The Gilded Lily

by Deborah Swift

  ‘Look,’ said Polly. There were several horses pulling boats that had been fitted out with wheels and were taking well-to-do families for rides up and down the river. One of them held a corpulent gentleman and his equally fat wife and children.

  ‘Suppose if it will hold them up, it must be all right then,’ Ella said and Polly giggled.

  Gaining confidence they hurried down the main thoroughfare, nicknamed Freezeland Street, surprised to find that it was not as slippery as they might expect, as somebody had thoughtfully strewn a layer of straw underfoot. About halfway down the row they spotted the hastily painted sign for the Gilded Lily, a sad-looking thing in comparison with the proper one at Whitgift’s, thought Ella. But there was Mrs Horsefeather, wrapped up in a foxfur hat and cape, unloading a crate of bottles from a sled. A number of watermen were vying with each other for the work as they dragged more goods for the Lily across.

  ‘Thank goodness. I am quite worn out with all this bending,’ Mrs Horsefeather said. ‘You girls can do it now. If you need my assistance I will be at the rum and gingerbread booth. I need something to warm my old joints.’

  ‘Come on then,’ said Polly when she had gone.

  Ella began to relax. Everyone else was treating the hardened river with calm acceptance, so she began to stack the trestle with the goods and bring out the slate for chalking. Her feet tingled from the cold. From a distance the Frost Fair had looked charming, with its tented row of stalls and bright bunting, but now the reality of having to stand out in the cold for several hours bit home.

  ‘Wish I had her furs,’ Ella said, pointing at a lady in a rabbit-skin muffler.

  ‘Or a pair of sheepskin gloves,’ Polly said. ‘When Miss Woodward came in last week she had on such a pretty pair. But best keep moving, that’ll keep the cold away.’

  They set to work unloading the crates. Business was brisk and the crowd grew thicker by the hour. All of London seemed to be here. On the ice, lords mingled with labourers; Freezeland Street belonged to everyone. Nothing could go in or out of London, so many treated it as a holiday. Stiltwalkers and jugglers roamed up and down stopping to create a crowd, who were enjoying a festive atmosphere fuelled by much medicinal use of hot ale or spirits.

  Around lunchtime Ella spotted a familiar figure walking down the ice, the distinctive hat with its three pheasant feathers marking him out. He was with a group of other young dandies, all in tight-fitting coats with cloaks a-swagger. ‘Look lively,’ she said to Polly, ‘here comes Jay Whitgift.’

  Polly immediately straightened her skirts and pulled down her hood so that her hair was showing. Not to be outdone, Ella did the same, but also undid her cloak to show more of the lace chemise.

  The men paused outside one of the tented alehouses, with a wooden crown atop, and Jay laughed at some jest before clapping one of his friends on the back. The others disappeared inside, and Jay sauntered down the row, pausing at the goldsmith’s and the printing booth where you could have a souvenir ticket printed by the heavy iron press.

  When he got to the Lily’s tent, he said, ‘Ah. I see by the slates, I was right to set you up here. You’ve done well. Who has been in?’

  ‘Miss Woodward and her friends, Miss Almoner, with her mother. Oh, and Lady Edgware. But mostly folks I’ve not seen afore.’

  ‘There was Miss Hunter,’ said Polly pushing her way forward.

  ‘Oh yes, Miss Hunter –’ Ella glared at Polly – ‘but she don’t count ’cos she didn’t buy anything.’

  ‘Have you enough stock?’

  ‘Yes, sir, there’s plenty,’ Polly said before Ella could reply. ‘Ain’t it grand, sir! There’s boys skating on the ice, in proper skating shoes. They must be Dutch, ’cos we ain’t got nothing like that over here, and over by the ship there’s a man set up a stage to dance jigs—’

  ‘And we saw a spit outside the tent called the King’s Head and it were roasting a whole ox,’ interrupted Ella.

  ‘Is that right? Where is the King’s Head?’

  ‘Turn left at the end of this row,’ Polly said, as Ella opened her mouth to tell him.

  ‘Very good,’ he said, smiling at Polly. ‘I’m partial to a roast.’ He looked at Ella. ‘I should fasten up, if I were you, the cold can soon go to your chest. Can’t have you sickening for anything before tonight. Have you no muffler?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Whitgift, but I did not think—’

  ‘Wrap up, then. My carriage will call for you at nine. Make sure you’re ready.’

  ‘I will be.’

  ‘Keep up the good work,’ he said, throwing a smile at Polly. Then he turned on his heel and headed back towards the Crown. They watched him duck under the awning and disappear from view.

  ‘I’ll take one of these,’ said a red-nosed woman, swathed in a woollen shawl.

  ‘Eleven pence,’ Polly said.

  Ella took her coins and Polly began to wrap the item.

  ‘What’s this about him coming for you in a carriage?’ Polly said, handing the woman the package.

  ‘He’s going to take me to meet his friends. One of them’s a knight of the king’s bedchamber.’

  ‘You never!’

  ‘Cross my heart. They’re all earls and lords. And one of them bides with the duke’s players. They’re after a pretty girl to go on stage. They asked after me particular.’

  ‘Can’t think why. Anyway, play-acting’s only for whores.’ Polly’s face was sour.

  ‘’Tis not. Jay says the king and everyone goes to the theatre now. You’re behind the times.’

  ‘Jay says, Jay says. Bet he only wants you to open your legs.’

  ‘Don’t be coarse. Just ’cos he asked for me and not you. You’re jealous, that’s all.’

  ‘Am not.’

  ‘Yes, you are. ’Cos you know what it means when a man takes you out in his carriage.’

  ‘No! You’re never betrothed.’

  ‘I’m not saying anything.’

  Polly huffed through her nose and turned her back on her. A few moments later, she rejoined with, ‘I don’t believe you. He’d never in a hundred Sundays wed you. Pa Whitgift’s trying to get him set up with Miriam Edgware.’

  ‘I’m saying nothing. You just watch me, that’s all.’

  Chapter 31

  As she walked back to the Gilded Lily from the Frost Fair, Ella kept thinking about Sadie’s words, that her mother would have thought she looked like a whore. There was an unaccustomed pain in her chest that would not go away. Sadie had become awkward. Time was, she was as docile as a kitten. Ella did not know what she would do if she had to mind her much longer. If Sadie would not help herself by doing as Ella suggested, then what would happen? She couldn’t stay locked up there for ever. She had provided nothing whilst Ella was out working at Whitgift’s, all she’d been able to do was to make a measly pair of stockings. It had been weeks since Sadie had been able to work, and Ella had to pay all Sadie’s rent out of her own wages. It wasn’t fair.

  She walked as fast as she could given the icy streets. The air was swimming with tiny snowflakes that melted as they touched her face so that she had to shake her hood to keep it from getting wet. She gritted her teeth and pushed her head forward as she walked.

  She nodded to the nightwatchman, and opened up the Gilded Lily. A wave of warmth hit her – Meg must have banked the fires. She lit a candle and, seeing a large square parcel in the shop, hurried upstairs. The second parcel was there in her chamber – the new mirror. Carefully, so as not to waste the moment, she sawed through the string with her nail-paring knife and peeled back the oilcloth wrapping. Her mouth fell open in an expression of incredulous delight. She let the cloth fall to the ground, where it buffeted a cloud of dust that swam in the stuffy air.

  Nothing had prepared her for the vision of the other world she saw before her. It was a window into another room. She saw a young woman, dressed in a wash of blue, a white lace fan dangling half open from one arm, standing before a set of low windows, each criss-crossed with
lozenges of glass panes, and each bearing a panel of brownish-green stained glass in the centre. She could see quite clearly the slightly distorted snow on the roofs of the other buildings outside the window, and even the smoke from the chimneys moving against the night sky.

  Of course she had seen looking glasses before – but they had been small pocket glasses or hand glasses. Women wore them hung from their waists, and men flashed them in their hats, or showed off their carved glass-cases at the card table. Other looking glasses of this size were made of polished metal, and the reflection was like looking through a gauze or an insistent mizzle of rain.

  Tentatively she moved closer to the seamless surface of the glass, and the woman in the gilded frame moved closer too. A curvaceous figure, with slender arms, leaning slightly forward from her nipped-in waist. The brass eyeholes on the front-lacing of the dress, the fine dentelle of the lace on the chemise, even the rise and fall of the bosom. Ella looked, delighted. Sadie was wrong. The woman she saw there was a fine lady. As so could Sadie be too, if only she would see sense.

  Ella brushed down her skirts and posed some more, turning this way and that, looking over her shoulder at the back lacing of her dress. She moved closer to the mirror and slowly raised her head until, startled, she met a pair of blue eyes, fringed with thick dark lashes, looming from a marble-white face.

  She recoiled.

  The picture had been alluring at first, from a distance, like a painting in a book. But as she looked more closely, the image grew more disturbing. She hurried to light more candles. At first she was curious to see the dull lifeless hair, crimped and tonged with sugar into stiff yellow side curls, the eyebrows uneven painted lines over rough stubble. Was this the woman renowned throughout London for her beauty? As she looked into this new harsh reflection her expression turned to one of fascinated horror.

  Her hand came up to touch her hair, and with shock she saw that the skin on the back of her hands was crinkled, the fingers bony. Tentatively, she peered closer. The Spanish cochineal she had applied to her lips had bled into the white powder of her skin, and her upper lip was a mass of tiny fissures, crazed like a secondhand chamber pot. Unable to take it in, she brought her face right up to the glass, until she could see that there were certainly cracks in the paste around her nose, and that her forehead had all the appearance of a limewashed building ravaged by the weather.

  She examined the surface of her skin with growing nausea, until a mist from her nose softened the definition of the features before her and she withdrew to let the bloom on the glass clear.

  She thought of the forthcoming evening. Jay had made it plain he was expecting her to make a good impression on Wycliffe. Wycliffe was used to the company of the gentlemen at court. She was actually going to be in the same room as someone who had dined with the new king. Perhaps Jay had given her the looking glass before she was introduced on purpose. She squirmed with shame. A hot flush of embarrassment rose around her neck, creeping upwards to her cheeks until they glowed damson. Ella observed the patch of colour flare, then fade until her complexion returned to its usual pallor.

  A means must be found somehow to perfect herself before Jay’s carriage arrived. She twisted the cord of her fan round her hand until the fingers turned white whilst she thought what to do. There was nobody in the Lily. She hurried downstairs.

  Two hours later when the door opened below, Ella did not hear it. She had moved her dressing stool before the glass, and now stood behind it dressed in scarlet silk. Her face was illuminated by two torchères ablaze with lighted candles set either side of the frame. Before the mirror was the side table, with a scatter of open pots and phials, its surface smeared with white and pocked with powder.

  ‘Miss Johnson!’ The call came from below.

  Ella turned slowly, holding her own gaze, until she was standing side-on to the glass, examining her profile, a look of intense scrutiny on her face. Her face was motionless.

  Only her eyes moved, liquid in the dry shell of her face.

  Jay’s carriage and pair were outside the door. The horses’ flanks steamed in the night air. Ella swirled on her cloak over her red dress and braced herself against the thickening snow. Jay nodded his approval, and Ella dipped her head. She dare not smile lest her carefully applied lip paint should bleed. She looked across at Jay from behind her fan as they jolted through the cobbled streets. His hat was on his knee and the ridge of ice crystals on the brim melted into a puddle of water which dripped onto the floor of the carriage. He stared steadily out of the window, as if he were travelling alone. Her eyes took in his profile, his aquiline nose, the slightly furrowed brow, and the familiar longing twisted her heart. She did not dare to speak, for in polite society, the gentleman must always speak first.

  She vaguely thought that he should have arranged a lady’s maid for her, if she was to meet with Wycliffe. She had become confused now as to where her station was in life. Before she worked at Whitgift’s it had been very clear. Now she was unsure if she was a servant or a lady. She was expected to behave like a lady, keep a tone of reserve, even rudeness. But now it was becoming clear she was still a servant, since he did not think her yet worthy of a chaperone or of a lady’s maid.

  The carriage took them through the narrow streets towards the centre of the city, and the buildings passed in a blur of candlelit windows and intermittent snow. The streets were empty of night-time hawkers and whores, for it was already after curfew. Just the usual assortment of ragged and yelping dogs that owned the streets after dark.

  The carriage drew up at an imposing stone house and Jay descended, his boots sinking in the snow. He walked ahead, whilst the burly coachman helped her out. She picked up her skirts to lift them clear of the ground and tiptoed as quickly as she could in the slippery conditions. A servant opened the door and ushered him up a staircase into a stuffy retiring room and Ella followed, hands gripping tight onto her fan. She walked with her back rigid and her head up, playing the lady, ready to make an impression on these famous gallants of the king’s acquaintance.

  The four gentlemen in the room were playing cards and barely glanced up from the table. Ella was disconcerted to see she was the only woman in the room.

  ‘Ah, Whitgift. Good,’ said one of the men, smiling at him and beckoning him over. ‘Filthy weather, isn’t it?’

  ‘Is that the girl?’ asked another, giving her a cursory glance. He was dressed in an oriental robe and a soft turban-like cap. Jay started to speak but before he could answer he shook his head. ‘Well, she won’t do. A yellow-haired maid is no good. Not for the stage. The fashion is for les brunettes, dark girls. They look more striking from a distance.’ He looked at Ella as if she was something distasteful. He turned impatiently back to his cards. ‘Why did not anyone tell me that she was blonde,’ he grumbled.

  ‘You didn’t ask,’ Jay said.

  ‘Don’t heed Mohun, you can join us for the next round. Here, have a drink,’ said a corpulent gent, raking a pile of coins towards him on the table. ‘Buckhurst’s brought a cask.’

  One of the other men looked up from his hand of cards to stare at them both, then winked at Jay. Buckhurst was a younger man than Jay, she guessed, with a crop of black curly hair tied back with a large bow, and a lovelock dangling over one eye.

  Jay helped himself to a glass of wine. He waved Ella to the upright chair near the door. She sat down, hot with humiliation. She sat still, unsure what was expected of her, and wondering how long she must watch them play cards. The room blazed with the heat of the fire and a number of dripping candlesticks, both free-standing and on the table. The table was a delicate item of expensive polished wood, but the surface of it was marred by great pools of wax from the candles, and numerous drinking cups sitting in wet patches of wine.

  The men continued to play, all except Jay, gambling for larger and larger sums of money. Ella sat upright on the chair, whilst the men ignored her, as if she was an unwanted item of furniture. But before long she became engrossed in f
ollowing the game. The amount of the wagers horrified her. They were betting their gold, their horses, even their land. At one point the corpulent man, whom they called Sedley, was on a losing streak, and she heard him say to Jay, ‘Bridge us a loan, won’t you, Whitgift?’

  Jay nodded, and brought out a fat purse. ‘Two shillings to the pound, by the end of the month,’ he said. He counted out the coins and they shook hands, the game continuing until the gentleman with the lovelock, Buckhurst, who was obviously the worse for drink, bet his entire stable. Ella could not imagine how anyone could do such a thing. She was mightily relieved when he won, and his horses were saved, to much rowdy cheering from the men.

  ‘Hey, fellows, did you hear about Winstanley?’ Sedley said.

  ‘No, what about him?’ said Mohun.

  ‘A few years ago he gambled his estate away to Lord Wessex in a dispute about a horse. They played dice. The one who won got the nag and the house. Winstanley lost, and he had to pack his wife and family off, send them to the back of beyond – Kingsbridge I think it was, to live with his sister. About a month ago he persuaded Wessex to play again, and guess what? He won it back!’ There was much laughter.

  Sedley continued. ‘He’s turned simple since though. He’s had the emblem of the winning card, the Ace of Clubs, included in the family crest and now it’s everywhere – on the border of the tapestries in the hall, above the front door, even on the caps of the chimneys. Wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a club on all the piss pots too!’

  The men laughed uproariously.

  ‘Good old Winstanley!’ said Buckhurst, glancing at Ella to see her reaction.

  Ella pretended to laugh, a small sound from the back of her throat, but privately she was appalled. To think of the poor wife! That her home, everything she held dear, all her precious things, could be lost overnight on the mere throw of a dice! And yet she must live under his roof again, knowing that everything she owned might be lost on a whim, with no warning at all.