London - Edward Rutherfurd [244]
Tiffany frowned. She knew she had many relations and did not want to seem rude. On the other hand, she had never heard of him.
“What would he have told me?” she asked cautiously.
James looked down at her, uncertain how to proceed; but since his rule was to be truthful, he blurted out:
“I think the idea was that I should marry you.” And wanting to seem encouraging: “I told him I’d be interested.”
“But I don’t know you,” she protested; and, realizing that this, in her world, was not a sufficient objection she explained: “You see, my father has said I can marry whom I like.”
“You mean,” he asked in amazement, “he said you could choose your own husband?” Could the rich merchant really have said such an eccentric thing? “Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“I suppose,” he said with a frown, “that puts me at a bit of a disadvantage.”
“I might get to like you,” she suggested.
“Perhaps.” But he looked doubtful.
“You should never give up,” she smiled.
“Really?” He continued to gaze at her as the rain started to fall rather insistently. “Better go,” he said, and moved off.
James Bull went out and got drunk that night. It was not a thing he had done before. He wandered down to Southwark, entered the George, for no particular reason, and sat alone drinking ale. He did not attract the interest of Fleming, since he did not look like a learned man, but halfway through the evening Dame Barnikel came and sat with him for a while. “You look down in the mouth,” she said, and asked him what was the trouble.
“Never you mind,” she told him. “A handsome fellow like you will find a girl.”
“Sometimes,” he confessed, “I think I’m a bit simple. Being honest, I mean.” She told him not to worry and gave him another jug of ale. But later in the evening she came and sat down again beside him.
“Do you see that man over there?” she muttered, and indicated a tallish, swarthy man in the far corner, who had a woman each side of him, and who smacked his lips when he drank. “He always gets the women. But do you know what he does? He’s a highwayman. Robs pilgrims, they say, on their way through Kent. And do you know where he’ll be in five years’ time? Swinging on a gallows, I can promise you. So you just stay honest the way you are. You’ll be all right.” And she gave his shoulder a friendly pat.
As he went to sleep, very drunk, that night, James Bull saw, with a measure of contentment, the swarthy highwayman swinging, while he watched with a girl on his arm: Tiffany, he supposed. The thought gave him courage enough to mutter in his sleep: “I’ll show them.”
If James Bull had been discouraged, for Tiffany, soaked though she was by the time she got home, the interview had been an agreeable revelation. This business of being sought in marriage, she realized, might be rather enjoyable. And when at Christmas her father asked her if she had any thoughts about the matter, she begged him, with every show of meekness, if she might have a few years more to consider: to which he agreed easily enough. “After all,” he remarked to his wife that night, “with my fortune, I dare say we could find her a husband even if she were fifteen.” And there, for the time being, the matter rested.
1378
While the threat of further war with France, now aided by Scotland, continued to perturb the young king’s council, the latest development was even more infuriating: French pirates were freely attacking English merchant vessels and the council seemed impotent. The king’s uncle, John of Gaunt, proud if well-meaning, had led an expedition to the French coastal region, but got nowhere and came home looking a fool. Yet no sooner was he back than a mere London merchant, an enterprising fellow called Philpot, of the Grocers company, had equipped a small flotilla at his own expense, routed the pirates, and sailed back in triumph to the city.
“Our own guild,” Fleming cried to Ducket in triumph. “He should be made mayor.” And from that day Fleming would say proudly to his apprentice: “Gaunt is royal; but Philpot is