Juliet Landon

by The Maiden's Abduction

  ‘You, not me. He didn’t know I was here.’

  ‘Yes, he did. He’d heard. He wants you to meet the Duchess. Heavens above, Isolde, most women would leap at the chance of being presented to the Duchess of Burgundy. She is English, you know.’

  ‘I know that,’ she said. ‘She’s Margaret of York, the King’s sister.’

  ‘Margaret of Burgundy now. And it will be an honour for William to have another Englishwoman watch him present his new translation to her. He printed it himself, you know. Here, in Brugge, on his own press.’

  ‘Printed? What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, instead of having scriveners to write each book by hand, William has learned how to put sheets of paper into a thing like a great cheese-press which marks them with words, so now he can print a lot of pages all the same in a matter of moments. It saves so much time. He’s been to Cologne to learn the method from a German printer; a clever chap, Master Caxton. Speaks several languages and translates books from one into another. He’s a Kentishman himself, but you can still hear his twang, can’t you?’

  ‘How long has he lived here in Brugge?’

  ‘Oh, donkey’s years. You must ask him about it some day.’

  ‘Then surely his wife will be there.’

  ‘No, William has never married.’

  She found this remarkable. William Caxton was a man of mature years, but courteous and obviously at ease with women. As a close friend of Margaret of York, Duchess of Burgundy, he must know many women in the ducal household, yet he had not married. ‘Oh. Doesn’t he stand still long enough, either?’

  In the darkness, Silas smiled, caressing her with hand and voice. ‘I’d make little progress with you, maid, by standing still,’ he teased. His hand moved up towards her neck, barely touching the soft skin of her throat with the back of his fingers.

  Trembling, she held herself rigid, hoping that her voice would not betray the melting of her insides. ‘This is foolish talk, sir. We were discussing Master Caxton’s invitation. You must see that there is too little time for me to…’ Slowly, her head was eased round to face him and tipped backwards to rest upon his shoulder, and before she could remember which words came next his mouth on hers made them unnecessary.

  With the same tenderness he had shown during their nights on the boat, he closed her mind again to the fears that plagued her, gentling her lips with all the skill of a master. With the same care, he moved his hands on to the fabric over her breast and held it until she realised what she had allowed. Then, she caught clumsily at his wrist, not knowing in that first moment of awareness how to proceed. ‘No,’ she heard herself say. ‘Please…no.’

  Obediently, the hand caressed and moved away. ‘No,’ he whispered. ‘It’s all right. You’re quite safe. You prefer to sleep with Mistress Cecily now you’re here in Brugge?’

  ‘Yes.’ It was a lie, but not for the world would she have said otherwise.

  ‘Then you have only to tell me when you wish to change your mind.’

  She could have protested that such a thing would never happen, but he sensed the conflict and his next kiss was long and deep, designed to prolong her confusion rather than to banish it completely.

  ‘Now,’ he whispered, keeping her head on his shoulder, ‘let’s talk about tomorrow, shall we?’

  His argument was convincing, although to Isolde the price of acceptance proved to be uncomfortably high. She was, he reminded her, a stranger to Flanders, so how could she know what was being worn at court? Those women with enough hair of their own, he assured her, wore it in elaborate styles threaded with ropes of pearls and jewels after the Florentine and Venetian fashion. The French and Swiss were doing the same. Those who had not enough of their own hair were using false pieces: plaits, chignons, piles of it. She would not need any of that, with her abundance. Jewels? That would present no problem; he had enough for a dozen such coiffures.

  Mei was skilled. She had dressed some of Brugge’s Italian ladies until she had become pregnant when, to please Pieter the Hat, Silas had taken her on as chambermaid.

  ‘Is that his name? The Hat?’

  ‘De Hoed. Hadn’t you noticed? That’s his weakness. And women, of course.’

  ‘And is that your weakness, too?’ She looked away, regretting the childish slip of the tongue. ‘What about my dress? Are crumpled dresses in fashion?’

  Silas had made all three women in his household available to Isolde on the morning of the next day, steaming and smoothing the blue-grey half-silk and fluffing up the snow-weasel fur trims to look like ermine. Cheaper, and almost as effective. The collar made a deep V from shoulder to waist and, when she would have filled the space with a high-necked chemise, Silas turned its edge down with practised fingers to show far more of her bosom than ever she had shown before. She protested that she was in danger of being taken for a courtesan, but Mei indignantly joined forces to silence her protests. This was high, she said, compared to some of the court ladies. She stitched the edges of a wide satin sash tightly together behind Isolde’s back, its top edge resting just below her breasts, supporting them from below and accentuating their full curves. When Isolde attempted to cover herself in a sudden gesture of modesty, Silas took her hands and held them away.

  ‘You’ve nothing to hide,’ he said. ‘Have courage.’

  On receipt of Isolde’s first smile, Mei—named after the month—had come to the conclusion that Isolde could not be the forbidding creature of whom Pieter had warned her, and, with Cecily’s help, made Isolde understand that she had never seen a head of hair as lovely as hers. It required four hands and occasionally five to devise an elaborate creation in which every strand was plaited with gold threads and tied at intervals with pearls threaded on silk. Thin plaits were twisted around thicker ones, coil upon coil, to fill out the back of her head in an intricate maze of red and gold, the smooth front adorned only with a strand of pearls worn like a low crown on her forehead. Finally, the wayward curls at the nape of her neck, which Cecily refused to allow Mei to shave off, were tied with golden cords into tiny bunches. The effect was spectacular. The butterfly had emerged.

  The only jewellery she was allowed to wear was a fine gold chain with a trio of pearls suspended from it, the pearl-shaped pendant falling into the cleft between her breasts.

  ‘Who does it belong to?’ Isolde had asked. Again, she could have bitten her tongue.

  ‘To you, lady.’

  ‘Sir, I cannot accept—’

  At that point Silas had taken her arm in his strong grasp, so that she had had to clutch at her long skirts to stay upright. He had drawn her with little courtesy into Cecily’s small room next to hers and she had thought that he was angry, so stern was his face.

  Holding her by the wrist, he had closed the door. ‘Now, understand me, Isolde,’ he said. ‘So that our inevitable explanations are matched; you are in a position to accept my gifts. You are a guest in my house. You were my guest at York, also. Your father and mine are old friends. He is expected to join us here, by and by. If anyone asks if we have an understanding, tell them to mind their own bloody…no, tell them yes. We have. Nothing official yet, but, dammit, I’ll not have those young court louts nosing about.’

  ‘I shall say nothing of the sort, sir! The only understanding we have is that I am here against my will and against my father’s will. Did you believe that by dressing me up and showing me off at court that would change things? I think they should know the truth right from the start, don’t you?’

  ‘Fine words, but which of us d’ye think they’d be inclined to believe? You or me? Do you not think you’d be taken for a hysterical woman after such an unlikely tale, looking as you do? I have a reputation as being a man of his word. What reputation do you have here?’

  ‘A good question, sir! What reputation I once had is now ruined, thanks to you. My chances of marriage are gone. What could I tell anyone that they’d believe, after this?’

  ‘That you’re mine. They’d believe that, and y
ou’d better start believing it, too. You have a half-hour before we go. Let me have your answer.’

  He had given her no chance to continue the discussion but had left her to her own devices which, in the deserted garden, had brought her close to tears. The maids had shown her how to keep the excess fabric of her skirt in a bundle just below her bust, but all this preening seemed meaningless in the light of Silas’s harsh demand. She was his only because he had stolen her; it would choke her to admit anything else.

  She was watching one of the cats playing with an injured mouse when he strode into the garden wearing a deeper tone of the same blue-grey half-silk, gold-embroidered, white-furred, and with full sleeves that showed a slash of white shirt at the elbows. The wide shoulders needed no padding, nor the chest where narrow pleats radiated from the waist and the frill that cascaded over perfectly formed buttocks. His hat was an inverted plant-pot of velvet, its brick-red echoed again in his tight hose that extended at the toe into long points. The choice of colours appeared to reinforce his belief that he and she were a pair.

  ‘Well?’ he said, coming to stand before her, noting her stillness and moistened eyes.

  Isolde watched how the cat took the mouse gently into its mouth and carried it off into a tangle of madder leaves. ‘You look very grand, sir,’ she whispered. ‘You, at least, are making some kind of statement about our relationship.’

  ‘Isolde.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Your answer, if you please.’

  She allowed her eyes to wander with some purpose over his strongly handsome face, partly to keep him waiting for every second of the allotted time. He was an exceptionally fine-looking man. Had he gone this far with other women? Was all this really for Felicia’s sake? ‘As long as my father keeps your sister, sir. That’s all.’

  A faint smile disturbed his lips. ‘Or until you change your mind.’

  But to that enigmatic reply she could find no answer, and so she stood like a creature at bay while he took her chin in his hand and kissed her, which she could have prevented, but did not.

  ‘You’ll like the Duchess,’ he whispered, retaining her chin. ‘She’ll know exactly how you feel in a strange country. Just stay by my side, eh?’

  The streets around St John’s Hospital and the imposing cathedral of St Salvator’s were cobbled and by far cleaner than any in York, but Isolde was thankful to be riding rather than walking. Along Silverstreet towards the street of the moneyers, the Duke of Burgundy’s palace was but a short step, time enough for her to form an impression of narrow streets where the signs of silversmiths, harness-makers, lorimers and spurriers threatened to knock them out cold if they rode too near.

  In contrast to the previous day, Isolde looked beyond her fears to what lay ahead, to the irony of meeting a woman who, like herself, was a Yorkist in Flanders. Isolde’s blue-grey gown of half-silk was called Bridges satin by the English because of an early misinterpretation from the correct Brugge satin, and she wondered if the Duchess had done her part to remedy the language problem as Silas and Master William had.

  Across courtyards, up flights of stairs and along galleries they swept in stately procession, through the vast Princenhof to where Master Caxton waited in an anteroom with his book-bearing assistant. The two men were in conversation as Silas and Isolde were ushered in, and the conspicuous blinking and widening of eyes revealed astonishment before the hushed but delighted greeting.

  ‘Mistress Isolde…Silas.’ Caxton’s smile transfigured the otherwise sombre face, too used, Isolde supposed, to poring over manuscripts in poor light. His greying mouse-brown hair, thinning on top, was brushed forward to spout over his ears like rainwater out of gutters, and his eyes and brows had an apologetic downturn, like the corners of his mouth, that changed to wrinkles as he smiled. Predictably, his best serge gown reached the floor, as those of older men did, and the long vestigial scarf draped over one shoulder was like an anchor chain to a soft pudding-basin hat that hung behind. The hands that were held towards hers in greeting were still stained with black at the tips, and he laughed ruefully as they were turned over for viewing. ‘Still hasn’t come off,’ he whispered. ‘D’ye think her Grace will notice?’

  Isolde placed her own upon them. ‘By now, Master William, she’d probably be uncertain of your identity if they were pink.’

  ‘Ah, d’ye know, I’d never thought of that? Well, then.’ He beamed.

  Yesterday, Isolde had wondered whether Master Caxton’s Englishness had, like inkstains, eventually worn off, or whether he still practised the typically English manner of greeting with kisses. She had discovered, soon enough, that he was as English as ever and that he had no intention of forgoing the pleasure. His lips were thin and dry, but as eager as a boy’s.

  ‘This is such an honour, damoiselle,’ he said, enthusiastically. ‘To have an Englishwoman, a beautiful Yorkshire woman, with me on this occasion makes it much more significant. Now…’ he turned to his assistant ‘…I forget my manners. Allow me to present Jan van Wynkyn. I’d not be here today if it were not for him.’

  A tall young man in his early twenties stepped forward, heaving a large leather-bound book easily on to one arm. ‘Vat he means, damoiselle, is that if it were not for me, he’d have been doing this a year ago.’ His accent was heavily German, his diction as immaculate as his appearance except for the inevitable stained fingers. Sweeping his large-brimmed and feathered hat off his head with a flourish, he used it like a scoop to draw Isolde towards him for the same greeting she had bestowed upon his employer, and had it not been for the large book between them, the kiss he took might have lasted even longer. ‘I am agreeable for this English custom,’ he said, seriously. ‘Vee Germans have much to learn.’

  ‘Then go and learn about it in Cologne, minen heere,’ Silas replied, with the same seriousness, placing a supporting hand around Isolde’s upper arm and easing her back to his side.

  Master Jan’s large full-lipped mouth stretched sideways almost to his straight fair hair, undismayed by Silas’s protectiveness. He stepped back a pace with mechanical precision, nodded once, and rounded off his greeting to Isolde with, ‘Meester Caxton told me of your beauty, damoiselle, but alas he has no vay mit vords.’

  The quip, so charmingly delivered, was received with some amusement, and so, when the door opened in the panelling and a young page beckoned them through, the smiles were still in place. With no warning of what to expect, Isolde had thought to find the Duchess surrounded by one or two of her ladies rather than the roomful of quietly conversing noblemen and women who confronted them. And though Silas had warned her of the stares she would have to tolerate, he could surely not have meant anything like this. As she had been bidden, she stayed close to him, and was interested to see that his bows were being acknowledged by several of the men in the room and, if she was not mistaken, by covert glances from the group of lovely young women also, though their eyes were lowered in perpetual modesty. This was not a trait Isolde intended to adopt.

  The room was painted in a soft watery blue and hung with sunny tapestries between which were windows giving views of tiled rooftops, pinnacles and spires. At one end of the room was a high canopied chair cushioned with green, and a tall cupboard on legs displaying an impressive assortment of gold and silver dishes, ewers and plates. The colourful floor was chequered, monogrammed and cyphred, and adorned by two gold-collared gazehounds which, with heads on paws, watched Isolde with eyes like huge dark marbles. She smiled at them and watched their delicate tails whip the floor in unison.

  What astonished Isolde most, however, was not so much the costly fabrics worn by every one of the women but the amazing truncated steeples upon their heads from which floated yards of shimmering gauze reaching almost to the ground. Pointed tents of velvet framed their faces, the edges hanging freely to their shoulders and, instead of showing an inch or two of hair on their foreheads, loops of gold and velvet lay upon the smooth skin where hair should have been. Not only had they plucked their e
yebrows but their foreheads, too.

  ‘Ah, Master Caxton!’ A clear English voice rang through the low hum of voices, and a lady disengaged herself from one group, turning towards her guests and closing the space between them effortlessly, as if on wheels. Her gown was of heavy red silk shot with blue, reminding Isolde at once of Dame Elizabeth’s turban. Undoubtedly, it was of the same fabric. The Duchess’s immense train was held off the floor like a pile of bedding in her arms, and as she reached Master Caxton she dropped it. A young woman came forward to arrange it in a swirl around her feet and then retreated, but not before she had parted with a stare of open curiosity in Isolde’s direction.

  Attention was now focussed upon Margaret of Burgundy, the sister of the English king, Edward IV, who had been given in marriage seven years earlier to Charles, Duke of Burgundy, in the expectation of cementing the friendship and, naturally, continued assistance in England’s troubles with France. Four years ago Edward had had to seek temporary refuge with his brother-in-law here, in Brugge, that much Isolde knew, though she had never expected to meet the woman on whom so much depended. The Duchess was petite and palely attractive, with the natural grace of one born to the position. Around her neck she wore a gold chain and pendant similar to the one Isolde wore, though the Duchess’s wide expanse of bosom left by the V of white fur showed no contours of any great interest, despite the absence of a modest chemise in the triangle.

  Master Caxton dropped on one knee, kissed the Duchess’s offered hand, then rose to bring forward Jan Van Wynkyn, Isolde and Silas. The silence and the stares intensified as Isolde’s name was spoken out loud.

  ‘Mistress Medwin, this is an especial delight. Newly from England? From Yorkshire? I long to hear all you can tell me. Are you being cared for here in Brugge? With Master Silas? Ah, then you are in good hands.’