carriage is outside, ma’am.’
Celia stood up.
‘Darling Philip is so concerned I shouldn’t stay out late. Do let me drop you off.’
We said our goodbyes. Her own footman helped us into their comfortable carriage, upholstered in pink. When Celia asked where I lived I suggested that she should put me down at the corner of Mount Street. I had no shame about living among the artisans and animals, but I knew it would puzzle her terribly. On the short journey she chattered on about the endless good qualities of her Philip, so there was no opportunity to get back to the problems of the Brinkburn family. As I was getting down, she kissed me.
‘Oh, it’s been so pleasant. Let’s meet again soon. You must come and see me. Do say yes.’
‘Yes, but I don’t even know where you live,’ I said.
She produced a tiny pink notebook from the pocket of her evening cloak and a silver pencil as thin as a flower stem.
‘You’ll come tomorrow, or the day after, promise? The doctor says I must rest in the afternoons and you’ve no idea how achingly dull it is, Elizabeth.’
Clearly my name was a lost cause with her. She tore the page with her address out of the book and pressed it into my hand. I watched as her coach pulled away, pleased things had turned out well for her. Also, I was glad to have set eyes on the possibly transferable fiancée. Altogether, it had turned out to be a more instructive evening than I’d expected.
You can buy anything in Bond Street. Anything, that is, except what a person might need in everyday life. Ironmongers, cobblers or grocers have no place on these elegant pavements. But if you want, say, a painting reliably attributed to Fra Lippo Lippi, a marble Aphrodite from Delos, a sacred scarab once owned by an Egyptian pharaoh, you may stroll up and down Bond Street and take your choice from several of each. You could also equip yourself with a full suit of armour, a crested helmet, sword, battle-axe and caparisons for your war horse.
I’d walked past Samuel Pratt’s shop at number 47, on the corner of Maddox Street, almost every day, stopping now and then for a glance when he had some particularly elaborate suit of armour or flamboyant banner in his window.
His customers, I’d assumed, were people who wanted these things to add historical tone to the halls of their newly built gothic castles. The knowledge that he was now supplying them to men who intended to wear and use them gave the place a new interest for everybody. When I walked down Bond Street on a sunny morning to keep my appointment with the younger Mr Brinkburn, there were so many people looking in Pratt’s window that they blocked the pavement, and two carriages were waiting outside. I pushed my way through and went into the shop. The high walls of its salesroom were hung with banners, shields, battle-axes and dozens of swords and daggers arranged in symmetrical patterns. Suits of armour on dummies flanked a door to an inner room. Two gentlemen and a black-coated salesman wearing white gloves were standing at a table gravely examining gauntlets. There was no sign of Miles Brinkburn.
‘Fifteenth-century German,’ the salesman was saying, ‘hardest steel that was ever made, but they’re supple as silk.’
A younger salesman came towards me and asked if he could help. I told him that I had an appointment with Mr Brinkburn.
‘He’s through there in our workshop, ma’am, seeing his armour unpacked. He said you were to be shown through.’
He opened the door between the two guardian suits of armour and stood back to let me pass.
Miles Brinkburn was down on his haunches beside a crate surrounded with wood-shavings, studying what looked like a piece of leg armour. He stood up when he saw me.
‘I’m so glad you could be here, Miss Lane. It arrived just before they closed last night and they haven’t had time to unpack it all yet.’
A well-dressed man in his mid thirties whom I took to be Mr Pratt himself was standing beside the crate, supervising an apprentice who was removing more wood-shavings. It struck me that Pratt looked worried. Miles, on the other hand, was glowing with enthusiasm. He showed me the piece of armour.
‘Just look at the great dent in this greave. Pratt thinks it’s old damage. It might have happened when my ancestor Sir Gilbert was wearing it in a tournament four hundred years ago.’
It struck me that it could have just as well resulted from some domestic accident twenty years ago, but I didn’t say so.
‘The armour’s been standing in our gallery all my life,’ Miles said. ‘I used to dream about it as a boy. I never imagined I’d be wearing it in action one day.’
Pratt looked even more worried. Miles pushed the apprentice aside and delved in the case like a child in a bran tub, bringing out another greave and two or three more pieces I couldn’t identify. Pratt took them and inspected them gravely, nodding his head.
‘Yes, they have every appearance of being authentic fifteenth century.’
‘Of course they’re authentic. They’ve never been out of the family. Now, where’s the main part of it, the what d’you call it?’
‘The cuirass,’ Pratt said. ‘It’s over there by the wall.’
He nodded towards the back and breastplate that would cover the upper part of the body.
‘It will have to be altered to fit me,’ Miles said. ‘Our noble ancestor must have been on the small side. I’ll need it done well before the tournament so that I can practise in it.’
Mr Pratt coughed.
‘When it comes to alterations, I think I should say that your brother may have…’
It sounded like the start of a speech he’d been preparing. Miles broke into it impatiently.
‘It’s nothing to do with my brother. I was the one who had the idea of sending for Sir Gilbert’s armour. He’ll just have to make other arrangements. Where are the spurs? They’ll need new straps.’
Mr Pratt looked anything but reassured, but must have realised he could take the subject no further at present, so signed to one of the apprentices to drag out another crate from where it was standing next to the cuirass. The lid was still nailed down and they had to use a crowbar to lever it off.
While the work was going on, I had a chance to look round. A craftsman was hammering delicately on something at a bench by the window. Wooden dummies stood along the walls, wearing various bits of armour. A full-size wax model of a leg dangled from a peg. Other pegs held leather tunics that were presumably for wearing under the armour. It might have been ancient sweat and blood from those that, in the heat, gave the workshop a pronounced animal smell. I noticed Mr Pratt looking round and wrinkling his nose. Wood splintered. The apprentice wrenched off the lid of the case, disclosing a layer of wood-shavings. Miles Brinkburn stepped forward eagerly, then fell back. The smell was suddenly much worse.
‘What the…? Have they gone and put a dead rat in with it?’
Mr Pratt took his place and scooped out double handfuls
