What disturbed Silas, however, was the degree of closeness between
Isolde's father and Alderman Henry Fryde, which must initially have
included enough trust to make York's most unscrupulous and ambitious
merchant Isolde's temporary guardian. It could be, he mused, that,
living in the far-flung hill country with only sheep for
near-neighbours, one could know little of erstwhile friends in York or
of the reputations that grew as fast as wealth. As for Felicia and Sir
Gillan. ? Silas's smile returned--they were both getting what they
deserved. And so was his own father. And, for that matter, so was
Bard. In fact, the only one not to do so was the lass herself, who
would either have to stay with him or enter a convent. Only time would
tell which she would choose.
The figure of a man entering the courtyard caught his attention. The
man stooped to pick up one of the cats and drape it over his shoulder,
his shape in the doorway blotting out the light.
But Silas was in no doubt of his visitor's identity.
"William... sir.
I am honoured. What a treat. How did you?
"How did I know, Silas Mariner?" The man laughed,
holding out a hand.
"Why, the whole town knows. Can you not hear the bells, lad?"
Pieter de Hoed, with his usual sharpness, had already warned young Mei
that she would have to become a more attentive chambermaid than ever,
by the look of things, because the lady in his master's company bore an
expression which no one could have called indulgent. Mei was therefore
quaking in her stout leather shoes as she led the two guests up a
winding wooden staircase to the room that Meester Silas had indicated,
the one overlooking the canal. Heartened by her recent success at
communication with the starched lady on the boat, Cecily was ready to
try it out again on Mei, and, with a similar system of symbols and
smiles, came to a mutual understanding remarkably quickly.
Hot water, clothes from their panniers, and food. Yes, thank you, she
had noticed the linen towels.
Spreadeagled on the bed, Isolde was staring in silence at the delicate
curves of a metalwork chandelier and the pattern of lines that rippled
across the wooden rafters above her, bouncing like will-o'-the-wisps
through the open window from the water.
"I shall grow fins," she murmured drowsily.
"I shall grow a tail like the mermaids. None of this is real."
"Nice room, though," Cecily said matter-of-factly, closing the door on
the two lads who had brought up the luggage.
"And big enough. Not like that box we had in York. What's the bed
like?"
"Big," Isolde agreed. She looked around her.
"Yes, it is. Nice."
The bed-curtains of aquamarine velvet lined with silk were tied up into
pendulous buns with moss-green silken cords, and the matching bedcover
was large enough to drape its embroidered borders heavily on to the
floor in a tangled strap work of gold and green. A bolster and
cushions were arranged across the bed-head of carved and pierced
woodwork that made a line of pinnacles like spires on a distant
skyline. Softly mellowed oak panelled every surface, cut into pierced
trefoils on the tops of the window shutters and across the back of a
bench where a green woollen rug hung in tassels over the seat. A
convex mirror surrounded by enamelled round els hung on the far wall to
follow their every move.
Intrigued, Isolde swung her feet down to the soft pile of carpet where
an intricate pattern of red, brown, green and blue covered it from edge
to edge. A kneeling cushion of the same design lay on the ledge of a
priedieu, and Isolde knew without being told that it had come by
camel-caravan from the other side of the world, where people had been
known to drop off the edge. Crossing to the priedieu, she knelt to
look more closely at the Book of Hours full of glowing pictures like
the one she had seen at Dame Elizabeth's house. Quietly, she turned
over the stiff pages and began to search for a prayer for safe arrivals
while at the same time studying each of the illustrations of daily life
for the figure which had dominated the page.
At the time, Isolde had not taken her captor's promise of every comfort
too seriously, and was therefore surprised to find that, after the
deprivations of the voyage, he appeared to be making an effort to
compensate for all that she had lost. Had he but known it, she had
lost little in York except her father's approval of her behaviour; the
Fryde family had offered no comforts to speak of, their hospitality
being far worse than Silas's custody. Naturally, she had been careful
not to make the comparison in his hearing, nor did she display more
than a polite approval of the cool, clean, well- managed house and
caring servants, the excellent food and restrained but unmistakable
signs of affluence which were in direct contrast to the Frydes'
ostentation.
It was difficult not to compare the two merchants, albeit they were
years apart in age and experience. Yet here was Silas La Vallon with a
beautiful house in Brugge and another in York, enough wealth to keep
servants in both, and a ship with a permanent crew. Pride had not
allowed her to show the slightest interest in either his merchandise or
his clients, nor had the bales and boxes unloaded at Sluys given any
indication of their contents, but she would have given much to know the
source of his wealth. Was it in those carpets from the Orient? The
spices? The grain? Or was it in the woollen goods that came to
Flanders to be finished, then re-imported? This was a question that
might have occupied her mind before her first day in Brugge had drawn
to a close. But then she was introduced to Silas's visitor, which
raised a completely different set of questions.
Chapter Four
Q-sy^is^Q
What on earth am I going to wear? " Isolde said crossly.
"If I'd had more notice, I might have been able to refurbish my best
blue gown and find some new fur to trim it, but it's been screwed up in
the pannier for a week. And what about my head-dress? It doesn't
match, and I can hardly attend court with my hair loose at my age,
can
I?
"
That was not quite what she meant, and Silas knew it. A loose-haired
maid residing with an eligible bachelor would raise a few eyebrows.
"Shh! Calm down, Isolde. Come out here and let me explain what it's
all about instead of getting worked up about what to put on your
head.
Come on! " He took her firmly by the elbow and led her out into the
courtyard. The full moon lit their way through the rose-covered
trellis and into the garden laid out in plots and grassy pathways edged
about with wooden rails. The Flemings, it seemed, had a passion for
tidiness. They found a stone bench and sat, Isolde rigidly upright,
Silas hoping that by taking one of her hands she would soften.
"William is a very good friend," he explained.
"He came over specially to tell us about it."
"You, not me. He didn't know I was here."
"Yes, he did. He'd heard. He wants you to meet the Duchess. Heavens
above, Isolde, most women would leap at the chance of being presented
to the Duchess of Burgundy. She is English, you know."
"I know that," she said.
"She's Margaret of York, the King's sister."
"Margaret of Burgundy now. And it will be an honour for William to
have another Englishwoman watch him present his new translation to her.
He printed it himself, you know. Here, in Brugge, on his own press."
"Printed? What do you mean?"
"Well, instead of having scriveners to write each book by hand, William
has learned how to put sheets of paper into a thing like a great
cheese-press which marks them with words, so now he can print a lot of
pages all the same in a matter of moments. It saves so much time. He's
been to Cologne to learn the method from a German printer;
a clever chap. Master Caxton. Speaks several languages and translates
books from one into another. He's a Kentishman himself, but you can
still hear his twang, can't you? "
"How long has he lived here in Brugge?"
"Oh, donkey's years. You must ask him about it some day."
"Then surely his wife will be there."
"No, William has never married."
She found this remarkable. William Caxton was a man of mature years,
but courteous and obviously at ease with women. As a close friend of
Margaret of York, Duchess of Burgundy, he must know many women in the
ducal household, yet he had not married.
"Oh. Doesn't he stand still long enough, either?"
In the darkness, Silas smiled, caressing her with hand and voice.
"I'd make little progress with you, maid, by standing still," he
teased.
His hand moved up towards her neck, barely touching the soft skin of
her throat with the back of his fingers.
Trembling, she held herself rigid, hoping that her voice would not
betray the melting of her insides.
"This is foolish talk, sir. We were discussing Master Caxton's
invitation. You must see that there is too little time for me to..."
Slowly, her head was eased round to face him and tipped backwards to
rest upon his shoulder, and before she could remember which words came
next his mouth on hers made them unnecessary.
With the same tenderness he had shown during their nights on the boat,
he closed her mind again to the fears that plagued her, gentling her
lips with all the skill of a master. With the same care, he moved his
hands on to the fabric over her breast and held it until she realised
what she had allowed. Then, she caught clumsily at his wrist, not
knowing in that first moment of awareness how to proceed.
"No," she heard herself say.
"Please... no."
Obediently, the hand caressed and moved away.
"No," he whispered.
"It's all right. You're quite safe. You prefer to sleep with Mistress
Cecily now you're here in Brugge?"
"Yes." It was a lie, but not for the world would she have said
otherwise.
"Then you have only to tell me when you wish to change your mind."
She could have protested that such a thing would never happen, but he
sensed the conflict and his next kiss was long and deep, designed to
prolong her confusion rather than to banish it completely.
"Now," he whispered, keeping her head on his shoulder, 'let's talk
about tomorrow, shall we? "
His argument was convincing, although to Isolde the price of acceptance
proved to be uncomfortably high. She was, he reminded her, a stranger
to Flanders, so how could she know what was being worn at court? Those
women with enough hair of their own, he assured her, wore it in
elaborate styles threaded with ropes of pearls and jewels after the
Florentine and Venetian fashion. The French and Swiss were doing the
same. Those who had not enough of their own hair were using false
pieces: plaits, chignons, piles of it. She would not need any of that,
with her abundance. Jewels? That would present no problem; he had
enough for a dozen such coiffures.
Mei was skilled. She had dressed some of Brugge's Italian ladies until
she had become pregnant when, to please Pieter the Hat, Silas had taken
her on as chambermaid.
"Is that his name? The Hat?"
"De Hoed. Hadn't you noticed? That's his weakness. And women, of
course."
"And is that your weakness, too?" She looked away, regretting the
childish slip of the tongue.
"What about my dress? Are crumpled dresses in fashion?"
the morning of the next day, steaming and smoothing the blue-grey
half-silk and fluffing up the snow-weasel fur trims to look like
ermine. Cheaper, and almost as effective. The collar made a deep V
from shoulder to waist and, when she would have filled the space with a
high-necked chemise, Silas turned its edge down with practised fingers
to show far more of her bosom than ever she had shown before.
She protested that she was in danger of being taken for a courtesan,
but Mei indignantly joined forces to silence her protests. This was
high, she said, compared to some of the court ladies. She stitched the
edges of a wide satin sash tightly together behind Isolde's back, its
top edge resting just below her breasts, supporting them from below and
accentuating their full curves. When Isolde attempted to cover herself
in a sudden gesture of modesty, Silas took her hands and held them
away.
"You've nothing to hide," he said.
"Have courage."
On receipt of Isolde's first smile, Mei--named after the month--had
come to the conclusion that Isolde could not be the forbidding creature
of whom Pieter had warned her, and, with Cecily's help, made Isolde
understand that she had never seen a head of hair as lovely as hers.
It required four hands and occasionally five to devise an elaborate
creation in which every strand was plaited with gold threads and tied
at intervals with pearls threaded on silk. Thin plaits were twisted
around thicker ones, coil upon coil, to fill out the back of her head
in an intricate maze of red and gold, the smooth front adorned only
with a strand of pearls worn like a low crown on her forehead.
Finally, the wayward curls at the nape of her neck, which Cecily
refused to allow Mei to shave off, were tied with golden cords into
tiny bunches. The effect was spectacular. The butterfly had emerged.
The only jewellery she was allowed to wear was a fine gold chain with a
trio of pearls suspended from it, the pearl-shaped pendant falling into
the cleft between her breasts.
"Who does it belong to?" Isolde had asked. Again, she could have
bitten her tongue.
"To you, lady."
"Sir, I cannot accept--' At that point Silas had taken her arm in his
strong grasp, so that she had had to clutch at her long skirts to stay
upright. He had drawn her with little courtesy into Cecily's small
room next to hers and she had thought that he was angry, so st
ern was
his face.
Holding her by the wrist, he had closed the door.
"Now, understand me, Isolde," he said.
"So that our inevitable explanations are matched;
you are in a position to accept my gifts. You are a guest in my
house.
You were my guest at York, also. Your father and mine are old
friends.
He is expected to join us here, by and by. If anyone asks if we have
an understanding, tell them to mind their own bloody. no, tell them
yes. We have. Nothing official yet, but, dammit, I'll not have those
young court louts nosing about. "
"I shall say nothing of the sort, sir! The only understanding we have
is that I am here against my will and against my father's will. Did
you believe that by dressing me up and showing me off at court that
would change things? I think they should know the truth right from the
start, don't you?"
"Fine words, but which of us dye think they'd be inclined to believe?
You or me? Do you not think you'd be taken for a hysterical woman
after such an unlikely tale, looking as you do? I have a reputation as
being a man of his word. What reputation do you have here? "
"A good question, sir! What reputation I once had is now ruined,