‘And the Canon Chancellor’s the one who started all this,’ said Strawberries Ripe. ‘He’s the one who wants to end all indoor trade and honest business.’
‘If we are agreed to change the locks,’ said Nat, the coffee pot burbling and steaming being him, ‘can it be done in deed? Does it not need a Guild of Locksmiths sort of fellow to change ancient locks that were fitted in Norman times?
‘Well, can we, Alfred?’ asked Ripe Cowcumbers, Ripe.
‘Alfred?’ Miep asked herself. ‘Who’s Alfred?’ She looked around in confusion until a tinker stood up whom she knew as Brass Pot Or An Iron Pot To Mend.
‘I can do all that those guilded fellows can do,’ replied Alfred Brass Pot, ‘and without the need of fancy badges and liveries neither, just so long as I have a subscription for the iron lock plates.’
‘Can’t we use old ones?’ asked Nat.
‘Aye, if you have ‘em. If they’re big enough.’
‘I propose,’ said Miep, ‘we change the locks on all the small little doors round the back and sides of Paul’s, perhaps half a dozen. A show of hands?’ asked Miep. Almost all agreed.
‘And I propose we let them hang the Dutch girl at the assizes,’ joked Old Satin, ‘for setting us on! For being the sole cause and instigator of our plot!’
‘Seconded,’ said Nat, a little too enthusiastically.
The meeting agreed to reconvene the following day when everyone would bring with them whatever old iron locks, lock plates and keys they had managed to find in the meantime.
‘Any more of that black ‘lixer?’ asked Alfred. Miep gave him the last dregs, and then Nat was at her shoulder in his Old Man Bramble incarnation, mithering and fretting:
‘Another meeting here tomorrow will rinse us. We’re down to the last three bags.’
He lifted the hardwood lid, and scooped the last three bags from the bottom of the Cadiz trunk. As he did so, he noticed that one of the bags was much lighter than the others. He sat on the trunk and slit the bag open.
A few minutes later, Miep found Nat pressing a piece of embroidered silk to his heart, his eyes shining with joy. She sat beside him on the trunk and asked him what he held, but it seemed he had lost the power of speech.
‘What’s that scrap of cloth?’ she asked again.
‘A letter from Persia,’ he replied, staring into the middle-distance.
‘For you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Written on silk?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
‘No, that’s your Arab, Miep. Your Persian writes by embroidery.’
‘They embroider the words?’
‘Not words,’ said Nat. ‘Glyphs.’
‘Show me!’
But Nat kept the silk clamped to his heart.
‘It is a complicated alphabet,’ he told her.
‘Can you read it?’ she asked.
Nat lifted the embroidered silk to his eyes.
‘My dear friend Nat,
I have taken to wife my raven-haired fiddle-playing Gol, and recommend marriage to you. I prosper as an oil factor in Tabriz. I counsel you, Nat-jan, to repose more trust in others, especially our old friend and benefactor Uruch Bey, who is a man to be trusted, after all. For he sent you this coffee, and will supply you with more, if and when you sail to Spain.
Your loving friend,
Darius Nouredini.’
‘He says all that on a little scrap of embroidered fabric?’ asked Miep in wonder.
‘Here, read it for yourself,’ said Nat, and handed it to her.
Brilliant white silk flowed over Miep’s hand and glowed in the West Nave Arcade’s pall and gloom.
She ran her fingers along the intricate embroidery. The Persian way of writing was strange indeed, quite unlike any other. For it was written in an alphabet of tiny mirrors, paste pearls, sequins and coral tubes, all stitched together with silver thread.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank the following people for their assistance in the creation of this book:
Mark Buckland
Alistair Braidwood
Anneliese Mackintosh
Karyn Dougan.
Ed Smith
Clare Alexander
Cassie Metcalf-Slovo
Mooness Davarian
Nargis Barahoi
Gunel Guliyeva
Drewery Dyke
Nick Hornby
Jeff Wood
John Gardiner
Ceri Jones
Nicky Fijalkowska
Adam Ma’anit
Esther Godfrey.
V&A and British Museum
Guildhall Library
Islington Library
British Library.
The Trade Secret
978-1190888517
Robert Newman
First Published 2013
Published by Cargo Publishing
SC376700
© Robert Newman 2013
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form or binding other than in which it is published.
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Printed & Bound in England by MPG Biddles
Cover design by Craig Lamont.
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