A young girl lost her bonnet in the wind and everyone laughed as it rolled comically across the field. A boy tried to fetch it, yet each time he bent down, the wind snatched it away and off he would run while everyone cheered. I knew the girl; she was no older than I and not handsome, but filled out now and ready for young men. I watched the boy finally capture the bonnet and tie it beneath the girl’s chin while others laughed at his red-faced embarrassment, and I wished more than words can say that I was that girl.
Henry Easton came by on his horse and talked to the foreman; from time to time they both looked up at the thickening clouds, pointing this way and that as though gauging the wind’s intent. Then he galloped off. I think now of that day and what a fine figure Henry Easton cut on his horse, and his young wife back at this very house and carrying their first child, for Mr. Walter was born the following spring.
That August day, as I continued homeward, I smelled the smoke before ever I saw it, and when I reached the village it was billowing above Market Lane. My first thought was of the dunghill by the blacksmith’s, where sparks from his anvil often set manure ablaze, bringing his wife out with her pail of water. But that day there was far too much smoke for a midden fire, and when I turned in to our street, I saw the crowd holding their hands before their faces against the sparks flying in the hot wind and watching our house burn. Smoke gushed from under the roof as the rafters splintered and burned, taking with them my birthday shilling and my father’s playbooks. It was too late to do anything about our place, but men and boys were already climbing ladders on nearby houses with pails of water to dampen roofs.
I thought of Margaret Brown in all those flames, but then I saw her at the edge of the crowd sobbing into the apron of the blacksmith’s wife, and I was glad at least that I would not have her death on my conscience. The church bell was ringing and I ran towards Margaret, but when she saw me she only turned her head away and clung to the blacksmith’s wife. By the grass beneath a casement window, I saw a half-eaten bun.
There came a great rumble of thunder and a woman who lived nearby fell to her knees to pray for her house. And her prayer was answered, as on the instant the rain came down hard, and most bowed their heads to give thanks. Slipping away as fast as I could, I ran to Cattle Lane and hid in an open-ended shed where sheep and cattle were quartered overnight before market day. The shed stank of old hay and cowpats and the roof leaked. But I piled straw in a corner and sat there wondering about all that had happened that day. Within a few minutes, the downpour ended and left a clammy grey stillness in the air. Now and then I saw people passing by in the laneway.
Someone must have seen me near the shed because in time Uncle Jack found me. I could see him in the light of the doorway and he called to me and I told him I was there, and he came and sat down. It was late in the afternoon and beyond the doorway the sky was darkening with more rain. In the shed I could not read my uncle’s features; he was just a figure beside me.
Finally he said, “Everyone is in church now for a service of thanksgiving. The rain saved the village, but the farmers’ fields are drenched and with the corn not fully gathered. ‘The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.’” He laughed mirthlessly as if those familiar lines from Scripture were no more than a bad jest.
But I could be wrong; he may not have thought that at all. Perhaps that was only my thinking.
We said nothing for the longest time and I guessed he was trying to get his mind around the fact that when he left for work that morning, he had had a house and the furnishings of a lifetime. Now everything was gone, and this vast and sudden oddness in his life was difficult to grasp.
As he stared into the darkness at the other end of the shed he asked me how the fire had started and, without waiting for an answer, said, “It was the girl, wasn’t it? I have heard she was toasting bread. You should not have allowed that, Aerlene. The girl is slow.”
I began to weep and said I was sorry for using those horrible words against him in the churchyard on Sunday. But he only asked me again why I had not watched Margaret Brown more closely.
“There must have been a casement open to that wind,” he said. “It carried a spark from the hearth onto something.”
I thought of Marion’s dress on the settle, where Margaret Brown had put it to mend the collar. That was likely where the spark had landed and Margaret may not at first have noticed; she may have taken her bread to eat by the open casement, where she could enjoy the wind’s commotion on her face. It was something I might have done myself. But as she ate, the fire was already leaping across the settle to the wall hangings. When she felt the heat behind her, she turned and, seeing the flames, threw the bread out the window and looked about for something to cover the fire. But what and how could that be done? It was too late and the heat was fierce and she was terrified, her fears multiplying by the moment, racing ahead to consequences.
Sitting on the straw in that shed, I imagined that it must have been something like that. And so she fled from the house and into the arms of the blacksmith’s wife.
“I wasn’t there, Uncle,” I said. “I went out to the Easton fields to watch the harvesters.”
He turned his face to me. “Why would you do that? Were you not told to stay with the girl?”
“I am sorry, Uncle.”
He looked away again. “That was poor judgment, Aerlene. The girl is slow.”
“I never thought her slow, Uncle,” I said, “but only shy and uncertain.”
For the first time his voice sharpened. “The girl is slow and you shouldn’t have left her alone in the house. A spark in the wind and that’s how it went. Everything went.”
I couldn’t bear to tell him the truth, that I had encouraged Margaret Brown to toast her bread before I left that morning, and so I asked about Aunt Sarah. He told me she had taken to bed at a neighbour’s and the doctor had been sent for; she would stay the night, and Eliza and Marion with her. Uncle Jack said he was sleeping that night on the floor in the back of his shop and I would have to make do there as well. He would lay down some cloth for us near the workbenches. For the rest of the week he had arranged lodgings for us at the White Hart, the best hostelry in Woodstock; he wanted us all in comfort, especially his wife, whose mind, he said, was greatly unsettled. At the end of the week, Marion and her mother would leave for London, and on Saturday afternoon I would go to John Trethwick’s house on Hensington Road. He would take me there himself.
He was silent for a few moments before he said, “The girl cannot be found. At first the blacksmith’s wife took her in and said she was sitting in a corner of the kitchen with a porringer of soup, and when next she looked, the girl was gone. There were many in the house, she said, all coming and going, all eager to hear the story since she’d been the first to smell the fire. So with everyone coming and going, she didn’t notice the girl leaving in all that rain, and now no one can find her. I expect she ran off. God alone knows where.”
That night a storm swept over us, and I was glad to lie beside my uncle on the floor of his workshop under old cloth. I lay thinking of Margaret Brown out in that weather, looking for shelter, alone and fearful.
Whenever I have returned to my father’s Lear, I have been especially moved by the passage in which the old King, thrust out into the storm by his two evil daughters, looks about in his wretchedness and feels at last a sympathy for those in want:
Poor naked wretches, wheresoe’er you are,
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm!
How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,
Your loop’d and window’d raggedness, defend you
From seasons such as these?
And always I think of Margaret Brown, cowering in woods or wayside on the night she ran away.
At the White Hart in Woodstock, my two aunts shared one room and Marion and I another; my uncle had his own, for he wanted Aunt Sarah attended to by her sister, and he himself was often awake through the
late hours working on plans for a new house. By nature my uncle was a sanguine man, and his disposition soon overcame the bitterness of his loss. By midweek, he was already conferring with masons and carpenters and bricklayers about his plans; and because he was so highly esteemed in the community, all were eager to help. Aunt Sarah, however, fell into a melancholy and stayed in her room all week.
Marion and I unwittingly declared a truce, deciding we could ignore the petty differences that so often soured our time together over the summer. Her intense self-enchantment with her constant primping at the looking-glass, her daily admiration of her dancer’s legs, my mordant and grumbling temperament, her muttering in sleep, my prodigious wind—all could be endured for a few days, because each day drew me nearer to the farmhouse on Hensington Road.
As though reading my apprehensive mind, Marion often expressed sympathy, though I soon came to regard her concern as nothing more than spite; she would warn me of things I had already considered and hearing them again only served to deject me. She would tell me, for instance, to be wary of the sister because the mad can be crafty and unpredictable; they can stick a fork in your arm on the merest whim and when you least expect it. How she knew this, I can’t say; she had little imagination. Perhaps she had overheard her mother talking about mad folk. As for John Trethwick himself, she didn’t like the look of him. Was the door to my bedroom bolted? Masters take liberties with their servants, that’s common knowledge. And in a farmhouse far from others? Who would know and who could help? She said that Margaret Brown had told her stories of girls who suffered under men like John Trethwick. Maidenheads taken with force and many tears. It would do well for me to be watchful in the night; he might climb through a window. I would try to change the subject by asking if she ever wondered what had become of Margaret Brown, but Marion would only say that the girl had been responsible for the fire and was scarcely deserving of thought or sympathy.
When Marion wasn’t forecasting the imminent loss of my maidenhead to John Trethwick, her other bedtime narrative contrasted our different fates; by this measuring, she was looking forward to city life with its dancing lessons and parties, its Sunday service at a proper church—her father preferred the French service at St. Anthony’s on Threadneedle Street, but her mother now worshipped at St. Mary-le-Bow, where the finery of the ladies could not be surpassed and the admiring looks of merchants’ sons were most pleasing to Marion. On Thursday night of that week at the White Hart, she was going on yet again about the various pleasures awaiting her in London when my uncle knocked on the door and told me to get dressed and come to his room at once. I left Marion wide-eyed with curiosity.
Uncle Jack’s room was only one floor above the tavern and I could hear faintly the voices and laughter from the patrons. I found my uncle in a curious state, nervously excited, pacing back and forth. It was unlike him, but there he was, walking to and fro, his hands behind his back, pausing now and then to peer out the window at the dark street like a man in search of answers to life’s most difficult questions.
Sitting on the bed, I waited for him to speak his mind, and finally he said, “I have news, Aerlene, and it affects your situation.”
“Yes, Uncle?”
“I heard not an hour past in the taproom below that John Trethwick is dead.”
I said nothing but felt such a welling of relief that it cannot be described; to rejoice in another’s death is not laudable in anyone, but there I was—happy enough to hear it.
“How did it happen, Uncle?” I said, only half-listening. John Trethwick was dead. What did I care how it happened? I would not have to live in his house; I could scarcely be expected to look after his lunatic sister alone. Had I been able, I would have danced a jig—yes, a proper jig for this news. But of course I just sat there, quite likely frowning lest I be thought callous.
“The man died in his sleep of an apoplexy,” my uncle said. “They say his features were all grimaced as though the devil himself had laid hands upon him. But here is a terrible thing too. It all happened earlier in the week, possibly on the night of the storm. The sister had been going into his room each morning to wake him, and hadn’t the wit to see he was gone until today. When he was turning in colour and smell, she ran from the house. It’s a dreadful story, is it not?”
“It is, Uncle,” I said. “A dreadful story.”
“Merciful Heaven, what an end,” he said, shaking his head. “Neighbours saw that poor distracted creature wandering and wailing along Hensington Road and took her back to the house, where they found Trethwick in his bed, his face all twisted and dark. I never liked the man, but I couldn’t wish such an end on anyone. Three days dead and not attended. They say the storm on Monday may have put him off his head. He was seen in a terrible temper that afternoon, for most of his corn was spoiled and he was cursing the heavens. It may have provoked the apoplexy. Whatever happened we’ll never know, but it touches on your situation, Aerlene. The sister will have to be put away. You can’t live in that house with her. I won’t hear of it and I don’t expect your aunt to press the matter, though she knows nothing of this yet and I’ll not tell her until her mind settles. I am trying to brighten her with my plans for the new house, but it will take some time.
“I have arranged for rooms at Oswald Thompson’s until the new house is at least walled in and roofed. There is no room for you at Thompson’s, nor would your aunt be comfortable in the same house. I am sorry to say it, but it’s the truth. In the morning I intend to talk to her sister about taking you to London until the new house is ready. You have worked for me and could be useful to Boyer in his shop. Your mother always spoke well of the Frenchman and said he was decent enough and always kind, even in her circumstances. But I have to persuade Eliza. I can’t see that she’s overly fond of you, and her daughter and you have had your differences too. But I will talk to her in the morning about this, for they are leaving the next day, so time is short. If Eliza agrees to this, I shall have to rent a horse for you and get you some new clothes. It must all be arranged by tomorrow. Now, remember you must be more willing to take instruction and curb this obstinacy of yours. Eliza will not brook insolence, nor should you think of offering it. Meanwhile, do not say a word of this to Marion until I have talked to her mother.”
Insolence? I would call upon the bear to stop my mouth before ever I uttered a single word that might offend; I would practise obedience, with an air of humility and gratitude befitting a convent girl in Papist Spain. Forbearance would be my watchword. That much I vowed to myself before leaving my uncle’s room that night.
After a long talk with my aunt, Uncle Jack told me the next morning that they had come to an agreement; to this day I believe that money changed hands, though I never asked and was never told. Marion took my news with good humour, telling me I would have much to learn about life in the city, a remark that I took to mean she would be only too eager to reprove me for my ignorance. But what did I care? I was free of John Trethwick and his sister and was now going to London, where my father lived and worked. Perhaps one day I would see a play of his enacted? When Mam was in London, he was only three and twenty. That would put him now in his middle years, an established and successful man. How could I meet him? It was an enticing question I would ask myself many times over the next few weeks.
On Friday of that first week in September 1602, Uncle Jack put us up at an inn on Cornmarket Street, and we left Oxford the next day at first light in the company of six carriers whose saddlebags were packed with goods for trade and each man leading another horse packed likewise. Marion and her mother and I rode in the middle of this procession, and so we were fifteen horses in all. The night before, I had lain awake an hour or two imagining myself upon a horse, remembering Marion and how splendid she had looked the day she arrived in Worsley. I soon found out, however, that riding a horse was not so grand as I’d imagined, for I grew tired of the narrow saddle, and the motion itself was upsetting to my stomach. The horse was docile enough, but I found the e
ntire experience a misery and was glad when we reached Wycombe by late afternoon. There we stayed at an inn and I was sick to my stomach in the night.
Next morning it was raining and the horse’s motion as we splashed along the muddy road again brought on the queasiness, which improved only when I closed my eyes. Thus I travelled that second day like one half-sleeping with an ague, mildly feverish, my innards unpleasantly astir, wishing only for the moment when I might stand still on my own two legs. No splendour then for me astride a horse. The rain had stopped, but at one point I heard shouting ahead between the carriers and two draymen whose cart had lost a wheel and was blocking the road. I only half-listened, but was still amazed at the range and originality of the curses they exchanged as our horses stepped carefully around the broken wagon. I have yet another memory of that day on the road. As we approached London, I heard from a distance the murmuring of a crowd and then shouting and hurrahs and the carrier behind me saying, “Another gone to hell and good riddance.” It was a hanging and probably at Tyburn, but still I kept my eyes closed until I heard the church bells, hammer blows to the brain of the sick, and then we were inside Newgate. When we stopped at the market, I fell from that damnable horse in a swoon, hearing above the sound of the bells a woman crying, “Is it the pestilence? Has she the pestilence?”
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