Figures in Silk by Vanora Bennett

Prattes’ and the Shores’ closest neighbor; the boys every girl in the Mercery had always dreamed of marrying. They were twins, so alike Isabel had never been able to tell them apart, though she thought this one was called Robert. But the sight of his eyes (topaz, she remembered Elizabeth Marchpane calling the color of the Lynom boys’ eyes; no, manticore, Anne Hagour had dreamily contradicted her: man-tiger) reminded her of the one definite thing she knew about them: that they’d both chosen not to go into their father’s business but to train as lawyers instead. Their father had gone round telling people, with wistfulness in his voice and hurt in his eyes,“They say there are opportunities I’m too old to understand in government; they’ll see the world and better themselves faster outside the Mercery, they say.” Thomas had told his father that with all the redistribution of lands and estates that the wars had brought, he’d get richer faster if he went into drawing up property transfer agreements. Robert had told his father he’d get richer faster if he stayed in the City but went into representing City merchants and the Guildhall in negotiations with the Royal Wardrobe. They weren’t the only young men to see new horizons beyond the City walls, and everyone knew their father was longing to amass a big enough fortune to buy his way into the gentry anyway, but the fact of both sons leaving the Mercery had aroused comment. The selds had buzzed with it for weeks.
    Isabel gritted her teeth. It was just her luck. A Lynom wasn’t going to sympathize with her decision to sign up for a ten- year silkworking apprenticeship. If she wasn’t careful, he might even delay things; let her father know before the papers were signed and sealed.
    For once she was grateful for Alice Claver’s war horse ways.
    “Sit down, young man, and take down the terms,” her mother- in-law rattled out, breaking through the visitor’s formal regrets over the death in the family; and the Lynom boy sat obediently at the table and began unpacking his box of pens and parchment. If Isabel hadn’t felt certain nothing could make Alice Claver nervous, she might have thought the silkwoman was in even more haste than she was. “Term, ten years. Premium, five pounds.”
    The Lynom boy’s good-humored eyes were laughing. He could feel her haste too. And he was intrigued. Isabel thought for a moment he must sense a story to tell the selds—at least until she remembered that he’d changed his own life to get away from the selds. Perhaps, she thought, reassured, he was the right person to be making this document after all.
    As it turned out, he didn’t try to delay. He’d become a lawyer through and through. He wrote the usual promises into the document: that Isabel would cherish her mistress’s interests, not waste her goods or trade without her permission, behave well, and not withdraw unlawfully from her service; that Alice Claver would“teach, take charge of, and instruct her apprentice” in her craft, chastise her in meet fashion, and find her footwear, clothing, a bed, and all other suitable necessities.
    Alice Claver looked over his shoulder. “What’s this?” she said sharply as he carried on writing. He stopped, looking confused, and ran his hand through his tawny blond hair. He’d started to add the final boilerplate phrase of contracts involving girl apprentices—that Isabel should be treated pulchrior modo , more kindly than a boy. “She’s my family,” Alice Claver said brusquely.
    “How else would I treat her?” She barked with laughter. After a pause, Isabel laughed too. the Lynom boy looked from the older woman to the younger, both in their black gowns. Then he smiled and crossed out the off ending line. But Isabel felt his gaze linger curiously on her as he packed up his pens.
    “My fee for drawing up the indentures and registering them with the Mercers’ Company clerk is one shilling,” the Lynom boy said,