‘Find out who she is!’
‘Which lady has caught your attention?’
‘That creature of pure joy and beauty.’ ‘There are several to fit that description,’ said Nicholas, surveying the crowd as it dispersed. ‘How am I to pick her out from such a throng?’
‘Are you blind, man!’ howled Firethorn, pointing a finger. ‘She is there in the upper gallery.’
‘Amid three dozen or more fair maids.’
‘Outshining them all with her splendour.’
‘I fear I cannot pick her out, master.’
‘The angel wears blue and pink.’
‘As do several others.’
‘Enough of this, you wretch!’
Firethorn punched him playfully and Nicholas saw that he could not escape his appointed task by a show of confusion. He had seen the young woman at once and the sight of her had rung a warning bell inside his skull. Even in the blaze of colour provided by the gallants and the ladies all around her, she stood out with ease. Her face was small, oval and exquisitely lovely with none of the cosmetic aids on which others had to rely so heavily. She was quite petite with a delicate vivacity apparent even at a cursory glance. Nicholas put her age at no more than twenty. She wore a dress in the Spanish fashion with a round, stiff-laced collar above a blue bodice that was fitted with sleeves of a darker hue. Pink ribbons flowed down both arms. Her skirt ballooned out with a matching explosion of blue and pink. Jewellery added the final touch to a glittering portrait.
‘I think you have marked her now,’ said Firethorn with a chuckle. ‘Is she not divine?’
‘Indeed, yes,’ agreed Nicholas. ‘But you are not the first to make that observation.’
‘How so?’
‘She is in the company of two young gentlemen.’
‘What should I care?’
‘Haply, one of them might be her husband.’
‘That will not deter me, Nick. Had she fifty or more husbands, I would still pursue her. It only serves to add spice to the chase. I have something that no other man can offer. True genius upon the stage!’
‘The lady has seen you at your peak.’
‘Count Orlando has conquered her,’ said Firethorn grandly. ‘I saw it every time I stepped out upon the boards. I drew tears from those pearls that are her eyes. I made her little heart beat out the tune of love.’
Nicholas Bracewell gave the resigned sigh of someone who had heard it all before. The actor had immense talent but it was matched by immense vanity. Firethorn believed that he simply had to perform one of his major roles in front of a woman and she would fling herself into his bed without reservation or delay. What made his latest target more alarming to Nicholas was the fact that she did not conform to the accepted type. Here was no practised coquette, sending hot glances down to stir Firethorn’s ardour. The young woman was self-evidently not the kind of court beauty who enjoyed an occasional dalliance to break up the monotony of an idle and powdered existence. For all her undeniable charms and her gorgeous array, there was a wan simplicity about her, a lack of sophistication, the shy awkwardness of someone who was enthralled by the play without quite knowing how to comport herself at a playhouse.
She was unawakened and Lawrence Firethorn had elected himself as the man to open her eyes.
‘Find out who she is, Nick.’
‘Leave it with me, sir.’
‘About it straight.’
‘As you wish.’
A stocky man of medium height, Firethorn filled his lungs to expand his chest and got a last, fleeting glimpse of her before she left the gallery. He had reached an irrevocable decision. Still in the attire of an Italian aristocrat, he stroked his dark, pointed beard and gave a Machiavellian smile.
‘I must have her!’
Born and brought up in Richmond with its quiet beauty and its abundant royal associations, Anne Hendrik had never regretted her move to Southwark. It was a dirtier, darker and more populous area with lurking danger in its narrow thoroughfares and the threat of disease in its careless filth. But it was also one of the most colourful and cosmopolitan districts of London, a vibrant place that throbbed with excitement and which had become the home of theatres and bear-baiting arenas and other entertainments which could flourish best outside the city boundaries. Anne had chosen to live there when she married Jacob Hendrik, an immigrant hatmaker, who brought his Dutch skill and conscientiousness to his adopted country. Theirs was a happy marriage that produced no children but which gave birth to a steady flow of fashionable headgear for all classes. The Hendrik name became a seal of quality.
When her husband died, Anne inherited a comfortable house and a thriving business in the adjoining premises. A handsome woman in her thirties, she was expected by almost everyone to mourn for a decent interval before taking another man to the altar and there was no shortage of candidates seeking that honour. Anne Hendrik kept them all at bay with a show of independence that was unlikely in a woman in her position. Instead of taking the softer options posed by remarriage, she picked up the reins of the business and proved that she had more than enough shrewdness and acumen to drive it along. Like her husband before her, she was not afraid to use a judicious crack of the whip over her employees.
‘This will not be tolerated much longer,’ she said.
‘Hans is a good craftsman,’ argued her companion.
‘Only when he is here.’
‘The boy was sent on an errand, mistress.’
‘He should have been back this long while.’
‘Give him a little more time.’
‘I have done that too often, Preben,’ she said. ‘I will have to speak more harshly to Master Hans Kippel. If he wishes to remain as an apprentice under my roof, then he must mend his ways.’
‘Let me talk to him in your stead.’
‘You are too fond of the boy to scold him.’
Preben van Loew accepted the truth of the charge and nodded sadly. A dour, emaciated man in his fifties, he was the oldest and best of her employees and he had been a close friend of Jacob Hendrik. Though he specialised in making ostentatious hats for the gentry, the Dutchman was soberly dressed himself and wore only a simple cap upon his bulbous head. Hans Kippel was far and away the most able of the apprentices when he put his mind to it but there was a wayward streak in the youth that made for bad timekeeping and lapses of concentration. Entrusted with the task of delivering some hats in the city itself, he should have been back with the money almost an hour ago. Anne liked him enormously but even her affection was not proof against the nudging suspicion that temptation might have been too much for the lad. The money that he was carrying was worth more than three months’ wages and he would not have been the first apprentice to abscond.
Preben van Loew read her mind and rushed to the defence of his young colleague.
‘Hans is an honest boy,’ he said earnestly.
‘Let us hope so.’
‘I know his family as well as my own. We grew up together in Amsterdam. You can always put your trust in a Kippel. They will never let you down.’
‘Then where is he now?’
‘On the road back, mistress.’
‘By way of Amsterdam?’
She had meant it as a joke but she rued it when his face crumpled. Preben van Loew was the mainstay of the business and she did not want to upset him in any way. At the same time, she could not allow an apprentice too much leeway or he would be bound to take advantage. Anne tried to make amends by praising the handiwork of her senior employee who was about to put the last carefully chosen feather into a tall hat with a curling brim. It was a small masterpiece that would grace the head of a gallant. The Dutchman allowed himself to be mollified then fell into a refrain that she had heard all too often on the lips of her husband.
‘They do us wrong to keep us out,’ he moaned.
‘It is the English way, I fear.’
‘Why do they fear the foreigner so?’
‘Simply because he is foreign.’