A Web of Dreams

by Tessa Barclay

  She felt herself colouring up as she thought of it. She turned up the collar of her mantelet in case the other passengers noticed. But it wasn’t shame or remorse that made her blush, it was longing, physical desire to be with Bobby again.

  He had bought her ticket and put her aboard the train without even so much as a kiss. He had shaken hands, stood back, given a slight salute. At her look of reproach he said in an undertone, ‘Must be discreet, my darling. Staff from the castle might be about. Wouldn’t do for HRH to hear of this.’

  ‘Oh yes. I understand.’ She leaned out of the open window. ‘Shall I see you again?’

  His smile reassured her. ‘Of course. Have to oversee the production of that wonderful tartan cloth, don’t I?’

  ‘When, Bobby, when?’

  ‘Soon as HRH leaves Balmoral ‒ four days’ time.’

  ‘Our house, the weaving shed, it’s down the brae at the west end of the town, by the Water of Leith. Anyone will direct you.’

  ‘Leave it all to me, my dear.’

  So she would see him soon. And by hook or by crook, she would find time to be with him alone somewhere. He would arrange it all ‒ he was so clever, so experienced.

  One thing above all ‒ she must never let her parents know. It wasn’t that she was ashamed or felt she had done anything wrong, simply that she knew they would be upset. She didn’t want to be in discord with them over what had been the most wonderful thing in her life. She didn’t want to hear them talking about wantonness or sin. How could it be a sin when it had seemed so right, so perfect? If God had not intended the human body to enjoy physical love, why had he created it with the powers to give and receive pleasure?

  Her parents would say: only within the bounds of marriage.

  Perhaps so. Perhaps she should have resisted Bobby’s advances. She was certain if she had pushed him away or threatened to cry out, he would have left her room at once. That had been impossible for her to do. She had been lying there dreaming of him, longing for him. He had come like a dream made flesh. She couldn’t believe she was wicked in having embraced the dream.

  When she reached home, she was braced for all kinds of anxious accusations, and ready to lie her way out of it. Yes, she would lie: she found she had enough intent to deceive, enough hardihood, to do it. She found there was scarcely any need.

  Ned’s story was that he had been taken ill with a stomach upset at Crathie, that Jenny had gone to the castle without him and later sent him home while she returned to Balmoral in a further attempt to see the Prince Consort. It had never for a moment occurred to him that she had been successful.

  Any gaps in his story had been passed over as due to his being too unwell to pay attention. Jenny supported this tale with enthusiasm, saying she had been asked to stay overnight at the castle.

  ‘In Balmoral Castle?’ gasped Mrs Corvill in awe. ‘Under the same roof where the Queen has slept?’

  ‘Aye, indeed ‒ but only in one of the maid’s rooms, of course.’

  ‘What like of a room does a maid have in a castle?’ wondered her mother.

  Jenny was able to give a minute description of the attic room ‒ the sprigged wallpaper, the white iron bedstead, the basin and ewer with a portrait of Old Balmoral on the side, the hand towel embroidered with ‘VR’.

  Enthralling. But even more enthralling was the news that she had an order for the Stewart tartan, that both her father and her brother must set it up on the looms at once and weave the pieces, each of fifty yards, one to fill the immediate order and one to be ready if extra were needed.

  ‘But what if it’s not wanted, child?’ protested William.

  ‘Och, father, do you think we’ll have any trouble selling a piece of cloth that the Prince Consort has admired?’

  ‘But it’ll be wanted exclusively by the Royal Household,’ he said. ‘They’ll not want all and sundry having the same cloth as themselves.’

  To be sure. She should have thought of that. ‘Then we’ll put it on display. There can be no harm in that. “As designed for Their Majesties” ‒ wouldn’t that be a good advertisement for us, eh?’

  In the amazement and delight of her news, any doubts about her conduct were totally forgotten. She had done wonders ‒ she, alone face to face with the husband of the reigning monarch, had spoken up for their work, had sold the cloth to the most prestigious customer in the land.

  Even her father, usually alarmed at anything out of the ordinary, smiled and nodded. ‘I’m well pleased. Yon’s a fine tartan, it deserved a special fate. And I expect you asked for a fine price?’

  She was startled. Not once had she thought to talk about money. But she recovered at once. ‘It wasn’t discussed, father. But if we ask for what’s fair, you can be sure the Prince is not going to quibble.’

  What she really meant was, Bobby will help me with all that.

  She overestimated Bobby Prentiss’s interest in clothweaving. When, five days later, he came to the Village of Dean ostensibly to see how matters were going, he gave only the most cursory glance at the work.

  Truth to tell, he found it embarrassing and almost distasteful. The weaving shed attached to William Corvill’s cottage wasn’t an agreeable place. It was, in truth, a shed, with large windows so that good light could fall on the web. The floor was of stone. He didn’t know enough to understand that this was the shed of a prosperous handloom weaver, that others had only earth floors, and no stool for the weaver to rest when he wished. Other weavers didn’t have the fine standard bearing two paraffin lamps of the latest design, because other weavers had no call to work by artificial light ‒ their work wasn’t sufficiently in demand.

  ‘Yes, yes, excellent, splendid,’ he said, giving the cloth half a glance. ‘May I pass on the news to the upholsterer that the cloth will soon be ready?’

  ‘Certainly, sir, certainly.’ William Corvill was trembling with awe and eagerness before this handsome young gentleman in his fine morning suit. He was the richest-looking person William had ever encountered face to face. ‘I’ll put it on the train for Balmoral myself, in about two weeks time ‒’

  ‘Good, good. You have a special label, no doubt, for urgent or special goods?’

  ‘Er …’

  ‘Yes, captain,’ Jenny intervened. They had no special label ‒ in fact, any labels were handwritten on pasted paper for each parcel. But for the Prince Consort’s tartan, she would ensure that a special label was purchased. She had seen them in the stationer’s shops. Better yet, she would have one specially printed. For by all the signs, they would be needing printed labels. The news of the personal interest of the Queen’s husband had brought a flock of customers to the Corvills’ cottage.

  ‘We’ve had to put this new extra work out among some of our fellow-websters,’ she explained to Bobby, when they were alone together that afternoon. ‘My father scarcely knows whether he’s on his head or his heels.’

  Bobby wasn’t paying attention to what she said. It was her bright laughing face that held his attention, the sparkling black eyes.

  ‘Of course the tartans are to our own design. He supervises the work carefully. And the finishing is done by the Suchetts as usual. It’s as if he’d made the cloth in his own shed ‒ you understand?’

  ‘Oh, don’t let’s talk about cloth-making, Jenny.’

  ‘No, of course; that’s of no interest to you, my love, you being no kind of a webster!’ She smiled and took his hand. ‘Oh, my world has totally changed since the moment you stepped up behind me among all the building implements outside the castle! I didn’t think then that it was the least romantic, but now …’

  ‘Yes, now?’ he coaxed.

  ‘I think it was the most wonderful good luck, that you were on duty that afternoon. Bobby, what if it had been that tall gaunt man ‒ the Equerry-in-Chief?’

  ‘He’d have had you escorted out of the grounds as fast as you could trot. But then, he’s got no discrimination.’ He enfolded her in his arms, dropping little kisses on top of h
er head. She snuggled against him adoringly.

  ‘You know, even if I weren’t so in love with you, I’d always be grateful to you because of what you’ve done for Ned.’

  ‘For Ned?’ He had difficulty for a moment placing Ned. Of course, the drunken brother whom he’d seen sitting solemnly at one of the looms this morning.

  ‘He’s going to the university! What do you think of that?’

  ‘Good for him,’ said Bobby, thinking that he’d been happy to miss that part of a gentleman’s education by going straight into the army.

  ‘You see, it’s not just that we’re going to make more money. We can afford now to take another weaver into father’s shed in his place, and pay him a wage. One of the big problems of letting Ned go to college, you see, was always how my father could manage without him. We could perhaps just have managed the fees, but we couldn’t manage without his earnings, nor could we afford to pay a substitute, so we’d have had to let the new man take a percentage of ‒’

  She broke off. Bobby, instead of paying attention, was unbuttoning the front of her bodice. Blushing furiously, she caught his hands. ‘Bobby ‒ don’t ‒’

  ‘But my darling, what is it?’

  ‘You mustn’t … I mean, I can’t … Not with the daylight streaming in …’

  They were in an apartment leased to him by a friend who was off to spend the winter inspecting the antiquities of Egypt. The tall Georgian windows faced out south on to the handsome square, the afternoon light of a bright September day gleamed on gilt mirrors, satin chair covers, porcelain ornaments.

  ‘Sweet girl! Between people who love each other as we do, there’s no need for modesty.’

  ‘But … it seems so shameless …’

  ‘We have nothing to be ashamed of, my angel. We belong to each other, don’t we?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then what we do is right and good.’

  She allowed herself to be persuaded, the more so as his touch upon her breasts was making her shiver with the anticipation of pleasure. Between kisses, he undressed her and then laughingly picked her up to carry her into the bedroom. There Mr McArthur’s fine fourposter was awaiting them, the covers already thrown back to be the more ready. He laid her down among the white pillows.

  She sat up, rosy with embarrassment yet full of a strange courage. ‘No,’ she said, ‘let me ‒ it’s only fair!’ But she was so unaccustomed to the buttons and studs of a man’s clothes that he couldn’t wait. In a few moments they were together in the big bed, and the slanting light from the windows no longer perturbed Jenny Corvill.

  His visits were what she lived for. Soon he was recalled from Balmoral to resume his duties at Buckingham Palace, and then their meetings were fewer. But he was good at suggesting reasons to the equerries’ office for travelling north ‒ arrangements to be made for some improvements in the royal apartments at Holyrood, or the hiring of a carriage-maker to refurbish the royal carriages used in the Highlands.

  As for Jenny, it was easy enough to get away to meet him in the daytime. Her parents would have forbidden any unescorted outings at night, but it was quite usual for Jenny to walk about the city of Edinburgh on business for her father. Moreover, she could always say, if she were late home, that she’d been chatting with her brother.

  Ned was now a student, though still living at home. He had wanted to take rooms near the colleges but Jenny hadn’t given him her support in this. She was afraid that if he lived away from home he would drink far too much.

  In this, she sometimes accused herself of double standards. If it was wrong for Ned to take drink, why was it right for her to take a lover? She would quieten her conscience by saying that it was totally different; she and Bobby loved each other, they made life wonderful for each other. Whereas the whisky injured Ned; took away his self-respect and was bad for his health.

  If a voice within her whispered ‘Hypocrite!’ she stifled it. She would do all she could for Ned ‒ help to make the money that kept him at university, reassure her parents when they worried about the way their cosy family life was changed with a stranger in their weaving shed.

  And certainly the world of the Corvills was different now. They had suddenly become all the rage. Cloth merchants sought them out, and were disappointed when William explained that even if he extended his business with all his Huguenot colleagues working for him at their looms, it was still impossible to produce cloth in the amounts they asked for.

  Instead, he preferred to concentrate on special customers. Jenny had a great talent for designing plaids with all the rich colours of the old tartans. There was a vogue for tartans ‒ genuine tartans and invented designs. Jenny would paint a new check on paper and then set up a sample on the loom. Her father would weave a yard or two. When it was finished and handled in the daylight, it looked ‘authentic’ ‒ the tartan of some old clan.

  Customers came not only from the surrounding area but from London, from abroad, even. The Empress of Russia sent a lady-in-waiting who happened to be in Britain visiting relatives. The Countess Velikilova looked through the pattern book that William kept in the cottage parlour, sipped tea out of his new china, and then asked to see what Jenny was currently working on.

  Jenny led her to the weaving shed. On her father’s loom was a tartan of which there was only as yet about twelve inches in existence. It was of a purplish-blue, with a black and a red over-check.

  ‘But that is extremely beautiful!’ exclaimed Madame Velikilova, her diamond earrings asparkle as she bent to study it. ‘What tartan is that?’

  ‘It’s a variation of the Montgomery plaid, madame. The Montgomerys are a Lowland clan ‒ their tartans are little known.’ Newly invented, she might have said. There had been a Montgomery tartan known in Ulster, but here in Scotland Jenny had never seen it worn. Moreover, the tartan she’d heard described was not really the one she had just designed.

  ‘You say it is a variation?’

  ‘Exactly ‒ it’s not the true Montgomery. I think of calling it Langside ‒ the last of the original Montgomerys was killed at the Battle of Langside nearly three hundred years ago.’

  ‘How sad,’ murmured the countess. ‘Do you tell me that no one has bought this tartan as yet?’

  ‘No one has even seen it, madame.’

  ‘That is very pleasing. Her Imperial Majesty would prefer that if I order a dress length, it should be unique. If I order a length of this Langside, do you guarantee that no one else shall have it?’

  William was about to utter an eager agreement. Jenny said smartly, ‘Well, but, Your Excellency, that would be a big loss to us. This is a pretty tartan ‒ I thought to sell it to ladies throughout the country.’

  ‘No, no ‒ Her Imperial Majesty would not be pleased at that.’

  Jenny was inclined to do business with this Russian lady. The Crimean War was still going on, though the Russians were losing and the old iron-handed Tsar, Nicholas I, had just died. The Countess was lady-in-waiting to the new, young Tsarina. From what Bobby had told her, Jenny expected the new Tsar to give up the fighting in the Crimea very soon, in which case Britain and Russia would no longer be enemies and in a few weeks or months it would be possible to boast that the Corvills had sold cloth to an Empress as well as a Queen.

  She let the Countess admire the cloth a while longer, promised to bring a piece to her hotel in a day or two when they had a length worth handling, and saw her to her carriage at the top of the steep hill above the Water of Leith.

  Her father said, ‘Why did you not agree at once to letting her have it exclusively for the Empress?’

  ‘Because they’ve millions of money, the Russian royal family, and I want her to pay a good price for it.’ She shrugged. ‘Don’t forget, if the war goes on, we won’t want to be telling anybody we’ve sold goods to the enemy ‒’

  ‘I never thought of that.’

  ‘But, on the other hand, if the war ends soon ‒ and I hear it may ‒ then we can have the benefit of a very good price and a
great achievement to add to the others.’

  ‘You’ve a head on you, lass,’ William said with puzzled admiration. ‘I don’t know where you get it from …’

  Three days later Jenny took a finished sample of Langside tartan to the Douglas Hotel. The countess was even more attracted to it when she saw it folded against Jenny’s arm. The bright March day picked up the soft colours admirably.

  ‘I should like you to make twenty yards of this tartan for Her Imperial Majesty.’

  ‘Certainly, madame. But if we are not to make any other lengths, we shall have to make a high charge for this one length.’

  The countess never haggled over money. And besides, it was much more important to bring home to Her Imperial Majesty a piece of this suddenly so-fashionable cloth than to bother about a few guineas here or there. ‘How much?’ she said with a shrug.

  Jenny calculated the realistic price which an exclusive merchant would charge. Then crossing her fingers behind her back, she doubled it and said, ‘We should have to charge you twenty guineas the yard, madame. That’s to say, four hundred guineas for a dress length.’

  She held her breath. Twenty guineas a yard! If the woman had any sense, she’d throw Jenny out there and then.

  But Countess Velikilova had no idea of costs. Her gowns were made, the bills came in, her husband paid, and that was that. ‘Very well,’ she murmured, nodding at her paid companion, an English lady who had the task of easing her path in every way. Mrs Simpkins duly made a note in the pocketbook she carried with her everywhere, and likewise noted the proposed date of delivery at their temporary London address.

  Jenny went down the stairs to the lobby in high spirits. True, it was a pity to lose such a pretty tartan, just the kind the ladies would have loved for their autumn dresses and cloaks next winter. But to sell to an Empress!