The Silversmith's Wife _ Sophia Tobin (10 page)

‘I could not stop her,’ said Grisa.

As the shop door opened again, Mary looked up. She saw the back of her helper, saw him turn, just once, and caught only the keen sympathy in his blue eyes before he was gone.

2nd June, 1792

We had many customers today. I kept good cheer; it is my business, and has been the habit of my life. I am skilled at hiding my true thoughts. Yet despite my smile one thought enflamed my mind, and shaped my prayers this evening, my frustrations brought to fruition by Sarah’s letter.

Dear Lord, give me a son. That is all I ask for. I am prepared to accept that I may never have a wife who is worthy of me, but if I had a child, that pain would be dulled. A son of my own, to carry my name. Late this afternoon, I called my wife to my chamber, but – oh, it pains me to think of the efforts I made, for she lay as though dead beneath me. Her lack of passion for me is why she cannot conceive. My good friend Dr Taylor has told me before, his tongue loosened by an evening’s drinking: the woman’s ardour is needed.

In the basement workshop on Foster Lane, Alban started early and finished late, straining his eyes in the dim light. He was working on a small cup, fashioning it from a blank of silver. He loved the beginnings of making something; he had hammered it round once, heated it cherry red, and soused it in the pickle. Now it was pale, cratered and chalky, like the surface of the moon. He looked at it, turned it carefully on the bench, and began to work it again: hit, rest, hit, rest, each strike firm and landing with a sweet chink, a note played just right.

He knew most other silversmiths didn’t love the metal as he did. He couldn’t remember how he had grown to love it; its presence in his life was a given. But he knew that once it had been his enemy. As a boy of thirteen, apprenticed to his uncle, he had found it nothing but noise and hard work, a war between his puny arms and the obstinate metal. But in the calm, unblinking stare of Alban’s eyes there had been a will, a desire not to be beaten. He had grown strong so quickly that the skin had stretched on his shoulders and arms, leaving pale welts that had never quite gone away. He had learned his skill; he had conquered the metal; and now he loved it.

In London he had worked harder, and faster, than he could remember. Watching the silver yield and shape to his will had calmed him after seeing Mary. His skill was something to be relied on. Even in near darkness, he didn’t want to leave it to go upstairs and eat. To look at Jesse, hunched in his chair, drumming his fingers on the kitchen table. He preferred to stay in the dark workshop, its walls pasted with tattered handbills of songs and verses. The light was so dim he could only read them half a foot away. And somewhere, on that wall, the shape his chalked hand had left the day he had returned to Chester, so long ago.

He heard the door to the workshop open and shut and looked up, prepared to see his cousin and discuss how their commissions were coming along. There was some elaborate casting to be done, and in a day or so some of the plainer pieces that they had made easily would need to be taken the few steps to Goldsmiths’ Hall, for marking and to pay the duty. But it was Agnes, coming towards him with a strange half-smile. In this setting she looked out of place, and as though she felt the strangeness, she was moving awkwardly.

Alban pushed his hair out of his eyes, felt the sweat slick the back of his arm. ‘How d’you do?’ he said, smiling at her.

‘I’ve come to fetch you,’ she said. ‘You must eat. I have a slice of fine Gloucester cheese for you, if you can be parted from your mistress.’ She tilted her head and looked at him playfully. He looked at the piece of metal in front of him and laughed.

‘You’ve left the children to burn the house down just to fetch me,’ he said. ‘I’d never have thought it.’

‘My good husband is watching them,’ she said. ‘I’ve told them to say their prayers.’ She came closer to him, bashfully, into the light, and looked at the silver he was working on. ‘It’s good to see you work,’ she said. ‘When we were first married, I would watch Jesse at the bench sometimes, though he told me to leave him alone unless I wanted to burnish something. He said he could never work properly when my eyes were on him.’ She gave a low laugh, one finger tracing a pattern on the bench. ‘We are so grateful to you, Alban,’ she said. ‘We are lucky to have you as kin. Jesse was worrying himself into the grave.’

Alban shook his head. ‘There is no need to thank me. I should have come here sooner, as I promised all those years ago. But I am here now, and there is plenty of work from Renard’s shop. Jesse can put his mind to rest.’ He worried as he said it that there was, perhaps, some uncertainty in his tone. There was still a faint smile playing over Agnes’s face.

‘He used to say he wanted to be a gilder to make more money,’ she said. ‘I said if I’d wished to marry a dead man I’d have trimmed my bonnet and paraded around the churchyards looking for one. I said I wanted him to have the full span of his life, and have it with me.’

Alban nodded and smiled. It was rare to see a gilder live beyond thirty; subsumed in mercury fumes all day, they were paid well but died young. Yet it sounded like something Jesse would have offered to do: a rash promise, made with no expectation of fulfilment.

Agnes’s smile faded. Away from the fireside and her normal wifely exertions, she looked unlike herself. With the smile gone, her full face fell slack. Her cheeks were not rosy, but a pale colour that reminded him of the dough she was forever kneading.

She looked up and caught his eye. ‘When I told him about the new babe, he could barely raise his head and speak to me,’ she said. ‘He is melancholy. Does his soul make him sick?’

Alban put the hammer down and leaned on the bench. The sudden intimacy of the question made him uncomfortable. ‘I doubt it is that,’ he said. ‘Illness comes. There is no reason.’

Agnes nodded, and crossed her arms over her chest, staring at the floor intently as though she was seeking answers there.

‘Agnes Chamac,’ Alban said. ‘You are a worrier, and I never knew it.’

She answered his smile with one of her own, though the worry stayed in her eyes, behind it; how long had her fear been there, he wondered? Poor, jolly Agnes, who everyone believed was well and strong all the time; who never faltered.

He put his arms around her, held her briefly, tightly. ‘Do not think on it,’ he said. ‘Jesse lives for you.’

As he released her, she looked at him as though she wished to believe him, and he looked back at her, trying to stay steady and strong, but feeling as empty inside as he had on the night journey from Chester. He could only see the rutted road, the grass waving in the wind, the full moon, and the faces of his fellow passengers, frightened that someone might come and take all that they had.

They both jumped at the sound of the workshop door slamming. ‘Won’t you come up into the light?’ said Jesse. He was standing at the top of the stairs. ‘Don’t you get sick of the darkness?’

‘I never think of it,’ said Alban. ‘But as you both ask so well, I will come with you.’

The children were sitting tamely enough by the fire when the men took their place at the table. As Alban bit into a slice of bread a deep sense of well-being spread through him: the soft warmth of Agnes’s bread, the salty butter prickling his taste buds. As he chewed it Agnes ladled pickled cucumbers on to his plate alongside a large slice of cheese.

‘Enough there,’ said Jesse. ‘We don’t want him so fat and lazy that he can’t work.’

Agnes sat down at the end of the table, her gaze moving backwards and forwards between the two men. In the background, Anne, Agnes’ and Jesse’s eldest daughter, was reading a psalm to her brothers and sisters.

‘I should take my break more often,’ said Alban. ‘Though it only makes me realize how much I would like to sleep in front of the fire.’ He bit into a pickled cucumber, and as he crunched on it noticed that Jesse had not yet eaten anything.

Jesse placed his palms on the table in a slow and measured movement. ‘Go to the children, would you?’ he said quietly to Agnes. Alban watched warily as Agnes moved away without looking at him. ‘Is something the matter?’ he said to Jesse.

‘I was speaking to some acquaintances at the Hall today when I took those pieces to be assayed,’ said Jesse. ‘They had news of Bond Street.’

Alban scanned his cousin’s face. Robbery was the greatest hazard for those who dealt in precious metals, and his first thought was for Mary, undefended in her late husband’s establishment. ‘What’s happened?’ he said. ‘Have they found out who killed Renard?’

‘No,’ said Jesse, glancing away. ‘It relates more to what happens next. One of my acquaintances raised a point that might be of interest to you. I had not thought of it, but I warrant you have. Mary Renard will have to marry again.’

Silence.

Alban bit into a pickle with a savage crunch, and sat chewing defiantly under his cousin’s grave stare.

‘Her husband’s barely cold,’ he said, once he had swallowed it. ‘Have you all chosen a candidate?’ He couldn’t help the tarnish of bitterness on his words; his eyes flickered down to his plate then up to Jesse’s face again, searching for information.

‘No,’ said Jesse. ‘Dr Taylor is meant to be dealing with the will, but one of the trustees – a crony of his – has a looser tongue than him, and spilled it all to a friend of mine who keeps him in seals and trinkets. Renard left his affairs in some disorder. It seems he had some idea that Mary should marry a cousin of his, but the cousin is dead. Thanks be to God: one Renard husband is enough for a lifetime, I would think.’

‘Why does she have to marry again?’ said Alban. He felt anger flare up in him as Jesse rolled his eyes. ‘If it is all left to her she may manage it in some other way, surely?’ He thought of Mallory He remembered her as a child: her hard, glittering eyes, even then, the flame of animal vitality in her. She was his hope for a moment: he was sure she knew more about business than both her dead husbands had, put together.

‘A woman cannot run such a business without help,’ said Jesse. ‘I know, some do, a woman such as Mrs Bateman. But she had a lifetime’s more experience than Mary, as well as a more indulgent husband who allowed her to share in his affairs. Mary knows nothing of the business, I imagine; Renard never let her near it, no, nor anyone else either. She has no friends to step in, apart from Grisa, who is . . .’ He waved his hand in the air, a disparaging gesture. ‘It seems Taylor is in a rush to marry Mary off. He thinks she is in need of protection.’

‘What business is it of Taylor’s?’ said Alban.

‘He is the executor, and main trustee,’ said Jesse. ‘In charge of her too, as well as the money. It’s no surprise. Taylor and Renard lived in each other’s pockets.’

‘We do not know the true situation. It is pointless to speak of it,’ said Alban.

‘It is good to anticipate,’ said Jesse. Finally, he took a bite of the bread and butter, and crammed a pickle into his mouth. ‘You should ask her,’ he said, his mouth full.

Alban sat back in his chair. He was half of a mind to leave the table, go back down into the cellar, and begin work again. He need never say anything; he need never even acknowledge that he had heard Jesse’s words. But something about the way his cousin was watching him made him think that he would not leave it. Not this time. Things had changed in the last eleven years; Alban would not be left, unchallenged, to do as he wished. There was something driving Jesse; an imperative to secure Alban’s happiness, to break through his obstinate silence. Alban wished heartily he had stayed in Chester, where those he knew would have left him to pursue a quiet life.

Jesse swallowed his food. ‘What do you say to it?’ he said. Alban could say nothing: he shook his head.

‘There was a liking between you,’ said Jesse, ploughing on. ‘That day in the church. I saw it, plain as day. And if I could see it . . .’ He shrugged.

‘You saw nothing,’ said Alban. ‘You saw nothing but me look at a pretty girl. That is all.’

‘And all your questions afterwards?’ said Jesse. ‘Your sudden desire to leave London when I said the match was settled? You couldn’t get to the mail coach quick enough.’

Alban pushed his chair back. ‘Thank you for the victuals, Agnes,’ he said, and left the room, descending the cellar steps, closing the door quietly behind him.

The workbench was as he had left it; the piece of silver there, waiting. But as he touched it, he knew he could do nothing with it, his concentration spoiled. He swore under his breath. As the fury surged through him he wanted to pick it up and hurl it across the room with a force that would crumple it against the wall. All he could do was stand there, leaning forwards against the bench, waiting for it to pass. He heard Jesse come down the steps, and when he looked up his cousin was waiting.

‘There is nothing, nothing to recommend me to her,’ said Alban.

‘Your accounts are all in order, I understand,’ said Jesse. His tone was blunt, unemotional; it had a kind of formality that Alban was grateful for, however fleetingly. ‘You have funds,’ added Jesse. ‘I know you do.’

‘Yes. But.’ Alban couldn’t describe the weight that sat on his chest.

‘Is there some other woman?’ said Jesse. ‘Some prior attachment?’

‘No!’ he said, in outrage. He walked up and down alongside the bench, his hand running across the smooth wood.

‘I vowed I’d be a man such as Renard,’ he said, after a moment. ‘Better than him, even. I knew that was what I should be, and that I had the capability. But I didn’t hunger for it, I didn’t reach, or push, or attain. Mine is a history of lost chances. She is just another, you see.’

‘No, I don’t,’ said Jesse. ‘Understand me. There will be men crawling all over that shop in Bond Street tomorrow like maggots on meat. You have another chance. She could not ask for a better husband, a better man. Let her decide it.’ He blocked Alban’s path as his cousin tried to pass him. ‘Let her decide it,’ he said again. But Alban had already pushed past and was running up the stairs.

The daylight hurt Alban’s eyes. He walked quickly away, not wanting to be caught by Jesse. At the first dram seller he saw, he took a drink. It tasted foul and hot. He walked on, haltingly, winding his way through the streets. He remembered the day in church when he had heard Mary’s banns read. He recalled her brother’s face, and the sunlight on the stone floor of the church as he spoke with Mary and her father before they moved away from him. Then, Renard had come to him, standing tall and straight in his finery. The man had a handsome face, and an easy smile. ‘You are Jesse Chamac’s cousin, are you not?’