His hand was warm and dry with strong fingers. She found herself walking with him. To her surprise, they headed towards the bright arch to the street, feet in step.
As long as I'm out I don't have to go home, Isabel thought, as the wind flapped at her skirts, with the fuzzy, fleeting contentment born of being caught up in an unexpected adventure. As long as no one sees me here I don't have to decide what to do. So she followed the stranger obediently into the Bush tavern, a few steps away down Aldersgate, where he headed straight for a table in a vaulted alcove under a window where someone else's meal, and the game of chess abandoned on a stool, hadn't yet been cleared away, ordering a jug of claret and whatever cold meat the landlord had as he passed. He stood looking down at the checkered wood, absent-mindedly fingering the pieces left at the side of the board, while a serving girl piled up tankards on one of the greasy boards covered in pork rinds. Isabel edged round the tables and stools towards him, suddenly breathless at her own strange boldness in sitting down to eat with a stranger. But if he was aware of her discomfort he didn't betray it. He was grinning at some thought of his own; he held one of the carved pieces out to her as she approached, and said lightly: ‘After all, perhaps none of the moves that worry us so much in life are as important as we think’. He popped the piece into its bag. ‘We all end up equal at the bottom of a bag, don't we?’
Isabel's nervousness vanished with the chess pieces he was whisking into their leathery resting place. She laughed and sat down. ‘I just don't want to wait till I die before my problems get solved,’ she answered, wishing she could achieve the same resigned tone. ‘I'm hoping something will sort them out now.’
She wasn't made to be philosophical. Nor could she quite find it in herself to do what she wanted to – find out more about her vis-à-vis. As soon as the maid had dumped two wooden platters in front of them, and even before he had finished pouring out the wine, Isabel found herself pouring out the whole story of her own troubles instead.
She told him how her father had fallen from grace at the Guildhall for losing his temper at a meeting – so badly he began shouting and blaspheming – while he was trying, unsuccessfully, to persuade the City to support King Edward and his Yorkist army in the wars. John Lambert had thought the rest of the merchants were being hypocritical to give in to the rival Lancastrian army – mad, pitiful King Henry, brought back to fight his last battles after ten years in forced retirement by the Earl of Warwick, who'd been King Edward's closest friend until they'd fallen out and he'd turned rebel. John Lambert didn't like the sight of the fierce, treacherous earl masterminding the feeble-minded Henry's every move. Nor did he have much stomach for Edward's younger brother, the Duke of Clarence, also in rebellion against his own blood; a lesser traitor hanging on Warwick's coat-tails, hoping in vain that he might get to be Yorkist king of the Lancastrian rebels. John Lambert had been right, really. It had been ugly. And London was Yorkist to a man, had been for years. Every merchant knew King Edward, who was strong and young and intelligent, and had been on the throne for ten years already, was a better king for supporting their trade than Henry, who had let lawlessness rule the land for more than twenty years before Edward first seized the throne. But the Lancastrian army had been here at the gates, and the consensus of the meeting had been ‘anything for a quiet life’. So John Lambert's outburst had not only been disregarded but had turned the rest of the merchants against him. They set such store by dignified agreement, they couldn't forgive a man who could rail and rant the way he had.
She found herself describing her father's stricken look when the mayor's men came and took away the striped pole outside the Lambert house – his alderman's post, his treasured symbol of office, the pole on which aldermen posted their proclamations. She told him how her father had then fixed on the idea of mending his quarrel with the City's great men by marrying off her and her sister; the way he'd suddenly announced she and Jane were to be betrothed to the outlandish suitors he'd picked for them, as soon as he'd heard King Edward's army was winning and moving on London, as soon as he could be reasonably sure that the merchants would bow to circumstances and remember they'd been Yorkist all along and open the gates to King Edward; as soon as they might be persuaded to think John Lambert hadn't been so wrong after all.
Isabel thought her father had been rubbing his nose in his storeroom and plotting the whole thing for months beforehand. Bitterly, she told the stranger how she and her sister were being sacrificed for her father's ambition. It wasn't fair, she said. He'd promised his daughters all their lives that, within reason, they'd have the freedom to marry as they chose. But when it came to it, he was breaking that promise.
‘I know it makes sense to him,’ she finished. ‘Half his old friends in the City are coming after him with court cases. They think he's finished. They're kicking him while he's down. And he wants to show them he's still got the power to make good alliances. He's imagining a wedding banquet that will put every trading company's summer feast into the shade – he loves parties; I just know he's already envisioning those tables groaning with honeyed peacocks and blancmanges of asses’ milk. He wants to try and impress everyone with the idea that the Lamberts are still on top of the world. He thinks a couple of weddings will win them all back.
‘But he doesn't seem to see it won't help him. They'll still remember him as the man who shouted at the mayor. And we'll be married to those clowns forever. It's wrong. I'm too young to be married. I'm only fourteen. And anyway, the last person I'd choose, ever, would be Thomas Claver.’
The dark man from the church was easy to talk to. He kept steady eyes on her throughout her passionate monologue. He nodded understandingly when she looked sad and his eyes crinkled in amusement when, in the hope of entertaining him, she started using fanciful turns of phrase she wouldn't normally have attempted. Yet when she came to a halt, Isabel had the uneasy feeling she'd got it wrong. He didn't look fired up with any of her indignation. He just looked thoughtful.
He'd been cutting up bits of meat with his knife while she was talking. He looked down at the red squares on his board now she'd fallen silent and seemed almost surprised they were all still there. He speared one and began chewing on it, looking at her again, still reflecting, until, in an agony of self-consciousness, she began to wish she'd kept quiet, or at least asked him more about himself before telling all her woes.
‘I can see why you're unhappy,’ he said in the end, and she glowed at the warmth in his voice. He wasn't good-looking, quite. His thin features weren't as bold and regular and noble as her father's, say, or the godlike, golden Lynom boys'. This man's face was thin and serious; made to be worried. If he hadn't sat so straight and used his wiry body so fluidly, if he wasn't gazing at her with such unwavering attention, she might have found him ratlike. Mean-looking. But the richness of his voice vibrated through her, making him magical. ‘You're in a difficult position,’ he was saying. ‘You think your father is making a bad judgement.’
She nodded, and took a sip from her cup of wine to hide the gratitude she could feel staining her face pink.
He leaned forward. Put his elbows on the table. She thought he might be going to touch her, comfort her. She blushed deeper and bent in on herself.
He didn't. He just joined his hands together, steepling them thoughtfully under his chin, leaning on his thumbs, and went on looking calmly at her. ‘May I offer some advice?’ he asked. His dignified simplicity made her feel ashamed of her own blurting.
Attempting to match his formality, she nodded again, trying not to let the hope shine too obviously on her face that he would hit on some easy way out for her.
‘You have to marry as your circumstances demand,’ he said, so gently she could hardly bear it. ‘I think from what you've told me that you know your father loves you. He's saying he's trying to do what's best for your family. And it's a father's job to make good alliances for his children. Even if he hasn't fully understood your feelings, perhaps he knows more about your family's circumstances than you do.’
‘But,’
