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.”
Anne was surprised. “I did not think you would know so much. You have not been near the birth chamber so often as I.”
“I read it in Jane Sharp’s book for midwives.”
“Jane Sharp! My father will not allow her book in the house. He says that it is obscene.”
“He would rather that midwives make their deliveries uninstructed, then?”
“You and I are not midwives,” she pointed out. “Does your father know you read it?”
I had not thought of this. Probably he did not. But he had never sought to censor my reading in the past. I do not know why I myself bothered to read The Midwives Book. I was not interested in women’s mysteries. Some girls are drawn to the secrets of the birth chamber from their earliest years; I was not. I had known too much dying there, perhaps, or maybe it was simply my temperament to prefer the gossip of men to that of women. And yet I read Jane Sharp, and read her hungrily, that I might learn all I could about what was about to pass in our household.
“I have learned from Hester and Joan, as well as Jane Sharp,” I said to Anne.
“Yes, we women always learn from one another. I heard lately of one lady who ate too many strawberries, and her child was born with the red mark of the berry upon his cheek. And there was another woman, who was startled by a hare bounding across the lane, and she gave birth to a baby with a hare lip.”
This I found most interesting, but I had something to relate of even greater fascination. “I heard of a woman … do not repeat this, I beg of you…” I leaned forward and lowered my voice. “A woman Joan worked for dreamed of coupling with an Italian man, and when her baby was born it had dark hair, like an Italian, instead of the blond hair she and her husband had.” I sat back in triumph.
“It cannot be true,” Anne said, almost in a whisper.
“Joan herself was there at the birth.”
This story impressed Anne greatly, and I felt that I had come off well, in spite of being younger and less experienced in women’s mysteries. It bothered me not that Joan had made me promise never to tell what I had told Anne. I had known from the start that I would break the promise when next I saw Anne Gosse, for what is the good of knowing a deep secret unless you can share it? As Joan herself knew full well, or she would not have shared it with me.
“I think you will adore your little sister, Meg,” Anne said.
“A sister would not be so bad—”
“If it is a brother you will adore him even more.”
“I do not think so. A girl would only share in my father’s fortune when it came time for her dowry, but a boy would take all.”
After that day with Anne I thought often about what she had said, and wondered if she was right that I did not wish Susannah to miscarry. Some days it seemed so. Other days it seemed only that I did not wish a miscarriage to be my fault. Wherever the truth lay, I was so careful with her that my father remarked on it one time as we passed on the stairs. He put a hand on my shoulder and gave me such a smile that I could not help but return it. And then I felt badly, as though I had told a lie.
I studied Susannah’s face each time I entered her room, for I knew that if she carried a boy it would make her right eye brighter, her right cheek rosier, and her right breast fuller. But I could not see any difference between her right and left sides.
“Has the midwife looked at your urine?” I asked her boldly one day, as I brought her ale and bread and butter while she lay abed. (She had an enormous appetite for bread and butter, and desired to have it several times in a day.)
“Certainly,” Susannah replied, tearing greedily at her bread.
“And is it tinged with red, or with white?” I asked.
“She cannot say, not yet.” She looked up at me and ceased chewing a moment. “What do you know of such things?”
“Why, it is all in Jane Sharp’s book. We sell it in the shop.”
“Who is Jane Sharp?”
“She is a midwife who has written a book for midwives.”
“Bring it to me, please. I want to read it.”
“My father says it is not good for women in your condition to read such things. Do not trouble yourself.”
And I took the empty tray away.
My father had said no such thing, of course, but I did not doubt that he would agree with me. I had no doubt, either, that he would like as much as I to know the sex of the child Susannah carried. One day in the shop, when the rain poured down and the customers stayed away, I asked him if he would not consult Mr. Barker about it, but he told me only that it was no concern of mine, and I did not dare to press him.
So it was I who went to Mr. Barker. I pretended to myself that I went to learn the sex of Susannah’s child, but it was not that. I knew that he would not tell me, and besides, I had no coin with which to pay him. I think in truth I went to tell him that he was wrong, that I was not the pilot of my craft.
The girl showed me in to the same room in which I had sat before, and soon Mr. Barker came to join me. We stood before each other for a moment in silence. He was all impatience; I was filled with courage and anger.
“Well, what is it, girl?” he asked me sharply.
“I do not know whether you are a good astrologer or a bad one,” I answered.
He looked at me with astonishment. “Well, I know that you are an insolent, impudent, immodest girl,” he retorted.
“I know,” I said, as though it were not very important. “I have tried to change, but I cannot.”
“You must ask God for His help,” he said gravely.
I nodded politely. It was true I had not tried this expedient, but in my heart I knew this was not a thing God could change. It seemed to me that He Himself had given me my ungovernable tongue, and it seemed doubtful that He could take it away now.
“What difference does it make to you if I am a good or a bad astrologer?” Mr. Barker asked more gently.
“You foretold a great loss in my life, and it came to pass. But you told me I was the pilot of my boat, and I am not. I am not.”
“Yes, Margaret, you are. But you are not the ruler of the sea. You cannot control the tides, the currents, the hurricanes. Those you must endure, as must we all.” He looked tired when he said it, and I wondered if he was troubled. “Have you steered your boat into the wind, as I bade you?”
I pondered this. “I do not know how.”
“When you learn how, things will go easier with you.”
“Mr. Barker, can you tell the sex of the child my stepmother carries?”
“I might predict it, if your father asked me to do so—or your mother. But they have not. Ah, Meg, do not look so! Ask me for something I can give you.”
At this I lifted my head and said, “Show me your collection, then.”
He was surprised for a moment, and I think he debated whether he should once more be offended by my impertinence. But then he smiled broadly. “It is always a pleasure for me to share my treasures with others,” he said, and led me to the next room.
It was only another parlor, with stools and tables and a leather chair, but against one wall many shelves had been built, each higher than the next. And each shelf was crowded with strange things. I could not see what sat upon the high shelves, but nearer to my eye there lay a row of long bones.
“Whose bones are these?” I asked.
“This is the bone of a dog,” Mr. Barker said, lifting up one that was gray and jagged. He put it down and pointed. “This is from a fox. I do not know whence this came. This is the skull of a cat.” He picked up this last and handed it to me.
I stared curiously at the small, hollow bone that sat upon my glove, trying to imagine it with flesh and fur and whiskers. Suddenly I thought of Louis, and handed it back.
“Is everything in your collection dead?” I asked.
“Except those things which never lived. Here I have rocks, some gathered from the countryside, some from the shore. This is a lump of tin, before it has been coined. It is from Cornwall. And this is lead; it is from Derbyshire.” I looked curiously at the tin and lead, but they did not look interesting. “This is a Roman coin. It is many hundreds of years old. I bought it from a man who found it in Aldersgate Street.”
This I looked at with more interest. It was heavy and square and bore the likeness of a man upon it, even as some half-groats bear the head of King Charles, and some shillings that of King James.
He showed me many things, some everyday, such as lumps of coal, and some strange, such as more coins and pieces of broken pottery. He had shells from faraway islands, and odd carved pieces he said came from Africa. He had many feathers, and a dead bat, and some dead insects. He had a piece of parchment so old I could not read what was writ upon it, which he did not let me touch.
When he had shown me all he led me to his door. “Why do you collect such things?” I asked him before I ventured out upon the Strand.
“When a child is born, he looks first only to his mother. As he grows he learns he has an entire household around him, filled with servants and sweets. Still later he ventures into the streets, and hears the ragman cry, or sees the cocks fight. He learns his letters, his Latin, his arithmetic. Always he is looking beyond himself, and learning. But one day, if he is like most men, he stops. He thinks he has learned all.” He smiled at me. “I did not choose to stop, that is all.”
2
As the weeks passed and Susannah’s belly swelled beneath her apron, my father became less merry and more cross. Everyone in the house knew the reason, for nearly every day the argument began anew. Sometimes he pleaded with her, sometimes he commanded her, but to everything he said she replied: “It would not be right, my husband.”
Even before she was carrying, Susannah and my father had argued about whether she was to have a wet nurse, but now the argument had grown fierce. “You are my wife and you will do as I bid,” he told her, and went scowling about the house and shop. But I doubted that she would.
Of course I was on my stepmother’s side in nothing; I could not be. But I knew that if I were she I would feel the same. I do not know if I will ever bear a child, but if I do so I will not send it from me the moment it is born, to be nursed at another woman’s breast.
“It would not be right, my husband,” she said over and over. She said it calmly, but she said it firmly.
One Sunday afternoon after dinner my stepmother and I sat in the parlor together, I reading, she at her needlework. It was the last day of April, but the rains yet rattled at the windowpanes. Susannah was very restless, and asked me to put a stool nearby that she might put her feet upon it and be more comfortable, and then in five minutes she asked me to remove it, and then to put it back, and so forth. I did all that I was asked politely, and murmured my concern for her. My concern was neither felt nor feigned, it was in some strange middle-land. I told myself that I wanted her to miscarry, yet I also worried sometimes that I might bring the child harm because I did not welcome it.
The fourth time I moved the stool for her she said, “I am sorry to bother you so.”
“’Tis no bother.”
“Yes, it is a monstrous bother, but you bear it well. You are careful of your brother or sister.”
I began to read again, for I did not like to hear false praises. Then I looked up. “Jane Sharp says that you ought to wear an eagle-stone. A stone within a stone, you know, it is like the babe within you. If you wear it round your neck, so as to touch your skin, it will keep you from miscarrying.”
Susannah smiled faintly. “Yes, I have heard that some believe that.”
“They are from Africa, but I know they are to be had in London. Why do you not ask my father to buy you one? Jane Sharp is a wise midwife.”
“I will do so, if it pleases you.”
We heard the outside door then, and straightened up in expectation, for my father had gone out directly after dinner but said he would speak with Susannah immediately when he came home. Now he brought into the parlor a smiling, big-bellied woman with rosy cheeks.
“This is Mrs. Walker,” he said. “Her babe will come two months before yours, so she will have her strength back before she begins to nurse your child. She lives in Broad Street, so the babe will not be in the country, but close by, and can be brought to you often. This much I do for you.”
I looked at Susannah, waiting for her to say in her calm way, “It would not be right, my husband.” But she did not, and I could see that she was too tired to argue it more. Her face was pale and her eyes were shadowed with her weariness. She lifted her head as though to speak, but then dropped it again. Her hands lay still on her needlework.
I do not know why I did what I did next. Perhaps because I thought of Louis, happy sucking at my mother’s breast, and thinking of him could not do otherwise. But later that afternoon when my father was out, I searched through the shop and collected all the texts I could find to support a woman nursing her own child. Jane Sharp wrote that sending a child to a wet nurse would change its disposition and expose it to many hazards. Robert Cleaver wrote that it would “break the bond of holy nature,” but he was a Puritan and I did not know if my father would heed his words overmuch. I was glad now to have read The Ladies’ Calling, though it had given me such pain, for I thought Dr. Allestree’s arguments might be the most persuasive with my father. He wrote that women of wealth and rank do not lower themselves in nursing their own children, because a baby takes its rank from its mother and is exactly equal to her, whether she be beggar or gentlewoman.
I gathered together all these works and laid them out upon my father’s table in the large parlor, one next to the other. Then I waited to see what he might say.
The following morning all the works were back in the shop, but I knew not how my father had taken my interference, for he said nothing. But at dinner that day, he said to Susannah, “I have told Mrs. Walker we shall not need her services.”
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.”
“Who will publish it?” my father asked.
“Why, no one, yet. A friend of mine has written it. It is a play, or a part of a play, and as good as some things I have seen the King’s Company perform.”
“Why does your friend not finish it?”
“Oh, she will, or she will write something else as good. She will write when she is ready. She is young yet, and has things to learn, but she will have us all laughing at her plays someday if she chooses.”
“Another she-poet! One Aphra Behn is enough, I think,” my father said.
“All women may write plays as far as I am concerned, if they write as well as Aphra Behn,” Mr. Winter answered him. Then he turned to smile at me. My face was scarlet. I knew he spoke of my work, yet I could hardly believe he meant the things he said, and I was glad he left without a private word.
But the rest of the day the air was changed. It was light and fresh, and my thoughts were light and fresh. Each printed page smelt of promise and possibility. And I thought about my future and for the first time I believed it to be yet unwritten.
Perhaps I will marry a bookseller.
Perhaps I will be a cherished member of my brother Toby’s household.
Perhaps Toby will yet die (though I do not wish it) and I will be an heiress once more.
Perhaps I will make my fortune writing plays, like Aphra Behn. Perhaps.
We do not know our futures, though we sometimes think we do. The world is full of strange things and strange chances. There is no safety, but neither can we be certain that any given sorrow will be ours, not until it comes upon us.
We do not know what every comet means.
What is there to do in this life, then, but to choose as Mr. Barker has chosen? To be open to all, to go on learning, to steer one’s boat into the wind?
And this is what I mean to do from this day, one day after another, at the sign of the Star.