The Gilded Lily

by Deborah Swift

  She came back to the table, eyes streaming. She brushed the wet across her cheeks and into her hair. ‘Do you think the dead can see us?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know . . .’

  ‘His wife cursed me. If it weren’t for her . . .’ She took a deep shuddering breath. ‘She hexed me – I saw her give me the cold eye when she was in the dock. She saw to it we’d have no peace. We would have been happy, snug and safe in our warm little house.’ Ella took hold of Sadie’s arm and pulled her close. ‘You could have had your own little room under the eaves. He were soft, a good provider, and he loved me. He would have done anything for me. Even though I were just a maidservant. He called me his little chicken.’ Ella’s lower lip trembled, and she let go. ‘Stupid bloody man. Why did he have to die?’

  Sadie sat back down and pulled her hair forward, tugging it between her fingers. She was unsure what her sister meant – their flight from Netherbarrow had been hurried and confusing. She was confounded by this strange talk of hexes – all she had understood was that Ella’s employer, Mr Ibbetson, had died and Ella had lost her position.

  She knew of course that they had taken a large quantity of goods from the house – this alone made her quake, the value of the goods was far more than twelve penn’orth, and that on its own was a hanging offence – but now here was Ella talking of curses too. Sadie shivered and looked behind, as if something might be lurking in the dark recesses under the platform. She stared at Ella, standing now head tilted up towards the ceiling, her mouth twitching, as if she were chewing the inside of it.

  Ella was serious. A chill ran through Sadie’s spine. ‘What do you mean, Ella? What sort of hex?’

  Ella grabbed hold of the back of her chair, her hands white, the tears were gone. Her eyes turned hard and defiant. ‘I know folks think it sinful, what I did. But it didn’t feel wrong. Maidservants are two a penny, and if one dies, then another mooncalf steps straight in to fill her boots, and most times the mistress don’t even notice the difference. As long as their bloody fires are mended. Filled with her own importance she was, Mistress, like I didn’t have no feelings nor nothing, lording it over us all with her jangling keys.’

  She paced the floor, her hands crushed into fists. Her voice took on a flinty edge. ‘It were time for Mistress to know what it feels like, to be left waiting.’

  Sadie twined her hair round her index finger. She did not know how to respond, so she simply sat and waited for Ella to burn herself out. Even when they were small, she had often watched as Ella’s storms blew up and then abated, and like the weather they seldom lasted too long. Ella had the knack of setting things to one side, putting them away neatly in sealed boxes in her mind and pretending that they never happened, whereas Sadie could never stop one thought from leaking into the next, so that her thoughts crashed into each other in a sea of worries. Now her disquiet began to mount as she tried to make sense of the fragments of Ella’s story.

  ‘What is it?’ Sadie whispered, when Ella stopped pacing and her shoulders showed that her breathing had settled. ‘What is it you’re telling me?’

  Ella turned half away as if ashamed.

  ‘Go on,’ Sadie said.

  ‘He needed someone to love him, see. Great soft thing. But now I’m thinking, mayhap I was wrong, and Alice Ibbetson might be a witch after all. She cursed me afore she went – not in words, but I caught it well enough. It were a look of hell and brimstone and I’ll not forget that look as long as I live.’

  Sadie stared. ‘Is she dead?’

  Ella did not look up.

  ‘Did they hang her?’

  Ella nodded, as if she could not trust herself to speak.

  There was a moment’s pause. Pigeons cooed in the rafters.

  ‘Then she can’t harm us,’ said Sadie, ‘whatever’s passed between you. God rest her soul.’ But the words seemed hollow and empty. She had not forgotten the sight of the body in the bedroom, and here was Ella talking about another death. She had a sense that she had only just scratched the surface of the story; that the events of the night they left Westmorland were like an underground river, deeply hidden, treacherous, so that the ground beneath them might suddenly collapse and drag them down and sweep them away in a black tide.

  Ella’s face took on a closed look. She took hold of Sadie’s shoulder and her fingers pressed into her collarbone. ‘Never go out without locking that door. And keep your head down when you’re out and about. That’s why I bought you that hooded cloak. That stain marks you out.’

  Sadie felt her words like a slap. Ella hardly ever referred to her face, though plenty of other people used it as a stick to beat her with. But her sister had always ignored it, treating her with a rough tenderness, partly bullying, partly loving, and for this she had been grateful.

  Sadie went red, and her hand sprang up to her forehead as if she was pressing it over a headache. It was a gesture she used often, her hand resting on her eyebrow, half cupped over her left eye, shadowing her cheek.

  Ella looked uncomfortable. She picked up the potage bowls and took them purposefully out of the front door to empty the dregs into the gutter, before dropping them into the sand bucket next to the fireplace. Sadie watched her sister scour the bowls with sand, rubbing hard round the edges with a cloth, put the lid back on the cooking pot with a clatter and wipe her hands. She turned back to Sadie, a softer look on her face.

  ‘’Tis only for a time. Till the fuss dies down,’ she said, gruff now, almost apologetic. ‘Come on, brace up. That potage were foul. I’ll go out to the pie shop and get us a savoury to share.’

  ‘Can we manage it?’ Sadie said. ‘There’s not much left from selling that ring, and you said it had to last us a month.’

  ‘I know what I said,’ snapped Ella, suddenly belligerent again. ‘Just stop moaning, will you. Lock the door after me, and don’t open it till you hear my knock – two short raps. D’you hear?’

  Sadie nodded and stood up as Ella unlocked the door with a key hung inside her petticoat on a long grubby string and took out the black leather purse of coins. When she got to the door she called back, ‘Lock it after me, I said.’ And Sadie slid the two bolts on the inside, though the door frame was that rickety and rotten she doubted it would hold up against someone who was really determined to get in.

  She turned her back on the bolted door and saw anew the small square box they lived in. It was smaller than the stall they kept their cows in at home. The pang of homesickness took her by surprise. A longing that seemed to spring straight up from her heart. She pulled her shawl more closely round her shoulders and tied the ends. It was one she had knitted herself with Herdwick wool. She brought it up to her face and inhaled. It was shabby and worn, with a tatty fringe, but it smelt of Westmorland. She liked it better than the cloak Ella had bought her.

  The smell took her straight home. She pictured her father’s back straining against his yoked shirt, bent over the fire to see what was cooking. She missed her da. Fifteen years she had spent hating him, dreading him coming home, fearing his drunken footsteps outside the door. At night she used to lie awake and dream about the day Ella would come back in her fine lace and satin and take her away from him. Ever since she was small she had been his scapegoat, someone he could hit when he was angry, someone who would cringe and beg, make him feel powerful, like a man, when in truth he wasn’t a man at all – just bones held together by beer. Yet now she missed him and it shamed her. But at least he was predictable, not like Ella who blew hither and thither like chaff in the wind.

  She went to the window and opened the shutters to look out on the street. She wondered what Da thought when she had disappeared. Since coming to London she played out imaginary scenes in her head, where he wept and told her he loved her, begged her to come home, said he’d never forgive himself. Maybe he was out searching for her right that minute. But deep down she knew he would not, that he had just drowned it as usual.

  She turned away from the window and hoicked the bowls out of the
sand where Ella had left them, then dried them on her apron. She rubbed the cloth around the inside, staring into space. Da. The memories flooded back. She realized she had not thought of him since Christmas Day. She knew it was Christmas Day because she and Ella hunkered up in front of a big fire with a meal of roasted pigeon and boiled taters, courtesy of selling another pair of candlesticks, and Ella had even bought a sprig of holly for the windowsill. At the first mouthful of pigeon she had felt a sudden grief, wondering how he was managing with nobody to fetch their share of the goose from their neighbours. That day Sadie saw Ella’s faraway look and knew that, like her, she was remembering other feast days and holidays, the May Day carousings and the warm fires of the Candlemas supper. But there was no snow in London, no village fiddler coming door to door, no mummers play, and the grey damp was unabated.

  She had reached across the table then and given Ella her last boiled tater, even though she’d been saving it till the end because it was the biggest.

  Sadie looked down at the two bowls. What was she doing standing about like a lummock? She stacked the bowls on the shelf and pushed her memories away. The pain of them scalded her too much. She ached for the beauty of the hills – the open skies with their scudding clouds, the hawthorn’s scarlet berries, the sweet tang of cow dung. She sat back on the hard wooden chair, winding her hair in her fingers, the stench of horse urine, bird droppings and soot in her nostrils, the incessant noise of iron-shod hooves drowning out the vermin scratching in the rafters.

  She waited for Ella to return and wondered if she had ever really known her sister. There was something in Ella’s tale that made her spine prickle, for she knew that Ella never told anyone the truth when a lie suited her better. With Ella there was always the feeling that the truth moved about, like tussocks on shifting sand, and that sometimes when you thought you were on solid ground, it would tilt and sink beneath you. And that fact alone made her shiver, and not just from cold.

  Chapter 6

  Jay Whitgift hurried down the narrow alleyway towards the Pelican Coffee House. The icy rain was like pitchforks so he was anxious to get away from the midden of the narrow unswept streets with their seeping piles of horse excrement and into the dry darkness of the Pelican, where he was to meet Allsop, a client. As he rounded the corner into Cooper’s Yard, he almost tripped over a chapman whose tray of pamphlets was jutting out into the main thoroughfare. About to curse the man, he turned to face him but was arrested by a pair of familiar eyes.

  ‘Josiah Whitgift.’ The man moved out from under the upper storey and pushed his tray under Jay’s nose. ‘Well, I never.’

  Jay did not reply and stepped away. He had no wish to linger and speak with him for he recalled him well.

  ‘Don’t go running away from old friends now. There is an almanac here would suit you very well.’ He fished amongst the damp pile of thin booklets in his tray.

  Jay shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. ‘Sorry, Tindall, I’m meeting someone, maybe another time, eh?’

  Tindall fixed Jay with his eyes. ‘Take my advice, you ignore the stars at your peril. A wise man takes them into account or he cannot move with the tides.’

  Jay looked over his shoulder, seeking an excuse to leave.

  ‘There is a message here could be made for you,’ Tindall went on, ‘and you would do well to heed it. There is a conjunction of Saturn and Mars coming, the reaper and the firebrand. It will mean great upheaval, not least for those born under the twins, such as yourself.’

  Curse the man. He would walk past, but it was evident that Tindall was not going to let him by unless he made a purchase. It was embarrassing to see him standing out on the street in such a condition. The last time he had seen him was in his father’s warm parlour, where in his fancy velvet coat it seemed as if he was doing them a favour by calling at all. Now astrologers had fallen from the king’s favour, and like all the others Tindall must be finding it hard to earn a living.

  ‘Very well, I’ll take this.’ Anxious to move on, Jay picked out the first chapbook that came to hand, giving it a cursory glance to see the price. He turned it over. It showed what appeared to be a depiction of Hell – burning skeletons flailing behind a wall of forked-tongued flames. In the background, a building that looked like St Paul’s Church was toppling into the fiery sea.

  He stuffed it into the top of his breeches and held out a penny.

  ‘No. It is not that one you need,’ said Tindall, his eyes dark and shifting behind his dribble of greasy hair, and he took out a thinner handwritten paper from under his coat.

  Jay sighed and reached for another coin. Tindall took it. His cuffs were thick with dirt, the edges frayed.

  ‘This is the one,’ said Tindall, holding out the paper, which was peppered with diagrams and symbols and tiny writing. ‘But you will not make much sense of it without my interpretation – you would do better with a full consultation.’

  Jay snatched the paper impatiently. ‘No, I don’t think so.’ He looked at Tindall almost apologetically. ‘You must know, nobody bothers with astrology these days. My father doesn’t need your help. We are men of reason now – I even have my own telescope. We don’t need old-fashioned notions of predatory comets and portents of doom. We’ve moved forward with the king, into a new age.’

  Tindall shook his head and said nothing, just stared at him intently, a look of pity in his eyes. Jay shifted his gaze, feeling uncomfortable, and having said his piece thrust his way past and continued up the road, screwing up the paper in his fist and throwing it down onto the road in disgust.

  Tindall watched him go. He dodged a passing handcart to retrieve the paper, unfolded it and smoothed it out. Through narrowed eyes he glanced at the sign of the Pelican, carefully shielded the paper from the rain, refolded it and put it back inside his waistcoat.

  ‘That’s as may be,’ Tindall said, drawing the oilskin cover over his wares. He shrugged and moved off. In a moment he was swallowed up by the crowd of itinerant hawkers, pedlars and barrow boys.

  Meanwhile Jay swung in through the door of the coffee shop and looked for a place to sit in the fug of steam and tobacco smoke. The stalls were full, but the occupant of one of the round tables near the bow window sprang to his feet and beckoned him over.

  ‘Over here, Whitgift.’ Allsop removed a glove and held out his hand, and Jay took it, noticing that it was immaculately manicured as always, the nails white curves above smooth pink flesh. Jay’s sharp eyes also saw that Allsop wore a mourning ring, presumably for his late mother. It was a particularly fine example, an ebony mount with engraved doves. He mentally assessed its worth as he gave Allsop’s hand the briefest of shakes. He recoiled a little for the hand was slightly damp. Sweat also stood out like dew on Allsop’s forehead.

  They sat, Allsop having some difficulty in forcing his large frame into such a tight corner, for he was a giant of a man, barrel-chested, like a mastiff, but with the jowls of a bloodhound. He was impeccably attired, in a tight-fitting plum-coloured damask coat. He snapped his fingers at the molly behind the counter and ordered more coffee, before leaning in to speak.

  ‘Look here, Whitgift, I’m going to need another loan. The burglary cleared me out. I’d hoped selling my late mother’s collections would clear my debts, but until the stolen goods are recovered I find myself in a bit of a tight spot.’

  ‘You realize the other loan is still outstanding?’

  ‘It’s a short-term difficulty. I am in poor health. I need to pay the apothecary and the physician, and they do not come cheap. It’s nigh on ten shilling these days just to get bled. Twenty pounds should cover it.’

  Jay whistled through his teeth. ‘That’s a fair amount on top of what’s owed.’

  ‘If the silver that was stolen is recovered – and I know you will let me know if it shows up at Whitgift’s – then obviously I will pay off both loans together.’

  ‘You know there’s no guarantee—’

  ‘Come on, Whitgift, I’ve always paid my dues
on time, have I not?’

  ‘I can let you have ten. It’s all I have brought with me.’ Jay had been prepared for this. He brought out his satchel from under the table and counted out the amount, before pushing the book across for Allsop to make his mark.

  Allsop made a great fuss of uncorking the ink and wiping the quill afterwards with unsteady hands. He pushed the book back. ‘I don’t know, I seem to be bedevilled – what with the burglary, and now I am unwell. And there’s more.’

  Jay raised his eyebrows in question.

  ‘We are in a bit of difficulty. The matter is somewhat awkward . . .’ He paused to wipe his forehead with his sleeve. His eyes shifted sideways, not meeting Jay’s gaze.

  Jay did not like the sound of the ‘we’. He put his elbows on the table and pushed his hat back on his head to get closer. ‘What is it?’ He sensed trouble coming.

  ‘There has been an oversight . . .’

  ‘Tell me straight. What’s the flutter? Is it horses again?’

  ‘No, not that. The list of my late mother’s jewellery, the one I sent over to Whitgift’s last week, from the burglary . . . well, there was something I missed, something I didn’t know was gone . . .’

  ‘Another jewel? It can easily be added to the inventory, you know, just give my father—’

  ‘No, no, it’s not that. This is a little delicate . . . if it was to fall into the wrong hands, it would ruin me. And bring you down with it.’

  ‘Go on.’ The hairs had risen on Jay’s neck.

  ‘I got the idea from my friend Pepys, it is a kind of notebook – a private diary.’