Liza let go the dancing rope, and as she wiped her hands on her apron, there was a muffled thud and a great squawking from inside. “There, old girl, keep your head about you. Simon, run, open the door and let this infernal mother loose—”
Simon stood and walked with a hand brushing the wood and casements at the rear of the house. He was bony but sure, and I knew he would run and leap in the meadows if only his eyes would let him. I wished he might be my companion. I wished for him.
“Simon! I hear the just arse in there flapping soot all over!”
An instant later, he pulled open the door and out waddled the disoriented animal, black and indignant, trailing a soiled rope from its ankle. I could see the bird had once been white. Up on the roof, Liza clucked and brushed her hands together. She looked as if she might leap in one stout, easy motion through the air, but instead she disappeared from my sight huffing and sweating to where a ladder must have been propped on the other side of the house.
I’d had little sign of the man of the house, nor anyone but Liza pegging her old gray shift to the line or stooped over a kettle in the backyard brewing soap and Simon whistling among the hens, whittling (how I feared for him, but his hands knew the knife, it seemed, as they knew the worn knees of his breeches or the downy stubble on his chin) and trying, when his hands were empty, to tame them. Often he cocked his head to the side, as if listening to music only he could hear. I well understood this posture, this stillness. There was endless conversation in the spring air, but for Simon, I realized, sound must by all rights be like streaks of paint on his world’s canvas. Where was his mother? Where was the brother he had spoken of? He seemed so alone, yet content to be.
I couldn’t resist. I took an acorn husk and flung it. It landed at Simon’s feet and he started. With my hiss, a vague smile spread across his face. “It’s you,” he said.
“That was a goodly dance you did with that goose, Master Simon.”
“Now you have my given name. What’s yours, pixie? I won’t give you the advantage.”
“I told you, I’m Pearl.”
“I shan’t forget again.”
“You best not do.”
“And how long have you been hidden, Mistress Pearl?”
“I’ve been here three days or so. How long have you been without sight?”
“I’ve lost count—seven or eight year, I guess.” He toyed with a weed he’d plucked by his chair. “I still see shadows. Sometimes. Come, stand closer. Clear the fence.”
“No, I won’t. Your mother’s servant will skin me.”
“She’s harmless enough. Unless you’re a goose.”
We both laughed, and I moved out from behind the beech tree to the edge of the fence. I hung on it and studied him. “Why did a shadow pass your face just now when I spoke your mother’s name?”
“You didn’t speak it.” He was silent a moment before revealing, with weary candor, “She is Mistress Weary of this World.”
I said no more but tugged at the brush by the fence, weaving leaves into a length of vine I’d pried from the bramble. I fit them into a crown, my fingers moving fast, knowing the work well. But I felt Simon’s empty gaze and the shadow of the house like a specter in the corner of my eye.
“I’m weaving you a crown. Your dwelling is very fine. Is your father a great man?”
He considered a moment. “Maybe,” he said at length in a level, nearly cheerful voice. “He’s of the middling sort, a merchant. But his travels serve him well. And where is your father?”
Had he seen me, Simon would have kept mum, but he couldn’t know. He couldn’t see. “Mother says I have only a heavenly father,” I relented in a voice neither kind nor cheerful.
“My mistress will be gone before the Indian corn is ripe.” Simon settled back on his chair and cleared his throat like one ending a grim sermon.
“Well, then,” I rallied. “Now that’s done, I’ll tell you my story.”
“What story is that?”
“Of the sinner’s brand at Mother’s breast. She wears a red letter on her dress.” I lowered my voice for effect. “I would tell of her walk through the prison gates with a babe in arms.”
“What is all that to me?” he asked, but I could see that I had grown in stature in his estimation.
“Don’t you know they call me the devil’s spawn?”
He grimaced and leaned forward, speaking very low. “Then is my mortal soul in danger?”
“Oh, yes.”
“I don’t believe you.” Simon tilted his head to one side as if to listen for a change in me.
I looked left, right, and then climbed deftly between the shorn logs of the fence, my heavy dress trailing behind like the great tail of the peacock from the horn alphabet. I crept toward him and felt the drama of play fill my lungs. I had less play even than other Puritan brats in my early life and craved it exceedingly, even in that late hour of childhood. I wanted to fling my arms full round his thin neck and bury my face there. His icy eyes stared past me, his head still tilted like a fishing crane’s.
“Believe it,” I whispered and with great clumsy ceremony settled the crown on his tousled head. His nose twitched like a rabbit’s and his face looked pained, but I was off at a trot before he could speak. Every grateful part of me, every nervous inch of skin and blood-beat of my small heart, knew this strange boy for a promise. Life, at last, had made me a promise—how to account for it!—and I could not bask in him more that day for fear of being scorched by my own bliss.
As I whirled under the blurred canopy, I saw Master Simon in my mind’s eye. He would remove the crown cautiously, having never seen one. But he was not half afraid of me, like the others, and he would know this talisman of mine. He would touch every part of it, leaf and bark. He would hold it to his freckled nose, perhaps his tongue, as I would see him do with many objects in days to come. He would know every edge that my hands, or Other hands, had made.
ALL LIFE IS BARTER
Chance soon brought my mother and me to Simon’s father’s door. Or I should say Mistress Weary of this World brought us. As we walked along the forest path my restless gait more than once nearly knocked the basket from Mother’s arm. She moved as ever with a stiff grace, a certainty that had been my comfort over the years. I could always retreat into her colorless skirts or call her hand to my shock of hair when I needed such soothing, and I fought still and viciously to call that right my own.
The air was full of chatter. Cardinals sang, and pigeons thickened the trees. The dappled air rang with portent. I found an oriole’s feather on my walk and twirled it round and round my cheek, enjoying its silky scraping, then tucked it behind my ear. I hoped very much to have a glimpse of the dying woman, for Simon had assured me that a physician newly arrived from England, a Dr. Devlin—whom I had lately glimpsed from one hiding place or another on the Milton property, leaving with his physician’s bag, but whose name and aspect I had not hitherto encountered in my charitable travels with Mother—had already been and gone from her side with his herbs and potions. Now it was her loosening soul men would care for as best they could. Servants and neighbors, able volunteers like my mother, would tend the wasting frame and failed flesh.
Mother hesitated outside the door, intent as ever upon society and its hostilities, her milky hand raised to knock. She shooed me as always and bade me keep close to the house, but she didn’t close the door behind her; I saw not Simon or Liza or the father inside, but I heard a woman’s weak voice cry, “Enter,” and watched my mother, basket on arm, glide in like a gray mist and vanish.
Mother always left the door ajar, as if she might need its opening for a hasty retreat. The shadows