The Hidden Thread

by Liz Trenow

  “From a small village near Halesworth,” Anna added. “I too have learned my love of painting from nature in the countryside around my home.”

  “And I from Ipswich, although I was born in the south, at Sudbury. And you are an artist too? What a happy coincidence.”

  “I would hardly call myself an artist, sir,” she replied, blushing deep crimson. “Just one who loves to sketch and paint.”

  “And that is what you must do, as often as you can.” His expression became thoughtful. “It is possible to learn techniques by watching others, but one’s own eyes and hands are the most important teachers. Nothing can replace the exercise of observation and constant practice.”

  Anna longed to continue the conversation, but Aunt Sarah was fidgeting at her side. “This has been most delightful, but we must not keep you, Mr. Gainsborough,” she said. “We thank you for your time.”

  “It has been my pleasure,” he said, and then added to Anna, “They are planning a new Society of the Arts, have you heard? It will be lodged just along the road from here. Perhaps you will be the first lady to display your work.”

  “Do not tease me, sir.” He laughed with her, but his eyes were serious.

  “I have met many fine women artists,” he said. “There is no reason why they should not have their work viewed in public too.”

  As they left the building, Anna felt as though she was walking on air.

  • • •

  That evening, still buzzing with excitement, she took up her pen. Henri would understand her excitement.

  Dear Henri,

  Thank you for your letter. I am thrilled to learn that you are nearly ready to weave my design and you know that I would return to see it for myself, if only that were possible.

  Today I met the great artist Gainsborough. Imagine! I admire his work tremendously. Anyway, your kind interest in my drawing has piqued my own curiosity about fabric design and I have already ordered a new, larger sketchbook to start on my next designs! But I need to learn more about weaving—perhaps you will teach me?

  Please write again soon.

  With my very best wishes,

  A

  16

  If ye should inadvertently cause offense, let your tongue be dipped in oil, never in vinegar; and rather endeavor to mollify, than irritate the wound, and avoid anger as much as possible. By mildness and good manners, the most intractable may be qualify’d, and the most exasperated appeased.

  —Advice for apprentices and journeymen

  OR A sure guide to gain both esteem and an estate

  As they approached the prison, along Newgate Street, it soon became clear that this was no ordinary Monday morning. Church bells were tolling and a great crowd, even larger than at the demonstration a few weeks ago, had gathered outside the prison gates, making their route impassable.

  It seemed to Henri that the whole of London had taken to the streets: men, women, and children all primped and vested in their Sunday best as though they were off to church and then for a pleasant picnic in the park or perhaps a trip to the pleasure gardens.

  “Grand Dieu,” M. Lavalle said, his face grim. “It’s an execution.”

  The condemned man emerged at the top of the steps, prompting an excited roar from the crowd, part appreciation and part denunciation. Despite the chains binding him at hand and foot, the prisoner was coiffed and dressed like a dandy. He raised his arms as best he could and smiled at the assembled masses for all the world like a king acknowledging his subjects.

  Then, to a chorus of ugly jeers and crude catcalls, he was led down the steps, hauled onto a rackety old horse cart, and forcibly mounted onto a long wooden box which, Henri now realized with a shudder, was the coffin in which the man’s body would later be interred.

  But the man seemed barely to notice, laughing and joking with the Guards and managing, most of the time, to dodge the missiles of rotting fruit and excrement. As the cart set off, surrounded by soldiers armed with pistols and swords, the crowd swarmed in its wake.

  “How far is the scaffold?” Henri asked a grizzled old man beside him.

  “’Tis but two miles to Tyburn. But by the time they’ve stopped at every tavern on the route, it’ll take ’em three hours and they’ll have bought him so many pints he’ll be dead drunk when he hangs. Which is more than the bastard deserves.”

  “What crime has he committed?”

  “They say he murdered a woman, though he denies it. She was a tart by all accounts, but no one deserves to die like that.”

  “Why do they treat such a sinner to beer?”

  “It’s the spectacle they come for,” the man replied. “They want to see him piss in his breeches.”

  “From fear?”

  “Nah. When he’s been hanging for a while, it shows he’s finally dead” was the terse reply.

  Henri watched the baying crowd, feeling dizzy and bilious. No matter how evil the crime, how could humans inflict such vile punishments on their fellow men? And what if the man was innocent? He could not bear to imagine that his friend might have to suffer the same terrible journey and undignified death.

  As the crowd departed with the procession, he and M. Lavalle were able to move toward the prison gates. Even before they reached the steps, they could hear the angry clamor of caged souls. It seemed to Henri that they were about to enter the gates of hell—only this was on earth, but two miles from his home and only a few hundred yards from the most beautiful building he had ever seen. M. Lavalle had told him it was Saint Paul’s Cathedral.

  “We might pray there afterward,” he’d said.

  After handing over a sixpence in “fees,” they were led by a rotund and red-faced warder along several corridors toward the cells. The stench and the racket were almost overwhelming. M. Lavalle handed Henri a handkerchief. “Hold this to your nose, lad,” he said. “Vapors and diseases are rife in this place.”

  The warder unlocked a heavy metal door, and they were ushered into the cell. It was a large stone room, lit only by two small barred windows high in the walls. At first, in the gloom, they could barely make out anything, but as their eyes became accustomed, they could see that the room contained thirty or more men, all of them chained to the wall and most of them naked, covered only in their own muck. All appeared to be equally starving and desperate, clanking their chains and calling out for food, water, tobacco, and gin. Picking their way between them, they found Guy curled up in silent despair on the filthy floor.

  Henri shook his shoulder. “It’s M. Lavalle and me. We’ve come to help you.”

  Guy turned his head, his eyes bright in the dirt of his face. “Leave me be,” he groaned. “There’s nothing to be done.”

  “We’ve brought you food.”

  The sight of the bundle that M. Lavalle produced from inside his jacket aroused an instant reaction from the other prisoners, who strained forward against their shackles, bellowing even more menacingly than before. Guy grabbed the parcel, tore it open, and began to stuff the bread and cheese into his mouth in a ravenous frenzy. When he’d swallowed the last morsel and checked for crumbs, he grabbed the bottle of porter from Henri’s hand, pulled out the cork with his teeth, and glugged it down in four long swigs, pausing only for a sharp breath between each gulp. He concluded with a raucous belch that brought cheers from his fellow inmates.

  “Where are your clothes?” M. Lavalle asked.

  “If you can’t pay when you arrive, they take your clothes instead,” Guy said, slumping back to the ground. “They’re vultures. If you can’t pay, you get nothing, no food, no drink, nothing. But who cares? I am going to die anyway, here or on the scaffold.”

  “We have brought money for bail. You could be out of here tomorrow.”

  Guy shook his head. “My mother’s already offered. They won’t take it.”

  “We shall try, at least. What are you char
ged with?”

  “Causing affray, theft, damage to property, accomplice to murder. Every bloody sin under the sun, they’ve nailed it on me.”

  “Is there no one among your group who would testify to your innocence?”

  “It’s every man for himself. Who cares about a penniless Frenchie anyway?”

  Guy’s face was an expression of misery so abject that it would remain seared in Henri’s memory for the rest of his life.

  “I thank you for your visit and the food, friends,” he said at last. “I am sorry for the harsh words I have spoken lately. I’ve been a fool and deserve to die a fool’s death. Look after my mother for me.”

  With that, he slid to the floor and curled up once more, tucking his knees to his forehead, with an arm over his head to shut out the world. M. Lavalle began to move toward the door, but Henri found himself fixed to the spot, reluctant to leave.

  “We’ll get you out of here, I promise,” he whispered.

  • • •

  The two men silently retraced the gloomy corridors and inquired at the gates as to who they needed to see about bail. The judge, they were told, but he was not available. When they persisted, refusing to leave until they could speak to someone, they were ushered into a chaotic office piled high with papers and ledgers and told to wait.

  Half an hour passed, and then another, and still no one arrived. At last a whey-faced clerk put his head around the door and, apparently surprised to see them, asked what they were doing there, and who they were waiting for.

  A further twenty minutes passed before he returned.

  “There’s no bail for Guy Lemaitre,” he said. “The judge has already turned it down.”

  “But can we not appeal?” M. Lavalle said.

  The man held up his palms.

  “Nothing I can do, guv’nor,” he said. “That’s the decision of the court.”

  • • •

  As they passed through the prison gates out into the blessed sweetness of fresh air, the sunshine and birdsong seemed to mock them. They retraced their steps along Newgate Street, lost in their own thoughts. By tacit understanding, they found themselves climbing the grand stone steps of the cathedral, stepping beneath the portico, and entering through tall wooden doors into the hushed silence of its enormous interior.

  M. Lavalle moved to the nearest pew and slipped to his knees, bending his head in prayer, but Henri remained standing, almost forgetting to breathe, as he marveled at the majesty of the interior, the intricacy of the carving on the marble walls, and the square pillars which soared up to multiple domes brilliantly depicting biblical scenes in gold, silver, and every color in the rainbow.

  The very beauty of the place brought tears to his eyes, and he began to feel light-headed, as though he had entered another world. His head started to spin, and then he heard his own voice, a disembodied bellow that reverberated in the silence of the vast space: “Pour l’amour du ciel, je vous en prie, sauvez mon ami!”

  M. Lavalle was with him now, a warm arm about his shoulders, whispering, “Hush, hush, boy, come with me.” He found himself being led out of the building to a bench in the bright sunlight where the old man sat quietly by his side, waiting for his sobs to subside.

  • • •

  The visit to Newgate left Henri with a deep and persistent anger in his belly. He had long since abandoned his faith in God, but now he prayed each night. Or rather, these were not so much prayers as furious railings against the injustice of the world and the cruelty of the punishment being meted out to an innocent young man. Guy’s only failing was in wanting to make the world a fairer place. Perhaps he’d been hotheaded and unwise, but his motives were pure enough, so why was God treating him so shamefully?

  M. Lavalle tried to reassure him that, behind the scenes, everything was being done to secure Guy’s release. The French church organized a daily rota of visitors taking food and drink, and letters were written to the court tendering a considerably larger amount of bail than M. Lavalle had been able to offer.

  Discreet inquiries were made among other journeymen who’d taken part in the protest that night, but no one would admit to witnessing the moment when the weaver’s wife was threatened. Most of them, terrified of being in any way associated with the crime, denied being anywhere near.

  Eventually an Irishman was found who claimed to be certain that Guy had not been involved, because he had seen him in the Dolphin at around the time of the raid. Everyone’s hopes were lifted when the man agreed to testify in Guy’s defense, but when they brought a lawyer to talk to him, he had vanished, taking his wife and children with him, never to be seen again.

  Weeks passed, and each time Henri visited the prison, Guy seemed thinner and more despairing. At last they learned that a date for the trial had been set for January.

  There was nothing to do but wait.

  • • •

  The nights drew in, the weather became colder, and occasional flurries of snow darkened the sky. Henri overheard Mariette and the cook making preparations for Christmas, discussing the cost of buying a whole goose and deciding that it was too expensive. “Half of it’s fat, anyway,” Cook grumbled. They would make do with beef. They spent the whole morning working together on a large plum cake, soused liberally with brandy so that it would last until Epiphany.

  This was usually one of his favorite times of the year, when feasts were planned, friends gathered, and the house was decorated with greenery collected from the woods and fields beyond Bethnal Green. It was a time when he felt that he truly belonged in this adopted land, a country in which he and his fellow Protestants had no fear of reprisals should they wish to worship freely, and in which he had his adopted family around him.

  But this year Henri had little heart for such celebrations. Visions of Guy, despairing in the hell of the prison and the sounds of the crowd baying for the murderer’s blood crowded his mind each night as he waited for sleep. Even in this seemingly benign country of England, he was now so painfully aware that there were forces to be afraid of.

  The only way of quelling his anxiety was through intense application to work, specifically to his master piece. Fearing the horrors of his own thoughts, he found himself toiling through the night to finalize the point-paper translation of Anna’s design, and then devising the complicated organization of the components of the loom, the range of colors needed for warp and weft, and the arrangement of lashes and simple that would bring the colors to the front of the fabric. The weave was so demanding that he made several false starts with the setup, but finally he was able to begin weaving with reasonable confidence that the finished product would do justice to Anna’s artistry.

  He loved this moment, when the shuttle made its initial passes through the warp, and the first few inches of cloth with the lines of the design began gradually to emerge, weft thread by weft thread. The work was painfully slow because the design required so many changes of the treadles at his feet and of the shuttles introducing each new weft color. The drawboy, sleepy and sluggish in the cold, made frequent mistakes, pulling the lashes in the wrong order.

  It was a more complex design than Henri had ever tackled, and he found himself exhausted by the need for constant concentration to avoid making costly errors. With each inch of fabric woven, the pressure for accuracy grew greater. The farther into the weave, should a mistake later be discovered, the more hours of work might be lost and precious bobbins of dyed and twisted silk yarn wasted.

  As the elegant curves and images of Anna’s sketch began to emerge into woven fabric, he felt her presence, as if looking over his shoulder, approving. Sometimes he found himself talking to her in his head: Is this green right, do you think? Or should it be paler? or The curve is so shallow here. I cannot conceal the steps entirely. Will you forgive me?

  If he should leave the loom for a while, perhaps to take a meal, on returning, his heart would leap with
the thrill of seeing afresh how the design was unfolding, how the network of curled stems was taking shape, supporting those delicately furled leaves and natural-looking blooms. When, at a foot and a half in, he reached the point where the tiny beetle emerged into the weave, he found himself close to tears, his chest bursting with a tender joy.

  He worked long hours each day, often perforce by candlelight at this darkest time of the year, only giving up if a warp thread broke that could not be recovered in the dim light of a candle or, more often, when the weary drawboy finally fell asleep over his lashes.

  He had not replied to Anna’s letter, for he had no idea what to say. Much as he yearned for her presence and longed to see her again, the tough words of his mother and the events of the past weeks had brought everything into a different perspective, harshly lit by his friend’s adversity. He had returned to the prison twice since that first visit, taking food and clothing. The church elders had offered to pay for him to have a single cell, but Guy had refused. “How could I bear the silence of my own company,” he said, “when all I have to contemplate is a life of misery? They are villains, this lot, but they are companions all the same.”

  It could just as easily have been me in that prison, had I not the support and guidance of a good and generous master, Henri thought to himself. His own life and Guy’s had been so similar, both of them having endured terrible loss and hardship before finding themselves in the world of silk by pure good fortune, and both having worked hard to come from nothing to become skilled craftspeople. How could he turn his back on the good fortune which had befallen him by turning down his master’s remarkable offer?

  Nothing had been said since that first conversation. As December was usually a slow time for new commissions M. Lavalle was rarely in his office and frequently out on external duties: at the church, where they were preparing, as usual, to help the needy at Christmas, and at the Weavers’ Company, where they were making ready for the intake of silk masters in the New Year. Mariette was her usual friendly self, not overly flirtatious and apparently unaware of her father’s intervention.