London - Edward Rutherfurd [248]
But wisely he also confided to Bull: “I admire your generosity, sir, in allowing your daughter to choose. But between ourselves, if I could not earn your blessing, I should not feel comfortable in trying to recommend myself to Tiffany.” To Bull’s wife, every few weeks, he brought a thoughtful gift.
To Tiffany herself, he was an agreeable friend, but it was natural that the girl should admire him. His fortune might not, as he said, be large, but he was always dressed in the finest cloth, and he had a fine horse. He could talk about any subject. He could be amusing. And when he spoke about the affairs of the day with her father, she could see that Bull respected his opinion.
“He’s certainly the most intelligent of all the men I’ve met,” she told her mother one day.
“And?”
“I don’t know. I think I’m too young,” she replied.
Tiffany hardly knew how to put it herself. Something, perhaps, was missing. When she read the romances of knights dying for the love of their ladies, she experienced a strange sense of excitement: yet she hardly knew whether this sensation belonged to adulthood or was merely childish. Once, speaking of a romance she had read, she asked her mother: “Do such men really exist?”
“Well,” her mother paused before replying. “Have you ever met such a man?”
“No.”
“You mustn’t be too disappointed, then,” the older woman said, “if you never do.”
“Then,” Tiffany decided, “I don’t want to marry until I’m at least fifteen.”
As Ducket considered his life, in the early spring of 1379, one thing concerned him: he was seventeen, but he had never had a woman.
He had kissed, to be sure. When it came to wrestling or boxing, he had proved his manhood to his fellow apprentices many times. But when, as they sometimes did, his friends went off to the stews on Bankside, he always made some excuse and left them to it. This was not because he was timid; but the seediness of the place and the risk of disease offended him. Sometimes, as he was healthy and well made, he thought he had noticed women glance at him appraisingly; but he was not quite sure how to approach them.
He could not confide this problem in Fleming, Bull, or even his worldly godfather Chaucer. But one day at the start of April, after they had chanced to meet in the Cheap, he asked the advice of Whittington, who remarked: “I might be able to help you there. Give me a week or two.”
With some excitement, therefore, ten days later, the boy met his friend at a tavern, down behind St Mary-le-Bow. But when he entered the crowded tavern, Whittington met him with a long face. “A delay,” he murmured apologetically. “I’ve been trapped. You’ll have to help me make polite conversation for a while until this person leaves. Then we’ll see what we can do.” And to his chagrin, as Whittington led him to a table, Ducket saw that the cause of the delay was none other than Silversleeves’ cousin, the long-nosed nun from St Helen’s, whom he had once seen at the house on London Bridge. “For God’s sake not a word about what I’m up to,” Whittington whispered.
Ducket found it hard to concentrate. More than once he surreptitiously glanced around to see if he could spot the woman who, he hoped, he was there to meet, but without success. Meanwhile, for the nun’s benefit, Whittington was putting on a display of serious good manners that almost suggested he was on the way to Mass. For her part, Sister Olive asked the boy about himself and something in her smile seemed to indicate approval.
Shortly afterwards she indicated that she