She heard Will’s voice downstairs, saying, carefully but anxiously, “a chill . . . she’s run down . . .” Will would never enter a woman’s bedroom the way Goffredo was now doing—striding decisively in and taking charge. Will would be too embarrassed; and he was angry with her, in his quiet way.
She was glad it wasn’t Will coming in now. She couldn’t face him yet. She’d confided in him, but he’d only added to her guilt and shame; she wouldn’t be able to look him in the eye until she’d thought how to do as he’d suggested. She needed to think. She was surprised at how relieved she felt to see the worry and affection on Goffredo’s powerful features. Goffredo would cope with everything for her now. She could relax.
He did. He fretted with the sheets for a minute or two, twitching at things, clearing away bowls and water jugs, plumping up her cushions. She lay limply and watched him. Then he twinkled at her from his laughter- lined eyes, and pinched her cheeks. “We need to get some color back in these,” he said briskly. Then he kissed her pinched cheeks. He did it chastely and with great kindness.
“You’ve been working too hard for too long, cara, ” he said gently. “We’ve all been telling you. You need a proper rest. I’m going to get them to bring you some food up now; and then, when you’ve eaten, we’ll wrap you up warm and take you home to Alice.”
They sat in the wherry, with his arm protectively around her and his cloak around them both. There was snow in the air and black in the water. She was slumped into him—too tired to sit up straight, and quietly enjoying his strength and warmth.
“You should marry me, you know,” he said. “Joking apart. It’s time someone looked after you.”
She was feverish. She let herself think about it. Running the weaving business with Goffredo, openly, from the house in Westminster; in a few months, once they’d registered at the Guildhall and proved they had goods of acceptable quality, defying the Italians and selling cloths in the selds and at the King’s Wardrobe.
Talking over the day’s business together. He’d always be laughing, what ever they were doing. Dropping by to see Will Caxton, the neighbor, her friend again; taking the wherry to London on Sundays to spend the day with Alice and the Prattes. Goffredo was old but kind and funny and, now she came to look at him properly, for the first time in years, still handsome. She couldn’t yet imagine making love with him, although she was trying, but at least the idea didn’t appall her. She probably could. And she’d never care for Goffredo so much that it would hurt.
It was time, after all. She’d be twenty- eight in a few months.
The business would be registered. They could stop living a secret.
Perhaps her life could be this simple. She could be Isabel Lambert Claver D’Amico, running a weavers’ workshop in Westminster with her husband. It would be the same life, almost. She had to at least try to think about it. It might have been what God intended all along.
But it would be utterly different, too: life without Dickon.
She’d never listen out for hooves or boys with messages. The tavern over the road would be just that again—a tavern. The Red Pale’s upstairs room would be just the place the D’Amicos sent overflow guests to sleep in. She’d forget that its plaster and straw and honey sunlight had once meant happiness.
She sighed. The misery came back, the tears too. She wouldn’t forget. “You’re probably right,” she sniff ed into Goffredo’s strong rib cage, grateful for his strength. Her head was pounding. “About marrying.”
She didn’t want to hurt his feelings by crying. She didn’t know whether he’d take that as a possible yes or a probable no. She didn’t even know which she meant. She didn’t know what had got into her. But he just clicked his tongue and said soothingly: “Don’t even think about it now. Later, when you’re better. Let’s get you well first.”
The idea of marrying Goffredo went on bobbing up in Isabel’s mind for weeks afterward. While she lay blacked out in her bed in Catte Street, with the old women bringing her hot drinks and warming- pans and tucking her up; while a muted, expectant Christmas was observed; while she rode, in the last days of December, to Sutton on Derwent with a nervous ThomasLynom, to wait with the astonishingly swollen Jane for her child to be born. During the blood and shouting and panic of the birth.
Afterward, while she watched her sister hold her baby, a wrinkled girl, and noticed the tenderness in Jane’s eyes and voice, a love that turned her bruised eyes and limp sweaty hair and pale skin and bloody linen and flabby stomach back into beauty.
Julyan had just a few fine strands of hair on her head. She had hypnotic round eyes: nothing like Jane’s green color, a paler blue than Thomas’s. But she already had the beautiful profile of her father: a short straight nose, high cheekbones, perfect proportions, a generous mouth. When Thomas held her, he was transformed too.
I could do this too, Isabel would think. Perhaps. She kept experimenting with the thought, trying to find ways of healing herself of the gritty, grinding pain she carried with her. It didn’t stop the blackness altogether to imagine herself married to Goffredo, holding a baby, being a merchant’s wife. But it helped. It lightened her mood, at least, until it was no worse than a cheerless gray. If she did it, then later, much later, after a year, after five, perhaps ten, she might find peace.
The Londoners all came for Candlemas; they were going to take Isabel back to London with them after the holy day. John Lambert, braving the roads despite his gout now he had a living grandchild to hold in his arms, was expected later in the week.
Jane was churched the day before the first guests arrived, on February 1, a month after the birth, so she could receive visitors again.
By then, Isabel wanted to go home. She’d had time to recover.
She’d had time to reflect, too, though instead of taking Will’s advice and trying to reason herself out of what she felt for Dickon, she’d just tried to convince herself she felt nothing. In Jane’s house it was easy enough to make herself think she’d shut down the secret part of herself that dreamed and breathed Dickon; in Jane’s house she slept heavily and woke up calm. But the idleness of her country existence was beginning to bore her. She told herself: I need to be busy. She was longing to talk about work. She wanted to get back to the weavers.
She’d persuaded herself everyone would only want to talk about the weaving project. So she was surprised by the adoring stares, the hush. Even from Alice Claver.
At least Goffredo looked at Isabel long enough to say, “How thin you’ve got.” But she must have looked almost normal because no one else did anything but stare at Julyan. Even after the visitors’ gifts were admired, after the baby’s feeding and sleeping habits had been discussed, after the parents’ happiness had been commented on and praise given to their choice of name, after the mystic of Norwich, Alice and William and Anne and Goffredo still had to be nudged into mentioning the workshop.
Isabel asked Alice directly: “So when is the registration hearing at the Guildhall?” and Alice, rocking the baby, looked up absentmindedly, then back down to where tiny fingers were curling fiercely around her thumb.
“Right after Lady Day,” she said; then, almost whispering,“When my Thomas was born, I couldn’t believe those tiny fingers.”
Late March; seven weeks or so away. Isabel tried to catch Goffredo’s eye, but he was also staring down as if he was about to devour the little scrap of flesh in her soft linen wrapping, flexing her toes. “Goffredo,” she said, and he looked up. “How many cloths will be ready by Lady Day?”
“Oh,” he said, “enough. Thirty?”
He wanted to go on playing with the baby again. “Goffredo,”
she said patiently, and he looked up again, a little guilty. He said, trying to satisfy her properly this time with a thorough answer:“If we stock them at Alice’s shops, if we price them attractively, say half the sale price of Italian cloths, they’ll probably shift fast. Say they take till midsummer—St. John’s Eve. Three months.
We can hav
e thirty more ready by then.”
She nodded, longing to feel brisk and businesslike and in charge of something again. “And we can start taking on more apprentices once we’re registered, too. Get all the looms you’ve brought working.”
“Twenty looms; we’ve been talking about taking on fourteen more women,” he agreed, concentrating on plans with her, not on the baby. “As soon as we have the registration,” he added, “so we can recruit without worrying about the Conterini and Salviati.”
He was looking enthusiastic now; his warmth for the dream they’d all cherished for so long was there on his face again. She sighed with relief: Goffredo, her partner. Willing to humor her even though they both knew she was, childishly, suddenly jealous of her sister’s newborn. He was a good man. He’d probably be a good husband too.
Isabel had thought she wanted to be off . A bleak impatience to get home sustained her through the long, jerky clip- clop back down the Great North Road. But when she saw Moorgate looming up ahead, beyond the butts and the vegetable gardens, and the City rooftops behind, she began to remember what her dread had felt like. Her holiday from heartbreak was over now. She couldn’t lie in bed, pretending to be ill, refusing to face reality.
She’d have to go back to work. To the selds; the Guildhall; the silk house.
She had a headache like a punch in the eyes. She didn’t want to see the tapestries in her room, the expensive bed curtains, the embroidered cushions, the patterns, the gay splashes of lilady and mulberry and applebloom, the scents of lavender and rose. She wanted straw and plain plaster; but, if she was sensible, she’d never have that again.
It was only once she’d walked into that familiar, dusty, claustrophobic bedroom at Catte Street, and been overwhelmed by how overstuff ed it was with pillows and memories, that she realized that now she’d also have to go back to sewing for the Princess.
Go to Westminster. Face Will Caxton’s eyes. Go to the palace.
Where Dickon might be.
The thought didn’t make her weep. She was past that. But she went to the window and stood with her cheek against the cool glass and metal. Burning. Gulping in air.
“Now,” a familiar voice boomed behind her, and Alice Claver swept into the room, without knocking, a tornado trailing draperies. “There’s something I want to ask you.”
Isabel closed her eyes. It was too much. She couldn’t face Alice as well as these feelings.
“Another of these boys has just come,” Alice was saying, and her clever eyes were looking carefully into Isabel’s. “With a message about firewood.”
Isabel opened her eyes.
“What do you mean, another?” she asked, too quickly.
Alice nodded to herself, two or three times, as if her own question had been answered.
“There’ve been a couple, over the winter,” Alice said. “While you’ve been ill, and away. Which is odd, wouldn’t you say? Since we all know Will Caxton’s cook buys the firewood, not you.”
Isabel hung her head. She was ashamed to meet Alice Claver’s eyes. She didn’t know what to say. Nor did she want Alice to see the joy coursing through her, as fierce and stinging as if there was aqua vitae in her veins. He’d sent for her. He’d sent for her.
Alice sat heavily down on the bed. She patted the place next to her for Isabel.
“I’m not going to try to ferret it out of you, you know,” Alice said gruffly. “But I’d be a fool not to know what’s going on.”
Isabel felt hot blood staining her face and neck; but there was relief mixed up in her agony of embarrassment. Alice nodded again. “There,” Isabel’s mistress said, in a not unfriendly voice. “I was right. I’m not just an old fool, am I?”
Isabel even managed to answer. “You were never a fool,” she got out, with reluctant admiration.
“I wasn’t always old, either,” Alice said energetically. “And there’s nothing I don’t know about girls getting their hearts broken.”
She spread her big hands out, put one on each large thigh, and leaned comfortably if inelegantly forward. There was a nostalgic look in her eyes. “You won’t have heard this from Caxton or Anne or William, but back when we were apprenticed to Master Large, right here in this house . . . ,” she began, with gusto.
The voices inside Isabel’s head were still singing. “Dickon sent for me; he sent for me.”
But she turned her face toward Alice Claver, and set herself to listen.
“. . . I didn’t know what had hit me,” Alice Claver was saying, and her big red face was gentler than Isabel had ever seen it. “The master himself, kissing me . . . It was madness, of course. Where could it go, with the mistress in the house too, watching him like a hawk, and the other apprentices with me at every moment of the day and night? There wasn’t even any where for us to go to be together. We had the odd scuffle in a store cupboard. Sometimes we’d manage to meet on a street corner. And I think we once took a walk round Moorfields. Stupid, really. But there was a whole year when it was heaven and hell rolled into one. I couldn’t think of anything else. I was like a thing possessed.”
She looked ruefully at Isabel. Then she snorted with laughter.
“But do you know what?” she added. “Once I’d got over it, I couldn’t think what had got into me for so long. He was just a fat old man with a bald patch. A dear old thing.”
It was extraordinary enough to grab Isabel’s full attention.
She could hardly believe what she was hearing. She’d never once heard Alice Claver talk like this, or about this; or the others, come to that. They couldn’t ever have known.
Drawing closer, wondering what Alice Claver must have looked like before she got so broad and red- faced; trying, and almost managing, to imagine her a slip of a thing, kissing someone in a store cupboard, Isabel asked softly: “But how did you get over it?”
“Work,” Alice Claver replied, with a snap of lips. “Of course.
It’s the only way. He sent me to Antwerp for the fair. Richard went too. We spent a month there. Worked like dogs. I was much too busy to be pining for love. We did our first big deal there. The most exciting moment of my life. Made . . . the other thing . . . seem plain foolishness; which it had been. We went out celebrating. Betrothed before I knew where I was.”
She shifted one of her beefy hands onto Isabel’s leg and gave it a firm pat.
“It’s time we got you back to work too,” Alice said heartily.
“There’s going to be a lot to do between now and Lady Day if we’re to get the registration through in good order.”
Isabel nodded eagerly. She was full of energy again; she’d be going to Westminster, maybe as soon as tomorrow. She was so touched by Alice’s opening of her heart that she felt dishonest to be thinking the way she was, but in her heart of hearts she knew that the first thing she’d do when she got there would be to find a way to see Dickon.
“But,” Alice went on, patting Isabel’s leg even harder—almost a slap—“I don’t think you’re well enough to go traipsing off to Westminster for half the week just yet.” She looked hard at Isabel; and Isabel realized the older silkwoman was one step ahead of her again. Alice had guessed exactly what was on her mind.
“Goffredo can handle things at the silk house until the registration,” Alice said briskly. “And I’m going to send word to your Lady Darcey, too, that you’re still convalescing—you were really ill, you know; we were worried. You’re not up to palace jaunts yet.”
Isabel opened her mouth, then closed it. She could see Alice wouldn’t brook dissent.
She didn’t mind. She’d do this for Alice. She’d bide her time when it came to Dickon. There’d be a moment soon enough. She had the strength and endurance for anything, as long as she could have hope.
The silkwoman heaved herself up and clapped Isabel on the shoulder. “We need you in London right now. We’ll think again about letting you go back to Westminster—later. Once we’ve got through Lady Day.” Despite her gruff words, there was a very so
ft look in her eye as she swept off toward the corridor.
The thirty silk cloths were brought to Alice’s house a week before Lady Day, ironed flat and stored carefully inside a chest.
The cloths, each marked with the Claver seal and the gold thread through the selvage, were stowed safely in an anteroom in the warmth of the silk storeroom at Catte Street when the summons to the Guildhall came.
The letter was for Goffredo—a demand to present himself at the City government center tomorrow. It was delivered to Catte Street, even though everyone knew Goffredo always put up at the Prattes’. Alice opened it—it was her house, after all—and once she’d read it, sent it round to Goffredo. It wasn’t for her to worry, yet; if a problem arose she had faith that the Guildhall would always come to the right decision. But she had no idea why the City government would want to see Goffredo now. They were all curious.
Goffredo was at Catte Street within an hour, looking baffled.
“Have they brought the registration hearing forward?” he said. “Is that it?”
“It can’t be that,” Alice Claver replied. “Or we’d all be called.
This is just for you. You aren’t in any trouble over any other business, are you? Short weights, behind on your documents? Problems with cargoes?”
He shook his head. “Nothing,” he said. “Of course.”
The Prattes came later. But they didn’t know anything either.
William Pratte had given up most of his Guildhall committees, except the venturers’ one on trade overseas. He hadn’t heard of any reason why the mayor would want to interview Goffredo.
Anne hadn’t heard anything in the selds.
It was worrying, all the same. Especially now, with the registration hearing so close.
Isabel said: “The letter came here. Perhaps we should all go tomorrow?”
Goffredo looked grateful. But William Pratte cautiously shook his head.
Isabel went anyway, without telling the others. It seemed right. She waited in the street for Goffredo the next morning. He turned up outside the Guildhall in his best dark velvets, washed and shaved, with only a tic in his jaw giving away his nervous-ness.
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