Queen of Silks. Vanora Bennett

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СКАЧАТЬ jumped: ‘Disgraceful. Almost makes you proud not to be one of them, doesn't it? Men of honour, my eye.’

      There was triumph in Anne Pratte's eyes at having brought her friend back from the darkness. ‘Yes, indeed, dear,’ she answered gently. ‘I always say all the fighting these great lords enjoy so much is really just an excuse to go out and grab someone else's land, isn't it?’

      Alice Claver began to laugh. A single hoot at first, then more hoots; then gales of relief. It was infectious. Before Isabel knew where she was, she and the others had joined in too. When she turned round somewhere in the middle of a gust of laughter, and met Alice Claver's creased, weeping eyes for the first time in a long time, she realised the black, hateful look had gone from them. From relief as much as anything else, she started laughing even harder, until she, like Alice Claver, was holding her sides and groaning with it.

      ‘Ooh,’ Alice Claver said, what seemed like much later; sounding almost her usual self. Anne Pratte was watching her from over her flashing needle with quiet satisfaction. ‘It hurts. I tell you what, Anne. You'd better give us all some of your sewing to do. It's keeping you calmer than the rest of us put together.’

      All Anne Pratte had in her pile was sheets for turning. Nothing you needed strong light to see. Alice Claver got up, took one off the pile and sat down again to thread a needle.

      She turned and looked at Isabel with triumph, as if she'd hit on a new reason to find fault with her. ‘Don't just sit there,’ she snapped. ‘Get yourself a sheet too. Do some work. Go on.’

      She must be feeling better. She was turning nasty again. Isabel blinked away the tears prickling behind her eyes. Hadn't Alice Claver seen she already had work in her lap? Silently, with as much dignity as she could muster, she held up her little rectangle of silk embroidery in self-defence.

      Alice Claver got up and with a single dark swoop snatched it away and pushed a sheet at her instead. ‘Waste of silk,’ she said gruffly. ‘You'll only make a mess of it in this light.’

      Isabel lowered her head. Without comment, as if she were also a little frightened of her friend's rage, Anne Pratte passed Isabel a needle.

      But, as Alice Claver sat down, Isabel was aware of her mother-in-law looking closely at the confiscated piece of embroidery as if to find something in it to sneer at; then peering closer, then holding it up to the light. She could almost swear Alice Claver looked surprised. Well, she was good at embroidery. Everyone had always said so. She kept her eyes firmly on the needle she was threading, her back tense, waiting for a new attack once Alice Claver had worked out what to say. But it didn't come. They sewed in silence.

      ‘He wasn't with me,’ William Pratte said. ‘I never saw him.’

      William Pratte was filthier than Isabel could have imagined. But he looked happy and healthy too, leaner and more muscled than he'd been a fortnight before, with his bald patch freckled a pinky brown and the sun still warm on his cheeks.

      The relief of knowing it was over, and the Bastard's head, along with those of the Mayor of Canterbury and the pirate captains, was safely on London Bridge, was making everyone feel drunk with the pleasure of being alive. The serving girls were opening the shutters, letting air and sun in with a series of joyful bangs. After a twirling embrace with her husband, Anne Pratte had rushed straight out to the garden to see what salad leaves there were. ‘I've been thinking for days, I could murder a nice dish of sorrel,’ she'd shrilled, waving her arms.

      ‘Perhaps he went with your father,’ William Pratte said, scratching himself. Isabel breathed: ‘Did you see him?’ He nodded kindly. ‘Oh yes, don't worry about him, I saw him on Tower Hill just yesterday. He had Will Shore with him. Hugh Wyche. The Chigwells. I didn't see Thomas. Then again, I didn't stop to ask. Just waved. But Thomas will be somewhere.’

      Alice Claver was beaming so hard at being let out of the darkness that nothing could dash her spirits. ‘Well, all I can say is thank God we have the daylight back,’ she said happily, including Isabel in her smile. ‘Thomas has always been a law unto himself. He'll turn up in his own good time. And we'd better get you bathed before he does, William. I've never seen so much dirt on one body.’

      No one worried too much when Thomas didn't show up that night either. Half the patrols were still out celebrating. The taverns were heaving.

      A little hesitantly, Isabel went along when, just before sunset, William Pratte took the two silkwomen to explore the damaged riverside zone beyond Cordwainer Lane. She didn't want to be out when Thomas arrived, but Alice Claver gave her a warmish look and said, ‘We'll get back before he does,’ and she gave in. Women were walking along the Strand through summer clouds of gnats, looking in astonishment at the fallen masonry and the burn marks or listening to their dirty, proud men gabbling, very fast and excited, ‘This is where we were when they started shooting’, or ‘This is where I hid from the wildfire’.

      The pirates had been beaten back from London Bridge. They'd gone downriver to Kew and tried to land there. They'd come back. But the defences had held. There was drunken singing everywhere, and a lot of woozy yelling: ‘God Save King Edward!’

      Seeing Isabel glancing around in case Thomas suddenly came out from some corner, Alice Claver told her: ‘It would be unusual for Thomas to come straight home’, and laughed, not unkindly, in the direction of the Tumbling Bear. Isabel tried not to feel disappointed that her husband hadn't rushed back to her side. But, since no one had word of him being hurt, and William Pratte said there'd been surprisingly few men killed, he must just be out drinking somewhere. For the first time, the memory of all those shady men he knew in all those taverns came back to her, replacing the pictures she'd called to mind so often in the darkness that they now seemed threadbare and soiled from overuse: his soft look back at her as he'd slipped out of the door on the day the ships came in; his parting murmur of ‘I want you to be proud of me.’

      ‘I love you,’ she muttered under her breath, to keep her spirits up, as she'd done a million times during the siege. ‘I love you.’ But she could feel doubt creeping in. She knew Thomas found home difficult and work difficult. Perhaps, now he'd discovered the pleasures of fighting, he'd seen a more exciting way of keeping out of his mother's hair than sheltering behind his new wife? Perhaps her novelty had worn off?

      Isabel felt suddenly so alone that she shivered. The heat was going out of the evening air. It was nearly curfew. He wouldn't come tonight. Anne Pratte put her shawl round Isabel's shoulders without comment; Isabel looked gratefully at her.

      ‘We kept our spirits up by turning sheets while you were out there fighting,’ Alice Claver boomed at William Pratte, back at Catte Street, over the evening meal. ‘And Anne kept our spirits up with gossip.’ She turned to Isabel for confirmation. ‘Didn't she?’

      And, seeing those eyes on her again with this new expression of wary near-warmth, it was suddenly clear to Isabel what she had to do before Thomas got home. She didn't want to be enemies with Alice Claver. And tonight, Alice Claver didn't look as though she wanted to be enemies either. There was no need. The half-truce that had set in might just hold if she helped it along. It was Thomas's stubbornness that had made things go wrong. Now was her chance to put things right. If she wanted to be happy as a Claver, she was going to have to get up at dawn and offer to start working for her mother-in-law.

       3

      Alice Claver had the same idea. When she saw Isabel in the morning, she didn't even comment on Thomas's non-appearance. She just said: ‘Shall I show you the storeroom?’

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