‘You were already there when I came down into the hall?’ she said in surprise. ‘I thought I was leaning back against the chair legs.’
‘I have been mistaken for many things in my life,’ the man nodded, ‘but usually more interesting, and more active than a chair. No matter. I am clearly getting old.’ Even in the dark, she saw the sudden crinkle of his eyes and knew he smiled. ‘Stay where you are,’ he said. ‘I’m going out and will be gone for many hours. Tomorrow, if you wish to stay, I’ll have an upstairs chamber furnished for you. In the meanwhile, sleep. Decisions of the night are false friends. Sleep alters priorities and waking opens new horizons. I shall see you, perhaps, when I return.’
Tyballis sat staring as the door quietly closed and the emptiness shuffled back around her. But it was a long time before she once again fell asleep.
She was woken by sunbeams. As with so much else within the house, the window shutters of Andrew Cobham’s bedchamber were broken with two slats missing. It had rained in the small hours and a sparkle of wet glass caught the rainbows in soft rosy streaks. Tyballis sat up in a flurry but she was quite alone. So she scrambled out of bed, found her old gown hanging forlorn and stained on a far peg, hurried into it and pulled the ties tight under her arm, discovered her shoes and stepped into them, had nothing to tidy her hair with and so simply pushed it from her eyes before finally rushing from the room. She looked back only briefly.
Grand once, and still retaining its shabby luxury, the chamber was huge. The fire tools by the empty grate were brass-handled and expensive. The one window was set behind a padded seat covered in faded tapestry. There were no candles in the chandelier nor the sconces, but the ceiling was vaulted, and its beams were carved. Fresh herbs had been strewn and perfumes of camomile and mint danced with the sunbeams. The bed rose from its central place like a gigantic throne, swathed in purples and golds, though the threads had fallen loose and hung in frayed scraps and dangling curls, the tassels unravelled. But the linen was clean, and the pillows fat with feather. Tyballis sighed. She had never slept in so wondrous a chamber before and doubted she would ever do so again.
Following the passage outside, she hurried upstairs to the tiny room where her pallet of the previous evening lay scattered. She was wondering what to do next when Felicia Spiers found her. ‘Mister Cobham has asked me specially to look after you, my dear,’ said the woman. ‘To make you welcome and find you a better lodging. I hadn’t realised you already knew our kind Mister Cobham.’
‘Oh, I don’t,’ Tyballis said quickly. ‘That is, I met him twice, but I never knew his name. And kind certainly seems an appropriate description. But perhaps mysterious as well.’
Felicia Spiers shook her starched headdress and a few wisps of greying hair struggled out to curl around her ears. ‘I would hardly call Mister Cobham mysterious, my dear. He is our benefactor and allows all of us – let us say, those in need – to stay in his home free of any rental charge, which is remarkably charitable of him, as I’m sure you’ll agree. I don’t question his motives, but he’s well respected and well liked here. I hope you’re not saying you don’t trust him, my dear?’
Tyballis certainly wasn’t going to mention finding herself undressed in his bed. ‘I simply meant he doesn’t appear to be a wealthy man, yet this house is a palace. Or it was once, though it’s gone to rack and ruin. I expect he has no money for repairs, but if he charged his tenants a reasonable rent, I imagine the building could be restored.’
‘Please don’t suggest any such thing to him, my dear,’ Mistress Spiers became quite agitated and twisted her hands in her apron. ‘My dearest Jon, my husband you know, has been incapacitated for some considerable time and we barely manage to feed the little ones as it is. If we had to pay for our board, I doubt we could stay.’
The same applied to herself. ‘But you must admit, it’s extraordinary for any common man to allow numerous folk to stay quite freely in his home.’
‘Most kind. Most charitable,’ bobbed Felicia. ‘He even brings us food sometimes, and medicines and kindling. He allows us to collect berries and herbs and salad greens from his gardens, and there is a little lake at the back where fish breed, so we have water as well, which is very nearly clean.’
‘So, the man is a paragon though not a handsome gentleman, you must admit, and wears a face marked by violence. They say our appearance never belies our virtue, so perhaps Mister Cobham is atoning for past sins.’
‘Hardly appreciative, my dear.’ Felicia pursed her lips. ‘Kindness is kindness, and a good man should be respected. There are few enough in the world, such as the Lord Mayor for instance, and all the Archbishops, his holiness the Pope naturally, and his noble grace our king, who is so beautiful I had to avert my eyes on the one occasion I saw his magnificence riding by.’
‘Our good King Edward,’ sniffed Tyballis, ‘is by all accounts a glutton and a whoremonger and they say half our bishops and monks are avaricious lechers. Every man has his faults. And every woman, too.’
Mistress Spiers stiffened. ‘I shall ask Ralph and Nat to carry out Mister Cobham’s instructions,’ she said and turned her back. ‘No doubt once you’ve moved into a nicer chamber, you’ll feel better disposed towards the man who gave it to you.’
‘I’m sorry – I didn’t mean to antagonise. And Gyles, your little boy?’ Tyballis asked in a hurry. ‘Is he well?’
‘Much better,’ Felicia said, determinedly sullen. ‘So, you need not fear for infection as well as fearing our landlord’s character.’
Guilt displaced all other discomforts. ‘I’d be pleased to help you with the children, if I may. I have no experience, but I hope to make myself useful.’
‘Useful is as useful does,’ said Felicia Spiers.
Chapter Eight
To have glass in the windows of the hall downstairs was grand enough; to have glass upstairs in the bedchambers was a ludicrous luxury. Now, washing windows, sweeping and scrubbing took her mind off other things. Tyballis permitted only fleeting thoughts of her husband wallowing in Newgate’s freezing filth, reassured to remember he now had money enough, which she had procured. She herself, of course, had no money at all and although it appeared she would be welcomed rent-free, there was still the consideration of food, soap, darning wool and other small expenses. Having been accused often enough of prostitution, and considering Andrew Cobham’s refusal to condemn the practice, she pondered briefly whether she might sell the only thing she now had to offer. She was fairly sure, however, that her body would be unlikely to fetch more than a penny farthing, and since Borin’s physical attentions had always left her sore and faintly disgusted, she could hardly hope that a stranger would prove any more appealing.
Bricks, well heated from the hall’s perpetual fire, lay over her new bed like the pustules of the pox, steaming cheerfully in an attempt to dry out the musty damp. The blanket and bedraggled eiderdown in patched cambric, lay on the newly swept floor. As yet her hearth was empty, but she could collect wood whenever she wished, Ralph Tame said, for when the evening chills bore down. A single stool was drawn towards the place where she dreamed of solitary cosiness to come. Ralph had set her up with the bedding and the furniture donated by their landlord, and his brother Nat had helped carry up the bed. Nat she had seen before, running from Davey Lyttle. Indeed she felt she had met them both, since their appearance seemed identical.
‘But it’s simply annoying,’ Ralph said, dumping down his end of the mattress. ‘And as far as I’m concerned, we look nothing alike. Yet people persist in pretending they can’t tell us apart.’