At the Sign of the Star (13 page)

Bright color came into my stepmother's cheeks, and she set her tankard quickly down on the table.

“A man must look beyond fashion,” my father continued. “And it is the opinion of many that a child's welfare is best protected at the breast of his own mother. You ought to have showed me those texts before, my wife.”

“Texts?” she asked in surprise, and then everyone's gaze seemed to shift about the table. I could feel Susannah looking at me, and back at my father, and my father sat back in uncertainty. I laced my fingers tightly together and stared into my dinner plate, where a scrap of roast beef, covered with pepper and vinegar, was all that remained of my dinner. I knew he would be severe upon me if he discovered my meddling.

“Did you not put works upon my table for me to read?” my father asked.

“Yes, of course,” Susannah answered. “For I know you to be a just and a thoughtful man, who heeds the advice of fine writers.”

Carefully, I took my spoon once more into my hand.

“Husband,” Susannah said. “Jane Sharp advises a woman who is breeding to wear an eagle-stone around her neck. Can you get one for me?”

3

Susannah's confinement came at midsummer. As it approached she became every day more fretful and more afraid. She no longer came to evening prayers, or even to dinner, and I made countless trips up and down the stairs with the chamber pot, for she seemed to use it a hundred times within an hour.

One day, but two weeks before she delivered, she caught my hand as I was taking away the tankard in which she had drunk sage ale (to strengthen her womb). “Margaret, listen to me,” she said sharply.

I paused, surprised.

“I know you do not welcome my child,” she said, letting her hand drop. “But you do not consider how pleasing it may be to have children near. You had brothers and sisters once before, was it so terrible a thing?”

“No,” I said, nearly whispering. There was much more I could have said to her, but I did not say it.

“It does not matter. You have attended me well in spite of it all, more than well. I am not ungrateful. But I want something more of you.”

I felt weary all through, thinking that all I had done for her these past months had not been enough. “What more, Mother?” I asked quietly.

“If I die, and my child lives, you must care for it. You must protect it, you must argue for it. Make your father school it well, in Greek and Latin if it is a boy, in household arts if it is a girl. Show my child a woman's love. You are young to be a mother, but I want my baby to be raised in his father's house. Promise me, Margaret. I will trust your promise.”

I stood very still for a moment, with her empty tankard yet in my hand. “You worry overmuch,” I said at last. “All will be well.”

“Do you refuse to promise, then?”

Her look was almost woeful, and I turned my eyes away, and fingered the green velvet bed hangings with my free hand. “No,” I said in a low voice. “I do not refuse it.”

“If I die, you will be mother to my child?”

“I will be its mother.”

“Ah.” She lay back upon her pillows. “Now I shall not worry.”

Of course I did not want to be a mother. I wanted to be a bookseller, perhaps even an author someday. I told myself I would not mind being some man's helpmeet in fair partnership, if I liked him, or an independent woman who made my own way, like Aphra Behn. But for the time being I wanted only to be a girl, helping her father at the sign of the Star.

I promised in spite of myself, though, because of Louis.

All was now ready for the birth. We had prepared a sheet for the lying-in, an abundance of swaddling clothes, and mantles, all of finest linen. The window in the birth chamber was covered with a tapestry, that the room might stay warm and dark, like the womb itself. There was a board for Susannah to brace her feet against, and a velvet cord for her to hang onto when the pain became great.

I did not like to think of that. I remembered the howls of my own mother sounding through the house. I did not want to hear such screams again.

My father felt the same, and when the time came, he did all that a father must do for his wife, and then left for Will's. I was not so lucky. Though I did not enter the birth chamber, because of my youth, I was kept busy running up and down the stairs with caudles and ale for the women within. There were the two midwives, who had seen Susannah throughout her pregnancy, Susannah's older sister, who had herself delivered but three months past and came with her baby in her arms, two cousins, Mrs. Gosse (but not Anne), and the nurse. The midwives brought stools, knives, sponges, and oil of lilies which they used upon their hands; I knew this from reading Jane Sharp. But I did not see them use it, nor did I see Susannah under her splendid linen sheet. I only passed things through a crack of the door and listened.

At first there was much laughter and chatter, as though at a party, and sometimes the baby cried. But as the hours passed the voices lowered, and sometimes I heard Susannah groaning, or crying out. Once I heard her say breathlessly, “God, help me to bear it!” After that I hid myself in the farthest corner of the house and read tales of Robin Hood and imagined myself far from London, in Sherwood Forest. I let the nurse do the fetching, and tried not to hear her footsteps upon the stairs, but heard them anyway. Once I followed her into the kitchen in spite of myself and asked: “How does it go?”

“Don't worry,” the nurse said kindly. “We are only waiting upon nature.”

Then I went back to my book but I read it not; instead I prayed to God, as my father had done, for a swift and easy delivery.

My prayers were granted. Late that night, so late that the laundresses had begun to rattle their tubs next door, Tobias William Moore was born, and became my father's heir.

4

And now there was nothing more that could be done. My last chance was gone. I had done all I could, all that was within God's law, to preserve my inheritance, but I had failed. I knew now that my hopes were finally dashed, and that my future would not be different from that of other women.

But I had a brother again.

I do not mean to say it was enough. I do not mean to say I would have chosen it. But when I held his swaddled body in my arms, and saw the curl of his reddened fingers, I could not help but love him. “Toby,” I called him. I was the first to call him so, but soon we all did.

Susannah suckled him herself, and when she did so, the peace upon her face made its way into my father's heart, and he said, “I have chosen well.”

I supposed that I would have much hard work during those first weeks, but the truth was I did not wait upon Toby even as often as I wanted. He slept much, and when he did not Susannah wanted him near, or the nurse held him, and even my father wanted his turn. And there were many gossips about—the same women who visited Susannah while she was breeding and who were in her chamber during the birth. So there was little for me to do in the house, and I began more and more to work in the shop again. I was glad enough to be back when it was busy, but sometimes, when I had no one to wait upon, and the dusting was done and every book sat with straightened pages, I stared through the window at the grass growing in the ruts of the road and thought about my chances.

I was not an heiress any longer. I would not have my pick of suitors; I could not tell all but booksellers to take themselves off. Most likely I would be married to some other sort of tradesman, a draper or a goldsmith or a barber, a widower with children of his own, perhaps. Most likely.

But the things that are most likely do not always come to pass.

I thought of this, and clasped my hands together, and tried to imagine other futures.

“What are you thinking about that makes your face so fierce?” Mr. Winter asked me as he came into the shop.

I gave my head a shake, and he saw I did not want to answer.

“I have never seen you sit and think; you are always reading when I come, unless you are working,” he continued.

“I have decided to leave off reading and begin writing instead. I am composing a play.”

“Well done!” Mr. Winter said. “I would be most honored to see it when you are ready for readers.”

I did not know how to answer him, for I had spoken in jest. But it's true that since seeing Mrs. Behn's play it had been much on my mind to try my hand, and perhaps that longing made my frivolous words seem serious. Now I was too embarrassed to explain myself, and only mumbled that it would be a good while, and then we spoke of Toby, and Susannah's health.

But when next alone I found paper and quill, and began to write down the scraps of speech that had been living so unwelcome in my head these past months, as rats do in a kitchen.

At first these scraps made themselves into rhymes. I had lived long with the music of Mr. Dryden's couplets in my head, and had many times heard him speak of the nobility of this form. I, too, wanted to write noble speeches, even if they would never be uttered. My rhymes trailed down the page, and I read them over with pleasure, and waited eagerly for the moment I would be alone and could read them aloud. But when it came at last, my words did not sound noble at all, only foolish.

I threw my paper in the fire, and for an angry week I did not write. But once again I found myself haunted by phrases. This time they were not noble, and they did not rhyme. And so I came to know that in spite of all I had learned from him, I could not be a follower of John Dryden, but must instead take my lead from Mrs. Behn.

In my scene a man lectured his wife on philosophy, while his wife nodded and agreed and showed him how to use a fork, and how to clean his teeth, and to do all the everyday things a woman knows better than a man how to do. As I wrote it I thought it very droll, and longed to hear another person laugh at it, but when I read it over I thought it childish, and was sure no other person on earth could find amusement in it. It felt so bold even to have written it that I thought I could never show it to Mr. Winter, and decided I would tell him it had all been a jest, and I had nothing to show. Yet when I had finished, and it was as ready as I could make it for the eyes of another, it vexed me that he did not come into the shop for four days running.

At last, however, he came again. The moment I saw him I felt my stomach dancing within me, and knew at once that I must give him the scene even if I did not want to.

He spoke first to my father, for a man they both knew had been robbed by highwaymen as he rode in a coach, and had lost his money and jewelry.

“No one was hurt, thank God,” Mr. Winter said.

My father and I exclaimed in dismay, and my father said soberly, “It is growing unsafe to travel through our own countryside.”

Mr. Winter shrugged. “Life has never been safe. Read Thucydides. Read Shakespeare. For whom has it ever been safe?”

Just then Mr. Dodds came in. He was an old man who read much and always brought us his trade. He began to speak with my father about political subjects, and I was grateful, for I could not speak to Mr. Winter of my play with my father listening.

“I have something for you,” I said in a low, hurried voice as he turned to me.

He looked startled at first, and I saw that he had forgotten our conversation. But then remembrance dawned on his face, and, with a glance at my father to see that he was unobserved, he reached for the roll of paper I held out to him.

*   *   *

Almost three weeks now had passed since my brother came into the world, and it was nearly time for Susannah's upsitting. She was most anxious for it, feeling quite well again and ready to go once more into London's streets. My father was uneasy at first, for my mother had never been ready for her upsitting before a month had passed. But Susannah did not look as my mother was used to look, wan and tired all the day though she did nothing but lie abed. Susannah's cheeks were pink, and her face filled with delight when she held her child, and she seemed full of vigor. So my father gave in, and began to ask instead what he ought to serve at the gossips' supper.

On the day of the upsitting the gossips came early, and threw away the soiled linens from my mother's bed, and bathed her, and dressed her in petticoats and a blue dress with a rose-colored underskirt. One of the women clicked her tongue and said her stays did not lace as tightly as before, and said that was what came of nursing her own child. But Susannah laughed and said she did not care. She asked me if I would brush her hair for her, and I did, though another woman dressed it. And then we went below for the supper: hare pie, and much wine. I think I had never before seen so many merry women. They toasted the King's health, and my mother's, and my father's, and of course Toby's. And then they toasted mine.

“And that she might marry well!” one woman said loudly. “A silversmith, perhaps!”

“Nay,” Susannah said, smiling. “Meg will marry a bookseller.” She looked at me hard when she said it, harder than she ever had when she was teaching me to candy violets or to work a chair cover. I knew that it was not something that was within her power to promise, but in spite of myself I thought: Maybe it will come to pass after all.

They lifted their tankards, and drank my health.

*   *   *

It was the next day that Mr. Winter came once more into the shop. He did not speak to me, but addressed my father, and a sick feeling went all through me, for I knew he avoided me because my work was so bad, or perhaps because he had not cared to read it. I busied myself at my counter and tried not to listen, but I could not help hearing them as they spoke of what Mr. Greene had said of Mr. White, and of whether the Duke of York's bride could give him an heir, and of the plays given in Dorset Gardens and Drury Lane.

And then I heard Mr. Winter say: “I have read something very fine lately, something very witty and droll, but you cannot read it, for it is yet in manuscript.”