London - Edward Rutherfurd [264]
One month later, Benedict Silversleeves and Tiffany Bull were betrothed. At Tiffany’s request, the marriage was not to take place until the following summer.
When James Bull heard that Tiffany was betrothed, he looked very thoughtful. “That’s it then,” he said at last. If, in his inner heart, he had known that the last five years of hoping had been a waste of time, his sense of family duty and of his own worth had never allowed him to acknowledge it. And now, just when, for the first time, he had at last got into his kinsman’s good graces, it was all over. Suddenly, he realized, his life had no particular object. He began to frequent the George. Not that he drank heavily, or failed to attend to his business, but there were still many hours when a man might sit morosely by himself; and this is what he did.
Dame Barnikel noticed him, and remembered vaguely seeing him like this once before. Now, rather curious, she kept an eye on him and pointed him out to Amy.
“A man,” she told her daughter, “is what you make of him.” Not she reflected to herself, with a sigh, that she had been able to make much of poor Fleming. “But now that young man,” she said, “needs looking after.” After a while she decided to take him, as she put it, under her wing. Whenever James came in, he found the formidable landlady wreathed in smiles. “Here’s this handsome man again,” she would say in her deep voice, as she sat him down. She positively purred at him. She even made the big, spare fellow feel attractive. “There,” she would say to Amy afterwards, as the girl stood awkwardly by. “You must learn to bring a man out; you never know what may be in there.”
Sometimes, she had to admit to herself, Amy wondered how she would accomplish this with Carpenter. Of course, she still admired his quiet strength; but the experience with Tyler’s revolt had disconcerted her. When he had returned from St Bartholomew’s, he had had nothing worse than some burns and a massive bump on his head. But who knows what might have happened to him if it had not been for Ducket? Nor had he changed his views. “It was London ruffians who did the looting,” he told her. “We still live under a godless authority. One day it will have to change.” She was not sure what she felt. But he was still her man. And so she knew she must be glad when, shortly before Christmas he announced: “I think we might marry in the summer.”
To many in England, after the calamities of the previous twelvemonth, the start of the year 1382 seemed to promise a new and brighter hope. In January a happy event took place. Richard II, the brave boy king, was married to Anne, a plain but kindly princess. She was almost as young as he, and had come, enduring a dangerous sea crossing, from the distant land of Bohemia, in eastern Europe. To the delight of all it was obvious that, as in a fairy tale, the young king and Anne of Bohemia had fallen instantly in love.
In the Bull household there was a hope that they might be similarly blessed.
In the last week of February the fat girl decided to speak. If there was a reason why she chose to do so then, it was buried deep in the folds of her person. “Ducket wasn’t in the riots,” she remarked, quite suddenly, to Tiffany in the kitchen one day. “He was saving a man’s life.”
When Tiffany told her father about this, he was not very encouraging. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but I’m not convinced. The fat girl only had the tale from Ducket himself. And whatever he says he was doing, there’s no doubt he was at the Savoy. Besides,” he went on, “you may recall Dame Barnikel’s suspicions about the theft of money. I’m not prepared to revise my opinion, and,” he gave her a hard look “you’re to stay away from him, if you please.” To which Tiffany bowed her head meekly and said nothing.
Then she sent a message.
Ducket came as appointed to the church of St Mary-le-Bow.