Act of Faith (4 page)

‘I’ll subsidise her keep, if that’s what you’re worried about,’ said Fra Clement. ‘I owe her father that, at least. We all do.’

‘Nonsense,’ the old man grumbled. ‘It’s not the money I mind. It’s having a girl around the place.’

‘If you ask me, you could do with her civilising presence.’ Fra Clement gazed around the room, one eyebrow raised ever so slightly. ‘I’ve seen cleaner stables.’

‘Since my wife died, it’s been only men living here.’

‘You forget, Joseph, that there are only men in monasteries and we manage perfectly well.’

‘Of course,’ said the printer, ‘but you are all saints.’

They laughed.

So I was to be a housekeeper for a pack of grotty men. Well, Father, I thought, this is what it’s come to. Instead of our great adventure in the courts and salons of Europe, I’m to spend the rest of my life doing the only tasks for which I am completely unprepared. Sweeping the grate, scrubbing cauldrons, washing ink-stains out of grubby shirts — mucking out the pigsty, for all I know.

So much for all those years of painful study, reading at night by the stub of a candle, getting slashed over the knuckles for an incorrect declension or failing to spot an error in one of Father’s essays. So much for his fine ideals: ‘A woman can learn as much as a man,’ he’d say, ‘and perhaps put it to better use. You are my greatest experiment, Isabella,
ma bella
,’ with a smile over the edge of his book.

‘Girl!’ My new master beckoned.

I hoped he didn’t expect me to prepare food. I only knew how to eat it.

‘Girl!’

Ah, but of course. I should curtsey, or something. He was looking at me as if I were a halfwit. Perhaps he was right.

‘Can you read Greek?’ he asked, this time in French.

I stared at him as if … as if I really were a halfwit.

‘Can’t you speak at all?’ he snapped.

‘Yes, sir. My Greek is adequate, I suppose.’ I tried a curtsey and nearly stumbled.

‘Adequate for what?’ asked Fra Clement, more kindly.

‘I corrected the manuscript of my father’s edition of Herodotus last year.’

‘Hmm,’ snorted Master de Aquila. ‘Then he had it printed in Venice! I would have given my right arm to publish it. But he wouldn’t listen to reason.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘I read all his letters. In fact, I usually replied to you on his behalf.’

The printer glared at me. Perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned Herodotus.

‘But you were to have his next work,’ I went on. ‘He told me that.’

Master de Aquila’s face lit up like sunrise. ‘Indeed? Where is it?’

But he must have already known the answer.

‘Somewhere at the bottom of the sea, I fear, sir.’ My voice barely wavered as I said it.

‘How old are you?’

‘Sixteen.’

‘So old?’ He peered into my face. ‘And not yet betrothed?’

I cast my eyes down towards the floor. ‘My father did not wish me to marry.’

‘What nonsense,’ he said. ‘Let me see your hands.’

I held them out, willing the fingers not to tremble.

‘Clean enough, I suppose.’

‘For goodness’ sake, Joseph,’ Fra Clement cried. ‘She’s a scholar’s daughter, not a milkmaid.’

‘Can’t be too careful,’ said Master de Aquila. ‘And your other languages?’

‘My written Italian is far from perfect,’ I admitted, ‘but I’ve understood every word you’ve said this morning.’

At this Fra Clement let out a roar of laughter. ‘You see?’ He slapped the older man on the shoulder. ‘The girl knows more languages than any other woman in Europe — and she understands how to stay silent in all of them.’

‘Very well,’ said Master de Aquila grudgingly. ‘You can stay.’

At first, my duties were simple.

I didn’t have to cook all the time. A woman called Gerda came in the afternoons to prepare the final meal of the day, which meant I only had to set out bread, herrings and cheese for breakfast for Master de Aquila, myself and Gerda’s son, Willem, who slept in a shed out the back and worked as the master’s apprentice. Other men came after daybreak and plodded up the stairs to the printing workshop, nodding to me as they passed. None of them seemed surprised to find me there on that first morning.

Gerda was a brisk woman with bright blue eyes and yellow hair, just like her son. But as I didn’t speak Dutch and she didn’t speak anything else, we simply smiled at each other and I tried not to get in the way. She taught me how to prepare the vegetables and fish for broth — by demonstrating first, and then grunting ferociously at me as I tried it for myself — so that I could feed the
household on Sundays when she was at chapel or busy feeding her younger children. Cooking’s not very hard, as it turns out. I don’t know why people make so much fuss about it.

Gerda brought me clothes, too, once worn by a daughter now married and fat. They were peasant clothes, of rough material and dull colours; sensible attire for my new life. No more lace collars or taffeta gowns. No more silk slippers. I learned how to bind up my hair tightly and tuck it under the soft white cap; how to lace the bodice firmly, and push up my sleeves so they stayed clean; how to walk in the leather and wooden clogs without falling over.

In the middle of the day, I worked as a secretary. Master de Aquila called me to come up the staircase when he was ready, and I worked in his office, at a tiny table set up especially for me. He sat either at a desk, where he worked on his correspondence and bills of sale, or at a flat proofreading table under the window. As the place was both a publishing house and a print workshop, the office was overrun with manuscripts coming in and completed books going out. Stacks of blank paper piled up against every wall, and on each shelf and table were pages and pages of written manuscript to be marked up for the printers.

Willem brought me the printed pages to be checked, straight from the press. At first these were easy enough, in familiar Latin or Greek, so that I could run my eyes over the lines quickly, scribble down any corrections and send them back without holding up the printing press for too long.

‘You have a keen eye,’ Master de Aquila said at the end of the first day.

‘My father taught me, just as other men teach boys.’

‘He trained you well,’ he said.

I shrugged. ‘He had little choice, with no sons and little money for a secretary.’

‘He must have been proud of you.’

‘Perhaps,’ I said. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Of course he was,’ said Master de Aquila gruffly. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

I bowed my head so he wouldn’t see my tears. He left me alone in the afternoon light.

In the evening, Willem tried to teach me about his trade and my new home. He knew a few words of French, and we stumbled through a long, disjointed conversation in English, French, Dutch and something in between.

‘Why have you come here?’ he asked.

‘I was lost … I lost my father.’

‘I heard,’ Willem said, nodding. ‘But why were you sailing here?’

I shrugged. ‘My father had friends in the city. Then we were supposed to join some other English exiles in Breda and … Actually, I don’t know what we were going to do there, but Father hoped there would be some place for him.’

‘You’re too young to be an exile.’

‘But that is what I am,’ I said. ‘London isn’t safe at the moment, especially for those who don’t agree with Parliament. Even the King has left.’

‘You are a troublemaker,’ he teased. ‘Anyone can see that.’

I smiled. ‘My father was outspoken. He asked too many questions, and — let’s just say we decided to leave.’

‘You escaped?’ Willem’s smile grew even wider. ‘Was it exciting?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘It was horrible.’

‘Perhaps one day you will go home.’

I could tell he meant to be kind, but the idea of going home — alone — seemed so impossible, almost ghostly, that it only hurt me more.

‘England is not my home any longer. I have no money, nothing.’

‘You are stuck here with me, then.’ He winked. ‘And the old man.’

‘So it would seem.’

Master de Aquila didn’t appear to be listening. He read as he ate, just as my father had always done, peering at the pages, writing notes in the margin of a manuscript, oblivious to everything else around him.

‘Your King — is he rich?’ asked Willem.

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Perhaps you should go find him,’ he suggested. ‘If you need money …’

‘He hasn’t even got a crown of his own, I’m afraid,’ I said.

Willem chuckled.

Master de Aquila slammed his papers down on the table. ‘Leave the poor girl alone,’ he snapped. ‘Can’t you see you’re making it worse?’

Willem reddened. ‘Sorry.’

‘It’s all right, really,’ I said.

Master de Aquila stared at me. ‘I understand you, child. I know how it is to leave your home, your country, in the dead of night, to lose those you love.’

I glanced down at the table, unable to speak.

‘As long as you are under my roof,’ he announced, ‘I will keep you safe.’ He clipped Willem across the ear. ‘And so will this fool.’

Then he stomped up the stairs to his library and shut the door.

As the days passed, I grew used to the rhythms of the household, to the thudding of the press and the murmur of men’s voices in the workshop. In the late afternoons, I sat in my bedchamber and stared out of the window — down at the women in the square, or the passing boats on the canal; the trees, rank green water and sky; and my own face in the glass.

I spent long dreary hours there, listening. I was not used to living in a city, but this one seemed too quiet. I remembered how, just a few weeks before, I’d complained about the noise of London at night. Now I realised it had merely sounded alive, with the cries of the boatmen on the river, the nightwatch, and the  market-cart wheels screeching on cobblestones. Laughter spilled out of lit windows and there was always a hint of music in the air.

At night, here, the house and the square were still. The press was quiet; the men all went home. Willem fell asleep by the kitchen fire, and Master de Aquila worked or read in his library. Beyond the yellow halo of my candle there was only grey light darkening to black in the corners of the room. Scrubbed floorboards, dark walls, an iron bed and the square chair on which I sat upright — my feet firmly on the floor, hands in my lap — staring at the candle, the fire, the candle.

I wondered vaguely where the rest of me had gone: the Isabella who had argued philosophy over breakfast and walked in the wildflower meadows and laughed at Justinian Jonson; the Isabella whose pen had drafted fiery treatises on everything from religious persecution to the welfare of the poor; the Isabella who kissed her father’s hair every night and whispered goodnight.

I explored the dark regions of my heart; discovered every morning, every hour, how it felt to be alone. An orphan.
I am an orphan.
I whispered it over and over. I said it aloud so I could hear the sound of it, the truth of it.

Every so often, I grew restless or uncomfortable or sick to death of the thoughts crackling in my head. I stood up, gazed about me, looking for something — anything — different or interesting or comforting. There was nothing. I sat down again.

Late one night, my infernal sitting, standing, gazing, sitting routine was interrupted by a loud crash in the hallway. I threw a shawl around my shoulders and peeked out of the door. Willem was on one knee, scrambling to gather up reams of printed sheets he had dropped on the bare floorboards.

‘What are you doing, at this hour?’ I asked.

‘Nothing,’ he said.

‘What do you mean, nothing?’

‘Just never mind.’

‘Are you stealing?’ I whispered, horrified.

He stood up straight. ‘No, I am not! How dare you?’

‘Shhh!’ I hissed. ‘All right, then. But what are they?’

‘None of your business.’ He bent again to pick up the scattered papers.

I took a step forward. ‘Here, let me help you.’

‘Leave it!’

My retort was cut off by Master de Aquila, who appeared in his nightgown and cap at the end of the hallway.

‘Who are we to argue, Mistress Hawkins, if Willem wishes to complete his day’s work many hours after he should?’ he said.

‘But —’

‘Go back to your bed, child. Leave him to his folly.’

I turned away, throwing a last glance at the papers — pamphlets, by the look of them. I closed the door behind me and heard a slap as Master de Aquila’s hand connected with Willem’s head.

‘Ow!’

‘Fool!’

I smiled. Those two bickered like sparrows all day and, it would seem, half the night.

It took forever to get to sleep, the silence broken every few minutes by the sound of Willem’s feet thumping along the hall, lugging armfuls of paper God knows where. I lay in my bed and tried not to think about ruby red curtains and Italian glass, about summer fruit and puddings, about Nanny at her sister’s house in Cheapside, about Newgate prison and the cloisters of Cambridge and waves — there were always waves.

After a week or two, I gathered together the shreds of my courage and peeked inside the workshop. The ink-spattered press stood in the centre like an altar around which everyone and everything revolved. Long, low benches, strewn with piles of paper, lay in lines on either side, while reams of new paper sat waiting against the walls. Two of the men leaned over the freshly printed pages, sorting and collating. Another wiped down the wooden press, ready to take another sheet. Willem was standing by, waiting for something.

He saw me and waved. ‘In, in.’

Everyone except Master de Aquila stopped what they were doing and looked up at me.

Willem ran over and took my hand. ‘Come.’

In our shared mongrel language, he showed me how the pages were made, one by one, each as perfect as the next. He pointed out
all the men — their names and their tasks. They each nodded to me, and went back to work.

In a corner of the room, Master de Aquila and his assistant, Paul, quickly selected the metal type from a series of drawers above the composing desk. Paul slotted the letters into a thing called a stick to make a line of text, and then assembled a page’s worth of sticks into a frame.

‘See? Simple,’ he said.

I put out my hand and ran a fingertip along the cold, sharp letters. ‘They are backwards.’

Paul nodded. ‘Like a mirror,’ he said. ‘Watch, now.’

It was Willem’s job to clamp the heavy frame —
forme
, he called it — tight and carry it to the press, where it fitted in to be inked and then pressed down onto the paper waiting below it.

Master de Aquila lifted the handle on the press, whisked out the sheet and handed it over for me to check, as if I had been part of his workshop for years. Of course the letters all came out the right way around and the right way up, but I stared at them stupidly, as if I’d never seen a page of print before.

Paul grinned. ‘Magic.’

I took the sheet back to the office to check and, instead of waiting for Willem to come looking for me, took the corrections back into the workshop myself. Nobody looked up this time.

They didn’t notice me later, delivering piles of corrected proofs to Master de Aquila, or the next day when he called me in to work beside him at the collation table. We stood side by side, shuffling papers and compiling greater and greater sheaves of loose sheets to go to the bookbinder, with the press thumping behind us and the other men murmuring quietly as they set the type, inked and cut.

These were English pages, from a Bible in Latin and English
commissioned by one of the King’s courtiers, who had fled the war and was holed up somewhere in Holland. The new Bible in English, instead of the traditional Latin, was very fashionable now, said Master de Aquila — everyone simply must have a copy, even those who couldn’t read.

From that day on, I spent my mornings in the office, every afternoon in the workshop, and the early evenings reading in my room or by the fire in the kitchen. All through the winter, in this house of dark wooden hallways, flagstone floors so cold your feet froze, and grimy windows too high to clean, only the workshop felt warm — alive. The press thudded like a heartbeat through all our days.

Books arrived from all over Europe every week, fresh from the presses of Basel or Venice, or dug up from a monastery somewhere, dusty with centuries of neglect. My master didn’t care. He unwrapped each one with a mixture of dignity and excitement, carefully untying the strings and unfolding the thick brown paper. Sometimes the books were wrapped in cast-off printed leaves, and he saved these, too, to study later to discover the fault that marred each page; as if knowing other printers’ mistakes would help him avoid the same errors himself.

He examined each book with infinite care, pointing out to us the watermarks and typefaces, exclaiming over a new colophon or some obscure innovation in binding. He made Willem feel the paper between thumb and forefinger, and guess its weight and stock.

I noticed a few familiar names on the title pages: John Milton or René Descartes; acquaintances of my father, and men to whom I had written from another life.

If my master purchased a particularly fine specimen, he waited to unwrap it with Fra Clement in a solemn unveiling ceremony.
Clement, he told me, was as mad about books as anyone he’d ever met, and collected one or two precious volumes every month.

‘Every month!’ I exclaimed.

‘Amazing, is it not?’

‘Monks must be well-paid,’ said Willem.

‘Manna from Heaven, perhaps,’ I said, and Willem snorted.

‘Stop your blasphemy, you two,’ said Master de Aquila. ‘Clement merely has a good eye.’

‘And a fat purse,’ Willem whispered.

I grinned at him, but Master de Aquila had heard, and Willem’s smile vanished as he was slapped on the back of the head.