Circle of Pearls

by Rosalind Laker

  Adam gave her his arm as they went down the steps into the crypt, which was arched in Gothic style and lay beneath the floor area of the whole Cathedral. At first Christopher’s tomb was hard to find. They searched individually in various directions until at last she found it.

  ‘He’s lying here,’ she said quietly. ‘He always was a shy and retiring man.’

  The plain, unadorned tomb was in a secluded corner that could be easily missed. Buried nearby was his daughter, Jane, who had been so dear to him. The inscription on his tomb read in Latin: Under this stone lieth the Builder of this Cathedral, Christopher Wren, who lived for more than ninety years, not for himself but for public good. Then, most poignantly, there followed: Reader, if you seek his monument, look around you.

  ‘How apt,’ Adam said, putting his arm around Julia’s shoulders. ‘No man has ever done more to enhance a city or his own land than he.’

  They stayed a little while and then left again. On their way home to Chiswick they passed many of the lovely churches with their soaring spires that Christopher had set like jewels about London. He had never allowed any of his workmen to swear when building a holy place, each church an expression of his own committed Christian faith. If his plan for the City had been accepted, it would have been a capital of graceful avenues, each converging on a piazza on which would have stood one of the beautiful buildings that he had had to build elsewhere, such as the Royal Exchange and the Custom House, but there had been opposition on grounds of expense and through legal difficulties over land and property rights, which had defeated his purpose. Nevertheless London had risen again in brick and stone with wide streets, leafy parks and much architectural splendour to become the cleanest city in the world, with sewers instead of open drains and much good water supplied. It was also again the wealthiest with nothing to show of the great calamity that had flattened it.

  Among the Wren buildings that Adam and Julia passed on their homeward journey was the Royal Hospital at Chelsea, which was a home for maimed and retired old soldiers that had been commissioned by Charles II at Nell’s instigation, for with her soft heart she had always been touched by the plight of those who had fought well and been left to beg on the streets. The inmates toasted that merry monarch on every Founder’s Day and never forgot to salute the memory of pretty, witty Nell, who had achieved fame on the stage and finally won the King’s heart, outliving him by only two years.

  Julia thought to herself how swiftly the years had gone by. She was about the age now that Katherine had been when displaying the treasured Elizabethan gown to her at Sotherleigh. It was high time she did something to ensure its preservation, but much as she loved her granddaughters there was not one she could single out for the task and her great-granddaughters were as yet too young. There was only one course open to her and, always practical, she decided to carry it out that day.

  Upon arrival home she hurried up to what she thought of as her casket room, for it was where she kept in carved boxes ribbons of every design that Anne had ever embroidered. It was a craft that had faded away now, woven ribbons having become very fanciful and elaborate and quite lovely. Also in the casket room was the old black chest in which the Elizabethan gown had always been kept. She had not wanted to remove the gown from it and Michael had had it transported from Sotherleigh to Chiswick for her shortly before Mary gave birth to the first of their three daughters.

  Now she lifted the lid and picked up the box with the ruff and farthingale and the golden shoes, all of which she carried through to the bedchamber that had become known as the Elizabeth Room. Because of its charm her granddaughters had always competed to sleep there, establishing a tradition that seemed bound to continue. Proof of this was when her three-year-old great-granddaughter on a recent visit made a special request.

  ‘Please, Grandmother! May I sleep in ’beth’s room?’

  ‘Me too!’ echoed another young one.

  That pleased her. She had her reasons for making the room a link with Sotherleigh. She placed the items she was carrying on a chair and then returned to gather up the gown in its soft lawn coverings to bear it through to the Elizabeth Room. There she uncovered it and laid it across the bed exactly as it had been when first shown to her. Patience and Katy had both worn it on their wedding days, but it would have fitted none of her daughters-in-law and in any case they had not been interested, all being young and frivolous young women at the time. Neither had young Robert’s bride worn it. She was a Frenchwoman whom he had met in Paris when visiting his childhood haunts, and she had been married from Sotherleigh in a gown of such Parisian elegance that all these years later it was still spoken of when the family reminisced.

  Julia went to some beautifully carved mouldings that framed the panels of the walls, informal garlands of flowers that gave the room such charm and caused it to be so enchanting to young girls, who liked to think themselves in a bower as they preened and primped before the mirror there.

  She touched one carved leaf and then another, which sent a cunningly concealed drawer to emerge from the panelling at waist level. It was typical of Christopher’s ingenuity that he should have designed such an unusual hiding place.

  ‘It’s for the Elizabethan gown’s safe-keeping,’ he had said when first revealing it to her. ‘I know how much it means to you.’

  As she laid the ruff and the farthingale into the secret drawer, together with the golden shoes, she happened to knock the brim of her hat against the wall and realized that in her eagerness she had forgotten to remove it. She went across to take it off in front of the mirror with the stump-work that she had embroidered long ago. The girls loved the little door with Queen Elizabeth on it, which was why it was hanging here in this room. It reflected now a face that was an older version of that of the fifteen-year-old who had first looked in it. She could see a likeness to her mother, as happened with women as the years advanced. Sweet Anne, who had lived to a considerable age, getting a little more vague all the time, had simply closed her eyes one day like the flower she had been embroidering closing its petals for the night.

  Julia took her hat through to her bedchamber. In the anteroom she sat down at her bureau and wrote a brief history of the gown and how it came to be the only one belonging to the royal lady that was saved. When she had sealed what she had written, she returned with it to the Elizabeth Room where she stood to look again at the gown that had played such a part in her life. She touched the embroidery for the last time and smoothed a hand over the shimmering satin. It showed its age now, but the flower slips still looked as fresh as if the blooms had been plucked and embroidered only a few days before.

  As for the drop-pearls, their lustre was undimmed. She slid her fingers under them and was as full of wonder at their beauty as when a child she had viewed them for the first time. Now she knew that they were mellow with the dreams of the women who had worn the gown they adorned.

  Slowly she swathed the gleaming gown in its lawn wrappings. Lifting it up carefully over both arms, she carried it across to lay it full length in the secret drawer. Lastly she placed the sealed history beside it. Then, with one slight twist of another carved leaf, the drawer went sliding away out of sight.

  She did not linger, except to pause in the doorway and send a little kiss of farewell from her fingertips in the direction of the treasure she had concealed. Then she went downstairs to go outside where Adam was waiting to stroll with her in the rose garden.

  It was her fervent hope that in many decades to come one of their descendants, maybe a girl much as she herself had been, with chestnut curls and a sense of history, would discover that secret place with its treasure within. Then the pearls, which had linked up the past, would draw the future into a gleaming circle. In her mind’s eye she could almost see the young face full of wonder. Surely such a girl would find a way to share the beauty of the great Tudor Queen’s gown with another century and a new age.

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