“How many times have you been there?”

“Six times,” J said reverently.

“Is she a pretty lass?”

“She’s not a lass, she’s a young lady. She’s twenty-three.”

“I beg her pardon! Is she fair or dark?”

“Sort of dark; well, she’s not golden-haired, but not altogether dark.”

“Pretty?”

“She’s not painted and curled and half-naked, like the women of the court. She’s modest and…”

“Is she pretty?”

“I think so.”

“If you are the only one that thinks so then she must be plain,” John teased.

“She’s not plain,” J replied seriously. “She’s… she’s… she looks like herself.”

John abandoned hope of getting much sense from his son about Jane Hurte’s looks. “Does she share your beliefs?”

“Of course. Her father is a preacher.”

“A traveling preacher?”

“No, he has his own chapel and a congregation. He’s a most respected man.”

“You are serious about her?”

“I wish to marry her,” J said. He looked at his father as if measuring how far he could trust him with a confidence. “I wish to marry her soon. I have been disturbed recently.”

“Disturbed?”

“Yes. Sometimes I find it hard to think of her only as a spiritual partner and companion.”

John bit the inside of his cheeks to suppress a smile. “You can love her body as well as her soul, I suppose.”

“Only if we are married.”

“Does she want to marry?”

J flushed a deep brick red and bent over the roses. “I think she might,” he said. “But I could not ask her while you were away. I needed you to meet her father and discuss her dowry and all the arrangements.”

John nodded. “We’ll stay overnight in London,” he decided. J’s apprentice lovemaking seemed very sweet and young compared to the complexity of his own pain. “Send them word that we can come at dinnertime and perhaps they will ask us to dine.”

“I’m sure they will. Only, Father…”

“Yes?”

“They’re very devout people, and they think badly of the king. We will have a better time if we do not talk about the king or the court, or the archbishop.”

“Or Ireland, or the enclosures, or the Ile de Rhé, or my lord Buckingham, or my lord Stafford, or ship money, or the court of wards, or anything,” John said impatiently. “I am not a fool, J. I will not embarrass you before your sweetheart.”

“She’s not my sweetheart,” J said quickly. “She’s my… my…”

“Intended helpmeet,” John suggested, without a glimmer of a smile.

“Yes,” J said, pleased. “Yes. She’s my intended helpmeet.”


John had expected an austere shop with an unsmiling proprietor and a whey-faced daughter, and was amazed by the well-stocked counter and the plump round-faced woman who sat outside the shop and invited customers to come in.

“I’m Mistress Hurte,” she said. “My daughter’s inside. My husband is visiting a sick friend and will be home in time for dinner. Step inside, Mr. Tradescant.”

Jane Hurte was on her knees behind the counter, tidying the immaculate shelves. She rose up as they came in and John had to blink his eyes to prepare them for the dark interior of the shop. He saw at once that J had been baffled in his description of her because she had a complex intelligent face full of character, neither simply pretty nor plain. Her forehead was broad and smooth and her brown hair was swept back under a plain cap. Her gown was gray but well-cut and flowing, and her white collar was trimmed with lace. She looked at John with a keen intelligence, and a twinkle of humor.

“Good day, Mr. Tradescant,” she said. “And welcome to our home. Will you step upstairs to wait? Father will be back in a moment.”

“I’ll wait down here with you if I may,” John said. He looked around the shop, which was lined with small drawers, none of them marked. “It’s like a treasure chest.”

“John told me that the Duke of Buckingham has a room like this, but he stores curiosities,” she said. With a shock John realized that she did not call his son J, but John.

“Yes,” he said. “My lord has some very beautiful and curious things.”

“And you arrange them and collect them for him?”

“Yes.”

“You must have seen many marvels,” she said seriously.

John smiled at her. “And many falsehoods. Foolish forgeries cobbled together to try to catch the unwary.”

“All treasure is a trap for the unwary,” she observed.

“Indeed,” John said, disliking the tone of piety. “I shall buy something from you to take home to my wife. Do you have some pretty ribbons or lace for her to trim a collar?”

Jane bent below the counter and slid out a tray. She spread a little black velvet cloth so the lace was shown to its best advantage and laid out one piece, and then another, for him to see.

“And ribbons,” she said. They came from a dozen little drawers, arranged by color. She spread them before him, the cheap scratchy thin ones, and the lustrous silkier lengths.

“Are they not a trap to catch the unwary?” John asked, watching her absorbed face as she smoothed the lengths of ribbon before him, and folded them so that he could admire their shine.

She met his smile without embarrassment. “They are the hard work of good women,” she said. “They work to put bread in their mouths and we pay them a fair price and sell at a good profit. It is not just what you earn, but how you spend your money, that is judged on the great day. In this house we buy and sell fairly and nothing is wasted.”

“I’ll take that lace,” John decided. “Enough to make a collar.”

She nodded and cut him the measure he needed. “A shilling,” she said. “But you may have it for tenpence.”

“I’ll pay the full shilling,” he said. “For the good women.”

She gave a sudden, delicious gurgle of laughter, her whole face lighting up and her eyes dancing. “I’ll see that they get it,” she said.

She took his coin and put it away in a strongbox under the desk, entered the purchase in a ledger, and then wrapped the scrap of lace very carefully and tied it with a piece of wool. John stowed it in the deep pocket of his coat.

“Here’s Father,” Jane said.

John turned to greet the man. He looked incongruously more like a farmer than a seller of cloth and haberdashery. He was broad-shouldered and red-faced, well-dressed in sober black and gray and with a small lace collar. He held his hat in his hand and put out his other hand to John for a firm handshake.

“I am glad to meet you at last,” he said. “We have heard nothing from John but about his father’s travels since he first came here, and we prayed for you while you were in such peril off France.”

“I thank you,” John said, surprised.

“Daily, and by name,” Josiah Hurte went on. “He is a mighty all-wise, all-powerful God; but there is no harm in reminding him.”

John had to suppress a smile. “I suppose not.”

Josiah Hurte looked at his daughter. “Any sales?”

“Just a piece of lace to Mr. Tradescant, here.”

His tradesman’s instinct warred with his desire to be generous to John’s father. The desire for a small profit won. “Times are very hard for us,” he said simply.

John looked around the well-stocked shop.

“It doesn’t show yet,” Josiah said, following his gaze, “but every month things are getting tighter. We have a constant stream of requisitions from the king, fines for this, new taxes for that. And goods which were free to buy and sell suddenly become farmed out to courtiers as monopolies and we have to pay a fee to the monopoly holder. The king demands a free gift from his subjects and the vicar or the churchwardens come round to my shop, look at the outside, decide on their own what I can afford, and I face prison if I refuse.”

“The king has great expenses,” John said pacifically.

“My wife and my friends would spend all my money too if I let them,” the Puritan said shortly. “So I don’t let them.”

John said nothing.

“Forgive me,” the man said suddenly. “My daughter swore me to silence on this matter and I broach it the moment I am in the door!”

John could not resist a laugh. “My son too!”

“They feared we would quarrel but I would never come to blows over politics.”

“I have seen enough of warfare this year,” John agreed.

“It is a criminal shame, though,” Josiah continued, leading the way up the stairs from the shop. “My guild can no longer control the trade because the court favorites now run the market in thread and lace and silk, and so my apprentices are no longer guaranteed their work or their wages; other men come into the trade and force prices and wages down and up at their whim. I wish you would tell the duke that if the poor are to be fed and the widows and children safeguarded, we need a powerful guild and a steady trade. We cannot have changes every time a courtier needs a new place.”

“He does not take my advice,” John replied. “Indeed, I think he leaves the business of the city and trade to others.”

“Then he should not have taken the monopoly for gold and silver thread into his keeping,” the mercer said triumphantly. “If he cares nothing for trade then he should not engross it. He will ruin the trade and ruin himself, and ruin me.”

John nodded, uncertain how to answer, but his host slapped the side of his head with a broad palm. “Again!” he cried. “And promised Jane I would not. Not another word, Mr. Tradescant. So take a glass of wine with me?”

“Willingly.”


Dinner was a respectable affair preceded by a lengthy grace, but Mrs. Hurte laid a good table and her husband was generous with small ale and had a good wine. J sat beside Jane and spent the meal regarding her with a steady admiring gaze. John watched his son with a wry amusement.

The Hurtes were a pleasant straightforward couple. Mrs. Hurte presided over the puddings at her end of the table and Josiah Hurte carved the beef at his end. Between them sat their guests and Jane, and two apprentices.