Garlands of Gold

by Rosalind Laker

  When passing through towns Saskia took note of the fashions, which followed the same trends as in Holland. Men of style wore enormous curled periwigs that flowed to their shoulders, their knee-length, full-skirted silk or velvet coats swirled as they walked, and their tubular breeches met high bucket boots that flapped over at the top, often with a trimming of lace or a flurry of ribbons. The women wore wide-brimmed hats like the men, but in softer colours, and overskirts were drawn back to reveal handsome underskirts over abundant petticoats. As it was a warm summer day, a light wrap of lace or silk completed their attire. As for the poor – and those she thought of as everyday folk – they were no different from their Dutch counterparts.

  When eventually London was reached the coach had to pass through one of the areas that had been destroyed by the Great Fire and the devastation was terrible to see. Street after street, although swept clear of ash and debris for traffic, was lined with blackened ruins, for the old houses of London, many of them Tudor and earlier, had blazed like torches, the flames leaping from one building to the next. Pathetically, here and there, attempts had been made by destitute families to reconstruct shelter out of whatever could be found to house them while the great task of rebuilding the city took place, signs of it in progress. There were wide gaps where firebreaks had finally controlled the spread of the flames. Soon the borderline of the conflagration was reached and then streets, shops and houses showed no sign of what had happened to the rest of the city during those terrible days and nights.

  Rushmere House, Cousin Henrietta’s grand grey stone residence, was set beyond iron gates in a formal garden with everything planted in squares with paths between in the current fashion. As the coach went up the drive to come to a halt at the steps up to the entrance a manservant opened the door and Henrietta Rushmere herself blossomed forth like a colourful flower in silken shades of rose and crimson. In a flutter of lace cuffs, she clasped her hands together in delight at her cousin’s arrival.

  ‘My dear Bessie! Welcome!’

  The two women, who were the same age all but three months between, embraced joyfully.

  ‘How wonderful to see you again, Henrietta! I had begun to fear this day would never come!’

  With arms linked as if they were girls again they went into the house. Bessie was scarcely over the threshold when she came to a halt to face her cousin and ask the question that had been churning inside her all the way there.

  ‘Henrietta! I just have to know! Is there a young woman with whom Grinling might be in love?’

  Henrietta looked completely bewildered. ‘He has never asked to bring a young lady here and neither has he ever spoken of having a sweetheart. I’m sure I would have seen signs of a romance.’

  It should have been reassuring, but Bessie was unconvinced. If Henrietta knew nothing it could mean that the young woman in question was as unsuitable as she had feared. She would just have to keep an alert eye open for any female that made soft glances at her son and then judge for herself.

  Saskia had watched the meeting of the two cousins with interest. There was no doubt that Mistress Henrietta had been a great beauty in her youth. She had very intense, almost brittle good looks that time had only managed to pluck at over the years and her cosmetics had been most discreetly applied. As for her hair, it had been coloured to a pleasing tawny hue and was exquisitely dressed with side-ringlets that Saskia guessed were supported by wires skilfully hidden from sight. It was a new quirk of fashion that she had yet to try on her mistress. She looked forward to meeting Mistress Henrietta’s personal maid, sure that some helpful hints could be exchanged.

  It came as a great surprise to find her counterpart was a Dutchwoman, named Amalia Visser, who was from Amsterdam. She was fifty years old, a long, lean woman with quite beautiful hands and, although her features were pleasant enough, her face was marred by a sad look in her eyes.

  Amalia waited until Saskia had supervised the unpacking of her employer’s travelling boxes and then invited her to a cup of tea in her own little parlour, which was very comfortable and had a view of the end of the formal garden. Together they chatted in Dutch.

  ‘It is such a treat for me to have someone from home to talk to in my native tongue,’ Amalia confided, ‘and I knew your mother. We met some years ago through a mutual acquaintance.’

  ‘You knew her!’ Saskia felt a warm wave of emotion sweep over her in finding this unexpected link with the past.

  ‘Yes, but I don’t remember ever seeing you, although I knew of your existence.’

  ‘Work and parentage were two different roles for my mother and one did not overlap the other.’

  ‘I realized that. Now tell me how things are in Holland and all that is happening. I’m starved for news.’

  Saskia thought to herself that here again was someone who was homesick. So she did her best, telling that there was no slump in the demand for fine paintings from artists that were making their names known in the great flourishing of art throughout the Netherlands and how the bulbs of beautiful tulips were increasing in price, more and more being grown for exportation as well as for the home market. All she knew of politics and other national affairs was what she had gathered from the news-sheets that James Gibbons discarded when he had read them. If he had come across some political item that had enraged him he always denounced it in an angry voice that could be heard all over the house. Saskia had always found his comments interesting and sometimes enlightening.

  Amalia listened intently to Saskia’s every word and then heaved a deep sigh. ‘You make me wish I were back home again more than ever. I’ve no complaints about how I am treated here and I’m paid well enough, but England isn’t Holland and my heart is there.’

  ‘Does Master Grinling ever visit here?’ Saskia guarded against her question coming in a rush, but it was what she had wanted to ask from the start.

  Amalia, as Saskia had anticipated, mistook the reason for her interest. ‘Yes, I know he’s Dutch by birth, but I don’t have any conversation with him if that’s what you’re thinking. His mother and Mistress Henrietta are first cousins, as you will know, and so he comes to dine occasionally when she invites friends to her table. He is always an asset as a guest, because he is musical and will often sing and accompany himself on a viol or a lute to please her and her other guests. There are times when he plays a fiddle beautifully and I’ve heard him on a flute too.’

  ‘Yes, I have heard him sing and play.’ Saskia had an eager question on her mind. ‘Does he come on his own to visit?’

  ‘Sometimes alone, at other times with a friend or two, because Mistress Henrietta often includes people more of his age, although – from what she has said to me – he is a young man at ease in any gathering, whatever the age group. Why do you ask?’

  ‘I’m just interested,’ Saskia replied and quickly changed to another question on safer ground. ‘How is it that you’re working here in England?’

  ‘It was your mother that contacted me when I was living in Rotterdam. Mistress Gibbons wanted her cousin to have her own lady’s maid while visiting in Holland and as my own lady had just died I was glad to obtain another position so quickly. I stayed on with Mistress Henrietta when she returned to England. It’s pleasant enough living here and for a while I had a follower, as servants’ suitors are called here. He was a dear man and was very good to me. He made my life worth living, but since he passed away a few months ago I’ve become very unsettled.’

  They talked on for a while, their conversation turning inevitably to beauty preparations. Saskia was cautious, remembering her mother’s warning never to betray to others the secrets of her skills and explained her reticence.

  Amalia understood and nodded her approval. ‘I want you to keep your knowledge to yourself. That was wise advice that your mother gave you, because if you have exceptional talents you can rise high in our particular field, even to the Palace itself.’

  ‘You are very understanding,’ Saskia said thankfully.

&nbs
p; ‘I have always been moderately skilled,’ Amalia confessed easily, ‘but anything I know to be good I’ll gladly pass on to you.’

  ‘There are two things I should most like to know. How do you wire Mistress Henrietta’s hair in that pretty way and what is the special dye that you use to colour it that is so pleasing?’

  ‘Get out that red book you’ve told me about and then you can write it down.’

  Saskia, who had already unpacked, went eagerly to fetch her red leather book out of the Spanish strongbox. Then she took pen and ink, ready to record what was needed to achieve the pleasing colour that dyed Henrietta’s otherwise grey hair. But when Amalia began to list the ingredients Saskia sat back in surprise, putting down her pen.

  ‘You use oil of vitriol?’ she queried, frowning. ‘Even though you dilute it I know that it can cause a painful rash and much else if it comes in contact with the scalp.’

  ‘There is a way around that problem,’ Amalia replied. ‘Mistress Henrietta’s hair is very fine and needs hair supplements at all times. So I buy strands of fair hair and dye them in the oil until they become that tawny colour. Then, when they are ready and have become the hue I require, I brush them out and weave them into her hair, creating the glossy coiffure that you admired.’

  Saskia had often used strands on the heads of her foster mother’s tenants, but had only used safe dyes in the colouring of them. Yet she wrote the receipt down in case she should ever require it, but she made a special note that it should be used with special care.

  As they talked on they found it interesting that they were both of the same mind, just as Saskia’s mother had been in her day, in regarding the popular use of lead in cosmetics as the most dangerous of ingredients. Both had seen on older women – and on men too – the ravages that it could wreak on complexions over a period of time.

  That same evening of arrival, after a message had been sent to Grinling that his mother had arrived, he came to the house to see her. Saskia, knowing she would have no chance to speak to him, waited on the gallery above the hall to see him arrive. At the clang of the doorbell she gasped with happy anticipation and then there he was, smiling as his mother came hastening across the hall to greet him in English.

  ‘My dear son! How well you look! Your father sends his most cordial greetings!’

  ‘I’m delighted to see you, Mother,’ he replied genuinely in the same language, his Dutch accent totally unrelieved by the time he had already spent in England. Saskia was amazed that there was no sign of any improvement. ‘What a pity Father was too busy to come with you. Is he in good health?’

  ‘No, he is not. He has never been the same since he had that heart trouble. It is high time he retired, but nothing exists that will drag him away from his three loves – the office, the shop and his warehouse.’

  Grinling grinned. ‘Just as I am with my tools and my woods.’

  For a matter of moments Saskia had the chance to see that in the time that had passed since his departure from Holland he had lost his boyish looks and matured to a splendid masculine handsomeness. It made her yearn for him more than ever and enviously she watched him disappear with his mother into the room known as the Blue Drawing Room and heard Mistress Henrietta welcome him before the door closed.

  Before he left at the end of the evening his mother drew him into the neighbouring music room to speak to him on his own.

  ‘Now,’ she said as soon as she was seated while her son wandered over to the clavichord. ‘I want you to tell me the identity of the young woman who has captured your admiration and perhaps your heart?’

  He raised the lid of the instrument and ran the fingers of one hand along the ivory keys. ‘I have nothing to tell you,’ he replied easily.

  ‘But whose likeness did you capture in the ship’s figurehead?’

  He compressed his lips in sudden understanding of his mother’s probing. He waited for a moment or two before he closed the lid again and turned to face her. ‘So that is why you made this visit!’

  ‘I knew the young woman must be someone special to have inspired you. So naturally I was eager to meet a future daughter-in-law.’

  He shook his head. ‘Then your visit is in vain, Mother. There is a lovely girl well known to me, but she is out of my reach. Somebody else is pursuing her with every chance of winning her. So that is the situation and now this discussion is closed.’

  She knew him well enough not to attempt to question him any further. He had the same stern expression now as his father when a limit had been reached.

  ‘Very well, dear son.’ She rose from the chair in a rustle of silk. ‘I’ll say no more, except I shall hope that one day you will meet a well-born young lady and win your heart’s desire.’

  ‘I thank you, Mother.’

  Saskia did not see him leave that evening, but two days later she was informed that an arrangement had been made by Grinling for his mother and Mistress Henrietta to view some of his latest work on a day when he would not be at the Royal docks. He was renting a small cottage in order to have a workshop for private commissions away from the industrial site.

  ‘You shall come with us, Saskia,’ Mistress Gibbons said to her. ‘You make excellent little drawings and I want you to draw my son’s workshop and copy whatever we shall be viewing today. The drawings will enable my husband to see what Master Grinling is achieving here in England. It will also be a splendid record to have when we are back in Rotterdam again.’

  Saskia did not think that anything she put down on paper would do justice to Grinling’s work or his surroundings, but she kept silent, not wanting to risk this unexpected opportunity to spend some time in his presence. Inwardly she was filled with excitement, but she kept her composure and Mistress Gibbons did not notice the flush in her cheeks.

  In the coach Saskia sat opposite the two ladies, a straw basket containing her sketching materials on her lap, and they set off through the city streets into the countryside. It was no more than two miles to Grinling’s thatched cottage, which was situated at the edge of a wooded glade and in the middle of a grassy stretch of meadow. The remains of a pebbled path curved to the door from the road, a little stream flowing gently nearby.

  The cottage itself was old, a wattle and daub building covered with once-white plaster and it had a slightly crooked chimney stack at one end. Its state of disrepair caused Mistress Gibbons to frown disapprovingly before she had even alighted from the coach. Yet Saskia saw that the cottage had an unusually high and wide window that showed signs on the plaster of having replaced a much smaller one. Remembering how Grinling had told her it was essential that he had good light for his work, she saw that in spite of the window’s small panes it would give him what he needed. The view that he had from it was of the road and more woods beyond.

  There was a glimpse of movement in the cottage and then he was at the door, holding it wide with a smile to match. He was in his shirtsleeves with a leather apron that looped around his neck and tied behind his back.

  ‘Good day to you, ladies,’ he greeted the arrivals, giving them a bow. ‘Come in!’ Then, spotting Saskia, who was following his mother and her cousin, he bowed again, his eyes holding hers as they exchanged smiles. ‘You are most welcome too, Saskia. I believe your coming to England will fulfil your destiny.’

  His mother glanced at him impatiently and compelled his attention again. ‘What nonsense are you talking?’

  Unnoticed by either of the two ladies Saskia had caught her breath at his words, for in his mention of destiny surely he meant that he believed as she did that their futures were linked. Indoors she glanced quickly around, but there was no sign of her carved likeness. Perhaps it had been put out of sight again, but this time it would have been to avoid any confrontation with his mother during her visit, for she most surely would have questioned him about it and objected strongly to a display of her maid’s profile.

  ‘As I arranged with you, Grinling,’ Mistress Gibbons was saying, ‘Saskia will make as many drawings
as I shall need to show your father all aspects of your work. Not only here in this place, but in the workshop at the Royal docks where you are employed.’

  He raised an amused eyebrow. ‘I’ll have to see what can be arranged. The workshops there are not under my jurisdiction.’

  ‘Of course it can be arranged. Cousin Henrietta knows one of the top officials in charge. Nobody will notice Saskia sitting quietly in a corner.’

  ‘I wouldn’t wager on that,’ he remarked drily. ‘Pretty girls are scarce there.’

  Saskia smiled to herself at Grinling’s compliment. It was clear that he had become totally fluent in English, but again she thought it was strange that his Dutch accent should remain so thick upon his tongue. Yet in her opinion, it could only add to his attractiveness to women.

  His mother was not listening. She stood looking around with a disparaging air. ‘Couldn’t you have found something better than this awful place?’

  Saskia wondered why often the most devoted of mothers could alienate themselves from their children by forever finding fault. Yet Grinling seemed remarkably tolerant.

  ‘I needed somewhere quiet and peaceful that was within the limits of what I could afford,’ he replied, ‘and, apart from enlarging the window, I haven’t had to spend anything on it. So now let me take you on a grand tour of my property.’ His eyes were twinkling. ‘We’ll begin here in my place of commissioned and non-commissioned work, mostly the latter.’

  What had once been the cottage’s living room was well set out with a work-surface fitted sturdily under the window for maximum light. Lying on it and securely fastened was a large rectangular slab of wood, its gouged surface showing that it was a relief carving currently being worked on from the back. The walls held neat rows of even more tools than had been in his home workshop in Rotterdam and two old chairs offered seating. The only other furniture was a narrow table.