Ester’s eyes met John’s. John said to the boatman, “We need to get these ladies to shore, and our friend to a quiet bed to sleep until the drink leaves him.”
The boatman moved close until he’d grabbed the side of their craft, then extended a hand to Mary. But she was clinging to the far edge and would not take his hand. Her dress was soaked and clung heavily, the patches on her cheeks were gone or askew. She heaved again over the side, her eyes shut against the rushing water.
When she’d finished she spat quietly and said to Ester, “I’m with child.”
The boatman was waiting.
“A moment,” Ester called. “Please.” The man turned to give them privacy. Quickly, pushing Mary’s wet hair from her cheeks, Ester whispered, “Does Thomas know it?”
Mary snorted, but her derision was cut short by a dry convulsion, which racked her body even though her stomach had already disgorged its contents. When this had passed, she sank against the ribs of the boat. “Of course he knows. Why do you think”—she gestured back at the bridge. “I told him at Barn Elms,” she whispered. Then she lifted her face and met Ester with a defiant stare. “He’d said it couldn’t happen if I didn’t”—she stopped, gestured emphatically, and waited for Ester to understand.
After a moment Ester did. Take pleasure.
“And I’d heard the same as well. So I took care not to.”
A gull wheeled above them, arcing over the bridge before sweeping back downriver. They followed its flight until its gray body faded against the horizon.
A last small spasm gripped Mary. When it had passed, she spoke as though to herself. “I told Thomas my father will disown me.” Her gaze had settled once more on the water. “So we’ll simply earn our own sustenance. Once Thomas accustoms himself to the idea.”
Ester allowed the words to go unchallenged.
With John’s assistance, they clambered out of the half-sunk skiff and onto the rocking craft of the solemn boatman—first Ester, then Mary, stiff in her ruined dress. Thomas, still in the skiff, paid as little mind as if they were strangers.
So all Catherine’s effort to protect her daughter—and Ester’s paltry, stumbling attempts—were for naught. Mary would now need to become a different sort of creature from the petted girl Catherine had raised. A woman whose life Ester could not guess at.
The man rowed them to shore, where they waited silently, Ester wrapped in the rough, smoke-smelling blanket that Mary had refused, despite her shivering. Ester could hear John’s voice over the water as he bailed. Thomas, now standing athwart the half-flooded boat while John worked, was singing aloud some bawdy lyric—and he hooted at John’s calls for him to join in the labor, until John gripped both gunwales and rocked the skiff, hard. Thomas splashed down in the center and set to work.
At length both men reached shore with the bailed skiff, and at the stair they were able to tip it and drain the remaining water. The boatman who had rescued them agreed to have his son and nephew carry the skiff overland back to the stair above the bridge—this in exchange for more of the coins Mary counted, clutching her sodden skirts and speaking the numbers crisply aloud so that Thomas, standing a few paces away with his face toward the flowing river, could not but hear: three shillings, two pence.
By the time she’d finished paying, it was raining. To warm themselves they entered a nearby inn, a low-ceilinged room heavy with the smells of candle wax and damp wool. Some whispered conversation had sprung up between Mary and Thomas on the brief walk there—Ester could not tell whether it was a fight or a reconciliation, but the two settled at their own end of the long wooden table.
John, sitting beside her, ordered bread and beer and grouse soup.
The candle on the table burned a bright yellow. John laid his hands on the scored wooden surface. “At heart,” he said, “Thomas is a good lad.”
Ester sat straight on the hard bench. “Thomas is well past youth, yet you call him a lad.”
John smiled. “I think he would like that.”
“Perhaps. Yet his love of youth is all for himself, and doesn’t extend to a brat.”
John looked uncomprehending. Then he turned to the far side of the table, where Thomas and Mary sat unspeaking—Thomas squinting into a tankard, Mary with an air of taut determination Ester had not seen before.
John shook his head slowly, understanding. He opened his mouth—she saw him ready himself to say Thomas will do what he ought. But he hesitated.
“Let us not lie to ourselves,” she said.
He conceded.
She shook her head to clear it; she hadn’t intended to argue. For once, she’d no desire to reason or muster evidence. She wanted, instead, to say something to him. Yet she’d no words.
She tried again. “Let us not lie.”
“I’ll not lie to you,” he said. “Your honesty is a . . .” He drank his ale, set it down. “Your honesty is a beacon.” He regarded Thomas and Mary for a moment, and shook his head slowly. Then—as though shedding the events of their return down the river—he smiled softly at her. His hand patted the table. Once, twice. Three times. “I want to show you all the still places and the lakes, Ester. I want to show you England.” And there was something fervent in his expression, as though she were an ideal of such purity it was a fearsome joy to pledge himself to it.
A woman brought the soup. Closing her eyes, Ester warmed her hands on the bowl. She understood she ought to remind him of the obstacles to a love such as theirs—between a Jewess and a Gentile. But she’d no more words to dissuade John from his determination to love her—nor did she wish any longer to turn him from it. She no longer wanted to be the aching, watchful person she’d become. For the first time she thought, I understand why we sleep. To slip the knot of the world. Sitting beside John, with her palms braced on the hot bowl of soup, she wished for forgetfulness—and for a moment she let herself slide into a dream. A falling, sickening feeling; a feeling of great and dangerous liberty. Her body remained on the hard bench—she felt John’s knee against the damp fabric of her dress—yet in her mind they were in a boat. Sailing, somehow, back upriver—away from all that fastened her to the city of London, away from duty and hardship, to where the water was bright and sun-teased. The rocking ribs of the boat. Her own ribs, cradled by the sparkling current; a cradle of rushing sound, John’s voice rocking her, and a rain of light behind her eyes. And the world, green and green and green.
A wildness took her. She opened her eyes.
“If,” she began. Then she stopped. His right hand was on the table. She slid her left hand toward his until they touched. With her right, she lifted the candle in its holder and raised it high. As the first of the hot wax hit his hand, he startled—but he obeyed her stillness and kept his hand beside hers as she traced the wax over his hand and her own, his and her own: a searing drizzle that left no burn, but cooled to a fine tracery that would seal them together until they broke it apart.
21
March 18, 2001
London
At two o’clock, Librarian Patricia had assured him that her colleague from the conservation laboratory would be downstairs soon. At two-thirty she’d repeated the assertion. After that, she’d refused Aaron’s increasingly pointed queries. Even Helen’s polite prompting failed to persuade Librarian Patricia to lift the telephone once more to muster her colleague from her roost in the conservation lab.
At nearly half past three, Conservation Patricia, with her faded red-brown hair and narrow, severe-looking face, approached their table. She had the air of someone who had reached the limits of her patience—had reached it, plainly, before cracking an eyelid that morning. In comparison Librarian Patricia looked downright kindly.
“I’m told you have some need of me?” she said, surveying both of them.