The Silversmith's Wife _ Sophia Tobin Read Free Page A

now. In this, as in so many ways, I failed my husband and my family. She closed her eyes and thought: my poor, dead father, and his promises.
    The night he had proposed to her, Pierre had made her come to him on the front steps of her father’s house. He was standing just beyond the front step, looking up at the night sky. He seemed elaborately posed; had her father given him a few minutes to prepare himself? Beneath his cutaway coat she glimpsed the lilac satin waistcoat and the large watch he was so proud of, the gold case chased with putti and clouds, and bordered by thin slices of coloured hardstone. He treasured that watch; he never let anyone touch it but him, keeping them at a distance with one hand as he showed it to them. His shoe buckles were new additions, set with glittering white pastes, and were larger than any she had seen before. He stood as though he was acutely aware of them, and wanted to show them to their best advantage. Every movement said: you are lucky, madam. I have chosen you. Every movement had spoken of self-confidence, and his certainty that he would rise in the world. Now, someone had cut him down.
    She did not know how long she sat with Dr Taylor, only that her reverie was broken by the house itself, warning her of the people within. She heard footsteps on the wooden floors upstairs; the suggestion of her servant’s and lodgers’ voices. ‘I’d better unlock the doors. They’ll have heard you come in,’ she said. But instead of going up she went straight downstairs, to the door that divided the hall from the shop. Again, she had to fumble with the keys to get the door open.
    On the other side her husband’s apprentice was standing. He alone of the house’s inhabitants had stayed quiet, but he was dressed and awake. She had guessed he would be most afraid, and she could see he was trembling. She put a hand out to him in reassurance. He was still recognizable as the fifteen-year-old sent to them from the Welsh borders some five months before who had taken to following Pierre around with the grateful look of a rescued cur. The dim candlelight glanced off his blonde head, his blue eyes in their bruised hollows wide with misgiving. He did not take her hand.
    ‘Come on, Benjamin,’ she said. ‘There are bad tidings. Your master is dead.’ Her voice wavered only slightly on the word: dead. The boy looked at her dumbly. She gave him the keys. ‘Go upstairs. Unlock the others. I haven’t the strength.’
    It was unprecedented for her to hand over the keys, but Benjamin took them without a word and bolted past her. As she went back into the parlour, Mary heard the thumps and creaks as he ascended the upper stairs in his lumbering, heavy-footed way. She sat down again.
    ‘You may go, Dr Taylor,’ she said. ‘It is late. You must be needed at home.’
    The doctor stood up, but did not show any sign of going to the door. ‘He was a good man,’ he said. ‘He was my best friend, in all the world.’ At the sight of her face, he seemed to remember himself. ‘My sincere condolences. Are you sure you wish me to leave? Can I not be of assistance in some way?’ He stayed where he stood, looking her over as though she was one of his patients. She felt the piercing intensity of something just out of vision begin to strum at her nerves.
    ‘I am sure,’ she said. ‘Please go. If you would come again in the morning?’
    He bowed, and withdrew. ‘Ho, there!’ he called in the passage. Mary heard Benjamin descend the stairs and let him out; then the locking began again, concluded by the apprentice grunting slightly as he heaved the bar across the door, the bar she had left unhooked.
    She heard the voices of her servants and lodgers in the passageway. But Mary stayed still. She realized she had not asked Dr Taylor where her husband was now. He must be somewhere; they would not have left him out there, lying on the cold ground. She felt the weight of her incapability descend upon her. Her sister