by Sonia Velton
“Then she pull’d off her silk finish’d gown,
And put on hose of leather, O!”
She looked up, startled. She held her hand to her eyes against the sunlight, trying to see who had spoken. I stepped toward her. “And then she runs off with the gypsies. Isn’t that how the song goes, Mother?”
* * *
My mother bustled around my daughter. She clucked at her and shushed her when she fussed. She picked her up and rocked her in gentle arms, singing songs to her that took me back to a place I had left long ago. I sat at the kitchen table and told her about the years that had passed. Or, at least, snatches of them.
“It is good to see you, Mother,” I said.
She looked at me over the baby’s shoulder. “Oh, Sara, I cannot tell you how much I have missed you. How I have thought about you every single day since you left.”
There was a part of me that could not bear to hear this. The same part that I had left behind years ago when the cart I sat in trundled off, separating me from my mother. The part of me that had dissolved into a bloody bowl of water that first time at Mrs. Swann’s. The part of me that Mr. Arnaud had almost choked out of me that cold March day.
“You sent me away.”
My mother turned her face from me and took the baby on a jiggling walk to the kitchen window. She stood like that for some time, looking out over fields and land that belonged to someone far wealthier than she or I would ever be.
“Why did you do that?”
When she turned, her face was streaked with tears. The sadness aged her, and I looked at the floor, not wanting to be reminded of the time that had passed.
“There are things you don’t know,” she said. “Things a child would not have understood.”
“Perhaps I would understand now.”
My mother sighed into the downy top of the baby’s head. “When you are a woman alone, there are men who take advantage of that. The master here was one of those men. He was starting to look at you. I was trying to protect you. I didn’t know what else to do but send you away.”
I nodded slowly as if I understood, but I was not sure that I did. I felt an overwhelming need to hold my daughter, so I walked over to the window and gently took her from my mother’s arms.
“Sara,” my mother’s voice was insistent, “I would not have been able to stop him. What could I do but send you away?” Somewhere in the back of my mind, there were strains of a conversation that I would never have with my own daughter: I had to give you away. What could I do?
“Where is he now?” I asked.
“He died a year ago. Fell off his horse during a hunt.” My mother put her hand on the top of my arm, rubbing at me as if checking I was real. “Look at you, my darling, you’ve done so well. A lady’s maid, no less, and a cook too, by the sound of it. Your old father would be proud. You have had a life in London that you never would have had here.”
“Yes,” I said. “You are right about that.”
The baby started to cry. I was relieved. The conversation was meandering toward a place I did not want my mother to go. “She’s hungry,” I said.
“She? Does this child not have a name?”
“Oh, Mother, I hardly dared name her.”
“Well, then, let’s do it now. What about Esther? Your mistress has been good to you, I believe.”
I wrinkled my nose. The baby’s chin wobbled, and she started to wail.
My mother laughed. “Perhaps not Esther, then. What else do you like?”
“Madam’s sister was called Anne. She died having a baby, like I almost did. Maybe that name. Or Anna, perhaps? That is what I always wanted to call her.”
“Anna.” My mother rolled the name around her mouth, as if it were marzipan. “Yes, Anna.”
My child had an identity then, just as I was regaining mine, piecing myself back together among the familiar landscapes of my childhood, while my mother stood at the hearth making stewed cinnamon apples for my little daughter.
Esther
Monsieur Finet was seated at the kitchen table. Moll stood behind him, one arm leaning on the table, the other resting on his shoulder. Finet was reading aloud from a pamphlet in deliberately pompous tones, causing Moll to giggle. Oh, that laugh, that tinkling laugh. When Finet finished, Moll made a gesture, as if she were wringing the neck of a goose, and it was Finet’s turn to chuckle, grabbing at his stomach, as if the force of his mirth might pop the buttons on his waistcoat.
“What is that?”
Two heads looked up at me and stared. “’Tis nothing, madam,” said Finet, gruffly.
“But I should like to see it. Give it to me.”
I could see the man swallow, even in that thick neck. He folded the paper before he handed it to me, as if that would stop me reading it. Moll made to slip away to the wet kitchen but I glared at her.
I opened the pamphlet, handling it gently as if it were my last connection with him. I did not want to read it all, but the words would not release me.
The
Ordinary of Newgate’s full and
particular account of the execution
OF
Bisby Lambert
AT
Bethnal Green, London.
With his last dying speech and Exhortations
and behavior at the place of Execution.
MORNING OF EXECUTION
17th APRIL 1769
ON Monday the 17th Instant, this Parish was presented with a spectacle as solemn as it was uncommon; the public execution of the criminal, Bisby Lambert. A platform and temporary gallows were erected near the Salmon & Ball public house, in Bethnal Green, all hung with black. Then, just before Ten o’clock in the Morning, Lambert was brought down from the Newgate Chapel to the Press-yard to have his irons knocked off. His Behavior at this time was in every way becoming to his unhappy situation. The clock striking ten, Lambert lifted up his hands and said, “I have not one hour more to live in this world,” and being put into a Cart, was carried to the Place of Execution.
He arrived a little before Eleven o’clock, and immediately began to pray fervently, and with an audible voice; which he continued during the whole time the executioner tied him up. While the officers were preparing him, an acquaintance of his standing by, says to him, “Lambert, you little thought of this once.” He wantonly answered, “No, I did not, and I will take care not to come to it again,” for which he was sharply reproved, and desired to think a little more of the approaching Awful Moment.
He addressed the spectators boldly to the following effect: “I am now going to suffer an ignominious death and you are all gathered to see my untimely end. It would be of no service to me now to tell a lie, and so I can say to you that I am as innocent of this crime as the child unborn. Let my blood lie to that wicked man who has purchased it with gold, and that notorious wretch who swore it falsely away.”
He then looked upon a woman weeping in the crowd before him and said, “If I were not strung up here, I would put my hand to your eyes to feel your tears as I do believe you have spit on your fingers to counterfeit them.”
Then Lambert looked undaunted around on the crowded multitude about him, as if he bade defiance to grim death and all its terrors; Lambert thanked God for His goodness in thus mercifully calling him to repentance before he was too much indisposed with the jail distemper. He desired that his friends would not be troubled or concerned about him, for he was very happy to be leaving this sinful, vain world.
Then, after a short time spent in devotion and having recommended his Soul to the Almighty’s Protection, he stood up straight and waited, saying only, “’Tis well you can do no worse.”
Then the Cart was drawn from under him, and he was turned off.
“Is this how you spend your time, Monsieur Finet? Have you nothing better to do now that Sara Kemp is gone?”
The cook got
up and turned pointlessly to the dresser, making a show of looking for something. I walked over and stood beside him. “I came down to the kitchens to tell you that Miss Kemp left her book for you.” We both glanced up at The Art of Cookery still sitting on the dresser shelf. “She thought you might have more use for it than her.”
Finet managed a thin smile.
“Now,” I said, “I should like oysters before the season ends. Finet, go out and get them for me.”
He stared at me. “Can she not get them?” he said, nodding toward Moll.
“No,” I said flatly, “she cannot.”
Finet gathered his jacket and left. Moll sought the sanctuary of the hearth, putting water on to boil for some unknown purpose.
I watched her for a moment, head bent, plaited hair falling forward over her shoulders, the heat of the range bringing a pink flush to her cheeks. Or was it shame? I still did not know whether the girl felt any shame at all.
“There is a woman,” I said to her, “a friend of Mrs. Arnaud’s. She has need of someone to help her around the house. I think that might be a better position for you than here.”
Moll spun round. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that you should go and work there. Her husband has passed away, so there should be no difficulties.”
Moll’s sweet lips formed a little circle and her smooth brow wrinkled. “But the master,” she said, after a pause, “he wouldn’t allow this?”
“You don’t understand, do you? You think the master cares what happens to you, but he doesn’t. He finds it all … tiresome. At any rate, the hiring and dismissal of servants is up to me, not my husband.”
She said nothing. Just turned back to the hearth, cavernous and empty inside, blackened to its core.
* * *
“I have dismissed her.”
Elias was in the workshop, yet more patterns spread out over the wooden countertop.
“As you wish,” he said.
If I had thought his reaction would betray him, I was wrong. There was no hint of pain or loss in his features as he studied the patterns. Perhaps he was skillful in hiding his feelings, or perhaps he had no feelings to hide. But, of course, the absence of feeling is not the same as the absence of deed.
“Sweet Peony and Laurel,” he said.
I looked at him quizzically.
“That is the one we should weave next.” I realized then that my own watercolors were spread on the counter, the ones he had grabbed in fistfuls from my dressing table drawer. “If we shade the peony petals correctly, the effect would be quite striking. We could add a ribbed ground. What do you think?”
There are no apologies from men like Elias Thorel, no acknowledgments even, just small concessions.
“I spoke to Arnaud the other day,” he continued. “He was most complimentary about your silk. He said that he will buy the next one we weave. He thinks there is a good market for—how did he put it?—“your wife’s elegant and natural designs.”
* * *
I stood in the garret watching as my new apprentice strung fine silk thread through the heddles. It was the palest of greens, the weft shot with silver thread. Once the pattern was set, a meander of shell-pink flowers would begin to run through the emerging silk, traversing its perfect line of symmetry with each repeat.
The house had been strangely quiet for the past few months, as if the soul had been cut out of it when the silk was destroyed. A loom is the heart of a weaving household. It is what drives us all forward.
Our new apprentice looked up at me, questioning. I ran my hands over the threads, feeling the tension of the warp, just as he had taught me to do. I nodded at my little journeyman. He gave me a shy grin and raked his hand through his sandy hair, readying himself to begin. His look of concentration as he started the loom was so like his uncle’s that my heart ached.
The point paper for Sweet Peony and Laurel lay stretched across the loom. As the silk is made, the point paper will be destroyed; an appropriate end for a new beginning. Ives started the loom and the house’s lifeblood began to flow again.
NOTE
Esther’s character is loosely inspired by Anna Maria Garthwaite, the foremost designer of Spitalfields silks during the mid-eighteenth century. She is credited with bringing the artistry of painting to the loom, although her success predated the industrial troubles of the Spitalfields silk industry by some years. Many of her patterns and silks have survived and can be seen in the V&A Museum.
The eighteenth-century Spitalfields silk weavers were a militant bunch and formed early trade unions, then called combinations. The industrial tensions between the journeyman weavers and the master weavers are accurate and culminated in sporadic riots, during which the “cutters” would cut and destroy the masters’ silk as punishment for not cooperating with the combinations. After one of these riots, John Doyle and John Valline were hanged in Bethnal Green outside the Salmon and Ball Inn. John Doyle went to his death swearing that he had been scragged and some of his last words are incorporated into Bisby’s Last Dying Speech and Exhortations.
Buttermilk Alley is shown as a small passageway running between Phoenix Street and Quaker Street on John Rocque’s map of Spitalfields and its environs dated 1746, although there is no trace of it now.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you to my UK and US agents, Juliet Mushens and Jenny Bent, for being such an amazing dream team and realizing my long-held ambition to be published in the US, where my father lived for many years.
Thank you to the wonderful team at Blackstone Publishing for their enthusiasm and support. Particular thanks to Djamika Smith for designing such a stunning cover, Lauren Maturo for championing Blackberry and Wild Rose, and Courtney Vatis for her careful edits.
Lastly, thank you to the fascinating pocket of London that welcomed the Profitable Strangers this book is about, and to the silk weavers of eighteenth-century Spitalfields for entrancing me fifteen years ago and never letting me go.