“And come again at this time tomorrow with one morsel of life as it has been with you,” he paused, bringing a finger to whispering lips, “and your mother. Come here to our line, and we shall barter. But do not bring me untruths. In time you’ll have more than you can measure, a new bauble each day if you like—”
I did not ask what manner of morsel he meant but only skipped away, happily bewildered, and slipped the feather up my sleeve.
Inside I found Mother refreshed. I don’t know why I held my tongue about the doctor, but I did. It seemed no more proper or necessary that I sacrifice him to public scrutiny than if I’d glimpsed a doe in the wood with her fawn, or a nymph from my fancies stepping back through the bark of an oak (after which I would press my ear to its trunk to hear her heartbeat). These fleeting favors I would not share, even with Mother; they were mine, and too precious to part with, and now again some gracious instinct commanded me; I felt a proud discretion.
My parent—not the only one, it would seem, if the doctor were to be believed—had lit the reed lamp and was chopping turnips for stew. I put my head on my arms on the table to watch the blur of her knife. Her hands were able, like Simon’s, like my own, yet I never shed tears at my work.
“What hurts?” I asked, and she smiled dimly and shook her head.
“I shall kiss it,” I announced. She stopped her chopping and held out her knuckles. I traced them, the peaks and valleys, with my little finger and settled on one. “This one?”
Mother nodded, and I stooped with great ceremony to kiss the imaginary wound.
“Thank you, Pearl.” She was a clever player, for my sake. She smiled as if by all rights she was happy, and I took up another knife and quartered the onion. When my eyes teared, I made a great show of it, and even ceased chopping to give Mother time to repay a sweetness. But she did not. Instead she brushed the turnip chunks onto a trencher and carried them over to the kettle. She knelt by the fire. I fingered the feather in my sleeve, and my play pain burned on like a lonely candle.
That night and all the next day it rained and rained, and the ocean roared. Mother made me stay indoors and spin, but by supper I was half mad with captivity. When she nodded off over her embroidery by the fire I escaped west toward the woods and there reveled in the violence, the water streaming into every rivulet, branches bending under the weight, spring rain sliding from bowed and swaying leaves. My dress was wet through before I noticed, my cloak like a heavy shroud, but I kept going until I reached the now familiar fence. I stood behind the great beech and studied the rear of Simon’s house. I wasn’t there long, shivering and feeling every bit the fool I was, when a muddy carriage drew up out front. I didn’t see who got out, as the house blocked my view, and in minutes the transport drew away again, the horses sputtering and shaking their manes in complaint.
I crept forward, holding my hood closed. It was hard to hear a thing, even with my desperate ear pressed close to the house. The window was shut tight and the rain pounded out its rhythm, but I knew the weather had changed inside the house. The muffled voices were not merry exactly, but there was something new in the current of them.
I pleaded in my mind for Simon to come out to the privy, but instead, after a time, Liza came and caught me by surprise, hissing and shooing at me with a stick, calling me a wretched little dog. She shook her head in utter disdain at the sight of me—dripping, my hood plastered against my cheeks. “You must be quite mad, child! Look at you, drowned!”
My voice died in my throat. I stuttered something incomprehensible and heard a man shout through the rain behind us, “Who’s there?”
“It’s that little dog I spoke of come sniffing again about my master’s door. I do think she’s smitten with your brother, sir.” She let go an undignified snort.
“Liza, your comportment lacks charity.”
In nary an instant his hair had been pasted to his angular face by the rain, his damp shirt molded to his chest. Oh, but he was beautiful, even wet; like a prince. My every limb felt locked. I wouldn’t have known how to differ when Liza chimed, “Be it so, young master, but this one has no business among christened infants. Her own mum bears the mark of the fiend at her breast.”
“The Good Father would not wish to hear you speak so, and pray you remember, Liza, your eyes are not His own. We are all born to sin.”
The servant blinked at his pious words and fixed her misty gaze on me. She bowed with mock gravity, a fuzz of gray hair dangling from her drenched cap. “Christ’s sake, there’s dye running in my eyes. Good sir and lady, I take my leave.”
Astonished—whether by the whole muddle, or her blasphemy, or the young man’s indifference to it, I know not—I found I was sucking on my fingers as I had as a babe and sometimes did still. I willed my rigid knees to unlock, but because of my twisted stance it was to the forest I curtsied, his presence a weight at my back. I fled to the safety of the trees, snagging my soaking cloak on the fence as I squirmed through. He called after me, and I looked back. Holding a hand above his eyes to shield them from the torrent, he urged me to come inside and get dry, but I kept running.
Raw to the bone, I tripped and splashed and stumbled all the way home, where Mother undressed me by the fire and rubbed me dry and wrung out my clothes and hung them. She begged me to be civil just once and let her soothe me, but instead I raged. I’d flourished on a diet of scorn all my young life, but this, a stranger’s sympathy, had caught like a bone in my unworthy throat. “Will they come and take me away and lock me in the prison for spying?” I sobbed, repelling her caresses. “Will they put me on the scaffold alone?”
But Mother, who had seen storms worse than this one, shook her head. She caught me close and sang into my hair, and we rocked by the fire. She blamed herself for my ways but without conviction, and I knew on that rainy night that my life was my own. It was the second priceless gift she gave me.
MY REALM
Pitching stones at the water’s edge the next morning, I heard voices back at the cottage. I raced to see who was there, for no one ever came to our little shore and a visitor other than our neighbor, Goodwife Baker, was cause for alarm. Maybe I was to be hauled away to the scaffold after all. Mindful of it, I came to a cringing halt halfway up the hill when I saw Liza at the door in her old gray smock and cranberry cap.
“I’ll put her to work if you won’t,” she was saying with her back to me. “Such a child should not be idle.”
“What such is that?” Mother wondered from the threshold, and went on sweeping last night’s rain from our sunken floor as if she didn’t see me.
“I’ll not mince words, miss. It’s well and good that our betters spoil their children, but she’ll not gain from it. She won’t be small forever, nor will such idle sneaking seem quaint in a maid.”
“No,” Mother chimed. “Her future’s bleak, as you say.”
Liza seemed stumped by that. She hadn’t expected Mother to agree so cheerfully. “She might marry up. I’ve seen it done.” The old woman parked hands on ample hips. “You speak pretty, I dare say. And you’ve dressed her well. What’s more, your needlework’s quite the fashion in town. I hear the quality wet themselves to wear what a sinful hand will craft, sumptuary laws be damned.”
“Marry up?” Mother had refused the bait. “Here in the seat of my shame? I think not.”
“Then train her for service like my own mum did. Send her away. Meanwhile, let me put her to good use. My master’s still at sea, his eldest came last night with his list and went again this morning, and I’ve got my hands full with a blind child and his sick mother. It’ll plump up her character.”
Mother smiled and swept, swept and smiled. “Will it, now?”
“It will.”
“And what will you have her do?”
Liza whirled and made as if to lurch at