Arden's Act

by Elizabeth Thomas

  “I also gave him the fear that killed him.”

  “His faith was not strong enough. You have no control over another’s faith.” The pair had stopped to lean upon a neighboring farmer’s fence, and Arden gazed absently at the sheep. Her belly swelled before her. Her hours were now frequently interrupted by the soft internal pummeling of the unborn child’s activity.

  “Your faith,” said Father Fernaut, “is another matter. If you truly feel you must do penance for your role in all of this, I’ll be happy to baptize you into the true faith.”

  “Oh, Father, you just say that to distract me and make me laugh,” said Arden. But her chuckle sounded slightly hollow in her own ears.

  “Mostly, you are correct,” the priest confessed, smiling at her. Then his demeanor became serious once more. “I wish you would let me tell the Davenants, and his other friends in London.”

  “I will write, and tell all after the child is born,” Arden sighed. “I promise.”

  “As you wish, my dear, but it’s getting difficult. When they ask about you, I tell them you are healthy. I tell them you are growing larger, as you should. When they ask of Brian, I must hold tight to my belief he enjoys the bliss of heaven to tell them he is happy. When they ask how he is doing with his play,” Fernaut finished, “I tell them he has taken a rest from it.”

  The play―another weight upon Arden’s heart. She hadn’t even been able to bring herself to read what Brian had already accomplished, let alone add anything to it. She pushed it back from her mind again and returned her attention to Father Fernaut.

  “You really believe Brian’s in Heaven now, don’t you?” A child of the Church of England, Arden had not heard much about Purgatory. She knew, however, the Papists believed most souls had to be purified further before being admitted to Paradise. This made a certain sense to Arden. She’d met many people who didn’t seem ready to take up residence in Heaven if they were suddenly to die. Yet she’d never met anyone she thought worthy of Hell, not even Treadwell. She would never say so to the King, but she did not even feel certain the shade of Oliver Cromwell himself currently writhed in eternal flame.

  “I fear to presume the will of God,” Fernaut began, “but Brian was a good young man who was kind to others, and trusted in the Lord.”

  “You just said his faith was not strong enough.”

  “He trusted the Lord with himself. He did not trust the Lord with you. The distress this caused him made its own punishment, I think,” said Fernaut gently. “I cannot be sure, but I would think the refinements of Purgatory unnecessary in that case.”

  “Father?”

  “Yes, my child?”

  “Do souls in Heaven know everything?”

  “I don’t know. I think they know more than they did upon earth.”

  “Do you think Brian knows I’ve never forgotten the father of this child?” asked Arden, the words scraping against the hard pain in her throat.

  “Perhaps,” replied the priest. “But he also knows you will never forget him. He is beyond pain, Arden, though he looks down on you with love. But no jealousy, dear. You must remember, Our Lord told us that souls in Heaven neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like unto the angels.”

  Arden absorbed Fernaut’s words, but just as the comfort he so obviously wished to give began to spread through her, he spoke again: “Speaking of your friends in London, I have a letter for you. It’s from one of the actresses, not of my flock.”

  He passed Arden a folded page, sealed with wax. She didn’t hesitate before the priest, but broke the blurry waxen imprint, smiling in anticipation of news. Inside she saw an awkward scrawl she did not immediately recognize, so she glanced at the bottom of the page and made out the name Kitty Brinks. She returned to the beginning:

  “Dere Ardin,

  I’m riting to ask how yoo doo, and offer my hops

  Yoo ar wel. Brain, too, of corse.”

  Arden sighed, and continued reading.

  “Allso, I hav news I thot wood intrest yoo. I no yoo

  ar a mary’d wumman, but I dout yoov forgot Lord Robert. Lord, I don’t no how yoo cud.”

  Leave it to Kitty to know the crux of things from miles away, even if she couldn’t spell it.

  “He has returnd safe to Lunnon.”

  Arden sighed again, this time in relief. She could not have suffered the death of another loved one. Loved one? Ah, but that is the way of it, Arden admitted to herself.

  “I had the gud forshen to mete up wif him soon after he

  came bak to town. He just herd of yur marige, and he

  sot comfert. My sol, Ardin, wot a man! He showd me

  the partments he let for yoo, and I’l bee a 6-wingd

  anjel if he din’t take me rite ther on the dinin room

  tabel!”

  “Oh!” cried Arden. She closed her eyes, but the image accompanying Kitty’s words still seared her lids.

  “What is it, my child?” asked Father Fernaut. “Bad news?”

  “Not really,” said Arden, forcing herself into composure. “I’ve just received further evidence of my idiocy in dishonoring Brian’s memory.” When I see Robert Courtenay next, she vowed to herself, I shall be armed with the largest cast-iron skillet I can find, and I shall bash his handsome head in! Yet there was more to Kitty’s letter, and she had to read it.

  “I nevr screemed so much in my life.”

  Perfect. Now she had sounds to go with the image.

  “Yet I wood not bee onest wif yoo if I did not tel

  yoo that he wus grately upset by yur loss.”

  So upset he went and plunged himself into the first...

  “Wen I told him, afterwurd, about yur tretement

  at the hans of Petr Shyer―wel, I’v nevr sene a

  man leve so fast, after dooin the dede. My pried

  is hert! But I must tel yoo―he clames he nevr

  told Shyer to giv yoo that mony and thos awfle

  instruckshins. I beleve him. I just thot yoo shoud no.

  “Hury bak, Ardin, dere, and bring Brain and the

  new babby wif yoo. I cant say yet Lunnon is dul

  wiffout yoo, but I’m shure it’l get that way befor

  yur child arives.

  Evr yur frend,

  Kitty Brinks.”

  If you were my bloody friend, you wouldn’t have en-joyed Lord Robert in my bloody apartments, on my cursed table! But they were no longer her living quarters. No longer her table. And Kitty had fully believed Arden to be happily married to Brian when she’d done “the dede.” Then why did Kitty want her to know that Courtenay hadn’t necessarily wanted her to get rid of any offspring from the sole night they’d shared? What could this knowledge have done but cause trouble between her and Brian? And what possible difference could it make now?

  Arden tore the letter into little bits, daring the priest with her eyes to question the waste of valuable paper. Fernaut managed to withhold comment as she fed the fragments to the sheep; then he escorted her back to the Malley farmhouse.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Arden’s labor pains began on the first day of December, after yet another morning walk with Father Fernaut. The priest summoned the young Quaker midwife, then offered Arden one last chance to convert before facing the mortal peril of childbirth. When Arden declined, Fernaut made the sign of the cross over her anyway. He settled in on the ground floor to wait with Danny, Bonnie, and Esther. Margaret helped Arden upstairs.

  “No, Arden, thou dost not wish to lie down yet,” she said, when her patient drew back the covers on the bed she’d shared with Brian. “There is more walking to be done.” Margaret took her elbow and led her back and forth across the bedroom floor. Over the frayed rag rug. Three paces on the bare wood. Turn at the blank whitewashed wall. If Arden dared look to her left after the turn, she’d see the folio of Brian’s play on the small table, lightly coated with dust.

  “Oh, Brian, you’d be so sad,” sighed Arden.

  “Why
would he be sad at the baby coming?” asked Margaret.

  “No, not that. The play. He asked me to finish it.”

  “Thou havest all the time in the world,” the girl soothed.

  “You know better than that,” said Arden. “I could die tonight.”

  “Arden, do not speak of such things. I might think thou hast no trust in me.”

  “I trust you, Margaret. Ooooh! Arrgh! Brian, I miss you.” Arden’s cry ended in a whisper.

  “But thou will soon have his child, to comfort you.”

  Arden said nothing to that, and even tried to bury her response to the next contraction. As her grunt escaped anyway, Bonnie burst through the door with fresh-smelling linens, and began stripping the bed to remake it.

  “Those are the best sheets!” Arden protested. “I’ll get blood all over them.”

  “Danny says nothing but the best for his brother’s child to be born onto,” said Bonnie. Her voice remained even and nonjudgmental.

  “But, Bonnie!”

  “Never mind, now, Arden!” Brian’s cousin had finished putting the Malley’s finest sheets on the bed.

  “Will thou stay, Bonnie, and help?” asked Margaret, oblivious to what had just passed between the two women. “I can call my mother if thou art too afraid, but I need no expert, just another sure pair of hands.”

  “I’ll stay, Margaret. But let me first tell the others, so they’ll not imagine a crisis.”

  “Thank you, Bonnie.” When she got the words out, Arden felt a great warm gush soak her skirts, legs, and feet.

  “Bring some towels back, if thou will,” called Margaret, as Bonnie vanished from the room. “Now thy waters have broken,” she said to Arden. “Please lie down and let me see how matters progress.”

  Margaret stripped away Arden’s sodden underthings in so brisk a manner she barely felt the Quaker’s touch. “Spread thy legs, let me get a look. Oh, yes, the child will not be too long now. Thou hast begun to open.”

  Open? thought Arden. Split apart describes it better. She grunted through a long, hard contraction. Bonnie had reappeared by the time Arden could manage to suck in air. “I think we should walk some more,” said Margaret, helping her patient back up again. Arden held a large towel around herself, in place of her ruined skirts. The pacing resumed.

  As her pains grew increasingly sharp, Arden cried out more frequently for her husband at the moments they struck. “Brian, why did you die and leave me? Brian, why aren’t you here to help me?” She sobbed when she had enough breath.

  Margaret checked Arden a few more times, having her get up and walk again afterwards each time but the last.

  “Robert, goddamn you, you bastard, you did this to me and now you’re not even here!” Arden shrieked. Though Margaret now allowed her to remain upon the bed, she was anything but restful. The pain had reached such a crescendo inside her that she prayed to faint, but could not.

  “It was Brian’s middle name. She used it as an endearment,” she heard Bonnie explain to Margaret from some calm place far away from the vortex of pain in which she writhed.

  “I see the crown of thy baby’s head,” Margaret said tranquilly.

  “Taking—Kitty—Brinks! Right there—on the—dining room—table!” Arden gasped angrily. She felt Bonnie squeeze her hand roughly, felt her cousin-in-law’s breath against her ear, whispering to take care for Margaret’s sensibilities.

  The amazingly unperturbed young Quaker patted Arden's other hand. Was it her religion, or the fact that she didn’t have a medium-sized boulder trying to push through her body that kept her so calm? “Surely Mr. Malley could never have done such a thing,” Margaret murmured soothingly. “He loved thee.” Arden heard her whisper to Bonnie: “The pain makes her delirious.”

  “No, Brian could never have done such a thing,” Arden agreed weakly, in the brief lull between contractions.

  “Thou must start pushing now,” Margaret announced, when the next wave of pain came. She moved Arden’s legs into position, bending them at the knees but letting her feet rest upon the mattress at the edge. Standing ready at the bed’s end, the midwife motioned for Bonnie to support Arden’s shoulders. Brian’s cousin also gave Arden her hand.

  “Arrrgh!” yelled Bonnie. “That’s my flesh and bone you’re mashing!”

  Arden grunted and strained for several moments, then loosened her grip and apologized. A few more repetitions of this, and the midwife proclaimed the infant’s head had emerged. “One more large push, Arden,” urged Margaret, “and I’ll have thy babe’s shoulder.” Margaret’s voice was the only pure thing in a world of chaos, and Arden blindly tried to obey.

  “Thou will have to do better than that, Arden.” The midwife kept her tone deliberately gentle, mildly encouraging, but to Arden the young Quaker seemed to set an impossible task. “I—can’t!” she protested.

  “Come on, dear. Just a little bit more. The worst is over, I promise thee.”

  Arden tried to think of God, Brian, and the child still mostly confined by her body. She tried to summon the will and the strength from any source that might give it. The urge to push came strong in itself, and at last she managed to cooperate with it. Margaret gathered the child into her arms, soothing its sudden loud cries with her gentleness. “She is a beautiful little girl,” she announced. “Now all thou needs to do is push out the afterbirth, so we can cut the cord. Then I will clean her up so thou canst hold her.”

  After the last push, Margaret shifted the baby into the crook of one arm and held the cord high above its abdomen so that Bonnie could cut it. Margaret laid the baby down on some towels to tie the cord, then began wiping her with soft cloths and warm water. Bonnie used the same materials to wash Arden. By the time they placed the baby girl into her arms, Arden found herself not quite as exhausted as she had believed. Margaret helped guide the hungry little rose-colored mouth to Arden’s swollen breast.

  “Helena,” Arden pronounced. “She is just a little more beautiful than Helen of Troy, so she deserves the extra letter at the end.”

  “Helena Charlotte Malley,” Arden added, when Danny, Esther, and Father Fernaut were admitted to visit, after the feeding. She thought the feminine version of the King’s name might help the girl later in life. She dared not select a name reflecting Helena’s true parentage.

  “This is the most beautiful babe ever born a Malley in my memory!” declared Danny. “Brian would be bursting with pride and happiness. He always hoped the child would favor you, Arden.”

  “My father had dark eyes,” Arden told him and Esther, though they hadn’t asked. Though it was not true.

  “Powerfully brown they must have been, too,” said Dan, innocently, “to win out over the old wives’ tale about babies always being born with blue eyes.”

  By next morning, when Father Fernaut baptized Helena Charlotte Maria Malley as a Roman Catholic, Arden had managed to compose a brief letter to the Davenants. She announced her daughter’s birth, and described her husband’s death. She told Sir William to go ahead and hire another assistant. She predicted, if he still wanted her, that she’d return to town and to the stage in late spring. She mentioned she had promised Brian she would complete his play. She also asked politely that the couple relay all of her news to the Duke’s Company, though she could not bring herself to ask them to thank Kitty for her letter. Fernaut carried Arden’s missive with him when he left.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  One afternoon not long afterwards, while Helena napped in the flannel nest of a converted dresser drawer, Arden forced herself to sit down at the small writing table. She took a deep breath and opened Brian’s folio. She only meant, in this first venture, to skim it. To get a vague idea what her friend and husband had been about in his tragically unfinished magnum opus. Despite the vast number of lines and words messily crossed out in the earlier pages, however, Arden found herself captivated. Luckily, Helena at this stage could be counted upon to stay asleep for a couple of hours, because Arden read straight throu
gh to where Brian’s quill had last left parchment.

  When she looked up from that page, she became aware of the warm tears upon her cheeks, trailing cooler paths left by earlier trickles of emotion. She knew not whether Brian had intended his play to be a comedy or a tragedy, because he had died after writing its very middle. She did know absolutely, however, that the heroine had become herself in Brian’s eyes. What had brought her to tears, page after page, was the love with which she had been depicted. He had crafted her dialogue with such care. Arden also recognized other characters as thinly disguised versions of Brian himself, Treadwell, and Lord Robert. Not knowing what Brian intended, she did not know how to continue. Should she give Brian the happy ending he had deserved? Or should she give the audience a tragedy that would wrench them to their marrow by writing down what had really happened?

  “I shall have to think on it more,” she said to herself, wiping her cheeks with a fold of her black dress. She closed the folio, bowed her head upon it, and prayed for guidance.

  *****

  Christmastime floated in on mild breezes. Arden defied the entire Malley family’s dire warnings, taking a properly bundled Helena for walks along the road. “The air is good for us both,” she assured Danny on the afternoon of Boxing Day, an hour or so before the sun would go down.

  “For you, I believe it,” Danny agreed. “You look more than well for a woman so soon out of confinement. But little Helena’s not even a month old!”

  They had already danced this pavanne a few times before, and Arden had always managed to lead. She used this to end the argument. “I’ve taken her before, and isn’t she still the healthiest babe you could ask for?”