“Well, of course I don’t mean a person ought to marry without thought,” retorted Mary, her voice quickening as though to tamp down Ester’s words. “Of course I mean we must choose sensibly in marriage. But I said love. And just because a thing is outside control doesn’t mean it’s folly. Maybe love is”—Mary waved vaguely—“good.”
The word sat amiss with Ester. Without considering whether she ought, she spoke what prickled in her heart. “It’s a danger to a woman even to feel love.”
In the silence, the sound of the dressmaker winding a length of thread.
“You’re wrong,” Mary said.
Was she? She knew she feared her own words to be true.
Abruptly, with a brisk tug from the dressmaker’s hand, the world stiffened. As Ester attempted, gingerly, to breathe, Mary came and stood beside her.
“You’re wrong,” Mary repeated softly. “And you know it—you’re lying to me, wicked girl.” She reached up and pinched Ester’s cheekbone, hard enough to leave a mark. Ester saw it in the dressmaker’s glass.
“Don’t ever do that again,” Ester said in a low voice. “Or I’ll leave you and not return. I’m not your servant.”
Mary’s face flushed with confusion.
At the faint sound of knocking from the front of the shop, the dressmaker disappeared.
“Well,” Mary blurted after she’d gone, “do you think my mother a fool?”
Ester drew a cautious breath. Was Mary in truth asking her to speak aloud what was whispered at the synagogue: that Catherine was choking on the air of a city her husband refused to leave?
“Your mother,” Ester said slowly, “struggles to breathe in London. Yet for her husband—”
But the words had hit too tender a spot. Pain bloomed in Mary’s eyes and Ester saw, too late, that Mary had wanted only the answer no.
Mary turned on Ester now. “And what did your wise mother counsel you about love?”
The dressmaker had returned. She dropped a cloud of fabric over Ester’s head and resumed her pinning. Ester endured it, her lips pressed tight.
After a moment a soft tsk escaped Mary. Then Ester felt the pedestal take Mary’s weight. Positioning herself quietly behind Ester, Mary unpinned Ester’s cap.
“A comb,” she said. The dressmaker produced one, then at a summons from the shop’s front room disappeared once more.
Frowning with concentration, as though Ester’s hair had all along been the true subject of their conversation, Mary parted Ester’s locks above each ear. With inexpert gestures, she began to divide and gather, now and again nipping Ester’s ears with the wooden comb. “Sorry,” she muttered as she worked.
Hands in her hair, stilling Ester. How many years since the housemaid Grietgen had plaited Ester’s hair, her hand lingering with affection on Ester’s finished braids? How long since Ester had had a friend? A strange submissiveness took her. The fine teeth of the comb Mary was using were never intended for hair so thick or wavy—yet despite Mary’s savage tugs, Ester closed her eyes. For a rushing instant, then, her spirit lifted, and she wished to explain all, so that Mary herself—with her airs and languid sighs—would hear Constantina’s drink-mudded voice, speaking on into the quiet night. Would understand exactly what love could wreak.
“She counseled me,” Ester said, “not to be a fool.”
Mary’s hands slowed. “My mother thinks I’m a fool,” she said. For a moment the comb stopped moving in Ester’s hair. “I’m not.”
The comb resumed, its motions more tentative.
“Do you wonder, ever,” said Ester quietly, “whether our own will alters anything? Or whether we’re determined to be as we are by the very working of the world?”
Mary snorted. “I wonder only whether you expect anyone to understand when you speak that way.”
“I mean,” Ester said, “do you think we can’t help what we are?”
With a vigorous tug at Ester’s hair, Mary said, “I choose what I am.”
She knew she oughtn’t answer. But pity for her own state was climbing dangerously in Ester’s chest. She’d no doubt love was real. Nor that it was a storm that flung a few to safety, but most to wrack. She wished that she, like Mary, could throw herself full-bodied at dreams. She wished to be Mary—to be any woman other than herself.
Most of all, she wished not to recall her mother’s drunken voice.
London. Constantina, swallowing the burgundy liquid in deliberate gulps that seemed to hurt. Constantina, throwing herself back on her bed, casting her long dark hair, loosened, across her pillow. London is where he lived.
“My mother,” Ester said before she could stopper the words, “was born from an unwise love.”
Mary’s mouth fell into an uncertain, half-mocking smile: Was this true? Was Ester confessing what none ought to admit, even if it were so?
Sternly, Ester continued. “She told me it. Though wine blurred her telling.”
At this further scandal Mary uttered a half-choked laugh, then stifled it. Something solemn flickered on her face: gratitude. She moved her hands gingerly about Ester’s head, as though not to disturb this unfamiliar, astonishing honesty.
Ester watched in the glass as Mary worked. Yes—she’d speak the truth. The parts, at least, that she felt certain she recalled. Constantina, whispering in the quiet house—Samuel and Isaac away, the maids dismissed for the night. Constantina, uncorking a bottle with a grunt of effort. Long, tapered fingers on ornate cups—one for her, one for Ester. A few small, warming sips, and her mother’s silvery, conspiratorial laughter. Do you know, Ester, why I keep a book of English verse I no longer care to read? That book was my own mother’s, Ester. A gift from the man she loved. But she could no longer bear to open its pages. I claimed it, Ester, because I was certain England would be my home when he called for me. Constantina’s dark eyes, trained on the dim ceiling above the curtained bed. When he called for me. My true father.
“My grandmother,” Ester enunciated, “hailed from Lisbon. Yet the man she married—a merchant twice her age—brought her to live for some years here in London. And while here, she loved an Englishman, not her husband.”
Mary pulled the comb through Ester’s hair, making barely a sound.
“My mother was born of that love,” Ester continued. “She was raised back in Lisbon, calling another man Father, yet her own mother whispered her the truth all her life.” In the glass, Ester found Mary’s eyes. “My mother was born of a great love, Mary. But that love failed to offer sustenance.”
Constantina: her almond eyes, the extravagant dark tumble of hair on her shoulders. Pulling drunkenly at the cord to release the drapes about the bed. Bidding Ester to unlace her gown, which Ester did gingerly, afraid to touch her mother’s velvety olive skin lest this sudden intimacy vanish.
Only once, Ester! I met my true father only once. My mother sailed with me to London to find him. And his eyes, Ester, my father’s eyes, weren’t mere brown. They were lit like jewels of moss and wood.
Mary’s hands had forgotten their work. “Why?” she charged.
Ester hesitated, then pressed on. “My mother said it was a love that made both rue that they were bound in wedlock to others. He was a man not high-born, but vaunted for his wit and perception in all he created. Yet he was restless in all that might cage him. As was my grandmother. But in the end they brought each other only torment. My grandmother, Lizabeta, returned to Lisbon with child.”
“But then they saw each other again,” Mary demanded. “Didn’t they?”
Ester nodded. “Though not for years. Only after the Inquisition in Lisbon took Lizabeta’s own father. She woke my mother in the middle of the night and they stole away without permission. They fled by ship to London, where they searched long for the Englishman. But his friends turned from Lizabeta and would not promise to bring him.”
“But they found him, in the end?” Mary said. “They did find him.”
“My mother was only a girl, Mary. Surely she invented or misunderstood much.”
“No, she didn’t.” In the mirror, Mary’s reflection was rapt. “Tell me.”