At the Sign of the Star (6 page)

Not long after my lessons in housewifery began, I found a way to entertain myself at my stepmother's expense. We sold a book in the shop called
The Queen-like Closet,
by Hannah Woolley, which contained recipes of all kinds, for food and for medicines. It also included menus for fine dinners, and examples of proper letters written on diverse occasions. It was not a book that had interested me in the past, for I liked not to concern myself with women's business. But Hester had her own bound copy, which she often consulted. Now at last I, too, found it most valuable.

One evening, when my father was out and Hester busy with her duties, I sat with my stepmother in the large parlor and studied the book closely. “Mother,” I said eagerly, “here is a recipe for a very sovereign water which will be of great use to you.”

“Are you reading again, Meg? We must begin on your needlework soon, that you may be usefully occupied.”

“You are reading yourself,” I pointed out. She had before her a bound book with dark covers, though I could not say what it was, for I could not read the title from where I sat.

“I have mastered the arts you are still learning. Still, even I might be better occupied mending your father's torn waistcoat than wasting my time this way.” And she gave a guilty glance to her book.

“I think you will find my time was not wasted tonight,” I told her.

“What is it you have found, then? I do not think I need Mrs. Woolley's help in my kitchen or my stillroom.”

“This very sovereign water is good for many ailments, but you will find it most especially useful as it helps speedily those with stinking breath.”

She did not speak but her face filled up with red. I made my own face as innocent as I could. “Have I offended you? I thought I heard my father say—”

“Get out of here.”

“I am waiting for my father.”

“Get out. Go to your room. I do not want you before me.”

“It also kills worms within the body. It helps with palsy. It is a cure for barrenness.”

She stood, holding her book in her hand. Although twice my age, she was not greatly larger than myself, for I was a big girl and she a small woman. But I did not wish to be struck, so I rose myself. “I think I will find Hester,” I said, and left the room, carrying
The Queen-like Closet
under my arm.

In the weeks that followed I was most obedient to my stepmother, attending to her carefully as she taught me to boil pigeons, to make Dr. Butler's treacle water, to make perfume of roses, to candy violets or gillyflowers. But when no one else was by I gave her many suggestions for remedies she needed not.

“Mrs. Woolley has an excellent surfeit-water which she says will help you with that farting.”

“There is a fine remedy here which helps remove the pits of smallpox from your face—have you tried it?”

Each time I insulted her she sent me away, and each time I found Hester, and jested with her as we used to do.

When first I began these assaults upon Susannah I worried that she would bear tales to my father, and wondered how I would face him if his ire were roused. But soon I saw that she would not own to him that she could not manage me. And because she did not bear tales about me to my father, I thought that I was safe, and that I would remain so forever. However, I was wrong.

We had spent the morning in the kitchen, making a gooseberry fool to have for dessert that day. Susannah was in a fine humor; I believe she did not correct me once. When I spilled the rosewater she said it did not matter, and when she dropped a wooden plate she laughed at herself, and said she was not fit to be my teacher. Almost we had fun together. But I did not want to have fun with the one who was taking my inheritance from me.

And so, as we dusted ourselves clean, I said to her, “I see you have got the ink spots out of your linen apron.”

Because we had laughed together, she was not on guard against me, as she should have been. Instead, she looked surprised, and said, “There were no ink spots.”

“Oh, I'm sorry. It was a natural mistake. Mrs. Woolley says ink spots on linen must be soaked in urine, so when I smelled you of course I thought…”

I had seen her angry with me before, but now she was not angry. Tears came to her eyes, and she turned from me.

“I must find Hester,” I said, for I felt bad, and wanted to be away from the mischief I'd done.

“Hester,” she repeated. “It is Hester who puts it into your head to say such things.”

I was alarmed. “No, Mother, it is all my own thinking. I would not dare to speak so if Hester were near, do not beat her, please. Beat me, if you must.”

But she went from the kitchen without looking at me again.

Then truly I ran to find Hester, to warn her. She scolded me when she heard what I had said, and hit at me, but I ducked back as she knew I would. Then we waited, but we heard nothing from my stepmother the rest of that day. In the shop she was cool to me, but she was often that.

The days passed. I learned to pickle cucumbers, and to preserve raspberries, and to make a trifle. I dared not make more sharp remarks to my mother, but I began to be very clumsy in the kitchen, spilling often, or measuring the wrong portions, or seeming stupid when she knew I was not.

Then, one evening after supper, my father called Hester to him, and when she came out of the parlor her face was white.

“What is it?” I cried, running to her, for I had been waiting on the stairs.

“I am dismissed,” she said.

I gazed at her for one terrified moment, then flew into the parlor. My father was sitting in a chair, and Susannah stood before him. He held one of her hands in his, and smiled upon her.

“You must not, you must not,” I said to him, and flung myself to my knees. Susannah stepped back in surprise. “Hester has done nothing. I am the one who makes the mischief from my own head; it is my fault! Do not send Hester away!”

“Meg, what is this nonsense? Calm yourself, Daughter.” My father patted my hair soothingly. “Your mother needs a lady's maid, that is all; someone who can go with her to the theater and help her to dress her hair. She has found someone more fit for this service than Hester, that is all. Do not worry about Hester. She will have a handsome present before she goes back to her village.”

I turned my face to look at my stepmother. Her eyes were as innocent as mine so often were with her. “Please,” I said in a low voice. “I will not mock you. I will study your arts. I will not spill in the kitchen.”

She smiled in a puzzled way at my father. “Do you think I am punishing you for a little spilled sugar, Margaret? Don't be foolish.”

“I know you have been a good daughter to your new mother,” my father said. “Susannah would have told me if it were otherwise. Do not bother yourself, Meg. Get up now. You need not come begging here.”

I stood up.

“Read aloud to us a little, Meg. Susannah has not heard how beautifully you read.”

“May I read another night, please? I have a headache.”

“Of course, of course. Run along, then. Perhaps Hester may need you.”

So once more I ran to Hester, and cried piteously, for I feared I had capsized my boat.

3

When once the shock was past, Hester did not mind so very much going home to her village. She had told me often that she did not love London, but I hardly believed her, for I loved it so much myself. And then, she was eager to see Thomas again, whom she would one day marry. “I hardly mind going, except for your sake, Meg,” she said to me.

I did not tell her so, but this grieved me, and made me cry when she was not near to see. I wanted her to mind for her own sake, and not only for mine.

“It will not be so bad,” she comforted me. “Perhaps your father will let you come to visit me in Surrey.”

“That is likely enough, if I come soon, for he would like to be alone with his bride. Once she conceives, however, I will be needed here to wait on her hand and foot.”

“Meg, it is not as bad as that.”

But to me it was.

The first week of August brought four days in a row of hot weather. The meat pasties in the cookshops went bad in the heat, and the smells of the street grew fierce. It was on the fourth day that Hester left London. I rose very early, to breakfast with her before she went.

“Will Thomas meet the coach at Guildford?” I asked.

“He'll not be able to wait that long. He'll start in the night and walk ahead.”

“He'll borrow the cooper's brown mare and ride the London road,” I said.

“He'll turn himself into a bird and fly by the coach window.”

“I wish
I
could turn myself into a bird.”

“I do, too, love. I wish I could take my bird with me to the countryside. I vow, once you saw it, you would love it as I do!”

This I did not answer. I knew it was untrue, but I did not want to make her unhappy by saying so.

After breakfast I helped her bring her things down from our room, and then we hugged good-bye. She cried, but I did not, for I knew I would cry later, and she would not. My father carried her bundle, and walked with her to the inn where the coach would call. I stayed in the doorway, looking after them.

Susannah came and stood behind me. “Now it is just the two of us,” she said. “And we will get on better.”

But I did not answer.

*   *   *

The new lady's maid was called Joan. She was older and plainer and much finer than Hester, though she could not read, as Hester could. I thought I would hate her, but it was not so. The first night she found me reading by candlelight when she came to bed and said to me, “Read to me a bit before I sleep, won't you?” And I did, until I heard her snoring gently. After that we did so every night, unless she came late to bed from keeping company with Susannah while my father was out. By day she used a high, sweet voice, and petted my stepmother and fanned her and admired her. But at night, when her stays were undone at last, she sighed mightily and grinned at me before she fell into bed. Once she said, “This is nice. At my last place I slept on a truckle bed in the mistress's room.” But in the main, we did not speak, except for my reading, which swiftly put her to sleep. She was larger than Hester, and when she slept her body gave off great heat, which was a comfort on cool nights.

Another good thing about Joan was that she sometimes kept Susannah from the shop. They went together to the Exchange to buy ribbons and pins, or to Drury Lane or Dorset Gardens to see the new plays performed, or to a card party given by a master goldsmith's wife. Usually my father would stay in the shop when she was gone, but once he left it to Robert and me to manage it between us. Trade was good that day, and I was proud to count the shillings into my father's hand at the end of it.

Yet, though I liked reading to Joan, and liked her taking Susannah from the shop once or twice in a week, nothing could make me like the ache I felt at missing Hester. For there was no one, now, to bandy words with me, or to make up foolish stories with me, or to pretend to scold me when I was too saucy, without meaning it one bit.

4

As the summer turned to autumn, we spent fewer mornings in the kitchen and more in the parlor, where Susannah taught me to do needlework. She did this, I was sure, because she knew how greatly I hated it. The kitchen had its warmth and its tasty pleasures, and even the stillroom had its curiosities, which made learning there of interest. But sitting near the fire with a needle, when I might have been helping in the shop or reading a book, was like poison to me. And while in the kitchen my clumsiness was feigned, with a needle I was truly clumsy. More than once I bled upon my work.

“Damme!” I exclaimed on one such occasion.

“Do not speak so,” Susannah said, but she was not shocked.

“I do not see why I must learn turkey work. Of what use is it to me?”

“How can you ask? Only look at the fine carpet upon the table just there. I made that myself!”

I looked, not for the first time. It was truly a beautiful carpet, with a thick pile of green. The border that hung down around the table showed a forest of green trees and red deer browsing among them.

“Why can we not buy such things?” I asked, but I knew the answer. Carpets from Turkey or Persia were only for the rich.

We worked in silence for some time. Then I asked my stepmother what she was making.

“A christening cushion,” she said, smiling down at her work. “See, this will be Moses in the bulrushes.”

This answer roused my fury, for I knew she was thinking of the children she would bear my father. “I do not need to learn these arts,” I said, and cast my work aside.

“Your husband will want you to know them.”

“Husband! Who will marry me, now that you and the brats you will bear have taken away my inheritance?”

At last it was said. The knowledge that had parted us like a sword from the day she came into the house was spoken aloud. I could hardly believe what I had said: I expected her to rise, to scream, I expected thunder to peal, or the fire to die in the grate.

Instead, she spoke without looking at me. “That is why I am doing my best for you. For if you find no husband you will end up in service, and then your household arts will command you a better position.”

For a moment I was without speech, and nearly without breath, as one who has had a sudden fall. Susannah looked up and saw my face, and her own filled with pity. She put down her needlework and put out her hand, as though to touch me, though she was not near enough.

I could feel the heat in my face, but my words were cool enough. “I see. I am being trained for service. Why did you not tell me from the start? It is always useful to learn a trade. However—I can find a better one, I vow.”

And I left the room. She spoke to my back, but I knew not what she said. I went to my room and chased Joan from it. I threw myself upon the bed and cried, and bit my fist to stop myself, and then cried some more.