Joanna Hickson - The Tudor Bride

Master Vintner ignored the dauphin/Pretender slip in favour of blatant flattery. ‘Saint’s bones! You are a grandmother? Impossible!’

I felt my cheeks burn even hotter and inwardly scolded myself for foolishness. ‘It is only too possible, sir,’ I said, avoiding his teasing gaze. ‘You might be a grandparent yourself if your son were a daughter.’

He thought about that for a moment. ‘Ah yes, I see what you mean. I find it difficult to contemplate the fact that my daughters are nearly of an age to take husbands. Am I the only father who hates that thought?’

I gave a small laugh. ‘That depends on the husbands they take. Fortunately mine chose well.’

He frowned. ‘Chose?’ he echoed. ‘You mean she chose her own husband? What was her father doing?’

My cheeks had cooled now and I gave him a direct look. ‘Sadly I lost my husband after the Battle of Agincourt. He was as much a casualty of that disaster as the Duke of York, even if he was not a nobleman.’

‘A disaster you call it?’ He kept his expression neutral. ‘Well I suppose for many thousands of your countrymen it was just that. Did he fight in the battle?’

I laid down my horn spoon to clasp my hands tightly in my lap. I did not wish to begin a detailed description of Jean-Michel’s miserable and unnecessary death. ‘No, he was a charettier. He drove supplies for the royal army. Although I serve the queen, I am not of noble stock, sir.’

Master Vintner struck his knee with the palm of his hand and laughed. ‘No more are my son and I, Madame, and yet we serve the king. These are changing times, are they not?’

I resumed my meal and we ate in silence for a few moments. ‘Where is Walter?’ I asked at length. ‘I do not imagine he is a lay-abed.’

‘No, no. I have sent him about his own business. He has gone to buy quills and paper. If you will permit me, I will escort you to the Tailors Hall myself. As it happens, I have done legal work for the guild and I think my introduction may ensure you more solicitous attention than my young son’s.’ He paused, observing me humbly. ‘I hope this arrangement does not offend you.’

In fact I found myself unexpectedly pleased by his offer but I restricted my response to a brief smile and a nod of appreciation. ‘Not at all, sir,’ I said. ‘It is very generous of you to spare the time.’

On Master Vintner’s advice I strapped pattens onto my shoes for the walk to Threadneedle Street and I was glad I had. The muckrakers may have been out at dawn, but the gutters in the lane had already received new and generous dumps of household waste and the main thoroughfares were liberally scattered with fresh droppings from travellers’ horses and the wild pigs that still apparently roamed the streets and gardens. London’s fifty thousand citizens had to eat and drink and pursue their livelihoods and so they also had to live with the side effects. Although the pattens made walking clumsy, at least they kept my feet and my skirt off the ground and my escort was kind enough to offer me his arm over the worst parts.

It was not far to the Tailors Hall and, on the way, we passed numerous workshops of crafts I would need to explore later; haberdashers, drapers, cordwainers, hatters, glovers and hosiers. London might be only half the size of Paris, but there seemed to be no lack of the skills necessary to maintain Queen Catherine’s reputation for setting the style, even when she began to change shape from her usual willow-wand slimness. The only question lay in whether there was a tailor who would be able to satisfy her demand for the new and avant-garde. My son-in-law Jacques had proved exactly the young and daring innovator she had wanted and I needed to find his equal in the lanes off Threadneedle Street.

By coincidence, while we waited in the dim oak-panelled hall for a meeting with the grand master of the guild, we witnessed an argument between a tailor and his wife which stirred my interest. For a guild freeman, which he clearly was, the tailor was a relatively young man; in his mid-twenties I would have guessed, his wife about the same, and their conversation centred on a subject which, in view of my own daughter’s position; working in Paris with her husband, was of particular interest to me.

‘Whatever happens, you are not to become excited and start shouting.’

These were the first words I heard as we drew near to the couple, who were among several groups and individuals standing around the long room. The young tailor was addressing his wife, who was already red-faced with suppressed irritation.

‘It will not help your cause and nor will it help mine, which is more important,’ he added.

‘It is unjust!’ she seethed, her voice vibrating with passionate indignation, ‘My work is lauded in the guild when it carries your name and yet I am not permitted to sell it as my own. I do not know how you can take all the credit when you know it is I who do the work.’

‘It is our business, Meg, and we are making our reputation,’ he insisted, keeping his tone deliberate and hushed. ‘When we married, you were happy just to have an outlet for your designs. Do not forget that you would have had no opportunity at all without the backing of my name.’

‘But it is not your name that actually does the designs, cuts the patterns and sews the seams, it is me! How would you like to have someone else receive all the praise and money for your singular endeavours?’

‘I would not stand for it, but I am a man and that is the way things are and you will not change it by shouting at the grand master like a Billingsgate fishwife!’

She looked mutinous, but simmered down enough to keep her thought process logical. ‘Perhaps the answer is for me to stop work and then we will see if our business makes any money!’ she muttered.

‘You can stop work when you fulfil your marriage contract and produce the children to staff our workshop,’ retorted the man with what I surmised was unkindness born of disappointment. ‘Until then, let us turn our attention to the more urgent business of how we are going to answer the guild’s accusations of over-pricing.’

She sniffed loudly, her resentment simmering. ‘We demand the highest prices because our gowns are of the highest quality. I will insist that fact until the moon turns blue.’

At this point a clerk nudged my companion’s elbow and asked us to follow him to the grand master’s chamber. As we traversed the hall, I asked the clerk if he knew the name of the couple we had been standing next to. He glanced back and smiled with instant recognition. ‘Ah yes, goodwife,’ he said, embarrassingly mistaking us for a married couple, ‘that is Master Anthony and his wife. Their designs are presently in great demand by London’s richest and noblest and, because of that, they think they can break the guild’s price tariffs. They are in dispute with the Chapter.’

‘And with each other,’ I murmured and made a mental note of the name Anthony, but I had more interest in the mistress than the master. A female tailor with a reputation for style might be just what Catherine needed in the months leading up to her confinement.

On my return to the house in Tun Lane, the smell of roasting beef assailed my nostrils like a benediction. After introducing me to the Grand Master Tailor my host had left me to attend to his own business, leaving strict instructions for me to meet Walter by the Cheapside fountain at the Vespers bell.

‘I have told my son to escort you home because London is a safe city in daylight,’ he had advised, ‘but as darkness falls a good woman risks being mistaken for one of her less reputable sisters. Besides, you might lose your way and I do not wish you to miss any part of the meal my sister is preparing for us this evening!’