My interview with Miss Nash was successful and the week following I was in her employ as maidservant and companion. She was old and frail, the only daughter of an Oxford clergyman, quiet and moderately tempered. She ate the same meal twice a day, at seven o’clock in the morning and at seven o’clock in the evening, a bowl of wheaten porridge boiled in goat’s milk to which I added a cup of Malmsey. Each Saturday evening I bathed her, for she wished to be clean-smelling at Sunday service.
Miss Nash was a tiny creature with soft, wrinkled skin, and as winter came on with its dampness and cold, she asked me to share her bed for warmth. We lay together, youth and age, listening to the wind, feeling the house cool as we waited for sleep; sometimes she talked of her life in Oxford fifty years before, during the reign of Queen Mary, the Papist. Her father had witnessed the burning of the Protestant martyrs Ridley and Latimer, and Miss Nash recalled how shaken he was upon returning home that day to tell her about it. I had read about their deaths in Foxe’s book as a child, and found it passing strange to be listening to someone whose father had been there to witness it.
Each Saturday at noon Miss Nash gave me two shillings for my week’s work and out of that I had to buy my food. On Sunday afternoons, I was free to visit my aunt and uncle, who always provided me with an extra loaf, a plate of cold meat, a pudding, or a few apples to supplement my meals. It was, I suppose, a tolerable life, though I can’t say that I thought much about whether it was or not; it was just life as I imagined I was supposed to live it. It ended one February morning when I heard a thump and, coming from the pantry saw Miss Nash on the floor where she had toppled from her stool chair. There was still breath rattling in her, and I ran at once to my uncle’s shop, and he returned with me, but the old woman was dead.
For several weeks, I stayed in the new house in Worsley and then one evening in March, Uncle Jack came home to say he had been talking with Mrs. Easton about me. She was expecting her first-born by lambing time, and so was in need of a nursemaid. Already she was conducting interviews with local girls. My uncle said he had spoken to her about my service with Miss Nash, but more importantly about my reading, which greatly interested Mrs. Easton, since reading was uncommon among servants.
I came to Easton House for my interview on Lady Day, 25 March 1603. The day before, the old Queen had died and all churches throughout the land, it was said, were tolling knells. As my uncle and I walked down the avenue of elm trees that spring morning, we could hear the solemn note of St. Cuthbert’s bell. It was raining, and I worried about my hair being tousled, but if it was, Mrs. Easton took little notice, putting me at ease at once by asking gently about my experience with Miss Nash and my duties in her house. I told her what I had done, confessing to no skill whatsoever in needlework, which made her laugh in praise of my forthrightness. She asked if I had any experience in the care of children and would I enjoy looking after them. She told me she wanted her children to be surrounded by books at an early age. She would have much to do running the household and needed a reliable guide to help with their education. Did I understand that? I said I did and told her I had yet little experience with children, but I would learn their humours and inclinations and prove a good nursemaid to them. I loved reading stories aloud, and when the children got older I would teach them their letters and tell them stories to nourish their imaginations. I liked Mrs. Easton so much and wanted so badly to work for her that when she chose a passage from the Bible for me to read, I began but haltingly; yet as I read, the words themselves appeared to calm me and soon I was reading with such a confident air that Mrs. Easton laughed and raised a palm.
“That will do nicely, Aerlene. Thank you,” she said.
I waited then outside the hall while she conferred with my uncle, and when he opened the door, I saw from his smile that my life at Easton House was about to begin.
CHAPTER 25
THIS MORNING WHEN I finished and Charlotte had written the last words, she came to my chair and embraced me. As she knelt, I breathed in her fresh, clean smell, but I can no longer mark her features; like everything else now, they float before me in this watery grey light. But I could detect a sadness in her. I know she has been worrying about me this week past, for I have been dropsical and feverish, my legs now badly swollen. Emily helps me up the stairs and undresses me as she would a child. Charlotte holds my hand at bedtime.
Last evening I fell asleep early and have now awakened from a dream of Nicky. We were in the light carriage, returning from the auction at Harrington Hall. My copy of the Folio was covered in cloth and safely in my lap. A summer evening and Nicholas was only eighteen. As his switch deftly touched the little mare, she quickened her pace and we moved briskly along the road. I was telling Nicky a story and he was laughing at its foolery and we
ENVOIE
Miss Ward passed beyond all earthly cares during the night of 30 September, and after funeral observances at St. Cuthbert’s she was buried in the churchyard within the Easton family plot. Miss Ward was loved more than ever she imagined by Charlotte, her brother Walter and those who served with her in the household. Charlotte has written to her sisters in America, and I doubt not but that our loss will likewise be duly mourned across the sea by Catherine and Mary.
I once asked Miss Ward which of her father’s plays was her favourite, and without hesitation she told me it was Hamlet. It is perhaps fitting therefore to end her story with Horatio’s farewell to the Prince:
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.
The Reverend Simon Thwaites
The Rectory of St. Cuthbert’s
Worsley under Woodstock
Oxon
5 October 1658
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Among the many estimable biographies of Shakespeare available, I found Stephen Greenblatt’s Will in the World [USA, 1004] and Michael Wood’s Shakespeare [USA, 1003] not only refreshingly concise, but also engaging and informative. To help navigate the streets of old London, I referred to John Stow’s magisterial A Survey of London Written in the Year 1598 [UK, 1005]. For a guide to how life might have been lived on those streets, Lisa Picard’s Elizabeth’s London [UK, 1004] was both helpful and entertaining. The Diary of Ralph Josselin, 1616-1683, edited by Alan Macfarlane [UK, 1976], provided interesting glimpses into rural life in seventeenth-century England.
COPYRIGHT
Mr. Shakespeare’s Bastard
Copyright © 2010 by R.B.W. Books Inc.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © AUGUST 2010 ISBN: 978-1-443-40432-7
A Phyllis Bruce Book, published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
FIRST EDITION
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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Wright, Richard B., 1937–
Mr. Shakespeare’s bastard / Richard B. Wright.
“A Phyllis Bruce book.”
ISBN: 978-1-55468-835-7
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PS8595.R6M78 2010 C813′.54 C2010-903075-3
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