Hamnet(49)

The Venetian cats, when not killing rats, stay true to their origins, choosing to sleep in the hold, on the boxes of beads from Murano. There is something about their wooden surfaces, their knotted ties, their chalked markings in Venetian on the side that evidently appeals to them.

Because not many people go into the hold during a voyage, when the cats die – and they do, in succession, one by one – their bodies remain unfound, on top of these boxes. The fleas that leapt from the dying rats into their striped fur crawl down into these boxes and take up residence in the rags padding the hundreds of tiny, multi-coloured millefiori beads (the same rags put there by the fellow worker of the master glassmaker; the same glassmaker who is now in Murano, where the glassworks is at a standstill, because so many of the workers are falling ill with a mysterious and virulent fever).

At Barcelona, the remaining Polacks jump ship, disappearing into the melee of the port. The captain sets his teeth and tells the men they will carry on, depleted as they are. They will deliver their crates of cloves and fabric and coffee and they will set sail.

The men do as they are told. The ship docks at Cádiz, then Porto, then La Rochelle, with more men lost along the way, then north, finally, to Cornwall. When they sail into London, they are down to a crew of five.

The cabin boy goes off to find a ship heading to the Isle of Man, the oncered scarf still tied around his neck, the sole surviving female Venetian cat tucked under his arm; the other three men head to a tavern at the furthest end of London Bridge; the captain orders a horse to take him home to his wife and family.

The cargo, unloaded and stacked in Custom House, is gradually distributed throughout London: the cloves and spices and textiles and coffee to merchants, to be sold on, the silks to the Palace, the glassware to a dealer in Bermondsey, the textile bales to clothworkers and haberdashers in Aldgate.

The boxes of glass beads, crafted by the glassmaker on the island of Murano, just before he injured his hand, lie on the shelf in a warehouse for almost a month. Then one is dispatched to a dressmaker in Shrewsbury, another in York, a jeweller in Oxford. The final box, the smallest of the lot, still wrapped in rags from the floor of the Venetian glassworks, is sent by messenger to an inn at the north edge of the city, where it remains for a week. It is then carried outside by the innkeeper and, along with a parcel of letters and a packet of lace, is given to a man heading into Warwickshire on horseback.

His leather saddlebag gives off a rhythmic click-click-click as he rides, the beads jostling together with the movement of the horse, turning their six colours around and around, rubbing against each other. For the two days of the journey, he idly wonders to himself what could be in the wrapped box: what could give off such a minute, clean sound?

Two of the beads break, crushed by the weight of their replicas. Five are scratched irreparably on their surfaces. The heavier ones work their way gradually, with each jolt of the horse, to the bottom.

The fleas in the rags crawl out, hungry and depleted by their hostless stay in the wharfhouse. Soon, however, they are recovered, rejuvenated, springing from horse to man and back again, then out on to the various people the rider encounters on the way – a woman who gives him a quart of milk, a child who comes to pat his horse, a young man at a roadside tavern.

By the time the rider reaches Stratford, the fleas have laid eggs: in the seams of his doublet, in the mane of the horse, in the stitching of the saddle, in the filigree and weave of the lace, in the rags surrounding the beads. These eggs are the great-grandchildren of the monkey flea.

He delivers the letters, the packet of lace and the box of beads into the hands of an innkeeper on the outskirts of the town. The letters are delivered, one by one, to their recipients, by a boy, in return for a penny (one, incidentally, arrives at Henley Street, for the husband in London has written to his family, telling them how he has sprained his wrist by falling down some steps, about a dog owned by his landlord, the play they are about to take on tour, all the way into Kent). The packet of lace is collected, after a day or two, by a woman from Evesham.

The rider turns his horse back towards London, noticing that the movement causes him some discomfort: there seems to be some painful, tender spot in his armpit. But he ignores it and continues on his way.

The box of beads is taken, by the same delivery boy, to a seamstress in Ely Street. She has an order for a new gown for the wife of a guildsman, who will wear it at the harvest fair. It is said that the wife has visited London and also Bath, in her time, so has refined ideas about dress. She told the seamstress that she must have a bodice decorated with Venetian beads, or else the dress will be worth nothing to her. Nothing.

And so the seamstress sent to London, who in turn sent to Venice, and they waited and they waited, and the wife of the guildsman fretted that the beads might not arrive in time, and they sent a second letter to London, and heard nothing back, but here they are.

The seamstress reaches through the hatch and takes the box from the boy. She is about to open it, when her neighbour’s child, Judith, who helps with the stitching and the tidying of coloured twists and the cutting of cloth, comes through the door.

The seamstress holds aloft the box. ‘Look,’ she says to the girl, who is small for her age, and fair as an angel, with a nature to match.

The girl clasps her hands together. ‘The beads from Venice? Are they here?’

The seamstress laughs. ‘I believe so.’

‘Can I look? Can I see? I cannot wait.’