The Silk Weaver

If ye should ever unwarily fall into an offence, never seek to cover it over with a lye: for the last fault doubles the former; and each makes the other more inexcusable.

– Advice for apprentices and journeymen

OR A sure guide to gain both esteem and an estate

Whatever was the English girl doing, leaving a piece of her sketching paper among the wild flowers?

Henri had come to the market to acquire a cheap pair of breeches for the drawboy, who had snagged his only pair on a nail head in the floorboards of the weaving loft. Mariette had pronounced them unrepairable and the lad was too embarrassed to venture to the market himself. Eventually, after much discussion over the breakfast table, M. Lavalle lost patience.

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ he shouted. ‘Why are you making such a to-do about this, boy? Is your bottom such a thing of beauty that young ladies may faint at the sight of it?’

‘Shall I go?’ Henri asked. ‘It will take me but a quarter hour and I will be back at my loom before you have noticed my absence.’

‘Thank you for relieving me of this irritation,’ M. Lavalle sighed, handing his coin pouch across the table.

Henri made for the gallery above the main floor of the market, and was halfway up the wooden stairs when he glanced across the stalls below and spied a figure sitting among the flower sellers. He could not see the face, which was bent over a book, but the incline of her neck, the pallor of her skin, and the long, elegant fingers were instantly recognisable.

He stared for a while, and then climbed to the top of the stairs and walked around the gallery, past the secondhand clothes sellers, until he was almost immediately above the English girl. She could not see him but, just fifteen feet overhead, he had a perfect view. All now became clear: she had a drawing pad on her lap and was sketching the flowers.

And what drawings they were! He could see at once, even though they were only outlines and had not yet been coloured in, that she had somehow managed to capture the shape of each stem, leaf and flower so as to render them instantly recognisable even for un ignorant like him, who had never studied the natural world except in the designs which he wove. And they were nothing like the realistic depictions this girl was producing.

He watched, transfixed, as the lines flowed onto the page in strong, powerful arcs, then pale, delicate curves and even lighter strokes for shading of stems, leaves and petals, bringing their shapes to life with extraordinary, three-dimensional veracity. She worked fast, almost feverishly, as if hungry to capture the forms, and the page was soon filled with vignettes of different plants.

If I could draw like that, I could make my fortune as a silk designer like Leman or Baudoin, Henri thought to himself. Another idea flashed into his mind: Perhaps she could show me? before he dismissed it. Idiot! he cursed himself. Why would an English lady want to teach a poor French weaver like me?

All the same, as he watched, he found it all too easy to daydream: how he might sit beside her, how she might gently place her hand over his to guide it across the paper . . .

She turned to a blank page and started on a new design, drawing two bold, meandering lines equidistant from each other diagonally from the top of the paper to the opposite corner at the bottom and then two more, crossing the first, from the other corners, to make an open, curved trellis pattern. She followed each of those lines with lighter strokes either side and shaded them; it was soon clear that she was drawing the sinuous stems of a climbing plant. He followed her eyes as she looked up at her subject, the columbine entwined with the teasel, and could see that she was now reproducing its heart-shaped leaves and delicate bell-like flowers with their translucent petals, shading them with tiny strokes until they too became instantly recognisable.

Soon, more plants began to appear on the page, interlaced through her trellis pattern: bold-faced ox-eye daisies and nodding bluebell heads (although there were none of these on the stall), the curled petals of a dog rose flower and some fronded leaves so fine, like the hair of a baby, from a plant that he did not recognise. It took him a little time to understand why her work was so true to life, so compelling: while the drawings in themselves were perfect, she also reflected the imperfections of nature, the torn leaf, the faded bloom, the crushed or folded petal.

Henri was spellbound. He forgot the heat and the smell of the market, the drawboy’s breeches, M. Lavalle’s irritation and the coin pouch hanging heavy in his pocket. The pressing deadline for the brocade he was working on today was suddenly unimportant.

The notion dawned on him slowly, but once he realised the potential of what he could see on her page, he could barely contain his excitement. Although the girl was surely unaware of its significance, this was the most beautiful, elegant and delicate fabric design he had ever seen in his life. It captured exactly what the dressmaker Miss Charlotte had been talking about: the wild flowers, the look of the countryside, the realistic rendering of the images and the beautiful curving lines of nature that surely – his face flushed at the thought – reflect the perfect shapes of a woman’s body.

The naive simplicity of it made his heart thud in his chest. He could almost see the design already transposed with dots of paint onto the squared point paper, and how the loom and its lashes should be set up to weave it.

Then, all at once, an astonishing idea overcame him with an almost physical intensity, making him giddy. It was the perfect design for his master piece. Already he felt a strong sense of ownership. It was meant to be his.

But how? Should he just approach her and ask if he could buy it? Would she be offended? Or would she just laugh in his face?

At that moment he saw the fat woman striding away from the stall. The girl moved her stool behind the table out of his sight. What was she doing now? He dithered, rooted to the spot by indecision. Within a few minutes she reappeared, pacing the gangway in front of the stall. Then she disappeared behind the stall again and reappeared with her basket. He saw her tear out the page from the sketchbook with his design on it, scribbling a few words on the back so hastily that he could not read them, and placing it face up among the flowers. Before he knew it, she was gone.

He was about to follow but, from observing her fretful demeanour, instinct told him that any interruption or intervention would not be welcomed. Besides, the drawing was still there on the stall, like a white bird stretching its wings in a flower-strewn field. The stallholder had not returned.

Hurrying as quickly as he could without drawing attention to himself, Henri rounded the gallery until he reached the wooden stairs, slipped down them and made his way towards the stall without knowing precisely what he was going to do when he reached it. And then, to his dismay, he saw the trader approaching with her wide-hipped stride from the other direction. He was so close to the stall by now that he could almost reach out and take the sketch without her noticing.

‘Oi! Put that back, boy!’ A man’s harsh shout came from the other side of the aisle. ‘That was left for Mags, that was.’

With a sudden turn of speed, the ruddy-faced Mags was upon him, snatching the paper from his hand. ‘Give that here, you thieving little cur,’ she said, smacking him across the head so hard that he stumbled and fell among the trampled mess of rotting fruit and discarded plants. He scrabbled away to avoid the kick that followed, and crawled out of sight beneath a nearby stall, trying to catch his breath.

‘So, what have we here, then?’ Breathing heavily from her efforts, she glanced at the sketch and turned the paper over. ‘That little missy done a runner, then?’

The pair of them examined the drawing for a few moments and began to argue about its value.

‘No!’ Henri found himself shouting. He jumped up from his hiding place, holding out M. Lavalle’s purse. ‘I’ll buy it from you.’

The woman’s fearsome demeanour softened in an instant. She knew her smile could charm men into spending far more than they had ever intended when buying flowers for their sweethearts. She could almost smell the pork chops the boy’s money would buy for this evening’s supper.

‘Two shillings,’ she pronounced. The man beside her whistled quietly between his teeth.

‘Two pennies, more like,’ Henri replied, remembering the errand on which he’d been sent. He had not checked how many coins were in the pouch but from its weight he judged there were not many, and he must not return without having purchased breeches for the drawboy.

‘One shilling, then,’ the woman said, standing foursquare, her feet wide across the aisle.

‘Thruppence,’ Henri said, pulling back his shoulders to make himself as broad as possible. ‘I have other purchases to make and that is all I can afford.’

She fixed him in the eye and held up the piece of paper, twisting her hands on each side as if to tear it.

The woman hesitated, examined the piece of paper again as if to convince herself that it was not worth more, and then, to Henri’s great relief, said, ‘Done.’

The drawboy pranced around the loom loft, jiggling his hips and singing an old French song, apparently delighted with his green serge breeches, even though they were several sizes too large and had to be held up with an old lash cord. They were already well worn, shiny at the knees and buttocks, and might not even last long enough for him to grow into them, but none of this seemed to dim his happiness.

Henri could take no satisfaction from the boy’s childish pleasure, sullied as it was by the guilt he felt at having spent M. Lavalle’s money on the English girl’s sketch without prior permission. The breeches had been the cheapest he could find – only nine pence – and now he faced the dilemma of how to own up about the other sixpence. He had no money of his own to repay the debt – having given all of the fee from his labours in the organ loft to pay his mother’s rent – but fully intended to do so just as soon as he was able to earn it.

On his return M. Lavalle had been engaged with a customer, so he’d simply handed back the purse without having to explain. It crossed his mind, fleetingly, that he could claim the breeches cost a shilling and thruppence, but his master would then think him a fool for paying so much. The problem gnawed at him for the rest of the morning, but the magic he’d felt while watching the English girl was still wrapped around his heart. He didn’t want to share that with anyone, at least for the moment.

Before lunch, he went to his box room and carefully took out the piece of paper from under his shirt, where it had been tucked all morning. The enchantment was still there – the delicate fronds of leaves, the curled petals, the curving stems – and his heart began to race all over again as he imagined them translated into a fabric design. He would make a start on marking up and painting-in the point paper this very evening, after supper. Then he could show M. Lavalle the sketch and the design, and it would be an easier task to persuade him that the sixpence had been well spent.

In the end, the decision was taken from him. At lunchtime, M. Lavalle invited the drawboy to show him his new breeches, slapped him on the backside approvingly and said, ‘They should last you until you are a man.’ Then he turned to Henri, in a perfectly casual way, and asked how much they had cost.

‘Nine pence, sir.’ Henri’s appetite suddenly disappeared. ‘They were the cheapest I could find.’

Henri took another bite of bread, giving himself time to think. ‘May I speak with you in private, after lunch?’

M. Lavalle nodded assent, but Henri could sense the question hanging over the table like a cloud for the rest of the meal. Even Mariette seemed to have little to say. At last, it was finished and the others dismissed.

‘Please forgive me for spending your money without permission, master. I will repay it just as soon as I can – when I get another request to be organ blower.’

‘I have never questioned your honnêteté, tu sais. But I need an explanation.’

Henri took a deep breath, and began. ‘I have been thinking much since our discussion about my design. Mariette suggested I should ask the dressmaker Miss Charlotte Amesbury, whom I think you know?’ M. Lavalle nodded. Henri hurried on. ‘She showed me how the newest vogue is for realistic-looking representations of natural forms, flowers, leaves and so on.’

‘Indeed. Fashions change with the wind these days, as I have said before, but that is certainly the way they are blowing right now.’

‘So I decided to start again, change my design to something more fashionable. The problem is finding a designer to help me.’

‘You won’t buy much of a designer’s time for sixpence. You know this, do you not?’

Henri reached inside his shirt and pulled out the sketch paper. ‘But I have something which I believe may make a good start.’

M. Lavalle unfolded the paper and smoothed it out on the table. Two long minutes passed, as the tick-tock of the grandfather clock in the corner seemed to grow louder and louder.

At last, the old man looked up. ‘Am I to take it that this is what you spent my sixpence on?’

He struggled to find the right words to explain, with M. Lavalle having to ask him to start again several times: how he had seen a girl drawing beside the flower stall, how she had given it as a gift for the trader who didn’t want it, and how he had offered sixpence to save it from being torn up. He omitted to identify the girl or mention that he already knew her, albeit only slightly, or that she was the niece of the despised merchant Sadler. There was no point in complicating matters for the moment.

‘I would know her again,’ Henri replied, trying to avoid a lie. ‘But why does this matter, sir? Since I paid for the drawing it is surely mine?’

‘Of course it matters,’ M. Lavalle spluttered. ‘You may have paid for her sketch but you have not paid for the right to reproduce it in cloth. If you hope to get the fabric commissioned and widely distributed, do you imagine that she will not recognise it, and wonder how you came by it?’

Henri shook his head, crestfallen. ‘Of course, you are right. I will have to ask her permission.’

‘And hope that she does not seek to charge you in addition for reproducing it,’ M. Lavalle said. His words were not meant unkindly, Henri knew; his master was being realistic. ‘Great riches are not the only route to happiness,’ he’d once told him. ‘A clear conscience is the path to a good name and a contented life.’

Guy was panting as though he’d run a mile. ‘I need to speak to M. Lavalle. I have news of much interest. May I come in?’

‘It is late,’ Henri said. ‘He may already have retired, and I am busy.’ The last thing he wanted was to listen to another rant from his friend about the scandal of journeymen’s pay.

M. Lavalle appeared at the top of the stairs. ‘I was about to treat myself to a drink of chocolat before bed. Would you two both like to join me? Mariette, do we have enough milk?’

When they were settled in the parlour, Mariette brought a tray with cups of hot milk into which she had melted shavings from a precious lump of chocolate given to M. Lavalle the previous Christmas by a yarn merchant grateful for his continuing custom. The dark treasure was kept hidden in the coolest place in the basement, its use allowed only sparingly.

M. Lavalle took a sip and murmured his appreciation, ‘C’est délicieux, ma petite,’ before turning to Guy. ‘So, now you can tell us your very important news, my friend.’ He took the scruffy piece of paper offered to him. Glancing over the old man’s shoulder, Henri could read the heading: Soie de Lyon, followed by a list of a dozen names. Halfway down was written, Jsph. Sadler & Son.

M. Lavalle skimmed it, sucking the breath through his teeth. ‘These are important men. Why are their names on this list?’

‘They have imported French silk, sir, from Lyon, without paying the duty. That is what we believe.’

Henri forgot to breathe, for a second. The great Joseph Sadler, breaking the law? He cared little for the man and his pig of a son, but the scandal could spell disaster for his niece.

M. Lavalle sighed and scratched his head beneath the velvet cap. ‘This is dangerous information. Where did you get it?’

‘Last week I was at the chophouse with some friends talking about the Book of Prices when someone said it was a waste of time because French imports would have us all in the poorhouse before long,’ Guy said. ‘Some fellows at the next table heard our talk and said they could help us: they had information about who was buying French silk.’

‘They are workers at the port of London, sir. They see everything coming in and going out. They noticed many packages, rolls of fabric addressed to London mercers, which were not marked for import duty, so they opened one or two and discovered that it was French silk. Some of the lads thought they might make a few bob in blackmail but they got cold feet and decided it was safer to approach the Weavers’ Company about it.’

‘I was at a Freemen’s meeting two days ago. Surely it would have been mentioned?’

‘That’s the point, sir. Nothing has happened. The lads are assuming the Company has buried it because of the important names.’

M. Lavalle shook his head. ‘Not that I have heard. But do I now take it they sold you the list instead, right there, in the chophouse?’

‘The journeymen’s group bought it, from their campaign funds,’ Guy said. ‘The group who put together the Book of Prices.’

‘That is why I am here, sir, to seek your advice. You know these people. What is the best way to proceed?’

M. Lavalle took a long sip of chocolate and wiped his moustache with his kerchief.

‘I need to give this some serious thought, Guy. It requires careful handling or it will go off like gunpowder and innocent people might get injured. I need to talk to some of my fellow Freemen, those whom I can trust. Come back at the end of the week, Sunday afternoon, would you? We shall talk more, and perhaps drink more chocolat. Can your group wait?’

‘I will ask them tonight. But I fear that unless they see some action soon, they will take matters into their own hands. French imports are taking the food from their children’s mouths, they say, and it is time the authorities showed a firm hand. All of their protests have been met with deaf ears, and their patience is running out.’ He made a small bow. ‘Thank you for your time, Monsieur Lavalle. The chocolat was delicious, Miss Mariette. Goodnight to you all.’

As they parted for bed, M. Lavalle whispered to Henri, ‘Your friend is among hotheads. I fear he may get into trouble. You have read the newspaper reports about the cutters, and the group that calls itself the Bold Defiance? The Guards are becoming impatient with their protests and if they are caught, they will be shown no mercy. Please warn him to be careful.’

At the foot of the stairs he turned back to Henri. ‘I know that he is a good friend of yours, but if Guy persists with these associates, you would be wise to distance yourself from him. I have high hopes for your future, my boy. It would break my heart to see you getting into trouble.’

Guy’s list was not mentioned again nor, to Henri’s relief, did he reappear. He noticed, however, that M. Lavalle was frequently out of the house. Henri hoped he would be able to settle the matter quietly, so that Guy could disengage himself and there would be no scandal that might affect Anna’s family.

Over the following days he found excuses to visit the market as often as he could. Each time Anna did not reappear he was disappointed and yet, at the same time, slightly relieved.

He decided instead to send a letter. It took him a whole evening to write and rewrite, with much agonising over the unfamiliar English words and their spelling. Finally he was satisfied, but then delayed a further two days, trying to summon the courage to deliver it.

At last, when he reached the end of a weave half an hour earlier than expected, he could allow himself to procrastinate no longer. Several times, en route to Spital Square, his heart faltered. What would he say should he meet her in the street or, worse, at the doorstep? I have a letter for you? Or would he just blurt it out: I bought your drawing from the stallholder at the market. Can I have your permission to use it as the design for my master piece?

It was a simple enough request, after all. So what was it about this girl that made him feel so awkward, so nervous and unsure of himself?

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