6

‘So is it true?’ Anne Pratte asked, eyes coquettishly down on her flying fingers. ‘What they're saying about your sister?’

Isabel had her fingers awkwardly up in the air, each with a bow of blue silk around them, and the other end of the blue threads tied, six feet away, to a nail in the wall. The braiding technique involved swapping bows from one finger to the next, using four fingers on each hand in a complicated chain of movements, each round of which created an elaborate knot that lengthened the fingerloop braid by a fraction. She'd been hoping to astonish her new teacher with her skill.

She had no idea what Anne Pratte could have heard about Jane. She should have known, though. She was coming to appreciate how important it was to know what people were saying. A rumour might mean a concealed truth; guessing a secret might give inside information that might then translate into a deal on advantageous terms. So the question made her drop one loop, then another. She hissed in a breath.

‘Pick it up, dear, quickly,’ Anne Pratte said calmly, taking in the tangle of threads and instantly understanding what was going on with them. ‘You're on bow reversed; pick up the side below, not the side above; then lower the bows.’ Without for a second pausing the lightning rhythm of her own hand movements, in and out, with a haze of blue loops whisking on and off her fingers, and the cord, which would be used as the drawstring for a purse, already at least a foot long, she went on, in the same meditative tone: ‘They say Jane Shore is going to divorce her husband.’

‘Oh dear,’ Anne Pratte added fretfully a moment later, looking across again. ‘Whatever have you done with that braid now?’

Anne Pratte let Isabel out early when Isabel said she wanted to visit her sister. She softened visibly when Isabel told her she'd been meaning to tell Jane she'd moved inside the Claver house to start learning fine silkwork.

There was no one at the Shore house on Old Jewry. It was shut up. Isabel found Jane in the garden of John Lambert's house instead, even though their father was away in the Low Countries. She was sitting on a bench, bareheaded, with the sun turning her waist-length blonde hair to a white-gold flame. She was reading a French romance; one of the new printed ones from Gutenberg. She was wearing a green velvet robe, with an emerald-in-the-heart pendant round her neck. There was a little smile on her face, and she was humming.

‘You probably know more than I do,’ she said coyly, in answer to Isabel's abrupt question. She didn't seem surprised by it, any more than she did by Isabel's sudden appearance at the Lambert house for the first time in months. It all seemed quite natural to her. She was used to people wanting to know her business. ‘What are they saying?’

It took Isabel what seemed like hours to drag it out of her sister, in a welter of embarrassment and euphemism. Will Shore had never beaten his wife, or neglected her (except for his ledgers), or been cruel in any worse way than to bore her. But he couldn't perform the act of love. ‘We've never … never … you know,’ Jane muttered, and Isabel first nodded, then shook her head, with the smell of Thomas's body suddenly filling her nostrils. She shut her mind to it; pursed her lips to keep memory away. Jane was giggling in what sounded like girlish embarrassment.

The four-year age gap between them used to mean that Jane always seemed grown-up and sophisticated to Isabel, whatever she did. But when Isabel heard that pretty tinkle of a laugh she suddenly felt older than her elder sister. Jane didn't seem to know the meaning of pain. A divorce would publicly shame Will Shore forever, Isabel thought. She hardly knew him, but he seemed harmless enough: skinny and hard-working and dull. And she could just imagine Katherine Dore and Agnes Brundyssch's response to the gossip. The delight. The catcalls. The gestures. He'd be destroyed.

‘Why a divorce?’ she asked. ‘Why can't you just quietly get an annulment? If the marriage hasn't … hasn't really …’ She collected herself. ‘It seems cruel.’

Jane's answer was strangely light. ‘Well, he's gone to Bruges to hide his blushes,’ she said casually. ‘Anyway, he refused to talk about an annulment. I did ask. I think he thought I'd just shut up if he said no. But I won't.’ She tilted her chin up; Isabel thought she had all the confidence of an indulged child that things would go her way. She went on, a little defiantly: ‘Why should I? Non-consummation of a marriage is grounds for divorce. It's the purpose of holy wedlock to allow women to bear children; to settle for less is to deny God's will.’

Isabel gaped. Those sounded like someone else's words. Jane wasn't usually hard. Whose advice was she taking? ‘Who's paying for the hearing?’ she asked, groping for the truth. Not Will, surely? And not their father. He must be furious, however gentle he'd always been with Jane. It would cost a fortune, and he'd be humiliating himself. He'd arranged the marriage in the first place.

The question made Jane shift in her seat, and pleat the cloth of her dress. Isabel looked hard at her. Jane wasn't good at secrets. She was definitely hiding something. ‘Father,’ Jane said eventually. But she blushed as she said it.

‘Why?’ Isabel asked blankly. Jane only looked demure and shrugged, like a cat getting a speck of dirt off its gleaming coat.

‘Of course, he's not happy …’ she offered. And she put her hand on Isabel's arm, cajolingly. ‘I'm not either.’

Jane Shore didn't know how to sound serious. Everything always came out with a giggle and a shrug, as though she didn't quite believe in what she was saying. It had been like that since she'd grown so tall and men had started hanging on her every word, looking foolishly happy, then, equally inexplicably, getting angry with her. They all seemed to assume she must be deliberately exerting some sort of influence over them; that she was in control of the effect she had; when the reality was that she understood neither the open-mouthed, moonstruck beginnings of their overtures nor the bitterness that followed; she just felt guilty, as if she agreed with them that she must, in some way she didn't understand, be to blame. Which made her giggle, and shrug, as if she was perpetually excusing herself. Which she was. She could see from her sister's unsympathetic face now that she was failing to convey the miserable reality of her marriage. She couldn't blame Isabel for not understanding, exactly. She just wished she was better at explaining herself.

It had started with the wedding night. Will's big eyes, with the black smudges underneath, opened wide and accusing; his little mouth pursing up small and round and ugly. Like a cat's behind, she thought, with a miserable giggle. Sneering at her. The remarks. That first night it had all been about dancing with the King. ‘If you could have seen yourself. No one knew where to put themselves. You were panting over him like a dog on heat.’ But what else could she have done but dance with the King if he asked her? If he came to her wedding party? She didn't ask, and Will didn't offer an explanation. After all the happiness and energy of the party, she felt as shamed as if he'd poured dirty water on her.

After that, there was always something she seemed to be doing wrong, and whatever she did to try to put things right only seemed to make things worse. It wasn't that he couldn't make love to her; the problem was that he wouldn't. When she'd first tried to kiss him, twining her legs through his, he'd pushed her away. She'd felt like a whore. When she'd tried to sleep quietly at his side and not disturb him, he'd woken her up, repeatedly, through the night; shaking her spitefully; mouthing at her, ‘You're snoring!’

‘But Isabel never told me I snored,’ she'd stammered, trying to defend herself but not knowing how. He only pursed his mouth up again and took himself, wrapped in a sheet, off to another room.

She felt uglier every time he moved his arms or legs another fastidious inch away from her, as if she smelled or her breath were rank; there was a pained look his face took on at the sight of her that cut her to the quick. Once he'd brought home a basket of pomegranates and she'd burst into delighted laughter. It must be a peace token, she'd thought.

‘Are those for me?’ she'd asked, looking at him with hope. ‘Shall we share them? Shall I peel you one?’

And he'd smiled like cold steel before answering: ‘Well, dear wife, I don't know that you've done anything to deserve treats,’ and, laughing, had taken the basket away.

Sometimes he'd end a conversation in which she was trying to suggest a visit or a dinner or an outing with the casual line, ‘That might be good – if I loved you’; sometimes he'd tell her she broke her bread too aggressively, or cut her meat like a peasant; or that she walked clumsily, or drank too much, or was a slattern in the house; or he'd just remark on how different the two of them were, as if inviting her to ask in what way (she quickly learned not to, if she wanted to avoid being hurt). And sometimes he'd give a long-suffering sigh and ask her to stop caterwauling, and she'd realise she must have been singing under her breath while she sewed.

She had tried; she really had. At least for a while. But it had so quickly all come to seem hopeless. And when her father had asked her to go with him to one or two of the court functions he'd started being invited to she'd been thrilled to discover how easy it was, as soon as she got out of the poisonous atmosphere of her new house in Old Jewry (she couldn't think of it as a home), to sparkle and laugh again.

But even that had only made things worse. When her husband got it into his head that she was sleeping with the King there was no appeasing him. ‘You slut, you whore, you dog,’ he'd say conversationally – it was the chatty ordinariness of his voice that most frightened her, ‘have you no shame?’ It made no difference what words she used to deny it; how many times she widened her eyes, put a pleading hand on his arm, and said, ‘But it was just a hunt’, or, ‘I was with my father all day.’

So Jane was grateful beyond belief that the hearing at the Court of Arches was set for just two weeks hence. Will would be back from Bruges by then. She could only pray that he would actually turn up.

She was desperate for it to be properly over. She didn't want to have to giggle and shrug apologetically and submit to any more hard stares from people who seemed to think it must be all her fault. Even Isabel, who she knew had a kind heart, but whose way of listening to news was so unnerving; who was sitting now as Jane remembered her always having done while she thought about things: tucked up on herself like a little ginger cat, knees under chin, hands round knees. Her eyes, looking hard and cold. Not blinking. Not touching. Not saying a word.

‘Isn't there anything else?’ Isabel asked in the end. She still didn't understand. ‘Anything you've forgotten to tell me?’ It was Jane's way sometimes to forget things.

Jane ran long fingers through messy blonde hair. There was a tiny frown threatening between her perfect eyebrows. But fretfulness only made her look more adorable.

‘Oh …’ she said disconsolately. ‘So many things; I don't know where to begin. I don't want to complain about him, you know. I just want it to be finished.’

And she looked so imploring that Isabel found herself feeling sorry for her, and melting, and smiling, and doing what she knew Jane would want: opening her arms to offer comfort. But even in the tangle of arms and blondeness and prettily tearful smiles that ensued, Isabel went on worrying over whether there wasn't more to this than met the eye. It didn't add up.

Isabel could feel the story taking on its own life in the markets, even on her brief walk home. Speculative eyes burned into her back. On the corner of Milk Street and Catte Street, two boys who caught sight of her started rhythmically grinding their pelvises and wrapping their arms round invisible women, then looking down, miming horrified disappointment, and bursting into comical boohoos. She speeded up, with her cheeks burning.

More gales of laughter met her inside the Claver door. Male laughter. She stared. There were two strangers in the hall. They were sitting on the two benches with a chessboard laid out between them on the little chest, but they weren't looking at the board. They didn't look at Isabel either, shrinking back in the doorway, hoping they weren't also enjoying the market story about Jane. They were too busy slapping their thighs and holding their stomachs and groaning with mirth to see anyone. They had tears running down their cheeks.

‘Whatever's got into you?’ Isabel heard Alice Claver say from the kitchen end of the hall. She had a servant behind her, with a platter of meat and pastry and a jug of wine.

They straightened up, a bit guiltily, when they heard her voice. Alice Claver was used to respect. But neither of these men – one a tall, sandy-haired, stooping man of middle years, in blue velvet mercer's robes; the other of similar age, a well-knit fellow with the blue-black hair and dark eyes of an Italian, who must be Goffredo D'Amico – could stop himself. The dark man looked down, but he couldn't stop his lips twitching. The sandy one wiped his eyes, tried to straighten his face, then began helplessly guffawing again.

‘Will,’ Alice Claver said forbiddingly. ‘Goffredo.’ Isabel, feeling invisible, thought she was about to bring them to order. But then, to her astonishment, Alice Claver's mouth also began to lift at the corners. ‘Come on, tell me,’ she said, as skittish as the girl she must once have been. Isabel could swear she was about to join in the laughter.

‘You must remember, Alice …’ the sandy one, who must be Will, said through his laughter, showing no fear at all. ‘Master Large's face when he got his first delivery from Venice.’ Alice Claver's face was definitely creasing up now. She sat heavily down, leaned forward on her elbows, and joined in the story for the Italian guest with such gusto that soon Isabel could hardly tell who was spluttering out which choked phrase. ‘Crimson purple silk.’ ‘Supposed to be for the French Queen's coronation robe.’ ‘When he realised it wasn't dyed with the proper expensive kermes he'd paid for …’ ‘… because all the cheap brazilwood and indigo they'd doctored it with in Venice started leaking into the wash he'd got us to do …’ ‘… and he was so angry …’ ‘… he stormed out of the storeroom to tell Mistress Large …’ ‘… with his hands dripping with fraud's purple …’ ‘… and put his foot …’ ‘… right into her bucket of chicken food!’ And all three of them put back their heads and howled at the long-ago memory. ‘Ha ha ha!’

Isabel was smiling in her corner, almost with them, in the quiet way of someone not sure whether they're invited to join in. This display of back-slapping camaraderie that clearly stretched back half a lifetime – she was almost sure now that the man called Will must be Will Caxton, who she knew was now a merchant venturer based in the Low Countries or maybe Cologne, and who'd once been a mercer's apprentice with Alice in this house – was making her feel left out of life, in just the same way that her creeping feeling that Jane must only be telling her half of what had been going on with her husband had. She despised herself for the prickle of self-pity she suddenly felt; the sense that her own life had become small, dull, lonely and closed. But she couldn't help herself. She found herself longing for eyes to light up with glee when they saw her face, for girls to twitch maypole ribbons round her while she kicked up her heels, for men to pull her excitedly into groups of laughing friends and buy her lengths of green velvet.

‘Ahhh …’ Alice Claver sighed, putting her head in her hands. The laughter was fading.

Isabel shifted a foot. She shrank shyly back as the Venetian turned a surprised head towards her, clearly only just becoming aware of her. He must be forty, like his friends, but he was so tall and muscled that he seemed in the prime of life. Under his black, rumpled hair she could see a powerful face, with laugh lines running from hooked nose to strong mouth. And there were more laugh lines at the edges of the dark, thickly fringed, dramatic eyes that were now fastening on her. But perhaps that was just because he was crinkling his eyes again in the beginning of a delighted smile. At her.

‘So,’ he said, holding her eyes for so long she could see the tiger flecks in his; so long that she felt warmth wash right through her at the slow, glowing happiness the sight of her seemed to be giving him; not looking away even though his question, in rolling, flirtatious, lustrously foreign English, was for Alice, ‘who have we here?’

And before she knew where she was, he'd paced over to her, taken her hand, bowed over it so close she could feel his breath on her fingers, and, straightening up, put his other hand round her waist and propelled her forward to join Alice and Will. Isabel looked up at him; he was close enough to kiss her as he looked merrily back down. She'd never been looked at like this before. ‘Please, join us,’ she heard him saying, and he gave a playful half-bow. ‘I can guess who you are. Alice's new apprentice; we're waiting for you. She's told us all about you.’ He stopped and corrected himself. ‘Not quite all.’ He grinned; she liked the impudence of it. ‘She never once mentioned your eyes.’

‘Well, why not spend time with a beautiful woman?’ Dickon was saying. He swung himself into his saddle. ‘Nothing wrong with that, if it makes you happy.’

Still on foot, with his hands grasping his own saddle, ready to mount, William Hastings looked searchingly up. But Dickon was a black silhouette against the sharp morning sun. He couldn't make out the expression in the younger man's eyes. He shrugged. It didn't really matter what Dickon thought, anyway.

It was only once the horses were walking at a slow clop out of the Westminster gate, with the knights and squires all clattering along behind, that Dickon spoke again.

‘Though of course it would make more sense if the beautiful woman you loved so much could actually be your mistress,’ he added prosaically. ‘Otherwise, what's the point?’

Hastings sighed. He'd known, right through the previous day's feasting, that Dickon wasn't warming to Jane. He'd danced with her, once; he'd listened to her play the viol and sing, and had smiled, coolly; he'd admired the green velvet gown; and he'd laughed in approximately the right places when she made her heart-stoppingly innocent little comments, so full of wit for those who knew how to appreciate them. Yet Hastings had been aware that Dickon's eyes hadn't ever filled with the soft fire he felt in himself when he looked at Jane, and saw in the face of the King or Thomas Dorset. Dickon had no finer feelings, Hastings thought regretfully. He was a fighter without equal; a resourceful planner; a tireless campaigner; an entertaining, cheerful, unpretentious companion; and faultlessly loyal. But all his virtues were warrior virtues. He was made for war. He just didn't understand the softer joys of peace and music and love.

As if confirming Hastings' unspoken judgement, Dickon's deep voice broke into his reverie. ‘Knights pining for the unattainable lady in the ivory tower – crossing forests and slaying giants to give her a token of their devotion, and all the rest of it – it's just stories; romances,’ the voice said, with ruthless cheerfulness. ‘You know that. Let's face it, Will. She's spoken for. You'll never have her.’

Suddenly relieved, Hastings laughed and raised his hands in mock-surrender. Dickon's certainty was catching, and he was right, after all. Hastings knew himself to be trapped in moonbeams. He wasn't the kind of man who couldn't laugh at the foolishness he'd got himself into; he'd always been a clear-headed man of war too, until now.

‘Seriously,’ he said; for it was hard to stop talking about her. ‘What did you think of her?’

Dickon paused to marshal his thoughts. Hastings' mind flashed back to the one snippet of conversation he'd heard between Jane Shore and the duke. Dickon had asked after the sister who'd got married at the same time, and Jane had dimpled exquisitely and replied, with a hint of mischief: ‘Ah, my serious sister! She's widowed now.’ He remembered Dickon's head leaning towards hers; his faultlessly courteous condolences. And he remembered Jane going on, with mockery beginning to twist her face; it must have embarrassed her to have to explain what had become of her sister. ‘Well, it was only an arranged marriage … though she's gone a bit odd since he died. Apprenticed herself to her mother-in-law – terrible woman – fire-breathing dragon. Insisted on it. My father was furious. So now she's spending her life winding threads in markets … poor thing …’ Perhaps she'd realised she sounded spiteful. She'd dimpled again; but not sweetly enough to take away the sting. Hastings had felt sorry for her; but he'd been aware of Dickon drawing quietly back, with a look of distaste.

Dickon had the same look on his face now, remembering her. ‘Pretty,’ he said briefly. It wasn't altogether a compliment. He added: ‘But not as soft as she likes to seem.’ After a silence, broken only by the creak of leather in sunlight and the jingle of metal and the breath of horses, he spoke again. He said, ‘My honest opinion?’ and Hastings nodded. Dickon said: ‘Well then. Too fond of being the centre of men's attention. And too many men.’

‘Immoral, you mean?’ Hastings queried; but Dickon was too good a companion to be drawn too far into insulting a friend's love. He only laughed, and spurred his horse on.

‘You know there's no harm in Goffredo,’ Anne Pratte said, following Alice's baleful stare. ‘Let him be.’

Goffredo D'Amico had been coming to the house for a week, sweeping his cloak, flashing his eyes, and clasping Isabel too close as he guided her from room to room, house to garden, and back again, along paths which, in Alice Claver's view, Isabel knew quite well enough for Goffredo to be able to refrain from putting one hand on hers and the other round her waist and practically dancing her along the corridors. Especially when there was no need anyway for all those tête-à-têtes that were now so closely spaced that they were in danger of becoming one long murmuring tiger-smile conversation. Now, the house had sprouted all kinds of unlikely dainties. There were so many baskets of figs, raisins, prunes, capers, pomegranates, oranges, spices and lampreys in the kitchen that someone was almost bound to end up with a foot in one of them. There were bunches of flowers on every table. Isabel had a new lawn coif and Holland cloth for kerchiefs. Goffredo, twinkling cheerfully as he paid his lavish but not quite improper compliments in the full gaze of all his friends, had taken to mixing up hippocras and coming to the house with a boy trotting along behind, trying not to spill from the jug. ‘Sweets to the sweet,’ he'd say, flamboyantly offering round the next bowl of almonds or dates, or, ‘homage to beauty’ or ‘eyes like dewdrops’.

‘It's all very well,’ Alice Claver said grumpily. ‘And the turtle doves do sound lovely in the orchard. But what in the name of God are we going to do with this popinjay he's bought?’

Anne Pratte ignored the rhetorical question. ‘He's enjoying himself,’ she answered unflappably. ‘It's a game, Alice. And it's about time that girl had a bit of fun. It's not stopping her doing well at her work with me. And you can't deny you wanted her to start making a relationship of her own with him …’

Alice Claver harrumphed. ‘A trade relationship! Not a great overblown rrroses-and-a-moonlight-and-a-can-a-you-hear-a-da-nightingales flirtation!’ she said indignantly.

But when she saw Anne Pratte put her hands on her hips she stopped. It was true, she thought, deflating suddenly. Venetians might be sly; but handsome Goffredo's charm was so practised and inoffensive that she really didn't think he would risk damning his immortal soul, and damaging his best partnership in London into the bargain, by trying to seduce her apprentice. Not really. Not that that would stop her keeping a careful eye on his carryings-on, of course. You couldn't ever really be sure with an Italian.

Dusk. Roses swooning on the windowsill. Gnats dancing near the flame. The two Williams on their bench, going through Goffredo's hippocras and oranges while William Pratte brought Will Caxton up to date on London gossip. The story he was telling was the one in which King Edward's brother, the Duke of Gloucester, had – perhaps – secretly killed old King Henry in the Tower last year. ‘We'll never know, of course. All we can say for sure is that the official explanation wasn't half good enough. Who would be naïve enough to believe Henry died of “pure melancholy and displeasure”?’ William Pratte was saying. ‘Do they take us for fools?’

There was an answering gleam of mischief from Will Caxton. Alice was out of the room, closing up the workshop. Anne Pratte, reluctant substitute chaperone, was keeping her eyes studiously on her work and shutting her ears to every subversive bit of gossip and flirting Alice Claver might have been listening out for.

Goffredo was setting out the chess board with long, brown fingers and a lazy smile. ‘Chess: a game for lovers, they say,’ he murmured, looking at Isabel through hooded eyes.

She half-closed her eyes back, feeling quietly irritated, as she did more and more often with Goffredo, but trying not to let it show. His attention was welcome in one way – it had gained her admittance to the charmed circle of evening visits by Alice's mercer friends. No one was surprised to see her at this table any more. For the first time, she belonged with the powerful; and she was grateful. But did he have to be quite so intrusive – constantly touching her as he drew her from one sight to the next; laying his hand on hers, for too long, at every opportunity; whispering at her, too close, and laughing if she drew her face back? It wasn't just that she could see it irritated Alice Claver almost to snapping point whenever he sidled up. The sight of him, the knowledge that he'd be whispering and winking and stroking her before she knew where she was, made her uncomfortable on her own account. She didn't know how to respond.

Here he went again: turning Will Caxton's neglected chess board into an instrument of flirtation. As he passed her the ivory pieces – as if he thought she knew how to play or could set up the board – his fingers were brushing against hers. She blushed and moved her hand back a fraction; then felt foolish when she saw Will Caxton glance up from his conversation and notice her flustered look. Goffredo was unabashed by her small rejection; he just murmured: ‘If the Lady plays her Beauty, the Lover counters with his Regard.’ Will Caxton was looking at them properly now. Ignoring him, Goffredo murmured persuasively: ‘Or his Desire.’

‘Venus and Mars,’ Will Caxton chimed in, apparently following their conversation. ‘Venus plays with honour, beauty, modesty, disdain; Mars with …’ Isabel was impressed by the way he was outdoing Goffredo at thinking of fanciful bookish allusions. But Goffredo began shuffling sheepishly. Will Caxton gave him an accusing look across the table and said: ‘Goffredo, you're shameless. You've been reading my Scachs d'Amor. You're quoting.’

Could a man as swarthy as Goffredo blush? Isabel wondered, laughing at the deft way Will Caxton had discountenanced the Venetian without giving offence; smiling at the usually smooth Goffredo's embarrassment. His hands went up in defeat. ‘I admit it,’ he said. ‘It caught my eye. It sounded impressive, though, didn't it, cara?’ and his fingers brushed hers again, and his eyebrows danced. She didn't mind any more, now Will Caxton had his eye on him. She grinned back. There was nothing to be frightened of, she thought. It was just Goffredo's game.

She hadn't paid much attention to Will Caxton, mercer turned import–export venturer. She hadn't had a chance to, with the handsome Venetian laying such energetic siege to her. Will Caxton was the kind of man who faded into the background. She'd just been aware of him as a friendly, sandy presence; someone with clever eyes; a man soaking up the endless talk of London town as though he felt homesick.

But she warmed to him now as he came up to their end of the table, sat down next to Goffredo, clapped the other man warmly on the back and, turning to her, said: ‘You must think Goffredo a clown’, then, turning to his old friend, adding, though so affectionately that there was no sting in the words, ‘because you've been acting the clown, D'Amico, admit it.’ Caxton kept his arm on Goffredo's shoulder, but turned back to Isabel and looked more seriously at her. ‘But I hope you'll forgive him his Italian ways when you see more of him,’ he added.

She liked the simplicity of that appeal, just as she liked Goffredo more now he was looking mildly ashamed of himself, not making the advances she'd found just a little threatening. She nodded and smiled, rather uncertainly. ‘He's a better man than you'll have had a chance to see, so far,’ Caxton said, and grinned at the Italian. ‘The only reliable Italian in London, for one thing. Honest as the day is long. And he knows more about silk than anyone I've come across; a master.’

Pleased at being let down so lightly, Goffredo bowed his head. Caxton went on: ‘He knows how to make money, too. Wooh!’ He puffed air out through his pale lips, making them both laugh with relief. ‘Hand over fist. I'm relying on him for money myself,’ he added. But he didn't rush to explain. He just nodded at Isabel with what might be an offer of friendship in his eyes and began setting out the pieces on the chess board, quietly and neatly. When Goffredo's eyes began to sparkle, under their big dark brows, at the prospect of a game, Caxton clicked his tongue at the Venetian and said, ‘Nothing I can teach you, my friend. But I think it's time our young colleague here …’ and he nodded in avuncular fashion at Isabel, ‘learned some strategy.’

‘I'll teach her,’ Goffredo offered, eager again. ‘I was just about to.’

Caxton only laughed. Not unkindly, he answered: ‘You? What, and let her end up thinking the pieces are called Regard, and Desire, and Disdain?’

Gracefully, Goffredo gave in. He laughed and got up. ‘All right, all right,’ he said, and Isabel liked the ease with which he accepted defeat more than anything she'd seen of him till now. ‘I'll go and find Alice.’

She concentrated as hard as she could on Will Caxton's explanations. She wanted to please him, and he was easy to learn from. He seemed to be telling her more than the specific rules – that the auphin always moved sideways, for instance. (‘The name means elephant, but think of it as a bishop, the kind of sneaky priest who can't tell the truth straight but approaches everything deviously, at an oblique angle, and you won't forget,’ he twinkled.) She felt he was conveying general principles, too: how to think clearly, how to understand other people's stratagems, and how to get your own way – things she needed to know to succeed.

It was getting dark. As he leaned forward to light the nearest candle, she suddenly found herself remembering another twilight under the arches of a tavern, and the man in the church laughing to himself as he bagged up leftover chessmen.

‘Someone once told me,’ she said thoughtfully, and, although her voice was so quiet she might have been talking to herself, Will Caxton looked up at once. Encouraged, she went on: ‘… a joke about chess. Well, a kind of joke. He was putting the pieces away. And he said, “We all spend our lives trying to win, but we all end up equal in the bottom of the bag.”’

The corners of Caxton's mouth turned up, though he didn't look as amused as she'd hoped. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘true enough – though there's more to life than playing games.’

He sat down and looked at the board, but she could see from the pale blue distance in his eyes that he'd begun thinking of something else. She kept respectfully still.

‘Mind you,’ he said after a while, into the silence, ‘there's plenty of writing about chess these days. It's not just a game of strategy for knights any more; a lot of people play it. When you're living overseas, you see a lot of books – like the one Goffredo was quoting just now – which draw on chess. It's an allegory for war; it's an allegory for love.’ He was musing now. She held her breath. ‘I could translate something … it might sell.’

Translate? Sell?

He laughed when he finally noticed her bewilderment. He patted her hand. ‘There, I'm running on like an old fool,’ he said ruefully. ‘And you've no idea what the old fool's talking about, have you? Well, how could you? You should have stopped me and asked me what I meant. I wouldn't mind.’

Isabel grinned, and, feeling suddenly confident, said, with a pertness she judged he'd given permission to, ‘Well then, what did you mean?’

Caxton had none of the tight-lipped caution of the common run of merchants, which surprised Isabel, since she'd found out, by careful listening in the past few days, that he'd once been the Governor of the English at Bruges, and was still an important mercer and venturer now he'd based himself at Cologne. There was no side to him. His crinkly eyes were full of hope; his mind full of a young man's big ideas.

Hugging her new knowledge of Goffredo's business acumen to herself, Isabel listened carefully as the sandy Kentishman began telling her his dream of setting up an entirely new business in London – a dream Goffredo had helped to back. Ever since Bruges, where book-learning was fashionable and every knight and squire kept a library, Caxton had been fascinated by the printing machines he'd seen, invented by the German, Johannes Gutenberg. He'd bought his own printing machine, in Cologne, using Goffredo's loan, and learned how to put the tiny metal blocks of type, each containing a letter, into a composing stick; how to bolt completed lines together into a block that represented a page of writing; how to ink the formes and work the press and transfer inky copies of the block onto paper made of shredded, fermented rags. ‘They call it the black art in Germany,’ Caxton said with a resigned grin down at his hands – which she noticed, for the first time, were stained with shadowy blue, like a dyer's – ‘it does for your hands.’ He'd already started importing books to London, in the same barrels that carried the cloth purchases he resold in the Mercery. But he was itching to make his own books too: choose texts, translate them, print them, sell them. He wanted to come back to London soon, he said, and settle here again; bring his press and his workers. William Pratte was paving the way for him with the Guildhall; he was hoping to raise money from the City. His eyes widened joyfully at the idea.

Jane had three printed French romances, Isabel recalled: luxuries, each worth several years of her own apprentice's pay, but still many times cheaper than a hand-copied book in the old style. ‘You'll be richer than ever, soon enough, then,’ she said, in as sophisticated a tone as she could, half-wondering why a man so established in his trade would want to throw it all away to chase moonbeams, but half-admiring his courage.

But Caxton only shook his head. ‘Rich would be good,’ he said, but without the answering enthusiasm she'd been expecting, ‘but I don't know if it's realistic. Gutenberg never made much from his press. And it would take years get going here. Anyway, that's not really why …’ His voice trailed away; he was thinking again. ‘It's just that I've seen so many extraordinary books on my travels. Extraordinary stories; extraordinary ideas; the sheer beauty of them …’ He shook his head, as if knowing he'd never manage to convey his feelings. ‘I think there are many more people who'd be as impressed as I am, if only they could see them …’ Another shake of the head. Then, suddenly, he grinned. ‘You must forgive me. I'm off again. I get carried away too easily. That's the trouble with dreams – they're so prone to making a fool of you.’

Isabel was daydreaming as her fingers passed expertly over the fingerloop braid. She'd mastered the technique now. She could let her thoughts wander as the braid grew in length and she shuffled her stool gradually further and further back from the nail on the wall to which its first end was attached.

Where her thoughts were wandering to was Goffredo's description of the foreign noblemen and princes who sent the agents to Venice to buy large amounts of the most expensive types of the finest silk fabrics in Europe for their wardrobes and palaces at silent, dignified, street exhibitions known as parangons. She was fascinated by the procedure: as remarkably elaborate and dignified as the cloths themselves.

The finest cloths, which in Venice and Genoa were those velvets most intricately interwoven with gold and silver, those judged by six Silk Supervisors to be worthy of export to the rest of the world, were displayed once a week near the Silk Office and the shops of the wealthiest setaioli, or silk merchants, at the Capella dei Veruzzi in the Parish of San Bartolomeo, and were called drappi da parangon. (All other cloths were coarser and cheaper, whether they were classified as drappi domestici for the hangings and clothing of Venice's own families, or mezzani for sale in city shops, sealed with the lion of St Mark, or inferior cloths woven specially for trade with particular areas – da navegar for the Levant and da fontego for German merchants.)

After the parangon cloths had been pre-selected for exhibition because of their exquisite design and pure dyes, their selvages were wiredrawn with gold and they were marked at each end with a seal bearing the symbol of a crown by the Venetian Senate's permanent commission of experts in the silk craft. Any fraud uncovered by these experts would mean the silk-maker was fined by the city government and his cloths confiscated. Then, once every fabric had been labelled with a number and the name of its maker, the exhibitors would withdraw to one side of the parangon – the name came from the Venetian word for exhibiting; the cloths were, literally, ‘show-off’ cloths – and wait silently for customers. (Isabel couldn't imagine a market in which the organisers managed to stop the salesmen shouting the virtues of their wares; but Goffredo said that in Venice these cridori were considered modi disonesti of selling. The virtue of the fabric should speak for itself. The buyers would pass through the two rows of stalls, with the parangon supervisors, a train of advisers, brokers, tailors and artisans, to judge the cloth. When they'd chosen what to buy, the supervisor would identify the name of the producer from the numbers attached to the bolts of cloth and call them, one by one, to negotiate a sale price with the customers. As soon as a deal was cut, the advisers were asked to leave and the cutting of the cloths began under the eye of the supervisor. Once the buyers finished, they left too. The exhibitors, standing back in silence, could collect merchandise and dismantle the parangon until the next week.

Now that, with Will Caxton's help, Isabel had got Goffredo's flirtatiousness under control, she was enjoying asking the Venetian about his business world more than she ever had receiving his lavish compliments. He knew so many things that would be useful to her; she wanted to be able to find out about them without worrying about whether he'd try to hold her hand as he told her. She thought he might be secretly relieved, too, now he'd stopped plying her with hippocras and dates; he must be realising what a fortune he'd been frittering away on them. And why bother, now he could see that it was his stories about the way the silk trade operated at its European heart that could be relied on to make her eyes open wide in wonder? He was working that out; telling her more and more; enjoying her appreciation. He rolled his eyes and his R's and exaggerated every gesture as he talked up the virtues of silk.

‘Is it not clear that silk adorns everything?’ he'd said last night. ‘Is it not silk that adorns the coaches, the carriages, the litters, the maritime gondolas, the horses of the Princes, with trappings, with outfits, with tassels, with fringes, with cords, with cushions, with cloths, and a thousand other beautiful things? Does not silk adorn the banners, the standards, the insignia, the halberds trimmed with brocaded velvet and fringes, the sheathed pikes, the bandoleers, the trumpets, the uniforms of the soldiers at war? Does not silk adorn the umbrellas, the canopies, the chasubles, the copes, the pictures, the palliums, the sandals, the cassocks, the dalmatics, the gloves, the maniples, the stoles, the burses, the veils for chalices, the lining of tabernacles, the cushions, the pulpits, and all other things of the Church?’

If he was parodying the importance of his trade, and his own adoration of it, it was only a slight exaggeration. Even here in London, she knew silk to be the ultimate measure of wealth: silk clothes for well-off families, or silk hung on walls with the family coat of arms embroidered on it in gold and silver, or silk cloths sewn together to form baldachins, mosquito curtains, coverlets, sheets, or used as linings and covers for cases, chests, books, chairs, mirrors. She was falling in love; but it wasn't the kind that Alice Claver had briefly worried about. The passion growing in her was the same love that consumed Alice Claver, the Prattes, Will Caxton and Goffredo: the love of the glowing, magical stuff that symbolised success and dignity and order and happiness and civilisation; men's (and women's) ability to create the highest forms of beauty from something as humble as the thread spun by a worm.

The excitement of it was almost enough to make her forget her lowly place in the household, but not quite. Goffredo might have brought her into Alice Claver's evening circle; and her own resourcefulness – as well as Will Caxton's help – might have tamed the Italian and consolidated her own hold on these powerful allies, but by day she was still just an apprentice, and a very junior one at that. She'd seen Alice Claver's wary glances in the past few days – her mistress didn't look altogether happy about Isabel's growing camaraderie with the most respected silk merchants in London. So, when Alice was in the room, Isabel kept her eyes down and did everything she could to show, mutely, that she wasn't getting above herself. Alice, in her turn, did everything she could to remind her apprentice that she was good with her fingers but too junior to be noticed unless she was being taught something or an errand needed running.

Now, for instance: Goffredo was flinging open the storeroom door and bowing Alice into her domain. Alice knew that Anne had been showing Isabel braiding there all morning, but all she said, before moving away to her table, was a single expressionless word of greeting, and it was: ‘Anne.’

Goffredo glanced over at Isabel. He winked, but only over his shoulder. Then he too moved off to start staring at Alice's ledgers.

Isabel always tried to hear what they talked about when they talked big business. But they always seemed to be murmuring just too softly for her to catch the words.

Anne Pratte was looking approvingly over at Isabel's braid and nodding. In the sing-song, rhythmic voice of someone half-hypnotised by the drawing together of threads, she said: ‘Yes … you just needed time. The tension was all wrong at first. Much too tight. But you've got the hang of it now.’

Isabel nodded, but she wasn't really listening. Behind Anne Pratte, she could see Goffredo standing; leaning over the table, holding the edges with his hands. He was towering over Alice Claver. He looked more serious than usual. And he was speaking more forcefully. ‘We should do it too,’ he was saying. ‘You know we should. It can't be that hard to import looms, teachers. The Provveditori would give me permission. I'm sure they would. If they can do it in Tours, why not here?’

But Isabel could see from Alice Claver's shoulders what her face must be like. Even if setting up a silk-weaving manufacture like the Italian venture in Tours was her heart's desire, she wasn't one to rush into anything foolhardy. Isabel strained her ears, and heard bits of the exasperated answer: ‘Can't be done’ and ‘Would cost a fortune’ and, rather louder, ‘… need big backing, and where on earth do you think that's going to come from?’ She saw Goffredo shush Alice Claver with gentling downward hand movements and his most charming smiles. But Alice Claver overrode him: ‘… and you'd be a fool to think you'll get any help from the Mercers' Company. You'd be astonished at how short on vision and foresight they can be if they think you're planning to do anything that might annoy their favourite Lombards.’ Another calming baritone rumble, broken by her strident laugh. ‘Straight to the Borromei? Now you really are being a fool. You think they'd lend to you so you could put every other Italian in town out of business? I'm telling you: if you give just one Italian in London just one hint that you want to set up silk looms here, they'll all want to eat you alive.’

Out of the corner of her eye, Isabel could see Goffredo looking crestfallen.

‘That braid's long enough now,’ Anne Pratte said from close up, bringing her out of her daydream. ‘You can knot it up; I'll start showing you how to make tassels today.’

She held out a knife. As Isabel carefully transferred the loops to the fingers of one hand, and Anne Pratte showed her how to complete the braid so it wouldn't unravel, then cut each tied bow neatly into the finished product, she looked brightly up at the apprentice silkwoman.

‘You remember what they've been saying about the King's three mistresses?’ she began. It was a story Anne herself had energetically spread through the markets as soon as she'd heard it at her last fitting with Sir John Risley, the newish Knight of the Body she'd got so friendly with. The King had apparently told Risley he had three mistresses: one the wisest, one the merriest, and one the holiest harlot in the land. It had kept Anne and half the women in the selds happy for days attaching names to those descriptions.

Isabel enjoyed Anne's gossipiness. She nodded. ‘Mmm,’ she said, admiring her finished braid; aware of Goffredo's and Alice's heads bent over the books. ‘So, have you worked out who all three of the ladies are yet?’

‘Oh, yes dear,’ Anne said. ‘Well, mostly. Eleanor Butler's the holy one, of course; that's not hard to guess. And they say Elizabeth Lucy is the wise one, though frankly …’ She shook her head, as if she knew these court ladies personally and her experience made her doubt Elizabeth Lucy's claim.

She gave Isabel another bright, inquiring look. ‘And of course, no one really knows about the third one, the merry one,’ she added, with just the right amount of doubt creeping into her voice, ‘but I've heard people saying … it might be your sister … ?’