At the Sign of the Star (9 page)

I heard a lark sing. Its song was very sweet and rich. I imagined myself with Hester in the countryside, eating red apples from the tree and listening to birdsong, and I felt tears standing in my eyes. Could the country be so bad a fate?

We began to walk again, and once more we fell behind. Anne and I walked in silence for a time. We could hear Susannah and Joan chattering together, and every now and then caught a few words. “So hard to please,” Susannah said once, and Joan said, “Time will tell.”

“Of course,” Anne said after awhile, “I suppose in the country you will cook and sew every bit as much as in London, though you are more apt to darn stockings than to embroider cushions. But you will be with Hester.”

I did not reply. I saw myself in a Surrey cottage, huddled near a coal fire too poor to keep off the winter draft. I saw myself peering at the stocking pulled over my hand, holding my needle uncertainly aloft.
It will not be like that,
I thought, and tried to picture myself eating apples with Hester once again, but somehow I could not keep the autumn chill away from us as we ate.

The lane turned once more, and suddenly I heard a sound that was not a bird. 'Twas a fiddle, for a man stood where two pathways crossed and played his instrument as we passed by. And I do not mean to say that man can make a better sound than the birds who were blessed by God with such happy throats, yet I never heard such sweet notes as these that climbed and fell and
opened
somehow under the sky. I was so struck, I stood for a moment, staring at him, and Anne looked back at me in surprise.

“Come, Meg,” she said, but Susannah said, “No, it's what we've come for.”

And I thought: Why go to the country, when one can live in London and go to Vauxhall?

At last we walked on, but there was ever music following us, sometimes birdsong and sometimes a fiddle or a harp, and then we came to a pavilion where there was much dancing. We sat nearby and ate our beef pasties, and Joan and Susannah had wine. When we were done, we danced, Susannah with Joan and I with Anne. And then Susannah said that we would trade partners, and held out her hand to me. I remembered the wedding, and how I would not dance there because I did not like my stepmother. But now the music was so lively and my spirits were so light that I could not help myself. We joined the crowd and swept round the pavilion with our skirts whirling until we panted and could dance no more.

On the way home we were all of us tired and quiet. The weather had begun to grow cold, and we pulled our cloaks around ourselves in the boat. We walked with Anne to her house, and as she kissed me good-bye she whispered, “Send me word of your decision.”

After we left Anne at her house and were headed toward Little Britain, Susannah said to me, “It is not so bad to have a mother again, is it?”

All the pleasure of the day fled. I did not know how to answer her. I wanted to say, “You are not my mother.” Or even: “Do not make me like you.” But I found I could not speak, and instead only smiled a faint, false smile.

4

It was on the Tuesday next that Mr. Winter came into the shop for the first time in several weeks. Now that there were no lessons in the kitchen, I spent most mornings with Robert at a bookstall in St. Paul's Churchyard, and my afternoons with my father in the shop. Once more it was I who took Paul Winter's coin when he came to read, for he rarely came before three or four of the clock.

“Good afternoon, Meg,” he said to me that day as he entered. “What are you reading today?”

“Nothing, sir. I only amuse myself,” I said, and lowered my book so he could not see it, for I was reading only jests and ballads, and I knew he would have no great opinion of them.

“Amusement is not a vice. Show me what you read, Meg.”

I held it out to him, and he turned over the clean page and read the title aloud. “
An Antidote Against Melancholy, Made Up in Pills. Compounded of Witty Ballads, Jovial Songs, and Merry Catches.
Well.” He handed back the pages. “I hope you are not truly melancholy, that you need such an antidote.”

“Certainly not, sir,” I said, but he looked at me keenly and I knew he thought I lied.

“Do the songs cheer you?”

“They do, sir.”

“Show me your favorite.”

I had no special favorite, so I read him out a riddle.

“‘He went to the wood and he caught it,/He sat him down and he sought it,/Because he could not find it,/Home with him he brought it.' Well, Mr. Winter, what do you suppose the man caught?”

“Hmmm.” Mr. Winter thought. “Because he couldn't find it he had to bring it home … a tick, perhaps?”

“A thorn.”

“Ah, a thorn. That has happened to me. Riddles are good fun. Is there another you like?”

“Not a riddle, no … but I like the song between Nanny and Jenny, where they sing of their sweethearts, and why they will not marry. The Baker stinks of sweat, you see, from working at the ovens, and the Butcher is too bloody, and the Tailor too poor … the early verses are very witty, though later they begin to be too much like each other. I think they ought to have made a verse about a sexton, that would have given good fun.”

“Perhaps you should write one yourself.”

“I?” I tried to laugh, but I could feel myself turning pink, as though caught at something, for in truth I had tried my hand at just such a verse, but my attempt was a failure. I spoke quickly, to change the subject. “At last Jenny sings that she will never marry … but I suppose she will be very poor if she does not, and will live always in her brother's house, sweeping up after his wife and taking care of his children.”

In my hurry to change the subject I spoke of what I did not mean to say. I looked away from him, hoping that he did not understand what lay beneath my words. But he did understand, and drummed his fingers against the counter as he thought of it.

“Nanny and Jenny had better marry booksellers,” he said at last.

“Perhaps they had not dowry enough.”

“You must not worry so, Meg. Everything will come right.”

“How can you make such a promise, when there are so many for whom things go so wrong?”

“I trust your father, that is why. He will not fail in his duty to you. Do you not trust him?”

“I trust him, yes, but … I am no longer the only one he loves. I am not the only one to whom he owes a duty. I wish…”

“What do you wish, Margaret?”

“I wish my fate lay in my own hands.”

“That is true for none of us.”

“But for a man it is more true than for a woman.”

“Yes, that is so—for some men. Not for Robert, who must serve your father until his contract has been fulfilled. Not for Julius, the African who waits upon Sir William; he may be sold to another at any moment.”

“My father…”

“Is at the mercy of circumstances, as are we all. It is true there are some choices he can make. But … there are strong women who take their fates in their own hands, you know. There are women who preach, women who teach, women who act upon the stage, women who write, women who sell books, women who brew ale. They are free, though I do not know that they are happy … I think few are who travel life's road alone.”

“
You
travel life's road alone.”

He smiled and shook his head. “Nay, Meg, I do not,” he said. “I have many friends who travel it with me.”

I thought often after that conversation of what he had said of these women, women who preached and taught. Of course I could not do those things. I had no education. I could sell books, certainly … but only if I first married a bookseller, and inherited his rights upon his death. I did not think I could brew ale even if I married a brewer and learned all he knew; the smell alone would be too strong for me.

I did wonder, a little, about women who wrote. But I thought to myself that to make oneself independent that way would be nearly impossible. I knew of no woman who had done it, saving only Aphra Behn.

5

One evening as I sat in the small parlor, helping Joan with the mending, my father came to me and said, “Well, Meg, have you made your choice?”

I knew well what he meant, but pretended for a moment that I did not. “My choice, sir?” I asked him.

Joan murmured something about thread and left the room.

“If you are to go to Surrey you must travel now, before the winter is upon us.”

“Do you want me to go, Father?” I asked and I knew he heard the pain in my voice.

He looked surprised. “No, of course not, Meg. I would rather you stay with us. Susannah prefers it, too. But I have told her it is to be your choice. I would not have you unhappy.”

I thought of my words to Mr. Winter, that I wanted to have my own fate in my own hands, and thought: I do. At least in this. It was true for very few, especially among children. Yet I was one of these.

“Thank you,” I said to my father, and tears spilled suddenly down my cheeks.

“You choose to go, then?” he asked, and the heaviness in his voice filled me with joy.

“No, sir. If it pleases you, I will stay with you in London.”

He stooped and kissed me on the brow. “It pleases me, Daughter,” he said, and left the room.

I sat with a torn apron in my lap and could not keep the tears from coming. Joan came back in and said, “What, are you melancholy again? And I thought you were feeling better these past weeks.”

Everyone thought so. I had grown quite used to pretending I was happy when I was not. I smiled at Susannah when I passed her in the hall, and murmured my dismay when she bumped her elbow on the wooden cabinet in the parlor. I told riddles to Joan, and even to my father. I sang a little while I packed the books Robert and I would sell at St. Paul's Churchyard, songs that were out of season, about Maying or midsummer. My father heard me and hushed me, but with a wink, the way he used to do when he was proud of my wit but did not want to show it.

What puzzled me was, the more I pretended to be happy the happier I indeed felt. Nothing had changed. My father had still chosen his bride over me, Hester was still gone, my inheritance was still gone, my fortunes remained uncertain.

And yet it was not so very hard to sing, and once or twice I did so without plan.

SIR PATIENT FANCY

1

The day after I told my father of my decision I sent our boy Godfrey to the Gosse house with a two-word message to Anne:
I stay.
And the truth of those two words gave me more satisfaction than I had imagined that I could feel at the prospect of staying on in my stepmother's household.

Susannah was pleased, too, that I had chosen to stay in London, which did not surprise me. She knew I would be a great help to her when her babies began arriving, at least, if they lived. And she may have thought that it meant that I had chosen at last to love her. That I could not do. But there were moments I almost loved her without choosing it.

One of those was the day she told my father she meant to invite the Gosse family for Christmas.

Before my mother died, Christmastide was always marvellous at our house, with the most delicious treats, the brightest lights, the most fragrant green boughs brought from the countryside to decorate the hearth, the sweetest carols sung. I remember well the last Christmas she lived, how my mother labored late into the night baking mince pies, and how I woke her early the next morning because I could not sleep for excitement. She cuffed me for waking her, and began to scold, then suddenly she hugged me instead, and bade me be merry all the day. And I was, for she was carrying then, and I hoped for a little brother or sister when the spring came.

But instead the spring brought only death, and since that time my father would not celebrate Christmas at home. We never dressed the house, nor made mince pies, nor asked company in. Instead we went always to someone else's house, and that someone was often a man, and childless. Last Christmas we had gone to the house of Titus Woods, my father's uncle. He spent the day telling me how lucky I was to have been born in the reign of Charles II, and how he himself had grown up under Puritan rule, and was not allowed to have Christmas. Then he told me of all his neighbors, and which ones were Puritans in their hearts, though he had seen them that morning at St. Mary-le-Bow. At last, however, he fell to talking of bowls with my father, and I was allowed to help the servants clear the table. I almost wished we had stayed at home.

So when Susannah said at supper one evening that she would ask the Gosse family for Christmas Day, I looked up from my plate to see what my father might say.

“'Tis an enormous bother to have guests for Christmas,” he answered her, hardly pausing between his bites of roast mutton.

“Why, you need not worry about the bother, you have a wife now.”

“Meg and I have got out of the habit of it. I believe my uncle may ask us to dine.”

“Don't be foolish,” Susannah said briskly. “'Twould be more fitting if he were to dine with us.”

He put his fork down and looked at her for a moment without speaking, and I knew he could think of no more excuses. “No,” he said at last. “No, it pleases me not.”

I felt a quick sting of tears, which surprised me, for I had not known how much I wanted to have a merry Christmas once more.

But Susannah was not finished. “Miles,” she said, putting a hand upon his shoulder. “Are we not a family? Is that not why you married, to leave those lonely Christmases behind you?”

“Do not speak so,” he said roughly, and he strode from the room, leaving his supper unfinished upon the table.

“You have offended him,” I burst out in dismay.

“We shall see,” Susannah said calmly as she helped herself to a radish from my father's plate.

And the next afternoon she told me that the Gosse family would indeed be our guests on Christmas Day.