The Silversmith's Wife _ Sophia Tobin

by Tobin, Sophia

  Mary knew that, some day soon, she would have to learn to be harder. For now, every time Alban was absent from her, she felt it keenly, as though death was close. The sound of Pierre’s step in the hall, the suggestion of his voice, even when she couldn’t hear the words, had made her heart quicken with dread. Alban’s step ended her suffering, for she knew that he lived.

  She knew that what Mallory termed her ‘nervous complaint’ would taint everything if she let it. She had to learn to leave joy alone, to enjoy it, not always to look forward to loss. Summer was coming, and she hoped that the lengthening days would reawaken her hope, and quicken the calm Mary who she was sure had once existed. She tried, but it was the kind of work that could not be achieved by effort alone, and she felt as though the sun was always behind her, on her back, and her shadow always cast ahead.

  This evening, she was playing cards alone, a solitary game her father had taught her as a child. The cards felt greasy under her fingertips. Pierre had been used to playing with them. She did not dare to look out of her own pool of light. She would not whisper it, even to herself: he is here. But she felt sure he was: in the darkness in the hall, the unexpected flaring of the fire, and the ticking of the clock. She longed to know that Alban was safe, but she did not dare move herself to go to the workshop, where he was carrying out repairs with Benjamin.

  A knock on the door made her jump, but when it opened Ellen was there, looking bored. ‘Please, Mrs Renard,’ she said. ‘Dr Taylor is here.’

  He was standing directly behind Ellen, a dim figure. As Mary rose she knocked the table, and some of the cards fell on to the floor. She thought that surely he must see it: the dreadful symmetry of this night, and the night he had come to tell her Pierre was dead. But his face was blank.

  He had come on other evenings, she supposed, though not usually this late, and usually with Amelia.

  ‘Good evening, Dr Taylor,’ she said. ‘I was not expecting you. Is Mrs Taylor well?’

  ‘Perfectly, thank you, madam,’ said Taylor, bowing to her. She caught the scent of spirits as she came closer.

  ‘It is late,’ she said. ‘Mr Steele is still in the workshop, if you wish to speak to him about the business. Mr Grisa is out. Shall I ask for tea?’

  ‘No,’ said Taylor. ‘Thank you. It is you I wish to speak to.’ His temper seemed to be fluctuating with every moment: he moved his head, as though he longed to shake something off. ‘I meant to call earlier,’ he said, ‘but I have been unwell these last few days. Mr Cracknell took my visits on for me.’

  ‘I am sorry to hear that,’ she said, seeking some sign of his normal gentleness. There was none. He sat half-turned away from her, and the firelight shadowed his face. There was a certain harshness to his expression, and the change from his usually kind demeanour troubled her.

  He continued without encouragement. ‘You know I have always tried to be a good friend to you,’ he said. ‘And it is as such a friend I speak now. I hope I have done my duty to you, and to Pierre’s memory. You, and this business, were his most precious possessions. It is my duty to protect you, and it, and that is why I speak.’

  ‘Well, then,’ she said. ‘Speak.’

  Taylor kept his eyes down. ‘I have been looking at the books,’ he said. ‘There has been a falling-off in trade, a marked falling-off. Not just due to the season,’ he added, more loudly. ‘Mr Steele was most kind to help us, but it is time to find someone more fitting.’

  ‘More fitting?’ said Mary, struggling to keep her temper. ‘He is the finest craftsman I have ever seen.’

  ‘I am sure, I am sure,’ said Taylor. He rocked a little, and would not look at her. ‘But he is a working silversmith, not a retailing goldsmith. This business is a going concern. I’m sure his skills are manifold, but he is no salesman, and though Mr Grisa is half-entranced with him, better management is needed.’ He nodded, seeming more comfortable.

  ‘He may not be a salesman,’ she said. ‘But he knows what beauty is, and how to create it. If he does not court people as Pierre did, maybe he is better for it. If I have any say in the matter, I do not accept your recommendation.’

  Taylor looked at her face sorrowfully. ‘My dear Mrs Renard,’ he said. ‘I have failed you. I had come here hoping that what I had heard is not true, but now I see what has happened here. This man has enchanted you in some way.’ He leaned forwards, and touched her hand. She snatched it away. ‘I do not blame you,’ he said. ‘Let me say it, I do not blame you. After losing such a husband as Pierre, such a man.’

  ‘What have your spies been telling you?’ she said. ‘Is Mr Digby one of your men? Is that why he haunts this stretch of Bond Street as if his soul was tethered here? What are you paying him?’

  ‘Mr Digby?’ said Taylor. ‘What do you mean?’

  She shook her head. ‘I do not care, anyway. I will tell you the truth: I am not afraid of it. I am married to Mr Steele. I am expecting his child. And you are mistaken, quite mistaken, in what you said about Pierre. My husband is a better man than Pierre Renard ever was.’

  Taylor stared at her as though she was raving. But she had heard his sharp intake of breath, and saw his fists clench. ‘God,’ he said, under his breath.

  ‘I am not ashamed,’ she said, her voice wavering, though she could hardly hear it. ‘If we have married too quickly in the eyes of the world, still I know my heart is pure, and I know his is too.’

  ‘You don’t know what you are saying,’ he said. ‘I fear for you, Mrs Renard. I fear for you.’

  ‘There is no need,’ she said. She did not search for anger; it rose quick in her. ‘I will not be controlled. You sought to find another Pierre, but I would not wish for him again. I hated him.’

  ‘Stop it,’ he said. ‘You don’t know what you saying. My dear Mary.’

  ‘I am not your dear Mary!’ she cried. ‘I am not a child. It has been long since I have been grateful for your protection. For God’s sake go now, before I say anything else.’

  The ugliness of Taylor’s former expression had crumbled away, like plaster chiselled from a flint wall. He was all raw anguish now, painful to look upon. He stood up, and held his hands out to her, as one would to a difficult child. As she turned away, the door opened.

  ‘Mary?’ It was Alban, holding a rag to his hands. ‘What is it, dear?’ he said. ‘I heard you shouting.’ He looked at Taylor. ‘So you’ve heard. Come to speak of your disapproval, have you? Come to say you wish to exert your powers?’

  ‘You will have to go,’ said Taylor.

  ‘Well, I knew that,’ said Alban. ‘Why not call in daylight hours instead of sneaking around in the dark? What business did you come here with this evening? Or did you come merely to trouble my wife?’ He stood in front of the door. His eyes were dark with anger, unreadable in intent. His customary calmness threw his anger into strong relief.

  Taylor sensed his menace and rose quickly. ‘Let me go home. It was a mistake to come here,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll show you out myself,’ said Alban.

  Mary heard the bang of the front door, and her husband calling to Benjamin to tidy the benches.

  ‘High emotion,’ he said, when he came back into the room. ‘Was that his sole reason for coming here? Our marriage? What other business did he have?’

  Mary was tidying the cards up, heaping them together in a haphazard way. ‘Nothing,’ she said.

  ‘When will you learn to be honest with me?’ he said.

  ‘Very well, then, if you will know. He came to say that the business was not working as it should. That a different approach was needed.’

  Alban nodded. ‘I see,’ he said.

  ‘He said that you do not woo the customers in the way Pierre did.’

  She looked at him. His face was delineated by shadow. He had not shaved for days, and his hair was roughly pushed back from his face.

  She tried to be gentle. ‘It is new for you, to run a shop on Bond Street. There are many clients. You must learn to read them all, and fl
atter them all. I know that this is not, perhaps, the way you imagined it.’

  ‘It is not.’ He was still holding the rag in his hands, as though he didn’t know what to do with it. ‘I didn’t come to London for this,’ he said. ‘I came to be myself. To be a silversmith. To do my work. That, at least, is real and true.’

  ‘Your work is beautiful,’ she said, shying at the inadequacy of the word. ‘no one can dispute its quality or its mastery. But the shop makes certain demands. Clients may not want something new and beautiful; they want what Lady So-and-so has.’

  He threw the rag down. ‘I should not have taken this on,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, come now,’ she said. ‘It does not matter. We will go.’

  ‘It was never what I wanted,’ he said. ‘It came with you. That’s why I did it. All these years I have been too cautious. I wanted you and rushed into this place of misery. And now I am here, after all your angry words about him, you seek to make me into the model of your dead husband.’

  She thought her heart might stop. She sat down quickly, hearing him go out into the London night. Her first instinct was to follow him, but she knew it would be pointless. She slammed the parlour door. She couldn’t bear for Benjamin to come in, and triumph over her.

  Alban turned right, and kept walking. He didn’t know where he was walking to, only that he had to be gone from Bond Street. His first thought was Jesse; but that was too far, and he had no idea what he would say once he got there. He didn’t want to speak, or explain anything. He was tired, there was the pain in his elbow, and now he was walking away from his wife.

  All those years of calm, he thought, and now this. It is like being thrown into a wild sea, with only the stars to guide you, and the stars were often hidden by clouds.

  What kind of man does it make me, he thought. That within a few months I have disappointed my wife, failed in her eyes and in the eyes of the world. I am nothing when compared to him, he thought. She might cling to me, but even now she watches, wondering why I am not like him. Even when Pierre’s woman had come to lay her tears at Mary’s feet, she had doubted him, and not Pierre, not that wretch who he had loathed at first glance, whose every word, whose every breath, seemed to fill the air with the aroma of his bloated ambition like stale tobacco.

  He reached Piccadilly, and stopped. He looked left and right. Carriages and people everywhere, things brewing. Up and down these streets people were drinking themselves into unconsciousness, wagering livelihoods on the turn of a card, losing their virtues in golden palaces and dirty hovels. That old wretch Digby was right, perhaps; he said that London would chew me up and spit me out. I should have turned right round and got back on the mail coach again. I’ll see my grave sooner than I will the long grass dancing in a field, under the full moon.

  ‘Care for some company, sir?’

  Of course, it had taken only a moment for her to find him. Girls like her could sniff out a conquest; or did they hit everyone? She was ageless, in the way some of these whores were; young, yet old enough to have seen too much.

  ‘For one of your kind looks I’ll give you a good price,’ she said.

  She took him to an alleyway nearby. She could tell he needed the shadows, the seclusion.

  Her hands upon him were practised and skilful. Their dexterity surprised him, and his hand went to his pocket. The best whores in the world, he remembered a man saying. Who was that man? Was it Digby again? Was he the repository of truth and wisdom?

  Alban took her wrists. His feeling surged in him, but it was mainly aggression, only edged by lust. He felt like he wanted to punch through a wall. Yet he was at a distance from his desire. He felt like he was fighting his way through a thicket. Something stood between him and the fulfilment of the desire.

  The girl’s face was passive before him: not comprehending, her eyes as glassy as moonstones.

  ‘No,’ he said. Then, ‘I’m sorry.’ He saw something cross her face, the beginning of a snarl. ‘Keep the money,’ he said.

  She lapsed against the wall as he turned and walked away from her. He had to go back to Mary. His anger had melted away, found its home in the darkness of the London night. It belonged to someone else now.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  24th November, 1792

  I counted out the pills and doubled the amount Jones told me when I asked him how many for her headache, and how many more for a long sleep. He did not question me further, such is our sympathy. I have separated the dose in a piece of waxed paper, and put it in Maynard’s snuffbox, and stowed it away with this book, beyond the prying eyes of everyone.

  I have sent a pair of silver candlesticks for my friend the apothecary. They please me: chased with laurels, the signifiers of victory. He will not recognize my little joke. There are ways out of all things.

  I would not have myself so callous towards Mary. I will not let our last parting be unkind. I would not like that as a memory. I feel a kind of tenderness for her, for she is sickly, and I see the trouble in her soul. A rest from the world is what she needs.

  Joanna woke in the dim room, and sensed Digby’s body beside her even before she turned. When he slept so soundly, she would wonder at him. Observe his face in repose, a face that, relaxed, looked so unlike him. Her eyes ran over the shadows of his ribs, his tough limbs. His body was so hard, so wiry, it was though there was no flesh on him.

  Tonight, he did not look serene. The furrows remained in his brow, and sometimes his lips moved, as though he was recounting his troubles to the silence. He looked as though he was worrying rather than resting.

  We found each other, she thought, without sentiment: trouble found trouble. Last week their lovemaking had been like drinking laudanum, lulling her into peace, into darkness. Afterwards, she had slept so deeply, in such a blackness that it seemed she was falling through the night sky, with no stars and no moon. When she woke she didn’t know where she was. Then she saw him, watching her, not with a smile, simply watching. He had spread her dark hair out on the pillow with his hands, as though it was a halo. ‘You talk when you fall asleep,’ he said. ‘I could ask you anything, and you would answer it truthfully.’

  ‘My hair,’ she said crossly, and sat up, patting it down.

  He had gone without another word, not even kissing her, only placing a touch on her shoulder.

  She wondered why she still invited him in, when she did not love him, or feel a fraction of what she had felt for Stephen. She was petrified at the idea of being discovered, and even more petrified by the thought that he would be taken up one day and hung for the watch. But still, he lit a spark in her, and when he held her, his arms hard around her, she felt enclosed and safe.

  The hammering on her door shocked them both. She had turned the key in it, and put her locking box against it. Digby rose swiftly, alarm in his eyes. Wordlessly, he slipped under the bed. Joanna wrapped herself in a gown and opened the door. It was Mrs Holland, carrying two candles, two fat plaits of grey hair framing her face. ‘You’d better come quickly,’ she said. ‘Missus has her pains.’

  ‘Is it time?’ said Joanna, dazed. She knew it was an inexact thing, but she was sure Dr Taylor had said it would be some time before the baby came. ‘I’ll be down directly,’ she said, taking one of the candles. ‘Let me dress.’

  After Mrs Holland’s footsteps had died away Digby slid out from under the bed. He watched her pin back her hair and slip on a gown in one clean, athletic movement. ‘I never noticed how graceful you are,’ he said.

  ‘You can make your own way out?’ she said.

  He looked pained. ‘The place will be in uproar,’ he said.

  ‘Well, wait here, then,’ she said. She left the room quickly.

  As he heard her footsteps retreating, Digby took Renard’s watch from his coat, and checked the time.

  Harriet’s screams could be heard halfway across the house. Unlike that day months before when she had heard of Renard’s death, there was no artifice to them; they were screams of agony and te
rror. At the sound, Joanna broke into a run. Mrs Holland was standing just outside the chamber door. When she saw Joanna she shook her head. ‘I cannot go in there,’ she said. ‘I remember my sister.’

  Joanna nodded curtly. ‘Has the doctor been sent for?’ she said. Mrs Holland nodded. ‘And the master?’ said Joanna.

  ‘Hadn’t gone to bed yet,’ said Mrs Holland, a look of distaste on her face. ‘He’s in the library, playing with his prints. He just asked for more wine.’

  ‘Joanna?’ Harriet’s voice floated out, a thin thread. Joanna went straight in and across the room, lit with many candles in large silver candelabra. Harriet’s face was red, but her expression had a vulnerability to it, the fragility of a reed pulled tight. The shadows beneath her eyes made them seem larger, and they glowed a kind of celestial blue. Joanna thought, unaccountably, that they were the blue of a distant heaven, the blue of an ever-opening sky. She felt afraid for her mistress. ‘I can see silver all around,’ said Harriet, smiling mistily. It seemed she could not focus. Joanna fumbled for one of the silver vinaigrettes on the dressing table, and held it to Harriet’s nose. The girl jerked back into consciousness.

  ‘Is there water?’ called Joanna, gripping Harriet’s hand as she grimaced, her body arcing in pain.

  Mrs Holland was a dim shape in the doorway. ‘It is coming,’ she said. ‘And linen.’

  ‘The doctor is coming,’ said Joanna, close to Harriet’s ear.

  ‘And what of Pierre?’ said Harriet, in a whisper. ‘What of him? Is he coming, Joanna? Is he coming for me?’

  ‘Hush!’ Joanna looked behind her. Mrs Holland stood, impassive. Joanna could not tell whether she had heard or not. She leaned even closer to Harriet, feeling the warmth of her own breath reflected back at her as she whispered in her ear. ‘You do not know what you are saying,’ she said. ‘Do not speak of him – your life depends on it, do not speak.’