The Silver Touch

by Rosalind Laker

  ‘There’s no need to be afraid,’ she assured them. ‘Those noisy people will run past our house soon and then we’ll go back indoors and have some hot chocolate for a treat before you go to sleep again.’

  It did not sound as if the rioters were going past. In her mind’s eye Hester could picture the swirling mass of maddened people beating against the square of houses like an angry tide. Her heart almost stopped as the side gate crashed open and rioters thundered in over the cobbles of the yard to batter at the back door of her house, yelling and bawling and bent on an orgy of destruction. The glass at the workshop window shattered, but for security reasons the shutters were extra strong and resisted the blows aimed at them. How long the locks on both windows and the door would withstand the onslaught, Hester had no idea, her fervent hope being that those milling feet would not kick up what had been hidden shallowly in the soil.

  When a cheer went up she realized that the door must have given. She shuddered at the violation of her home, drawing the children still closer to her. At least the rioters would find nothing in the workshop. Pray God they did not come searching outside to the outhouse.

  Musket shots and screams added to the racket in the square. If anything the roar of the mob became louder like that of a wounded animal.

  ‘What can be happening, ma’am?’ Abigail asked her fearfully.

  ‘I don’t know. Whatever it is, I think it’s bringing those people out of my house.’

  It sounded as if they were leaving in a kind of panic, leaving as quickly as they had come. There were more musket shots and the din began gradually to recede.

  ‘I think it’s over.’ Abigail’s voice rose on a hopeful note. Then she caught her breath on a rasp as the side gate opened again. One of the men had come back. They heard him go at a run into the house. Hester, straining her ears, could hear him shouting. Disengaging the children’s arms and then lifting Peter on to Abigail’s lap, she got up and opened the door to look out cautiously.

  ‘Don’t go out there, Mama!’ Letticia implored tearfully.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she replied reassuringly. ‘I think I heard my name. Yes, I did!’

  She pushed wide the door and ran across the yard into the house. John, coming downstairs from a frantic search for his family, saw her rushing to meet him.

  ‘Thank God!’ he exclaimed, kissing and hugging her to him in joyous relief. ‘I was afraid you had tried to escape and become caught up in the riot!’

  ‘No! No! We hid in the outhouse. We’re all safe.’ She leaned back in his arms to look at him. His face was bruised and his coat torn. ‘What happened to you?’

  ‘I had a struggle to reach Nixon Square in the throng, but I managed to get through.’

  ‘What was the shooting?’

  ‘The militia was called in. We mustn’t let the children look out in the square until the morning. A few rioters were shot and they’re being carried away.’

  ‘Let’s fetch the children now.’

  They had their promised hot chocolate before they went to bed and so did everyone else, all seated round the kitchen table. Downstairs was a shambles where cupboards had been opened and contents smashed and spilled, but the rioters had not had time to get upstairs and those rooms were undisturbed.

  In bed, John decided the time had come to break some bad news to Hester. ‘I’m afraid tonight has been a financial disaster for us, my love. All the silver from the workshop was looted.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t.’ Lying within the circle of his arm, she turned towards him. ‘It’s all buried in my herb garden. Tomorrow you can dig it up.’

  Astonishment widened his eyes and then he chuckled at her ingenuity, gathering her to him. ‘No man ever had a wife like you, my darling!’

  At that point passion swept them both away.

  At dawn next morning when he took a spade to the herb garden the spout of a silver teapot showed him where to begin digging and by a clump of chives a half-finished tankard had been churned to the surface by the milling of feet there.

  The advance of the Scots ended at Derby and they were driven back across the border, the rebellion crushed. The city settled down once again. Hester did not. She had believed her family complete. Due to Peter being a most sensible child, she had had more freedom than ever before to work at John’s side. Now she was never going to forget the riot and many times in the future she was to wonder if the troubles of that night had left their mark on her fifth child.

  Throughout the months of her pregnancy she was sickly and ailed as she had never done before. At first she tried to carry on at her bench in the workshop but her tiredness and lack of energy defeated her and waves of faintness had forced her to retreat to a couch upstairs where she spent most of her days. John could only guess at her frustration in having to confine her hands to sewing and embroidery instead of working the precious metals.

  There had been times when he had thought seriously of registering his punchmark and opening his own business as an independent goldsmith, but it was a great risk for a family man of moderate means and now a new threat to his livelihood had arisen. In Sheffield a new and cheap method of making plate had been discovered, a process by which a thin coat of silver was applied by fusion to a copper base. Nobody in goldsmithing knew what effect it was going to have on the trade and there was plenty of head-shaking and pursed lips in the goldsmiths’ coffee-house whenever the subject was discussed. As yet he had no lack of work, which made it harder to have Hester indisposed, and he had had to subcontract in turn. As for the forthcoming addition to his family, he would welcome the infant when it came, even though he knew from Hester’s lack-lustre eyes that this was the one child she could have done without.

  Almost as if in revenge for being unwanted from the start the Batemans’ third son, who was to be named William, chose to delay for many pain-racked hours before finally making his appearance, feet first, just as dawn was rising. He almost cost Hester her life. If she had not been a survivor by nature she would have succumbed during her ordeal. As it was, she lay exhausted for hours afterwards, not knowing who came and went at the bedside. William was four days old before she had the strength to look at him and hold him. By then he had become accustomed to a wet-nurse, Hester having no milk, and the vital link that might have drawn them together was lost. He was the first of her children to bear no likeness to John from the start and that in itself detracted from his chances of arousing love in her. She could only see one of her half-brothers in him, the greediest of those who had been present at the dividing up of her childhood home, and she was thankful when he was taken from her and put back in his crib. As she might have expected, he bawled in protest and he had a loud and penetrating wail. She closed her eyes wearily, turning her face to one side on the pillow, terribly afraid she had given birth to a tyrant of the nursery.

  Her fears proved to be well founded. When fed, comfortable, warm and newly dry, he would continue to bawl, his tiny fists flailing as if to hit back at all who came near him. Seeming to need sleep only in snatches, he disturbed the nights of the Bateman household and disrupted the days to the best of his ability. Only Ann was able to quieten him. Something in her soft voice, perhaps a recognition of love in her tone, would make him gulp into silence, listening to her intently. It became her greatest pleasure to care for him and, although a child herself, she treated him as a little person and not as a doll.

  Abigail, who had become larger and rounder and plainer in the fourteen years she had been with the Bateman family, was full of praise for Ann. ‘She’s a real little mother, madam,’ she said often enough to Hester. ‘Young William would nearly have driven me out of my wits at times if it hadn’t been for her.’

  Privately Hester felt the same. At least William had done something for Ann that nobody else had been able to do, for by accepting responsibility for him she had come out of her shell. Her pride in being the one most able to comfort him had given her an awareness of herself as an important cog in the family wheel. She
would always be the quiet one, for nothing could change that reserve inherent in her, but she no longer hung her head when she was the focus of attention and the worst of her shyness seemed to have left her.

  Although Hester was never able to feel the same depth of love for William as she did for her other children, she eventually overcame her initial withdrawal by reminding herself that he had been fathered by the man she loved. With time he lost the look of her relative that had helped to turn her from him and became a handsome child with a mop of dark chestnut curls, his smile mischievous and merry, and he had a fount of laughter in him.

  He was also strong willed and destructive. Unlike his brothers and sisters when small, he wrecked whatever came into his path. Toys hoarded from the past were broken the moment they came into his hands and whatever he was unable to destroy he tossed from him, invariably causing some damage in the process. When reprimanded he would focus a melting appeal for forgiveness that invariably caused all hostility towards him to fade away. Hester alone failed to be moved by either his open, hazel-eyed gaze or lisping words. She recognized, as nobody else in the family appeared to have done, that he had been born with the most devastating power that any human being could have over others, which was the gift of charm. Ann had been the first to succumb from his crib days and was his constant champion, ever trying to conceal his misdemeanours and making excuses for him. It was she who wept when Hester punished him, while he received a slap or a locking in his room without a tear, merely puzzled that his mother alone could never be won over and retained that hard glint in her eye.

  ‘At least we know there’s not going to be a third goldsmith among our sons,’ John said with amusement after some latest mischief by William had been reported to him. ‘To my mind he shows all the signs of becoming a pugilist when he’s grown.’

  ‘I trust not,’ Hester replied wearily. William had run riot once again in the workshop. Since then the lower half of the door was kept permanently bolted while the upper half stood wide. He frequently escaped Abigail and Ann to come to the door and hammer on it for admittance and, if ignored, would throw whatever came to hand over the top. Again and again, Hester had to interrupt her work to drag him back to whoever happened to be searching for him.

  With her concentration at the work-bench frequently broken by these tussles with William, or by the need to investigate an uproar of his making in another part of the house, she was far more tired at the end of the day than she would have needed to be. John’s arms at night were always a comfort to her. It was through tiredness and sleepy warmth that she failed to take her own simple precaution against further conception.

  Her sixth and last child, another son, was born in the second week of November, 1747. It was a quick and easy birth, a contrast in every way to William’s delivery. Unexpectedly, William did not resent this new arrival on the scene. Only the baby’s name defeated him. He could not manage to say Jonathan. ‘’thon,’ he called his brother. But it was typical of him that he did not give in until eventually he had mastered it. ‘Jonathan!’ he shouted triumphantly. Then he shouted it daily about the house until those around him clapped hands over their ears.

  It was always said in general conversation afterwards that it had been Jonathan’s arrival that had created the need once more for a larger house and caused the move from Nixon Square. Letticia, an observant, quick-witted fourteen-year-old, held another opinion. Her father certainly appeared to think he had been the instigator, but the evidence was against him. Already Letticia had discovered, through taking note of her mother’s tact, that a clever woman could manipulate a man into doing her will if she had a mind to it and, what was most important, letting him believe he had thought of it first. To the best of Letticia’s knowledge, her father had been perfectly content at Nixon Square, but suddenly there was a great uprooting and the Batemans moved, lock, stock and barrel, to the northern outskirts just beyond the city boundary to a house on a route out of London known as Bunhill Row. She was certain it was her mother’s wish that had been fulfilled.

  Letticia’s deduction was close to the truth, although it had not been as hasty a decision as she supposed. In fact, it had involved much discussion between John and Hester, he seeing the threat of Sheffield Plate as a reason against a move from Nixon Square; she convinced that a step towards greater independence was long overdue. John was sufficiently established now as a dependable outworker to take himself beyond the city boundaries where he would no longer be tied by many of its laws that restricted those, such as himself, with the skill in his craft to match any man but without the qualifications.

  He was not, and never would be, an ambitious businessman, as she had discovered long since. His sole aim was security for her and the children, which in itself was highly commendable and far more than countless women received from their husbands. She was grateful for it but nobody could advance without some risk and to avoid it was stultifying. She truly believed that if he had attained his Freedom of the Goldsmiths Company he would have been content to jog along as he did now, leaving the fame and glory to others. At least with Joss it would be different. Joss would bring renown to his father’s name.

  There was also another reason, no less important, why she had favoured a move. John worked extremely hard, as he had always done, and she was convinced that to be on the outskirts of the city and away from the river fogs when his day’s labour was done would be immensely beneficial to him. Now and again he was subject to a slight cough and although her herbal mixture of hore-hound, honey and egg-white soon banished it, she felt that the sweeter, cleaner air of the countryside should prevent further recurrence. It was an enormous relief to her when the move took place.

  Bunhill Row ran right through the parish of St Luke’s, the southern end being mainly commercial due to its nearness to the hub of the city. There many prosperous businesses stood shoulder to shoulder, including the House of Whitbread which made some of the best ale to be had anywhere. Towards the northern end it was mainly residential, although there was an armoury house in a large artillery ground and the residences, all well built and occupied mostly by well-to-do tradesmen and successful artisans, thinned out gradually into open countryside with Bunhill Fields rich with wooded groves and the glint of streams.

  It was this open view that stretched beyond the windows of Number 107, the Batemans’ new home in a row of three houses standing quite alone with gardens to the rear. Part of their garden was taken up by a light, airy workshop, solidly designed, where the windows could be opened to the balmy country air.

  John and Hester were soon to become acquainted with their neighbours and Peter made friends the first day with the twin brothers of the Beaver family who resided at Number 84. They brought along some other boys, nearly all of them around the same age, and Peter was immediately absorbed into the group. Elizabeth Beaver, who happened to be his age exactly, had trailed in after her brothers. She stood staring at him with large sapphire-blue eyes, her fair hair tied up with a pink ribbon, and offered him one of the sticky toffee pieces that she had with her in a twist of paper. He took a piece and thanked her as best he could. It almost filled his mouth.

  ‘I helped my mother make it,’ she informed him.

  ‘It tastes good.’

  By then the others had fallen on the toffee and taken every piece. She did not complain, simply licking off whatever sugary fragments remained on the paper. Hester, sighting her from the window, invited her in to meet Letticia and Ann. There was nothing tomboyish about her, quite the reverse, there being something almost ethereal about her looks, but although she became friendly with the girls she was to remain one of the boys’ group, always on the outskirts, mostly ignored, but stead-fastly attempting to join in the games and climb trees and run races. Hester took to her, admiring her spirit, and was pleased whenever she came to the house.

  On her own first day in her new home Hester had seen again birds she had not fed since childhood and Peter, who was clever with his hands, made a little
bird-table for her in spite of unwanted help from William.

  ‘Leave that saw alone! Put down that hammer!’ Exasperated, Peter finally dealt his brother a harder clout than he had intended and shoved him away. ‘Go back indoors.’

  William withdrew a few steps. The blow had hurt but he did not cry easily. He fixed his eyes on Peter in unspoken appeal and waited. It did not take long. He saw his brother glance towards him reluctantly and sigh.

  ‘Oh, very well. You can hold the nails for me.’

  William beamed. ‘I won’t drop them, I promise.’ He did, of course, quite accidentally, and they had to search for them in the overgrown grass of what would soon be a lawn again.

  Hester had plans for the garden. There was room here for flowers and vegetables as well as her herbs. Already everything there had run wild in the interim when the house had stood empty, waiting to be sold, and she would have to call in a gardener. The herbs she would sow herself when the spadework was done and she would replant those brought from Nixon Square. She felt she had never been happier. She had loved the house from first sight. It was solid and unpretentious, not as large as its neighbours on either side but roomy and spacious with softwood-panelled walls, dentilled cornices and pleasing fireplaces. There should never be any need to move again. Here she could put down her roots once and for all.

  John was also pleased with the new location when his last doubts about the wisdom of the move finally vanished. It was a far better area in which to bring up the children, Hester was happy as a lark to be back in the countryside and he and his workshop were still within convenient reach of the city. He could walk to his favourite coffee-house to talk shop with other followers of his craft in less than an hour and, although he was not much of a drinking man, there was a tavern called the Royal Oak within a few yards of his new home. Lying back from the street, which at this far end of Bunhill Row had petered out into a country lane, the tavern stood wall to wall with a large mansion, presently closed, which belonged to a London banker, James Esdaile. The forecourt of the tavern ran parallel to the well-kept flower garden that fronted the mansion, divided off by the high garden wall which surrounded the Esdaile property. In the tavern, he heard once more about the absent owner from local residents and he related what he had learned in turn to Hester.