London - Edward Rutherfurd [276]
And then something happened.
With a roar of rage, Bull turned upon Tiffany and, swinging his large arm, struck her face with the open flat of his hand so hard that she seemed to fly from him like a wounded bird. There was a general gasp.
Then a cry, as Tiffany, spinning away, crashed against the open window, lost her balance, and fell out.
“My God!” Bull, suddenly ashen, leaped to the window. The whole room seemed to surge forward, as Tiffany, with a faint cry, dropped like a bundle of clothes the thirty feet into the waters of the Thames below.
The sequence of events that followed lasted only a matter of seconds from beginning to end, yet, to most of those present, they seemed to happen rather slowly.
Tiffany’s dress had lessened the impact of her fall and she was only briefly submerged. Though stunned as she came up, she could see that one of the bridge’s great piers was only yards away and she struggled desperately to reach it before the current took her to the point where the waters began their irresistible rush into the channel. She was vaguely aware of a voice far above crying – “Hold on” – as she managed to seize the long riverweeds that grew upon its sides. But already the current was pulling, tugging at her dress. The weeds were slippery. Frantically she held on, but knew she could not do so for long. Yards away, the churning waters roared and foamed; the current seemed to be urging her, ever more insistently, to join it in the headlong ride to death.
Above, in the big room, all was confusion. What should they do? Bull was struggling to get out of his heavy robe; his wife, about to lose a husband as well as a daughter, was gasping for breath. Silversleeves, with a look of deep piety, sank to his knees and began to pray, while James Bull, waving his arms wildly, cried out: “A rope! Fetch a rope!” Clambering across the room, he knocked over the table, stamping, in his haste, upon the astrolabe and crushing its delicate mechanism entirely.
But it was Ducket who, dropping the knife and ignoring Silversleeves, ran to the window and launched himself out into the air just as, below, Tiffany’s fingers lost their grip.
A second later he followed her, into the raging torrent.
Bull the merchant had many faults, but ingratitude was not one of them. Nor, indeed, was moral cowardice.
Some hours later, when Tiffany was sufficiently recovered to talk, he spent some time at her bedside, listening while she spoke to him earnestly. Then he went down to the kitchen where, in dry clothes, Ducket was sitting by the fire, and asked the apprentice to accompany him to the big room.
“I have thanked you for saving Tiffany’s life, which you certainly did, and I do so again,” he began. “But I now believe, after talking to Tiffany, that I owe you an unqualified apology for doubting your character. I ask your forgiveness.” He paused. “It seems also that my daughter is very anxious to marry you instead of that rogue Silversleeves. Her judgement is obviously better than mine.” And now he smiled. “The question is, Ducket, would you consider it?”
Ducket and Tiffany were married a week later. It was a happy occasion. Whittington stood beside the bridegroom. Chaucer made a speech.
The rich merchant, before giving his daughter to the foundling, had made one stipulation. “Since I have no son, and you will enjoy a large fortune from me, I ask one thing: that you, Ducket, should take the name of Bull.” To which the couple had readily agreed. It was therefore Geoffrey and Tiffany Bull who now started their new life together, in the pleasant house already picked for them, on Oyster Hill by London Bridge.
One other happy event also took place a month later. On the eve of her daughter’s wedding to Carpenter, Dame Barnikel made an announcement.
“I’m going to marry James.”
She had decided she could make something of him; and James Bull for his part, it seemed, had concluded that, if not the fortune he had