Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [453]
On this basis their marriage had continued without undue friction, ever since. Their children were married now. The girl was a secret Catholic; his son was not.
He saw Abigail Mason marry Robert and have two children. She was still as pale as ever; but he noticed that she and her family quietly attended Elizabeth’s church services rather than pay the fine. He often thought of poor Peter with affection, and wondered whether Abigail did.
Once or twice during these years he also saw Nellie Wilson, who had now grown into a respectable married woman at Christchurch. She became a little stout, and her husband grew so rich by his voyages that he was on a nodding acquaintance with the gentry. He never alluded to her past; indeed, there were few at Sarum besides Abigail Mason who could even remember her. As for Piers Godfrey, he died and left a little family of artisans to whom Edward sometimes gave a little work.
There was only one storm cloud on the horizon threatening the peace he loved so much – Catholic Spain. For Philip of Spain was arming for an invasion; and already he had supported a rising in Ireland.
The Spanish king had a Catholic rival to Elizabeth, her cousin Mary Queen of Scots – thrown out of Scotland by the dour Protestant followers of John Knox, safely confined in England, but a rallying point for every Catholic rebel.
Philip had papal support too. Since Elizabeth had failed to return her kingdom to Rome, he had excommunicatd her and, worse, he had even secretly offered plenary indulgences – remission of their sins – to certain gentlemen who had offered to assassinate her. Subtle and determined Jesuits like Edmund Campion were even now touring the country in secret, telling good Catholics they must not attend Elizabeth’s church and stirring up all manner of trouble.
It was all leading to a Spanish invasion.
And this was the important subject which nowadays occupied his mind more than any other. He had been pondering it all the way from Downton and it was about this that he planned to address Salisbury council the following month.
Katherine was surprised to see him back so soon.
He asked her who the stranger was.
“I hardly know him,” she told him. “A goldsmith I think, who knows John. He only came to pay his respects.” She smiled. “There is something I think would interest you more though – Thomas Forest came here two hours ago. He wants you to visit him at Avonsford.”
And at this news Edward Shockley immediately forgot all the other matters that had been on his mind.
What in the world, after so many years, could Forest want with him now?
The rift between Edward Shockley and Thomas Forest had opened gradually. But for years he had supposed it was complete.
It had begun because, for once, Forest had been wrong in a business assessment.
Their joint cloth venture had not been a great success.
For their main market, the Netherlands, had been sadly disrupted. The cause was Spain, which tried to impose its Catholicism and the cruel rule of the Inquisition on an unwilling population. The brutal troops of the Duke of Alva had been valiantly opposed by the Dutch forces of William of Orange. And the effect, for years, had been chaos. The great Antwerp cloth trade had suffered, and so had the cloth merchants of England.
Shockley’s trade was hit. He fought back, finding markets for his best broadcloth, and set up business in striped kersey and lace as well.
“But though it provides enough to keep us,” he told his family, “the profit is not nearly enough to satisfy Forest.”
And so, a little before Bishop Jewel died, he had bought Forest out, for a modest figure. It was an arrangement that worked well. His son and John Moody ran the business now.
He had made one other change too. Since the Antwerp business had gone, he had let the Fleming pay off the debt on easy terms, so that his family should be provided for, then he had