Free The Gilded Lily by Deborah Swift Page A

now of course defunct on King Henry’s orders. It was more than a century since any monks had chanted evensong here. They passed down a
cloistered corridor, through several sunless interconnecting rooms furnished with a hotch-potch of locked cabinets – the gun room, the silver room and finally the gold room, which functioned
also as an office. This was the only room with daylight; a thin stream of sun slid through the tiny round window and onto his father’s desk. The walls were speckled with moving dots of light.
His father was marking up rings and bracelets for sale, now that the owners had failed to buy them back by the due date.
    He sat down opposite his father on a high-backed Windsor chair. The room whirred as if alive, a hundred pocket watches ticking away inside the cabinets.
    His father did not look up but continued to examine a ring by holding it up close to his spectacles.
    ‘Saw Tindall today, outside the Pelican,’ Jay said. ‘He looked a blaggard. His coat was that threadbare I’m surprised it holds together.’
    ‘Nat Tindall the astrologer?’ Now Jay had his father’s attention. ‘I’ve not seen Nat for years. Not in all of Cromwell’s days. How does he, the old dog? Did
you tell him to drop by?’
    ‘He looked a pinchbeck. I tell you, Pa, we can’t have the likes of him hanging around here.’
    ‘Why, Jay? There’s no harm in him coming in for a chinwag. He gave us good advice in the early days.’
    ‘He’d bring the business down. He’s naught but a leech.’
    ‘Hold with your judgements now, son. It was on account of him I took this place – and now look at it, it’s fair buzzing. He saw it in the stars, told me the date to sign for it
and all. Happen we could do with a bit more of that advice.’
    ‘Don’t be soft, Pa. It’s our own hard work has brought us all this, not any of his quackery.’
    ‘We’ve had queer luck, though, haven’t we, son? Though I reckon ’tis you – you’re my lucky talisman.’ He smiled up at Jay, a smile that crinkled the
brown skin on his forehead and around his eyes like an old leather glove. ‘’Tis uncanny the way the best stuff turns up here. Dear old Nat, he made quite a chart for it. Great big thing
it was, took up half that wall. Baffled Bessie and me, it did, but he said our success was writ aforehand in the heavens. Insistent, he was. Something to do with Taurus, the Bull.’
    ‘Bull, my backside. We’ve made our own reputation. And it’s not lady luck, it’s my hard graft – working my way through the stock every day and checking the
gentry’s lists in case their stolen goods turn up here.’
    ‘And they always do. I’m telling you, it’s uncommon fortune that brings them things through our door. Nat was right. Why, they could end up at any pop shop in London, but like
as not they finish up here. ’Tis uncommon fortune, that.’ He shook his head with an expression almost of reverence. Jay kept quiet. He knew full well why the goods always landed up in
their establishment.
    His father went on. ‘Only last week, Justice Brinkley came by to ask after his missing portraits, and before a week was out, as if by bewitchment, here they were.’ His father
whistled softly through his teeth. ‘No trace of where they came from, none of the lads can remember who brought them in, but the bugger paid handsomely to buy them back. Beats me why the
constabulary never catch the villains – far too slow, likely. But mark me, if it weren’t for us, Brinkley’d never have clapped ey’n on those portraits again.’ His
father’s eyes watered. ‘It was a ripe old time, when we first started. Yes, I miss Tindall. I had an affection for him, he had a wise old head on his shoulders.’
    Jay remembered Tindall’s knack of suddenly looming out of the shadows, like a living gargoyle, when Jay was about to do something he shouldn’t, like light-finger a watch from his
pa’s cabinet. As a boy it used to make him start, and feel