The Silver Touch

by Rosalind Laker

  Hester did not stay overnight with Letticia and Richard in readiness for the next day as she would otherwise have done, because Sarah had expressed a wish to view the Lord Mayor’s procession with Jonathan’s children while at the same time refusing to accompany Anne-Olympe. Since neither Peter nor Jonathan could spare time from work to go on the outing, Hester returned home especially to be able to escort her. Always she had encouraged Sarah into family occasions and did not want her to miss this one. In the morning two of the Bateman coaches set off from Bunhill Row. Young Bill had elected to ride with his grandmother and his aunt while his brothers and sisters rode with his mother. He was wildly excited and bounced up and down on the seat, his bright russet hair the same hue as Hester’s had been in her younger days.

  ‘Isn’t this fun, Grandmother! We’re going to London, Aunt Sarah!’

  James had hired a large room on an upper floor for Hester and her family. It was close to St Paul’s Cathedral where they would be able to see to advantage and view one of the highlights of the procession. When they arrived Alice was there already, having been invited to join them, and Letticia came soon afterwards. As with Alice, her children were grown, the daughters married, the sons at work. She did not miss them unduly for her social life was full and, as an unexpected bonus of middle age, she and Richard had mended the rifts in their marriage. As a result she had regained much of her lost happiness and was more amiable to others than she had ever been.

  ‘I think we should take our seats now,’ she suggested after they had enjoyed the light repast that James had ordered to be served to them. ‘We shall soon hear the military band.’

  ‘I can hear it now!’ Bill was leaning precariously out of the open window and Hester quickly hauled him back.

  There were three windows and the adults divided themselves up with the children, Letticia sitting with Sarah, who had two of the youngest with her. Below in the street crowds had gathered on either side, particularly dense on the steps of St Paul’s where some of the recently formed Bow Street Runners were keeping a passage open to the great door. Through it the Dean, his clergy and the choir had appeared to descend and group themselves on the lower steps, a verger with his silver wand in attendance.

  Now the merry lilt of the pipes and rattle of kettle drums rose clearly above the noise of the crowd, announcing the close approach of the new Lord Mayor. Behind the marching band came coach after coach of aldermen and other dignatories until, with a jingle of harness, cavalry rode in escort to the long-awaited magnificent red and gold coach, six matched horses driven by a coachman in scarlet, bringing forth a crescendo of cheering from those below the windows where the Batemans sat. Made by London craftsmen two decades before to be the Lord Mayor’s personal equipage during his term of office, the coach shone like a brilliant jewel and swayed on its straps as if weighed down by the gilded encrustations of its glittering ornamentation.

  ‘There’s Sir James!’ Alice cried excitedly.

  They could all see him now, his broad face abeam with joy at the rapturous acclaim he was receiving from the city that he had served and would continue to serve in some capacity after this year’s duties were done. In his scarlet robes, his gold mayoral chain agleam, he was waving his tricorn hat exuberantly through the open windows of the coach in acknowledgement of the deafening cheers. As the coach drew level with the Batemans’ windows, the whole procession halted. James was to alight here to approach the cathedral steps humbly on foot, and for that reason he had selected those particular viewing windows for Hester and her party. For no more than the few seconds he could allow himself at this stage of the events, he looked up to where he knew she would be sitting. She raised her hand in a little wave of greeting and he returned her smile with a bow. Then he walked, a lone figure, to kneel with bowed head before the Dean and receive his blessing, which rang out in the crisp autumnal air.

  ‘God bless you and keep you in your going out and your coming in. May this be a year of service and happiness for you and London. Amen.’

  The choir burst into song. A Bible was presented to James and he held it before him as he returned to his coach. The procession moved on, many people clustering in its wake, others dispersing to return to whatever business they had left for the grand sight they had witnessed. Hester, about to relax back in her chair, grew taut and leaned forward to rest a hand on the sill. A face had turned upwards to her in the mingling throng. It was William!

  She pressed her hand to her heart on its thump of joyful surprise. Then, instantly, she remembered that Sarah was in the room. Glancing across, she saw to her relief that her son’s wife was busy with the children. The cautionary turn of her head must have alerted William, because when she searched for him again he had drawn a few paces away. A woman about his own age was with him and, after tucking his cane under his arm, he took something from her arms to hold up for Hester to see. It was a very young baby, pink ribbons on its cap, and she gave an involuntary gasp of pleasure, making a motion of applause. William handed the child back and whatever he said to the woman caused her to look up at the window in her turn, her face freckled and vigorous, deeply dimpled as she bobbed a curtsy.

  At that moment Bill rushed across to Hester, exclaiming about the soldiers, and William hurriedly turned the woman away with him, his arm across her shoulders. Yet as they began to be lost in the mingling crowd, he could not resist one last fleeting glance up at his mother. Then they were gone.

  Behind Hester there came a rising wail, thin and piercing. ‘That was William!’

  Hester sprang up from her chair, but she was too late. Sarah had rushed for the door. ‘Wait!’ Then as she disappeared from the room to go pounding down the stairs, Hester turned in appeal. ‘Stop her, for mercy’s sake!’

  It was Alice who moved first. There was a hubbub with the children, one of them crying, and neither she nor the other two women had heard or seen what had taken place. She simply supposed that Sarah, in one of her quirks of eccentricity, had taken it into her head to follow the Lord Mayor’s coach with every chance of getting lost in streets she did not know. Outside there was no sign of her. Alice began to dart this way and that. Surely Sarah, bare-headed and capeless in a crimson gown, should be easy to sight. The trouble was that with the extra number of people about it was not easy to see far in any direction.

  Ten minutes later Alice returned, having searched in vain. Hester sat sideways on a chair, her arm resting on the back of it, and upon seeing Alice on her own she let her forehead sink wearily on to her hand. Letticia and Anne-Olympe looked grave. With the need for secrecy gone, Hester had told them of William’s return and her wish that Sarah should never know of it since she was now Peter’s wife. What she had not disclosed was her own private fear about the situation with regards to Anne-Olympe, but even that danger had been averted now it was apparent that William had married the widow whose workshop he had taken over. After all the trouble he had caused her, Hester knew he would never have flaunted a bastard. William was well and truly wed.

  ‘Sit down, Alice,’ Letticia advised, releasing a sigh. ‘There’s much for you to hear.’

  They all took turns in the next hour to look for Sarah, taking her cape with them in hope. The children, tired from the excitement and increasingly bored at being confined to the room, began to get restless and quarrelsome. Just as Anne-Olympe was thinking she must take them home before any damage was done, Bill having made a lord mayor’s coach out of chairs on the floor, the door reopened and Sarah entered. She was ashen, her eyes huge and staring and her hair, which had become loosened from its pins as she had pushed and shoved to get through the crowd, hung in disarray down her back. She fixed her eyes on Hester as she crossed the floor, her movements agitated and unsure.

  ‘I couldn’t reach him!’ she exclaimed frantically. ‘I glimpsed him once in the crowd and lost him again.’

  Hester’s voice was husky with sadness. ‘It was for the best.’

  ‘How can you say that?’ Sarah drove the f
ingers of both hands into her dishevelled hair and shook her head wildly. ‘Tell me how long William has been back in this country! I demand to know.’

  ‘Long enough to have finished his disrupted apprenticeship and to shoulder the responsibility of a thriving goldsmithing business outside London.’

  Sarah’s cheeks hollowed and then she made an unsteady gesture of accusation. ‘You have kept us apart because of Peter, haven’t you?’

  ‘It was William’s own decision made a long time ago. Have you forgotten why you married Peter? Everything was over with William then.’

  ‘It was never over for me!’ She threw her arms over her head and rocked with despair. ‘And it never will be.’

  Her abject misery touched everyone, the children standing silent, the younger ones frightened. Bill, who was attached to her, went forward and hugged her. He did not understand the situation, but he knew it was something bad. ‘Don’t cry, Aunt Sarah. Please!’

  She lowered her arms and took his head between her hands, looking down at him. ‘You’re like my William. Did anyone ever tell you that?’ Gently she put him to one side and raised her voice at his grandmother on a curiously hysterical note. ‘I want William’s address. I must find him and tell him everything. Then he and I will never be parted again!’

  Hester’s pity suffused her whole face. ‘It’s too late. William is married with a child.’

  Sarah’s pallor became sickly white and her colourless lips began to quiver uncontrollably. Although she swayed she did not faint as the others expected, Alice and Letticia having drawn near. Her blurred eyes gazed beseechingly at Hester as if wanting what she had been told to be denied. Since her own vocal chords had apparently ceased to function, she made several small helpless movements with her hands. Hester caught them in her clasp.

  ‘You can make a new start to your life with all of us to help you. We are your family. Think how Peter has become your mainstay. He will always be there.’

  She did not appear to grasp what she was hearing, simply closing her eyes and nodding as if to ward off anything more being said to her. She was still nodding without meaning when Letticia put her cape about her shoulders and her hat was given to her.

  ‘You should go home now and rest.’ Letticia patted her comfortingly.

  Sarah put out a hand to Bill. ‘Take me down to the coach. I don’t remember where it is.’

  He looked questioningly at his mother and grandmother. They both indicated he should do as she wished, Hester adding: ‘Tell the servant in the entrance hall to summon the coaches for all of us and wait with Aunt Sarah there.’

  It took a little time to get the children into their outdoor clothes as well as to accomplish their last-minute trips to the closed stool in the adjoining anteroom. They were about to leave, Hester fastening the cape of the youngest child, when Bill reappeared, looking puzzled and put out.

  ‘Aunt Sarah took the first of our two coaches and told the coachman to take her home. She wouldn’t let me go with her.’

  Immediately there was consternation. A glance from the window showed she was already out of sight. Letticia tried to calm her mother’s fears about Sarah going off alone.

  ‘She wanted to be on her own for a little while, that’s all. And when she gets home the housekeeper will look after her.’

  ‘That’s just it,’ Hester exclaimed over her shoulder as she led everyone downstairs. ‘Sarah and Peter were going to dine with me this evening to allow the housekeeper and the servants to have a whole day off. It’s so rare for Sarah to be out of the house. Peter will still be at work and there’ll be nobody there!’

  Hester had never known a longer or more crowded journey; she and Anne-Olympe with seven children in one coach. They came to Peter’s house before reaching either of their own homes and she and Anne-Olympe alighted there. Instructions were given to the coachman to see all the children into the care of their nursemaid and to get a message to Peter at the workshop to come at once.

  Hester hastened up into the porched entrance and hammered the brass knocker. She could not bring herself to voice the terrible fear that was in her, but she supposed her daughter-in-law guessed. There was no reply to her knocking and she tried to call through the door, pressing herself against it. ‘Sarah! Let me in!’

  ‘I’ll see if there’s a window open at the back.’ Anne-Olympe had already examined those at the front of the house. She did not find an opening anywhere. Without hesitation she took up a stone from the garden and smashed a pane. Putting in her hand, she released the latch and, after gathering up her skirt and petticoats, she climbed in. She ran first to admit her mother-in-law into the house and then had time to see that a kitchen knife lay where it had been dropped on the black and white chequered tiles of the hall. Nearby was Sarah’s hat, its bright blue ribbons forming a pattern of their own. On the stairs was her discarded cape.

  ‘Pray God we’re in time!’ Hester gasped, following her up the flight.

  It did not take them long to find her. She was curled up in the darkest corner of a large linen cupboard, her face buried in her arms. Hester dropped to her knees and spoke softly to her.

  ‘Let me help you to bed, my dear. You’ve had a great shock today. A little sleep will bring you comfort.’ There was no response. Gently she slid a hand under her daughter-in-law’s chin and tilted her face. Sarah blinked, her gaze empty and totally vacant. A shiver of horror ran down Hester’s spine. ‘Oh, no! Oh, my dear girl! Have we failed you after all?’

  Anne-Olympe, helping Hester to bring Sarah to her feet, realized that oblivion must have come to her sister-in-law’s mind in time to save her from the wrist-slashing that the knife downstairs had indicated. Sarah stood motionless to be undressed and put in a night-gown as if she were a life-size doll. Hester, to whom tears were rare, wept uncontrollably as she brushed the beautiful hair while Anne-Olympe tidied up and put everything away. They were just drawing the covers up over Sarah in the bed when there came a knocking on the front door.

  ‘That can’t be Peter,’ Anne-Olympe observed, ‘because I’m sure I left the bolt drawn.’

  ‘I had better go down anyway.’ Hester dried the wetness of her eyes as she descended into the hall. She opened the door to the coachman.

  ‘Mr Peter wasn’t there, ma’am. He had to go and see a client earlier today, but Mr Jonathan will tell him to come straight here when he returns.’

  She closed the door and leaned against it, reaction setting in to the twists and turns of the tragedy that had occurred. Her usual abundant energy had deserted her and her legs felt ready to give way. Determinedly she straightened her back and went slowly across to remount the stairs. That dreadful knife had been cleared away with all else. Although she wanted to hope that Sarah would come out of that deep shock to resume normal living, her common sense told her that it would never be. Something had snapped in Sarah’s mind. It would have been easy to give way again to tears of pity and sadness, but she must be strong as she had always been in times of crisis. She was in John’s place as head of the family and must carry her duty well.

  Anne-Olympe was sitting at the bedside. ‘Sarah has gone to sleep.’

  ‘That’s good.’ Hester sat down herself more wearily than she had intended. She was aware of her daughter-in-law’s understanding gaze. Unexpectedly it touched her. She and this young woman had come through a terrible time together in the past hour. ‘I don’t know what I would have done without your help, Anne-Olympe.’

  ‘Alice or Letticia would have returned with you if I had not been there.’

  ‘That’s not the point. Today no daughter could have been closer to me than you were and still are as we sit here together. There have been barriers between us in the past and angry words exchanged. I hope they are forgotten.’

  Anne-Olympe looked at her linked hands in her lap as if pondering her answer and then raised her head again. ‘I have known you feared Peter’s love for me and its possible consequences. My anger has been a passing thing.’
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  Hester drew in her breath. ‘I thought I had hidden that particular anxiety as I believed Peter had disguised his feelings for you.’

  ‘He did for a long time, probably because Jonathan still held me with the charm that had made me fall in love with him. As that illusion cleared I began to see Peter in another light. No man in love can guard his glances forever.’

  ‘Does he realize that you know how he feels?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I’ve tried to be as astute in concealing my own emotions from him as he was in keeping knowledge from me for a time.’

  There was a long pause. ‘Are you telling me you’re in love with him?’

  ‘I am.’ It was said openly and honestly. ‘But I’m married to another man to whom I gave a promise of fidelity at the altar and such is my nature that I must abide by that vow, no matter that he has betrayed me since the early days of our marriage.’

  ‘You know that too?’ Hester’s voice was imbued with sympathy.

  Anne-Olympe gave a heavy nod, unwittingly revealing the burden it had been to her. ‘Jonathan is a good father.’ It was as if she wanted to cement her reassurance by showing that her marriage still retained an unassailable bastion. ‘My children are everything to me.’

  Suddenly Sarah stirred, sitting bolt upright to stare about her blankly. With gentleness, Anne-Olympe pressed her back into the pillows and she slept again almost immediately. Hester rose to her feet, relieved immeasurably that the way had been cleared between her and Jonathan’s wife. She had long held Anne-Olympe in respect and this had now reached new bounds.