Ester looked once more at John. He had a sculpted face, faintly pink cheeks. Seeing Ester watching him, he gazed at her seriously for a moment. Then a smile lit his face, replacing its solemnity with a fleeting boyishness.
“Lady Mary,” Thomas intoned, “have no fear of our John. If he makes judgments on us, he does not press them, though he seems prim as a very magistrate—a profession we must be certain not to mock overmuch, as his father serves that function. But every knave needs a foil, and John is mine.” He turned and spoke over his shoulder as he walked again. “Aren’t you, John?”
John answered with a tolerant laugh—but Thomas persisted. “What would your father say, John, of your choice of friends?”
“My father isn’t here,” said John carefully. “But if he were, he would take care to collect all the evidence before passing judgment.”
Thomas laughed. “And have you collected the evidence needed to judge us?” In turning to address John, Thomas steered Mary carelessly close to a wall lining the alley. Her wide sleeve brushed a clay pot containing some loose dirt. It teetered, then toppled from the nook where it had been nested; John caught it with quick grace before it hit the pavement, and set it back in place without a word. This time, though his reply was mild, the smile he turned on Thomas had something stiff in it.
“My father is the magistrate,” John said. “I’m only his son.”
Bescós was facing both his companions, and this time there was more flint in his words. “Yet any magistrate or man of reason might question the folly you both display,” Bescós said to them both, “in calling a Jewess a lady.” He turned then, and looked full on at Ester. His gaze was cold, and as it continued unrelenting, Ester felt her own stare waver. Only then did Bescós give a slight smile.
She felt a thread of fear. Pulling Mary’s free elbow, she turned for the coach. This time Mary came. Behind them Ester heard the men follow, like a pack trailing a scent, but she didn’t turn. On the next street, their coach was waiting, the driver waking from his sleep as Ester rapped on the lacquered wood. Mary climbed in and Ester followed, closing the door firmly—yet by the time she’d latched it Thomas was at Mary’s window, speaking in a rapid banter that elicited a giggle. Ester turned away in vexation, only to find someone at her own window. John’s face was serious but his brows arched—poised, she thought, between humor and concern. He gestured with his head toward Thomas. “His tongue runs on pattens,” he said.
In her confusion she tested the door and found it shut. Uneasily, she looked across the coach, where Mary leaned out her window, both elbows propped on the frame, the bustle of her dress shoved in Ester’s direction. Thomas was getting his display of Mary’s graces now if he hadn’t had his fill earlier.
Ester glanced back at John, still at her window. His eyes were a flecked, filtered brown. Light in a sieve of tree branches.
“Do you always speak thus?” he said. “Direct as an arrow, with no fear of judgment?”
“Mary.” She tugged on Mary’s bustle. But Mary swatted her hand away without turning.
“’Tis a rare thing,” John said.
“Go,” Ester called to the driver.
“A minute!” cried Mary, and Thomas joined her laughter.
On her hand clutching the sill of the coach’s window, Ester felt a touch. John had set his hand on hers. Gently he began working one of her fingers loose of its grip on the wood.
She stared as he released one white knuckle, then began patiently on the next. The purity of his focus so riveted her that for a moment she forgot to pull away—the light weight of his hand on hers was astonishing. Absurd.
He released the third finger, and the fourth.
A bitter laugh burst from her. “Should you wish some coins for your service in seeing us to our safe departure,” she said, “you may go to the other side of the coach, where the favors flow freely—or so your companion seems to think.”
Her words didn’t dissuade him from his labor.
“I’ve nothing for you,” she said weakly.
He’d worked loose her last finger. Now he lifted her palm lightly, and set it down again on the polished wood of the coach’s window. For a moment he smoothed it, studying the long, thin fingers with their wash-roughened knuckles and bitten nails—as though her hand were a creature deserving of tender pity.
“There,” he said. When he looked up at her, it was with an expression of quiet delight, as though his own daring had taken him by surprise. Raising his hand before her, he clenched it into a fist—then slowly spread his fingers wide, as though in demonstration: like so. A gesture of such untroubled simplicity, she could not comprehend it.
Mary spoke some word to the driver, and the coach started along the street.
Ester looked straight ahead. When at length she turned, Mary’s lips wore a ticklish smile.
She knew she ought to say something to Mary. But her mind had been rinsed clean.
“I believe,” said Mary, “that I’ll require your presence at my home. Tomorrow, noon.”
“Why?” whispered Ester.
Mary shrugged prettily.
“Why?” repeated Ester, finding her voice.
“I need a companion, as I’ll be receiving a visitor.” Mary had turned to face her. Her eyes, a rich brown, were wide with elation.
“You told him where you live? Thomas Farrow?”
Mary grinned with sudden abandon. “Yes!” she sang.
Ester couldn’t hold back a laugh. Whether Diego da Costa Mendes would accept a Christian suitor for his daughter Ester couldn’t guess, but she’d little doubt as to how the man would respond to the prospect of his daughter being courted by an actor. “Your father will send him away without a word,” she said.
“My father is gone these three days.”
Ester drew in her breath. The foolishness. Had she the freedom Mary enjoyed, she felt certain she wouldn’t squander it on flirtation with such a man.
Without thinking, she’d spread one hand on her skirt, and with the other now felt the skin of her knuckles. It was rough, cracked from laundering. She balled her fist tight. “Don’t act a fool,” she muttered.
“I need you as my companion,” said Mary.
“You want me to act the duenna to appease gossip—so you can flirt with a paltry man to spite your father.”
Mary’s face darkened. She stared out the window. In a low, dispirited voice she said, “Didn’t my mother ask you to be my companion?”
“Her aim was to save you from folly, not invite it.”
Mary didn’t answer.
Ester pressed on, her voice rising to a pitch she couldn’t justify. “To make my meaning clear,” she said, “I care nothing if you trollop yourself about with such as Thomas Farrow. But don’t imagine my presence will save you from gossip. As you yourself noted, I carry my mother’s dishonor. Not that I care for such a thing as reputation.” She said the last as bravely as any dolly on London’s streets—as though respectability were nothing to her. Yet she knew all too well how its public loss could be used against her. Mary knew too. An unblemished reputation was the key to what all sensible women aspired to: marriage, safety. A life like those masks lying forgotten in the theater, serene and unreadable.
Was such female happiness real or feigned? No matter; Ester was barred from it by circumstance. By temperament.
But perhaps a different sort of happiness might yet be hers, in the confines of the rabbi’s study.
The coach had stopped abruptly. There was shouting outside, the noise of a small crowd. But Mary’s attention was fixed only on Ester. “I ask no charity,” she was saying. “I’ll pay you to serve as my protection against the gossips.”
The tumult from outside rose, jeers and raucous cries; the driver was conferring with someone and laughing loud. But Mary kept her eyes on Ester. “Ten shillings for tomorrow,” she said.
Ester almost laughed. Was it worth so much to Mary, this meeting with Thomas? A dalliance with a man whom any could see would make a ruinous mate? Did a woman’s desires so war with sense?