Mr. Shakespeare's Bastard (8 page)

T
HIS AFTERNOON THE SOUND
of something heavy falling below stairs, and then Emily shouting, a dreadful racket which I surmised came from the kitchen. Making my careful way down the stairs I hoped that Mrs. Sproule had not dropped dead on the flagstones. When I reached the kitchen, she was indeed on the flagstones, though very much alive on hands and knees, mopping and muttering about clumsiness amid the broken crockery and pickled cucumbers that littered the floor. With arms folded across her chest, Emily looked on with an expression suggesting that old women make too much fuss over a broken crock of pickles. The air was pungent with the smell of spices and vinegar.

“The last of the lot,” Mrs. Sproule kept repeating as she squeezed the rag into a dish of soiled pickle juice. “Mr. Walter will not be happy. You know, Miss Ward, how he likes
his pickled cucumbers with his bacon. There was enough in that crock to last until the summer garden. What will he say now?”

Nothing much, I thought. Mr. Walter may like his cucumbers and bacon, and may even mildly wonder at the absence of the pickles, but such is his unassailable incuriosity about household matters that likely it will never be mentioned. At the moment he is more concerned with getting his fields in order with the weather warm and fair at last. Still I had to appear concerned, and after a fashion, I was. Emily, it seems, in reaching for something on a shelf, had contrived to knock over the jar. I wondered how the girl had managed to tip such a heavy vessel: it must not have been securely placed on the shelf, and that would have been Mrs. Sproule’s responsibility. I foresaw a squabble and had no stomach for overseeing it. Emily is clumsy and Mrs. Sproule forgetful, as am I. However, Mrs. Sproule was clattering on about Emily’s mind being forever elsewhere when going about her duties and feeling little or no contrition when things went awry. For her part, Emily claimed that the pickle jar had been in her way, and the jar ill placed on the shelf to begin with. When she reached for something behind it, she said, the jar toppled. She very nearly received a hurt on her foot. Right there on her ankle. See that. And of course Emily pointed it out to us. Nothing is ever her fault, and so it followed that we
need expect no apologies. I told her to get on with other things and said to Mrs. Sproule that I would make her some tea. Mrs. Sproule was in tears because the girl had been saucy to her. “I shouldn’t have to put up with that after all my years of service in this house, Miss Ward.” And so on. And she was quite right, and I assured her on that score and then made the tea.

Later I spoke to Emily in the hallway, where she was sulking as she polished the large mirror near the front door, reminding her yet again to watch her manners, to remember her station in the household and to concentrate on the work at hand. Charlotte had gone walking with Mr. Thwaites, so thankfully she wasn’t there to hear me, for she hates the slightest hint of disorder in the household. While I was talking, Emily wore an air of grievance, as though she longed for someone to knock on the door and rescue her from this tiresome business. At one point, the damnable girl actually shrugged as I spoke. Perhaps she senses that my heart is no longer in all this.

To calm myself, I went upstairs and sat in the nursery, which is just as it always was, for Charlotte, who loves this room more than any other, wants it to remain as it was in her childhood. I am glad enough that she has insisted on this, because the nursery settles me when my mind is astir. In one corner is the old rocking horse, which was ridden by all the children in their turns, but mostly by Nicky,
who would almost tip it over in his exuberance. It saddens me yet to think of a musket ball striking him dead as he sat astride a real horse, his beloved chestnut stallion, at Naseby. The storybooks once read to the children are still here by the window seat, where they listened on rainy afternoons. At other times, I dressed them in cast-off clothes and they performed plays I had composed from stories.

Sometimes we enacted shortened versions of my father’s plays, for by then I had bought what was available of his works in print at a stationer’s in Oxford. I never, of course, revealed the author’s relationship to me; such an admission would have been far too outlandish for the children to believe, and would have occasioned some awkward conversations with their parents. I was content enough to introduce them to my father’s work. Nicky enjoyed the histories and especially
Henry
V; the older girls liked the comedies. As for Mr. Walter, his nature inclined him to regard the everyday world as more important than the realm of the imagination. Yet stolid and dutiful child that he was, he could be persuaded to play a minor part in our entertainments, a Sir Walter Blunt or a Salisbury. Just to please me. His sisters enjoyed indulging their younger brother in his fondness for heroic roles, so Catherine might play Mowbray to Nicky’s Bolingbroke, or Mary as Edmund suffer the insulting remarks of Nicky’s Edgar:

He was not yet twelve years, his clear, treble voice declaiming my father’s words in this nursery.

That year on Christmas Eve, the children and I performed a pageant in the hall before their parents and servants and neighbours with brief scenes from various plays. The last piece of all was Nicky’s delivery of King Henry’s Saint Crispin’s Day speech to his troops before the Battle of Agincourt. Even the old squire, a man not given much to fancy, had tears in his eyes as he listened.

When the girls left for America, Nicky was fifteen and out of sorts with play-acting. This nursery fell silent until Charlotte entered our lives and grew old enough to ask for stories and other enchantments.

One day not long ago, she asked if I remembered frightening her with a scene from one of the plays about the kings of England. That day she had been reading yet again a letter from one of her sisters in America, in which either Catherine or Mary was recalling her childhood in Easton House and the plays and stories I had told them. Charlotte
said how she wished she had known her sisters, how she regretted growing up without them, how pleasant it might have been to have older sisters in the house. It saddened her to think how alone she often felt. I told her that she had at least been spared the bullying of older sisters, and anyway, I said, I myself grew up alone and didn’t mind much. “You had Mr. Walter,” I said, “and still have, for that matter. And you had Nicky too for a dozen years or so.”

“Yes,” she agreed, “Nicky was a wonderful brother to me. As a little girl, I do remember him so well. Still, it would have been agreeable to have sisters in the house. Even had they bullied me.”

She brightened. “But I had you, dear Linny. The stories you told and the scenes you enacted of all those kings. You once had me stuff a pillow under your shawl and then you drew the curtains by the window and had me sit in the darkened room while you left. You told me to hide because the King, who was a wicked man, was coming to get me. Then a moment later you returned. Was that Henry the Fourth or Richard the Fourth? You clomped about the darkened room with that pillow strapped to your back beneath the shawl and said you were going to kill the children.”

“Charlotte,” I said, “there was never a Richard the Fourth on the throne of England. That particular dramatization was of Richard the Third. Old Crookback, so-called for his deformation.”

She’d scarcely heard me, so caught up was she in her reminiscence. “You came into that room and began to search everywhere. Behind the rocking horse. By the bookshelf. Clomping around like a mad thing. You were looking for the two children …”

“Yes, Charlotte. Rightful heirs to the kingdom. The hunchback was going to kill them and claim the throne.”

“You terrified me. When you opened the cupboard door next to where I was peeking out from behind the curtain, I shrieked.” Charlotte laughed at the memory. “I think I must have wet myself.”

“Indeed you did,” I said, “through and through. I had to change your underthings.”

“Oh, Linny,” she said, “that was such a long time ago.”

“For you, perhaps,” I said, “though not for me. Twenty years.”

“Yes, I must have been only three or four.”

I told her I had invented that scene, as Richard didn’t kill the children himself but hired assassins.

I lightened the darkness of some of the plays because, like my mother, Charlotte could not abide sorrowful endings: so in the old King’s tale of woe, the hangman’s knot is imperfect and Cordelia survives. “Look, look,” cries Lear, “she lives.” And so she did, at least in the nursery of Easton House before the eyes of a ten-year-old girl. The same happy fate awaits the voluptuous Cleopatra, when
Charmian plucks the asp from the Queen’s breast with news that Antony is still alive, and the famous lovers are reunited. Desdemona awakens to embrace and forgive Othello. I could not bring myself to tamper with Hamlet’s story, even for a child’s amusement, and so I kept it to myself. Perhaps even to this day, Charlotte believes these great tragedies ended happily.

I was still in the nursery with these memories when I heard voices below stairs in the hallway. Charlotte and Mr. Thwaites had returned from their walk, and standing at the top of the stairs out of sight, I heard Charlotte tell Mrs. Sproule that the rector would be staying for supper. I retreated at once to my room to allow the cook time, as I expected her to be flustered by this news. Old people grow accustomed to routine and dislike unexpected requests, and so I would soon get an earful. I allowed a few minutes and then went down. Passing the closed door to the library, I could hear Mr. Thwaites saying something to make Charlotte laugh. In the kitchen, Mrs. Sproule was busying herself but grumbling too.

“Such a day, Miss Ward. First, that girl’s clumsiness and impertinence, and now the rector for supper on scarcely any notice. What next, I ask you?”

I told her I had little idea what was next—death perhaps at one fell stroke—but we must cope as best we can. Charlotte then came into the kitchen, her colour high, for
she was happy and excited to have Simon Thwaites in the house. And this I thought was a herald of things to come, and good for her and all of us. Charlotte apologized again for the late notice, but she and the rector had walked farther than they had expected and the poor man had talked of an appetite. Mrs. Sproule, however, was not to fuss. Bread and butter and cold meat would do. Charlotte had asked Emily to light a fire in the hall—and would I fetch a glass of wine for Mr. Thwaites? I would indeed, I said, and one for her as well, I hoped.

In the hall, Emily had laid a good fire in the hearth and smiled pleasantly at me. I have to say on the girl’s behalf that she quickly gets over hard feelings. Mr. Thwaites, who had been standing by the window with his hands behind his back, turned to accept the wine and thanked me. When Charlotte came in, I could not help noticing, even with my poor eyes, how Simon Thwaites regarded her. Yes, I thought, affection is flourishing between them and clearly on display.

Though not overly handsome, the rector is well formed and has a clear, intelligent look about him. If they marry, he will instruct her in the ways of the world with patience and doubtless he will do a better job than I have done. To his credit, he is no firebrand like his predecessors; Charlotte has said that he is moderate in his views, an even-tempered soul—and with a sense of humour, as I soon found out. When he asked me why I didn’t attend
Sunday service, I told him out of nothing more than mischief that I was a Quaker, but with no Society of Friends hereabouts, I made do with quaking by myself.

“Upon my soul, Miss Ward,” he laughed. “A solitary Quaker in our midst.”

But I could see he didn’t believe a word of it and no more was said about attending Sunday service.

From the open doorway, we could hear Mr. Walter talking to Mrs. Sproule in the kitchen, and when he came into the hall, I could smell the not-unpleasant reek of horses and leather. The rector arose to greet him and Mr. Walter could only wag his large head in cheerful dismay at this Thursday evening surprise. I hurried off at once to get his ale.

When I returned, he said, “The cup that cheers, eh, Linny?” and drank deeply.

“Indeed, sir,” I said, refilling Mr. Thwaites’s glass and stirring the fire. With warmth and drink, awkwardness receded and Mr. Thwaites was soon asking about the fields and the weather. When I left, the conversation had turned to the sickness, still common in the larger towns and cities, but mercifully still absent from us.

In the end, the evening was successful. Mrs. Sproule put together a simple meal of cold beef and mustard with bread and early greens. There was also raisin pie. Afterwards she and I tidied up and had our boiled eggs in the kitchen. Later I listened to Charlotte saying goodbye to the rector,
who had decided to walk back to the village despite Mr. Walter’s offer of the light carriage.

I lay awake then for the longest time thinking about my next day’s words for Charlotte.

I
COULD PICTURE
M
AM IN
the Boyers’ house on her first night all those years ago, lying in bed, listening to the great city settle around her. That summer, she told me, the pestilence was in abeyance and people were unafraid to walk abroad. She could hear them passing in the laneway below her window, just as I would years later. Her work as nursemaid, however, was not agreeable. “I did my best,” she laughed. “But either I was unsuited for it, or the child simply would not take to me.”

“Or,” I said, “she was just a brat, as you once told me.”

“Perhaps so,” said Mam. “Yet nothing I did could please her.”

For many weeks she had to make do with restive nights and pinched cheeks as the squirming child clutched at Mam’s face while she walked the floor with her. Then her luck changed. One of the shop assistants left abruptly and did not return. No one knew why, but Mam guessed
the girl had run off with someone. “She was very pretty and a flirt and one of the gallants caught her, I expect,” said Mam. “I don’t imagine it ended happily, for such encounters seldom do.”