by Sonia Velton
But the sores on her skin were no more visible from the window than the patches on her gown, and Lucy swayed in the dusk each evening until she forgot the words of her songs. Then she began to stumble while she swayed as if she had been at the gin. One evening Mrs. Swann—who had been out on an errand—caught her leaning out of the window calling to the men on the street, clearly possessed of the notion that she was the queen of all England. Mrs. Swann marched up the stairs and threw open our door. She grasped Lucy’s little white-gloved wrist, pulled her away from the window and slammed the shutters. Rightly so: nothing is less likely to arouse passion in a man than a syphilitic old whore.
But when I first arrived, the sight of Lucy Carey at our bedroom window had stopped men in the street and given them a mind to go whoring even if before they had none. And when they did they would be greeted by Mrs. Swann.
“Why, sir,” she would say, as she took a gentleman’s hat and greatcoat, “come into the warm and sit by our fire. ’Tis a cruel night to be out all alone.” And if the gentleman was new to whoring and shuffled from one foot to the other, glancing awkwardly about him, Mrs. Swann would slip her arm through his, take him past the tavern and up the back stairs.
We all sat together in a room until the men came in. Mrs. Swann called us out one by one while Lucy stayed behind and tended the babies, feeding them gin to keep them quiet while their mothers worked. It was dawn by the time we were allowed to go to bed. In our room, the rising sun would frame the shutters with light and I would lie there watching Lucy as she sat at her dressing table, brushing her wispy hair as if it were still long and thick. Sometimes she would cock her head to one side and look quizzically at her own reflection, as if she questioned whom she saw there. Some nights I could not bear to watch and closed my eyes to the sight of what I might become. Then I could only smell her: bergamot, ambergris, orange flowers, and jasmine. Even now, I still think I hear her at night, singing of sailors in faraway places …
“There you are, Sara!” Madam’s voice was shrill, annoyed. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”
“Sorry, madam, I thought I saw someone I knew.”
Her face softened. “Yes, I am sure this place is full of ghosts for you. Come, let me show you something.”
I followed her to one of the fruit stalls. She seemed very pleased with herself as she giggled and said, “There! Have you ever seen such a thing?”
The outside was ridged and scaly, like a mermaid’s tail, and the top a prickly green fountain. “Why, madam,” I said, picking it up, “it looks like something the ladies at court would wear in their enormous wigs!” I put it on top of my head like a hat and the stallholder scowled at me while Madam tittered into her gloved hand. Then I looked up at the railed gallery above us and saw him. Black hair loose around his shoulders, narrowed eyes on the brink of recognition. The most striking weaver in Spitalfields was staring down at me with a pineapple on my head.
Esther
I bought nothing at the market. Although the spring flowers were beautiful, I no longer wanted to paint for painting’s sake. I needed there to be a purpose to it and that purpose was silk. I could not bear that the flowers I painted were trapped, useless, on the page.
I found myself listening for him. Within barely a half-hour after I had heard the Christ Church tenor bell, the noise would start. It became so familiar to me that on the days he didn’t come it was the silence that struck me as strange. I hadn’t known it was possible to feel the absence of someone you could not see.
Then one afternoon, after he had not come for almost a week, I heard him. I knew immediately that I would go up there. I had only to find a reason.
Christian charity. That was all the reason a good Huguenot wife needed to do anything.
“I brought you these.”
He put down the shuttle and took the muslin cloth from me, still warm from the small cakes inside.
“My maid baked them this afternoon.”
“Thank you, madam,” he said, polite if a little surprised. He set them on the bench. Ives stared at them from his straw pallet.
“Take some,” I told the boy. “They’re best when they’re fresh.”
He looked at his master, but Bisby just smiled and nodded. Ives reached out a small hand and slid the cloth into his lap.
“You’re making progress,” I said to the weaver, walking round to the side of the loom. Ives shuffled his pallet out of the way, cheeks already fat with cake. Silk now stretched from the heddles to the gathering roller, the cream background shaded with cobalt blue.
He looked unconvinced. “Some progress, yes.”
“But you work all day,” I chided. “It will take time.”
He nodded. “Sometimes I wonder why I am doing it at all.”
“My husband says you are extraordinarily talented, Mr. Lambert. That is why.”
“Mr. Thorel is too kind,” he said.
“Really, he is not!” I laughed. “You should know that about him. He would not do this unless he believed in you.”
“Do you know how many journeyman silk weavers become masters, madam?” He knew I did not, just watched me for a moment, his gaze earnest, his blue eyes searching my face.
“Almost none. Only the masters have the capital to establish themselves. Only the masters can afford the fee to the Weavers’ Company. It’s the sons of master weavers who become masters. The sons of journeyman weavers stay journeymen.”
“Then all the more reason for you to do this, Mr. Lambert. My husband wants to help you and, of course, he wants to sell this beautiful silk when you are done.” I indicated his work with my hand.
“And what about you, Mrs. Thorel?” he asked. “Have you transferred your beautiful design to point paper?”
“It is quite impossible,” I sighed.
There was merriment in the look he gave me then. “So I must not give up on my master piece, but you may do so on your pattern designing?”
I said nothing, but looked at him in a way that told him I had taken his words in good part.
“Come,” he said, gesturing for me to join him again. “You would not find it so hard if you understood the loom. Here is the mise-en-carte,” he said, gesturing toward the point paper stretched across the loom. “Each square is colored to represent the pattern created by every movement of the warp threads. These are the simples.” He ran his hand down some vertical drawstrings. When he pulled one a heddle lifted. “The simples are attached in groups to lashes in accordance with the pattern to be produced. When the drawboy pulls them in the proper order, it raises the correct heddles when I throw the weft. That is what you should have in mind when you draw your pattern. Every square that is black represents a simple to be raised. The weaver will always pass the white and take the black.”
“Thank you, Mr. Lambert. That’s all very clear now,” I said.
His smile was warm and playful. “It’s not as complicated as it sounds, Mrs. Thorel. All you have to do is enlarge the pattern and copy it onto a grid so that the weaver can see square by square—that is, thread by thread—how to proceed. Isn’t that right, Ives? Ives?”
I turned to look at the boy. He was curled catlike on his pallet, nose to knees.
“He’s asleep!” I said.
Bisby Lambert shook his head. “It’s my fault. He’s working all day and then as my drawboy here as well. No wonder he’s exhausted.”
I had some sympathy for the boy. All that talk of lashes and simples had had quite the same effect on me.
“And I’m afraid he’s eaten all your cakes,” said the weaver, picking up the discarded muslin from the floor.
“No matter,” I said, smiling. “I can always bring you more.”
11
Sara
Moll was in the wet kitchen, standing in front of the sink, sleeves rolled up to her elbows, scrubbing at the greasy pots with
brick dust. She turned to me as I walked in, framed by the arch linking the two parts of the kitchen. “Come to help?” she called.
“No. I’m looking for food,” I replied, opening the larder in the room next to hers.
“It’s two hours till supper.”
“It’s not for me. I’m to collect some finished silk from the journeymen and I thought I’d take them something.”
I heard Moll fill a bowl with water from the tank and start to rinse the pots. “Which journeymen might they be?” she said, over the clattering she was making.
I sighed, impatient. “John Barnstaple and the other one, Lambert, I think. Not that it’s any of your concern.”
“Oh, aye,” she said. Her tone made me imagine her smirking face reflected in the shiny bottom of a just-rinsed pot. “Those two, is it? They can’t bring the silk back themselves, then.”
“I overheard the master saying he needed it now, so I offered to collect it. I’m just trying to help.”
“Then why don’t you take this and tip it into the privy?” She appeared in the archway and held out the bowl of water to me, murky with brick dust and slick with grease.
I ignored the little shrew. “So there’s nothing I can take them?”
Moll rested the bowl on her hip. “What d’you think this is? A chophouse?”
* * *
I found some lamb patties in the larder and took them with me. I had indeed heard raised voices coming from the master’s workshop, and at Barnstaple’s name, I stopped outside the door, even though my arms were full of Madam’s darned stockings. Some mercer was complaining that his order of plain weave velvet was long overdue. Once he had gone, I asked Elias Thorel if I could walk over to Buttermilk Alley for him and see if the order was ready. I wanted John Barnstaple to know who I really was: Mrs. Thorel’s lady’s maid, not some girl playing with fruit at the market.
“They can keep their food,” said Barnstaple, glaring at the patties on the table.
“Barnstaple,” Lambert spoke his name like a warning, “there’s no need for that. Thank them for us,” he said, turning to me. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that Elias Thorel would sooner have wrung Barnstaple’s neck than give him food.
“The order?” I said.
“He can have it when it’s ready.” Barnstaple scowled.
“But he needs it now,” I said. “The mercer is waiting.”
“If he wants it now he can pay a proper price for it.”
“Does Thorel not pay you for the silk you weave?”
“Oh, he pays, all right,” said Barnstaple, setting aside his scruples about the food and reaching for a patty. “Just less than he did before. He’s reduced the piece rate for the silk and now he’s expecting me to put myself out weaving it quickly!”
“Why did he reduce the price?”
“Because the mercers are buying their silk from France. Because people don’t want to pay for silk anymore.” Barnstaple sounded exasperated, as if explaining to a child. “If the master can’t sell it, he won’t pay us to weave it. Why pay for Spitalfields silk when you can cut your cloth from calico?”
I didn’t have an answer, but he didn’t want one. His words seemed to inflame him. They brought color to his cheeks and urgency to his voice. I found myself staring at his mouth, watching it shape the words. He sat up straight and leaned toward me. “Do you know there are master weavers who have put down their looms entirely? Their journeymen have nothing to eat.”
I shook my head, feeling I should say something, but too fixed on his face to speak.
“But,” he said, carefully crafting the word, “they will not be allowed to get away with it.” Then he pulled his eyes away from mine and grasped a jug of ale on the table. For a moment I felt almost abandoned and searched his face, hoping he would look upon me again. He must have thought I was concerned for my own sake, because then he smirked and said, “Don’t worry, they’ll always need someone to empty their chamber pots for them.”
I smarted, glad that the half-light masked the effect of his words.
“It’s hardly the maid’s fault,” said Lambert.
His words brought me to my senses. I stopped staring at John Barnstaple as if he were some kind of prophet and tilted my chin. “I’m Sara Kemp,” I said, “Mrs. Thorel’s new lady’s maid.”
Barnstaple looked me up and down. “Tell them to send the scullery maid next time. She’s prettier than you.”
I felt like I crumpled in front of him, folding in on myself like a napkin at the dinner table, crushed and tossed away.
“Ignore him,” said Lambert. “He’s in a bad mood and he’s had too much to drink.”
Barnstaple laughed and poured more ale. “Still,” he said, as much to himself as anyone else, “we’re not likely to see Moll round here very soon. The master will barely let her out of his sight.”
“What do you mean by that?” I asked.
“You’ll see,” said Barnstaple, tipping his tankard toward me in a mock salute. He downed the ale and banged the pot onto the table. “Come back next week,” he said. “I’ll have Thorel’s silk then, God damn the man.”
* * *
Later, back in the kitchens at Spital Square, I looked at Moll afresh. Until then, I had barely noticed more than the rough skin on her heels as they grazed mine in our bed and that her too-big apron was tied twice around her tiny frame. I had thought Moll was a girl grown too tall for her body, colt-legged and clumsy about the house. But that evening I stood silent in the doorway and watched her as she sat at the kitchen table, bent over a wooden board piled high with sweet herbs. She hummed softly as she worked her knife over the marjoram and thyme, stopping occasionally to brush the chopped fragments from her long, pale fingers. A thick plait the color of butter hung over one shoulder, and her lips were like the curved inside of a shell, smooth and delicately pink.
A thought occurred to me then: this girl is too beautiful for her own good. What mistress in her right mind would want such a peach ripening under her roof? Of course, some might call Madam a beauty, but we are all in our own season, and if Madam was summer, then Moll was a new spring just bursting into color.
Esther
“But why, madam?”
“Why? That is like asking why would one eat, or sleep at night. Our souls need the same nourishment as our bodies, Sara. We take that from prayer and attending church.”
“But I never went to church when I was with Mrs. Swann.”
“That I can well imagine. Now, pull harder, please.”
Sara leaned back and tugged on the lacing of my stays. I held my breath so she could close the gap an extra inch. I had to teach her almost everything. Although she had claimed ample experience of a lady’s toilette, it was clear she barely knew how to thread a bodkin with silk ribbon and lace my stays from the bottom to the top. How she laced her own, I could not fathom and was never inclined to ask. I just showed her how to knot the ribbon properly, round the last pass through the eyelets, and tuck the loose end neatly behind the white kidskin edge.
“But it doesn’t seem right, after the life I have led.”
“Sara …” I put my hands on my waist and squeezed to help press the edges of the corset together “… that life is behind you now. It is important that you go to church and are seen to do so. We would not want people wondering why you are not there. You are part of a pious household now.”
“Is that tight enough?”
“One more pull, please.” I had to look my best for church. I fiddled with the front of the stays, adjusting them down a little, then lifting my bust over the wool-filled cushions fitted to the inside edge of the corset. “Pick me out a gown, Sara.”
She tied the silk ribbons, then walked over to my wardrobe. I sat down at my dressing table in just my corset and shift so I could powder my face before putting on my dress. In the mirror, I
saw Sara appear behind me and hold up a red damask gown with a pattern of green scrolls. I let out such a sigh that I sent up a flurry of powder from the pot. It stung my eyes and made me sneeze.
“Not that one,” I snapped, batting at the powder to clear it. “It’s church we are going to, not the theater!” I put down the powder and went to the wardrobe myself, running my hand over the many gowns that hung inside. “This one will do.” I pulled out a gray velvet with a modest edge of white lace.
Sara slipped the sleeves onto my arms, then stood in front of me to arrange the lace across the front. “It seems strange,” she said, pointedly looking at my breasts spilling out over the top of the corset, “to make such an effort for God’s benefit.” I brushed her hand away and arranged the trim myself to punish her for her impertinence.
* * *
Pastor Gabeau leaned on the pulpit at L’Église Neuve. Behind him the modest chancel provided a gloomy backdrop to his exhortations. After reading the French liturgy, he began his sermon. His theme was familiar, and the words came to me in snatches, breaking through my thoughts: “… the growing aversion of the young for the language of their fathers, from whom they seem almost ashamed to be descended …”
Elias, straight-backed and stern beside me, stared ahead as if at the pastor, but more likely his attention was on the best pews in front of him, occupied by the foremost Huguenot families. Pews he used to occupy before we married, but now finds full, no one prepared to move up for Elias Thorel and his English bride. Such a small thing, a petty slight. Even four years later, I kept asking myself whether it was me who kept him tethered to the outskirts of his community.
Behind us sat the journeymen, worshipping at the same church, equal before God, if not before the loom. Was he among them? I wondered whether Bisby Lambert could see me as he looked across the congregation toward the pastor. Did I distract him from the sermon? Did he find himself dragging his attention from the curve of my neck to the safety of Gabeau’s moral tones? Of course not: he would not worship in the Huguenot chapel.