At the Sign of the Star (11 page)

There was an astonishing din. The musicians tuned their instruments, and the girls who sold oranges bawled, “Oranges, oranges, who will buy of me?” The coxcombs who sat in the pit called up to the women who wore vizard masks and tried to flirt with them. Two men quarrelled loudly, and an elegant woman in one of the boxes laughed so mightily at something that I feared she would bepiss herself. I tried to venture a remark to Susannah, but could not make myself heard, so at last I gave up and waited in bliss for the play to start and the noise to grow hushed.

But it didn't.

When the musicians first started to play, I thought it had. Certainly it was quieter, or perhaps it only seemed so. The musicians were strange to behold, dressed in taffeta gowns with sleeves trimmed in tinsel. They wore garlands of dried flowers in their hair. The music they played was by turns sweet and lively, and I liked it well, but I was impatient to hear the players speak their parts. At last the fiddlers laid down their bows and then Mr. Betterton himself came onto the stage and opened his mouth to speak the prologue. “We write not now as th'Ancient Poets writ/for your Applause of Nature, Sense and Wit/But like good Tradesmen, what's in fashion vent…”

“My husband forbade me to see it,” a woman near me said. “He says Mrs. Behn is brazen to write plays just as though she were a man. Of course he is right. But I could not keep away!” And she giggled.

The other woman answered her, saying her husband had long since given over forbidding her to do things. I stared at them, amazed that they would dare to speak while the play was on. But they were not the only ones. All around me people continued to quarrel, flirt, and chatter. The orange girls cried their oranges and their customers jingled their coins. Indeed, many attended keenly to the business upon the stage, but others paid it no mind at all.

It could not be right. Something was not right.

“Mr. Betterton plays the hero, Wittmore,” Susannah said to Joan.

Mr. Betterton bowed, and was clapped, and now two actresses came upon the stage, the first I had ever seen. The clothes they wore were richly colored, and their faces were bright with paint. But what did it matter if I could not hear the lines they spoke, written by the only female playwright in the history of the world?

For a moment I sat in a dark, numb stupor, hearing nothing but the whirl of sound around me. My disappointment was so great that I wanted to cry. But when all around me took it as a matter of course, it seemed too young a thing to do.

Then I was caught by the words “Custom is unkind to our sex, not to allow us free choice.” The words trembled in the air near me, and I realized they had come from one of the actresses upon the stage. And I understood that I
could
hear, though it seemed that I could not. As the actresses pranced and rustled in the glow of the foot-candles, their lovely, reckless voices sailed through the hot, bright theater to me.

It was true that I could not hear all. When those near me spoke loudly I often lost a speech, or when the orange girls came by. Once a loud quarrel broke out in the pit, and there were cries of “Duel, duel!” and everyone stood and looked below. I stood, too, though I had seen men duel more than once before in London's streets. But they did not duel, and at last people settled themselves. When I returned my attention to the stage I found I had missed how Lodwick had tricked Sir Credulous, and I was very angry about it, and thought it was pointless to have come to the playhouse. It was better to sit at home and read, after all, where one could get every word. And I vowed I would pay no more mind to the players below, and then I would not care when I missed their speeches.

But it was not so easy, for when I
could
hear I heard in spite of myself, and I caught the laughter of those around me as one catches fleas from another's nearby wig, and soon I felt how charming Wittmore was, and how foolish Sir Credulous, and how sweet Isabella. And despite my vow I soon listened as hard as I could, and leaned forward and cupped my ear with my hand when the conversation near me grew loud. For when the players spoke, a kind of magic happened, and it was as if everything were real indeed, as though I sat and spied through the window upon living people who knew not that I watched.

The play told the story of a rich old merchant, Sir Patient Fancy, who always thought himself ill. He had a young wife who did not love him. There were also two young couples who wanted to marry, but whose parents wanted them to marry others, and many complications of that sort. The players said many funny things, and some clever ones, and there were some very comical moments, most especially when a man was crawling about the floor, and a woman sat down upon him as though he were a footstool, in order to hide him from Sir Patient. At that, Susannah, Joan, and I all laughed heartily.

In the end the lovers married for love, as is the way in happy plays. We all laughed and clapped wildly, and I thought to myself that Aphra Behn was getting money from our merriment, and that made me clap the harder. It seemed a wondrous thing, and for a moment I dreamed of doing it myself.

“Well,” Susannah said as we made our way from the theater. “How did you like your first play?”

All my disappointment came back, and I cried out with indignation, “Why do people talk all through it? It is better to sit at home and read the text, I think, for I missed half of what passed!”

She looked at me, and I saw that she was hurt, and that like the players I must act a part, and pretend to feel what I did not.

“That is always the way of it,” she answered me after a moment. “But there are some lines in a play like this one it is better not to hear.”

“Because it is so bawdy?” I asked her, but just then we emerged into the street.

It had been full daylight when we entered the theater at a little past three, but now it was night, and a light rain was beginning to fall.

“Oh, dear,” Joan said. “Well, we won't mind it.”

“We must find a coach,” Susannah said.

“Look at this! It's hardly dark,” I said. It was true, too. Fleet Street was filled with link boys, and each one held a light upon a stick, so that he might earn a few pence guiding the theatergoers through the dark streets. The light from the flames flickered in the puddles that were beginning to form at our feet.

“Pull your hood close,” Joan said. “Your hair is getting wet.”

I hardly cared. I was not used to being abroad at night, and the excitement of it swept through me as the crowd swept past me. And at that moment I decided that it didn't matter that I had not heard every word said. It did not matter. What mattered was the light dancing in the water, and the memory of bright skirts swishing past the foot-candles, and the lovely, reckless voices sailing, sailing through the dark theater to where we sat with our laughter ready.

“Wasn't it wonderful!” I said. And I was not pretending.

4

A few days after we saw the play Susannah became very like Sir Patient Fancy, to my mind. She was by nature a cheerful, brisk woman, but now she began complaining frequently. One day she looked in the glass and claimed her eyes were wan, another day she worried that her urine was clouded. She was much bothered by kitchen smells, and said she could not eat. My father was anxious and tender with her, but I saw nothing to be concerned about. I thought perhaps she wanted more attention from my father, who had been very busy of late with the printing of a new sermon by the Dean of Canterbury.

I said as much to Joan, but Joan smiled and shook her head. “Mrs. Moore does not stoop to such strategems,” she said. “She is a plainspoken woman.”

I thought about that, and it seemed to me this was true. “Ought I to worry, then? Think you that she is indeed ill?”

“Nay, don't worry,” Joan said, smiling more broadly.

So I vowed I would not. But the next morning after breakfast I heard great retchings as I passed through the hall and ran to find Susannah sitting upon the bed, with the bedcurtains drawn back, heaving into a chamber pot.

“You
are
ill,” I cried. “The doctor must come.”

She waited a moment before she replied, head hanging over the pot, to be sure she was done. Then she set the pot upon the floor and wiped her mouth on the corner of her apron. “No, we need him not.”

“Have you the ague?”

“No, no, do not worry.”

“Of course I must worry. You may give it to my father, or to me.”

Susannah lay back upon the bed as though suddenly she felt weak. “What I have is not contagious,” she said with a small smile. “Else every young married woman in London would come to be near me.”

Suddenly I understood. “You are breeding,” I said.

She nodded. Her eyes were closed, as though she did not want to see my feelings show upon my face. All that I had feared had come to pass. Susannah would bear a child—a son, surely—and I would lose my inheritance. But when I caught a glimpse of my face in the glass, it was not filled with the hatred I thought I felt. What I saw on my face was more like fear. And underneath the thought of my inheritance was the memory of my brother Louis hanging onto my apron with his little hands.

“You must be careful of yourself,” I said. “You must rest. I'll call Jane to empty the chamber pot. And perhaps you will want Joan with you?”

She opened her eyes, then, and looked at me, as though she wondered what I was thinking.

“If you please,” was all she said, but her eyes followed me as I left the room.

THE MIDWIVES BOOK

1

“Oh God, you have sentenced me to get my bread by the sweat of my brows, and my wife to bring forth children in pain and peril. Lord, grant her a gracious delivery, and give her strength to endure it. Though many die in childbirth, may it please you to preserve her life, and the life of the child she bears, that both may be instruments of your glory and vessels of your mercy. Amen.”

We sat together in the large parlor: family, servants, apprentices. My father sat in a carved chair and held a Bible on his knees. The curls of his wig swung forward as he bent to peer at the text in the weak firelight. Evening prayers grew longer every day, it seemed to me. My father read chapter upon chapter aloud from Scripture. Sometimes he read an entire sermon. Then he prayed long, and afterward we all chanted psalms together.

“I think my father is more fearful than you are,” I said to Susannah as we left the parlor together one night after he had prayed fervently once more for a gracious delivery.

“Nay,” she answered. “He is not.”

That made me turn away, for I did not want to know about her fear. I told myself she was only standing up for my father, for she did not act afraid.

*   *   *

The months that Susannah was carrying passed slowly for me. It seemed there were only two topics of conversation in the world: the Papists and my mother's growing belly. Mr. Grove and the Mr. Turners simpered as they asked after her. Neighbor women came often, bringing a gooseberry pie or a pot of jam. They stayed and chattered for hours with Susannah. Sometimes such laughter arose from her chamber that my father and I could hear it in the shop, but he pretended he could not.

On the Feast of St. Valentine I turned thirteen, but no great change occurred. Still I worked in the shop, and read when I could, though I also spent much of my day climbing stairs to wait upon Susannah in her chamber, or in the kitchen stewing things that might tempt my stepmother to eat. Of course she did not go into the shop now, nor into the kitchen, nor to church. My father was by turns merry and cross; he was tender with Susannah and barked at Jane and me when we did not hurry enough upon the stairs. The weather was dreary, with leaden skies and chill winds.

Mrs. Gosse came several times to sit with Susannah, and once she brought Anne. It was on an April afternoon, almost a year after Hester and I had seen the comet in the sky above London. To my great joy, the two of us were given our freedom, and we took our cider and bread into the small parlor where we sat before the glowing coals.

“How lovely that you are to have a brother or sister so soon,” Anne began. I sighed before I could help myself, and Anne's eyebrows lifted. “Are you not glad?” she asked.

“Why should I feel glad that my inheritance is to be taken away? It would be better for me if she miscarried.” I was sure these words would shock Anne, but I did not care. Speaking them gave me an enormous relief, a sense of freedom. I felt hard and strong all through.

But Anne was not shocked. “Your upbringing has been so odd,” she said thoughtfully. “You are not used to the ways of the world. You are always fighting what must be. There can be no peace that way.”

“I do not desire peace.”

She laughed at that. “Certainly it is not the only prize in life. So, you wish Mrs. Moore to miscarry. Do you think you will get your wish?”

I had not shocked her, but she shocked me. “I did not say I wish it.”

“You are of two minds, perhaps. We will judge you by your actions. Do you jostle Mrs. Moore upon the stairs? Do you bring her disagreeable things to eat? Do you drop pewter plates near her that she might be startled by loud noises?”

“You know that I do not. I would not add such a crime to the sins of my soul.”

She smiled and lifted her tankard to drink.

“I have mixed tansy and muscatel, and rubbed it into her navel,” I said as though making a confession.

“Excellent for preventing miscarriage. I thought as much. You must also protect her from any kind of anxiety or shock. You must not let her have morbid fancies, or indulge in excesses. She must avoid fire, lightning, thunder, and the noise of guns or of great bells. She must not—”

“Look upon monsters lest her child be born deformed,” I broke in impatiently. “Nor wind wool, or perhaps her child might strangle in the womb. She must not go to funerals for there might be harmful influences there.”