I stepped slowly forward and took that dry old hand, looking back but once. Mother shook her head, eyebrows raised as if to say, “Well, then,” and blew me a tepid kiss.
Liza worked me all right. Day after day for weeks till I knew that fine house, that garden plot and fieldstone cellar, better than my own snug cottage. She did her best to pry secrets from me too. “Have you seen your father lately, dear heart?” and “Is it true your mum’s badge glows full of hellfire at night? A lass I met last Lord’s day said you can see your mum well off, burning like a demon lantern. Tell poor Liza where she walks to at night, love. There’s no harm in it.”
“Tell her nothing,” Simon cautioned, smiling, “that you won’t have the whole marketplace know, Pearl—and quickly too.”
“Bah, I wish you deaf and dumb instead of blind some days.” She turned to me. “He’s a good boy, he is. Keeps me honest.”
One early morning Liza fetched me to the house and then sat with her feet up, swigging from a little flask she slipped from the kerchief tucked behind her bodice, below which I fancied her old breasts drooped like withered peaches. She sat and laughed at me for working so hard, for my ready fawning. “Simon, look here,” she bellowed. “Ah, well, you can’t look, but your girl’s scrubbed the very skin off the planks.”
Whoever would imagine it—me, someone’s girl? Good thing he couldn’t see me blush. Though I spent little time on the receiving end, I had sense to know how exasperating gratitude can be. He spoke softly in his deep voice. “Hush, Liza. You’ll wake Mother. And what would you have Pearl do, now she’s here enslaved to you?”
“Oh, today,” fretted the old woman with a blithe wave of the hand. She pulled on her flask again, swiping dribble off her chin. “Your dour brother may be ashore again, but it’s May Day, after all. We should be merry.”
“Do you really think him dour?”
“Well, no.” Liza relented. “Sober, more like—and too fine for his britches. A good boy, though. You’re both good boys.”
I was still taken with the notion of May Day. I crawled nearer Liza’s chair on hands and knees and rested my chin in her lap. She didn’t fault me for it. “Show me how it’s done,” I begged, “the May games.” I knew a show like that would be banned right quick in Boston.
“You don’t need my teaching. A little bird told me you weave a faultless garland in your own right.” She gave my head a lazy pat and sighed. “In old Norfolk such and maypoles were no heathenish vanity. Even in my day there was piping all night in the barns, feasting and dancing. We had wakes and ales on Lord’s day, fools and bells and bonfires in summer, hot cockles and thrashing of hens at Shrovetide.” She slumped back on her chair so the legs squealed on the wood. I felt sure she would tip over in her zeal, but she leaned in when Simon shushed her again, whispering conspiratorially, “We had carols and wassails at Christmastide with good plum porridge too—and not a spoonful of it profane.”
“You needn’t long so for it, Liza,” soothed Simon. “There’s little chance to be merry in England now. Dr. Devlin says they’ve closed the playhouses. My brother’s heard you’re not to be caught whistling in Covent Garden lest some saint hear you.”
“Well, the mistress sleeps, and the sun shines; the floor here’s clean—” she patted my head—“and May is the mischief in me. Come, you,” she commanded me, “and let’s crown the King of May.” Liza plucked Simon off his chair, and we headed out toward the woods behind the house. “And you’ll be his bride.”
We trekked a long while, humming in our throats like bees, then settled in a secluded clearing. Warblers and sparrows darted in treetops as Liza and I gathered columbine, trout lilies, and trillium; we snapped off evergreen fronds and carried it all to Simon while Liza sipped from her flask. Simon hoarded our stash on his lap, breathing in armfuls, running his hands over hemlock and juniper as if they were heirloom silver. I wove him a brand-new crown while Liza wove one for me, singing hoarsely:
A garland gay we bring you here,
And at your door we stand,
It is a sprout well budded out,
The work of our Lord’s hand.
“What cruel church is it won’t let us nail a birch branch over the door for luck?” she sighed when she’d finished, tousling Simon’s long, dark hair and crowning us both with great ceremony.
He was our king all that bright morning, and I his queen. Bawdy Liza bade me kiss the groom, and he only winced a little. I felt like a bird pecking at seed. His lips were as smooth as the inside of a cat’s ear, and I believe he thanked me afterward, under his breath.
“Now dance,” cried Liza. “Dance!” But she was drowsy now (perhaps she’d been at her flask all night, it being a holiday) and slumped against a birch with her mouth open, drifting off to sleep in our May palace far from the trodden path. We obeyed our dancing master well—spinning, more like—round and round, elbows linked, till Simon cried dizzy and we collapsed in a heap. We lay on leaves and crushed wild onion with our arms touching till I got up to paint his face with the morning’s last dew.
“Queen Pearl,” he said solemnly, his blind blue eyes peering right through me, and he caught my painting hand, circling my wrist with long fingers as if to measure it. I yanked it back, unused to such an easy touch, used to being in charge. We were awkward a moment, faced perhaps with our two ideas of what grown horizontal brides and grooms do to amuse themselves. After a bit of squirming, that scrap of shame wore off. We lay all the morning listening to catbirds and to Liza’s swinelike snore, until poor Mistress Milton back at the house began shrieking for cider.
I never saw Simon’s mother, who lay shut up in her chamber the weeks I labored in that house. She was an imperious figure of ever-increasing proportions, and sometimes I imagined her beyond the door on her haunches like a great sphinx, ready to devour those who ventured unprepared into her airless chamber. She was indeed weary of this world, and as her state worsened that month, Liza came to fetch me less and less often. Soon she came not at all, and I reverted to my feral state, wiser and lonelier for it.
When I made my old spying rounds now, I never found Simon on his chair in the garden but saw only the new vegetable plot overtaken in the sun. Wondering how people could be so grand as to neglect such a task (neglect me, for that matter) I slipped in and weeded as best I could (though none had asked for me), the feel of earth a familiar pleasure. More and more, though, pride kept me away from that house. And then one day when my chores at home and my lessons were done, I wandered downtown with heavy heart to spy on saints and ladies and found instead a funeral procession.
Mistress Weary of this World had been in state for days, said a strange child who claimed to be a cousin, holding out her gloved hand and her ring, a gaping skull, for me to envy. I saw Simon and, beside him, his brother, Nehemiah, the face from the painting and the rain. For a moment I couldn’t take my eyes from that face, but when I looked again at Simon, I felt a thrill of fondness, and something like remorse, for grief had settled in his aspect.
Before them, behind the pall and coffin bearers, stood a tall, rugged but finely dressed man who must have been their seafaring father. I could see both Simon and his brother in the man, whose neat black-and-silver hair was combed back in a becoming way under a stately hat. Many others snaked down the street in murmuring pairs behind them, and I slipped into the line as it passed. I saw ahead at the church gates the minister, standing with clasped hands and a mild smile of welcome.
We snaked behind the church, and the coffin was placed on a bier by the fresh grave. I kept near the back and vanished in a sea of cloaks as mourners flowed inside the gates for the eulogy, coughing and whispering and even laughing under their breath—funerals were as often as not a chance for socializing. I knew his manner of oratory well enough, but this minister—unlike our own, who had of late been ill and under Dr. Devlin’s distinguished care—had a dull tone with no music in it.
Prayers