The Silversmith's Wife _ Sophia Tobin Page 2

  They regarded each other in the moonlight. His eyes were shining, watery; he looked as though he was on the brink of tears.

  ‘Do you wish to come in?’ she suggested helpfully, then cautioned: ‘My husband is not at home.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘But it is for him that I am here.’

  Talking in riddles, she thought in her befuddled brain. Perhaps it is some game they have been playing again – she knew how Pierre and Taylor delighted each other with wordplay, though she often thought they sounded like overgrown children. She let him in, and directed him up to the parlour. If he was going to speak cryptically to her, they may as well be warm; and as for respectability – there was no one respectable out to know that she was receiving him without Pierre in the house. She followed him up the stairs wearily.

  She thought later how strange it was that he should make such a mess of it. Dear Dr Taylor, who was normally so authoritative; so used, as a doctor, to presiding over birth and death. Yet there he was, walking up and down her parlour, the floorboards protesting beneath his heavy feet, his hesitant speech fading to a mumble as he groped for words. He said her husband’s name several times, as though by saying it, it would give him the momentum to speak on, but each time his voice trailed off, and he muttered the name of Digby, and spoke of Berkeley Square, and of footpads.

  ‘Please tell me what has happened,’ she said, eventually. Taylor ceased his pacing. He stood over her. It was odd to see his face, which usually bore an expression of jovial kindness, twisted with sorrow, the shadows and the firelight laying contrasts on it, making him seem gargoyle-like.

  ‘He is dead,’ he said. ‘Someone has taken him from us. I am sorry. So very sorry.’ Then, hesitantly: ‘Marie.’ It was the use of her Christian name that most clearly showed his distress; until this night, he had never said it. A fat tear rolled down his cheek.

  Mary stared at the floorboards, and the Turkey rug that Pierre had made such a fuss over. ‘Make sure it is brushed, Ellen, and brushed properly,’ he had said to the maid before he left. There was a spot of dirt on it. She had to resist falling on to her knees and picking it up, pincering it between the nails of her thumb and forefinger, before Pierre came back and saw it.

  ‘Has the constable been called?’ she said.

  ‘The watchman will make his report to him, but – when he was found – there was no one nearby.’

  ‘How did he die?’ she said. She knew it was an unlady-like question, but she also knew that in his current state, Taylor would tell her; tomorrow, it would be too late, but for now, all delicacy and convention had flown.

  ‘They cut his throat,’ he said. His voice was barely a whisper.

  Tick, tock, went Pierre’s lantern clock, and as Mary’s eyes darted around the room, all she could see were things chosen by her husband, for he had crafted his home carefully. She gazed on the dull brass colour of the lantern clock; it was over a hundred years old, he had told her when he bought it. She would have preferred something else in this room: something made of wood, ‘something feminine’, he had scoffed. Everything in the house had been done to his liking. Except for the papers in this room: cream, with little scarlet fruits. They had agreed on the choice, startling each other with acquiescence.

  She heard the doctor pull a chair towards her, and felt him take her hands. They were unexpectedly rough. He was an accoucheur, and she had always assumed his hands would be soft, silken, for attending to a woman’s most delicate parts; but no, these were large paws, chapped, as though if you stroked them the wrong way the skin would rise up like scales.

  I never had a child, she thought. And I never will, now. In this, as in so many ways, I failed my husband and my family. She closed her eyes and thought: my poor, dead father, and his promises.

  The night he had proposed to her, Pierre had made her come to him on the front steps of her father’s house. He was standing just beyond the front step, looking up at the night sky. He seemed elaborately posed; had her father given him a few minutes to prepare himself? Beneath his cutaway coat she glimpsed the lilac satin waistcoat and the large watch he was so proud of, the gold case chased with putti and clouds, and bordered by thin slices of coloured hardstone. He treasured that watch; he never let anyone touch it but him, keeping them at a distance with one hand as he showed it to them. His shoe buckles were new additions, set with glittering white pastes, and were larger than any she had seen before. He stood as though he was acutely aware of them, and wanted to show them to their best advantage. Every movement said: you are lucky, madam. I have chosen you. Every movement had spoken of self-confidence, and his certainty that he would rise in the world. Now, someone had cut him down.

  She did not know how long she sat with Dr Taylor, only that her reverie was broken by the house itself, warning her of the people within. She heard footsteps on the wooden floors upstairs; the suggestion of her servant’s and lodgers’ voices. ‘I’d better unlock the doors. They’ll have heard you come in,’ she said. But instead of going up she went straight downstairs, to the door that divided the hall from the shop. Again, she had to fumble with the keys to get the door open.

  On the other side her husband’s apprentice was standing. He alone of the house’s inhabitants had stayed quiet, but he was dressed and awake. She had guessed he would be most afraid, and she could see he was trembling. She put a hand out to him in reassurance. He was still recognizable as the fifteen-year-old sent to them from the Welsh borders some five months before who had taken to following Pierre around with the grateful look of a rescued cur. The dim candlelight glanced off his blonde head, his blue eyes in their bruised hollows wide with misgiving. He did not take her hand.

  ‘Come on, Benjamin,’ she said. ‘There are bad tidings. Your master is dead.’ Her voice wavered only slightly on the word: dead. The boy looked at her dumbly. She gave him the keys. ‘Go upstairs. Unlock the others. I haven’t the strength.’

  It was unprecedented for her to hand over the keys, but Benjamin took them without a word and bolted past her. As she went back into the parlour, Mary heard the thumps and creaks as he ascended the upper stairs in his lumbering, heavy-footed way. She sat down again.

  ‘You may go, Dr Taylor,’ she said. ‘It is late. You must be needed at home.’

  The doctor stood up, but did not show any sign of going to the door. ‘He was a good man,’ he said. ‘He was my best friend, in all the world.’ At the sight of her face, he seemed to remember himself. ‘My sincere condolences. Are you sure you wish me to leave? Can I not be of assistance in some way?’ He stayed where he stood, looking her over as though she was one of his patients. She felt the piercing intensity of something just out of vision begin to strum at her nerves.

  ‘I am sure,’ she said. ‘Please go. If you would come again in the morning?’

  He bowed, and withdrew. ‘Ho, there!’ he called in the passage. Mary heard Benjamin descend the stairs and let him out; then the locking began again, concluded by the apprentice grunting slightly as he heaved the bar across the door, the bar she had left unhooked.

  She heard the voices of her servants and lodgers in the passageway. But Mary stayed still. She realized she had not asked Dr Taylor where her husband was now. He must be somewhere; they would not have left him out there, lying on the cold ground. She felt the weight of her incapability descend upon her. Her sister Mallory would have asked, and made sure things were dealt with properly.

  Her housemaid came in, dressed in her outside cloak over her nightgown. She crouched down beside Mary, and took her hands.

  ‘You are icy cold, ma’am,’ she said. ‘I thought you were walking again, when I heard the footsteps; but I was locked in, and could not come to you. I was afraid you would go out into the night, and have no one to bring you back.’

  Mary looked down, feeling the familiar shame. She had sleepwalked for years, and only once had her husband shaken her awake. At the memory of it she could feel the primal horror it had awakened in her: a seam of terror runni
ng from her throat to her breastbone. Her scream, like an animal, he said, had woken every inhabitant of the house. He had cursed her for it, and never woken her again, always rousing Ellen from her bed to talk Mary soothingly back to her room or to a chair in the parlour.

  ‘I am cold,’ said Mary. ‘My feet are damp, from standing on the doorstep. I wish my sister was here.’

  ‘But it’s too late to go out,’ said Ellen, and Mary saw the fear in her eyes. ‘Who did it, Mrs Renard?’

  Mary shook her head. ‘I do not know,’ she said, and covered her face with her hands.

  The girl slipped out and returned with a glass of red wine. Her hand trembled as she put it down on the table next to Mary. She banked the fire, then brought a shawl in, and wrapped it around her still mistress, gently pulling Mary’s reddish-brown hair free from it and smoothing it over her shoulders as one would to a child.

  The other inhabitants of the house did not go back to bed. Roused by the news of a sudden death they stood around, conferring, in low voices. Who could have done it? He was, they all agreed, a difficult man – but this?

  Mary watched the flames rise and fall. She was hardly aware when Benjamin came into the room, and put the keys by her with a clunk, scratching the flawless surface of Pierre’s tea table.

  She realized she was hunched tight, her arms folded around her body as though she sought to hold herself still. As her hand slid down she felt a dull pain, just above her wrist, and pulled back her sleeve. On the underside of her arm there were three bruises: three small perfect circles in a line. As she saw them, she heard her brother calling her, a voice from eleven years ago.

  Mare-lee. Mare-lee.

  A door slammed shut.

  ‘It’s a full moon,’ she heard the maid say in the passage. ‘It makes my flesh creep.’

  Mary began to laugh; and once she started, she found she could not stop.

  CHAPTER TWO

  1st May, 1792

  I must begin by saying that my blood is French. It is a century since my mother’s family came to this country, silk weavers driven here by cruel religious intolerance, and though I may pass for an Englishman, the name of France is engraved on my heart: for it is the source of taste, of true art and of craftsmanship fit for kings. My father was descended from a goldsmith’s family, creators of some of the finest silver and gold plate this country has ever seen; but he died before I was born and my mother, denied by his family, gave me her name. She died when I was barely walking, and I knew only of a cousin living in some distant part of the country, only lately reconciled to me.

  From such sad beginnings, I have come, and my present circumstances, to some, would be enviable indeed. I own a fine shop on Bond Street, where I live with my wife, Mary, and our servants and lodgers. People of quality flock to my shop, for I know how to match each man with the piece of silver or gold plate that will appeal to him: for this man, beauty matters; for this man, utility. I am a master at it.

  Yesterday, a newly married couple came calling to the shop when I was not there. It sounds as though they are prepared to spend a good portion on plate, but Grisa – my shop manager, an emotional fellow – was apparently all of a fluster with them, and instead of serving them well, took the gentleman’s card, and said I would call upon them. Their names are Mr and Mrs Chichester, and I go to Berkeley Square to see them, this morning.

  In the morning light, Joanna Dunning laid out the pots on the satinwood veneer of her mistress’s dressing table, the silver cold beneath her hands. Here the powder pot; here the pin tray. Each piece had its place. After laying them out in their prescribed positions, she looked at them. Then she straightened them again: sometimes moving each box an inch or two, sometimes merely touching it, careful not to scratch the polished mirrored surface of the dressing table with the ornamented surfaces.

  It passed the time, she supposed. Which was the business of life.

  In such moments she would reflect on the journey she had taken, from the milliner’s shop where she had begun her working life to the coveted role of lady’s maid. Time in service had taught her that it was best not to look too closely at things. She saw evidence of life’s baseness everywhere; for all its grand furnishings, the air in the room was thick with the closeted fug of the bedroom, and for all her care the silver bore the traces of a hundred touches by her fingertips.

  She glanced over her shoulder at her mistress. Harriet Chichester lay propped up on a mound of pillows, her golden curls spread around her, sipping her chocolate lethargically. Joanna had hoped a young bride would be easy to work for – she had been engaged by Harriet’s mother only days before her wedding – but the new Mrs Chichester had rapidly disproved this notion by displaying a fierce temper. Just this morning she had lashed out at Joanna on waking. Luckily, Joanna had stepped back, so the pretty little claw met nothing but air; in servitude, as in life, anticipation was all.

  You have known nothing of suffering, Joanna thought, and thus nothing of life. To her, the girl’s face seemed unfinished; unlined skin set with moist, china-blue eyes across which thoughts moved as clearly as clouds across the sky. It was a countenance unmarked by experience. Joanna supposed it was this very blankness that had meant Harriet was referred to as a beauty. For the last seven months, she had searched that face with her gaze as she tended to it; but try as she might, she could not see anything beautiful there, and could see no trace of a soul behind the eyes. Mrs Chichester seemed to be merely the sum of her wants and desires, and a voracious seeker of novelty.

  I must have been muddle-headed to pursue this situation, she thought; I must have taken a thimble too much of gin with Mallory She moved the pin tray again and tilted her head to gauge whether she liked its new position.

  ‘Joanna?’ came the small, fretful voice from the bed.

  ‘Yes, madam?’

  ‘I want to wear the white muslin today.’

  ‘It’s rather cold for that, madam.’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘Very good, madam.’

  The white, always the white. And in the midst of winter. Out she’d go, stepping out of the carriage and on to the filthy London streets, wandering around just long enough to cover the hem in mud. How in Christ’s name was she supposed to get it clean? How would the weak winter sun bleach that out?

  I am not the only one, she thought, who finds you hard to bear. For it was evident that Harriet’s husband, Nicholas Chichester, was growing more despairing by the day. He was only a year older than Harriet’s twenty years, and it was the opinion of the servants’ hall that he had married his wife for her father’s coal pits, and the money they brought him, under command from his own father. Joanna felt sorry for him; he seemed too young, and clever, to have been saddled with such a torment as Harriet. But there was something discomforting about him, too: he had the air of a person who preferred his books to people; and he had some odd notions. Like the silver-gilt toilet service she stood over now.

  Joanna had been there the day Mr Chichester had explained all to Harriet. His mother had had such a set, handed down from her mother, and they had been forced to be rid of it at some time (he had hinted at a mystery – but Joanna suspected it had been sold, for she had heard the family’s fortunes rose and fell like mercury). Never one to eschew a new purchase, Harriet had agreed to the commission with enthusiasm. Mr Renard of Bond Street had been called in to design and execute it.

  So far, all had been sweet between the newlyweds; or as sweet as could be, thought Joanna, for two strangers pushed together.

  But over the silver, their innate incompatibility had emerged. Harriet had insisted on choosing her own designs, on veering away from the restrained, classical direction her husband had favoured. No, smooth lines and elegant, plain surfaces were tedious to her; there were to be flowers, and perhaps a cherub or two? Mr Renard had been called to the house repeatedly. Designs had been drawn up, rejected, and drawn up again. He had trudged up and down the grand staircase, a self-approving, amused sm
ile playing over his mouth, for he found her pettishness engaging, it seemed. Barely a week after agreement had been reached, Harriet had complained that it was not ready.

  Finally it had arrived. A set of sixteen pieces: boxes, trays, snuffers. Each box’s silver lid finely chased with flowers. The silver covered with a wash of gold, by her insistence, each surface glowing, so it seemed to light up the room, especially in the evening when the candles were burning. The mirror, set in an elaborate frame, was so large and heavy it had taken two men to carry it up the winding marble staircase. How they had grunted and sweated, rolling their eyes at the voluble directions of Mr Renard. And everywhere, Harriet’s initials. As Renard told Mr and Mrs Chichester, it was a toilet service fit for a duchess.

  Some bloody duchess, thought Joanna. Harriet had barely had it a month and already she was careless of it; dropping things, banging the boxes against each other. In the last day or so it had seemed as though she intentionally wanted to damage it. Joanna wanted to tell her to be careful of it; that she wouldn’t get another. This would be hers for her lifetime now, just like the husband that she treated as an amusing toy.

  You could tell Mr Chichester hadn’t wanted to have the initials engraved upon it. She had watched him when it was unveiled, he and Harriet standing awkwardly side by side like two children pushed together against their inclinations, his eyes veering away from the HCs everywhere. Joanna understood. He wanted the service to be passed down through his family, an heirloom unsullied by Harriet’s name. He had suggested that the initials be left off. But when he had said it, holding the designs in his pale, long-fingered hands, Harriet had made a fuss, her eyes brimming with tears. Mr Renard had looked askance at him: come on, indulge the lady, his expression had said, his fingers running over his elaborately embroidered waistcoat; gold thread, as gold as the dressing set. And Mr Chichester, so nearly a man, but still with something of the student about him, had allowed himself to be bowed down, and submitted. In a moment Harriet’s tears had been transformed to smiles, and Renard was laughing, looking at her face as though she enchanted him.