‘I’ll join you, Lady Honor,’ I said.
She smiled. ‘Excellent. Company would be pleasant.’
Marchamount shook his head. ‘Surely you don’t prefer the companies of ladies over manly sport, Brother Shardlake?’
‘When has the company of ladies not been preferable to that of bears and dogs?’
Lady Honor laughed. ‘Well said! Lettice, Dorothy, come along.’ She turned and began walking upriver along the Bankside path. I stepped to her side. Her two women walked a few paces behind, with the pair of sword-carrying servants.
Lady Honor’s wide skirt brushed against my legs and I felt the wickerwork frame underneath, which held the farthingale out from her legs. I thought of the legs underneath the frame and blushed momentarily.
She made a moue of distaste as another loud roar came from the stadium. ‘A manly sport indeed. It’ll be manly when they set a man on the bear instead of dogs.’ She turned to me with a wicked smile. ‘Gabriel Marchamount perhaps, how d’you think he’d fare?’
I laughed. ‘Not well. I do not like bear-baiting either. The taking of pleasure in another creature’s suffering.’
‘Oh, it’s the noise I can’t stand. You sound like one of those extreme reformers, sir, that would ban all pleasures.’
‘No, I have always felt thus.’
We walked slowly on. ‘They’re naught but dumb brutes.’ Lady Honor sighed. ‘But no, you do not see humanity at its most edifying at the baiting. To be honest I was afraid I might faint, it would be so hot in there today, and smelling of blood. Ah, this is better. Goodwife Quaill looked as though she’d have liked to join us, but she wouldn’t speak unless her husband allowed her.’
‘The advantages of a widow’s independence,’ I said.
She smiled broadly, showing her white teeth. ‘You remember our conversation. Yes indeed. I am widening my business interests, you know. I have bought a workshop for the sewing of silk garments down by St Paul’s. Gabriel helped me, he’s good at that sort of thing.’ She smiled again. ‘But I dare say you are too.’
‘I could do with some new clients,’ I said ruefully. ‘Mine are abandoning me.’
‘More fool them. Why is that?’
‘I do not know.’ I changed the subject. ‘You hire women to do the sewing?’
‘Yes. Silk is such a difficult material; many ladies prefer to have their clothes made up for them now. I have six seamstresses working there, all ex-nuns.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. From St Clare’s, St Helen‘s, Clerkenwell nunnery. Some of the nuns were happy enough to leave the cloister, I’ve heard one or two of them have ended up down there - ’ she nodded back at the Southwark stews - ‘but my women are older. Pitiful creatures, afraid to walk in the streets. They’re happy enough to work at sewing.’
‘It must be hard for them,’ I said.
‘The poor old things like working together again. I feel it is important the ex-religious are found places where they feel secure. Everyone should have their settled place in society. If proper attention was given to that, we should not have all these masterless men roaming the streets.’ She shook her head. ‘It must be a troubling thing to have no place. One must feel very insecure.’ For the first time it struck me that for all Lady Honor’s sophistication there were whole areas of the world, indeed of the very city in which she lived, of which she could have no conception.
‘It is better that people should have the chance to rise if they have the merit,’ I said.
‘But so few have, Matthew, so few.’ Her use of my Christian name gave me an unexpected frisson. ‘I think you do, but you are not ordinary.’
‘You compliment me, Lady Honor,’ I said, bowing hastily to cover my confusion.
‘There is such a thing as natural nobility.’
I blushed, and thought suddenly: I must not let my feelings get the better of me. I must not. ‘The king’s government is full of new men,’ I said hastily. ‘Cromwell. Richard Rich.’ I dropped that name to see how she would react, but she only laughed.
‘Rich. A cruel brute in a velvet doublet. Did you know, his wife is a mere grocer’s daughter?’
‘She is mistress of Barty’s now.’
By now we had walked some distance up the bank, as far as the Paris garden, the houses starting to give way to open countryside. Lady Honor stopped and looked across the river at the bulk of Bridewell Palace. Her ladies and servants halted at the same moment, ten paces behind. A cloud passed across the sun, softening the light and easing the heat.
She looked at me seriously. ‘Matthew, I do hope I am not in trouble with Lord Cromwell. It preys on my mind. Did you talk with him?’