

‘Come now,’ she said, settling Eli on to the floor by the fireside. ‘Hush, my love.’ In his excitement Eli continued to babble as she stroked his face. When Pierre moved suddenly, the child at last turned his eyes to him: steady, unblinking blue eyes that did not look directly into Pierre’s own face, but seemed only to gather him as a shape, some dark mass that Eli did not wish to see. The little boy looked away.

Pierre was holding a coin. ‘Here, little fool, if you wish to jest with me,’ he said. The smile on his face was strained. ‘I will give you this, if you will be quiet.’

Eli looked at him. Then, without even blinking, he snatched the bright coin and threw it into the fire.

‘I should have told you,’ said Mary, rising to stand between them, her fingers twined with Eli’s. ‘He is very quick. He does not mean to anger you; he only sees something bright and moves for it.’

Pierre said nothing. His face was white with anger. When her parents entered the room, he stared silently into the fire. He had made his anger known later.

‘I have done everything for your sake, for the best, and God’s glory,’ he had said to her, one day. By then, all her family but Mallory were gone. She thought she saw compunction in his eyes. In the vow they had made to each other, before God, she had sought sanctity. It had been the foundation of her marriage, the reason for putting away the bad memories, and for telling herself that love could be built on such broken foundations. Now knowing the contents of the will, she knew with certainty that the vow that had lain between them had never been sacred in his eyes; and she felt his betrayal more bitterly, realizing that she had borne with him out of duty, in the belief of love.

I did not know, she thought, that it is possible to love and hate at the same time. But you cannot truly feel both at once; one feeling must lie dormant, sleeping, while the other burns itself out.

When did you last come to the City?
Agnes’s soft voice in the churchyard, so full of kindness. In response, a memory came, a memory that, like Mary’s heart, had long been suspended, in frozen winter.

One day long ago, she thought. She had gone to the City, to her parents’ house. The front door had opened with one push.

In the hallway, her mother stood, holding shut the parlour door. Even in the grey January light, as dull as evening, Mary could see the tears on her face. Beyond the door, she could hear the sound of her brother’s feet as he circled the floor again and again, and the peaks and troughs of his voice as he chattered to himself, small inconsequential noises expressing curiosity and agitation.

‘Mother?’ said Mary.

‘He cannot see me weep,’ said her mother in a whisper, one hand holding the door as she wiped away her tears with the other. ‘He is breathless already. It will distress him.’

‘Why are you crying?’ said Mary.

‘You should not be here,’ said her mother, turning her gaze to the floor. ‘The carriage is coming directly.’

It was then Mary knew.

‘Pierre,’ she said. Her mother said nothing.

‘Why?’ said Mary.

‘There is no other way,’ said her mother. ‘Pierre will not have him here. We have promised him. I will not tell you what he said, I will not speak ill to you of your husband. We will go to my sister. Please, Mary, do not speak. It is absolute. You know your brother’s health is not strong. He will not make this journey again.’

From within, Eli’s footsteps ran faster. His breathing was faster too, rasping a little, a sound they had long been sensitive to.

‘Let me in,’ said Mary. Her mother released the door.

At her entrance, Eli turned, his mouth forming a little O of wonderment at the sight of his sister. He smiled broadly and ran to her, then, when she crouched down beside him, planted a kiss on her lips.

‘There, my little man,’ said Mary, holding him in a tight embrace. ‘What are you chasing?’