She ignored the eyes. Stuck her chin in the air while the coffins were laid down, with the occasional bump and thump and sweating pallbearer’s groan breaking the quiet. She would be calm, dignified.
She had one more thing to do before she could grieve.
So she was almost surprised at the pain, when it came.
“It's bad,” Robert Lynom said kindly. “I know.”
It had been his arm on her back in church when she was crouching forward, giving herself up utterly to the agony, curling herself into it. His arm holding her up when she stumbled on the way to the graves. His kerchief, then his chest, she’d buried her face in.
Robert Lynom had half carried her up the Catte Street stairs afterward, disregarding Rose Trapp’s anguished flapping at the height of his elbow and Will Caxton’s ineffectual flapping somewhere behind. “Let’s not worry too much about etiquette right now,” he’d said reassuringly to Rose, “this is just easier for me,” and Rose Trapp had subsided into watchful silence. He’d laid Isabel on the bed, still in her gown. “Rest,” he’d said, putting a big cool hand on her hot head. For a while, there’d just been Rose Trapp in the solar with her, muttering what words of comfort she could, with gnarled hands fussing over laces and hooks as she eased off headdress and gown and kirtle. And then there was just Isabel, in her pale linen, and the coiling, roiling, heaving inside her. Hot eyes. Something steaming on the table. A white sky at the window. And a meager comfort in the clump of boots downstairs; mourners at the meal Will Caxton had paid his own thirty marks for.
Will and his men were going back to Westminster later. He’d been apologetic about it, but she’d seen the estrangement in his eyes. He didn’t think he’d find comfort in being with Isabel. He couldn’t wait to get busy, get away from the pointless pain of memory. He’d got timber and tools ordered. They’d start rebuilding his house in the morning.
Tomorrow she would sell the cloths. After that, she’d be alone.
She thought about that for a while. Imagined the white silences, broken only by the two new kitchen men she hardly knew.
Days with Alice’s apprentices, four pink- faced girls from the provinces whom she’d kept apart from for fear they’d find out too much.
She didn’t want to be alone.
She was still frozen into a kind of calm when she first realized that. But she could feel the fear coming, a great wave of it, rushing at her, about to break.
Then, instead, she heard footsteps. Robert Lynom’s unhurried tread on the stairs.
Relief at the prospect of his sensible company brought her back.
The only thing he could sit on was a tiny stool. He was much too big for it, even curled up with one ankle on the other knee and his big clean hands composedly on the crossed leg. She smiled weakly, and wasn’t sure herself whether it was because of him cramped comically on that stool or just because his presence made some of her cares drop away.
Without being asked, he’d ensured she wouldn’t be alone.
Jane had had to rush back to her baby after church, he said; Julyan was ill after the journey. But he didn’t think it was anything serious. The ThomasLynoms were staying with him (it was familiar territory, after all; he’d bought Jane’s confiscated house at Old Jewry, just round the corner). But, all being well, Jane wanted to bring the baby, and the nurse, later, and stay with Isabel instead, as long as Isabel felt up to the commotion. “They’ll bring their own linen,” he said. “I have plenty.” He’d even thought of that.
She nodded, too grateful to speak. He’d done more. He’d taken it on himself to pay Rose to stay at the house for a few months, too, he said. Rose could run the house hold; stop the kitchen men getting carried away; do the marketing. He hoped she didn’t mind.
“You’ve had bad luck,” he was saying now, each word a certainty. “You don’t deserve it.”
She nodded, feeling stronger.
“It won’t last,” he said. “The bad luck; it will pass.” And his strong face was so full of conviction that she almost believed him.
He looked thoughtfully down at her. “Do you mind if I say something now that goes beyond my calling as your lawyer?” he went on, sounding, for the first time she could remember, a little hesitant. She nodded him on.
“It’s this. There’s more to life than trading silk,” he said carefully. “You don’t have to spend your days between Cheapside and Soper Lane and Hosiers Lane and Pissing Lane, living cheek by jowl with crowds of other people doing exactly what you do and trying to beat them at it, making it your business to know every detail of their business and private lives while you try to stop them finding out about yours. It’s a small place, the Mercery. There’s a world outside. I haven’t regretted getting out. Nor has Thomas.
Nor has Jane. You’ve given it your all, Isabel. But there might be more for you in life too.”
There was compassion in his voice now. Her eyes asked the question: “What?”
He spread his hands, palms up. “Happiness. Peace.”
Perhaps her face closed at that. At any rate, he drew back, shaking his head as if mildly surprised that he’d gone so far. In something much more like his usual down-to-earth lawyer’ stones, he said: “You don’t need to worry about money, what ever you decide to do. You have more than enough. Alice has left you a very profitable business. You have the lease on this house. You own the goods in the storeroom; you have contracts, contacts, and apprentices. You can keep things just as they are if you want.
You know the business backward. I would imagine you’ll be very successful. But it wouldn’t do any harm to remember you could also sell. Retire. Even think of marrying and having children. You have choices.”
He stood up. “Think about it,” he said. “And now, get some sleep.”
She’d dreaded the empty darkness of the coming night, the creaks and scuttles in the silence. But it wasn’t going to be like that after all. She had choices. Her blankets felt warm. She snuggled drowsily into them and fell asleep listening to his footsteps on the stairs.
The calm the Robert Lynom’s common sense had brought Isabel sustained her through the silent loneliness of the next dawn.
Rose Trapp mustered the four apprentices and the others who trooped in at the back door at first light. They didn’t stop to eat.
They had a purposeful look in their eyes: the look of women being given an unexpected chance in life and eager to seize it in both hands. Rose Trapp had told them half the proceeds of the sale would go to providing a memorial for Alice and Anne; the other half would be used to give dowries and seed capital for deserving silkwomen, and they would be among the first candidates. Two of the four girls Alice had brought down from Derby as apprentices—Annie and Janie, blond, round- faced sisters—came up to Isabel as Rose supervised the packing of the silk cloths in rough bags and, silently, nervously, pressed her hand. She nodded, suddenly more grateful than she knew to Rose Trapp, wondering how she hadn’t realized for herself that Alice would think it important to set these girls up in life.
Alice’s familiar stall was empty. Rose Trapp supervised the laying out of the cloths. Isabel watched in silence at first. She felt numb; she’d be numb until all this was over. But after a while she shook herself and mustered her reserves of strength. She owed it to Alice Claver to make this sale a success.
She noticed that Rose Trapp was taking great pains to have her Joan’s lovely cloth advantageously displayed at the top of the pile, folding and curving it so its summer colors glowed. It was clear that the old woman wanted that cloth to sell for the best price of all. She must hope the proceeds of that sale might be given to her, to fund her own lonely old age.
“Rose,” Isabel said. Her voice sounded loud in the silence. The old woman looked up, almost guiltily, caught out in her hope.
“That cloth is the most beautiful of all of them,” Isabel said.
“Isn’t it?” No one would deny that Joan’s cloth was a masterpiece.
Once the market opened to cust
omers, she knew it would go for a good price: twenty pounds, maybe, or even more—enough for an old woman in a tenement room to live on, frugally, for the rest of her days.
“So you’re right to display it like that,” she went on. “Give it pride of place.”
Rose Trapp waited warily, with the dumb patience of the poor, who can’t hope for much and whose small hopes are so often disappointed. Her gnarled hand touched a corner of the green and gold and blue cloth, as if she were memorizing its lustrous-ness; as if she feared that even this might be about to be snatched away from her.
“It’s yours,” Isabel said reassuringly, and saw the veiny claw relax. “I know that. But I’d like to offer to buy it from you. I’ll make you a good price. Let’s leave it out on display for now; it will help draw in the crowds. But don’t let it go for less than”—she paused; thought how much would make Joan Woulbarowe’s old aunt financially secure without making her feel Isabel was offering her charity. “Fifty pounds,” she finished—a price verging on the fantastical—and watched the joy come into those cloudy blue eyes. “I’ll match any offer up to that.”
Rose nodded, lowering her eyes. She was whistling under her breath as she finished setting out cloths and coins.
The word had gone round. Within minutes of the opening bell, the little shop was crowded with visitors eager to see the silk cloths woven by their own London kind. Isabel and Rose had the silkwomen stand round the sides, keeping the throng back; letting in only one or two representatives of the wealthy at a time to feel and discuss the qualities of the cloths, the choice of warp and weft, the number of threads per inch, the weight and thickness of gold thread, the grace of pattern and color; moving toward a possible purchase. The excited voices of those still waiting grew so loud they had to raise their voices to be heard.
At one point, Isabel shivered. She looked up to see Dr. Gigli’s fat black velvet paunch only inches away, through the little sales area’s window. He was watching her steadily, intently, and nodding his head as if memorizing an enemy’s surprising strength.
The malevolence in his eyes made her flesh creep. But she raised her head proudly, met his gaze, and smiled. He looked away. He’d gone the next time she looked up.
After that, Isabel forgot herself and her troubles in the rush. It was her honey voice they all wanted to hear, her knowledge of an industry they’d all have liked to learn that drew them in. She talked; persuaded; charmed. And she enjoyed the clink of coins falling into Rose Trapp’s bag.
John Lambert came and bought a length of tan- and- gray brocade. He’d brought cash. “We should have gone into business together, after all,” he said.
She kissed him and pressed his hands, aware that he’d come as close as he could to apologizing, and grateful for it; acknowledging, equally silently, how hard it must have been for him to come back to this market today after he’d been squeezed out of the City; remembering, with a shock of shame, how she’d helped squeeze him out by hiring away his workers. She said: “I’m sorry we didn’t, too.”
Isabel just shook her head and smiled and politely refused to answer questions about how the fire had started that had destroyed her workshop and killed so many of her colleagues.
The only time her flushed, smiling face clouded was when would- be buyers offered prices for Joan Woulbarowe’s cloth. “Not for sale,” she said briefly; and, nodding regretfully, the clients moved on to examine the next cloths in the pile.
By the time the crowd thinned and Isabel drew breath and looked round long enough to realize other silk traders were already packing up their stalls, all thirty cloths were sold or pledged.
When Rose Trapp lifted the bulging bag of coins from the cash purchases, there was an almost comical look of wonder in her eyes at how much they’d fetched.
It was done. Everything was gone. Isabel’s euphoria vanished too. Suddenly she was desperately tired. Her feet hurt from standing. Her face hurt from smiling. She didn’t want to be here, with people looking at her. She needed to get away from the eyes.
“Here,” Rose Trapp said, as if she knew, pressing the bag and the pile of bills of sale into Isabel’s hands. “The girls will clear up and wrap up your cloth. I’m taking you home.”
It was the sight of the bills of sale that forced Isabel to recognize reality.
She’d made her last sale in the Mercery. She couldn’t, after all, go on operating the Claver silk business. She didn’t, after all, have choices. She’d have to sell up.
She walked home, ignoring Rose Trapp, staring at the bills of sale, feeling dazed. The documents in her hand were innocent enough—simple pledges to pay her, at her house in London, by the end of the month, for the single silk cloth being contracted for. But they were also a reminder of the paperwork she needed to make the wholesale, international end of her business work—which she’d never get into place again. She needed to go to the trade fairs of the Low Countries a couple of times a year to buy silk cloths to sell on in London. And to do that, she needed the banking services of one of the powerful London Lombard families—a wealthy Italian who would write letters of credit, like these bills of sale but for much larger sums, with which she could make purchases abroad. But she’d seen the hatred in Dr. Gigli’s eyes. She knew no London Italian would underwrite her now, or ever again.
And she couldn’t buy without money.
She could still try to fight for justice at the Guildhall—get the Italians responsible for the fire named and punished, so that others who came afterward would lend to her again. But she knew in advance how hopeless that would be.
Her mind darted desperately from faint hope to fading possibility.
She still had half a year’s supply of silks in the store house, she thought. She could go on trading with them for a while, and hope things would right themselves of their own accord and the Italians would forget their animosity. But she knew even as she clung to that thought that it wouldn’t save her. City people were cautious, but they were merciless once they smelled defeat on someone. She’d seen her father cling too long to his City existence, after he lost his aldermanship; she’d seen him battered by law-suits, a target for opportunists and raiders like herself, before he’d finally accepted defeat and retired to the country. It would be more dignified to go now with her good name intact.
Or, just possibly, she thought, she could sell up and start again later in partnership with her father—using the House of Claver’s money to finance a renewed House of Lambert fronted by John Lambert, to whom the Italians might lend.
She sighed. Tried and failed to imagine talking over new strategies with her father. He’d never agree to following up any of her ideas. They’d only fight.
She shook her head. In the morning she’d tell Robert Lynom that she’d decided to sell.
She was so tired.
14
It was well into the morning when Isabel woke up.
Rose Trapp was sitting on the stool by her window, hunched up in the threadbare brown gown she always wore. She had some sewing in her hands. She wasn’t sewing, though, just gazing out. The sky was a promising pale blue, shot with silvery wisps.
But Isabel didn’t think the old woman was looking at the clouds.
She thought she was listening. Isabel could hear loud street talk.
Rose Trapp looked round and saw Isabel’s eyes on hers. She looked guilty.
“Did you have a nice rest, dear?” she said quickly. “You look a bit better, I must say. You were as white as death last night. I was worried. Your sister’s here, and the baby. I put them in Mistress Claver’s bed last night; I hope that’s all right. She’s brought a load of linen. Everything’s fine. Everyone’s fine. Now, you just stay put. I’ll run and tell her you’re awake. And I’ll bring you a bite to eat in a bit.”
Rose Trapp stood up. Why was she gabbling, as if she had something to hide?
Anxiously, Isabel said: “What are they saying out there?” and nodded at the window.
Rose Trapp looke
d hunted. “Don’t you worry, dear,” she wheezed. “Everything’s fine.”
“Tell me,” Isabel said faintly.
“Oh, just some nonsense . . . There’s always something, isn’t there? To be honest, I can’t make it out myself,” Rose Trapp lied unconvincingly.
“Tell me,” Isabel said, but she was slipping back into sleep as she spoke.
When she woke up next, Jane was with her. The baby, in her basket, was at Jane’s feet. Jane was sewing. But, like Rose Trapp the other time, Jane wasn’t paying attention to her work. She’d turned her eyes to the window. She was listening.
“What are they saying?” Isabel asked. Her voice seemed loud.
Startled, Jane turned toward her sister. Her eyes softened.
“Oh . . . you’re awake . . . and you look so much better . . . Thank God.”
Then she looked out again, and her sigh of relief turned into a different kind of sigh.
“It’s terrible out there. There’s a crowd on the street the whole time. I’ve stopped going out, especially with the baby. They’re so angry. It scares me what they might do . . .”
Jane caught Isabel’s blank stare. She shook her head. “Didn’t you know?” she said tenderly. “They think the king poisoned the queen.”
Jane leaned forward and put a hand on the blanket mound made by Isabel’s knee. “Come and stay with me at Sutton,” she muttered pleadingly. “Please, Isabel. Leave Robert to handle everything here. Let’s get out of London. I’m scared.”
She was nodding her head encouragingly; hoping she could make Isabel nod hers back, like a reflection, without even realizing Jane was tricking her into happiness.
There was nothing Isabel would have liked more than to be running through a meadow, with buttercups in the grass and her hems sodden with dew. But not yet. She still had to talk to Robert: make sure he understood the need to find new apprenticeships for the four girls; make sure he knew how she wanted the fund for silkwomen to be run.
Figures in Silk Page 39