Land of Hope

by Paul C R Monk

  ‘Halt or I’ll fire!’ called out Crespin. He had understood from de Boufflers’s previous remark that there could be no prisoners. In other words, some things in wartime were better done differently, and he had primed his matchlock musket with powder.

  Jeanne, resolute, did not break her stride. She would not go back to France to spend the rest of her life in prison. And she would not allow her son to be broken. She clenched Paul’s hand tightly as she heard the sound of a charge being rammed into the barrel of a musket. But she strode on through the lush green grass, amid the late-afternoon sunshine and insects all abuzz. She now locked eyes with Paul, who smiled back with a look of determination that told her he understood and accepted the risk. He reciprocated her squeeze of the hand.

  The pauper cocked his match while de Boufflers still stood in contemplation of the lady and her boy. So this is where her destiny has led her, he thought, back into the wolf’s mouth; how strange. Of course, he had experienced similar coincidences, and he knew that they meant nothing. This one, though, would make for excellent conversation material at court.

  ‘Halt, I say!’ called Corporal Crespin, who then blew upon the match cord to kindle the embers, and opened the pan, giving the smouldering cord access to the gunpowder.

  ‘Sir?’ said an anxious Sergeant David, who knew that Crespin rarely missed a target.

  At last, de Boufflers raised his hand to hold the fire. But Crespin had pulled his arm sharply to his shoulder and had the boy nicely in his sights. The proud lady would live the rest of her life in remorse for the death of her son. It would teach her to play with a Crespin. And besides, he was only interpreting orders. So he squeezed the trigger nice and smoothly without the slightest jerk. But the instant he did so, a downward blow struck the barrel of the musket.

  ‘Leave it, soldier!’ said de Boufflers, letting go of the barrel as the countess swiftly yanked the boy into her path. She glanced back over her shoulder, then strode onwards with her son in front of her. ‘She will not be broken,’ said de Boufflers.

  ‘But, Sir . . .’

  ‘Let her go, man. Instead, pray for your own rotten soul lest you die on the field. Your section will be fronting the action in the morning!’

  TWELVE

  In beautiful Amsterdam, Jeanne was relieved to experience life without the constant threat of being pounced upon by French soldiers.

  And the wait in the bustling merchant city par excellence had the advantage of allowing her and Paul to rest their sore and weary feet. They were staying at the tall canal-side house of a Huguenot who had made a new life there as a clockmaker. The Dutch, though austere in appearance, loved to spend their money on non-wearable luxuries, and his timepieces were much prized.

  A methodical, clever, and neat man with a spiritual understanding of the universe, Monsieur François Barandon no longer regretted the fortune he had lost to the French royal coffers. He had moved on, and besides, his former wealth had certainly already been spent by the war-hungry king, whereas his new fortune, born of his own hard work and talent, was growing. The narrow house built over four storeys, its lavish furnishings, its well-stocked basement and loft, proved it.

  ‘Dear Madame Delpech, I am certain that your husband, resourceful as he has previously proven to be, will no doubt turn his talent into silver again,’ said Monsieur Barandon to Jeanne one day. They were seated at table in the high-ceilinged dining room whose walls were beautifully painted with bucolic scenes and pictures of trees laden with fruit.

  ‘The problem is not his lack of talent,’ returned Jeanne, lowering her pewter fork, ‘or his hard-earned knowledge, but the fact that laws learnt in France cannot be applied to foreign cultures as can techniques of time craft.’

  ‘That is true, François,’ said his wife, an impeccably dressed and robust lady in her mid-thirties with her fair hair drawn back into a coif. ‘We should count ourselves lucky and thank God for the choices you have been given to make.’

  ‘Does that mean that God has not helped my father, then?’ said Paul, who should not really have spoken at all. But as his young mind evolved precociously due to events, he had begun to take liberties. The Barandons’ young daughters, just a year or two younger, sniggered at his gall.

  ‘Paul, dear!’ said Jeanne, though finding it difficult to justify reprimanding him. He had been her travel companion, and she had come to treat him almost as an equal despite his age.

  ‘The boy is quite welcome to speak his mind in this house, Madame Delpech,’ said Monsieur Barandon with a reassuring smile. ‘Come, lad, now’s your chance to develop your argument, and we shall see if we can answer it.’

  ‘Well, otherwise, he would have made Father choose a trade that would bring him prosperity in adversity, wouldn’t he?’

  ‘An interesting point,’ said Monsieur Barandon, lost for words. Jeanne came to the rescue.

  ‘No, Paul, dear,’ she began in a condescending tone, ‘it does not mean that at all. God has given us the liberty to make our own way through life, and sometimes life deals blows that cannot be anticipated. Otherwise, we would have left the country many years ago, as your father used to say we should. But what God has given us is the ability to strive on in adversity, and strive on we must if we love him, and we will be rewarded in life as befits our expectations. And for the time being, it is for our family to be reunited under the same roof.’

  So I was right after all, then, thought Paul, who had begun to suspect that God was not playing fair at all. But he kept these thoughts to himself, for fear of upsetting his mother.

  ‘Amen,’ said Monsieur Barandon. ‘And let us pray that your father will remain strong in faith to strive forward despite the odds life and the devil throw at him. And let us in the same way give thanks to God that I have the blessing here today of your company to remind me how the cards of life are not evenly dealt.’

  That evening, Jeanne lay awake in the large feather bed, wondering how in the world Jacob could weave a livelihood in London.

  *

  Two hundred and sixty miles across the Channel, Jacob lay wondering how he could have fallen from grace so quickly.

  He was forty-five today —forty-five and no place to call his own after having worked hard all his life. He had overcome hurdles of oppression time and again. Time and again, he had picked himself up, dusted himself off, and set forth on his battle horse, all to end up in middle age living in two rooms in a lowly district outside London. And to top it off, with no talent for the manual trades that Huguenots so often excelled at, he saw his remaining monies dwindling at an alarming rate in the horribly expensive English capital.

  It was unfair, but to dwell on it would be to give in to self-pity. In the sallow light of a candle lamp, with a hand on the twinge in his back, he sat up on the edge of his rope bed that sagged in the middle. His eyes fell upon the little acorn faces—each representing a member of his family—lined up in a row on the straw seat of a wooden chair that he used as a bedside table. No, actually, he had not lost everything, he reminded himself.

  He stood up and removed the straw tick mattress. Then he got down on his knees on the rough floorboards and reached for the straining wrench, a mallet, and a couple of pegs which he kept under the bed. These were the tools for tightening the rope that was threaded the length and width through the holes in the oak bedframe. Next, picking up the slack with the wrench and wedging the taut side with a peg, he began methodically tightening the rope that formed the bed base, pulling it hole by hole on alternate sides so that he could at least sleep tight. Then he put back the mattress and made his bed.

  Feeling better for the exercise, he sat back on the edge of his tightened bed and picked up the book lying on top of his Bible on the chair. Monsieur de Sève had handed it to him the previous week at the coffeehouse behind the Exchange.

  Jacob had met Philippe de Sève at the French church. A Huguenot from Berne, ten years Jacob’s junior, he had lost his wife and their child in France during childbirth. He had a
rrived in the English capital a few weeks before Jacob. Both being of southern stock, they had formed a solid friendship from the start and rendezvoused every day at the coffeehouse on Birchin Lane, a five-minute walk from the church, where they could catch up on events in France and in England. They kept up each other’s spirits, and made plans for a later date that would see them in partnership to take advantage of their Huguenot connections inside France.

  Jacob flicked through the book. It was titled The Compleat Soldier, or expert artillery-man. On handing it to Jacob, Philippe de Sève had told him of Marshal Schomberg’s defection from the French army, having refused, like so many veteran soldiers of his generation, to recant his faith. The duke may have been one of France’s greatest generals, but he was too close to the grave to risk losing the way to eternal peace in heaven.

  ‘Schomberg has laid down his sword to William and Mary,’ de Sève had told Delpech that late morning in the crowded coffeehouse. It being pleasant and balmy, Jacob recalled the place being alive with chatter, laughter, and shouted greetings. The doors and windows had been flung open, though the sweltering air was still heavy with the fragrance of roasting coffee and tobacco smoke. Jacob and Philippe had sat head to head in a walnut booth so they could hear themselves speak, their hats and frock coats hung up on a wall peg above them. ‘The king has commissioned him with raising an army, my dear Delpech.’

  ‘Good Lord, is he going to fight against his king?’

  ‘No, an English one. James Stewart is in Ireland, preparing to retake the English throne . . .’

  ‘Not good. That would mean a Catholic king in England!’

  ‘Precisely. That is where we come in, my good fellow, us and thousands of Huguenots like us. Schomberg is keen to enlist good cavaliers and men of quality. There is no reason why we cannot both put ourselves forward. I am told by Monsieur Despierre that we would receive a lieutenant’s salary. As much as seven pounds two shillings, my word!’

  Jacob remembered choking on his pipe at this point during the conversation. He had spent many a restless night torturing himself over how to regain what he had lost, nay, how to provide for his family and pay his rent in the coming months. ‘I should say any salary would be welcome,’ he had said, wiping a moist eye and lowering his pipe.

  ‘It is a godsend, Delpech. It stands to reason,’ de Sève had returned with cheer.

  Looking back on the scene now as he flicked through the pages of the soldier’s guidebook, Jacob realised the pay was very attractive indeed when you considered that a carpenter only got one-seventh the amount. The new English king must be very keen to keep his new throne, and Parliament just as adamant to stave off a Catholic return, he thought. However, he did not think, as did his friend, that it was a godsend to send men to the battlefield, rather the work of the devil or higher powers on earth. But he had kept the notion to himself in the coffeehouse, there being many other Huguenots elated to fight against any allied forces of the French king—a king who had banished them from their own homes and confiscated their lands.

  A leaf inside the guidebook fell from between the pages to the floor. Jacob bent down and picked it up. On it was printed a ballad titled “The Protestant Courage.” Jacob read the first verse:

  ‘Sound up the trumpet, beat up the drum,

  Let not a soul be subject to fear,

  Since the true pride of all Christendom,

  Does against France in valour appear,

  The courageous worthy seamen,

  Does from all parts to London advance,

  For England’s promotion, they’ll fight on the Ocean,

  Against all the strength and power of France.’

  The power of France could well be thought of as the dethroned English king, Jacob thought, as de Sève had argued. For was not King James financed by the coffers of Louis XIV, who was providing men and arms?

  Jacob did not want to go to war against his own country, though. Neither did he want to kill or be killed. But Philippe de Sève had reassured him that they would not be on the front lines. And besides, it was out of the question to let a cousin of the despotic king plague the lands of refuge.

  Jacob slid his legs onto the bed, now taut, glanced at the acorn faces on the straw chair, then snuffed out the candle, condemned as he was to go to war.

  *

  Philippe de Sève also rented a room in the timber-framed tenement building on the narrow, unpaved street east of Brick Lane. In fact, it was de Sève who had advised Delpech to take the second-floor rooms before they were snapped up, given the continuing influx of Protestant refugees.

  The digs were spartan, the plaster between struts and beams was cracked in places, and the coarse timber floorboards at first made Jacob almost lose his balance. But the two rooms, one street-facing, the other looking out onto back yards of the new constructions, were spacious, cheap, and, being on the second floor, relatively well-lit.

  It did not take long for him to spruce the place up and give it a godly sheen, knowing Jeanne could arrive at any moment. It was bad enough asking her to reside in the poor district outside the city walls; he could not expect her to live without the bare necessities as well. So, thanks to church contacts and the travel money which had not been stolen, for a good price he was able to purchase simple but sturdy furnishings: an unpretentious four-poster which came with a trundle bed underneath, a dining table and straw-seated chairs, an upholstered two-seater, a wardrobe with a glace, appropriate bathing equipment, and a three-panel screen for privacy. The church supplied him with crockery, covers, and bed linen.

  It was cheap, and the area rough, but it meant he would not have to ask for alms from the Huguenot church to pay the rent. Like this, at least there would be one place where he could hold up his head, and keep up the pretence of bourgeois etiquette.

  Jacob had paid his rent that morning to his landlady, a top-heavy, large-hipped lady in midlife who occupied the first floor with her cat and memories of her late husbands.

  Mrs Smythe was far from being the pleasantest of Londoners Jacob had met. As de Sève put it, she was a paradox unto herself. She took their rent money with one hand and with the other was ready to shoo away all the aliens back to where they came from, to fight their battles on their own turf, as she liked to say. By aliens, she especially meant the French, who had brought with them their fancy dressmaking skills and silk- weaving techniques. ‘Bless my soul, London is not the place it was!’ she would blurt out whenever her eye caught sight of a passer-by in the Frenchified fashion.

  Mrs Smythe owned the weaving workshop on the ground floor, which she had taken over after the death of her first husband, a weaver by trade of Flemish descent. She was beginning to feel the pinch of the influx of French weavers whose unparalleled mastery and extravagant variety could only previously be procured at much expense from the famous looms of Lyons. Lustring, velvet, brocade, satin, peau de soie, fine ladies’ mantuas, corded silk called ducape, and fabric of mingled silk and cotton—all of the highest excellence—were becoming the new norm. By consequence, Mrs Smythe’s plainer fabrics were fast going out of fashion, and she had reduced her workforce to just an aging part-time journeyman called Alf, an accommodating man of few words who ran errands, fixed the loom, and delivered the cloth to clients; Nelly, a seventeen-year-old seamstress whose parents had placed her with the childless widow of her second uncle once removed; and her good self.

  Thankfully, she was able to rent out her upper-floor rooms for increasingly higher prices, paradoxically thanks to the workforce from across the Channel, which enabled her to balance her books. Like Jacob, having been driven out of home and country with little or nothing, these skilled refugees craved work and vied for lodgings in the cheap parish east of the city walls, currently under development for their accommodation. The allotted area was known as Spitalfields. And it was a stone’s throw away from Mrs Smythe’s house.

  Jacob sat in the comfortable, albeit worn, upholstered armchair he had retrieved from a church acquainta
nce. He had put on the shoes he had waxed a moment earlier, and now sat staring at the wooden cross he had nailed to a support timber. He was feeling pretty low, wondering how on earth he could escape from the infernal spiral that had time and time again relieved him of his wealth. It was moments like these, when his mind was empty, that he found himself prey to his inherent bourgeois fear of becoming destitute.

  But a familiar knock on the door brought him back from his thoughts and put a brighter tempo into his heart. He pulled himself up and stepped to the door, which he opened knowing full well who he would find on the other side.

  Philippe de Sève was dressed in a black suit, a white lace collar, and white stockings despite the season. A black felt hat crowned his head, from which his natural cavalier locks cascaded onto his shoulders.

  ‘Good day to you, dear fellow,’ said Philippe, standing before the door. ‘Magnificent start to the day!’

  ‘A fair morning indeed,’ said Jacob cheerily, closing his front door behind him.

  ‘Let us hope it will bring us as fair news,’ returned Philippe. They stepped to the narrow stairwell, so narrow in fact that Jacob had been obliged to use a long rope cast from the window to hoist his furniture inside.

  Jacob knew full well what his friend was referring to. But Jacob’s hopes were not at all focussed on the imminent announcement of their mobilisation. He hoped, as every morning, to receive news of Jeanne via the church on Threadneedle Street.