Free The Gilded Lily by Deborah Swift Page B

guilty.
    ‘But, Pa, charting the stars is old-fashioned. We’ve got to move with the times. The king made it plain he has no traffic with astrologers on account of the church, and we
can’t be seen to go against the king’s wishes, ’twould be bad for business.’
    Jay saw his father’s lips press together in an expression he recognized well, a bull-headed stubbornness. This was the last thing Jay needed, to have some old charlatan noseying around the
business, putting a muzzle on his activities. He changed the subject.
    ‘Anyway, Pa, I’ve got an idea in my head that will really make us the talk of the town. Something new, that no one else has ever done.’
    His father ignored him, bending over a pocket watch to tie on one of his labels. He penned a few marks with the quill, blew on it so the ink would dry, then looked up.
    ‘Time for new ideas soon enough. You’re too full o’ them, if you ask me. Can’t sit still a minute. Always got your finger in one pie or another. No staying power,
that’s your trouble. And put that down.’
    Jay dropped a watch chain he’d been winding round his fingers back onto the table.
    ‘Let the astrologer come,’ his father said. ‘There’s more to life than we can see on the surface, son.’
    You bet there is, Jay thought; just don’t look too closely under your own two feet. He dragged his attention back to his father’s words.
    ‘You don’t know what it’s like to struggle. Times are uncertain. There’s the war with the Dutch, and the last king lost his head, never known anything as cock-eyed as
that in my life. Belt and braces, is what I’ve always said. That’s why I had you schooled.’
    Jay frowned. His schooling had not been a happy experience.
    ‘Come on, Jay, please your old pa, eh? Look out for Nat Tindall, and if you see him again, tell him he’s welcome. There’ll be time enough for your newfangled schemes when
I’m gone.’
    His father always had that card – the one that made Jay feel as though he was standing over him, just waiting for him to die. That really was an ace, and he knew he could not trump it. But
he had no intention of inviting that unwashed old goat Tindall anywhere near their premises, so he merely nodded. When his father had set his mind on anything and dug in his heels, it would take
more than a coach and six to shift him. Unfortunately for him, Jay thought, his son was tarred with the same brush.

Chapter 7

    One of Sad ie’s earliest memories was watching her father slump into sleep over the kitchen table. Ella said he was ‘neither use nor ornament’, and her face
had been full of disgust. Sadie knew she herself would never qualify for the word ‘ornament’. She grasped early on that she had better be of some use, that any advance she might make in
life would come through skill and not looks, so she was adept at many small crafts. Hers were the neatest stitches, the sturdiest baskets and straw hats, hers the most mouth-watering lardy
cakes.
    So she had to bite her lip often, as Ella struggled to make Mr Whitgift’s wig ready for his fitting. Ella wrested it this way and that, pulled and prodded at it, tugging on the hair, as if
it were the wig’s fault it would not go right. Once she saw Ella thrust the wig away in frustration and she went over to help, but Ella hissed at her.
    ‘Keep out of my light.’
    ‘Would you like me to do a few rows to speed it on?’
    ‘Why? I can do it. He wanted me to do it, not you. Get out of it, you clod.’
    And Sadie did not offer again, but watched Ella tussle with it. She knew that fighting with the materials never made it easy – you had to respect the tools, let them help you.
    When the day of the fitting arrived, the wig was finished just in time. Madame Lefevre had put it on a stand with the other finished perukes. Sadie was glad for Ella, because she had seen the
effort she had put in. Granted, it was not as neat as her own work, but it would pass muster, and she was