Mistress to the Crown. Isolde Martyn

Prince of Wales at Ludlow. Anyroad, like ah said, you should have sent for me straightway.’

      ‘But you won’t turn down Lord Hastings’ business, surely?’

      ‘Tha’s summat for tomorrow.’ Shore was looking at me strangely. ‘Why didn’t you send to find me, Elizabeth?’

      ‘I did not know rightly where you were, sir,’ I answered, although I was certain he had been trying to raise himself with a gap-toothed seamstress, who lived two streets away. ‘But I’ll obey in future. Next time her grace the Queen knocks and you are out, I’ll hide beneath the counter and pretend we are closed.’

      ‘Aye,’ he grunted. ‘Do that.’

      During supper that evening, he said not a word until we had finished eating. ‘Lord Hastings is a great lord, wife. You should ha’ said ah would attend him at t’Palace.’

      ‘But he offered to come back tomorrow. Anyway, being such a “great lord”, I daresay he may take his leisure where it pleases him, and it pleases him to return tomorrow morning. Are you decided? Shall you accept his business?’

      He set his alejack down and made a face. ‘Depends whether he makes an offer. Ah hope you asked a good price for the girdle?’

      ‘I think so. It was for his stepdaughter.’

      ‘Aye, that would be the Bonville girl. Worth a fortune, she is.’

      ‘Well, he took much trouble in choosing it for her and he was pleasant and not high-saddled at all. You should have seen the clothes he was wearing.’ I shook my head, still marvelling. ‘I advised him go to Father’s and see the new delivery.’

      His face creased in disapproval. ‘Jesu! You presumed to direct a great lord like him?’

      ‘But he didn’t mind at all.’

      Shore’s eyes narrowed. ‘Mayhap it was not just the girdles that interested him.’

      This conversation was travelling onto hazardous ground. Shore had not agreed easily to me employing some silkwomen and making a little money of my own.

      My hands fisted in my lap. ‘What are you saying?’

      He snorted and clambered from the trestle. ‘Have you not noticed that when you are in t’shop, we have more men come to buy?’

      Foolish logic! How could I notice the difference when I was not there?

      ‘I do not like your implication, sir,’ I said, swivelling round to face him. ‘Nor do you make any sense. Just tell me how would men know whether I am in the shop or not before they come in?’

      He was looking down at me as if my dress was immodest. ‘Because ah’ve seen them staring though the doorway as they pass, or else they traipse in, feign interest in summat and then leave if you are not around. God’s truth, when you are there, they dawdle like sniffin’ dogs. Ah’ve observed it’s only the men, not the women.’

      ‘And ah observe that you have a great imagination,’ I muttered, gathering up the platters for our maidservant to remove.

      He grabbed my shoulder and growled, ‘Are you calling me a liar, wife? Why do you think ah’ve always been reluctant all these years to have you in the showing room?’

      I shook his hand away as I stood up. I knew very well but I said, ‘Well, I always thought it was in case people believed you too poor to employ sufficient apprentices. If I am good for business because my manners please people, sir, then you should be content. I am not like my friend, Alys Rawson, using my looks to turn men into fawning lapdogs.’

      He looked so peevish that I could not resist tormenting him further.

      ‘Oh Heavens, Shore, you surely do not fear I shall cuckold you? What would Lord Hastings want with a lowly creature like me?’ There is such a thing as a husbandly grunt and Shore’s was perfected. ‘Anyway,’ I added, pouring some more ale into his cup, ‘let us not quarrel but celebrate our good fortune. If you can be cunning and sell to both lords, you shall have much profit.’

      But Shore’s jealousy was pricked. Next morning, the sly knave sent out an invitation to his friends’ wives to come at a quarter to ten and take refreshment so that when Lord Hastings arrived, I should be making petty talk upstairs and unable to come down. Oh, how his distrust made me seethe.

      No bargain was made with Lord Hastings that morning, but I noticed later that he had left his gloves behind, not on the open counter by the measuring rule, but tucked at the end between a shallow basket of remnants and the wall.

      What should I do? Send an apprentice to Westminster or my lord’s house? Tell Shore? Take the gloves myself? Was this forgetfulness deliberate? Ha, vain fantasy on my part to suppose such a thing. This great lord would no doubt send some menial to retrieve the gloves, yet I stood there holding them and dared to dream.

       II

      I met Lord Hastings again within a few days. He summoned my father to bring samples of silks and gauzes to Beaumont’s Inn, his London house. The request read: Since the fabrics are to be purchased for my lord’s stepdaughter and Mistress Shore resembles her, would Master Lambard please ask his daughter to accompany him! So Lord Hastings had discovered the family connection. I felt very flattered. Of course, Shore would have made trouble had he known, but he had gone to Suffolk to collect cargo that had arrived from a manufactory he part-owned across the water in Bergen-ap-Zoom.

      I had visited the houses of wealthy merchants, but I had never stepped inside a noble lord’s dwelling, and Beaumont’s Inn, with its two gables and three storeys, looked to be extremely modest. It lay at the south-east end of Thames Street, close to Paul’s wharf and neighbour to Baynard’s Castle, where King Edward’s mother, the Duchess of York, lived. Only a strip of garden and a laneway separated the two properties.

      Father and I were shown up into a hall with long windows that looked westwards towards the River Fleet. Two immense tapestries adorned the facing wall. I do not know a great deal about the stitching but the dyes I do know. Indigo, woad and madder predominated and I would have wagered these hangings had been made in Anjou and come to England as part of Queen Margaret’s dowry when she married King Henry. In fact, the golden salt upon the high table might have been hers as well for it was shaped as a swan, one of her badges.

      The man who had been privileged to receive this spoil was in conversation with two men from the Tailors’ Guild and all three were leaning over drawings set out on the high table. When the steward announced us, Lord Hastings dismissed them and stepped down to greet us.

      Ah, I am a mercer’s daughter to my fingertips! There is such beauty in a well-dressed man. Lord Hastings had excellent taste. He clearly understood colour, and his long robe of Saxon blue velvet was tailored skilfully across his shoulders. Falls of gilt brocade hung from his padded sleeves just above the elbows and his indoor shoes were finely tapered and made of dark blue leather embroidered with his maunche in white and violet thread.

      ‘Ah, I see you have brought my gloves, Mistress Shore.’ My senses picked up a descant to that plainsong remark. ‘Bring the samples to the windows, Master Lambard, if you please.’

      As he stood with his steward flicking through our squares of cloth, the sunlight showed me a lord who was far older than I had first thought. His forehead was lapped by fine, plentiful hair of a lustrous fairness, a pale scar angled up from his left eyebrow and a frown mark slashed his brow above his nose. Otherwise, the lines in his face hinted at a kind and generous disposition.

      ‘Your daughter is of my stepdaughter’s complexion,’ he said, looking round at Father. ‘It would please me if she could remove her headdress.’

      ‘Of course, my lord,’ agreed Father, his mind utterly on selling.

      What choice had I? I took off the velvet and buckram cone that sat upon my coiled plaits and let the steward take it into his care.

      ‘Since she