A face looked back from the glass wavering in her hand—the lips gleaming a soft, dark red. For a vertiginous instant it was not Ester’s own, but her mother’s: cascading hair, eyes black and dangerous.
Since she’d last looked in a glass, her face had changed, thinning in such a way that the resemblance to her mother was sharper. She’d known from stray hairs in her comb that the years since the fire had marked her. Yet a true storm of silver had begun in Ester’s hair—she touched it. It was as Mary said. Only her arched brows remained pure black. The face was young, but its crown old. Small wonder Mary hadn’t been able to guess her age. Wobbling in the glass, her own face fractured and assailed her. Her father’s large and solemn eyes warring with her mother’s ample, mocking mouth.
“Some young man will beg to kiss you now,” Mary lilted.
Ester wiped hard at her mouth with the sides of her fingers. She wished to rebuke Mary but could summon no words.
“But why dash it away?” Mary cried.
Catherine’s reprimand bore down on Mary. “Because, Mary, this one is wiser than her own mother.”
Shouldn’t Ester have guessed that her mother’s ill reputation would follow her from Amsterdam? Constantina, trapped within her own fury. Beauty and spite entwined. Ester tore away from the image.
Yet Catherine, head tilted and scrutinizing Ester’s stiff posture, seemed to see something that eased her. “No,” she said slowly. “This daughter won’t mimic that mother, though she does possess some beauty of her own.”
Mary’s coquettish tones had faded to impatience. “She can serve as my companion then?”
Slowly, pensively, Catherine’s fingertips circled in the air: something still troubled her.
“What else now, Mother?” Mary cut in, querulous. “Is it the brother?”
As Catherine hesitated, anger leapt in Ester’s belly. She rose, brushing aside Mary’s staying hand. How dare this woman in fine fabrics deign, in a single shallow breath, to judge Isaac’s life and death?
But before Ester was fully on her feet, Catherine nodded decisively. “I’ll permit it,” Catherine said.
“No!” Ester’s thin hands had balled into fists, her nails biting at the flesh of her own palms.
“Ester?” The haughtiness was gone from Mary’s expression—she looked lost. Her bewilderment stilled Ester.
“I can’t,” Ester managed.
For a moment, then, Catherine’s eyes touched Ester’s as though recognizing something there that she respected. “But you can,” said Catherine slowly. “My daughter, it happens, has a nature that requires supervision by one without foolish vanities of her own. You, it happens, have no foolish vanities. Nor do you have prospects. It’s a suitable task for you. And more than that, it will improve your chances.” Of a good marriage. Catherine raised her eyebrows, awaiting acknowledgment of the wisdom of this. “You’re young,” she continued after a moment. Her voice was not ungentle, and Ester found herself wondering how many daughters Catherine had buried. “Fate might yet shelter you.”
Turning at a small sound of protest from Mary, Ester saw that a vague envy suffused her face, as though she’d just watched something inaccessible pass between her mother and Ester.
Catherine closed her eyes a moment, then nodded: the matter was decided. “You’ll go to the dressmaker immediately, and acquire a dress suitable for society.” Bending forward stiffly, Catherine gestured: she wished the servant’s help to stand.
So fully had Rivka retreated into silence since her outburst that Ester had nearly forgotten her presence; but now she stepped forward. Whatever further opinions she held were writ on her in an obscure language. She helped Catherine to her feet.
For a moment Catherine stood opposite Ester, her rigid bodice straining at each inhalation. Under her thick face-powder, her expression flickered—the faintest hint of conspiracy, even humor?—then faded. Her face slackening now with fatigue, she turned away, listing on Rivka’s arm.
Matching her mother’s slow pace, Mary stepped out toward the waiting coach, pausing once to gaze with dull apprehension at the cinder-gritted wall blocking one end of the street, the balconies crowding overhead, the pale gray smoke from the tanneries draping the narrow strip of visible sky.
In his study, the rabbi was still seated beside the fire, opposite the HaLevy brothers, reciting. “The world is balanced upon three pillars: The study of Torah. The worship of God. Acts of kindness.”
The last word was lost to a reverberating slam. Manuel HaLevy had dropped a book on the stone floor. Slowly he bent and retrieved it.
“My apologies,” he said flatly.
There was a brief silence. “That concludes our lesson,” said the rabbi. If he suspected Manuel had dropped the book deliberately, his face didn’t betray it.
As the brothers gathered their cloaks, the rabbi called to Ester. Yet instead of asking the nature of Mary and Catherine’s visit, or protesting any claim the da Costa Mendes women might make on her as Ester half hoped he would, he said only, “The commentaries were bound two weeks ago. It’s time to retrieve them, Ester.”
This was the third such set of books he’d ordered from Amsterdam: tomes of scholarship suitable for pupils more advanced than any here in London. In truth, the rabbi’s folly in this matter puzzled Ester: who else but they might conceivably study such volumes? Still, if he wished to conduct himself as though a crop of scholarly youths was ready to sprout through the cobbled streets at any moment, it was to her own benefit.
“I thought Rivka—” Ester began.
But the rabbi shook his head, almost sternly—as though the da Costa Mendes women’s visit had prompted him at last to acknowledge what they both knew: that Ester hid from London. Days passed when she ventured no farther than their door, shying from the city that had swallowed her brother. She’d become a creature Isaac would have scorned, cringing from daylight. The pallor she’d just glimpsed in Mary’s glass proved it.
“Ester,” the rabbi said. With his long fingers he indicated a high shelf behind him.
She counted as he instructed her, taking the silver coins from the narrow brimming box and dropping them into a pouch. With trembling fingers, she fixed the clasps of her cloak. Then set out, hurrying, her shoulders tightening against the unexpected cold.
The street was nearly empty, blocked at one end by an age-darkened stone wall. Above her, the tiered houses cast their shadows on the cobbles, each level of a building jutting farther than the one it sat upon as though competing to darken the street. Between the topmost balconies, which threatened to touch overhead, the hazy sky promised nothing.
The bindery the rabbi had named was somewhere in Southwark. She knew how to reach the river, but that was all. She hesitated. Then, deciding, hurried out of the street and to the next wider one, as though speed could prevent the city from touching her.
The edges of the cobblestones were slicked with waste, every few steps a new odor assaulted—how to breathe without breathing? The city tilted at her, dangerous—the foul streets in which she’d lost Isaac. By now the HaLevy sons would have turned into the alleys past the Clothworkers’ Hall. She quickened her step to catch them—for as much as she distrusted the elder brother, still she’d rather ask directions in Portuguese than in English.
Rounding the corner, she spied Manuel and Alvaro HaLevy strolling ahead of her. Here on the street, they appeared less foolish than in the rabbi’s study. More powerful.
At the sound of her steps, the younger brother turned. Shyly he smiled, and laid a hand on his brother’s sleeve, stopping him.
Manuel took in Ester’s presence on the street with an expression of mild surprise: he hadn’t suspected she’d be so bold as to seek him out. He folded his arms, looking amused.
She addressed them bluntly in Portuguese. “Where’s Chamberlain’s bindery?”
“Across the river,” Alvaro said in his English-accented Portuguese. “Just beyond the bridge.” He gestured at the road, in the direction they’d been walking. “It’s the second turn to the left off the main road. Beside a bread bakery.”