Ester listened dumbly to the women, whose talk had turned to the need for a new synagogue building—one with a proper women’s balcony. Today, as it did each week, the Sabbath respite found Ester unsteady on her feet, as though she’d just stepped off a ship with surf still ringing in her ears. All week a tide of housework rose about her, sliding her this way and that as she fought with breath and limb to stay afloat. Bread and meal, ale and fuel, mending thread and needle. A full partner now in domestic labor, Ester understood at last how much Rivka had spared her while she still scribed for the rabbi.
On wash mornings she was wakened by Rivka in darkness to set a buck-basket of linens soaking in lye, then work in the kitchen while dawn came and went. On market days she walked until her feet were numb. She could negotiate prices of coal in English now and even had come to understand the repartee of the vendors in the city’s marketplaces. But any more delicate thoughts scattered at the least interruption, and the books on the rabbi’s shelves might as well have been behind a locked door. She was a body, laboring. Even at night in her bed, when the tide of work had ebbed and her thoughts ought have convened, they failed her. Verses that had once played in her mind now vanished—a whorl of words, dipping and spinning, gone. Sleep, of all things, had overmatched her, closing on her like shutters of oak. Passing the rabbi in his study, she’d pause only to add wood to his fire or bring him his meal. In his accustomed chair he sat, the light of his face dimmed, attending to her tread as she neared and departed, as though listening for a signal that the wrong he had wrought had been undone. She did not linger. She returned to the kitchen and washed the salt out of a block of butter. She broke up and pounded cakes of sugar, set new-milled flour to dry. She heard from Rivka one morning of the death of Catherine da Costa Mendes, and then—in tandem with Rivka, their bodies folding and turning as one—wrung a torrent of water from a sheet, and set it over the basket to dry.
In the enticing sunlight now, Mary’s father, the olive-skinned and black-wigged Diego da Costa Mendes, stood conversing heartily among the men. He gave barely a glance to Mary, who stood among a cluster of beribboned girls. Mary herself gossiped gamely with her companions, yet something in her seemed newly tentative—in the snatches of conversation Ester overheard, Mary entered others’ witty exchanges like a house-breaker, her words landing with graceless haste. In truth, Ester had had little chance to speak with Mary directly since Catherine’s death. When Ester had carried Rivka’s offerings of food to the house of mourning, the da Costa Mendeses’ servants had accepted the gifts, but Mary herself had not emerged to converse—nor had she made any reply to Ester’s soft greetings in the ensuing weeks, beyond a brittle nod. And Ester knew better than to join Mary’s cluster of friends here outside the synagogue—the other girls had long made plain without words that Ester wasn’t welcome in their gatherings. Their eyes fled her silver hair, as though her apparent ineptitude in the area of marriage might be contagious.
All Ester knew now of Mary’s state was what was evident to everyone: whereas other widowers might worry over the welfare of a sole surviving child, Diego da Costa Mendes seemed to take no note of his daughter. There was little doubt he’d soon choose a young wife to bear him a new family. Only last week Ester had heard one of the synagogue’s matrons say there was a lady whom Diego da Costa Mendes courted in the countryside—indeed he’d traveled there twice in the scant weeks since Catherine’s death. “In the countryside, did you hear?” The matron’s voice had dropped to a disapproving whisper. “And Catherine of blessed memory suffering all those years in the London air, and he unwilling to leave.” The circle of women had shaken heads, yet said no more—for though there was little affection for the da Costa Mendes family, none wished their enmity.
Half dozing now at the verge of this cautious, all-judging circle, Ester caught fragments of the chatter of the nearby cluster of Mary’s friends, their restless noise amplified by the stone wall beneath which they gossiped.
“It’s sheer obscenity,” said Emilia Valentia, her words gilded with delight as she played with one of her long brown curls. “So all say, and I’m certain it’s true.”
“And she attended?” said the tall, angular Cancio girl, and she led the others in a gust of laughter. The girls prolonged their merriment as though for an audience, their gazes flicking now and again across the narrow street, where several young men of the community stood in studiously casual poses of their own.
“Are you certain?” the Cancio girl continued more quietly, her surprise evidently genuine. “How could her father permit it?”
“But he accompanied her!” exclaimed Emilia. “Along with her mother! The entire family, together!”
Sarah Cancio, the heavyset matron beside Ester, had been attending to the girls’ conversation as well, and now she leaned out of the group of older women to nod approvingly to her daughter. “Theater is obscenity,” she called out briskly. Beneath her powder, streaked by sweat, she had an honest, impatient face. “A wretched influence for a girl, worse for her reputation. It was vile enough before they permitted women on the stage. Now who can say what audience of drunkards gathers there?”
The Cancio girl frowned and stepped deeper into the cluster of her friends, seeming to reconsider her own disapproval now that her mother had affirmed it. “Yet half London’s gentlemen go, Mother,” she protested. “And you say you wish me to marry well?”
Her mother gave a grim laugh. “You won’t find any among us to escort you to that cesspit. Let the Christians throw their souls to the dung heap with such entertainment.”
Firm nods among the other women concluded the matter: theater was not for the daughters of the synagogue.
As though at a signal, the gathering on the street at last began to disperse—the older women trading quick embraces; the girls offering hasty kisses on the lips and tidying one another’s curls one final time in parting. As her friends found their families and departed, Mary trailed behind, eyes trained on her father. Diego da Costa Mendes spoke on with his companions. His daughter, Ester saw, had become as invisible to him as his ailing wife once had been. Perhaps she’d always been so.
Pain flared, sudden and unbearable, on Mary’s face. Then, abruptly, her expression shut. Without warning, she turned.
“Why are you staring at me?” she charged Ester.
So accustomed had Ester grown to passing unremarked, she’d almost forgotten she herself was visible. She hesitated. Then said, “Because your father won’t pay you mind.”
For a moment Mary’s hands worked at the fabric of her bodice, as though searching for some other place to alight. It occurred to Ester that Mary might slap her.
Instead Mary’s hands alit, painfully tight—one, then the other—on Ester’s wrist. “We’ll go.”
“Go where?” Ester said. But as soon as she uttered the question, she read its answer in Mary’s defiant expression.
Two days later, Ester climbed into the coach to find Mary scanning the street through the coach’s window. Mary was dressed in a blue satin that showed her rosy skin and black brows to advantage, and she sat with stiff posture—her stays, Ester saw, had been tied tight as was now in fashion, and pinched her waist cruelly. On her bosom rested a small silver cross Ester had never before seen. Many of the congregation wore such adornments when they ventured about London, but Ester was certain Mary hadn’t worn such a thing while her mother lived. With a reflexive, agitated motion, Mary stroked the cross with a single finger, as though she were with each touch mustering courage to issue the world a dare that frightened her.
As Ester settled on the bench, Mary glanced past her. “What concern’s it to her if we go?” she muttered.
Following Mary’s gaze to a high window of the rabbi’s house, Ester saw Rivka’s shadowed form there, watching.
“She allowed me the day free of work,” Ester said. “So I might accompany you.”
Still staring at the form in the window, Mary cupped the cross in her palm. “You speak as though she’s done me a charity.”
“The demands of the house are a greater burden on Rivka without help,” Ester said.