Mistress of Mourning Read Free Page B

candles for their chapel, and they are coming to fetch me.” Then the shop bell over the door rang, for coming through it was my suitor, Christopher Gage.
    He was a good decade my elder, in public a hail-fellow-well-met, popular in our parish ward and at our church and important in the wax chandlers guild. He looked suddenly short, after I had met Nicholas Sutton.
    Christopher was of broad build but carried his weight well, his shoulders back, his head always held high. His cheeks bloomed with health under his carefully combed brown hair that so perfectly matched his clear brown eyes. He dressed plainly but richly, and favored large, gem-set rings, one of which, twice, he had tried to give me as a betrothal gift. Christopher Gage was an intelligent man, a widower with two grown children. He was going places, and Maud and Gil thought I should be going with him. Well, I must admit my business merger with Will had turned out well in our personal lives, and our marriage had been solid.
    “Ah, my dearest!” Christopher cried, and seized and kissed my hand as if he were some chivalrous knight and I his lady. “Arthur,” he said, ruffling the boy’s hair until it resembled a bird’s nest. “Gil”—with a nod and a single pat on his shoulder. “I bring good tidings of great joy, as the gos-pels say.”
    The man was ever cheerful when he had an audience, though strangely that did not lift my dark moods of late. He was not attuned to my grief, telling me we could simply make another son to take Edmund’s place if I’d but wedhim. Still, Christopher had not only been a friend of my husband but had known my father, Simon Waxman, which went far with me, for I had adored my well-traveled, urbane, and talented sire. When I was a child, I yearned to travel with him, but I’d barely been outside of London.
    “Tell us then, Master Gage, if you please!” Arthur begged.
    “Should I fetch Maud then too?” Gil asked.
    “Of course,” Christopher said. But the moment my brother-in-law left the room, he told us, “The wax chandlers have purchased land for a new guildhall, over on Maiden Lane where currently stands the Cock on the Hoop Tavern. God as my judge, the location is as fine as those of the major liveries, and we’ll build a grander guildhall too. It will benefit us to be nearer to the guilds with noble and royal patronage, like the broiderers and the haberdashers, away from the tallow chandlers, with their lesser candle products for the poor—smelly, dirty stuff,” he said with a wrinkled nose.
    “It’s all some folk can afford for lights,” I protested. “I’ve known one or two who saved all their lives to buy our good candles for their funeral processions and masses for their loved ones’ souls.”
    He shook his head almost imperceptibly and went on. “In addition, King Henry has granted our new motto, ‘Truth Is Light,’ to replace the old ‘Loyalty Binds Me’ granted by King Richard—ah, God rest his Yorkist soul,” he added in a whisper as he made a swift sign of the cross. “To top all that off, the guild is to have a new coat of arms, and the artist wants you to sit for it, Varina!”
    “I…That’s wonderful, but who is he?” I asked, feelingtoo many people I didn’t know were pulling the strings of my life today, however much bounty was bestowed. Besides, I wanted to create images, not become them. I truly longed to be an artist, like my father, and not only an artisan.
    “He’s the Italian who bought votives from you the other day. I suggested he come by. I believe you told him your father had been to Italy, and you discussed the wax effigies the wealthy Italians pay to have carved and clothed to their likenesses. That’s one way to stand near the holy altars to curry favor with the Virgin and other saints, eh?” he said with a sharp laugh. “But if that would catch on here, instead of only with our royalty and nobility ordering such effigies, the price of our beeswax would soar, I’m