I might have guessed that the minister would brim with pity, and I tried to shut out his whispered rhetoric by focusing on the quiet of the surrounding night. Unlike the last time we three had stood together—near Mistress Weary’s grave—it was the minister’s tone that seethed with a malice of consolation. But I soon succeeded in not hearing him at all. I smiled outright at the astonishing pair the doctor and I made on the scaffold, in full view of the good but useless minister in his nightshirt. At length I began to giggle uncontrollably, even as the poor appalled man of God came stamping up the steps to clasp my wayward arm—and Daniel Devlin transcended his tippling to leap from the platform like a cougar, to vanish into the gracious dark, laughing also, like the terrible villain I would one day discover he was.
I wonder now, years later, what else he might have done, which action—relent confess apologize grovel demur—would not have seemed preposterous, or pointless, or false. Leaving is as close to grace as some of us will come.
It was not many days later that Mother and I happened upon our minister on a secluded stretch of beach. So many strange things had happened, were happening, that I thought little of it when Mother shooed me (and due modesty) away and rushed to speak with him.
The night I stood with Dr. Devlin on the scaffold, the minister had at first remained a long, strange while across the way, as if we two were in fact players on a stage in the fog and not people he knew. At last he crossed to us, and his words, sharp at first, gradually soothed the doctor’s ravings. He spoke of the dangers of a life of the mind, of a life lived in books, of a reality blurred with dreaming by day and tippling by night. He seemed to know well the doctor’s plight. As the man of God paused for thought, the physician began to look cornered. The devil came into his eyes, and he leapt.
I had slept poorly many days since, with the doctor leaping and leaping through my thoughts: wicked and foolish he seemed, pitiable and dangerous. On this afternoon when Mother and I met the minister out walking at the shore, I wandered drowsily in the tide, digging a stick in the sandy pools and chattering to my reflection. I dragged my bare feet along the packed sand and amused myself by scrawling Simon’s name in giant letters for the gulls to read. I had gone to him the day after the infamy on the scaffold but found only the empty garden. I had leaned against the beech and watched the new kitchen greens wave in a gentle breeze, feeling as bleak and hollow as I ever would.
Despite my efforts to conjure Simon now and hold him in view, it was the doctor’s face that stayed as my mind churned over and over his strange words on the scaffold: Did you hear me calling in your thoughts? I am one soul in the world that knows you.
I watched with grim resignation as the tide washed my handiwork away. S-I-M-O-N. I chanted the letters over and over, watching from the corner of my eye Mother’s agitated stance. It was, of course, the physician they spoke of. The minister’s earnest voice came like waves: My finger, pointed at this man, would have hurled him into a dungeon once . . . . I thought to let him lodge with me that I might coax him toward a public confession . . . such splendor in a man lost . . . . His words scattered like gulls on the wind. I have offered and offer still to assist you . . . . though it be too late to invoke the law it is not too late to clear your name . . . . Away on the wind. Wind and tide, stink of fish . . . magistrates . . . He would have you accuse him! He taunts me, knowing you will not . . . . Does he pity those who loved him once?
Mother’s proud hands gestured at the air, and they were two bodies drawn together in the ocean’s roar, their words churned and muted. It was a strange, unsettling dance, for it reminded me again of how little I knew and how much the world kept from me. Mother held her back very straight. She blazed with purpose, and the beloved face, the lips that kissed me each night but now spoke coldly to our only friend and counsel—dull and ineffectual though he sometimes was—looked not familiar. He has seen Pearl, you know. Do you know? Look at me, please. Hear me . . . he speaks of her . . . to her as to a familiar . . . he harps on your brand. The minister cast down his eyes at mention of the careworn “A” at my mother’s breast.
Mother glared out to sea, as if the sea itself had failed her.
Furtive as a cat but I think he does wish at last to wear the stain that is his alone to bear . . . and I can in conscience only give him leave to speak it if I might act on behalf of right . . . cannot it seems find courage to set right his soul nor forsake earthly fear. You can be just and publicly accuse him . . . for the child’s sake if not your own . . . .
What will she gain, Mother countered, seeing the old sore ripped open? I tore across the beach holding my skirts high. The child. The child. A sickening word, really—child—helpless as a snail, but it set me spinning and whirling in the sun. I kicked at the water’s white foam to send it flying. I played a lunatic in hopes of distracting them from their passionate debate, but they never once looked at me. Is pity easier to bear than scorn, minister? I think not—for my child. Mother shook her head. Her stern air dissolved in tears.
The child turned to other live creatures to assure herself that she was there at all. She poked at a horseshoe crab, collected starfish in a line, and even laid out a jellyfish to melt in the sun. He will not go until he has what he came for. We must ask what that thing is . . . the simple if lamentable alternative is to go. Travel as you’ve dreamed to your mother’s people in Leiden.
At length, frustration throbbing in my ears, I gathered pebbles into my apron and took to pelting the rigid, hopping sandpipers, outside myself. I wasn’t really trying to hit them, but I injured the wing of one little bird and felt a sinking dread as it bounded away. I spilled my stash of pebbles to the ground and stared at my hands but could not recognize them.
Watching Mother from this distance, I saw the dull letter at her breast. The sun made a mockery of it, and I was inspired to craft a lovelier version from eelgrass, and to plaster it on my own budding chest. I twirled and preened and vaguely heard Mother, closer now, calling me. I looked up in time to see the minister stride away, but I was too consumed by the artful “A” on my dress to pay him much mind. At length Mother came and exclaimed at my damp garb, and made as if to brush away my weedy costume. I darted out of her reach.
“Pearl,” she said, almost gently, “that sign is not yours to bear.”
I pursed my lips and let the words slip free. “‘A’ is for apple.” I watched carefully to see what reception this pronouncement—this challenge—might find.
Her eyes for an instant’s glimmer seemed to consider me in a new and more serious light, despite my sodden dress, but quickly grew distant again.
“‘A’ is for almond,” I went on in the dull, unquestioning tone usually reserved for Dame Ashley. “Angel, alabaster, able—”
“Adultery,” Mother sighed heavily. “As well you know. And to do with no heart save mine.”
No heart, indeed. I wanted to lunge at her and knock her down. I wanted to weep and be comforted, to shriek and claw at her, but instead I stood barefoot in the sand, soothed by the vastness of the sea. Our lives could be small there, and I could take comfort in the whispering tide. I ripped the seaweed from my dress and wrung it like a cloth, watching what little water remained drizzle over my narrow wrists.
Brushing away tears she had been too rigid to touch, Mother turned and set off without a word. I followed with one last pensive look at the sea. Mastered by some dim need to torment her, I trailed and taunted all that evening as we walked, supped, and readied ourselves for sleep. No heart save mine, no heart save mine, no heart save mine. “A” is for arse and ale and alchemy and anarchy and ashes to ashes and atheist and Anabaptist . . . . What, pray, is the name of my father? To this last, she answered as she always did but with barely contained rage and anguish: “You share the same Father we all do.”
By bedtime, she had threatened to shut me and my treacherous blasphemies in the closet.
Even after she had tucked me in and kissed my brow, thinking me asleep, I felt mischief surging and let my eyes spring