The Fatal Fashione Read Free

city.”
    The mutual admiration between the financial genius and his queen ran deeper than many knew; theirs was a meeting not only of minds but of memories. Thomas had been one of the first to pledge allegiance to Elizabeth when she became queen, and he had served on her first council. He, too, had lost his mother when he was but three and knew what it was to have a stepmother. Like the queen, he’d had a powerful father, albeit a commoner, in whose footsteps he walked: His sire had been high sheriff and lord mayor of London as well as founder of the Gresham family fortune through trade with the Merchant Adventurers.
    Jenks cupped his hands to give Elizabeth a boost up to her mount, and she lifted her knee over the horn of the sidesaddle to settle herself. With a guard before and behind her, the party strung out along Dowgate, heading north toward Cornhill in the most mercantile part of town, crowded with shops and livery company halls. This late in the day, the hawkers’ cries were few, as many were already home. By now goodwives or servants had purchased whatever would grace the tables of London this evening before darkness fell.
    “To clear the area for your visit, I gave the crew an early good day,” Thomas explained as he rode beside but slightly behind her. “There are but a few necessary watchmen about the place now.”
    People made way for the mounted party, though some stared up at them. Elizabeth kept her hood pulled close to her face. She startled as a pan of slop from one of the overhanging stories above just missed her skirt. She urged her horse toward the middle of the street, despite the fact it then walked in the shallow sewer ditch. Just ahead, she saw the large cleared site, looking clean and spare with great marble stones rising from its base.
    “This will be very grand, Thomas, bigger than I imagined it when you explained your plans,” she said as they reined in. Both he and Jenks helped her down. Three men were on the site, guarding stacks of materials and supplies, but only one seemed to pay them heed.
    “It was shameful the way merchant traders had to meet in the open on Lombard Street for years, Your Grace. There we were much subject to the weather and to the possibility that someone lurking nearby would overhear us. Yet I am keeping the tradition of a bell rung twice a day to summon traders. Only this bell will hang from a high tower—there,” he said, pointing skyward. “And it, like the dormers of the fourth-floor slate window, will be graced with the sign of the Gresham name.”
    “Your grasshopper insignia?” she asked, for she recalled the name Gresham came from two old English words for “grass” and “farm,” a farm no doubt full of the high-jumping insects. Now, as never before, that sign seemed a perfect symbol for this ambitious, loyal man who leaped fast and high in her service and esteem. Thomas’s notes to her always had his grasshopper crest pressed into the wax from his signet ring; he wore a gold one now on his left index finger.
    He took her on a tour, pointing out sites whereon would stand outer colonnaded arches supporting second-story rows of shops for mercers, smiths, and tradesmen. Within the future colonnades would lie the open space for a vast inner courtyard where merchants and traders from England and all of Europe could meet and bargain for personal and national fortunes.
    “No more, I pray,” he told her solemnly, “will the focus of financial power be on the Continent, among our foes as well as friends, but here, in the heart of our England. By the way, Your Majesty, second-floor niches will each be graced by the bronze and painted statue of an English ruler, with yourself in the very center. And, of course, your royal arms will hang over the Gresham arms at the front double-arched entry.”
    “All that pleases me mightily, for this grand edifice must be not be a mere copy of a foreign bourse but English to its foundation. As you say, it will bring