10 - The Goldsmith's Daughter Read Free

him well. (Was it presumptuous of me to consider myself his friend? I did not think so; nor did I believe that he would, either.)
    ‘Well?’ Adela asked, kissing me again. ‘Are we to go or not? If you don’t wish to stay at an inn, there are those friends you’ve mentioned so often, Philip and Jeanne Lamprey. Perhaps we could lodge with them.’
    This time I was able to speak with decision. ‘No, for unless fortune has favoured them since we last met, their cottage is too small to accommodate even one extra person, let alone two. We shall certainly call upon them, for they would never forgive me if I didn’t take you to see them, but there is no question of being their guests.’
    Adela pulled away from me a little, her dark eyes glowing with excitement.
    ‘Does this mean that we are to go to London? That you have agreed?’
    I realised that I was now as eager to make the journey as she was, but I made one last, desperate stand on the side of common sense.
    ‘Suppose the weather turns bad? We might be snowed in for weeks on the road.’
    ‘Master Nym assures me that that isn’t likely to happen,’ my wife said, getting up and going to pour me some ale. ‘I was questioning him while you were drawing water for Margaret, and he’s adamant that it’s as mild a winter as he can remember, and thinks it almost certain that it will remain that way. All the signs point to it, he says.’ She put the overflowing beaker down on the table beside me and went to fetch a cloth to mop up the overspill. This done, she knelt down by my stool. ‘Roger, my love, just this once let’s take the risk. The children will be well cared for by Margaret. You know as well I do that we need have no fears for them. And when we’re old and grey, I’d like to have something to look back on. When you’re deaf and doddering around with a stick, when I’m bent double, when the children are grown up and beginning to treat us as though we’re not safe to be out alone on the streets, we’ll be able to laugh and say to each other, “Do you remember when we were young enough and mad enough to travel to London in the depths of winter with Jack Nym and his cartload of soap? Do you remember the wedding of the little Duke of York and the Lady Anne Mowbray? Do you remember the trial of the Duke of Clarence?”’
    I knew I had lost the argument. I knew that, stupid and hare-brained as the adventure appeared, I was suddenly as committed to it as was Adela. I sighed and pulled her back on my lap.
    ‘And when does Jack Nym think of returning?’ I asked.
    ‘He’s hoping to stay long enough to see the wedding tournament on January the twenty-second. In the meantime, he intends to tout around for someone who needs a load transported back to Bristol.’
    This, I calculated, meant at least a week in the capital, and I could not help wondering if our meagre savings were sufficient to support us for such a length of time. Then I reflected that if I took my pack with me, I could earn money by selling my goods. I had done it before in London on more than one occasion. I could do it again.
    I smiled at Adela, putting up a hand to smooth her cheek. ‘Don’t look so worried. We’ll go.’
    The twelve days of Christmas were over, and still the weather held, crisp and dry and bright.
    Adela and I shut and locked our cottage in Lewin’s Mead, warned our neighbours and the Brothers at Saint James’s Priory that it would be standing empty for some weeks, took what few valuables we possessed, such as pots and pans and bedlinen, to Margaret Walker’s for safety, saw the children happily ensconced in her tiny house and, on the sixth of January, not without some lingering misgivings on my part, set out for London, sitting up beside Jack Nym on the front board of his cart. Behind us, locked in by the tailboard, the crates of grey Bristol soap rattled and clattered and bumped.
    I suppose I ought to have guessed what lay ahead, but for once I was lulled into a