‘Have you deserted?’ she asked fearfully.
He threw back his head and laughed. ‘I can tell that you don’t believe that even eleven years in the army could change me! No, I’ve not scarpered. They invalided me out and sent me home on a ship with a number of other wrecks they could no longer keep on the march.’ She had pushed a chair forward for him and he dropped into it, close to exhaustion. ‘I’ve had to beg my way here from the Pool of London where I disembarked and it has taken me more days than I bargained for to make my way to Bunhill Row. Fortunately I was able to slip into the house just before your servants locked up for the night.’
‘Did the army send you home penniless?’ She was indignant at the thought of such military callousness.
He shook his head wryly. ‘No, but you should know my luck, Mother. I was robbed on board ship, not being able to defend myself as once I could have done. It was being set upon by footpads in a London street that started the chain of events that eventually landed me in the army and so it’s no surprise to me that a similar attack should accompany my leaving it.’
‘How were you wounded?’
‘Not on the battlefield, although I did get this scar in a skirmish.’ He grinned ruefully. ‘A runaway army wagon knocked me down and crushed my leg. Mercifully the surgeons didn’t cut it off and it has healed.’
She put a hand to her head in bewilderment. ‘Why am I standing here asking you questions. You must be starving!’
‘I haven’t eaten since yesterday. But tell me first — are all the family well?’
‘Yes, I’m thankful to say. Joss is the least fit at the moment but he was back at his bench today.’
‘And what of Sarah?’ He spoke deliberately.
‘She and Peter live a few doors away. They have no children.’
‘Not even mine?’
‘No. Did you think that might have happened?’
He shrugged. ‘I thought it unlikely, but when Peter wrote that he had married her, I did wonder if it had been to give a child of mine a name.’
‘Is that why you wanted no one else to know you were here?’
He gave a nod. ‘I didn’t want to arrive like a spectre from the past to spoil their lives until I knew the situation. It’s why I stopped writing. I know it must have been hard on you not to have a word from me, but I was faced with what seemed to me to be a lifetime in another land and I never expected to see my own country again.’
‘Why should you suppose Sarah might still care for you after all this time?’
‘I’ve not forgotten what she said to me when I marched away.’
‘And you?’ She almost held her breath in trepidation. ‘When you wrote after the news of the marriage you made it plain it was of no importance to you that she had wed.’
His pain-worn face changed subtly as if she had touched a nerve. ‘I daresay if she had not married my brother I should have tried now to win her back to me.’
Her mind was racing. Whatever happened they must not meet. Peter and Sarah had put their lives together again and if that was disrupted, however unintentionally, it would leave Peter more vulnerable to Anne-Olympe and immeasurable trouble there. ‘Come into the kitchen,’ she urged, needing time to think. ‘You look ready to drop and there’s plenty of food in the pantry.’
He ate at the kitchen table, wolfing down bread, pickles, cold potatoes and the slices of beef that she had cut from a joint. As she heated water on the range and brought a tin hip-bath that the servants used, she gave him news of the family and friends, for he had received none of the letters written to him for over three years, having been constantly on the move. After he had demolished an apple pie and drained his tankard for the third time, she sat down as she asked him if he had made any plans for his future.
‘I have only one and that depends on your helping me, Mother.’
‘I’ll do anything I can. Money is no barrier now. I can let you have a good sum to set yourself up in the business of your choice —’
He held up a hand palm-outwards to show that was not what he wanted from her. ‘Money doesn’t come into this. What I’m asking is that you will let me finish my interrupted apprenticeship with you.’
‘That’s impossible! You can’t pick up where you left off. Those past years wouldn’t count. You would have to begin indentures all over again.’
‘I think not. After all, apprentices change masters when the first one dies.’
‘That’s a different case altogether. It is no fault of an apprentice when his master dies.’
‘Neither was it mine being tricked into recruitment. That should count as being beyond my control. I know Richard would never be persuaded to take me back in view of my past record and you are my only hope.’ To her dismay his voice faltered, his face crumpled grotesquely, tears springing from his eyes, and he thumped both fists on the wooden table in desperation. ‘For God’s sake, don’t refuse me! Don’t bar me from the goal I’ve craved for all these years. I’ve been spared my hands.’
He opened his fists and stretched his fingers wide until they trembled. ‘I’m begging you to give me a second chance to use them in the work for which I was born!’
She rose from where she was sitting opposite him and went round to draw his head against her and he clutched his arms around her, his shoulders shaking, his physical pain and mental torment finally taking their toll. ‘I’ll help you, but the cost for you will be high.’
‘Anything!’
She drew back from him and cupped his face as he looked up at her. ‘It means keeping your return to England a secret and cutting yourself off from us all again. Nobody must know you were here.’
He understood. ‘So Sarah would leave Peter for me,’ he said meditatively.
‘It’s a risk that can’t be taken. Too many other people are involved. Is it a bargain?’
Reaching for his crutch, he dragged himself to his feet and held out a hand to clasp hers. ‘I agree. May I see you sometimes?’
‘How should that be managed? You must never come here and I would be unable to read any note you sent me. Then there’s always the danger of our being seen together if you should be fairly near. London can be like a village sometimes and many people there may well remember you. No, I’m afraid we must let a few more years pass before we meet as we would wish and you come here again.’ Then she turned to deal with immediate practical matters. ‘Get those filthy garments off you and I’ll burn them later. The bath water will be ready now. I’ll fetch some towels.’
When she returned with them he was already in the tub and using the soap she had left ready. Upstairs again, she knelt to open a chest in the box-room. Somehow she had never been able to bring herself to get rid of John’s clothes and now it was as well that she had kept them. She took out a neatly pressed and cleaned coat, a pair of breeches, a cap and a waistcoat. Then a shirt, cravat and undergarments with a pair of white knee stockings. It did not matter that there were no shoes for William’s feet were a size larger, but Peter had forgotten a pair of riding boots in the porch a day or two ago and they would fit well. Last of all she took a night-shirt and a dressing-robe, for he would have to sleep the night here, although she intended he should leave again as soon as possible.
After leaving the day clothes in her bedchamber, she went to her sewing-box where she kept an old razor of John’s that she used for nicking stitches when unpicking. It could be sharpened on the knife board and rid William of that unsightly stubble.
She emptied the bath water while he put on the night clothes. When he had shaved himself, relieved to have a smooth chin again, they went up to her bedchamber where she gave him her bed.
‘I’ll sleep on the couch here later. In the morning I’ll keep the servants out of this room and you must stay in it all day. There’s a closed stool in the closet when you should need it. Now I’m going downstairs to remove all trace of you being here.’
He was sound asleep when finally she returned. Once in the night he rolled on to
his back and snored loudly, waking her up. She went across and gave him a shake. The last thing she wanted was for the servants to suspect she had a man in her room, for she had never snored in her life.
At an early hour she was up again, beating the servants to the kitchen by half an hour. On a tray she took up some breakfast for him and enough food for the day. As he sat up in bed and tucked in as if he had not eaten the night before, she sat on the edge of the bed.
‘Today I’m going to the city to see what I can arrange. Do you want me to bring any of your old books to read?’
‘I’d rather have some newspapers and the older the better. I’m starved for what has been going on in England while I’ve been away.’
There were stacks of them in one of the rooms of the workshop. She fetched him a pile and, after warning him not to rustle them if he heard the stairs creak, she locked him in and took the key with her.
‘I want nobody to go near my bedchamber today,’ she instructed the servants. ‘I have left my designs all over the table there and I don’t want them disturbed.’ It was not the first time they had been barred from her room for that reason and she was satisfied that she would be obeyed. She drove herself to the city in a wagonette which she liked to do sometimes, and on this occasion she did not want anyone else knowing where she went.
It was a long day for William in spite of his enjoyment of the newspapers. He exercised his leg rigorously, hoping to dispense with his crutch for a cane before too long, and sat for a long time at the window, feasting his eyes on the greenness of Bunhill fields that stretched away beyond the roof of the old stable where once he would probably have broken his neck if it had not been for his father’s timely intervention. He had had a lot of time in which to think about the past during the bouts of homesickness that had afflicted him overseas and in reflection he believed he had activated his father’s illness by the jerk he had caused on the rope that day. Whether his mother shared the same conviction he did not know, but long-held resentment had burst forth from her after the shooting of the horse, and she had never been quite the same to him after that. If that was the case, and she had struggled with herself not to blame him for it, it made what she was doing for him now all the more important. He believed there was forgiveness in her at last.
It was close to four o’clock in the afternoon when he saw Sarah. She must have come up the side path for suddenly she was there, crossing the lawn slowly in the direction of an archway that had been made in the garden wall to give easy access to the workshop next door. Through the half-open window he could hear her singing to herself, almost tunelessly like a child, and she was holding out her skirts and swinging them absently as if in her own world. It was all he could do not to call out to her. He even started up from the window seat where he sat, but restrained himself in time. His gaze followed her hungrily. She was as enchanting to him as he remembered, the same fey, elusive air about her. Maybe that was the secret of her spell. She was the only woman who had ever kept him on a string, for he had never been sure of her, always tantalized and forever in pursuit.
Although he watched avidly she did not return by the way she had come. He was still sitting there when Hester returned with the good news he had hoped for.
‘I have taken Richard into our confidence and because you are Letticia’s brother he has agreed to grant you the support you need. A former journeyman of his, a Mr Glazebrook, established himself recently as a master goldsmith in his native city of Chester. Richard will give you a letter for him and vouchsafe that you were recruited against your will and that he has no vacancy for you at the present time in his workshop. When Mr Glazebrook first returned to Chester, Richard was of considerable assistance to him and there seems no doubt he will be willing to allow you to serve the remainder of your apprenticeship with him. Letticia will not be told of what her husband is doing and I have his word that no one shall know of your return or whereabouts.’
William thanked her, impressed by how she had managed everything. ‘How am I to get there?’
‘I shall drive you myself tomorrow in the wagonette. While it is still dark you’ll go down to the stable and wait in hiding. I shall come myself to put the horse in the shafts. I have bought you a wide-brimmed hat today, such as drovers wear, and you must pull it well down to shield your face. In this family we often give neighbours a lift into the city, as you may remember, and nobody is going to question me about a man at my side, provided you do nothing to awake recognition. I have also arranged a banker’s draft that will keep you in pocket until your indentures are fulfilled. As soon as you have received the letter, which Richard will have ready for you in his workshop, you will be driven immediately to catch the Chester mail coach.’
In the morning everything went as she had planned until she was about to put the horse into the shaft. Then, without warning, a shadow appeared under the arch of the coach house. It was Joss.
‘What are you doing here at this early hour?’ he asked her in surprise.
She had completely forgotten that he was also going into the city that day. Before she could answer him William, whom he had not yet noticed in the shadows, spoke to him. ‘I am the cause, Joss. The bad penny has turned up again to get sorted out once more.’
‘Will, of all people!’
The two brothers embraced in joyful reunion. Later she was to be thankful for the most poignant of reasons for Joss’s appearance just then. After her brief explanation, he offered to drive William into London himself and she accepted, glad that they should have some time together. Joss could be trusted completely to keep his own counsel.
‘You’ll not regret what you’ve done for me,’ William assured her as his brother gave him a helping hand up into the wagonette and slid his crutch out of sight. There he adjusted his hat, giving a debonair tilt to it, but the old mischief was lacking in his eyes and his smile was serious as he raised his hand in farewell to her.
She could not go out into the road to wave him off. Instead she whipped off her straw hat as she crossed the lawn and rolled up her sleeves in readiness for an early start in the workshop on some snuffer-scissors she was making. Concentration on her work had always helped her through times of crisis.
Fifteen
Hester sat working at her design-table in the room next to the workshop, the February sun making pale squares across the paper and gleaming on the black silk of her mourning attire. Although she had just entered her seventieth year she worked as hard as ever, her energies only mildly tempered by time. It was grief that made her feel her age as nothing else could do, not even a long stint at her work-bench. The passage of two years since Joss’s death had done nothing to ease the rawness of bereavement, for it became acute with every ecclesiastical commission she received and they came almost daily. Joss had given such spiritual dedication to that branch of his work and now, when her designs for religious regalia were allotted out in the workshop, she was always wrenched anew by his not being there to have first choice. It was for this reason that she found it impossible to bring herself to make any of the innumerable small articles commissioned by the Church, those that in the past Joss had always set aside for her in the knowledge that they were her particular forte. She still could not bear to see anyone at Joss’s bench even when it was only to fetch a tool from the rack there.
Quick in all her movements, she raised her head alertly as a maid came from Number 107 to announce a visitor.
‘Mr Glazebrook from Chester has called to see you, ma’am. Shall I bring him here?’
‘No!’ She did not want her sons asking questions about him! ‘Serve hot chocolate and ratafias in the parlour. I’ll come immediately.’
It was a while ago since Richard, having been notified by this man, had informed her that William had completed his apprenticeship and duly registered. Nobody else except Richard, who had written to him, had known that William was at Joss’s funeral. He had sat at the back of the church, and outside he had stood apart under the trees, the same bla
ck hat shielding his face, a cane instead of a crutch for support, when Joss had been laid to rest beside his father. Towards the end of his life, Joss had prepared her for William never being able to join the family circle again.
‘William saw Sarah that day he came home,’ he said, lying wearily on his bed, having fallen victim to a prolonged and wasting disease not long after he had driven his brother to London. ‘I think I may tell you now because you must understand he will always be attracted to her.’
‘I never thought William could love so committedly.’
‘I don’t know that it is love as you and I understand it, but she has a magic for him. Nothing is going to quell it, not even old age.’
Hester’s step was brisk as she covered the distance between the two buildings. She knew it had been a disappointment to Joss that neither of his sons, who took after their mother’s side of the family, had wanted to go into goldsmithing, but they were established in good apprenticeships for other trades and should do well. Without rhyme or reason, her hopes for the future were pinned on Jonathan’s second son, Bill, a lively six-year-old, whose full name of William came from his maternal grandfather and not from his once-errant uncle.
In the hall she paused to touch her hair into place and tuck back a tendril displaced by the wind. Grief had drained away all but a few bright threads of colour among the grey. After settling a displaced frill on her fichu, she entered the parlour where Mr Glazebrook, a portly man with a dark brown wig, rose to bow and greet her.
After she had poured the chocolate and they had discussed the inclement weather, he came to the point of the visit. ‘I had some recent news of your son William and, as I was coming to London on business, I thought I should like to call on you to pass it on in person.’
‘It is most sociable of you.’
‘Your son is in Kent somewhere. He had no need of my recommendation when it came to employment. His work was seen by a goldsmith’s widow who offered him charge of her late husband’s workshop. I know no more than that.’
The Silver Touch Page 36