A sick feeling in her stomach.
She could marry a soul like Alvaro. He would be kind to her. He had wealth. Her life would be graced.
Yes—but had the widow Mendoza not said that this suitor required that Ester renounce her studies?
Once, before the fire had burned away all pretense, she might have become the sort of wife who would shutter her desire to learn, keep a civil tongue, profess happiness with what was available to her. She was no longer that person. The human heart—her mother’s, her grandmother’s, her own—was a chaos of desire. And she could counter it only with the life in her mind. By living in words and books and cool reason. Recording the map traced by her thoughts, though it be an infinitesimal gesture, small and unseen. A fingernail’s scrape on a prison wall.
The prospect of sheeplike Alvaro HaLevy and a house full of his children, their eyes trained on her while she pretended to be what she was not, made her walk faster. She couldn’t marry Alvaro. She would come to punish him out of her own discontent.
She was unnatural; so it must be.
She walked on. After a time she recognized the crawling in her belly as hunger. She’d no money to pay the vendors who sold rolls and oranges from laden trays. She’d left the rabbi’s without anything but her thin cloak. Now the air was cooling, and although the park was still alive with those loath to let go the day, the crowds had begun to depart.
A weightless dusk stole over the green. What had she imagined—how did she think to sustain herself? Away from the food and shelter of the rabbi’s household mere hours, and already she faltered. The truth choked her: the rabbi had been correct. What choice did she have in this world, but marry or else give her life over to the crushing labors of a housemaid?
For some moments, without realizing it, she’d been watching a portly woman walking slowly in a cloak and dressing gown. A sable tippet was draped about her shoulders, her hands were buried in a fur muff, and a black felt mask covered the upper part of her face. Some lady of wealth, no doubt, unable to resist the freedom of the balmy air but loath to be recognized in her dressing gown—another soul leaning for just a moment into the freedom of the damp, greening park.
As their paths converged on a shallow rise, Ester noted something familiar in the ponderous gait, the soft jowls, the head held obstinately high. Ester reached the woman, who stopped her laborious progress. From behind the mask, watery dark eyes found Ester. “Today,” the woman said after a moment, “London’s air may be breathed.”
Catherine da Costa Mendes, Mary’s mother. From behind the black mask, she gazed into Ester’s eyes with the peaceable blankness of one struggling too much to judge or be judged. The sloping path, Ester saw, was her master.
“I’m glad to see you well enough to venture abroad,” Ester said. Such direct reference to Catherine’s health, she knew, might be improper. But she’d no strength in her for delicacy.
Catherine snorted in grim appreciation. “I’m not,” she said, “well enough. Yet I chose to accompany Mary on this excursion. And Mary awaits me now, I’m sure, with little patience.” With her chin, she indicated the edge of the park, where her daughter was presumably already seated in the waiting coach. A moment later she looked back at Ester—and a silent acknowledgment of all that Mary was and was not passed between them.
Catherine leaned heavily on her walking stick, each of her soft breaths audible. The light was fading, and the park was fast emptying of the women who considered their honor too precious to be left out after dusk. A trio hurried past, lifting their trailing gowns, their speed curtailed by their elegant shoes; they glanced at Ester and Catherine with curiosity. Ester watched them cross the last margin of grass and reach the street, one turning to the others, her speech indistinguishable from this distance save a high laugh of relief. Most of those wandering the paths about them now were men, and the better dressed stepped briskly.
“You’ve been walking without purpose,” Catherine said. “I’ve seen. But surely you have one.”
“I’ve come to see the greenery,” Ester said.
She could sense that Catherine was taking her measure, though the older woman’s eyes were hidden behind her mask.
“Let us not be polite,” Catherine said. “I no longer have breath for lies.” When she was able to continue, her words were flinty. “Lies served me, in my time. Now they peel away. Nor do I have tolerance anymore for idle gossip . . . a change that vexes my daughter greatly.” She breathed. “The least of the thousand things that vex her, to be sure.” She searched Ester’s face and nodded at what she found there. “You and I risk nothing by speaking the truth. It will not take long, you see, for any words you speak to go with me to the grave. And I”—a fierce expression tightened her face for a moment, before loosening its hold—“I should like to hear truth.”
The park was quiet. Even like this, masked and struggling for air, Catherine still had the erect, stern bearing of a woman whose judgments others feared.
A broad laugh broke the surface of the quiet. Two women, dressed in low bodices and scarlet skirts that advertised their trade, were leading patrons into a stand of trees.
Ester spoke first. “Why do you press Mary to choose me as a companion? When she summons me now, she tells me it’s upon your insistence.”
Catherine bowed her head, then spoke with slow force. “You may think of me what you wish for what I’ll now say. But know that I am no fool easily swayed by shadows and portents.” She waited for Ester’s nod of acquiescence, then spoke without pity. “I dreamt I was in my grave. And yet I saw through the eyes of a bird on the rooftops, and I saw that Mary was in need of aid. I dreamt I flew from roof to roof looking for one who could help my daughter.” She breathed. “There was no one. So the dream ended, Ester. With no one.”
The twilight had inked Catherine’s mask to a yet deeper black. For a moment Ester indulged the notion that someone else looked out from behind it—someone dear to Ester, someone she belonged to. Could Catherine know how near her vision had trod to Ester’s own dreams, which too often raked her sleep? Her mother in her green dress, with her wounded glance; her father with his velvet eyes, calling her name. Her brother upon the docks, his voice echoing with some urgent request.
To push back shadows with the hard edge of reason, she spoke. “I don’t believe dreams instruct us,” she said. “They confuse and weaken, and are false signs.”
Catherine weighed Ester’s boldness for a moment. “You’re wise, perhaps, not to heed them,” she said. “Nonetheless, I have not forgotten this one dream, which differed from any other that has visited me in all my years. Mary will need a friend. I want you to be one to her.”
Ester drew a sharp breath. How foolish she’d been to think for even a moment that Catherine might care for her well-being. To a woman like Catherine da Costa Mendes, Ester could never be other than a servant—a salve for Mary’s troubles.
“Mary has all she needs,” Ester said, obstinacy rising in her voice. “Even if she doesn’t marry, she’ll have an inheritance and everything she requires. It’s not she who deserves pity.”
She’d rarely dared utter the word, not after the deaths of her parents, nor even of her brother. But now a toothed hunger seized her. Pity. A charity none save the rabbi had troubled to offer.
Catherine took a step back as if to shield herself from Ester. “I birthed five children,” she said. Below the outline of her mask, the set of her mouth had tightened. “Did you know that? Only Mary, my youngest, lived past six years.”