Blackberry and Wild Rose

by Sonia Velton

  Esther

  I went straight from the attic to my room and lay down on the bed. The cat opened a sleepy eye and watched me as I buried my face in the pillow. I had no need to feign illness: I was as wretched as I could ever have pretended to be. I would not see him again. For months, each day, I had longed for those snatched hours in the garret and now they had been taken from me. I was left with my life as it had been before: Elias and Moll, endless sewing and a troublesome lady’s maid.

  I rolled onto my side and stared at the door. That was when I saw it. A full cup of tea I had not asked for on the bedside table.

  * * *

  “Madam.”

  A singsong voice. I opened my eyes.

  “Mrs. Arnaud is here to see you,” announced Sara. “Are you well enough to receive her?” She looked pointedly at the tea, untouched and stone-cold beside me. I nodded and sat up, smoothing my clothes and tidying my jabot.

  When I got downstairs, Mrs. Arnaud was unfolding a tiny shift. It was made of white silk, turned slightly brown with age, and edged with pale lace. “It was one of mine when I was a baby,” she explained, after we had greeted each other. “I thought it might do for the maid’s child. Just something to send with her to the lying-in hospital. I presume she does not have much.”

  I was surprised by my deepening affection for this sincere and kind woman.

  “Shall we tell her together?” she asked.

  I nodded, and Mrs. Arnaud placed the shift over the arm of the sofa where it hung like a little ghost baby, reminding us of what we would have to do. We talked idly of other matters until the door opened and Sara came in. When she placed the tray of sweetmeats she was carrying on the table and saw the little garment, her expression became hawkish. I was grateful that Mrs. Arnaud was sitting, so composed, beside me.

  “Miss Kemp,” she began, “do please sit down.” She gestured to the sofa opposite us, but Sara shook her head.

  “We have some good news.” Mrs. Arnaud’s voice was kind but unapologetic. “The Foundling Hospital has agreed to take your baby after your lying-in. You will be able to return to work after a few weeks and know that your child will have the best possible future.”

  “How can it be best for a baby to be taken from its mother?” Sara’s chin jutted out, mutinous yet wobbly, like a child’s.

  I rose from the sofa and went toward her. “It is for the best,” I said, placing my hands gently on her upper arms. “It is hard now, but one day you will understand that.”

  She shrugged me from her. “I’ll not do it,” she said.

  I was trying to be patient because I was well aware of the tragedy that awaited her, but she seemed to have no idea what Mrs. Arnaud and I had done for her and how fortunate she was. “Sara, believe us when we tell you that there is no other option.”

  “Believe you? Why should I? All you want is for someone to keep dressing your hair and darning your stockings!”

  I pursed my lips. How could she do this in front of Mrs. Arnaud of all people?

  “That is not true.” I tried to be like Mrs. Arnaud and speak firmly. “We want only the best for you both.”

  Sara’s gaze became steely. “No, you don’t. You’re just jealous!”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “There’s not a child between the two of you, is there?” She was glancing from me to Mrs. Arnaud and back again, with a wild, spiteful look. “You want me to give up my baby because neither of you can bear the thought that I should have a child when you cannot!”

  Mrs. Arnaud shook her head sadly. “Mrs. Thorel, this is really more than I can be expected to endure. I will have to leave you to deal with her.” She gathered her things, rose from the sofa and walked out, letting the door close behind her with a dignified little click.

  When I knew she had quite gone, I looked at Sara and slapped her so hard across the face that the sound rang through the room as if someone had dropped the fire irons onto the stone hearth.

  28

  Sara

  I stood in front of Elias Thorel with Madam’s slap still branded across my face. He seemed surprised to see me and looked beyond me toward the door, to see who else of more importance might be behind me. When his eyes finally settled on me, I pulled my shawl more tightly round me. The bitter weather had allowed me to spend the past few months shuffling around, stooped and covered, without raising eyebrows at my condition.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you, sir,” I said, curtsying as best as I could.

  “Well,” he said, “what do you want?”

  I had found him in his withdrawing room, not the workshop. It was getting late and he was tired, settling into his high-backed chair and lacing his fingers together. His wig was on its stand and without his customary silk jacket, he looked as ordinary as I had ever seen him, like any other man at his desk in shirt sleeves and waistcoat. His commonplace appearance made me feel bold: he was not a master, he was just a man.

  “It’s Madam, sir.”

  “What about Mrs. Thorel?” There was an edge to his voice, impatience gnawing at the words already. But I knew he would want to hear what I had to say, and it was hardly my fault for telling him.

  “I have noticed things, sir. She seems to be hiding papers in the drawer of her dressing table. I say hiding, because as soon as I come into her room, she locks them away.”

  Elias Thorel looked unconvinced. “She is your mistress. She can lock away what she chooses.” He pulled his hands apart then and leaned forward.

  He was telling me he wanted to get on, shifting closer to the books lying open on his desk and the quill with its ink turning dry at the nib. I did not have long. “Then there is the journeyman, sir.”

  A flicked-up gaze and narrowed eyes. I had caught him.

  “Which journeyman?”

  “Bisby Lambert. I have seen them together. Not that I am prying, sir, not at all. I was merely looking for her because she had said she was feeling unwell. I had thought to bring her some tea to make her feel better, but she was not in her room. So I went looking for her.”

  He frowned and circled his hand in the air as if to speed me on. “Well, where did you find her?”

  I should have remembered that he is the most efficient of men and been more economical with my words. “In the garret.”

  “The garret?”

  I might just as well have said the Wig and Feathers. There was no reason a respectable married lady would be found in either.

  “What was she doing in there?”

  I had his interest now. He was leaning forward, his forearms resting on the desk, smudging his careful columns of figures. “I’m sure I don’t know. I can only tell you what I saw. They were talking, sir, but not normal talking, like she might talk to me. They were talking as if they were …” I chose the word carefully, “… intimates.”

  He looked grim. “And what of these papers? Are they letters?”

  I would have loved to be able to tell him they were. A neat pile of scribbled sweet nothings, perhaps, tied together with a blue ribbon and smelling faintly of perfume. “I don’t know, sir.”

  “Where did you say she keeps these papers?”

  “In her dressing table drawer, and she is certainly at great pains to keep them hidden.”

  Elias Thorel held up his hand, silencing me with the gesture. He did not want to hear more. No matter, I had said enough.

  Esther

  Elias blazed a trail to my room. I ran after him, tripping over my skirts as I stumbled up the stairs, begging him to slow down and talk to me. I had no idea what Sara had said to him. I only saw him slam out of the withdrawing room, leaving her standing by his desk, eyes wide as if she had just held a flame to tinder.

  When he got to my room, he went straight to my dressing table. He pulled on the tiny handle of the drawer, but it held fast. Then he took one of
my metal combs and forced it into the gap between the drawer and the frame and pulled it upward until the wood splintered and the lock gave way.

  He reached inside and pulled out a fistful of my drawings.

  “What are these?” he said, brandishing them in my face.

  “Just drawings.” I clutched at the papers, but he held them just out of my reach.

  “Drawings of what?” He began to look through them, still holding them high above me. I felt faint. My breath came in short gasps and the room began to spin. I sensed my world shifting with every drawing he looked at. Then he stopped and stood completely still. In that instant of pause I knew what he was listening for and I willed it not to come, prayed that he would not still be here. But there it was, his diligence and industry resonating through our house.

  Elias flung the designs onto my bed and walked out.

  I grabbed handfuls of my skirts and tried to keep up with him as he climbed the stairs to the garret. He lifted the trapdoor and pushed it open so that it fell back onto the attic floor with a bang. The pulse of the loom halted. Elias climbed into the garret and I followed, stepping into the flood of light that had become so familiar to me.

  Even in winter the huge windows made the garret seem almost ethereal, otherworldly and separate from our humdrum lives below. But nothing about this place was to stay separate. When Elias flung open the trapdoor he connected this existence to my real life, tainting both.

  Bisby got up from the weaving bench to face his master. He could see me behind Elias so he was watchful, on edge. But Elias rounded on him with a smile and an air of forced geniality.

  “How is our master piece coming along, Lambert?” he asked. Though his voice was amiable, it still made Ives put down his lashes and hug his knees to his chest. “Well?” Elias insisted. “Have you finished?”

  “No, sir.”

  “No? Why not?”

  Elias approached his loom and inspected the gathering roller with a practiced eye. “There cannot be more than a few yards here. Not much, considering how long you’ve been working on it.”

  Bisby looked at me, a glanced betrayal.

  “Oh, how rude of me,” said Elias. “This is my wife.” A heartbeat’s pause, before the charade ended. “But, of course, you know that, don’t you?”

  Bisby was silent, offering neither truth nor lies.

  Elias stepped over to Ives. “Stand up, boy.” Ives jumped up, sending his pallet skidding out from underneath him.

  “Please,” I began, “leave the boy—”

  “Have you seen my wife up here before?” asked Elias, ignoring me.

  Wide saucered eyes, a trembling lip. Then a nod, the faintest treachery.

  “Go on,” said Elias, his voice gentle as a nursemaid’s. “What does she do up here?”

  “She brings us cakes, sir. And seeds for the birds.” Ives looked up at the linnets as if their existence were proof enough.

  Elias stared at the songbirds and let out a breath of exasperation. “Of course she does. That sounds just like my wife!” Then his eyes dropped to the other loom. He strode over to it and pulled off my petticoat, revealing a stretch of white brocade from the warp threads to the take-up beam. Meandering across it was the repeating pattern of buttermilk dog roses and the deep plum of the blackberries, a reminder of the autumn when Bisby and I had started making it. Elias stared at it, captivated not by its beauty but by its betrayal.

  “What is this?” He had turned and was looking straight at Bisby. With every moment that he hesitated, Elias took another step toward him.

  “It’s mine,” I said. “I designed the pattern and Mr. Lambert helped me to set it onto point paper.”

  Elias stopped in the center of the garret and nodded slowly. “And has he been weaving it for you?”

  “Yes.” Finally Bisby spoke, clear and emphatic. “I have.”

  “Finished, is it?”

  “Almost, yes.”

  “So you have completed a silk for my wife, while your own master piece lies unfinished in the loom next to it?”

  “Sir, I—”

  But Elias did not want to listen. “I trusted you, Lambert. I invited you into my home and I allowed you to use my grandfather’s loom to weave your own master piece. I wanted to help you become a master.” His voice was increasingly incredulous until, right at the end, it cracked and my husband was laid bare in front of his wife, his journeyman, and a drawboy. “I tried to help you and you have made a fool of me.”

  “Mr. Thorel, I have not. I have done nothing.”

  “Done nothing? Weaving silk with my wife, in my own house, without my knowledge? While the silk I asked you to weave gathers dust? That is not nothing!”

  It was silent in the attic for a moment, save for the rustling and scratching of the linnets. “Get out,” said Elias, more resigned than angry. Ives shot toward the trapdoor, as if he could not wait to get away, while Bisby turned, then bent to pick up the shuttle and store it carefully.

  “Was it you?” said Elias, watching him.

  “Sir?”

  “Was it you who put that note in my room?” Elias’ voice wavered slightly, as if his words were fragile enough to be destroyed by Bisby’s answer.

  “I don’t know anything about a note.”

  “The demand,” clarified Elias, “from the weavers’ combination. Sixpence per loom.”

  “I have no part in any of that,” said Bisby.

  Elias nodded. “An hour ago I would have believed you.”

  * * *

  My husband and I were left alone in the darkening garret.

  “Elias?” My voice searched for him, probed into the darkness for his reassurance.

  “You have humiliated me,” he said flatly.

  “No,” I breathed. “I wanted only to be part of what you do.”

  “What I do? But I have no part in this. You’ve done it all with him.”

  “Because you wouldn’t help me.”

  “So it’s my fault?”

  “No, I’m just trying to explain.”

  “Explain what?”

  “Why I …” I let go of my breath as if I had no use for it.

  “I’ll be the laughingstock of all Spitalfields. You do know that, don’t you? They will say that I cannot weave a decent silk so my wife has to do it for me.”

  “He will not say anything. He is an honorable man.” Elias stepped toward me, resolving out of the darkness.

  “Is he? But you know my journeyman so well.”

  I shook my head, a futile gesture.

  “What have you been doing here with that man?” He caught hold of the top of my arm. In the moments I stayed silent, his grip tightened, squeezing the answer out of me.

  “I told you, I intended only to design and weave a silk.”

  His thumb dug into my arm. “What happened that you did not intend?”

  I shook myself free of him. “Stop it, Elias. I have done nothing wrong.” Almost the truth. And truth enough compared to what he had done with our own housemaid. “Why don’t you tell me what you have done with Moll?”

  “Moll? The scullery maid? What has she to do with this?”

  “You complain that I have spent time with Bisby Lambert, when you have had Moll in your bed!”

  “What?”

  “I heard you.” I was unable to stop now, all the thoughts that had gone round my head for the past few months escaping. “I was outside your room and I heard her inside. Laughing.”

  “Laughing?” He mocked me with the word. “Perhaps I said something funny.”

  “It wasn’t that kind of laugh.”

  “Then perhaps I just enjoyed seeing a girl smile. I can barely remember the last time my own wife smiled at me.”

  “It was late at night. What was she doing in your room?”

 
; “Well, I don’t know. Maybe I needed a blanket, or a warming pan. Perhaps she brought me more candles. She is a maid, after all.”

  “But she does not sleep in the maids’ room!”

  “According to whom?”

  I did not answer.

  “Ah.” Elias nodded. “The lady’s maid. The one who just told me about your secret patterns. Yes, she seems very trustworthy and, if I’m not mistaken, pregnant as well.”

  I felt foolish, confused.

  “Is that what this has been about? Some petty revenge for what you imagine I’ve done based on a girl’s giggle and the gossip of a shameless servant?”

  “No. It’s about me, what I want to do. What I have a talent for.”

  “You have a talent for destroying things, Mrs. Thorel. That is all.”

  29

  Sara

  From the parlor window I watched Lambert leave, a shape in the graying light, coming round the corner from the tradesmen’s door. He shouldered into his coat and trudged along the pavement, hands thrust into pockets, the boy running behind him, trying to keep up. When they had left the square, I picked up Madam’s embroidery hoop and put it away in a cupboard. When I could find nothing else to pretend to do, I went to her room.

  She lay on the bed with one arm flung behind her head, her face half buried in it. Her skirts frothed around her legs. The pose was so dramatic, she looked like a painting.

  “What have you done?” she sobbed, into her sleeve.

  I came into her room and began to tidy trinkets that did not need tidying. I tucked a pair of tiny scissors and a fruit knife into their embroidered case and stabbed her bodkin back into the pincushion. Anything rather than look at her.

  “Stop it!” she exclaimed. “Stop doing that.”

  I put the things on the dressing table and tried not to look at the splintered drawer beneath it.

  She propped herself up on one elbow and stared at me. Her hair had come loose and hung down her back. The powder was gone from her skin. Everything about her was raw and exposed. Guilt was spreading through me, as palpable as the constant ache in my belly.