Read Online Golden Hill by Francis Spufford - Free Book Online Page A

both hands out, palm down, fingers wide as if he were playing octaves, before him, so that all eyes were drawn to them expectantly, and all could see they were empty, and there was nothing between the fingers. ‘My interest’ – he clapped his hands hard together, making the company jump – ‘is all for your delight.’ And quickly he stretched a long green-clad arm between the candles, to cup the ear of silent little Elizabeth opposite. His hand twisted; her mouth opened in an O to match her eyes.
    ‘Sihirle, para bulmak!’ he cried. Between his fingers silver flashed. He flipped the coin in the air so it made, briefly, a glitteringsphere, and presented it. ‘For you,’ he told her. ‘Precious metal out of thin air.’
    But Lovell seized Smith’s wrist, tilted it and squinted.
    ‘Out of my cashbox, if I’m not mistaken.’
    Elizabeth looked at her father.
    ‘You may take it, Lisje,’ he said. And to Smith: ‘What tongue was that?’
    Lovell released his grip.
    ‘Conjurer’s gibberish, surely,’ said Hendrick.
    ‘In fact, no,’ said Smith. ‘Turkish. It seemed fitting, since the coin is so too.’
    ‘You speak Turkish? A strange knack for an Englishman.’
    ‘Just a few words, sir, gained on my travels.’
    Tabitha, though, had been gazing intently not at Van Loon and her father, nor at Elizabeth, nor even at the piece of money, but at Smith’s hands. She tilted her head from one side to the other and back again, as if settling something into place. A flickering smile appeared on her lips, narrower than her sister’s, and roseleaf-brown in the shadows at the edge of the candle-light. It was the first Smith had seen there.
    ‘No, Mr Smith,’ she said softly, ‘that is not your interest.’
    *
    Scarves and coats in the hall; a squadron of departing Van Loons. It was only half past nine; Smith wondered what he was going to do with the rest of the evening. The women had not withdrawn when the meal was done, in the usual way, possibly he guessed because an effort was being made to keep Flora and Tabitha apart. Flora, in fact, was pulling a coat on too: the Van Loons had enfolded her, and were carrying her off to a game of cards in their house two streets away. Tabitha remained at the tablewhile Zephyra cleared it, the men talking around her. ‘You will call again, won’t you, Mr Smith?’ she had said, looking up at him. ‘Oh, of course,’ said Lovell, without visible alacrity. ‘Why not.’
    ‘I’m sorry they were so rough with you,’ Flora said now, in the hall, her face flushed prettily, a tendril of fair hair hanging down. Joris tugged at her arm.
    ‘They comported themselves very reasonably,’ said Smith.
    ‘Well, then I’m sorry that Tabitha was so very … Tabitha.’
    ‘She has a temper,’ Smith agreed.
    ‘She has a demon,’ said Flora, seriously.
    Smith waited at the stairfoot for the buttoning to be complete. The framed thing was in front of him that had sparkled in the dark, the night before. It was not a picture, he saw now. It was a shallow box filled with whorls and loops of some brittle material encrusted with flecks of light. It drew the eye in: coils balanced countercoils in there, curls countercurled around other curls, in minuscule filigree. The colours were mineral. It was like looking into the bottom of a rock pool when the pebbles shine in sea-contrived patterns, or at the floor of a cavern cysted by patient droplets. It was a petrified forest, a hard little, subtle little garden.
    ‘What is this made of?’ he asked Hendrick, who was next to him.
    ‘Paper. You haven’t seen one before? It is called quill-work. Very frustrating, very difficult. A recreation for clever girls who don’t have enough to do. The shiny parts are ground glass, glued on. But you have to be careful. You can easily cut yourself, hey?’
    *
    ‘What do you make of him?’ Geertje Van Loon asked Piet that night, in their box bed with the damask curtains. ‘What do you make of him?’ the