Saturnalia

by Paul Fleischman

  “Did you ask for me, sir?” the manservant inquired.

  Not deigning to reply, Mr. Hogwood thrust a wig box into his arms. He placed the wig inside, then added the card upon which he’d written “With the Special Compliments of Samuel Hogwood, Wigmaker, King Street, Boston.”

  “Carry it to Madam Phipp.” He then plucked the ivory box from his pocket, took out the gold-edged locket inside, opened it, frowned at the portrait of Cupid, then placed it back in its box. His father had presented the locket to his mother. Based on that record of success, and his servant’s advice to appeal to the widow’s feminine nature, he handed it to Malcolm. “Give her this also. And be quick about it!”

  Exiting through the rear of the shop, Malcolm took the liberty of exchanging his battered woolen hat for one of Mr. Hogwood’s sleek beavers. As instructed, he made his way through the streets as speedily as he could, though not in the direction of Madam Phipp’s. Entering a small shop near Say’s wharf, he traded the wigmaker’s gold-chained locket for two others of lesser value, hurried on to the widow’s house, and was disappointed when the door was opened not by her thin serving girl but rather by her thick footman, Giles.

  The man eyed Malcolm. “What’s your business?” he croaked.

  Looking over his head, Malcolm scanned the house, searching for the girl. “I’ve a wig to deliver,” he answered the footman absently. “From Mr. Hogwood.” He gave the wig box to the man, who proceeded to shut the door.

  “Hold! There’s more!” Malcolm fished through his pockets and extracted a slightly dented locket, missing its chain and bearing the mysterious initials “W.Y.” within. UA gift for Madam Phipp. From my master.” He handed the trinket to the footman and quickly placed the other locket in the wigmaker’s ivory box. “Mr. Hogwood wished me also to convey a message to the serving girl here. She with brown hair and blue eyes.”

  The man appeared doubtful. “In faith, did he now?” He smiled sourly at Malcolm. “You may tell Mr. Hogwood that the girl is busy upstairs at her work. As you ought to be also!”

  He slammed the door.

  Malcolm stepped back. Looking up at the second floor windows, he worked his way along the front of the house, crippling several seedling trees. He rounded a corner, craning his neck, and passed around a chimney. Then he glimpsed her.

  He tossed a pebble at the window and waved. He straightened Mr. Hogwood’s hat, composed his thoughts, and readied himself. First, he would discover where she was from, then reveal that he’d been born there as well. This striking connection between them established, he’d next present the locket, briefly recounting its long history in his family. Following this, he would set forth his ambitions once his service had ended, impressing upon her the earnestness of his—

  The window opened.

  “Good day!” he called up. He smiled, then cleared his throat. “With all submission, is it true, as I’ve heard, that you come from the county of Hampshire, the most beautiful in—”

  At that moment, a waterfall of filth from a chamber pot, quite large and quite full, descended upon the manservant, drenching his face and Mr. Hogwood’s hat, fouling his waistcoat, running down his back, and conveying, he believed, the message that the girl was not from Hampshire, that she was occupied with her chores, and that she’d prefer to take up the subject another time.

  Favoring a recess himself, Malcolm departed in search of a pump.

  “Penny a peep!” shouted out Tut. The sky that evening had been swept clean of clouds. A vast chandelier of stars sparkled overhead, while up from the waters the moon was emerging. “Gaze on the wonders of God’s firmament!”

  He patted his dog, who was lying on the snow, wound up tightly against the cold. He looked down Deer Lane, then up Middle Street, at the intersection of which thoroughfares he’d set up his telescope with high hopes. Expectantly, he scanned the lit windows of the several taverns and cookshops nearby, then trained his instrument on the moon, rising over the horizon like the huge eye of a cyclops, wide with curiosity.

  “Behold the moon’s every hill and hare!” he bellowed. “Penny a peep!”

  Five men exited from a tavern. The tallest of them veered toward Tut, gave him a coin, and put his eye to the telescope.

  “Do you make out the man?” Tut asked him.

  “The man?”

  “In the moon. There in the center of the glass.” His patron’s companions clustered about.

  “Truly,” the man mumbled. He switched eyes and squinted.

  “Banished above for gathering wood on the Sabbath,” added Tut. “So ’tis said.”

  “Faith, yes,” his customer declared. “I warrant I spy him out pretty clear.”

  One of the other men paid his fare. Not wishing to be thought a fool, he agreed that the moon did indeed hold a man, relating to the rest some details of his dress, an account confirmed and added to by each of the remaining three men.

  The five ambled off, Tut fingering their coins. It was early still, yet he’d already brought in nearly half a shilling. He surveyed his new location with approval. An excellent choice, he complimented himself, then made out the sound of feet.

  “Behold the man in the moon!” he called out. “Plain as a plow horse! Penny a peep!”

  The couple approaching ignored this enticement. One tall and broad-shouldered, the other quite small, they passed him, turned down Bartholomew Street, and stamped the snow from their shoes before the door of a narrow shop.

  “My wife has prepared you some food,” said Mr. Speke. The carver led Ninnomi inside, the air suddenly smelling of pine, as if the door opened onto a forest. They filed through a low room crowded with wood in every form, from post to peg, the floor wearing a winter coat of wood shavings. Beyond lay the living quarters, where Mr. Speke seated the girl at a table holding turnips, hashed mutton, brown bread, and cider. The wood-carver left to fetch another lamp and returned to find her devouring the meal. Scant wonder, he mused, that Mr. Rudd had so quickly agreed to give up the girl for the evening in exchange for Mr. Speke’s feeding her supper. He’d likely not cast her a crumb all day.

  The carver threw more wood on the fire, positioned the lamps on either side of Ninnomi, then brought to the table pen, ink, and paper.

  “Pay me no thought,” he almost whispered. He dipped his pen into the inkhorn and began to sketch her left profile, struggling to keep his hand from trembling. His quill scratched roughly on the paper, leaving behind the line of her brow, then her nose and lips, then her delicate chin. He noticed that his heart was pounding. Though he’d carved figureheads before, they’d always been posed for by ship owners’ wives or daughters, models who’d meant nothing to him. Mr. Epp, anxious to launch his new brig and having no female relations on hand, had left the choice of subject to Mr. Speke. After weeks of being pestered by the man, the carver had finally found one, an Indian girl of the same tribe and age as the one whose face he hadn’t glimpsed but whose scream still sounded in his memory. At last he would exorcise his tormentor! A task impossible without Ninnomi’s features to complete the figure.

  Mr. Speke moved to her other side. “How old would you be?”

  She swallowed a mouthful. “Eight years, sir. Less one month.”

  He began to draw her right profile, his mind suddenly fixed on his daughter. Dora had been only three when she’d died, had never grown tall like this girl at his table. He asked himself once again why the Lord had chosen to snip short her life. He was unable to keep from calculating that she would have turned four in exactly a fortnight. Or to drive from his thoughts another anniversary: six years before, to the very day, he’d been marching through the snows of Rhode Island with the rest of General Winslow’s men, nearing the Narragansets’ stronghold, nearing the very girl before him. . . .

  Marching through the Boston snow, passing by Mr. Speke’s front door, William clutched his cloak about him, then crossed the lane t
o avoid a passerby. It was early still and the streets weren’t yet empty. Not wishing to keep his hungry great-uncle and cousin waiting until late, he’d told Mr. Currie that he’d a book to return to Mr. Leghorn, his tutor in Latin, had filled his pockets with food, and set off.

  He turned onto Middle Street, passed Tut by, looked up at the moon but made out no sign of anyone looking back. A minute later he reached Mr. Rudd’s. He scanned the man’s windows and found them dark. Quietly, he crept around to the rear of the shed. He tapped at the door. Michamauk let him in.

  “I’ve brought food,” William said in Narra-ganset. He produced from his pockets two turnips, an apple, a heel of bread, and half a cake of maple sugar. “I’ll try to bring more tomorrow night.”

  Michamauk’s eyes and nostrils opened wide. He viewed the food by the light of the lamp, explained that Ninnomi was feasting as well, carried the bounty to his bed of straw, sat down, and began with the bread.

  “I would have brought more,” William spoke up. “But I mustn’t make my mistress suspicious.” Suddenly he was swept by a wave of guilt for stealing from her kitchen and brazenly lying to Mr. Currie. They’d have loaded his arms with food if he’d asked. But he hadn’t wished to reveal his night searches, or give any hint that a part of him remained loyal to his past and would never step into the cheerful confines of the Currie household.

  “Sit down and speak to me, Weetasket.”

  William impatiently shuffled his feet. “I would like to, Great-uncle. But I told my master I’d be away from the house but a short time.”

  Michamauk picked up one of the turnips. “Perhaps then I will speak to you.” He stood up slowly and gazed out the window. “Can you name that constellation?”

  William approached and followed the line of his finger. “Orion,” he proudly replied. “The mightiest hunter of all the Greeks. Who was felled in turn by a goddess’s arrow.”

  Michamauk appeared unimpressed. “So it is that the coatmen believe,” he said. “Give me its name in our own language.”

  Desperately, William searched his mind, knowing that the name wasn’t there. “I’ve forgotten, Great-uncle.”

  “I’ll tell it to you,” Michamauk replied. Meaningfully, he stared at William. “That and much else you ought to know. Stay awhile.”

  William stayed.

  At nine o’clock the curfew bell rang. Those who were out hastened toward home. Those who were home covered the coals in their hearths with ashes for the night. One by one, windows fell dark. Middle Street, its snow glowing in the moonlight, soon grew empty, a fact sadly noted by Tut. He counted his coins by his main attraction’s light, proudly reported the night’s profit to his dog, and had begun to unfasten the telescope from its wooden stand when he heard feet behind him.

  “Penny a peep!” he called out, reattaching the instrument. “View the man in the moon!”

  Mr. Baggot halted. “’Tis past curfew,” he barked.

  Tut paled. Would he again be summoned before a judge? “So it is, in faith! And I’m off like a bird!” He returned to hurriedly loosening the nut that bound the telescope to its stand.

  “Hold, sir.” The tithingman, heading home after an evening of inspecting taverns, found his eye snagged by the sole lit window ahead of him on Middle Street. “A penny you say?”

  “Yes, sir! But a penny!” At once, Tut’s fingers changed direction again, tightening the telescope down. “And the moon man’s up above, mark my word. Hauling his bundle of wood on his back.” Tut cleaned the eyepiece with his handkerchief. “As befits the sinner!” he added, hoping to show himself an upholder of the law. “Would that the lot of Sabbath-breakers were transported—”

  Mr. Baggot grabbed the telescope, and to its owner’s amazement aimed it not up at the moon but down the street. It was his sworn duty, the tithingman reminded himself, to watch over his town, to search out evil, that it might be plucked out. He caught sight of the eyeglass maker’s shop and was startled by its nearness in the glass. Then he fixed his gaze on the lamp-lit window, and beheld two heads, one old, one young.

  “God’s wounds!” he muttered.

  Tut eyed his patron, then squinted at the window, to no avail. “Saturn is out as well,” he piped up, feeling left out. “Bright as a pin.”

  Mr. Baggot made no reply to this, or to subsequent advertisements for the splendors of Mars, the Pole Star, and Sirius. Without warning, he drew his head back from the glass, paid his penny, and scurried down the street.

  Halting before he reached Mr. Rudd’s, he pressed himself back into the shadows. He saw a girl enter the shed. He waited. Long after Tut had passed him, he heard the door open, made out footsteps, then saw William emerge into the street.

  It was him! Without doubt! The tithingman blinked, hardly believing the sight was real. He’d snared him, in the midst of some evildoing! What need was there to set traps for the knave? “For he is cast into a net by his own feet,” he recited to himself from the Bible.

  Unbreathing, he watched the boy pass by. Wondering where he was headed next, he waited until he’d turned a corner. Then he dashed through the snow, unaware that he too was being watched by a resident of the shadows, a restless man, constantly humming, his vision roofed by his hat’s low brim, a man whose thoughts kept him from sleep. Thoughts focused upon none of the figures mysteriously coming and going that night, but upon a man he’d sworn he would revisit one day—the sleeping Mr. Rudd.

  SIX

  FOUR MORNINGS LATER Mr. Currie and his wife were awakened by the beating of a drum outside their chamber.

  “Rise up!” demanded a voice. “Up sharp!”

  The sky was just beginning to brighten. It was December twenty-second, the winter solstice—and the day of the Saturnalia.

  “Out of bed, do you hear! Sleep-guzzling sluggards!” A hand, then several, pounded on the door. One of them flung it open and the room rattled with the beating of the drum, the clanging of pot lids, and the shrilling of whistles as William, the serving girl Gwenne, and five of the Curries’ children paraded inside, waking the sixth, the infant Rose, who slept in a cradle beside her parents and whose crying joined the cacophony.

  “’Tis nigh upon noon!” shouted out Sarah. She motioned to the others to cease their noise-making.

  “The morning star’s already set!” declared William.

  “Hours ago!” lisped Timothy.

  “There’s a world of chores waiting!” cried Gwenne. “And behold the lag-lasts! Lolling in bed!”

  At this, the entire company rushed upon the printer and his wife, threw off their blankets and cattail-fluff quilt, and drove them from the fort of their four-poster.

  “There’s water needs fetching!”

  “And the fires to kindle!”

  “And breakfast to get for your hungry masters!”

  The two masters-turned-servants, feigning worry for their lives, hurriedly jumped into their clothes and were hounded downstairs by the clamoring throng. Mrs. Currie lugged water from the pump in leather buckets. Her husband hauled wood inside from the shed, raked the ashes off the night’s embers, and blew on the cluster of surviving coals to start the new day’s fires. The journeyman Amos, who lodged nearby, arrived and added his orders to the others’. Presently, Mr. Currie served breakfast, and was made to beg his betters’ pardon for its lateness, meagerness, and poor quality. After they’d eaten he disappeared, returning, as he did each year, bearing a custard pie, baked the night before and containing somewhere inside it a pea-sized wooden crown. He cut it into equal-sized pieces.

  “Rachel’s is wider, ’tis plain!”

  “So is Ruth’s!”

  “I’ve never once reigned! Mine ought to be larger!”

  The printer placed slices before everyone but himself and his wife and watched the group eat. For the first time that day they were silent, preoccupied with carefully chewing each bite.r />
  “’Tis in mine!” shrieked a voice.

  All heads turned toward Gwenne, who extracted from her mouth the miniature crown and held it up for all to see.

  “Queen Gwenne!” proclaimed Mr. Currie. He kneeled before her. “Monarch of mischief!”

  “Queen Gwenne!” the others repeated in unison.

  Beaming, the serving girl decreed that her subjects had leave to finish their pie. When they had, a fine ribbon of royal purple was passed through the center of the crown, and the emblem of her rule, much indented with the toothmarks of previous sovereigns, was solemnly lowered over her head.

  “May Saturn’s reign return this day,” Mr. Currie earnestly intoned. “A golden age, without war, without want. A time with neither masters nor slaves, when all sowed and reaped side by side. A time of pleasure and plenty!”

  “Plenty of rum!” burst out Amos, and the celebration was launched. Those passersby who found that the shop was closed, presumably in mourning, were surprised by the quantity, and character, of the noise coming from within. Following the ancient Romans, Mr. Currie set out a supply of liquors: rum, beer, cherry brandy, syllabub, and Canary wine. Amos tuned his fiddle and played. Forbidden games of cards and dice, indulged in only on this day, produced a year’s store of whoops and groans. Gifts were exchanged. Songs were sung. Pranks planned months before were sprung. Presiding over all, and making the most of her reign, which would expire at midnight, Gwenne set her subjects hopping to commands that mocked all exercise of power.

  “William! Imitate the walking of a goose!” “Ruth! Sing ‘Heart’s Ease’ while balanced on your head!”

  “Sarah! Stand on a chair and dispraise yourself for all to hear!”