Goldsmith's Row (10 page)

He had made a vivid little sketch, the strokes were so fine he might have been using a needle. In it, Philadelphia was blindfolded and holding a tiny pair of scales that were steeply dipped at one end. Grace did not understand what this was supposed to convey, but she could see what had upset Philadelphia. In drawing an imaginary bandage for her eyes, he had let it run upwards to cover the place on her forehead that was pitted with smallpox.

She did not know whether he had been careless or deliberately cruel,  she did not know very much  about men and how their minds worked; she understood Philadelphia a good deal better, for one thing she had learnt at the Charity Hospital was that a great many people had some burden of ugliness or weakness or stupidity which they themselves never forgot, even when it had become accepted and taken for granted. She suspected that Philadelphia's smallpox scars were just such a burden.

On a fine April morning soon after Easter Grace accompanied Mrs. Tabor to market. They crossed the hurly-burly of Cheapside to the place Philadelphia called "the land of milk and honey," because the main supply of fresh food from the country villages was offered for sale at the booths and little shops clustered around Milk Street and Honey Lane.

Mrs. Tabor did not come over here often, she left the marketing to Philadelphia, but this morning she wanted to find a particular farmer's wife whom she had dealt with for many years, so that they could be sure of a good supply of gooseberries and strawberries early in the summer. She was soon engaged in a pleasant gossip with Goodwife Salter, while Grace stood behind her letting the sights and sounds and scents of Cheapside wash over her in waves.

The lowing of a cow that was being milked in the street, the freckles on the milkmaid's fat elbows… A mouthwatering smell of hot mutton pies… Other smells less fragrant: people tramping by with dung and straw on their boots… Two little girls who had come in from the country with their mother; they had a flat basket full of primroses, done up in posies.

She did not see the sandy-haired boy in the shabby jerkin until he stopped and spoke her name. Then she turned and gave a squeak of pleasure. It was Coney from the Charity Hospital.

They gazed at each other, almost unable to speak. Though they had been living only a few miles apart, they were so much at the mercy of other people's whims that they had hardly expected to meet again.

"I
reckon you've grown into a regular fine lady, Grace," he said at last and with a hint of disapproval.

"Oh no!" she protested, flushing. She felt awkward for a good many reasons, the chief one being that Coney knew how little right she had to go peacocking around in her splendid new clothes.

"What are you doing in this part of London?" she asked, to change the subject.

"Haven't I as much right here as you?"

He hadn't forgiven her for going to Goldsmiths' Row or for the lies she had told in order to get there. It was easy for him, he was by nature so honest and proud, not to say tough; he seemed taller than she remembered, and his shoulders were broader than ever; he was bursting out of his threadbare coat and breeches, which were white with the ground-in dust of the mason's yard. And he didn't care a bit about his shabby clothes, he looked as pleased with himself as if he owned the whole street, and his bad temper disappeared under a sudden smile, because he couldn't resist the impulse to tell her a piece of good news.

"Do you truly want to know why I'm here? You know my master, Melchior Breda, was a famous carver of monuments in the Netherlands, before he came to England? Now at last he has found a patron, and he's been chosen to devise the tomb of a rich merchant in that church there—St. Mary Magdalen, Milk Street. It will take months to complete, and because of this, my master has more money to spare. He's moved into a better lodging, and I live there with him, to keep the place clean and cook his meals. So I am free of the Charity Hospital too."

"Coney, I am so glad!"

She could understand, better than anyone, how much it meant to him to escape from the imprisoning walls of the Charity Hospital, where they were all drilled into uniformity like so many peas in a pod, and instead to be a unique person in his own right. His circumstances were very modest, but that didn't matter. He was delighted with his corner by the fire, his truckle-bed under the stairs, and the right to spend a holiday hanging around the boats on the river, on the chance that one of the watermen might give him a free trip, or going to the shooting-fields at Clerkenwell, where he could learn to use the longbow. London was his oyster.

"You should have been to see me," said Grace. "It's only just across the way."

Coney's pleasure was clouded over. "I did come," he said, shuffling his feet. "They told me to get out and stay out."

"What? Who could have done such a thing? They can't have understood properly. Madam!" She turned impulsively to Mrs.  Tabor,  who had just finished her chat with  the farmer's wife. "Madam, this is Coney that was at the Charity Hospital, he's my great friend, he's always taken care of me, and he says he came to visit me, but one of the men, I suppose it was Mr. Zachary, told him to go away. And they never even gave me the message!"

"Well, my dear, it's very unfortunate," said Mrs. Tabor, beginning to twitter and eyeing Coney with a mixture of annoyance and apprehension. "I hoped you wouldn't find out. I was afraid you would be distressed…"

"Madam, do you mean to say that
you
made them send him away?"

"Hush, Grace. People are beginning to stare. As for you, young man, you've no business to pester my grand-daughter…"

"He wasn't pestering me!"

Mrs. Tabor embarked on a rambling appeal to Coney. "You must know that you would be in serious trouble if I was to complain—not that I ever should, if it's true that you were kind to her in that horrible place—even so, that's over now, you are neither of you children any more, and you belong to quite a different state of life; surely you must see that it's not fitting?"

While she spoke, Mrs. Tabor had been tugging at the strings of her purse; at last she got them disentangled, dived in and brought up two large silver coins, which she held out to Coney.

"Here, boy. Here's for your disappointment."

Until then, Coney had been standing his ground, not much impressed by anything Mrs. Tabor had to say. Now he backed away from her, red in the face and furious.

"Keep your dirty money, I want none of it. I may not be good enough for the likes of you, but at least I never tried to reach a state of life where I don't belong."

He stalked off up Milk Street, and disappeared through the side door of the church.

13

Mrs. Tabor and Grace were flurried and disturbed by their encounter with Coney; Philadelphia had to calm them both.

"They are each feeling  ill-used  by  the  other,"  she in-formed Joel. "They are so extremely alike; if I still doubted Grace's claims, I should be convinced by the way she takes after her grandmother."

"Would you?" said Joel, hugging his secret triumph. Given enough audacity, you could make people believe anything.

"Poor Grace is so fond of the boy that she very nearly said she wanted to go back to the Charity Hospital."

"I hope she's not such a fool," said Joel sharply.

"I don't think there is any inducement strong enough to make her return willingly into the power of that monster Tucker. Besides, the boy himself is no longer boarding at the Hospital, she wouldn't see him if she did go. She'll forget him as soon as she can make some new friends of her own age; it's a pity we can't go to the Goldsmiths' banquet this year, but it wouldn't be seemly, Mrs. Tabor being so recent a widow."

The banquet was an annual event, all that was left of the religious festival of Catholic times, when the members of the ancient Guild had celebrated the feast of their patron St. Dunstan by going to Mass together in solemn procession.

"And we ought to venerate him still," grumbled Ralph. "A proper English saint, Dunstan was, not like some of those papish foreigners, and a brother craftsman to boot. It's well known he used a pair of goldsmith's tongs when he caught the devil by the nose."

"You'd better take care how you dabble in theology," said Laurence, "or one of the devil's representatives will get you by the nose. There are too many of them about, disguised as puritan ministers."

Laurence was going to the banquet; no question of his staying at home to mourn his uncle. Probably Philadelphia and Grace could have gone too if he had cared to ask the wife of one of the liverymen to take them under her wing. But he wouldn't do that, because it would have been a tacit admission that he accepted Grace as his cousin.

The banquet took place at midday in the Goldsmiths' Hall; there was a high table across the top of the room, where the master-craftsmen sat, among them Sir Richard Martin, the reigning Lord Mayor, and his Sheriffs, Hugh Offley and Richard Saltenstall, all three of them being goldsmiths. There was always an impressive display of civic scarlet and badges of office at the high table, alternating with the colored hoods of the Liverymen. The journeymen sat at two long trestles which ran down the middle of the hall, while the female guests—the merchants' wives and daughters—sat at separate tables near the wall.

Along the centre of every table stood the ceremonial plate; salts, bowls and chargers, richly embossed and engraved, polished to the smoothness of glass and glittering with light. The Queen herself had nothing to surpass the treasures which generations of goldsmiths had presented to their own Company.

From his rather lowly seat among the journeymen, Joel could see his father, at the end of the masters' table, eating his dinner and talking quietly to one old crony; he always remained in the background, in the shadows, had no ambition to take a leading part in the affairs of the Company. Joel watched him with an irritable affection. The old man would never set the Thames on fire, but he'd had a hard life and many disappointments; he hadn't come into an undeserved fortune at the age of twenty-nine, just for being the nephew of a rich man who wanted to perpetuate a famous name. There had been an unbroken line of Tabors among the master craftsmen for nearly three centuries; that was why those revered greybeards welcomed Laurence so complacently. He was looking very fine today, with his uncle's heaviest gold chain wreathed across his shoulders, and a long, brocaded gown whose fur-lined sleeves fell open from the elbow; his hair lay thick and smooth under his flat cap, and he smelt like a barber's shop, thought Joel contemptuously. He was certainly the main topic of interest among the women. As Joel glanced in their direction, he caught the eye of a girl called Audrey Freeman, who had been his companion at most of the Christmas festivities a few weeks before John Tabor's death, when everyone thought that Zachary Downes was about to become his partner. The way Audrey had behaved with him at the Twelfth Night revels you would have thought she could hardly wait to have the banns called, but today she returned his smile with a stare of brazen indifference. They were all the same, those merchants' daughters, ready to romp in the dark so long as their parents didn't find out, but when it came to marriage they were cold-blooded and purse-proud, with an absurd notion of their own value. Not one of them could hold a candle to Grace. As he considered this, a splendid new plan shaped itself completely in his mind.

He would marry Grace.

He could not imagine why he had never thought of this before. He had plunged with her into a reckless game of false pretences because he wanted money, and also because he wanted revenge, and saddling the Tabor family with the child of a Bankside harlot was a very good joke, even if he couldn't share it. His revenge still amused him; as for the money, so far he had received only a fraction of the reward, and some of that he had passed on to Mrs. Bullace; it was important to keep her happy. That devil Laurence had got the attorney to persuade Mrs. Tabor that she shouldn't give him any more until Grace's identity was proved, one way or the other. Which it never would be. Joel felt sure he would get the whole sum in the end—the old woman was already convinced—but the most generous reward would not be enough to set him and his father up in a shop of their own, and buy back Sam's indentures from Laurence, so that they could take him with them. Grace's dowry, however, would be a different matter.

In the ordinary way Joel knew he would not be considered a suitable match for an heiress; his family and prospects were too insignificant; his hopes depended on the fact that Grace might not get the sort of offers Mrs. Tabor was probably counting on. The great City dynasties were cautious about whose blood they mixed in their veins; it was not Grace's illegitimacy they would cavil at, but the fear that she might not be a Tabor at all, even on the wrong side of the blanket. If Mrs. Tabor was given time to realize this, wouldn't she be thankful to settle for a less exacting member of the Company who merely needed a nest-egg to start him on his way to fame and fortune? After all, he'd rescued Grace from a life of bondage, hadn't he? They would do very well with a shop on Lombard Street and if Grace was rather stupid, she was very pretty and also industrious and obedient; he wouldn't have any trouble making a dutiful wife out of her. He indulged his fancy as he went on eating and drinking his way through everything that was put in front of him.

"You're very quiet," said his neighbor. "Still brooding over the iniquity of Laurence Tabor? I can't see what's wrong with the fellow."

Joel's grievance had become a favorite jest among his fellow-lodgers in Bachelors' Alley. This riled him, and he flushed angrily.

"He's a man of straw, that's what's wrong with him. A braggart and a pretender, crying his wares in the front of the shop, but when it comes to an honest day's work at the furnace, you won't see hair nor hide of him. Oh, I grant you he can prick out his little pictures as finely as a gentlewoman sewing seams, but that's not the proper employment of a master-goldsmith. Eight weeks and more he's been back in London, and all he's done, besides these paltry limnings, is to fiddle around with some trifling pins and gilded wire. Not a piece of regular smith's work have we seen."