The Hidden Thread

by Liz Trenow

“Vas au diable,” Henri cursed cheerfully as they parted and he headed toward Princes Street. It always gave him a happy feeling, safe inside, walking these streets, the silk weavers’ streets—his streets—rows of houses with warp winders hanging over the doors, the songs of birds in their cages and the clatter of looms from the long-light lofts high above the street.

  • • •

  Henri regarded M. Lavalle as a father figure and was only too aware that he owed everything to the master weaver. He barely remembered his own father, who had died when vainly trying to save his sister from drowning in the Bay of Biscay during their flight from France.

  Through much subterfuge, they had managed to escape from the foul-mouthed dragonnades for whom they, along with all other Protestant families, had been required to provide lodgings. It was supposedly to ensure they had renounced their faith, but it also resulted in penury, as they were forced to sell their looms to make room for the soldiers and meet their endless demands for food and wine. To refuse would mean a beating or worse. His elder sister disappeared one day and never returned. He’d heard people whispering, although he did not at the time understand what they meant: that she’d refused a soldier’s advances and paid for her virtue with her life.

  “We have nothing left to stay for,” his father had whispered late one evening as the soldiers snored in their beds. “It is time for us to leave, while we still have a few livres remaining.”

  They trudged sixty miles to the coast under the cloak of three long, cold nights, resting during daylight to avoid capture, and arrived at the port only to learn that the ship for which they had bought tickets had been wrecked. They spent the last of their savings bribing the captain of a small fishing smack—five hundred livres before embarkation, and the promise of a further five hundred on arrival in Plymouth.

  These things Henri knew from what his mother, Clothilde, had since told him. All he remembered of that terrible journey was being carried through the surf in the dead of night by a gruff captain with enormous hands and then hauled through a narrow trapdoor in the deck down into the pitch-black bilges of the ship, the stink of rotten fish and the fearful sting of the kippering salt on which they crouched. She had recounted how, before leaving the port, they’d been advised to stand stock-still, in perfect silence, immediately beneath the main beam of the deck above so that their skulls should not be pierced by the swords that customs inspectors would thrust between the planks to detect stowaways.

  Sometimes, Henri’s dreams were haunted by other memories: the whites of his parents’ eyes in the darkness as the smack bucked and rolled, his mother’s retching, his sister’s terrified whimpers. And how, as the ship pitched even more violently, they were thrown against the side of the hold, the trapdoor was blown open, and they were plunged into a torrent of freezing ocean water. He would always waken at this point, crying out and struggling for breath, knowing that this had been the end of his life as he had once known it.

  It was only many years later that his mother managed to steel herself to describe what happened next. They hauled themselves on deck through the trapdoor, battling the cascades of water crashing over the ship, only to discover that the fisherman and his boy had disappeared, presumably washed overboard by that first devastating wave. Their only hope was to lash themselves to the mast and pray that they would ride out the storm, but before they could do this, another mountainous surge hit them, dashing twelve-year-old Marie over the side of the ship and into the darkness. His father had immediately jumped in to rescue her, but both had been carried away in the swell, never to be seen again.

  Clothilde’s memories of how they survived the storm were vague, but eventually they were shipwrecked on the coast of what Henri now knew to be the county of Kent and hauled to safety by salvage hunters. They must have been sorely disappointed to discover that their sole bounty was a woman and a small boy, half-dead from exposure, but one of the families took them in and nursed them back to life.

  Henri could remember little of what happened over the next few months. They found shelter in an abandoned shed on the edges of a small town and his mother seemed to give up all hope, weeping day and night and never venturing out, while he went scavenging for food, clothes, and blankets.

  Then, one day, he was caught by a market trader who accused him of thieving and dragged him by his ears to the home of the Town Clerk. Although Henri had by now learned a few words of English they were nothing like sufficient to explain that he had only been waiting for discarded food and that he and his mother were starving because they had lost everything at sea.

  The Town Clerk, a barrel of a man with bloodshot eyes, a heavily powdered wig that sat lopsided on his head, and a white beard that cascaded over his chest, bellowed at him, “So, what do they call you, boy?”

  Terrified, Henri managed to mutter his name.

  “Onry? Ain’t that a Frenchie name?”

  Henri nodded.

  “How’d you get here, then?”

  He understood the question and tried to find the words to reply but failed, and instead tried to mime the motion of a boat tossing in a storm. As the man continued to shake his head in bafflement, Henri was overcome with fear and frustration and began to cry.

  Then the miracle happened. A young woman came through the door with a tea tray. As well as the teapot, tea plates, cups and saucers, sugar bowl, and milk jug, the tray contained a plate of sandwiches and another of small biscuits. Captivated by the sight of such deliciousness passing so close to his face, Henri’s tears dried in an instant. He found his mouth watering and heard his stomach rumbling. It was all he could do to prevent his hands from reaching out to grab a small piece.

  “Oh,” she exclaimed. “I didn’t know you had a visitor, Father. Shall I bring another plate? He looks famished.”

  There was an agonizing silence as the two of them regarded the urchin in his bare feet and rags, his limbs so thin they might snap at any moment.

  The man grunted. “I suppose you’d better, m’dear. Come and join us. I need you to translate.”

  • • •

  Henri stood obediently as they seated themselves by the fireside, eating everything that was passed to him and drinking a whole mug of milk while trying to answer the questions the man fired at him. The girl’s French was rudimentary and some of the sentences she translated made little sense, but he responded as best he could. As the interrogation continued, haltingly, it became clear that many of Henri’s replies were also becoming lost in translation.

  Eventually he managed to convey to them that he and his mother were fugitive Huguenots, his poor drowned father having been a silk weaver in their hometown, and that his mother had worked as a throwster in the same trade, twisting the finest single silk threads together on her wheel to make yarn of the correct denier as required by the weaver. Even though his hunger was clearly apparent, they found it hard to believe that he and his mother had no home and, literally, not a sou to their names, and survived from his begging and scavenging.

  “We must do something for him, Pa,” the girl said.

  “It’s the workhouse for them, I reckon.”

  “But didn’t you hear what he said about his mother? She has a craft and would earn a living if she could find work.”

  “There’s no throwstering around these parts, my dear.”

  “There is in London. What about Uncle? He works in the silk trade, doesn’t he?”

  “Psht. He don’t want vagrants turning up at his door, Louisa. Enough of this, lad. I’ll let you off the charge of pilfering if you do as I say. Bring your mother here and we’ll take you to Saint Dunstan’s. At least you’ll get food and a bed there.”

  As the girl showed him to the front door, she whispered, “Don’t go to the workhouse. It’s a terrible place. You’ll get separated from your ma there. Go down the side steps and come to the kitchen door. Cinq minutes.”

  She met
him at the threshold, thrusting a brown-paper package into his hand.

  “Good luck,” she said. “Now get out of here before Father catches you.”

  On his way back to the shack, he hid in a copse and carefully unwrapped the package. Inside was pure treasure, better than any gold. It contained a loaf of stale bread, a large chunk of cheese, and a girl’s drawstring pocket holding a single silver shilling and a piece of paper on which were written the words:

  My uncle, Nathaniel Broadstone, silk weaver, 5 Marks Lane, Bethnal Green, London. Do not mention my name.

  • • •

  The journey took four days of walking and hitching lifts from cartiers because the stagecoach tickets cost more than the shilling would cover, and it was evening by the time they found their way to Bethnal Green. It had been raining all day, and they were soaked to the skin. The man who answered the door regarded the ragged and sodden pair suspiciously.

  Fear tightened Henri’s voice into a squeak. “Please, sir, we come to see Mr. Broadstone.”

  “And who are you, may I ask?”

  “Henri Vendôme, sir, and my mother, Madame Clothilde Vendôme.”

  “And so, madame, why have you brought your son to my doorstep?”

  She shook her head.

  “Speak, woman.”

  “We cannot say, sir.” How could he betray the girl’s kindness?

  The man shook his head. “If you cannot say, then why should I help you? Be off and stop pestering me.”

  They endured an uncomfortable and terrifying night huddled in a doorway, trying to avoid the attention of the many unsavory characters that seemed to populate the streets after dark. A bitter rain lashed down unceasingly and the noises of the city were strange and fearsome to their ears. More than once, Henri wished himself back in the Kentish shack and that he had never met the Town Clerk or his daughter, who had given them such hope of a new beginning only for it to be so rudely dashed in this noisy, foul-smelling place.

  And yet, in the morning, the sun came out and warmed them dry, and they stopped at a market stall to buy a couple of hot pies with their last few pennies. As Henri struggled to order in English, the woman smiled and, miraculously, replied in fluent French. A fellow countrywoman! It was the first time they’d heard their own language, from a native speaker, since being washed up on these shores.

  “C’est gratuit,” she said, handing over the pies. “Keep your pennies. You look a bit down on your luck.”

  Clothilde burst into tears. “Oh, merci, madame, merci mille fois! Dieu vous bénisse.”

  Through her sobs, the story poured out in an incontrollable stream of words, as though a barrage had been unstopped. Finally, she was able to express herself, to tell her tale to a sympathetic ear.

  “Ah, les pauvres,” the woman said, at last. “But take heart, madame. You still have your lovely boy at your side. And you are in the best place for a new start.”

  Mon Dieu! They could barely believe what she told them. This was a place where many thousands of French and Flemish refugees had settled over the decades, fleeing persecution just as they had done. The English followed the same religion as theirs, more or less, and, at least officially, were welcoming, even if the locals were not always so sympathetic.

  This area, just outside the city walls, she said, was where most of the French congregated. There were churches and charitable organizations and, best of all, literally hundreds—“des centaines, à chaque coin de rue”—of silk weavers, warpers, throwsters, merchants, mercers.

  She held her hands wide to express the scale of what she was trying to convey. “There is work for everyone here,” she said. “London is crazy for silk.”

  When, finally, Henri and his mother took their leave, she advised them to head for the French church in Fournier Street, a short walk away in a place called Spitalfields. The church elders would be able to help, she said. They followed her instructions and headed for the tallest building in the distance.

  As they drew near, Henri’s eyes were pulled heavenward by the extraordinary tower, tiered like a wedding cake, with its tapering spire above almost touching the clouds. It made him feel quite dizzy. Apart from its spire, the building looked more like a palace: broad granite steps led up to a door made for giants, surrounded by massive pillars that would take several Henris to join their hands around. The whole building was brilliant white, whiter than a new fall of snow, and glowed like a beacon in the sunlight among the dark, noisy streets of the city.

  As they stood, in awe, Clothilde began to weep all over again. “It’s too grand,” she said. “However can a pair of vagrants like us enter such a place?”

  But Henri dragged her up the steps. “How can we know if we don’t try, Maman? What else can we do?”

  Just as they reached the doors, a tall, black-frocked priest emerged.

  “Can I help?” he said, peering down at them.

  “We look for French church.”

  “Then you’re in the wrong place, laddie. This here is Christ Church,” the man said, pointing behind them. “L’Église de l’Hôpital is just along there.”

  • • •

  It’s hard to believe that was ten years ago, Henri thought to himself as he sauntered down Lamb Street and Browns Lane, turning right into Wood Street, avoiding the route that would lead him past the kiosk selling sugared almonds. The girl at the stall was undoubtedly pretty, but she had at first resisted his flatteries. Then, after weeks of dedicated flirting, he’d managed to steal a sweet, almond-scented kiss. More recently, she’d allowed him, with much giggling and a high-pitched squeal, to feel her breast. But, as so often, and in a way he did not quite understand, once the game was won, he’d begun to find the girl’s attentions burdensome. His thoughts were already turning elsewhere.

  At the far end of Wood Street, the English church glimmered in the sunlight just as it had on that day. As he passed Fournier Street, he could see L’Église de l’Hôpital itself, a fine building on the junction with Brick Lane, still standing tall and proud above the terraced rows of weavers’ houses.

  As an apprentice, Henri had not been allowed to leave the house on a working day but, now that he had graduated to become a journeyman, he was often asked to run errands: taking and returning messages to and from weavers or mercers, collecting and delivering additional supplies of raw silk to be twisted by throwsters and of warp beams and thrown silk to weavers, bringing back woven silk ready for packaging and sale. He reveled in these new freedoms. M. Lavalle trusted him implicitly and depended on him to help teach the other apprentices from time to time.

  “Bonsoir, Henri,” M. Lavalle called from the office at the front of the house. It was barely half past four, but Henri knew when it was wisest not to argue.

  “Apologies for my tardiness, sir,” he said, poking his head around the door. “Shelleys kept me waiting twenty minutes but the sun still sails in the sky. I have three hours yet to complete that damask. Pas de problème.”

  M. Lavalle looked up from his ledger, peering over his glasses. As usual, when not seeing customers, he was casually dressed in baggy trousers and a waistcoat that had seen better years, his favorite deep-crimson velvet cap concealing his balding pate. He was not a handsome man, but his pudgy, deeply lined face and irregular complexion spoke of a life of hard work and pleasures enjoyed: good food, plentiful drink, and the contentment of loving and being loved.

  He smiled benignly at his protégé. He’d watched the emaciated, lice-infected urchin boy whom he’d first encountered emerging, like a silk moth from a cocoon, into an intelligent, lively young man with a remarkable aptitude for hard work, who had completed his seven-year apprenticeship with ease and was now well on his way to achieving his own mastership.

  As an established member of the Huguenot community in Spitalfields, M. Lavalle was an elder of the French church which had, over time, developed clear protocols
for helping the hundreds of destitute compatriots who arrived every year. Each family would be issued secondhand clothes and boots and would be fed and cared for at a parishioner’s home for a number of weeks until they were able to find work and fend for themselves.

  M. Lavalle remembered that first meeting with perfect clarity. The dreadful state of the mother and child had touched his heart: their skinny frames, ragged clothes, and desperate eyes. He had gladly offered to act as their temporary host, especially on learning that they had come from the same region of central France as his own forebears. Not that he’d ever lived there himself; his parents had escaped before he was born, shortly after the persecution of Protestants first began.

  In those days, before so many thousands had followed them, the English were very welcoming. But with successive waves of immigration, and French people now outnumbering native speakers on some streets, the welcome had worn thin. Even though the guild had lifted their ban on “Strangers” and M. Lavalle, like many other French masters, was now accepted as a Freeman of the Company of Weavers, resentment had grown, and divisions had formed.

  The streets of Spitalfields could become treacherous late of an evening, when the young gallants had been supping in the taverns for a few hours. At the very least, insults could be thrown: he’d not infrequently been called a “cabbage head,” “froggy,” or “French piss pot.” Only the other day he had picked up a pamphlet entitled “Considerations upon the Mischiefs that may arise from granting too much indulgence to Foreigners,” which he had skim-read, briefly, before consigning it to the fire in disgust.

  Through M. Lavalle’s introductions, Clothilde soon secured work as a silk throwster. She was already experienced and her skills were much in demand, especially as she was prepared to put in the hours and could turn out yarn quickly, with a consistent twist. Within weeks, her reputation had grown sufficiently to guarantee regular work and she was earning enough to rent an independent lodging. M. Lavalle helped them find a small room in a house off Brick Lane.

  For the first time in many months, she discovered something to live for, something to relieve the grief that had almost destroyed her mind. The knot of fear that seemed to have taken up permanent lodging in her belly began to ease, and Henri even caught his mother smiling from time to time.