A Secret Alchemy (6 page)

“No.”

“Only—only Izzy was wondering what happened to him.”

“Dear Izzy. She keeps telling me to get some help. I—I suppose that’s what made her…think of Mark.”

“Yes,” I say, respecting his evasion. This is the right moment, though, to ask him about how he isn’t managing, but the words stick in my throat.

“She’s convinced the Press is going to the dogs, just because one of her pet reviewers didn’t think much of
News from Nowhere
. Said it ‘betrays the spirit of Morris’s own Kelmscott Press.’” He snaps out the words, as if they really sting.

“Would you mind? It’s not as if you
like
Kelmscott work.”

“I don’t like Morris’s design, but you can’t argue with the importance of the Press.” He sighs. “I suppose if I’m honest he had a point. Some of the registration was a bit off, and the paper was quite transparent, so you could see the two sides didn’t match. Very regrettable. It was November—do you remember how gloomy it was?” He grins. “No, it was summer for you.”

“It was gloomy,” I said, and he gives my shoulder a pat on the way to topping up our glasses.

“It shouldn’t have happened. One of the light bulbs had gone, and I’d run out of spares. It was such horrid weather that I didn’t go down to the shop, just put up with the bad light. A mistake, of
course. I’d get an assistant if I could. But real printers don’t grow on trees, and cost accordingly. And it’s too slow for the young. But other than that,
News from Nowhere
was well up to standard. It’s hard to get the paper for letterpress. Even so-called fine presses turn out to be using photo-litho, and computers and so on. And then the paper dealers say there’s no demand.”

I’m about to say that I’ve seen some very good work done by photo-lithography, when rock music bursts into our quiet, loud enough to make me jump.

“Just the tenants, don’t worry.”

“Heavens! Don’t the neighbors mind?” It’s not the real, raw thing of my teenage years, more seventies heavy-metal, but very loud.

“Yes, and they will come and complain to me, instead of them. They’re convinced they’ll get sworn at if they go to the house, though that only actually happened a couple of times. When did Eltham get so bourgeois?”

“It always was. Grandpapa used to go on about how the semis grew like mushrooms after the Great War. How it used to be orchards and meadows till then.”

“But they weren’t bourgeois then; they were homes fit for heroes. And the tenants are very good, really. We have peace for days after I’ve had a word. There are only two at the moment, though I wouldn’t answer for the girlfriends they import. And they always warn me if they’re going to have a party.”

He reaches to pour more whiskey, and as the sleeve of his jacket slips back I see a nasty-looking dark patch on his forearm.

“Have you hurt yourself?”

He finishes pouring and the cap jingles as he puts it back on the bottle. “Oh, that. Just caught my arm on the iron.”

“On the
iron
?”

“‘Wash on Monday, iron on Tuesday,’” he says. “Dear Elaine trained me well.”

“Yes, bless her.”

“Izzy and Lionel want me to sell the Chantry house,” he says suddenly.

“So Izzy told me. What do you want?”

He sighs. “I suppose it’s for the best. Apparently it’ll fetch a lot.”

“It’s not as if he’s living in it anymore,” Izzy had said.

“It’ll be an awful wrench,” I say, and realize that it will be for me, too, to know that it’s gone, even though I’ll be back on the other side of the world. Even though compared to Adam’s death…I swallow. “But you’ll have the workshop. And lots of money. You can do it up. Get help.”

“I told you, you can’t get printers anymore.”

“I didn’t mean that kind of help, if you really can’t find it. But a cleaner. A gardener. Grow some vegetables.”

“Now, Una, you know I can’t grow things. That was always Elaine’s department. But it would be nice.” He looks round. “Though I don’t know…I doubt I could find anyone. All the neighbors say you can’t find a gardener these days for love or money. And I wouldn’t have a cleaner I couldn’t trust, not round the Press.”

His arguments for changing nothing emerge with the briskness of someone who doesn’t want to be persuaded, for reasons too deep to be uprooted by mere common sense. I look at him, and in the fading light see Mark’s photograph behind his shoulder. “You don’t want to sell the house, do you?”

“Una, my dear, I’m seventy-eight, and I’m not getting any
younger. I’ve faced that, you know, just as I’ve faced everything else. I thought I could face this too.”

“You thought? Not now?”

“Lionel rang up just before you arrived.”

“I’m going to see him tomorrow.”

“So he said. He’s looking forward to it so much. But it wasn’t about that, it was about selling the house. He says he’s been advised that it’s not sellable without the workshop. We’ve got to sell the whole Chantry, not just the house. The workshop, all the garden. Everything.”

“What?”

“Something to do with access to the road, and planning permission, because they’ll want to build.”

“But—”

“I know. I’d have to move. A flat, or something.”

“Could you—” I swallow hard. “Could you not buy somewhere with enough space? Or even have a workshop somewhere separate?”

He shakes his head. “I’m too old to start again…No. If it’s all sold, there’s no getting away from it: it would be the end of the Solmani Press.”

Elysabeth—the 33rd yr of the reign of King Henry the Sixth

In the end, after many months had passed, and with each my
courses had brought a disappointment, I determined to go on pilgrimage. John was too busy with the manor, and with the endless struggle to keep the King on his throne and the Queen from driving all who wavered in their allegiance to Lancaster into the arms of the Yorkist rebels. But to my joy Antony came with me. He
journeyed to seek the grace that he seemed always to yearn for, though I know few boys or men who lacked it less. I traveled all those miles to pray for a son.

Two years married, and I was still barren. I could not understand why it should be so. John took me whenever he was at home, and with a little advice from Mal, I had learned to please him, and to be pleasured by him in my turn, for to do so, she said, would help a baby to come. Besides, she said, it was hard enough to be a woman, and no need to stint such pleasures as I could find. Such matters were privy to us, or as privy as the lives of the master and mistress of a manor can ever be. But with my belly thin and my breasts dry I was still a poor wife in the eyes of the world, and at each of her many visits to us at Astley, Lady Ferrars looked more sour and was secretly more pleased, for if I had no child the Astley lands would revert to her estate.

Grafton was on my way from Astley to Walsingham, and I spent some happy days playing with the children and taking some of the household cares from my mother’s shoulders, for she had but lately been brought to bed with Eleanor, and with each baby, she said, it seemed more weeks before she found her full strength again. I said nothing, but she leaned forward and patted my hand. “All will be well,
ma fille
. Keep faith.”

Then Antony and I set off for Norfolk. We rode by Northampton, Peterborough, and Wisbech, and stopped with our Haute cousins at Lynn, to hear the news and give it, and rest the horses and ourselves. Antony wrestled with our cousins and played quoits, while I asked advice of my aunt Haute for the getting of children. Then we rode on, the road thick now with pilgrims: Castle Rising, Flitcham, New Houghton. At Fakenham we left the horses and walked the Pilgrim’s Road in the bitter salt wind
that comes off the Wash as if it would strip the very clothes from your back. I shivered and pulled my cloak close to my throat. But Antony seemed indifferent to the cold. He was no more than thirteen or fourteen summers, a boy, a little brother whose sins and hopes were trifles, when I was a woman grown and praying for a son. And yet as clearly as if I had reached to touch him I knew that there was no part of him, no step that he took on this Pilgrims’ Road, no glance that he cast that was not part of his pilgrimage, of his offering of this journey to God.

The chapel was a still center where we knelt as the wind streamed endlessly outside. I fixed my thoughts on our Holy Mother, and my eyes on her image, and prayed that her will be done, and that her will might be to grant me a son, or even a daughter, for then I might hope to get a son in time. The chanting rose and fell, the frankincense so thick in the air that I could fancy it soaking into my flesh, into my still-narrow womb, ready to quicken with John’s seed. Then I looked sideways.

Antony’s eyes were open, gazing on Our Lady, his hands reaching out to hers, and his thin body stretched upwards, almost ready for flight.

When John told his mother that I was with child, she had perforce to give us joy, but the sourness lingered in her voice. I got little help from her in the first, sickly weeks, but Mal said that the sickness heralded a boy, and this hope strengthened me to ignore her. By the fourth month I was in better health, and all still seemed to be well.

Thus it was the Monday before Whitsun and only a fortnight before my time when, from my bed, late one evening, I heard the scurry and jingle of a horse ridden at full speed into the yard. I sat
up too hastily, and my head swam. I had to wait before putting on my nightgown over my smock and going heavily downstairs. When I entered the hall, the messenger—one of John’s father’s men—had already told all, and been dismissed to wash at the pump, sup in the kitchen, and find a bed in the hayloft.

John tossed a scrap of paper onto the table; the few words were scrawled on it and only begged him to listen to the bearer, then make haste to do as Sir Edward asked.

“What is it, husband? Is your mother ill?”

“My father says that King Henry is bound for Leicester, for the council that’s called. But Richard of York is on the road from Ludlow to catch them. We must hasten to join the King, and with as much force as we can muster. Would that your father were not in command at Calais! We have need of every man that’s still faithful to the King and the House of Lancaster.”

“I know. But Calais must be held, and he is best fitted to do it. And there are enough men at Grafton still. Has your father sent word there?”

“Aye. We are to meet there. On the London road we will get news of where we may reach the King.”

“But, John, would it not be quicker to ride straight to Leicester?”

“King Henry may not reach Leicester. And if Richard of York catches him…The King has His Grace of Somerset with him, of course, but few other men of note, and only a handful of troops—an escort, not an army. There’s little York doesn’t know about moving quickly, and his men learned their business in the French wars. It’s thought the Earl of Warwick will join him. It may come to battle. We must reach the King as soon as we may, and pray that others do too. Else we might as well hang ourselves now as
wait for York to order it.” He patted my shoulder. “Go to bed, wife. You must get your rest, and I must make ready.”

But I did not go to bed that night, any more than John or most of the household did. There were supplies to be put up for the journey, and food for all before they started. The kitchen maid stirred up a sulky little fire from what was left of yesterday’s. Then I sent her off to the storeroom to find bread and meat and cheese while I set porridge on to boil and drew more than one jug of small ale. Twice I was summoned to help in mending jackets and finding gloves, and stayed to persuade a reluctant tenant to join us in protecting His Grace the King, and twice I got back to the kitchen to find the porridge boiled over and the fire all but put out.

They rode before dawn had done more than soften the skies from black to gray, and though Mal insisted I go back to bed, I lay awake till noon. My baby seemed all elbows and knees that morning, first poking out my tight-stretched belly, then pushing up till I could barely breathe, then down so hard and long that I had to get up and call Mal for help that I might piss. And when at last he was still, even then I could not sleep. My mind buzzed; there was new fear for John, and well-worn fear that my baby might be a girl, and puzzlement that I could be both glad and sorry that Antony was not older and might not also join in riding to protect the King.

Later that very day a packet arrived from my mother, I remember. I asked the man who brought it from Calais what news he had, but he had landed at Ipswich and stopped only at Grafton, and had no knowledge of what passed in London. I would have given him money and food and kept him with us to join the rest, had he been a man of my father’s, but he was of the Calais garrison, given leave to go home to Nuneaton to attend to his old mother’s affairs.

My mother wrote in English, and enclosed a copy of
Lancelot, ou Le Chevalier de la Charette
. I was touched that she should think less of my education and more of my pleasure.