The Silver Touch (10 page)

Her expression crumpled and she collapsed against him to be held hard in his consoling embrace. ‘Why did you let me think you didn’t care?’

‘You took me by surprise, that’s all. Of course I care. What sort of man do you think I am? It’s just come at a deuced awkward time when I’m on the last lap of my apprenticeship.’

‘Do you think I don’t know the penalty that would be yours if this trouble came to light?’ she exclaimed desperately, pulling away from him.

‘Don’t get upset again,’ he urged. ‘We’ll solve this problem somehow.’ Noticing they were not far from a square, he put a supporting arm about her and led her the few yards into it. Tall, elegant houses stood on all four sides with a flower garden, a lawn and trees in the middle. He sat her down beside him on a stone bench under a chestnut tree. ‘We must marry sooner than we intended. How and when has to be settled.’

She dried her eyes. ‘It can’t be until you have completed your apprenticeship.’

‘By my reckoning that would mean our baby bearing the stigma of bastardy for the rest of his or her life even though we married afterwards. That is entirely out of the question.’ He was leaning forward, arms resting across his knees, his brow concentrated in thought. ‘If we could just keep my master from hearing of it until I obtain my Freedom all would be well. Perhaps if you moved out of the Heathcock to Hampstead village or somewhere like that, we could be married in a country church where the banns would be read out without much chance of news of them reaching as far as London.’

‘That wouldn’t do. It would mean a secret departure and even though I’m sure I could find work to give me a roof over my head, Jack would search high and low until he found me, which would bring the truth out anyway.’ She paused. ‘There is another way.’

‘What’s that?’

‘A Fleet wedding. No banns are needed there.’ During many sleepless nights it was the only alternative that had presented itself. At the Fleet prison for debtors there were always some clergymen among those incarcerated until their debts were paid and in their unfortunate circumstances they were eager to perform the marriage ceremony for payment in coin or in kind, however small. Some of them touted for business through the iron bars and hung out advertisements often marvellously inscribed. No proof of the legal right to wed was ever asked for and as a result the Fleet had become notorious. Bigamists as well as runaway couples and outright villains took advantage of the easy wedlock offered. No self-respecting man or woman would consider marriage there and Hester was not surprised when John swung round on the seat towards her, outrage stamped on his face. With a rush of words she forestalled the argument she knew was about to come.

‘I know it’s a degrading place and not what we would have chosen, but it is the only answer for us. Our baby will be born in wedlock and nobody need know of our marriage until you have been granted the Freedom.’

He lowered his eyebrows grimly. ‘Are you suggesting I let you suffer the disgrace of what will appear to be an unmarried pregnancy? No! We must think of something else.’

‘There is nothing else.’ She was adamant. ‘Don’t worry about me. It will be nobody’s business but mine who is the father of my baby. However much Martha may moan, Jack will never turn me out.’ Although she could see she had a hard argument to win she was determined to get her way. ‘Mull it over,’ she advised, getting up to leave, ‘and remember it won’t matter to me what anyone says or thinks for a few short months. On the day you register your own mark of
J
.
B
. at the Goldsmiths Hall I shall shout it to the roof-tops of London that I’m Mistress John Bateman.’ Her whole face bloomed with her smile. ‘How wonderful it will sound!’

‘Hester,’ he said with admiration, walking her out of the square, ‘there can be nobody else like you in all the world.’

‘Then — ?’

‘I’ve decided nothing yet,’ he stated firmly. She used no more persuasion, certain that with a little time he would come round to her point of view.

The marriage was finally arranged for a Saturday afternoon in late September. Hester was exactly three months into her pregnancy and so far nobody suspected her condition, not even Martha, who normally missed nothing. She wore her best muslin dress under her long cape and had retrimmed a wide-brimmed hat with blue ribbons. It proved difficult to leave the tavern without being sighted by Martha and questioned as to why she was dressed up in the middle of the afternoon, and she had to linger until the woman was well out of the way. Fortunately she had allowed plenty of time and did not have to hurry too much in order to reach the Fleet prison on time. It was a gloomy, frightening place where the inmates, already in dire straits, had to pay their jailers for food and any privileges. Those without friends outside to help them often died of starvation.

John was waiting for her. He was wearing his good clothes in which he always looked exceptionally handsome. On his coat he had pinned a flower and he was holding out a small nosegay that he must have bought from one of the flower-sellers who hung about the gates, waiting for wedding couples. She took it from him and inhaled the sweet scent as they smiled at each other in welcome.

‘It’s lovely, John.’

‘You look beautiful, Hester.’

A guard admitted them through a door in the great gates. In the gatehouse they faced a warder across a desk. ‘Protestant or Catholic?’ he questioned in bored tones.

John answered, ‘Church of England.’

‘Right. Go through to the courtyard. You won’t have long to wait.’

It was an ill-smelling, cobbled area of some size surrounded on all four sides by the bleak prison buildings studded with barred windows. A few guards stood about on duty. As John and Hester walked to the middle of the courtyard, faces appeared at all the windows and there was an unruly din as shouts and cat-calls and pathetic cries for alms echoed and re-echoed about them. A chill of horror settled on Hester and she held still tighter to John’s strongly clasping hand. Worse was to come when a door opened and about a dozen Protestant clergy burst through, buffeting each other to be the first to reach a chain-barrier that kept them confined to one corner of the yard. Most wore surplices, some of which were in tatters, showing how long the wearers had been incarcerated, and there was a desperate look on their faces as they cajoled and bargained their willingness to perform the marriage ceremony, vying with each other to make themselves heard.

‘Wait here,’ John said, sparing Hester the heart-rending task of making a choice from these men of the cloth brought to such degrading circumstances.

She watched him pick out a little man who had been crowded out at the back, and then two more to be witnesses.

The odd litle procession came towards her. Composed now, there was dignity about all three of the clergy in spite of their rags. Payment had already taken place; a roll of tobacco for the Reverend Curtis, who was to marry them, and snuff for both the witnesses. A well-thumbed prayerbook was opened and the ceremony began.

‘“Dearly Beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God and in the face of this congregation, to join together this Man and this Woman in holy Matrimony ...”’

At times it was almost impossible to hear his words for the raucous noise continuing unabated from the barred windows. Once she felt quite faint, the prison stench overcoming the perfume of the nosegay she held. But when it came to making their vows she looked into John’s eyes and forgot her surroundings momentarily. He slipped the ring on her finger. It did not matter that it was not gold. With it he had made her his wife. The ceremony was concluded.

John was too private a person to give her a bridal kiss within earshot of the bawdiness being shouted down at them. He waited until they had re-entered the gatehouse with the three clergy for the registering of the marriage. It was a short, sweet meeting of their lips that was chivvied impatiently by the warder.

‘Plenty of time for that later. Come and sign the marriage certificate.’ He twisted it round and thrust it towards them across the table.

John drew it to him and signed. Then he dipped the nib in the ink again in readiness for Hester and offered the pen to her. She stood motionless, dangerously close to panic. With writing having no part in her life, she had forgotten completely that she would be expected to sign her name. Now John would know! The old shame seared through her, making her want to throw her arms over her head and hide herself away. Everybody was waiting; all eyes on her. ‘I —’ Her voice faltered and broke.

Then John put the pen into her wildly shaking hand and said in a special tone of comprehension, meant only for her to grasp. ‘Let me show you where to make your cross, my dear wife.’

She did it, making the nib splutter, but that was not important. Those little ink-blobs would always remind her of the moment John had shown no disappointment, no condemnation. Instead he had looked at her with as much love as before. The witnesses added their signatures, sand was shaken over the wet ink to dry it and then, after the certificate was folded, it was handed to her. She put it into her draw-string purse, thinking it of more value than all the Crown Jewels in the Tower.

Outside the gates they had to part, he to keep up the façade of being a bachelor apprentice and she to hide for as long as possible the increasingly visible evidence that she was going to bear a child. They had agreed it was vital that nothing should link them and for this reason they would not meet unless an exceptionally safe circumstance presented itself. Neither had any real hope of this happening. They continued to hold hands as they slowly drew away from each other to go in opposite directions, until finally the last contact of their fingertips was gone. They both turned constantly, sometimes taking a few steps backwards as they went, until they could no longer see each other in the stream of passers-by.

Before Hester reached the Heathcock she took her nosegay to pieces in order to make it look like an ordinary bunch of flowers, pocketing the lace frill that had held it together, and removed the new ribbons from her hat. Lastly, and reluctantly, she drew the wedding ring from her finger and put it in her pocket until she could find a place in her room where it could be safely concealed. With her dress covered by her long cape, there was nothing to show outwardly when she re-entered the tavern that her outing that day had been different from any other.

Four

Another month went by and Hester still managed to keep her secret. Full skirts and starched aprons were a good disguise for a thickening waistline, but she was aware of other developments that could not be hidden: an indefinable change in the face that her looking-glass reflected and a growing fullness of her breasts that bands of linen could not quite compress. Once or twice she caught Martha giving her a speculative glance, but the unlikelihood of her being pregnant was a defence in itself and nothing was said.

She was glad she was feeling well because she was kept busier than ever, her free time quite dispersed as if Martha was trying to recoup from her those working hours that had been lost. Since she was unable to see John, it was far better to be busy with little time to think. When she did have an hour or two to herself, she sewed baby clothes in the privacy of her bedchamber and hid them away in a drawer.

In the back of the wash-house in the kitchen yard was a lean-to that served as a bath-house for the staff, the guests having hip-baths in their rooms whenever required. Hester was standing in the tub one day, rinsing soap from her head and body with a jug of warm water, when the door to the wash-house, normally locked, was thrown open and Martha entered. She set her hands on hips and glared at the swollen contours of Hester’s body.

‘I thought so, you little whore!’ she shrieked. ‘As soon as you’re dressed you come immediately to the upstairs parlour. Jack will want to speak to you.’

In spite of the outrage of Martha’s intrusion, Hester felt calmer than she had expected to feel now that her secret was out. With her hair still damp and pinned under her cap, she mounted the stairs slowly, her hands folded across her waistband, her back straight and her chin high. When she entered the parlour Jack was waiting. He seized her by the shoulder and half flung her into the middle of the room. Martha sat on the window seat with the light behind her.

‘Who is he?’ Jack thundered, his face congested with rage. ‘What’s his name? I’ll skin him alive for bringing you to this pass!’

Martha’s voice rasped sarcastically: ‘I don’t imagine it was rape.’

He rounded on his wife with a bellow. ‘Keep out of this for the time being! I’ve seen enough libertines and rakes come through this tavern door to know the tricks they can play on an innocent girl.’ He swung back to face Hester, his fury directed entirely at her seducer, his ham-like fists clenched as if in readiness to beat the offender to pulp. ‘Tell me! Come on! I swear to you I’ll leave him in a state where he’ll never be able to play that kind of trick again!’

‘I’m not prepared to tell you anything, Jack.’

He gaped in disbelief. ‘What are you saying?’

‘It is my business entirely.’

‘No, it’s not!’ Martha had sprung to her feet. ‘Your disgrace is reflected on us. Answer your brother at once! Tell him the father’s name!’

Hester compressed her lips. ‘I will not.’

Martha’s head shot forward. ‘Maybe you don’t know who the father might be. Is that it?’

Hester did not deign to reply, her glance of contempt enough. Jack gestured to his wife to keep silent and peered closer at Hester. ‘You’re shielding the rogue, ain’t you? Why? If he won’t do the honourable thing and marry you, then you’re only being a fool in letting him get away with it.’ His coaxing was rough and clumsy. ‘Let me deal with him. He deserves a beating.’ Then seeing she had no intention of telling him what he wanted to know, his temper shifted against her, a dangerous glint in his eyes. ‘Do you want me to turn you out into the street? Do you wish to have your baby in the gutter?’

She did not flinch, although her face was ashen. ‘You must make your decisions as I have made mine. I’m not telling you who fathered my baby however long you interrogate me. I was a willing partner.’

He almost hit her. His raised fist shivered as his fondness for her warred with his rage against her defiance. Martha watched bitterly. He had never hesitated towards her. She swept forward two paces and poked him in the arm. ‘Ask her if her lover is married already. You might get the truth there.’

Jack fixed his gaze on Hester. ‘Well? Is that the case?’

Hester almost closed her eyes with relief. ‘He is a married man,’ she answered. Any chance of John being suspected had been completely wiped out. ‘That is the last thing I’m going to say.’

He drew in his breath noisily. ‘You’re my sister after all and your home is under my roof. In spite of what I threatened, I’ll not change that, but what you have said makes me still more determined to find the man responsible for bringing you to this state. If it’s the last thing I do I’ll see he gets his dues. He’ll not escape me — not with the contacts I have in this city and elsewhere.’ Thrusting her aside, he strode out of the room, slamming the door after him.

A moment’s silence followed; Hester looking over her shoulder in his wake, suddenly full of trepidation. Martha folded her arms and watched her with malicious satisfaction.

‘You’ve a right to look alarmed. You know Jack as well as I do. He can be like a bulldog when he sets his teeth into something. However long it takes he’ll never let go. Your fancy lover will get his comeuppance before Jack is finished with this matter, I can tell you.’

Hester chose to ignore her jibing. ‘I’m sure you have other things to say to me.’

‘I have. When is your brat due?’

‘My baby will be born in five months’ time.’

‘Right. You’ll be in the kitchen and the wash-house from now on. You’ll use the back stairs and make sure you’re never seen by either guests or regular customers in the taproom. There’ll be no going out for you either. The name of Needham has never been shamed before and I’m going to protect it to the best of my ability for Jack’s sake and mine. Afterwards there’ll be no place here for the baby. It will have to be farmed out, but we can meet that hurdle when we come to it.’

‘Is that all?’ Hester demanded coldly. Nothing should separate her from her baby for the last few weeks before John obtained his Freedom.

‘For the time being. Now get out of my sight, you slut!’

There was no harder work than that of the kitchen and the wash-house. Hester found it taxed her strength as it had never done in the past and she collapsed into her bed at night. As her pregnancy advanced she became more and more exhausted. She guessed that Jack would try to find out if the culprit was among the patrons of the tavern and assumed a check had been made on the company she had kept during the period before her reunion with John. Over and over again she thanked Providence that her meetings with him afterwards had not come to anyone’s notice.

In early January, Martha voiced a suspicion that had been steadily growing in her mind. ‘You don’t suppose Hester took up with John Bateman again, do you?’ she said to Jack. They were alone in the taproom and he had just set up a cask of ale.

‘She said the man was married,’ he reminded her, wiping his hands on a rag.

‘That could have been a lie to throw you off the scent. Remember you had her in a desperate corner.’

He considered for a moment and then shook his head. ‘I warned her off seeing Bateman and that put an end to it.’

‘That’s what you
thought
,’ she emphasized, her tone half-mocking. ‘As it happens she went on seeing him after that, which was why I chose to have a discreet word with Harwood and he thanked me for it. I’ve no doubt that he called Bateman to heel.’

Jack showed mild surprise at the action his wife had taken unbeknown to him and then he shrugged. ‘That’s it then. No sane fellow in the final stages of his apprenticeship would risk his master’s displeasure a second time.’

Martha proved persistent. ‘Suppose Hester was infatuated with him and maybe he was with her. What if he couldn’t stay away from her? We know how foolish the young can be.’

Jack’s brows drew together suspiciously. ‘I can’t say I’ve ever really noticed the lad. I only remember what Harwood told me and I certainly didn’t see him the evening he was in the taproom talking to Hester. What’s he like?’

‘Tall and broad-shouldered and slim-built. Fair hair and good-looking in his way.’ She stopped, seeing her husband’s face had taken on a purplish tinge as his temper soared up in him. His huge fist banged down on the bar, making everything vibrate.

‘By God! That fits the description of a man seen with her near Tower Bridge by someone I know. Why didn’t you tell me this before?’

‘Because you never thought to tell me you had any description,’ she retaliated. ‘What are you going to do?’

He threw aside the rag he was holding. ‘I’m going straight to Harwood before Hester gets wind of this! I want the truth out of Bateman before she has the chance to cover up for him again!’ Dashing through to the office, he grabbed his caped greatcoat and thrust his arms into it. Martha followed to take his tricorn hat down from another peg for him, excited by this development.

‘You can’t be sure about Bateman being the guilty one,’ she felt bound to advise.

He snatched his hat from her and jammed it on. ‘If I’m not right, nothing is lost. If I am, then Bateman is going to rue the day he ever set eyes on my sister!’

Left on her own in the office, Martha saw through its window into the side hall used by the servants that Hester was taking a large basket of laundry through to the wash-house. As soon as she was out of sight, Martha left the office and made for the stairs. In Hester’s room she shut the door behind her and looked around. Surely somewhere she could discover a chance link with John Bateman in case denials should make Jack’s errand fruitless. It was not that she expected to find love letters, Hester being illiterate, but girls liked to keep love tokens and something bearing a name or initials might come to light.

She began a thorough search. It was not the first time she had investigated Hester’s possessions, although the previous time she had had only to open a drawer and turn back its contents to find the store of baby clothes, which had finally confirmed her suspicions and led to the carefully planned denouement in the bath-house. Hester’s leather folder lay on the shelf and she took it down to open it, hoping it would contain a sketch of the man in question. Only drawings of flowers and trees and birds came to light, plus some old yellowed papers on which sketches of herbs gave their owner the proportions of various herbal remedies and ointments. There was also a pressed rose among the drawings that gave nothing away. She turned to the chest of drawers and the rest of the room, even standing on the stool to peer at the top of the bed’s canopy and shaking its curtains to make sure nothing was concealed in them. Being Hester’s domain, there was not even any dust. Stepping down again, her heel caught on a loose floorboard and a new possibility dawned. Nothing was revealed underneath it, but that did not deter her. On her hands and knees she began a systematic examination of every floorboard.

In the wash-house, Hester remembered she had not brought down one of her own petticoats she had meant to include. A scullery-boy was stoking the fire under the copper for her and she left him in charge as she went back to the tavern. Suspecting nothing, she opened her bed-chamber door to find Martha kneeling beside a prised-up floorboard, studying the marriage certificate she had just unfolded.

‘What are you doing?’ Hester was aghast. ‘How dare you touch my possessions!’ She darted forward to try to snatch the paper away. Martha, scrambling to her feet, whipped it behind her back.

‘Why didn’t you tell us you were wed?’ she rasped, her lips pinched back from her teeth. ‘You would have saved your brother a deal of misery!’

Hester stooped to pick up from the floor the little purse containing her wedding ring and from which Martha had taken the certificate. She held the purse to her in a protective gesture. ‘How you have pried!’ she accused in disgust. ‘Why couldn’t you have left well alone? John and I agreed to tell no one of our marriage. It was the only way of keeping our secret safe.’

Martha tossed the certificate contemptuously on to the bed and set her hands on her waist, arms akimbo. ‘What makes you think I can’t hold my tongue when needs must?’ she enquired slyly.

Hester jerked up her head, incredulous and uncertain. ‘Would you really stand by John and me until his apprenticeship is finished?’

It amused Martha to raise the girl’s hopes and then dash them again. ‘As it happens the matter is already out of my hands. It’s not a quarter of an hour since Jack and I finally put two and two together and decided John Bateman was the one. Jack is on his way now to see Harwood about it all.’

With a choked cry Hester, dropping the purse into her apron pocket, rushed for her cape. ‘I must stop him!’

‘You’ll never catch him up.’

‘I’ll do my best.’ She swung a muffler around her neck against the cold she would meet outside. ‘There’s always a chance he’ll be kept waiting. Maybe Master Harwood will be out somewhere. All I need is a little time to make Jack listen to me!’

Martha followed her out on to the landing and watched her hasten down the stairs. She shook her head. With the pace that Hester could make in her advanced condition, Jack should be almost home again before she reached the Harwood establishment.

*

In the workshop John was applying decoration to a silver alms dish. He held the chasing tool almost vertically between his left thumb and two first fingers, his other fingers free to steady his hand on the workpiece while the hammer in his right hand rhythmically commanded a smooth propelling motion, taking the design slowly and meticulously around the rim.