“What troubles you?”
Mary’s voice was tight. “Not a thing.” Her gaze was fixed out the window and she didn’t move—not even a few moments later when the coach swayed with Ester’s descent.
Puddles from the recent rain edged the road. Beneath Ester’s shoes, brown water seeped between the cobblestones. Nearby, at the edge of the stair, John and Thomas conversed intently with a whiskered man, who stood with arms folded. They weren’t alone in bidding for the whiskered man’s services; two other men waited behind Thomas and John. Beside Ester, the driver of Mary’s coach stood on the street with one hand on the horse’s harness. He was picking his teeth and gazing at the river traffic.
Thomas looked displeased as he and John returned to the coach. Seeing Mary still lost in some reverie, Thomas rapped sharply on the side of the coach, startling her. “A hard time of it,” he said, “to find a boat to take upriver. The rich are leaving the city again as they love to, for fear of sickness, and in their petty panic claim all the boats. Our good man of the river insists we hire his horse to pull the skiff against the current, or he won’t let us have his boat—for he can earn more money by hiring both to us, and he knows well that his three-quarters-dead horse is no good for city use. He’s had his way with us too, for there were more looking to hire his boat should we have refused. Imagine, to hire a nag when we’ve got this one standing idle.” Thomas looked regretfully at Mary’s father’s fine horse. Cuffing Mary’s driver jovially on his shoulder, he said to the man, “You should hire this one out while we’re upriver. A bit of silver for your own pocket.”
The da Costa Mendeses’ driver shielded his eyes from the glare and said nothing. But Mary, who had climbed stiffly down to the wet street, signaled him to go. Accepting his dismissal, the driver mounted his seat and tched the horse slowly into the city streets and out of sight.
Mary watched him go. Then turned to Thomas and said in a pointed tone, “How much for the boat?”
Thomas hesitated. With a quick glance to John, he said, “Six shillings.”
Mary pulled an embroidered pocket from the placket of her skirt. She counted the coins deliberately into his hand.
Thomas gave the coins a high toss and caught them, a jaunty gesture. Now that he’d received them thus from the air—as though they were a gift from the fates, rather than from Mary—his mood seemed restored. He clapped John on the shoulder. “It’s fortunate the river only goes in two directions,” he said. “Our boatman is so drunk he can’t find his arse with two hands.”
“Thomas, man,” John protested.
“They’ve heard it before, John,” he said. “You need to stop being afraid of women.” Coming up alongside Mary, he smacked her bottom. She winced and said nothing, which seemed to irk him. Faced with her silence, he shrugged after a moment and turned to the river. “We’ll have a leisurely trip, then.”
John wore a sober expression. “So many fleeing for the country,” he murmured. “Has the sickness reached new parishes?”
“But they go for nothing, John,” Thomas laughed. “Flying off in little boats. They do it each time some new fear visits the city. And do you know who rejoices? The thieves. The richer a man gets, the richer he is in fear, so at the least shadow he abandons all his worldly goods except what he can carry. All those frightened gentlemen will have their lovely silver plate robbed out of their houses by the time they return. If I only had a skill for thievery I’d be running off this moment to start the plunder—and if I received a clap on the shoulder, I’d just split my wealth with the magistrate.” At a sound of protest from John, Thomas laughed. “No harm meant to your father, I believe you that he’s honest, but if so, then he’s the single honest one in all of England.”
Only Ester saw the bitter twist that, for a moment, overtook Mary’s face: why steal when all is being given you?
They walked together to the muddy stair and down into the rocking skiff, Thomas first. In her simple dress Ester was able to climb in with ease, but in her stays and busk Mary struggled and nearly overbalanced, and John and Ester braced her on either side to settle her onto the seat, which she clung to with both hands, though the very wooden planks seemed distasteful to her.
The boatman untied the stout rope from the cleat, attached it to the halter of his nag, and began trudging along the stone path at the water’s edge, the nag following, skiff in tow. They started against the current.
The river was wide here, and slow. “Temple Gardens,” John said. Leaning forward, he named each sight as it came into Ester’s view. “Whitehall . . . Westminster.” Towering stone greeted her, a prospect unimagined: dreams of height and grace, invisible from the alleys she daily walked. What a city the birds must see, high above humanity, above all that hammered and smoked. As she watched the vista glide silently by, John laughed.
“London,” he said, gesturing as though introducing her.
And could it be that the London that had loomed over her all these years was small enough to be displayed in that single broad sweep of his hand—and to be left behind now in a matter of only moments? But it was: the city wall, an instant of cool shadowed stone, and they were past. Outside the wall, buildings soon thinned. Paltry streets, a few houses, taverns: rivulets of London spilling into the countryside. Then even these gave out. In the growing quiet, a passing boatman sang a verse; the hooves of the nag plodded on the tow path’s soft dirt. Gone were the haze and stench of the tanneries, replaced by air pure and wet.
That such air could exist, and so close to the city. It was an astonishment that refused to fit into any plane of Ester’s thinking. Her heart grieved, for a moment, for Catherine.
In the green distance, windmills worked, and on grassy hills the whitsters in their pinned-up skirts laid out blinding spangles of laundry. At water’s edge, where the tide must flood and recede, abundant weeds bent in the direction of the current. A silent, stunning freshness. Never had Ester felt a place to be so alive. Birds darted at the verge of the river, and the water was starred here and there with insects that seemed to walk on its very surface. All about them was green. Even the metal gates along the shore were overgrown, caked so thickly in moss one might have broken off pieces of it to eat. How absurd, that she could imagine eating it. A hunger such as she’d never felt took her. If she could unmake her entire life and remake it, she thought, she’d do so in an instant—she’d stand and dive from this boat, plunge into this slow-moving river, and find herself as alive as the water and the air. It seemed immaterial that she couldn’t swim. For the moment she felt persuaded that the water wouldn’t kill her, but would bear her easily beyond the scarred world she’d too long inhabited.
The horse stepped slowly, the breezes blew and settled, the rope creaked, the skiff swayed.
At Barn Elms, John took her arm and helped her to shore. Behind them, Mary said something indignant, calling Thomas back from where he’d stepped ahead of her up the bank.
“One fair hour,” the boatman called. Even from several paces away, Ester could smell the ale on his breath. “That’s all that’s paid, and that’s all I’ll stand guard over this boat, for I’ve got business on the river today and won’t lose it to your dalliances. This boat leaves in one hour, no matter if it’s empty.”
Thomas took Mary’s arm. “Kiss my parliament,” he muttered to the boatman. They hastened into the park.
But John knocked his forefinger once against his lips, then led Ester in a different direction.