Strange Devices of the Sun and Moon

Strange Devices of the Sun and Moon

Lisa Goldstein

“…
A company of ragged knaves,
Sun-bathing beggars, lazy hedge-creepers,
Sleeping face upwards in the fields all night,
Dream'd strange devices of the Sun and Moon
…”

—Thomas Nashe,
Summer's Last Will and Testament

February, 1590

1

The traveler in front rode a horned mount, and had horns on his head as well. He was dressed in green, with soft dark-green boots and a cloak that flowed on behind him. The bells twined in the animal's mane made little sound, something like the wind blowing somewhere far off. Behind him rode the standard-bearers, carrying the old banners stained with dew and rotted with rain, and behind them the queen. He lifted a trumpet to his lips and blew it, and then turned and motioned to the troop behind him. They followed him like a wave.

As they passed through the dark streets their way was lit by a sparkling light, as if the element they moved in was not air but fire. If people had seen them pass by (and no one did, though a few looked directly at them) they would have thought of stars falling to earth. And compared to their lights the stars and the round moon were dull, dimmed by fog and soot and the candles from houses and inns and taverns.

They were going into exile, though none of them mentioned it. Some of the flightier ones had even forgotten it, and now they bent to play with the stones on the city streets, thinking them a sort of toy. “Press on, press on!” a few of them called, and the ones who had picked up the handfuls quickly dropped them.

The company moved through the streets, drawing closer as a defense against the strangeness. Some flew ahead on wings like thin and shining silk, some rode fine horses or birds, some were small enough to be carried. They who spent so much of their lives in a kind of dream now looked around as if awakening, seeing the huge wooden and plaster houses, the streets wider than any meadow path, the faint stars overhead. Some of them laughed in surprise. A few whimpered for a moment, and then forgot why it was they were supposed to be unhappy. “Press on, press on!” came the call from the front of the line, and those at the back took it up. Some of them began to sing.

In the cold London houses people stirred in their beds, thinking they heard something. Alice Wood turned and reached for her husband John, forgetting in her sleep that he was dead and in his grave this past year. “It's the wind,” she whispered, though to whom she said it she didn't know. In the taverns the wits fell silent a moment and one or two of them made a move to depart. A young man abroad late found himself singing a song he hadn't heard since childhood. And Paul Hogg raised his eyes from an experiment and thought, they're here. They've come at last.

Before cockcrow and first light the travelers dispersed to houses throughout London. A few of them passed the rest of the night sweeping the hearth or mending old clothes. Others curled up in out-of-the-way corners and went to sleep. The queen waited to thank the horned man for bringing them to their destination. They would be safe in this strange place, she thought. By running brook and standing stone, by all the powers of the World, it would go well for them here.

By the time she woke Alice had forgotten the disturbances of the night. She dressed in her skirt and bodice and ruff, and adjusted a small linen cap over her head. Then she took a moment to glance in her small hand mirror. The face that looked back at her seemed, as always, older than she expected, as though somewhere in her mind she was still young and living with John. How had the years passed so quickly? She saw fine blond hair, too light to show the gray, a wide mouth and high cheekbones and strangely uptilted eyes. “Like a Tartar's,” John had said about her eyes, though they were blue instead of brown.

It had snowed lightly the day before, but the morning looked to be unseasonably warm for February. Weak sunlight came in through the two windows at the front of the house. As she opened the door to go to work she noticed the place looked cleaner than usual, freshly swept, and without thinking about it she felt strangely gladdened, lighter than she had in days.

Her house was along the north wall of St. Paul's, on Paternoster Row, and the stall from which she sold her books stood in the walled yard of the cathedral itself. The church, to the scandal of the priests and religious people of London, served as the center and meeting place for nearly everyone in the city. As she headed for her stall she saw evidence of the day's activity beginning. A tailor jostled past her, scraps of cloth hanging from his shoulder. Near her someone was posting a bill advertising employment, one of the large London inns seeking a hostler. Scriveners and lawyers, gallants and gossips were hastening toward the large wooden cathedral. There they would spread out through the aisles and nave, display their wares on the tombs and font, look for clients, ask for and receive the latest news.

Almost all the booksellers and printers in London had their stations in St. Paul's, either against the church itself or in rows leading away from it. Some of them had already started setting up their wares and were calling to the early browsers. “Buy a new book, sir—here's the latest news from France!” “Almanacs, almanacs and prognostications!” “Jigs and ballads here!” “Honest man, here are the books you lack!”

“Good morning!” her neighbor at the next stall, Edward Blount, called to her.

“Morning!” she said, putting her books out on display. She didn't have as many books as Blount—in the harrowing time after her husband's death she had been too busy learning the business to acquire any new titles—but John had left her some popular pamphlets and ballads, and she kept the monopoly which had allowed him to print all the playbills in London. Still, she couldn't help envying Blount his impeccable literary taste, his nose for what was both good and popular.

More booksellers were opening their stalls now. A moneylender walked by, deep in conversation with a client. George Cowper called to her as he passed. “Looks to be a fair day,” she said to him.

“Aye, but it'll probably turn foul later,” he said. “Care to take your dinner with me?”

“If I'm not too busy.”

“Come, you won't be as busy as I will.”

“Oh, I'll sell a book or two,” she said. She liked George, but she wished he wouldn't keep reminding her that his business was brisker than hers. And as if to spite him she did a good trade all day, with hardly any time at all to rest. The lawyers were in town for the Candlemas term, and she and every other bookseller were kept busy answering questions about the books and news they'd missed while they were out of London. By the time she managed to get away to the stalls on Cheapside Street George had already eaten.

More people thronged the churchyard when she got back. In a month or so it would be warm enough for the playhouses to open, but in late winter those who wanted to see and be seen came to Paul's. She watched as a man urged his horse through the crowd and into the cathedral, which was used as a shortcut for those who didn't want to walk the long way around the walls. Two dogs fought over a scrap of meat, and someone wearing the rags of a beggar took advantage of the diversion to dip his hand into his neighbor's purse. A woman near her cried her wares: “Apples and oranges here! Oranges from Seville!”

A thin man wearing unadorned black doublet and hose and the smallest possible white ruff was waiting for her at her stall. He looked like a Puritan, and her first thought was to tell him she had no theological books. Or he might be a spy from the Privy Council, come to make sure that everything she sold had been authorized and licensed. Whoever he was, she wanted no part of him. “What book do you need?” she asked.

“No book,” he said. “Are you Alice Wood?”

“Aye.”

“Have you a son?”

“I had a son,” she said cautiously. No one had mentioned Arthur to her for so long she had almost grown used to thinking of him as dead.

“And where might he be now?”

“I don't know. Who are you and why do you question me like this?”

He took a half crown from his purse. “I'll give you this for any information you might have.”

She looked at the coin. “It looks counterfeit,” she said.

“Aye,” he said, smiling strangely. He put the coin back in his purse. “Beware the false coin and the false man. Beware the moon, counterfeit of the sun.”

“Who are you?”

“One who seeks the truth.”

“Then seek it somewhere else or stop talking in riddles,” she said, suddenly angry. “If you know something about my son I would like to hear it, and if not go back to Bedlam where you came from. Does he owe you money?”

“Nay. We owe him, and more than money.”

Alice watched him as he left the churchyard and thought of Arthur. She had been old when he was born, nearly thirty, and he had been their only child. From the beginning he had been a moody boy, sometimes quiet, sometimes talking about nonsense for hours on end. He had never played with the other children, and despite the fact that his father was a bookseller he had never learned to read. Yet he had only to hear a song once to remember it, and when he was young John used to ask him to sing for the customers who wanted to buy a ballad-sheet. As he grew older he began to leave the churchyard for hours, sometimes for days. Finally he had left and not come back. She used to ask the poets and pamphleteers who came to talk to her and John if they had seen him, but no one had. She thought he must be dead, of some illness, like John, or killed in a brawl.

Near her a young gallant was looking around anxiously, probably trying to find someone to dine with before the day ended and he had to go home hungry. She smelled horse dung and the perfume and sweat of the close-packed crowd. Someone laughed loudly and she followed the sound, hoping for a distraction. As if the thought of the pamphleteers had conjured them up she saw Thomas Nashe and fat Henry Chettle coming toward her, swerving wide to avoid a suspected cutpurse. “Good day, masters,” she said, smiling a little to see them.

“Good day, Mistress Wood,” Thomas said. “How are my books selling?”

“Well enough.”

“Well enough for you, perhaps. You have other books to sell, but I must make up a new pamphlet or poem or play every few months or starve.”

“Do you think so? You always do well—”

“It would take a new battle with the Armada, and Queen Elizabeth herself riding to St. Paul's to proclaim victory, for anyone to set foot in this churchyard and buy a book again. Forgive me, but it takes only one bad pamphlet to raise a damp enough to poison the entire place. You wouldn't credit the books they sell here. Richard Harvey's, for one.”

“Aye, I saw your attack on him in the new manuscript you gave me. I thought perhaps you might take that out—it could offend the man—”

“Offend him? And what's that to me?”

“He would feel he had to give you an answer—”

“Aye, let him. And I'll answer him in kind. We'll have more sport than an afternoon's bearbaiting.”

“But it's such a paltry thing—you would be wasting your talent if you spent it on nothing but the Harveys. There is so much you could write about.”

“And I will, too. I could make up a pamphlet about your blue eyes, about that apple Chettle's eating.”

“Listen, I must ask you something.”

The young man looked as if he were about to go on, as if only her question prevented him from improvising for another hour. “Aye?”

“Have you heard any word of Arthur?”

“Your son? You've asked us before.”

“Aye, but a man's been around asking about him.”

“What sort of man?”

“A man all dressed in black. He had the look of a Puritan about him.”

“A Puritan? You want to stay away from that sort.”

“Then you haven't seen Arthur? Or heard any news of him?”