The Woman in the Shadows: Tudor England through the eyes of an influential woman

by Carol McGrath

  I could see a shadowy figure beyond my bed curtains and immediately through my awakening state a deep fear gripped me. My heart began beating too fast against my ribs; my eyelids shot wider open. Someone was surely hovering about my chamber. I clutched the covers, closed my eyes again against the fast-moving apparition and tried to scream, but only a croak issued forth. I tried again. This time, my voice returned in a long roar.

  It was only Meg who thrust her face through the half-opened bed curtains. Her night bonnet was askew on top of her dark wild curls and her face was creased into a hundred worry lines. She grabbed my arm and hissed, ‘Mistress, hurry, there’s a blaze.’

  I sat up and began to swing my legs over the edge of the bed. ‘By the Virgin and all her holy relics, the kitchen’s not on fire is it?’

  ‘No. Outside. It’s the wool store.’ She dragged the bed curtains wide open and pushed my cloak into my arms. ‘Hurry, quick, no time to lose. Your cloak, your shoes!’

  The church bell was ringing slowly, long haunting peals, signalling that there was fire in the neighbourhood. Jumping down from my high bed, I thrust past her and raced to the casement window. The full moon cast an eerie light that tried to squeeze through overhanging gabled buildings. Looking down into the narrow tunnel that was Wood Street, below the protruding casements, I saw my neighbours still dressed in their Midsummer revelling cloaks and masks, milling into the alley beside the house. Wreaths of dark smoke floated above their heads and over the leather buckets they clutched, drifting from behind my house out of the alley that led to the yard and my storage building. Two of Cripplegate’s constables yelled at them to form an orderly chain. Already the line of neighbours stretched towards the conduit where Wood Street met Little Wood Street and buckets were being passed from person to person. Others raced past carrying pitchforks.

  I spun around and ran from the room, not stopping to pull on slippers, into the chamber across the corridor, where I knelt on the window seat and threw open the shutters. The pungent smell of smoke immediately caught in my throat, causing me to step back. I drew my cloak over my nose and mouth and looked out into the garden and the yard. My warehouse was on fire. The mulberry tree in the garden blocked the true nature of the pandemonium beyond the garden but I could see pewter-coloured smoke rising. I could hear shouting, the crash of timbers, the hiss as water reached flames. My cloth was burning. I could smell it.

  A gigantic flame jumped and licked up above neighbouring rooftops. It glared at me, rising high above the garden wall like a great flowing dragon’s breath of fire and smoke. I could see shadowy figures like sticks moving about the garden. I heard myself scream at the danger that threatened our very lives. We must stop the burning before it swallowed my stable as well as the storehouse and reached the wooden houses beyond. As I watched, more arching flickering flames grew large and diminished as water hissed on contact. A breath later, they reached up and lessened again as the fire fighters down in the yard attempted to quench them. All my hopes for my business were undone with those greedy flames. They would devour the woven wool for the monasteries that we had purchased in May, business that I desperately needed. A moment later and tiles from the roof came crashing down. I screamed again.

  Meg pulled me away from the casement. ‘Hurry.’ She thrust my shoes at me. ‘Out now, Mistress, out into the yard. If it spreads we will be trapped.’

  I pulled the shoes on, reached up and fastened my cloak, fingers fumbling awkwardly at the neck button. My hair flying behind me in a mass of silvery curls, I ran down the staircase and out of the emptied house, Meg’s frantic footsteps came clattering behind mine.

  ‘Where are the servants?’ I shouted once we reached the garden. ‘Have they returned yet - from the revels? Is it after midnight?’

  ‘Yes it is. In the yard; all the servants are outside. The apprentices and Gerard are trying to put out the fire.’

  We exited the back entrance by the store rooms. The garden was filling with smoke and it was hot. We held our cloak edges up to our faces and coughed as we hurried past the herb beds and rounded the mulberry tree. We were quickly surrounded by drifting, stinking, dark clouds. The gate into the yard lay wide open. My household maids hung about it, helplessly holding hands, coughing, weeping and pulling their cloaks over noses and mouths. There was a great sudden cracking noise and sparks flying across the yard flew at them. In unison, they screamed. Little Bessie, only twelve years old, jumped up and down shaking them from her cloak, stamping them out on the cobbles, her fair hair flying everywhere. The flames licked up once again and a great heat blew around the yard and into the garden. My maidservants fell back against the wall almost knocking each other over in their hurry to escape the flying, hot embers.

  ‘Get back, get back,’ a voice yelled towards us. Its owner was invisible through the glowing cinders and clouds of smoke, but I recognised it as belonging to one of our parish wardens. There were the splashes of water spilling and shouts of, ‘Get out of the way.’

  The maids retreated into the garden, pushing through the gate, but instead of staying with them, I elbowed past the backwards flow, out through the gate, determined to see if my building could be saved, even if the cloth could not.

  ‘Come back, Mistress,’ Meg shouted at my back. Ignoring her, I shook my head and ploughed forward.

  Water ran in thin rivulets through gaps in the stones to lick around my feet. I glimpsed the shadowy shapes of the apprentices leading my two whinnying horses from the stable into the alley, past a ghostly line of neighbours with pails who shouted, ‘Hurry,’ as they passed their buckets along.

  The boys were safe. I heard their shouts of ‘Make way,’ as they led the stamping, snorting animals towards the alley.

  I peered through acrid smoke that gathered about the yard, rising up in fat grey clouds, leaking through gaps in buildings, billowing up towards the moon and stars.

  Meg was by my side again, pulling me back, crying, ‘Mistress, come away.’

  I shook her arm off and walked through the fire-fighters and neighbours and male servants, coughing and spluttering, stepping anxiously over hot embers, searching through the choking smoke, sweeping an arm across my forehead, mopping away the dripping sweat that was stinging my eyes, as I attempted to make a count of my remaining servants.

  Toby was missing. Where was Cook?

  I pushed through tight knots of neighbours searching for them. At last, I saw my cook. He was organising others with buckets of water as they attempted to quench the fire, but nowhere could I see Toby. Though they were containing the fire, tiles crashed onto the cobbles and smaller flames rose. Timbers collapsed. I jumped away from a descending tile as if a hobgoblin had leapt from the fiery building ready to seize me. There was another bang. Fire drops burst out at us yet again from the building’s smouldering frame. I smelled my own singeing hair and reached up. The trailing end curls escaping my hood had been caught by a spark. I frantically beat out the burning and stuffed my hair back inside my cloak.

  Another leaping malicious flame rose into a high pillar. The fire-fighters worked hard to quench it as helplessly I watched. For a moment as the flames were dying down and I could see inside the storehouse. What I had lost was illuminated by a strange rosy light; a heap of burning cloth, timbers and chests reduced to ash and embers of smouldering wood. Even a great dye cauldron, we rarely used, had melted into a pool of molten iron. Everything was destroyed. I cursed the Devil. I cursed Midsummer. I cursed the exhausted sleep that had rendered me insensible to the danger of fire. I stopped close of cursing God who had allowed this terrible thing to happen. I was too shocked to weep.

  It was then, as I stood helplessly staring at the destruction of my goods, that a man’s voice hissed into my ear, ‘Sin never goes unpunished, widow.’ I spun around but he was already vanishing into the smoke, hurrying away towards the alley. He had appeared by my side as a malicious shadow, and with an intake of breath he was gone. In that moment, I remembered my dead husband. Who here
knew what he had been when living? God did - God did, and this destruction was our punishment, his and mine.

  Those near me had not heard the shadow’s words. They were focused on the ghastly spectacle before them, drawing back and forward, passing water to quench the last flames, not taking any notice of me, but someone had known whom I was. Someone had been watching for me.

  Was I being punished for concealing my husband’s sin? Were all my servants safe? Where was the watch boy? Roused by fear to action, I pushed through those standing near me, heard a few mutters of ‘the widow’ as I reached Gerard Smith. I caught hold of his loose shirt sleeve. ‘Is everyone safe?’ I shouted above the rumble of dying flames, the crackle of burning and sizzling of water.’

  I still had not seen our watchman.

  ‘Yes, mistress,’ he shouted back. ‘No one has burned though it may have been the intent.’

  ‘How,’ I said, helplessly, trying to keep anger from my voice. ‘Where was Toby then? He was on guard duty tonight. Where is he?’

  Smith shook his head, lifted a bucket, tossed water on the expiring flames, and when that was done, he looked at me with anger on his blackened face. ‘I know not, Mistress, nor do I care. The boy disobeyed my orders. We were out in the streets, me and the apprentice lads, watching the revellers return from the Smithfield bonfire. Someone could have raced down the alley and tossed a torch into the workshop.’ He paused and shrugged. ‘Toby must have followed us out earlier and left the building unguarded. This is the Devil’s work.’ He spat on the ground. Before he reached for a new bucket passed along the chain, he crossed himself. ‘Get back, Mistress. It is no place for you. The master, yes - were he living. For a woman, no.’

  Biting on a sharp retort, I drew back and stood by the garden gate with Meg and my household servants, swallowing my tears. I watched as my storeroom became a heap of burning timbers and charred roof tiles. At last, there was just a terrible heat left and smoke hanging over the yard, clinging to everything in its malodorous path. As a rosy dawn broke and I thanked my neighbours, I saw pity clothe their faces. One merchant said with candour, ‘Someone wants your business, Mistress Williams.’ He shook his head and added, ‘You should think hard before going on by your own. Not work for a woman.’

  ‘Many widowed women have their own businesses.’

  ‘Sell up, Mistress. Get out if you are wise. Go back to your family.’

  I set my shoulders squarely and said to my neighbour, ‘Thank you for helping tonight. I shall rebuild. I have cloth that is selling abroad as we speak. Thank you, sir, for your concern’

  He shook his head and sloped off.

  If the survival of my business was threatened, I knew not from whence the threat came. I tasted salty blood tickle onto my tongue as I chewed my cheek. Tears sprang into my stinging eyes at last. The Company might not support me in my time of need. Many cloth merchants held a resentment of our long-standing business with abbeys in five wards including the great Austin Friars in Broad Street. There were, indeed, those who would wish me ill.

  As I made my way back through the foul-smelling, smoky garden I pondered the fire’s cause. Only Toby would know and Toby’s disappearance was as much as mystery as that of those who had started it.

  ‘Come, Mistress.’ Meg gently took my arm. ‘You need the tub. Thank the Lord for small mercies. We still have a roof over our heads.’

  ‘It will take heaven to move and the stars to smile down on us,’ I said. ‘For we have lost the cloth for the abbeys and look, the garden is ruined too.’

  ‘We have survived. The horses are safe, and we can save what we can from the garden. It looks worse than it is.’

  ‘But Toby is gone. What if he burned to a cinder like the chests and the wool?’

  ‘Maybe he was just afeared and ran, thinking he would be blamed.’

  I shook my head. ‘Maybe, but it seems unlikely.’

  Toby never returned that night and he never came back the next night either. Nor was his body found in the ruined building once everything had cooled enough us to search there. I insisted that the constables made enquiries on my behalf, even offering a reward if Toby was found. The youth was pleasant and diligent; a kind, honourable boy who could use a sword. Something dreadful had occurred to make Toby run away, and it was not the fire, which, of course, was terrible enough.

  ‘We must find my boy,’ I said to the constable when he called on us. Smith stood beside me, his countenance puzzled and still streaked with dirt.

  ‘We shall discover the lad’s whereabouts, Mistress,’ the constable replied, his three chins wobbling. He stood in my office closet and drowned the cup of ale I had proffered, gobbets of foam hanging like droplets of sticky white sap from his little grey beard as he drained the cup. ‘I must be going now. It was a long night,’ he added.

  Smith shook his head. ‘I liked the lad. Trusted him.’

  ‘Who knows what went through that lad’s head. I shall send out the watch to find him. If he is alive, we shall discover him. He will not go unpunished.’

  I shuddered at the thought of Toby’s punishment if the ward decided on his guilt, and called for Meg to show the constable out.

  After he had lumbered off, Smith shook his head, and sipped his ale thoughtfully. ‘Toby is either well on the road out of the City or has vanished beyond the river to Southwark. The streets of Southwark was where the master discovered him. Mistress, but if he is in that place we’ll never track him down.’ He stared at the ledgers piled up on my desk. ‘Best we think of how you can replace that woollen cloth before others take your trade.’

  ‘I shall think of something,’ I said and hurried from the office before I burst into tears of self-pity.

  That night, I sat on my bed-cover, awake for hours thinking of what to do, realising that now I would have to borrow money. I had little coin in my coffers.

  My thoughts uneasily leapt forward. What would Father do when he found out what had happened? I must send him word. Although perhaps he knew it already. Rumour spread faster than fires did in the City. I buried my head in my hands and wept again for what was lost - my husband, my cloth, my reeking garden, and Toby, because I was sure that it was not his fault and that something terrible had happened to him. I was fearful of a voice in the dark.

  This would not do. I leaned my head against my bedpost and drew a deep breath. I wiped away my tears with my apron. This would not do. We would go on. I must.

  Chapter Four

  FATHER CAME TO SURVEY the damage, angry at the vanished watch boy, cursing the lost wool for the monasteries, nagging me to give up my plans to run the business. I stiffened my shoulders and said to him, same as I had told my neighbours, ‘Father, I shall manage.’

  ‘If you need me and you will when you face up to all this,’ he replied sternly, impatiently batting at the air in the hall with his expansive arm, making me feel eighteen again, ‘Send for me.’

  ‘Thank you, Father. You should go now.’ I showed him to the door myself. He was on his way to his premises on Cornhill that morning. Since he assumed that my coffers were filled, I did not enlighten him. The smell of smoke had dissipated somewhat, mingling with whiffs of lavender-scented soap, and since I was busy checking what stores we had left in the kitchen, I did not want him to linger. I needed to collect my thoughts. I needed time.

  He threw one last glance around my hall before passing through the opened door. Susannah and Bessie, two of the maids, were bustling about with armfuls of linen to wash. ‘I shall be back soon, my dear. Your mother worries about you, you know.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure, but no need for Mother to worry. We are putting everything to rights again.’ I closed the door on him with a smile, wiped my hand over my forehead and sank onto a stool in the hall where, only a week before, trestles had been laden with food for a funeral feast. The thought spooled about and around my aching head. What would I do?

  While I thought about procuring a loan, the maids scrubbed the house from top to bottom and
washed our household linen with perfumed water to dispel the smell of smoke. There was no money for fresh linen, even for a cloth merchant. We would make do with what we had. I rolled up my sleeves and helped my maids to pound sheets in the copper kettle we set up in the kitchen beyond the hall.

  The apprentices moved inside the house to share a rough, empty chamber on the third floor. They had previously slept in the storehouse. Gerard Smith kept to his cupboard-sized alcove in one of the indoor storerooms and guarded what remained of our cloth. He remained edgy and anxious for days following the fire. I watched from the upper floor window in the chamber adjoining my own as he disappeared into the yard, staying out for hours trying to salvage what wood he could from the ruined building. From there, my eyes followed him when he returned to the house with hunched shoulders, bent with despair. As the week after St John’s Eve dragged on and there was no news, he became morose. He never said it, but I know he blamed himself for what had happened.

  So many people depended on me now that finding a way to replace the cloth I had lost became urgent. All our nerves were on edge. Meg was snappy, the maids were hushed, Cook grumped about how he had to make ends meet on a pittance and I worried about how I could feed them all.

  A few weeks after the fire, I called my household together and told them that it was necessary to make economies. We began to live on vegetables, cabbages and purple carrots, those that had survived, supping on pottage every day, with fish on Friday and a little meat on Sundays.

  Gentle June hurried into a sweating July. After Thomas Cromwell returned later that month, my father took charge of my share of the payment for my bombazine cloth. To my relief, this would be sufficient to run my household for a few more months, though it was not enough to replace the loss. I did not see Master Cromwell myself because once he delivered my money to Father, he immediately sailed back to Antwerp, and much as I had liked him, I was too worried about my business to mind. Since there was no spare money to buy new cloth, Father’s solution was that I closed up my house, paid off my servants and returned home to Putney.