The following day, Chaloner took Metje with him when he went to purchase clothes to impress the Lord Chancellor. However, it was not long before he wished he had left her behind. Her idea of what was suitable did not match his own notion of buying the first thing he saw, and the business dragged on far longer than he felt it should. By the time the garments were ordered, he was tired, irritable and painfully aware that nearly all the money Thurloe had given him was gone. Since he was late with the rent and there was not so much as a crust of bread in the larder, clothes seemed an outrageous extravagance.
‘You cannot meet the Lord Chancellor dressed in rags,’ argued Metje, speaking Dutch as she always did when they were alone. ‘He will not employ clerks for the Victualling Office who look poor enough to help themselves to the navy’s supplies.’
Chaloner had allowed himself to fall into an awkward situation with Metje. To her, he was Thomas Heyden, a diplomatic envoy. This had worked perfectly well in Holland, when their relationship had been superficial, but it was different in London, when he had come to realise that she was the woman he wanted to marry. He was not looking forward to the time when he would be obliged to confess that he had misled her for the past three years, suspecting she would be hurt and angry.
She knew he was struggling to find a new employer, and nagged him incessantly about his lack of success when she had experienced no such problems, so she was delighted when he mentioned the possibility of an interview at White Hall. Because she had been so pleased to hear he had finally done something right, he had broken one of his own rules of secrecy by confiding that the man he was to meet was the Earl of Clarendon. She saw the post would be a considerable improvement on part-time clerking for the Puritans of Fetter Lane, and was determined to do all she could to ensure he created a good impression, waving aside his concerns over paying the landlord.
‘I could move to cheaper accommodation, but then you would not be next door,’ he said, trying to think of ways to alleviate the problem. ‘And you cannot walk across half of London to visit me at night.’
She agreed. ‘Nor can you come to me. My room is directly above Mr North’s bedchamber, and you have only to breathe on the floorboards to make them creak. He would find us out in an instant, and I do not want to lose my position because he thinks me a harlot. You must keep those rooms if you want to see me. And what about your viol? You play it most evenings now, because the Norths like hearing it through their walls, but if you moved, your new neighbours might complain.’
‘I should cancel the order for the cassock,’ he said, looking back to the tailor’s shop.
She took his arm and pulled him on. ‘Consider it an investment, which will reap its own returns in time – and you must find work, Tom. You cannot live like a pauper for ever. Or would you rather I returned my new fancy apron, so we can purchase cheese instead?’
He smiled. ‘I cannot imagine when you will wear it, when North forbids lace in his house. He told me the Devil’s underclothes are made of lace, although he declined to explain how he comes to be party to such an intimate detail.’
‘He is a dear man,’ she said affectionately. ‘Did I tell you more of his chapel windows were smashed last night? He was so upset that he is talking about leaving London again. I hope he does not, because what would become of us? Will you visit him this afternoon? He was asking for you yesterday – something to do with whether the community can afford to replace the glass.’
‘People remember the time when it was Puritans defacing churches, and they want revenge. North should sell the building, and hold his prayer-meetings in someone’s house instead.’
‘It is wicked that people cannot attend chapel without fanatics lobbing bricks,’ said Metje angrily. ‘I am not a good Puritan – or I would not visit you night after night – but Mr North is. I shall always be grateful to him for employing me – a destitute Hollander in a hostile foreign country – when no one else would give me the time of day.’
They walked to Fetter Lane, where she returned to her duties. Although North would have dismissed Metje instantly had he learned she was carrying on with a man, he was not a strict taskmaster and afforded her a good deal of freedom. He seldom questioned her when she announced she was ‘going out’, and her life as a paid companion for Temperance was absurdly easy.
When Chaloner was sure Metje was safely home – it was a Saturday and apprentices were drunkenly demanding of passers-by whether they were true Englishmen – he went to find North. The Nonconformist chapel was an unassuming building halfway along Fetter Lane, a short distance from North’s house and the rather less grand affair next door in which Chaloner rented an attic. Despite its modest appearance, it attracted much ill will, mostly from Anglican clerics who had been deposed by Puritans during the Commonwealth, and by apprentices who enjoyed lobbing rocks. Occasionally, larger missiles were launched, and there had been threats of arson.
The door was barred, so Chaloner knocked. North answered, and his dour expression cracked into a smile when he recognised his accounts clerk. North was not an attractive man, and his plain clothes did little to improve his austere appearance. He had dark, oily hair, a low forehead and his stern face was rendered even more forbidding by a burn that darkened his chin and the lower half of one cheek.
He waved Chaloner inside the chapel, which comprised a single room with white walls and uncomfortable benches. It was dominated by the large pulpit in which the Puritan incumbent, Preacher Hill, stood to rant of a Sunday morning. Hill ranted at the daily dawn meetings, too, when his flock came to pray before they went about their earthly business, and he ranted in the afternoons when the hardy few appeared for additional devotions. In fact, he ranted whenever he had an audience, no matter how small, and Chaloner had once caught him holding forth to a frightened baby.
‘I tried to catch you yesterday,’ said North, ushering Chaloner towards the small gathering that sat near the pulpit. These were the chapel’s ‘council’ – those with the time and inclination to argue about funds, building repairs and which psalms to sing. ‘Were you looking for work again?’
‘Will you leave us if you are successful?’ demanded a large woman who wore a massive shoulder-width brimmed hat and voluminous black skirts. Faith North was clearly annoyed that her community might lose the man who acted as their treasurer. ‘We were in a dreadful mess before you came along, and I do not want to go through that again. I have better things to do than juggle money, and we cannot let Temperance do it, not after the chaos she created last time.’
Temperance blushed and stared at her shoes. ‘I told you I was hopeless at book-keeping, but you insisted I do it anyway. It was not entirely my fault things went wrong.’
‘I thought it would do you good,’ sniffed Faith. ‘Make you a better wife when the time comes.’
‘No harm was done,’ said North, laying a sympathetic hand on his daughter’s broad shoulder. ‘Heyden untangled the muddle, and we are making a profit now – enough to maintain our chapel, buy food for the poor and pay Preacher Hill.’
‘The Lord,’ boomed Hill, making several people jump. The preacher wore drab, slightly seedy clothes, and his pinched face was entirely devoid of humour. His small eyes glinted when he spoke of his love of God and his hate of blasphemers, two subjects that merited identical facial expressions, and a large mouth accommodated his shockingly powerful voice. ‘The Lord allowed us to make this profit. Heyden had nothing to do with it.’
Faith sighed wearily. ‘So you tell us every week, Preacher. But it is cold in here, and I want to go home, so we should turn our attention back to the business in hand. You can tell us about the Lord’s fiscal omnipotence later, when we are in front of a fire with a hot posset in our hands.’