The Chocolate Maker’s Wife

by Karen Brooks

  As the wind filled the sails, the distance between them grew and her stomach lurched. She could just see Grace’s quirky hat and the little bunch of mauve and ivory flowers she persistently shoved down the front of her dress. Rosamund wore a matching bunch against her décolletage. Touching it lightly, she knew these tiny white and purple flowers would always make her think of Grace, just as chocolate would always make her think of Jacopo and the young men who’d trained beside her, who along with Filip had helped her through so many setbacks to rise and become a success. She hoped that the wave that had lifted her would keep them all buoyant for a long, long time.

  Among those she was leaving behind, it was Sam who stood out. He’d come to join Grace and was standing with her, his hand shielding his eyes. Dear Sam. What an odd and wonderful relation he’d turned out to be. Irrepressible, oft times inappropriate but with a bundle of goodwill, he’d proven the staunchest of friends. All he required was to be listened to and admired. It hadn’t been a difficult exchange. For all his faults and peccadilloes, he was what he was, her cousin, her little naval clerk who, the moment he set eyes upon her, ensured their faint familial connection was made real. She’d miss him.

  As the sails snapped she waved madly. The ship was carried forward, around a bend and towards the open sea and their new home. She glanced up at Matthew. He stood behind her, one hand upon her waist, and smiled down at her. Aye, wherever they went, wherever they settled, she’d found home. It wasn’t a place — it was a person. It was Matthew.

  Was it justice or irony that those who sought to use her to destroy Matthew were also responsible for this? For them finding each other? Maybe, in the end, God was laughing. The Blithmans were now, in death, recompensing for their mighty, terrible transgressions — each and every one of them.

  From the day Mr Bender revealed her change of fortune, Rosamund decided it was justice of the heavenly kind and didn’t question it further. Satisfied Aubrey’s proof — if it had ever existed — that her marriage to Sir Everard was invalid had burned along with him, she accepted God’s and the Blithmans’ gift gracefully. She would use it to make life better for all those she loved. She’d done what she could for those remaining in London; she would do the same for Matthew, Bianca, Filip, Ashe and Mr Nick in their new home. She was aware of Bianca soothing Ashe, who looked so nervous being on a ship but would not consider remaining behind. She bestowed a warm smile and silently thanked God for both of them.

  Of all the extraordinary things that had happened, and of all the people who’d come into her orbit, it was Wat Smithyman who proved to be strangest. Understanding he’d unwittingly aided and abetted the Blithmans in the most heinous of crimes, now the man could not do enough for her. Like Rosamund, he wanted to shed the skin of his old life, grow a new one — not only in the New World but at the side of the woman and man he’d once mistakenly thought a social-climbing trull and a murderer and despised. Appointed Matthew’s assistant along with Mr Nick, he’d proven his worth over and over in the weeks leading up to their departure. Before Christmastide, he’d gone ahead to Boston to find a house and premises in which they could start their new venture, and he’d sent word he’d found the most perfect of sites and was even now, as they sailed, preparing them for their arrival. Could Rosamund trust him? Not yet, but knowing Mr Nick was over there with him did much to soothe her concerns. She would give Wat time. As Mr Bender said, she now had the luxury of buying as much of it as she wished.

  With the exception of one thing…

  There was one count of time that no-one could delay. It was a period God decided and no man or woman could tear asunder. Resting a hand on her stomach, a rush of heat filled her body. Though the child within didn’t show yet, she would be born in a new world; a world where she had both a mother and a father and a ready-made unconventional family to cherish her, give her strength, love, protection and tell her oh so many marvellous stories. She would one day know pain — one could not live and grow without it — but not abuse. She would never be abandoned, except to the sunshiny blessedness of wonderment. In her world, curiosity would be her breakfast, imagination her dinner and the dreamy silkiness of chocolate and words her supper.

  As she looped her arm through Matthew’s, Rosamund saw the captain approaching. With him was a man in plain garb, a book tucked under his arm.

  ‘Are you ready?’ she asked Matthew, the stiff breeze trying desperately to lift off her hat and unravel her hair.

  Matthew’s smile broadened. ‘I’ve been ready since the moment I knew who you really were. My heart.’ He bent and captured her lips with his own, withdrawing slowly. She would never grow tired of those eyes, those twilight eyes with their touches of violet. Dazzling, they were filled with a pulsing light and what she knew was love and a healthy respect — all reserved just for her. She felt the familiar bubbling starting deep inside her chest. Dear God, ever since she’d admitted her love for Matthew that reservoir she’d kept locked away inside her for so many years was refilled day after day. Being with him brought nothing but joy. Forget the wealth, the opportunities the Blithmans had bestowed upon her; the greatest gift they had given her was this man.

  God bless the Blithmans, she thought, and with it, the last of the shadows that had haunted her for so many years fled.

  Never before had she so many reasons to smile, to laugh with the springtime abandon of her childhood. What would her grandmother say? Mr Dunstan? She decided they’d be happy for her — though her grandmother would remind her to maintain her dignity. Oh, fuck dignity, she thought, it’s my wedding day. My day and she wanted to laugh even more. Even better, she knew this wasn’t the most glorious of days, it was simply one of many that had already been and were yet to come.

  To think, Paul Ballister, his thuggish, brutal twins, and her uncaring mother had tried to make her see the world through their blighted eyes, as a dark, dismal place where trust was broken, hearts were cruel, and bodies and lies were currency. Being married to Sir Everard, learning the extent of his deceits, his family’s sins and their legacy, had almost confirmed it.

  Matthew had taught her to see the good in the world again. What was just and true. So had Bianca, by teaching her to read. Oh, she knew there was darkness and horror — dear God, not only had she survived so much of it, but all she had to do was think of Bianca and she was given a staunch and clear reminder of humanity’s capacity for cruelty — and foolishness. Nevertheless, wherever possible, she would try to choose mercy and allow others to see, by her example, the wonder it created.

  This was what she’d establish with her new chocolate house. A place where people could come to forget and remember. To forget their troubles and to remember what makes them laugh: companionship, good food, music, poetry, stories, news, gossip; being reminded that for all you might think your life is woeful, there are those who fared far worse.

  Matthew had also, through his words, taught her to search for reasons and find answers — and to seek the good even through the evil. Wade through wrong to find right and stand by it. He did that as a correspondent; he did it as Matthew Lovelace, too, making sense of the world, acknowledging that honesty and corruption co-existed, and in the end it’s all down to individual choices. The important thing was to make the right ones.

  Matthew was her choice and she was his. Love had risen from the ashes because, when she was given the chance, she chose well. She almost hadn’t, and that thought terrified her.

  ‘My lady, sir, I believe you know Mr Hershey,’ said Captain Browning, pulling off his hat and introducing the tall man who kept his on. One of the Quakers Bianca knew, Mr Hershey often acted as spokesperson for the other Friends, and had been instrumental in helping Matthew and Rosamund rescue many beyond Bianca’s group.

  ‘Hope you don’t mind,’ said the captain, ‘but he tells me there are others who wish to bear witness to the ceremony. I said it would be fine, especially now we’re away from Deptford. After all, it’s not every day we have a marriage on board.’<
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  Not only had the other passengers come forward to watch, but as many sailors as possible ceased their tasks. Best of all, coming up from the below decks were the rest of the Quakers, blinking in the light and inhaling the fresh river air. They looked towards where Rosamund, Matthew, Filip and Bianca stood, Ashe clutching another bunch of flowers that Grace had thrust into her hands, smiles breaking out on their faces.

  Thus it was, as they sailed along the Thames and the sun reached its peak before sliding towards the horizon, that the captain of the Odyssey, watched by his crew, a Spanish chocolate maker, a former slave, rescued Quakers and paying passengers, performed his first marriage.

  Rosamund Blithman became Rosamund Lovelace.

  Busy exchanging vows with Matthew, she never noticed as they sailed past Gravesend. Her heart and mind were fixed on the man holding her hands and gazing into her eyes with such devotion, a world of sacred promises radiating from his face — and on controlling the laughter that threatened to overcome her and interrupt the ceremony. It was the laughter that comes when hearts’ desires are realised, when the future is sunrises, rainbows, fresh falls of soundless snow and shared burdens.

  Unable to hold it back any longer, as they sealed their promises to each other with a long and not-so-chaste kiss, and a cheer rose from all those who’d witnessed the union, it rang out. Uninhibited, otherworldly, it was a clarion. For a moment, silence fell upon the ship before, as one, everybody — even the usually reticent Quakers — threw back their heads and laughed as well. Powerless to resist Rosamund’s joy, the passengers threw their arms around each other, women and girls were swung in wide arcs, their skirts flying up. Children stamped, men cried out in glee. From somewhere came the music of pipes and dancing commenced. Ashe was swept into the fray before Bianca and then Filip were taken too.

  Eyes sparkled, mouths were filled with mirth, hearts and souls soared. The captain guffawed the loudest at the laughing siren on the poop and the bell-like sound she emitted which announced a God-blessed union like no other.

  It was the same laughter a newborn child gave the day she came into the world, not knowing the misery and misfortune that would take her down a sometimes-dark path towards damnation, but understanding in the deep instinctive way that only those who have recently left the abode of angels do, that one day, God willing, all would be set aright.

  A devil and an angel would see the beauty in each other and joy would be reborn, tenfold, a hundredfold; joy with all its bitter-sweet promise.

  And love. One could not forget love.

  Or a bowl of sweet, dark chocolate.

  THE END

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Little did I know as I began my research on chocolate, England in the 1660s, and the Restoration, an era about which I knew a little, that by the time I was ready to write almost two years later, I would be completely besotted and challenged by the period.

  It was a naughty, violent, politically and religiously fraught, dangerous, cruel, exhilarating, and incredibly sensual time. Poverty and wealth existed side by side, resentments, racism and xenophobia ran deep, and so did plots. Increasingly literate people stretched their religious and other rights and sought to be free of the constraints the King imposed on them in a variety of ways. Arts and theatre flourished as did the sciences. But war was omnipresent and fear of a return to the chaos of the Civil War dominated many people’s minds and motivations. Women began to make their presence felt in science, literature, arts and business — so much so, as Antonia Fraser writes in King Charles II, ‘the position of women in the second half of the seventeenth century was in many ways preferable to their position in the nineteenth’.

  It was so easy to lose myself in this era, and it is a testament to the splendid academics, historians, journalists, diarists, and novelists, as well as artists and musicians and their work, that it’s been such a fascinating delight and provocation. While I won’t mention them all (there’s no room), I do wholeheartedly thank those people I read, listened to, studied, watched, devoured and, mostly, learned from wholeheartedly.

  I also did some on-the-ground research, going to London in 2017 and travelling around the UK and parts of Europe. Before leaving Australia, I contacted David Gottlier of Bowler and Hatte tours and spent the most marvellous time in London with him, walking the streets of my characters, visiting monuments, churches and important buildings, most of which appear in the novel, as well as many of the sites where chocolate houses and some coffee houses (including Pasque Rosee’s The Turk’s Head — purportedly the first — Garraways, Lloyds, etc.) had stood. David was a tireless and knowledgeable companion who tailored his time to my specifications (and then embellished) and I’m grateful to him for sharing his wisdom and tolerating my endless questions.

  But before I go into where fiction interweaves, diverges from or collides with fact in the novel, I should explain how I came upon the idea of writing about a chocolate house/maker. I’d heard about coffee houses, but the idea of a chocolate one was completely new to me. I was in the UK in 2014, fine-tuning research for my earlier novel, The Brewer’s Tale, and researching the subsequent one, The Locksmith’s Daughter, and travelled out to Hampton Court one day with my dear friend Dr Lesley Roberts. We saw a sign directing us to a chocolate room. Unable to help ourselves, we trotted along the cloisters to find it, only to be greeted by a very long queue. Having a natural aversion to queues, we sighed and continued past and struck gold. Further along, uninhabited by people, was a small room, blocked by a rope, filled with an assortment of shiny utensils, mortars and pestles, pretty bowls and saucers and array of interesting objects. The sign above declared it was a chocolate kitchen and it was where a man named Thomas Tosier, the King’s chocolate maker, would prepare King William’s favourite drink. If that didn’t tweak my imagination, then the picture hanging on the wall certainly did. It was of a homely woman of middling age, dressed in an ordinary gown with a large hat and a bunch of flowers shoved into her décolletage. Her name was Grace Tosier, wife of Thomas who, the information beneath announced, had a famous chocolate house in Greenwich and was renowned for both the chocolate drinks she made and what went on behind its doors.

  That was it. One look at Grace and the chocolate kitchen and my imagination went into overdrive. There and then I said to Lesley, I am going to write a book and it’s going to be called The Chocolate Maker’s Wife. Initially, I thought it would be about Grace, but as I began my research, I found I was more interested in how chocolate first came to England, how it was received, and those early places that built a business out of it, borrowing ideas from the fast-growing coffee houses and what they learned from Spain and other parts of Europe. Grace does appear in the novel, as a young apprentice/helper in Rosamund’s kitchen, where she shows not only her devotion to the apprentice Thomas Tosier (yes, poetic licence allowed me to ensure he made a start there too), but her general quirkiness and penchant for flowers.

  So, Thomas and Grace existed. So too did Solomon de la Faya, as a chocolate maker (firstly, to King Charles II and later, his brother, James), though his father, Filip, and their beginnings, are my invention. Of the main characters in the book, the only other major one to have lived and breathed the period was Samuel Pepys. It must be very difficult to write about the 1660s without reference to his amazing, funny, detailed, shameless and chatty diary. After reading a few biographies of Pepys — to set a context and get to know the fellow better (and I thoroughly recommend Claire Tomalin’s Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self, Robert Latham’s The Shorter Pepys, as well as Stephen Porter’s Pepys’ London, which also sets a terrific framework), I resorted to his diaries. Originally written in code (probably so his wife didn’t find out about all his masturbatory fantasises and peccadilloes — he even coded in French!) it wasn’t until they were eventually ‘found’, put aside, ‘discovered’ again and, in a series of fortunate events (or what Tomalin calls a ‘tragi-comedy’) translated, that the world was able to read Pepys’ observations about every
thing from comets to naval matters, people, major and minor events, personal triumphs and tragedies and even his bowel movements. Available online as well, these diaries, which span ten years, are a fantastic resource and I confess to quite falling in love with the funny little man with the sharp mind, dedication to duty and awareness of his growing social rank. I couldn’t not include him in my novel, adding more inventive flesh to the meaty bones he left us.

  Every time Sam appears in the novel (with the exception of his interactions with Rosamund et al.) and mentions what he’s been doing, who he’s seen, where he’s gone and why, what he’s accomplished (or not), the references to his house (for example, the renovations it undergoes), his wife, and his duties, it is accurate according to his diary. From Pepys, I was able to gauge the weather, the whereabouts of other historic figures on particular days — including the salacious deeds of Buckingham, Sedley and co., various duels, theatrical performances, and so much more — the condition of the roads and other little gems that I’ve tried, where appropriate, to incorporate, including the sighting of the two comets.

  Sam lived through the plague and the Great Fire. The former he relished and often referred to the plague year as one of the happiest and most fulfilling of his life. The scenes with Sam and the Great Fire, where he went and whom he spoke to, and who stayed at his house (apart from Rosamund) are also precise according to his diary.

  I have occasionally taken liberties with Sam — mainly in his scenes with Rosamund or at the chocolate house and Blithe Manor. I like to think he would forgive me for that and, hopefully, enjoy his role in the story.

  Sam also underwent the surgery he describes to Rosamund early in the book. Suffering from kidney stones his entire life, Sam’s bravery and the pain he must have been enduring to even contemplate such a risky procedure is mind-boggling. He was the first patient on the surgeon’s list that day. Apparently, most of the other patients who also had surgery that day died — probably from being operated on with unclean instruments. It’s no wonder that every year Sam had an annual dinner to celebrate his survival, exhibiting his stone which he kept in a jar.