A Measure of Light (2 page)

“You were not hurt?”

“Nay, William.” Her voice held the broadened vowels of Yorkshire.

His lips tightened. His hands fell from her face and he sat, bleak, forgetting the gift. For awhile they did not speak, as if the danger they faced was like shame, whose contemplation was ugly.

“Must be they were clergy,” he said. “Archbishop Laud has his spies, now. They sit quietly in churches and report those preachers who refuse the new rules.”

“They are required to wear the surplice.”

“Aye, and must bow at the name of Christ, and must follow the Book of Common Prayer to the letter and …” He spread his hands. “All the rest of it.”

Aye, the rest
.

“Many are leaving,” William continued. “I hear another ship hath sailed for New England. ’Tis rumoured that Archbishop Laud may close the borders.”

“Do you think we should go, William?”

He reached for a pamphlet they had been reading aloud to one another. He turned the pages, frowning.

“Boston …” he murmured. “Its bay is ‘free of cockling seas’ with ‘high cliffs that shoulder out the boisterous seas.’ Every family hath a well of sweet water. ‘Those that drink it be as healthful, fresh and lusty as those that drink beer.’ ”

Mary held out her hand for the pamphlet.

“ ‘Wolves, ravenous rangers, frequent English habitations,’ ” she read. “ ‘Big-boned, lank-paunched, deep-breasted, prick-eared, dangerous teeth, great bush tails … they set up their howlings and call their companies together at night to hunt, at morning to sleep.’ ” She closed the book, handed it back. “You have your lease, William, your customers.”

She crossed her arms to snug the fur closer around her neck. Brown curls, flattened by a linen cap drawn by a string at the base of her neck, framed her forehead; sensing her own doubt, she bit the lips of a mouth so wide, so sensitive, that its tender half-smile, should she catch sight of it in windowglass, bore no relationship to her feelings.

“In Massachusetts, they are free,” he said, as if reasoning with himself.

The scene swept over her like a wave of nausea. How delicately the hangman had pinched the nostril between his fingers. How carefully he had positioned the knife.

—

Propped against the bolster, naked, she stared up at the ceiling cloth. Beneath the coverlet, William lay sprawled on his back, one leg thrown over hers. He slept.

As I cannot …

She felt herself to be poised between two places of equal, but different, terrors. Here, in England, persecution. There, in New England—wolves, forests, fierce winters.

In either place, however, she would have William.

She had met him at the church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Sensing eyes upon her, she had looked across the aisle and seen a young man, narrow face framed by short-cropped hair, green eyes long as willow leaves. He had worked his way through the crowd, afterwards, so they would pass through the door together. In the tumult of the street, she could not move for the intensity of his gaze. He lifted her hand and for the first time she smelled the perfume of his gloves. Then he bowed, spoke: “William Dyer.” “Mary Barrett,” she answered. They exchanged what information was needful, and he came to her cousin’s apartment, where Mary resided, and they went about the city throughout the summer, and married in the fall.

Love for the young man mingled with another joy—the ecstasy of conversion.

A journey
.

So the lecturer called it. Some, he warned, would be unwilling to “loose” themselves from all they would leave behind. Yet others, who shed all regrets and desires, might “join the company of saints,” a way that was not taken up by the “shell of religion,” as he called it, but the “one true way that leadeth unto Life.”

She turned on her side, relaxed by memory, and ran a finger along William’s collarbone and over the curve of his waist. She felt the stir of his soft prick in her hand, heard his changed breath. He rolled over, tugged at the sheet and tossed it away. Tongues—muscular, agile—while his hand slid to what was no longer hers alone but a
shared secret. His fingers, making her mind fly and shatter.
Journey. Join. Loose myself. Loose myself
. Pain as he entered her, and then the conjoining, surprising in its ease. Their mingled cries, the shudder of seed.
Child, make a child
.

On Christmas morning, they made their way through the palace of Whitehall, a vast warren of buildings jumbled on the north bank of the Thames. The scent of roasting meat oiled the air; servants laden with linens and steaming platters choked its alleys. Snowflakes drifted, wide-spaced, wavering, as if threaded on invisible strings.

They entered an apartment overlooking the jousting yard.

“Your coif, Mary, always tipped. There.” Mary endured her cousin’s possessive touch as Dyota, childless, adjusted the black silk, popping finger to mouth, slicking the curls on Mary’s forehead. Cousin Ralf, the king’s Master of Robes, appeared in a high-crowned hat, a mustache waxed at the tips, long hair hanging in curls. In the window’s cold light, he bent sternly to inspect the yellow leather of William’s gloves. The men stood, then, looking out over the quintain and its sandbag, capped with snow.

“Business is good?” Ralf spoke with delicate respect. With two fingertips, he stroked a mole on his cheek.

“The queen hath visited my stall. I have ordered a half-dozen gloves.”

“A gift?”

“Nay, for herself. One pair is of white leather, with satin gauntlets.” William sketched curves on the air. “Silk arches on the tabs surrounding sea monsters and serpents. And a band of tulips, carnations and lilies.”

Only sixteen, I was, Mary thought, handing a Christmas pudding to the serving girl and unhooking her cape, when Urith sent me to
London. “Dyota will find you a husband,” Urith had said, with love and regret, placing her hands on Mary’s shoulders as if to reassure herself of the girl’s strength.

They took their places at a long table. Dyota fussed with her napkin, her lace collars, her garnet necklace.

Hard to believe Urith is her mother
.

Urith was not only a midwife but a specialist in the healing of eyes, so skilled that a surgeon in York sent her his difficult cases. Her words were direct and honest; her hands, when not needed, took their rest.

Ralf spoke the prayer. Mary glanced at her young husband. He gave her the shadow of a wry smile before bending his head. They were seated opposite one another, close enough to touch feet. Ralf and Dyota sat far apart at the table’s ends, like royalty.

“Amen.”

Dyota rang a bronze bell for the serving girl.

Waiting, hands in lap, Mary remembered the day she and her older brother had gone to stay with Aunt Urith. Galfrid, her father, had bent to her, explaining that he had been called away from his surgery to perform an amputation and that he wished to take her mother, Sisley, to see the bluebells. “Only three days,” he had said, “and we shall be home.”
Bluebells. Fields of them, spreading to the horizon
.

“The king hath brought a European painter to make portraits of the family,” Ralf said, lifting his spoon. He took a bite, chewed. His eyebrows lifted with a sorrowful expression, masking pride. “Van Dyck.” His long fingers were particular from days spent rubbing gold buttons with a chamois cloth.

“We heard about it at last night’s masque.” Dyota shaped her mouth busily around the words. “Oh, ’twas brilliant. Inigo Jones did make the set and a man named Ben Jonson wrote the words. The queen herself acted.”

Words flew between Dyota and Ralf, spoken rapidly, as if to exclude William and Mary.
Vatican envoys. Spanish diplomats
. Such a frail foundation for a life, Mary thought, eyes on her plate.

“I spoke with the queen’s adorable dwarf!” Dyota said. A line of powder crusted the ledge of her double chin. The words of a lecture came to Mary’s mind.

“…  
a dead fly is but a small thing, yet it corrupts the most precious ointment of the apothecary and makes it stink …”

Mary and William glanced at one another again, knowing they served as audience.

“Yesterday, Mary witnessed the mutilation of three Puritan clergymen,” William said.

Burnings rose on Ralf’s cheeks, his eyes watered.

“Do you know,” William continued, holding his spoon with both hands as if to snap it with his thumbs, “’tis said that Archbishop Laud keeps a list of clergymen? He pens an ‘O’ beside those who are Orthodox. And a ‘P’ against those who are Puritans.”

“I did
not
know,” Ralf said, offended. “Where do you hear such things?”

“The Puritans of Lincolnshire have asked me to visit our people thrown in prison. Did you not know that the Tower begins to burst with clergy?”

Mary nudged his foot beneath the table, feeling that he displayed his information like wares on a table.

“You must not,” Dyota breathed. “’Twould put Mary in danger. Perhaps even us.”

With her vow of obedience, Mary had accepted her place in the hierarchy: the creatures of the earth, plants and animals, the lowliest; then children; then women. Then men. Above them all, God. She bore like a wooden collar knowledge of what was seemly or possible for a wife.

She drew breath, determined to voice her opinion.

“I would go myself, cousin,” Mary said. She spoke calmly, cooling William’s heat yet buttressing his indignation. “They have done no harm. Some of them were required to answer the Visitation Articles. Nine hundred questions and every one must be answered correctly. Who could manage such a task? No one. Not even those who pose the questions.”

Ralf raised a hand, flicking away Mary’s words. He leaned towards William.

“I do not know who is in the Tower, or why,” he said. His lips quivered. “But keep your nose out of it, William. Those who put them there know the why and wherefore of it, and are better placed than you to have their reasons.”

William pushed back his chair. He glared at Ralf. “Gold, silver, lace, stained glass, they would put in our churches. Papistry.”

“I heard the queen brought her own confessor,” Mary said. “And her Capuchin monks.”

“’Tis nothing!” Dyota shrieked, suddenly, slapping the table with both hands. “’Tis her business. Ralf, make them stop this talk.”

“Did you not hear?” William said. “Mary saw
clergymen in the stocks
. Having their ears sliced from their heads.”

Ralf rose from the table. Love for his king was like a wasting sickness, Mary thought, seeing how shock rendered his skin translucent, like a porcelain glaze.

“’Tis unseemly talk for Christmas, William. You brought this subject to the table and it has spoiled the pudding. You see, your cousin could not finish.”

Dyota pressed ringed hand to mouth, tears welling.

Wants me to go to her but I feel no pity …

They did not finish their own pudding and Mary did not retrieve the plate on which she had brought it.

—

In March, Mary told William. She had missed two months of her flowers.

When Dyota learned of Mary’s pregnancy, she sent a letter of appeasement, with an invitation to visit.

Their time together became a matter of politeness—on Dyota’s part, an avid disgorgement of court gossip; on Mary’s, of answering questions about her health, which was of great fascination to her cousin.

Mary did not tell her that William went once a week to visit prisoners in the Tower; purchased and brought food, paper, and ink for them; wrote letters to his family in Lincolnshire informing them of what he heard or inferred concerning Archbishop Laud’s intentions. She could not tell her of lectures they attended secretly in a Kensington home; or discuss the fact that the countryside was greatly disturbed by Puritans who went to the churches decorated under Laud’s edicts—and smashed stained-glass windows, bludgeoned gold candlesticks, burned Books of Common Prayer. Or that Parliament had been shut down by the king, and that many of its members were Puritans.

Dyota bade her servant bring jellies and custards, fussed at Mary, urging her to indulge. Her eyes rested eagerly on her cousin’s bosom, which swelled over the lace edging of her dress. Mary tugged at her collar, covering the plump flesh.

“Ah, Ralf and William,” Dyota said, beseechingly. “Once the baby arrives they will forget their differences. We are family, after all.”

Dyota gossiped with the wife of an earl, who confessed that her husband had brought a beautiful young serving girl from the Shetland Islands and could not keep his eyes from her. Dyota had bade the woman send the servant to Mary. Seeing the girl’s sweetness and wondering at her terror, Mary hired her.

Sinnie replied to her mistress in an English filled with peculiar words. She whispered her lilting prayers in Norn, the other language of Shetland. At sixteen, she stood barely taller than a twelve-year-old girl and would not meet William’s eyes. Her skin was the colour of cream, peppered with freckles.

On a day of cold rain, Mary and Sinnie sat by the fire in the hall of their little house. Mary picked spine and bones from the flesh of a poached carp. Sinnie pressed a coffin of sweet dough. The large room had but one high window and so by afternoon the soot-blackened walls leaned and shrank in firelight and shadow.

“Memory,” Mary said. “
Do you remember the fish?
All I need say to my brother Wyl, and in our minds we will be crossing the bridge through the lilacs’ perfume and the scent from the Kettlesing bake houses. And then we stop to watch the trout swimming in the Wharfe. Shadows a-quiver in the green water …”

Sinnie had set aside the coffin, was peeling onions. The papery skins fluttered to the floor. She glanced up at her mistress, met her eyes and looked away.

“Do you have brothers, Sinnie?” Mary asked. She was patient with the girl, who seldom spoke and when addressed was seized with fright.

“Aye,” she whispered. Slices fell from her knife, circinate hoops juicy on the black wood. She blinked, her eyes filled with onion tears. “Two.”

“And would it be as I said? You would speak a word and they would remember, the same as you?”