But at the same time, deep down, she knew why she was worrying about the ins and outs of this story, when in some ways it would have been more practical to worry about protecting her own business. She’d done what she could to look after her business, for now. Dickon had promised it his continued protection.
She had to rely completely on that promise, too, since all her other connections—Jane, Lord Hastings, Princess Elizabeth—were now of so little value. Now all that remained was to see if Dickon was a man of his word, if he’d be minded to keep promises.
She sat up straighter in the boat. She was trying not to think about Dickon. Everything was uncertain. He’d have to release Jane before she could even begin to hope.
Isabel couldn't think what the racket was as she walked into the Claver house at Catte Street. The voices sounded too deep for the silkwomen, the footsteps too sturdy.
It was only when she got into the great hall that she saw. A dozen strangers were crammed in, staring round in frank curiosity at Alice and Anne and the hangings, and helping themselves hungrily from the platters the kitchen boy was hurriedly handing round. Men and women both, all with black curls and lustrous eyes; all indescribably filthy. She couldn’t catch a word they were saying.
There were trunks and bags everywhere.
It was only when she saw the bowl of pomegranates that she began to guess. She looked round. He had more gray hair than before, but his dark-brown eyes, liquid and long- lashed as ever, were on her with just the same playful devotion she remembered.
He was unfurling his cloak with a flourish. “What a fool I am to have arrived on a Friday; no meat!” he was saying, in his flamboyant way—the cheerful, carefree way that had been hers, all of theirs, before Friday 13th. It seemed another life. His warmth was infectious. She flung herself into his arms in front of all of them, grinned over his shoulder at Alice with a cheekiness she’d almost forgotten, and cried: “Goffredo!”
If Goffredo's return was a good omen , there was better to come. They let Jane out on the Sunday night, but first they made her publicly repent of her sins. She had to walk barefoot through the City, carry ing a lighted taper. And she was allowed to wear nothing more than a kirtle.
If the crowds that gathered to watch her pass, praying in her circle of light, were supposed to jeer and snicker and jostle and try to pull up her skirt and peer down her shift and hurl rotten fruit and dog turds and cobblestones at the whore in nothing but her linen, to enjoy the sight of her delicate white coverings and skin turning mottled and discolored, to have fun watching her flinch and cry out in pain, they were a disappointment.
Instead, the audience fell silent and stared at her beauty. She was one of them: a Londoner. Some even prayed with her.
Perhaps they’d had their fill of blood at the executions the day before, when four ordinary London citizens—strangers who’d got talking in a tavern, like everyone else was doing, about where the two princes, last seen in the Tower, could have disappeared to, and then, somehow, found themselves plotting a rescue—had been beheaded on Tower Hill.
Jane’s jailers at Ludgate were certainly happy enough when Isabel and Alice Claver and Anne Pratte, flanked by a quietly triumphant crowd of silkwomen, picked up their prisoner. It was just after nightfall. Jane was waiting for them, in a quiet dove- gray gown over the kirtle she’d walked through London in. It was still as snowy white as they’d delivered it the previous day. She was praying when they came for her; she’d prayed more in her days at Ludgate than Isabel remembered her ever having done before.
She was calm as she got up to go. She gave the three men in the gate lodge gifts of all the sweetmeats she’d been brought, divided evenly; she shook each one’s hand and thanked them for their patience with her visitors, in a huskier, more tired voice than usual, but with loving looks.
Isabel gave the head gateman a little bag of coins as they left.
“A thank-you to all of you for all your kindness,” she murmured; and she was touched to see his rheumy eyes fill.
He said gruffly: “Glad to see her out of here. It wasn’t right. But it’ll be lonely without her. We were just getting used to the crowds.” He was still harrumphing sentimentally and blowing his nose as the pro cession of women set off .
Isabel thought John Lambert should have come to London for his daughter’s release. She’d noticed, with scorn, that although her father had written to Jane at Ludgate Prison, he’d cautiously sent the letters to Catte Street rather than to the jail; he wasn’t the type to want to be too closely associated, in public, with an enemy of the king. She’d even suggested Jane ask him to come and show support. But Jane had just laughed forgivingly whenever Isabel complained about their father’s cowardice: “But he’s right, Isabel; he has to be careful. Anyway, what about his gout? He can hardly move these days. It wouldn’t be right to force him up to town. It wouldn’t help.”
Jane wasn’t laughing now. She was looking ahead, not meeting any eyes. “I so want to get home,” she said. “Away from people staring.”
“We’re staying to night at Catte Street,” Isabel reminded her gently. Perhaps Jane hadn’t understood before that her own house had been shut up, ransacked and confiscated?
Jane paused, as if thinking; then nodded. “Catte Street.”
They put her to bed in Isabel’s room. She was pliant, yielding, and remote. She said nothing except a faint “good night” to Alice and Anne. But when Isabel, the last to leave, was about to draw the bed curtains and slip away with her candle, Jane pleaded,“Stay with me a while,” and Isabel, happy to see a flicker of life in her sister’s eyes at last, not wanting to leave her alone in a strange place with her disturbing memories, put down her candle and sat down on the blankets, taking Jane’s hands.
“They haven’t finished with me, have they?” Jane said faintly.
“They told me . . . there . . . That there was word I’d have to be interrogated again. By the King’s Solicitor.”
She was clinging to Isabel’s hands, and there was anguish in her eyes.
Isabel didn’t like the way her sister’s eyes made her feel.
She’d been saving her news to tell Jane once she’d slept, but perhaps now would be the right time to reassure her. This was the best thing Robert Lynom had done yet. “Yes, but,” she said cheerfully, “can you guess who the new King’s Solicitor is?”
Jane shook her head. “I don’t know anyone now,” she whispered; and Isabel felt guiltier still for having tried to play guessing games with her.
“ThomasLynom,” Isabel replied gently. “Robert’s twin. A friend.” And she watched the slow answering smile spread across Jane’s face, and sat with her until she fell asleep.
She would see Dickon again.
Jane was changed—wounded, quiet, prayerful—but at least she was free. Dickon had kept his word. The thought filled her with joy; it was all she could do to keep it from her sister, who spent her days dozing in the bed they were sharing again, like children.
Isabel even managed to meet Will Caxton’s eyes when the wiry printer came to call. He’d brought a little posy for Jane. He’d scrubbed most of the blue stains off his hands. His bony, freckled face was a study in anxious solicitousness. “She’s got so thin,” he kept saying, after she’d come downstairs for a few minutes to thank him. “So pale.” Alice and Anne fed him and wouldn’t leave his side, so there was no real danger of unwanted confidences. But Isabel was grateful for his delicacy anyway; in the one moment she had been left alone with him, and he’d raised frank eyes to hers, he’d just patted her hand and said, “You must have been so worried,” and then, with great kindness, “You couldn’t possibly have thought this would happen. You mustn’t blame yourself.”
There were five days till Friday.
On Monday the contracts were given out for the vestments for King Richard III’s forthcoming coronation. After an hour of frantic pushing and shoving at Old Jewry, waiting for news of who would be assigned which task, peace descended on the
markets. The mercers who’d got contracts retired to their workshops with satisfied looks on their faces to sew and cut and embroider round the clock. The others vanished indoors to hide their disappointment. The House of Claver, represented in the crush by Isabel, did well. There was one commission to supply cloth for the queen’s train. And Anne Pratte was asked, personally, to make three mantle laces of purple silk with tassels and buttons of the same stuff , mixed with Venetian gold thread, and another set of white rather than purple—one for the king and one for the queen.
Walking home, letting herself take plea sure in the moment, feeling proud of her business’s well- deserved reputation, Isabel happened upon one of the London Italians walking out of St.
Thomas of Acre. It was Dr. Gigli, portly and quivering in black velvet.
“Ah, it is Mistress Claver,” he said suavely. “I see from your face you have done well with the contracts.”
She smiled and bowed, remembering that Dr. Gigli was the physician who’d gone north with Dickon to treat his sickly nephew.
“Yes, we’ve been honored twice over,” she replied, with carefully mea sured professional boastfulness. “What a compliment to our silkwomen.”
He nodded and beamed back, asking with great charm for details.
Once the Claver commissions had been discussed to their mutual satisfaction, she turned to go. Then, as if suddenly remembering something, she added casually: “You’ve been traveling, I understand? You must be just back from Middleham?”
Dr. Gigli bowed. He was too much of a politician to look surprised at her knowledge. But he looked regretful as he raised his head. “A while ago now,” he said. “Two weeks.”
“I hope your patient is restored to good health?” she asked solicitously. “Young George Neville . . .”
Dr. Gigli lowered his head again. “Regrettably . . . ,” he murmured. He crossed himself.
So the boy had died. Isabel listened carefully. Dr. Gigli had thought his patient had nothing worse than an ague. He’d cupped him and prescribed a special diet, and young George Neville’s condition had seemed to improve. Until the evening when George Neville’s fever came back with a vengeance. He’d passed away by dawn.
“My lord Gloucester must have been distressed,” Isabel said sympathetically.
“Ah . . . but he did not hear at once . . . he was already on his way to London by the time it happened,” Dr. Gigli replied, like her, not quite calling Dickon “His Majesty.” There were no agreed names yet for the turmoil of the past few weeks. “I had to break the news to him here, myself, at Crosby’s Place, once I’d reached London. And that was only last Thursday . . . the day before . . .”
He hesitated, felt for the right phrase to describe the day of the change of power. Then he gave up, said helplessly, “all that,” and waved his fat ringed hands instead. “He was distressed, of course.
The boy was his blood, after all. But he had pressing affairs of state to consider too. When I heard, the next day . . .” he gestured again, “about . . . all that . . . I understood why he’d been in such haste.”
There was the beginning of a frown on Dr. Gigli’s well- padded brow. Something must have worried him about the way Dickon had received the news he’d have broken so diplomatically. But he composed himself. Smoothed down his black velvet over his paunch and smiled a full, superb smile in Isabel’s direction. “It was a long journey,” he added, then yawned magnificently, “and I am still a little travel- weary. Forgive me.”
With all the smiles and ceremoniousness she could muster, Isabel bowed him on his way.
But the doubt he hadn’t wanted to discuss dragged at her fragile new happiness. Like Dr. Gigli, she didn’t want to think about 3 what the story might mean. Still, she couldn’t stop herself wondering. Had the death of that boy, which had threatened Dickon’s landholdings in the North, been part of his decision, immediately afterward, to take the crown? She hurried home, not giving herself time to dwell on that thought.
On Tuesday morning a merry Goffredo took his Italian teams to Westminster, on foot. Their trunks and bags were going by river, but so many foreigners would attract attention on the wherries. It was safer to walk. Isabel was to join them at the silk house on Friday night. “We will cook you a magnificent dinner, cara,”
Goffredo promised.
For the rest of Tuesday and through Wednesday and Thursday, Isabel worked with Anne Pratte on the royal mantle laces for the coronation. “It will do you good to do something normal,”
Anne Pratte said, firmly, giving her the white set for the queen.
Isabel would rather have made the purple set Dickon was to wear.
But she submitted. It was something to do, to keep her from her thoughts. And Friday was almost here.
There was a palfrey tethered outside the Red Pale. She only really believed he’d be in the room once she’d seen it. She tiptoed upstairs, suddenly as quiet and shy as an innocent. He was sitting on the bed, reading his Book of Hours. He hadn’t seen her. She looked at him for a moment without moving, smiling with happiness.
A floorboard creaked. He looked up. She could see in the lightening of his eyes that he’d doubted she’d come. Hesitantly, she said: “I’m here.”
He opened his arms. She ran to him.
She lost herself for what seemed like hours in the beauty of their lovemaking. Joy filled her heart. His touch meant so much to her. . . .
“What are you thinking?” he murmured into her ear, when it was over, putting an arm over her chest. He was smiling, lazily.
She kissed him very tenderly on the mouth. She knew she had to ask. But a dreamy melancholy was settling on her even before she did. She knew the answer he’d give, too.
“When did you find out George Neville was dead?” she whispered.
She could imagine it so well: the chess move Dickon must have suddenly seen he could make. His masterstroke. Dr. Gigli mournfully bowing and scraping as he made his announcement, Dickon’s mind, razor- sharp, racing ahead to how his own northern lands were compromised by the child’s death. So full of the troubles facing him that he could hardly bring himself to acknowledge the fat Italian. Then realizing he had another young nephew in his hands, right here and now. Realizing there might be a quicker, more effective way of shoring up his position than struggling through layers of Woodvilles to beg for his royal nephew’s help. Thinking: Wouldn’t it be easier just to grab the big prize and stop bothering about the details?
Dickon’s eyes flickered. He knew she knew. Without moving, he said: “The day before . . .” Even he didn’t know what to call the day he’d seized power. He hesitated. She nodded. It was just as she’d thought.
He added hastily, “but that’s not why.”
But his eyes told a different story. They both knew it.
They went on staring at each other. Eons passed. I should go, she thought. Everything he’s told me has been a lie. Everything I suspected was true. He murdered Hastings deliberately, so he could steal power. Disgraced Jane. Maybe murdered his nephews too.
But she knew she wouldn’t go. And he knew too.
So there was no point in recriminations. The sadness in her eyes, and his, wasn’t farewell. It was an acknowledgment, on his part, of crimes he’d committed for power; and, on her part, that she didn’t care what he’d done as long as he was there. They were grieving, together, for the one victim of his coup on her heart: their lost innocence.
When she did, finally, get up and begin dressing, he watched from the bed.
“Will you come back?” he said, and his voice was humble.
Gently, she nodded.
She might try to tell herself later that there were sound practical reasons for her to stay with Dickon; she could even imagine trying to fool herself into believing she was just looking after her business by being here. But she knew that wasn’t why.
She’d looked into the depths of his soul. She hadn’t found it in her to recoil. How could she say no now?
Instead,
hating the terrible joy she could feel crackling through her, she just muttered “Friday,” and slipped out into the burning summer afternoon.
CHESS
13
autumn 1483
"Health and wealth and happiness to us all!”
Alice Claver declaimed, making up in volume for what her voice lacked in clarity, and every cup in the room was raised to her in wobbly candlelight. There was a whisper of translation, then smiles.
It had taken till the end of summer, but the workshop was up and running. The dormitories were full. The cook-pots in the kitchen were bubbling with warm foreign- scented herbs now the harvest was in and Michaelmas approaching. No one in London had found the Clavers out as they spirited the Italians away downriver. And none of the neighbors in Westminster thought anything much of the new machines whirring next to Will Caxton’s, or the new foreigners groping their uncertain way round the streets. Thank God for Will Caxton, Alice thought, not for the first time.
The machines astonished her. Goffredo had risen magnificently to the occasion. As well as the looms, he’d also brought the two devices they’d talked about last year, the machines she’d heard were gaining popularity in Venice and saved untold amounts of labor. Both were giant wooden frames suspended from the ceil-ing. One contraption, if you wound it, could draw up dozens of strands of silk at once straight from the boiled silkworm cocoons and throw them, and another could reel dozens of thrown or twisted threads together ready for use. She’d never seen anything like either of them.
But Alice loved the looms best. Loved watching as the quiet younger brother of Gasparino di Costanzo, the master weaver, strung the first one up with its spiderweb of subtle gray and tan warps and tan and gray wefts, or as Gasparino’s thin dark hands flew between the complicated arrangements of strings and threads and bobbins, lifting, pushing, combing, until the cloth began to glow and flow with fantasy foliage. Gasparino and Alvise and Marino and their families couldn’t yet speak enough English to explain themselves except through signs, so Goffredo helped. “For this pattern,” he told Alice, who was always hungry for explanations, “you need three paired main warps and one binding warp; the main warps are a mixture of tan and gray silk, and we’ve used tan silk alone for the binding warp. The main wefts are the same mixture of gray and tan silk; and the pattern weft is pure tan silk.”
Figures in Silk Page 29