Anticipation by Tanya Moir Page A

wealthy exiles’ capital at such a benevolent rate, will soften, d’Etevenaux swears. Once he has the funds to pursue his Austrian campaign, Louis’ men will overlook the lights of Huguenot services in the woods at night; those Calvinists foolhardy enough to remain in his realm may quietly practise their trades and leave their fortunes to their children.
    But there is a catch, a rub, an ulcer the brandy is stinging under Guillaume’s tongue. Can it be right to buy freedom for the French Calvinists by funding their oppressor? Shall he pay the debts of Louis the Debauched, Ravisher of the Faith, Devourer of Huguenot babies? Shall he bank-roll Louis’ papist plague of dragoons against the Protestant English Army, with whom(
The Times
reminded him this morning) France is still officially at war?
    Remembering last week’s sermon, Guillaume puts his brandy aside. He paces around his closet twice, then sits down and scratches his forehead. It’s true that with or without the exiled Calvinists’ help, Louis will fill his war chest. Either way, the pestilential dragoons will continue to get their pay. Perhaps d’Etevenaux is right, and there is only one thing to decide. Shall their brothers in France be free?

    Guillaume is still grappling with this question the following day, as his servant Beth makes her way towards Spitalfields Market. She has her handkerchief to her nose against the ever-present miasma of foreign food that rises from the streets. Garlic and onions, frogs and snails. The tails of oxen, stolen from cesspits behind the fellmongers’ stores, rendering down to soup. The strangers will eat anything, if left to their own devices.
    Beth buys good clean English meat from her butcher friend, paying only a few pence below the receipted price, and thinks her employers are lucky to have her.
    On her way home, she pays a call of her own, upon a gentleman who is waiting for her in a private room at the Weaver’s Arms.
    ‘Well?’ says Nathaniel Sharpe. ‘What do you have?’
    Beth settles herself, with some dignity, upon the opposite stool. ‘A moment, please, Mr Sharpe. I’m parched.’
    ‘Of course.’ He pours the sticky yellow wine she likes, and watches her sip at it without further show of impatience.
    ‘Well,’ says Beth, at last. ‘I reckon he’s done it.’
    ‘You’re sure?’
    ‘Sure enough.’
    ‘And you’ll swear to it?’
    ‘Yes, sir.’ Beth looks Nathaniel Sharpe right in the eye — a look that never fails to make her mistress nervous. ‘That’s what I’ll swear.’

    Business is business. Money must be made before it can be disposed of. Guillaume, therefore, puts the Swiss scheme out of his mind, and devotes his afternoon, at last, to Jean-Pierre’s designs. There are drawings for five new botanical brocades. He spreads them out on the dining table, where the light is best. In the last of the sun, their colours gleam, but Guillaume is not impressed. He has in his mind the finished silks, which will outshine all jewels, and glow with the beauty of fire and sunsets.
    Beth comes in and lights the lamps, and returns with an extra candle. Guillaume studies the final design, a gold tabby brocaded with rampant pink briar rose and exotic blooms of silver and purple that he suspects grow only in Jean-Pierre’s head. It’s not enough to admire the beauty of the pattern; Guillaume’s job is to consider its execution. Whether it can be woven, and by whom, and how long they would take. The percentage of waste, if and when those delicate brocade stems pull their tabby ground too tight. Designers can never be trusted to think of these things. Still, the pattern is lovely enough for King George himself, and Guillaume is engrossed in the sums for its manufacture when the pounding on his front door begins.
    His first thought is for his looms. He hurries to the front room, which affords a good view of the street, now unusually bright, and flickering with torchlight. Guillaume peers out from behind