Figures in Silk

by Vanora Bennett

  She paused for emphasis: “It’s hugely profitable, in fact,” she said, with magnificent assurance. “That’s why the wise king is willing to make the initial outlay. Of course, it’s not cheap or quick to set up. But you’ll reap many times the benefit later.”

  How does she know all this? Jane wondered, lost in Isabel’s argument. Then, did she just say, “You will reap many times the benefit later”? What did she mean by that?

  Isabel’s hands were trembling—but with her dawning sense of achievement, not with fear. The divine madness was ebbing.

  She couldn’t believe what she’d been doing and saying. She finished: “The great pity is that there’s no English silk-weaving center.” She lowered her eyes modestly, setting the king free at last.

  “Yet,” she added.

  A man standing behind Jane began to laugh and clap. Isabel turned to see who it was.

  Lord Hastings was nodding at her. His feet were planted wide apart as if to steady himself. His dark face was split in the same kind of delighted grin she could see on King Edward’s face. “Do you know, Sire, I think she’s got a point,” he said. “It might work.

  It just might work.”

  The king smiled at Hastings. “Lord Hastings knows about trade,” he said comfortably, welcoming his friend into the circle with a gesture. “You know that, don’t you? He’s a stapler when he’s at Calais. One of you merchants: making fortunes out of cloth. If he thinks it could work, then—” He waved his hand again.

  Lord Hastings passed Jane as if she wasn’t there. “Bravo, Mistress Claver,” he said, bowing as he squashed onto the bench with them. “Who’d have thought you had a business head on your shoulders? And now—what can you tell us about this initial investment?”

  She rode home at the back of a party of knights returning to London. Jane stayed behind. For a few moments, Isabel revelled quietly in her solitude; it was the first time all day she hadn’t had to guard her expression. It was also the first time she’d had to consider the leering way the Marquess of Dorset, Jane’s blond second admirer, had cornered her in the tent’s shadows while Jane was dancing with Lord Hastings, after a lot of food and drink had been consumed by everyone present. Dorset had lurched his admittedly handsome body at her and pressed beery lips down on hers, grinning. She’d pushed him away, but he’d just said, “Oh, come on, you know you want it,” and, “You’re a beautiful woman, you know,” with lust and contempt equally mixed on his face. She’d had to kick his leg quite hard, while trying not to let anyone see what she was doing, to make him pull back. He’d sworn and stepped away, but he’d gone off , shrugging, still with that drunken, leering, triumphant grin on his face. Thinking about it now, she let her face twist into open contempt for the first time. Why did Jane tolerate him?

  But there were more important things to think about. It was only once she was alone on the road, upon her horse, that Isabel became yawningly, terrifyingly aware that she needed a real silk expert for the follow- up negotiations the king had suggested take place with Lord Hastings, tomorrow, at the palace at Westminster. She’d already taken this deal as far as her own cheek and intuition and what scraps of knowledge she’d gleaned at Alice’s would go. She didn’t know what to ask for next.

  She couldn’t ask Alice. Alice would take all the credit for doing a deal with the king. She couldn’t ask Anne Pratte, either, because Anne’s first move would be to tell Alice. Isabel knew that without having to test it: Anne wouldn’t be able to resist. Nor could Isabel ask William Pratte, for all his standing with the Mercers and loyalty to Alice—because he would tell Anne, and Anne would tell Alice.

  She plaited the reins between her fingers, thinking. For a few moments she wondered about asking Goffredo. He knew everything. And he’d enjoy the adventure more than anyone. But then she imagined the overheated atmosphere that sharing a secret with him, even for a day or two, would produce, and shook her head. She’d just stopped him pawing her at every opportunity.

  She didn’t want all that starting again.

  That left only Will Caxton. His business in London wasn’t with Alice, unlike Goffredo’s, so if he suddenly absented himself the next morning, Alice wouldn’t bother herself too much with where he was going. But he was so unassuming, so low- key. Her first instinct was to rely on someone whose expertise she could hide behind: someone more flamboyant, a showman. And yet, as the horse jolted her one way or another on its leisurely amble, she began hesitantly to grasp the reality that her own showman-ship had got her this far. She didn’t need someone else’s flamboyance, after all; only some detailed knowledge and negotiating experience. And gingerly, gentle Will—who’d done as much, really, to make her part of Alice Claver’s circle as Goffredo ever had; who always behaved with respect, as if she were his friend—would provide all she needed of that, and more. He wouldn’t try to steal her glory either.

  She sat up straighter and kicked her horse out of its amble and into a smart trot. It was settled.

  “ Westminster? Whatever for? ” Will Caxton said blankly, when she whispered her request to him that night. He didn’t want to waste his precious last days in England on something unnecessary. He had business of his own to transact. “Not something else to do with your sister?”

  He hadn’t met Jane. But all of Alice Claver’s circle disapproved of her.

  Cagily, Isabel replied, almost whispering: “Not exactly . . . though I’ve told Alice it is. I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t important.”

  He sighed.

  “Well, I hope it is, that’s all,” he said resignedly.

  “Please, Will. I really need you,” she muttered, and sensed him softening. “And please don’t tell Alice you’re coming, either. I’ll explain once we’re on the boat.”

  Once they were both safely on the wherry seat, side by side, watching the other boats go by in the morning glitter, past the gnats and dragonflies dancing on the reeds, she started to whisper what she wanted of him. Will Caxton didn’t believe her at first. He even got a little short with her. She sensed, from the slight color around his sandy hairline, that he was as close as he ever got to being angry. “I haven’t got time for wild goose chases,” he said sternly, as if doubting he’d done right to be so friendly with this untested girl. “Are you absolutely sure you’re not just making this up?”

  Even when she showed him the scrawled laissez- passer Lord Hastings had given her, to get her through the palace guards, he wasn’t sure. He screwed up his eyes and peered at it with undisguised skepticism.

  “Why would he agree to see you?” he said, after a long silence.

  She couldn’t quite keep the note of exasperation out of her voice as she replied, more shrilly than she’d have liked, “I’ve told you why; it’s true.” Perhaps that almost convinced him. At any rate, he fell quiet. Looked thoughtfully at the paper again. And, as Westminster loomed up ahead—the double towers of the abbey and the great arching roofs of the palace, the fairy- tale homes of priests and princes—she could see him begin to work out negotiating points, whistling under his breath. Just in case.

  The corridors they went through were no grander than those they were used to, but there were many more of them. The palace seemed an entire city in stone. They didn’t know where to go or what to say to soldiers, so they waited in silence at the gates while the soldiers conferred, and waited again, several more times, as they were shuffled along corridors by hesitant underlings.

  Eventually a tall, dark, harassed- looking man who looked a little like Lord Hastings came out to their latest stone corridor and bowed. A page piped out his titles: Ralph Hastings, Esquire of the Body, Master of the King’s Horse, and Keeper of the King’s Lions, Lionesses, and Leopards. Isabel guessed this must be Lord Hastings’s brother. Trying not to look overwhelmed, she dropped a curtsey as deep as Will Caxton’s answering bow.

  Ralph Hastings led them down yet more corridors to the Lord Chamberlain’s rooms. He talked, very calmly and slowly, in his outlandish Midlands country voic
e, putting them at their ease.

  “This is a good time to call on my brother,” he said, “after his morning duties are over. It’s the first moment in the day he gets time to think.”

  Isabel knew Lord Hastings’s duties as chamberlain ran from organizing the household—ordering the king’s meals and arranging audiences with him—to secretarial work, to intimate duties of the body: ensuring that fires were tended and candles lit in the royal bedroom, the bed aired, the chamberpot emptied, and dogs and cats driven out of the chamber; helping His Majesty dress, making sure his clean linen had been warmed at the fire, handing him his carefully brushed clothes, and preparing and supervising his rosewater baths.

  Isabel wondered: How does Lord Hastings get time to run the Calais garrison and the king’s Midland armies and mint new issues of coin if he has to do all that too every morning? Curiously she asked, “Doesn’t he get pages to do the morning duties for him?”

  But Ralph Hastings shook his head, with a courtier’s astonishment at this childlike outsider’s ignorance in questioning palace ways. “Touch the king’s person?” he asked, with raised eyebrows.

  He must mean no, Isabel decided, feeling abashed. Lord Hastings must do all that himself.

  She was aware of Will Caxton, at her side, almost imperceptibly shaking his head. She wished he hadn’t seen her make a fool of herself. “Let me,” he muttered, “do the talking.” For a moment she was nettled by this. But mostly she felt relieved. This was why she’d brought Will, after all.

  The chamber they entered was large and airy, but simple enough: a great mullioned window looking onto the river, watery light reflected on the bare walls, a large table covered with papers set near the back wall, two scriveners sitting at it tidying the papers and making notes, and, by the window, Lord Hastings himself, splendid in blue velvet tunic and hose, with his hat already sweeping off his head and his laughing eyes on Isabel, beginning to bow as he said, with what she thought to be affectionate welcome: “Ah, the young Mistress Claver! Come in, come in . . . we have business to settle, I believe.”

  Lord Hastings knew Will Caxton’s name (as he seemed to know everyone’s). As soon as Will Caxton was formally announced by the page, he turned with great ease to the sandy, skinny merchant and said, “We haven’t met. But your work at Bruges was famous; of course I know of that. And we all admired the excellent agreement you struck with the Hanse merchants.”

  Then, to Isabel, with respect and courtesy combined: “I see you’ve brought a colleague as talented as yourself. A good friend to have.”

  Will was more self- possessed before nobility than Isabel had perhaps expected. He bowed and answered formally, took his place at the table with poise. It was easy to take her lead from him. It was only for a brief moment, as they settled themselves to talk, that she caught his eyes on hers. His head nodded, in quiet approval.

  In the hour that followed, she was surprised many times by how adept Will Caxton was at the business at hand. He set out what would be needed to establish a silk- weaving industry, clearly and briefly; and, equally calmly, Lord Hastings agreed to everything. The contract (which named Isabel as an entrepreneur in her own right, along with Alice Claver, Goffredo D’Amico, and both Prattes, to be known collectively as the House of Claver) did not even include Will Caxton. “I’m planning a different business,” he said, when Lord Hastings raised an inviting eyebrow at him.

  “I’m just here to offer advice.”

  Isabel couldn’t believe how easily what she wanted was, thanks to Will, taking shape in the document one of the scriveners was composing as they talked. The contract specified that the silk industry they would set up would have the king’s protection for twenty- five years. The scrivener’s legal French, which she 14 could only just follow, allowed the House of Claver to make contracts with a full workshop of Venetian dyers, spinners, and weavers to immigrate to England.

  Will Caxton raised the question of their safety—the City was prone to riots against greedy Lombards.

  “Where would you like to establish yourselves?” Lord Hastings asked Isabel.

  Will Caxton answered, as quickly as if they’d agreed this beforehand among themselves: “Here—in Westminster. That would be safer.”

  And down it went in the text: that the silk weavers would be lodged in a quiet, anonymous house in the precincts of the abbey, far from the prying eyes of the merchants of London. Goffredo was to be offered English citizenship, in case he ran into trouble with the Venetian authorities or the Italians in London. The Venetian masters would use the workshop to teach a first group of English weavers how to produce a full range of satins, damasks, velvets, and taffetas. No other foreigners would be permitted to set up a rival business in Westminster or London until this quarter-century contract expired. The Venetians would have a moratorium on repaying any debts incurred at home and any taxes due in London, just as they would have immunity from prosecution for crimes committed overseas. The workshop would be exempt from municipal levies and obligations. Nor would it have to pay for imports of any raw or spun silk, dyestuff s, gold, or silver that the artisans would need for their work. The king would pay the ten- shillings- a-year rent on the house. He would advance money too for the food, clothes, and thirty- ducat annual salaries of the foreign workers—a quarter-century interest-free loan. All the House of Claver would have to do would be to buy the equipment: twenty looms for high- quality cloths; spinning machines; mangles, vats, and tools for the dye shop. “We don’t know how to calculate the price for the machinery,” Lord Hastings said apologetically. “Best you keep that to yourselves.” But everything else would be paid for from the king’s own purse.

  A silence fell as Will Caxton considered whether any other points needed to be written into the contract. The scrivener was dropping sand on his paper, to blot the ink, and funneling it back off into the sandbox. Lord Hastings grinned. He leaned forward and tapped Isabel on the shoulder, looking suddenly conspiratorial.

  “You do know, don’t you,” the king’s friend said, “that although it’s the king’s grace who’s happy to take formal responsibility for your costs, in practice the only way he’ll have of getting the money for it is by borrowing from the merchants of the City of London? He’s not a wealthy monarch in his own right.”

  Isabel saw Will Caxton permit himself a small answering smile. He knew. She echoed it.

  “Essentially,” Hastings went on, crossing one leg athletically over the other, “your father and his friends will be paying for your venture—but won’t know they are. Yet your House of Claver will enjoy all the profit if it succeeds, as I’m certain it will. You’ve done well, Mistress Claver. This is a sweet deal for you.”

  Her smile deepened as that thought sunk in. Will Caxton looked modestly down, enjoying it too. Lord Hastings looked kindly at her, as if well aware of the greater complexity of her feelings—as if realizing that the love of the beauty of silk that had started her down this path in life was now giving way to an appreciation of something she hadn’t seen until now: the beauty of power, used with elegance. Slowly, he nodded. Then he got up, in another fluid movement. “I think that’s everything, isn’t it?” he said gently. The audience was over.

  Outside, walking back down the corridor, accompanied only by the page this time, Isabel, whose eyes were fixed straight ahead, 14 whose head was full of the triumphant singing of heavenly choirs, slowly became aware of Will Caxton beside her, suddenly slightly sweaty with relief, rumpling his velvet hat in his hands, then running his hands through his thin hair before putting it back on. He started whistling again, very quietly, under his breath. She half-turned her head, ready to grin at him. He winked back, but his cautious body movements suggested to her that it wouldn’t yet be appropriate to rejoice out loud. She fixed her eyes on the page’s tunic ahead, and carried on walking.

  Will waited until they’d got right past the last soldier and were standing on the jetty, waiting for their boat back to London, before he whooshed out a great
sigh of pent- up happiness. “We did it!” he said, putting a hand on her arm and jigging it up and down. “We really did it!” His voice was high and cracked.

  Excitement flooded through her as she beamed back at him, rejoicing at being allowed to show her feelings at last. He looked his normal self again now—unassuming and astonished by his success, with his pale eyebrows giving him his usual air of surprise. He wasn’t half as impressive as he’d been in the palace anymore. She had to remind herself that it was this man who’d done all that; she’d chosen right. “Will,” she cried warmly, “that was unbelievable! You were . . . You were . . .” She was so overcome she couldn’t even think of a strong enough expression of praise.

  “You were so GOOD,” she ended, not caring.

  He grinned, bashfully. He knew she meant the highest praise; and who didn’t like praise? But his voice was calmer as he said modestly, “Well, I’ve had years of experience, you know.” He nodded at her with equal warmth. “And there was me, not even believing you this morning. Growling at you like an old bear. You’ve done an extraordinary thing yourself, to see this opportunity—to seize it.”

  It was Isabel’s turn to blush. Will Caxton took his eyes off her happy confusion. He looked around instead, approvingly, at the 14 calm of the scene on the riverbanks: the gentle swell of the river plain; the rooftops covering priests and functionaries and contemplatives. “And this really will be a good place to work out how to do something new; not too much fuss and bustle,” he said thoughtfully. “Perhaps, when I come back, it’s where I should settle, too . . .”