Figures in Silk Read Online Free Page B

Isabel couldn’t look at the bridegrooms—Will Shore, somewhere over there on the edge of her field of vision, behind Jane, a shy beanpole in violet hose, and Thomas Claver, thickset and reddish- haired, next to her. In Thomas’s case, though, she was at least aware of his eyes darting between the watchers and her father and his own tub of a mother, whose reddish face was cheerful above her serviceable dark clothes. John Lambert had wondered aloud more than once in the past few days whether Alice Claver—who was famously not one for ceremony—would have the decency to dress appropriately for the occasion. She’d lived down to his expectations, wearing only her usual market clothes with a bright blue cloak wrapped over them, as if she’d hastily borrowed some of her stock for the day, or was expecting rain. If anything in the assembly of people Isabel couldn’t look at now gave her comfort, it was Alice Claver looking scratchy and uncomfortable in that dressed-up cloak.
     
    There hadn't been much time for Isabel to get used to her situation, what with King Edward’s army entering the City and the curfew being moved to before sunset, just in case, and her father being called on to head one of the city patrols watching the soldiers to prevent outrages against the citizens. At the end of the first day, when people had begun to relax a little, as they saw that this army, now mostly camped outside the walls in Moorfields (with just a few hundred lodged in Baynard’s Castle, the riverside family home of the dukes of York), was not going to make trouble, and as eager vintners and fishmongers rushed to make contracts to supply the soldiers until they left to march north again, an agitated John Lambert had got the call to join the king and his generals at the thanksgiving Mass they were holding at St. Paul’s. His delight at that almost compensated for being left out of the farewell banquet at Baynard’s Castle last night, at which the mayor had been allowed to serve the king’s wine. And his preparations for being briefly in sight of the court had overshadowed the planning for the weddings.
    With so much going on, John Lambert had only had time to take Isabel once to the Claver house on Catte Street, a great place whose airy halls and parlors put to shame even the substantial Lambert family home round the corner on Milk Street, even if it wasn’t decorated with half so many tapestries and carpets as the Lambert house. It was in the morning of the day the gates were opened to the army. He was already in his harness, ready to ride out with the patrol. He’d hastily sorted out the business side of the marriage with Alice Claver, at one end of the great hall, in the space of an hour, while the betrothed couple had been given a brief chance to get to know each other, sitting awkwardly on benches drawn up across from each other, at the other end of the room.
    It had taken Isabel what seemed an eternity to find the strength to raise her eyes. When she did, she’d been astonished by the picture the young man opposite her presented. Thomas wasn’t slurp-ing at the cup of wine his mother had left by his side before tactfully drawing away. He was slumped on his bench, with his pink face in shadow under hair that wouldn’t lie down. He was staring at his feet, pulling at the purse dangling down his leg with busy fingers, and biting his lip.
    He looks scared to death, Isabel had thought suddenly, sitting up straighter with the realization. More scared than me. He’d probably never succeeded in touching any of the tavern girls she’d seen him leering over in the Tumbling Bear and the Lion, she realized with a flash of intuition. This indulged only child of a rich widow, who’d never been sent to start an apprenticeship in another household, who’d been allowed to avoid learning his mother’s trade in her own house, was looking like a large child on the brink of tears. He’d almost certainly never been alone with a female of