Suzannah Dunn - The Queen of Subtleties

What a strange request: everyone’s very interested in the finished articles, but I’ve never come across anyone who cares how they’re made. ‘Well, I’m afraid, as you can see, it’s not really happening today. Today is comfits.’

A wince of a smile from him, as if it’s his fault. He glances appreciatively around the room, making the best of it now that he’s here.

‘If you come back on Friday, I’ll be sculpting.’

‘Right.’ He snaps to attention. ‘See you on Friday.’

I’m saying, ‘Well, only if you want to,’ but he’s already gone.

This next time, funnily enough, they pass each other in the doorway. When he’s shut the door, Richard asks me, ‘What was Smeaton doing here?’

‘Smeaton?’

He comes over to look at what I’ve been doing.

‘His name’s Mark.’

‘Yep. Mark Smeaton.’

‘How do you know who he is?’

He saunters away with a smirk. ‘I know anyone who’s anyone, Lulabel.’

‘But he’s a musician.’ That’s what he’s just told me.

He stops, turns back to me. ‘A musician?’ He looks amused. ‘Is that what he told you?’

My heart flounders: what does he mean? what’s going on?

‘He’s the musician, more like. The up-and-coming musician. In the king’s opinion.’ He ties his apron around his waist.

‘Mark?’ The Mark who was in here, just now?

‘Smeaton. Otherwise known as Angel-voice.’

Angel-voice? ‘Is he?’

‘Well, no, but he could be.’ He’s washing his hands. ‘His voice is what he’s famous for.’

‘Famous?’

‘Well, kind of. Known for.’ Slant-eyes sideways. ‘Let’s face it, it isn’t for his dress sense, is it.’

Sometimes Richard is so shallow. He has a lot to learn about what matters in life.

‘Anyway,’ he dries his hands on his apron, ‘what was he doing in here? Ol’ Angel-face.’

Angel-face. Angel-voice, Angel-face. Which is it? I don’t seem able to see him, hear him, now, in my memory, as if Richard’s names for him have brought me up too close. ‘He wanted to see me.’

‘What about?’

‘Nothing. He wanted to…see what we do. How we do it.’ It sounds ridiculous. Spoken, it’s become ridiculous.

Richard is craning along a shelf of moulds. ‘Thinking of becoming a confectioner, is he? Nice little sideline for when his voice breaks.’

Right, that’s enough. I reach around him, on tip-toe, and swipe a tiger from the shelf: ‘This one.’

He whips around, his weird eyes on mine. Amused, again. ‘What do you get up to when I leave you in here? Do Gentlemen of the Privy Chamber usually drop by?’

And now he’s getting carried away. ‘No, but he’s not a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber, is he. He’s a musician.’ As if any musicians ever come in here. As if anyone at all ever comes in here, when Richard’s not around.

‘Yes, and, Lulatrix, he’s a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber.’

But this is absurd: what does Richard take me for? ‘He’s a musician. You just said so. Which means he works. Doesn’t joust, all day long. And he’s…he’s nice.’

‘Oh, come on, Lucy. You, of all people, should know that our dear good king can be…unconventional, shall we say, when it comes to staffing. He likes talented people. Recognizes talented people. Likes them around. And he loves music. Is there anything he loves more than music? Well, except…well, except a lot of things.’

‘Mark’s really a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber?’

Richard’s busy checking that the mould is clean, dry, undamaged. ‘The king likes him; I mean, really likes him. God knows why, but he does.’

‘What d’you mean, God knows why?’

‘Well, he’s hardly Privy Chamber material, is he.’

And isn’t that good? Perhaps not in Richard’s view, but certainly in mine. I lose track of who’s in the Privy Chamber, but anyway they’re all the same in that merry band: top-heavy with titles, too handsome to be true, too clever for their own good and a law unto themselves.

I ask him, ‘How do you know all this?’

He grins. ‘I have friends in high places.’

For once, I’m not going to let him get away with his usual flippancy. ‘Who?’

He seems genuinely surprised; he puts the mould aside. ‘In particular? At the moment?’ He means it: it’s a proper question.

I nod.

‘Silvester Parry. One of Sir Henry Norris’s pages.’

‘Silvester.’ Unusual name.

‘Silvester,’ he agrees, as if I’m a clever child.

‘Well, you’re going up in the world.’

Something amuses him; he’s about to say, but seems to think better of it.

Sir Henry Norris, I’m thinking. Isn’t he the king’s best friend? A Gentleman of the Privy Chamber; I do know that. And the one who is indeed a gentleman, by all accounts. Or perhaps by Richard’s account; I don’t remember where I heard it. Isn’t he the widower? With the little boy? ‘Is he a recent friend? Silvester?’

‘Very recent. But very good.’ Richard, gathering ingredients, laughs even as he’s turning his nose up at the remains of my gum tragacanth mix.

‘Good,’ I say. ‘Good.’ And I made a friend, today.

He’d hesitated—Mark—as before, in the doorway, and said, ‘Well, here I am.’

Presumably it seemed just as odd to him as to me that we’d made the arrangement. If ‘Friday’ could be said to be an arrangement. It seemed to have worked as one, though, because—as he said—here he was. And early. Calling to him to come in, I tried to make it sound as if I did this all the time: welcomed spectators. As he crossed the threshold, he took a deep, slow breath.

‘The smell in here…’ He sounded appreciative, and full of wonder.

I confided my suspicion that I can’t smell it, any more; not really, not how it smells to an outsider.

He looked stricken, on my behalf. ‘You need a stronger dose. You’ll have to stroll through some sugar-and-spices orchards; perhaps that’d do the trick.’

‘Yes, but first I’d have to go to sea for weeks on end.’

‘Ah. Yes.’ He made a show of shuddering.

That, we were agreed on. I indicated for him to draw up a stool, and he settled beside me. The scent of him was of outside: his lodgings’ woodsmoke and the incense of chapel; and, below all that, was…birdsong. Birdsong? Morning air. He smells alive, I thought, and presumably I smell preserved. Even when I do manage to get outside, I’m usually only crossing the yard between my lodgings and here. The air in the yard throbs with baking bread, brewing and roasting. ‘And I’m not sure about those “orchards”,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure that sugar, when it’s growing…well, that it’s anything like what turns up at Southampton. Unless it grows in blue paper wrappers.’

‘Oh.’ He glanced around, expectantly, presumably looking for them, our conical sugar loaves. I broke it to him that he wouldn’t find any, here. They’re locked in a trunk in the spicery. Even I have to apply to the Chief Clerk for my requirements. Then he asked me about spices, about whether they grow. ‘I just can’t imagine them growing,’ he said.

I explained that they’re seeds, mostly.

‘Yes, but that’s it: I can’t imagine the plants.’

I considered this. Reaching into a bowl, I took a rose-petal. With it on my palm, I said, ‘I wonder, if you’d never seen a rosebush, whether you could imagine where this came from.’ I passed it to him.

He held it and then rubbed it slowly between forefinger and thumb. It kept its shape, bounced back from every fold; effectively remained untouched. ‘I’d never thought of them as tough,’ he said, and he was as surprised as I’d known he would be. ‘They’re not really delicate at all, are they.’